DIAGNOSING THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

2000 DR. ROMESH SENEWIRATNE

The signs have been evident for many years that the global economy is sick. These signs include a widening gap between rich and poor individuals and nations as well as rising dependence by the people of the earth on drugs to help them cope with living. Most animals do not need help to cope with living, although some, diagnosed as suffering from depression by human beings, are being given the same drugs that humans take to medicate their unhappiness. Despite these drugs, or because of them, the number of people who are killing themselves has been increasing every decade during the past 50 years. These are surely some signs of a sick economy. There are many others, which will be explored in this paper. In 1999 the Age newspaper contained a half page story on page 4 titled Australias stark reality: size does matter written by the reporter Malcolm Maiden. The article claimed that the company that once called itself the Big Australian signalled its final, full surrender to the forces of globalisation. The Big Australian referred to is the mining company BHP (Broken Hill Propriety Limited), whose advertising campaigns of the past have identified the company as the Big Australian and the Quiet Australian. The newspaper report described some of the actions of the new American boss of the company, which many Australians continue to identify as a great Australian company along with Arnotts biscuits, Holden motor cars and other traditionally Australian companies which have been taken over by larger foreign controlled companies in the new globalised economy. It would appear on deeper political and economic analysis, that the State and Federal (Commonwealth) Governments of Australia surrendered to the forces of globalization many

years ago, and for over a decade have been loud advocates of what was termed globalization and economic rationalization. Both are synonymous with the economy being ruled by the markets and those with the most capital: capitalism, in other words. The Australian Governments have been strong proponents of the philosophy that large corporations and affluent individuals should be allowed to continue to profit freely with minimal government interference suggesting that by so doing, a trickle-down effect will lead to an overall rise in standard of living, with the poor also eventually benefiting from increasing affluence of the rich. This too is a Capitalist philosophy, closely connected with the notorious social and political philosophy called social darwinism.

SOCIAL DARWINISM The discriminatory social policies that have resulted from misapplication of the evolutionary theories of the English scientist Sir Charles Darwin, include a range of social and economic theories based on promoting survival of the fittest including promotion of the dominant races and sterilization, enslavement or extermination of inferior (also called degenerate races). Dominant races (and races that implemented eugenics to try and become dominant) include Aryan races (not all of whom are white) and white races, however the races considered to be inferior (intellectually and morally) have consistently been uncivilised natives of colonised countries in the continents of Africa (especially), Australia, South America and Asia. The Asian exception in post-world war two history has been Japan, reflected by the fact that (rich, fair-skinned) Japanese were considered to be honorary whites in white-supremacist systems such that in apartheid South Africa. Social darwinism assumes that it is natural for the strong

to survive and the weak to die, that it is natural for the rich to prosper and the poor to be exploited and enslaved. It supposes that in the struggle for survival, the fit (rich) are destined to rule over the poor. This applies to individuals, as well as groups of people and even nations according to social darwinist theory. Nazi theory is a development of social darwinism, centred on the implementation of eugenics, a catastrophic medico-political attempt to improve the genes and genetics of the human race initially by selective sterilization of those considered unfit to breed, and later by the mass murder of races and classes of people considered dangerous, defective or degenerate. Social darwinism is intricately enmeshed with capitalist theory and slave theory, and a close historical examination of the three theories demonstrates common features and prejudices in their underlying philosophy. The first is that some people, families, and some classes of people are superior to others, and therefore deserving of more political power, more money and property and more respect from the public, as well as better opportunities for happiness, survival and success. These people are also encouraged to have more children and to educate them in such a way as to maintain the existing class and political structure. The inferiors in these hierarchies were considered to be deserving of rule, as well as exploitation by the superior races, classes and cultures. The second is the class structure itself. Charles Darwin, as the grandson of the imperial social theorist and biologist Sir Erasmus Darwin, was born into an elite English academic family, and supposed, as his letters to his cousin Francis Galton reveal, that the Darwin family were exceptionally well-endowed with geniuses (including himself), amongst what he considered to be the most intelligent type of person on earth, the Englishman of good breeding (and from a good

family). Hitler, and other advocates of racial superiority theories formulated, or had formulated for them, different hierarchies, with some differences in the order in which races and individuals were to be categorised in terms of superiority and inferiority. However, the basic obsession with categorisation according to class, colour, race and presumed genetics is common to all. The class structure in Germany, Scandinavia, the United States of America, England and Australia are significantly different, and the types of policy formulated to control troublesome sections of the society have differed between these major centres of eugenics practice and exporters of eugenic ideas.

EUGENICS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Eugenics is a word that was effectively written out of the English language after the end of the Second World War. This is because the discredited philosophy of breeding better people according to Darwinian principles, after being embraced by several European nations before the 1940s, was responsible for mass-murder, genocide, torture and other abuses when practically applied to rid Germany and German-occupied Europe of degenerate races and degenerate individuals. The nations whose scientific, medical and political establishments initially embraced eugenics included the United States, Great Britain, South Africa, Canada and Australia along with numerous European countries. The misguided abuse of genetic science resulted in thousands of forced sterilisations (often by simple castration) of young men and boys in the United States in the early years of the twentieth century, often for so-called feeble-mindedness or delinquency. Feeble-mindedness and other forms of degeneracy were manifest in such behaviour, according to

eugenists, as masturbation, petty crime, immorality and delinquency. The term eugenics and the first Society (organization) for Eugenics were created in the late 1800s by Charles Darwins first cousin Sir Francis Galton and Darwins son (Major Leonard Darwin), with the ostensible aim of improving humans by selective parenthood, and to give a better chance to the more suitable races or strains of blood. The philosophy was exported from London, where it originated, to Germany where both eugenics and euthanasia (mercy killing) were instituted as State Social Policies in the 1920s and 1930s when, starting with the mentally ill and physically deformed, those deemed to be immoral, or degenerate were killed following torture in the form of cruel medical experimentation. This was a horrible practice that became obvious to the world following the Second World War, when the methods used by German and Japanese authorities to achieve racial cleansing was revealed (in part) by the mass-media, which had become increasingly powerful following the development of television in the 1930s. The abuses which resulted from eugenics were usually blamed, however, on Hitler and the Nazis, clouding the issue of how and where the Nazis got their ideas. It also clouded the important fact that many other nations, including those which constituted the Allies, also implemented eugenic policies before and during the Second World War. Television, as usual, told only part of the story, and was used, from the outset, for the purposes of pro-British and pro-American propaganda. It did not suit the agenda of the television programmers at the time to reveal to the world how widely eugenic philosophy was accepted and implemented. The first television broadcast, an experimental internal broadcast before an audience at the Royal Institution in London was done by John Logie Baird, a 38 year-old Scottish

engineer who had worked at a Clyde Valley electric power company, before leaving to concentrate on his research. The same year as the founding of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 1927, ICI chemicals was also founded in England. ICI is an acronym for Imperial Chemical Industries, and these were the last days of undisguised imperialism by the British Empire. ICI continued, after the war, to grow into a massive chemical and pharmaceutical company, which profited from experimentation on captive subjects during and after the Second World War, including the recently revealed experiments on interned Italians and Jewish refugees in Australia, who, along with injured Australian soldiers, were deliberately infected with massive doses of malaria. These malaria infections were transmitted by transfusions of infected blood (courtesy of the Red Cross), and by exposing them to specially bred mosquitoes, provided by the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation). The experiments on the disabled Australian soldiers and interned civilians were claimed at the time to be necessary for the war effort and to protect Australian troops who were dying of malaria in New Guinea, but this was not, in fact, true. The cruel tests were done in the interests of the pharmaceutical industry in the USA and England, specifically for those of the American company Winthrop (manufacturers of Panadol) and ICI chemicals, which were testing out a German-discovered drug, later marketed as Paludrine. After the war ended, the trials continued for several months in Melbourne, at the wishes of these foreign drug companies, demonstrating the lie that lay at the heart of claims that they were necessary for the health of Australian troops. The drug trials and the deliberate infections which preceded them were orchestrated by the military hospital at Heidelberg,

Melbourne, and conducted in remote North Queensland, far from the eyes of the rest of Australia and the world. What is worse, rather than compensating the victims of this cruel human experimentation, the government of Australia and the Australian military denied that such events actually occurred until 50 years later, and even then denied culpability for their actions. The orders that resulted in what can easily be described as torture came from the British Empire, without whose agreement (and complicity) the experiments would not have been allowed.

IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY At the time of Erasmus Darwin, Charles grandfather, London was the centre of the British Empire and the global economy, and the academics in Englands two major Universities, Oxford and Cambridge, considered (and declared) themselves to be the cream of the worlds intellect. They were the educators of the British Royal Family and the designers of the British educational system which was exported to the world. They were also the designers and masterminds of English Imperialist theories, including the divide and rule policies used in the many countries colonised by British Forces, and many other socially destructive policies that continue to this day, sometimes due to conscious efforts to attack other countries, societies and populations and sometimes as a result of entrenched attitudes and procedures. Imperialism is a term used to describe the expansionist political and military philosophy of European monarchic empires, including England, Norway, Holland (Nederlands), Greece and Monaco, to mention some of the democratic states that retain self-styled kings, queens and royal families today. This concept supposes some families to be naturally superior based on heredity, blood, genes and blood

lines. These families were designated as divinely appointed natural rulers to whom all lesser mortals were expected to show respect, and further, diffidence. A subservient attitude when a commoner was in social contact with the aristocracy was demanded of the commoner and enforced by the supporters and protectors of the royal families, kings and queens included, but also including their children, relatives and descendents. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when slavery was still legal, many other European nations also had imperial royal families, including France, Germany, Austria and Spain. In fact, the aristocratic families that ruled these different European nations were often related biologically to each other. Thus the Kaiser (emperor) William (Wilhelm) II of Germany was the grandson of Queen Victoria of England, and the present-day husband of Queen Elizabeth of England, Prince Philip, is of the Greek royal family. When, eventually, slavery of Africans was declared illegal in the British Empire and the slaves were released, rather than paying compensation to those who were enslaved, the massive sum of 20 million pounds was paid, instead, to the slavers, an action arranged by Nathan Rothschild, of the notorious Rothschild banking family. This family has remained immensely wealthy and influential until present times, as have many other families, companies and nations that profiteered from the use of slave labour over the past 500 years. Although the theory of evolution by natural selection is generally credited to his grandson Charles, Erasmus Darwin also developed a theory of evolution by the inheritance of characteristics and preferential survival of better adapted species, publishing his theories in 1794 in a book titled Zoonomia. His grandson developed these theories further following his journeys aboard the HMS Beagle in the 1800s, but published them only when confronted by a paper detailing similar theories by the young scientist Alfred Russell Wallace, who forwarded a paper describing evolution by natural

selection to Darwin whilst on a journey as ships naturalist himself. When Erasmus Darwin published Zoonomia, slavery was one of the mainstays of the British Imperial economy, and this was to remain the case for many decades to follow. Slaves were taken by the British from Africa to the Americas, but also from the Indian Subcontinent to other parts of the British Empire, where they were forced to work in menial jobs for British companies and wealthy individuals. In Australia, convict labour was another form of slavery instituted against the poor as well as political dissidents (particularly Irish ones). Coolie labour, imported from China and India, was another aborted effort at slavery by the British in Australia, which most Australians are still unaware of. In 1794, the same year Erasmus Darwin published his book, slavery was officially abolished in all French territories, but not in British ones. The Chronicle of the World, which is, it must be noted, a British version of history, explains the French actions and motives as follows: As the three black delegates from Santo Domingo watched from their seats in the Assembly, the Convention votedto abolish slavery throughout the territories of the republic and to confer French citizenship on every former slave. Then the Domingans were led to the Tribunal where the president embraced them as the Convention rose in a standing ovationIn 1792, a year after the outbreak of the slave revolt, two civil commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel were sent to administer the island. In August 1793 they freed all of the 500,000 slaves. This humanitarian act had its political side. As long as the revolt continued it was impossible for France, at war with Spain and Britain, to defend its colony. Loyal freedmen were naturally better

patriots than rebellious slaves. (p.783) According to Chronicle of the World, the French hoped that their action would stimulate Britains slaves to rise in their turn, thus helping to undermine Britains war effort. This was not, in all probability, told to the slaves, who were undoubtedly pleased at being freed, not realising that their freedom was part of a military strategy. Here is seen one of the symptoms of a globally sick economy: military and political strategy disguised as humanitarian action. It also becomes evident from this historical episode, that war between European states has been a dominant feature of global politics for several centuries. It is worth noting that the British attempted a similar strategy during the American War of Independence, when Negro slaves were offered their freedom if they fought for the British against the Americans. Hundreds of slaves were subsequently betrayed by the British, and sold again into slavery after the British lost the war.

MODERN ECONOMICS AND WARFARE Todays newspapers (6.1.2000), have announced that another stockmarket crash has occurred, this time blamed on imminent rises in interest rates in the United States of America. The article in The Australian, by economics correspondent Ian Henderson, begins: The prospect of a sharp interest rate rise in the US within a month wiped $15 billion off Australian share prices yesterday and battered other markets worldwide. The article continues: Share prices around the world were jolted by fears of

the looming rise, which is being fuelled by evidence of strong economic growth, a tightening labour market and a view that share markets are probably overvalued in the US. Why should strong economic growth cause a lack of confidence in the stockmarket? What constitutes strong economic growth? What is the labour market and why is it tightening? Could warfare and slavery have anything to do with the collapse of the stockmarket? Is this an indicator that the global economy is becoming more unwell or is it a sign of improving health of the people who create and maintain the economy? The stockmarket is maintained by speculation about the future. This includes speculation about which companies and industries are likely to bring profits to shareholders, and which are likely to out-compete the opposition. The opposition, in a competition-oriented capitalist economy, include other companies and industries on the one hand, and other countries and groups of countries on the other. This competition is often ruthless and may involve strategies developed by military-style thinking, including brainwashing, propaganda, subterfuge and surprise attacks. Take-overs of smaller companies and industries by larger ones are common, and have resulted in giant corporations wielding more economic influence than entire nations. The connection between the stockmarket and military machine involve more than common strategies, however. Companies that profit directly from warfare are included amongst the companies on the global stockmarkets, and these are known to grow in times of war. These companies include businesses involved in more than the manufacture of conventional weapons such as guns, missiles, tanks, grenades, aircraft, ships, submarines, land mines and bombs. The industries which provide the raw materials for conventional

weapons, including the mining industry, also profit from war and preparation for war, regardless of whether this is called the war effort, as it was called in the 1940s or defense as the same industry has been called since then. In more recent times, computers, surveillance equipment and biotechnology have also been part of the military machine, and used for military purposes, as has the chemical industry and pharmaceutical industry. These latter industries have played a prominent role in a change in modern warfare from predominantly conventional warfare to predominantly unconventional warfare, involving chemical warfare, drug warfare, psychological warfare and biological warfare. Reading between the lines of military jargon, some disturbing conclusions may be reached by reading the cover story of the August 1999 Bulletin magazine. The article, by John Lyons, is advertised on the front cover as Defence: our new policy revealed and is titled Operation Backflip. Lyons claims that following a reluctance to engage in such activities following defeat in Vietnam, Australia is again engaged in what are euphemistically termed forward operations, in the nature of Vietnam and Korea. He reveals that this change in Australian military policy is being done by stealth, and making the Australian military activities more closely in line with that of the United States of America. Lyons writes: After the defeat in Vietnam, US and Australian policymakers and the public lost the appetite for prolonged overseas engagements. The Nixon doctrine of 1969 preached that unless a leading power intervened in a Third World conflict, the US should not commit forces. Committing forces is not the same as supporting conflicts, and it is common knowledge that the USA has supported armed conflict around the world over the past century, especially in

the past fifty years when the pentagon and US military have been fighting a war against communism and socialism. This is not surprising, since the US is a major exporter of arms, and it is thus deemed to be in the interests of the American Economy, and thus the US National Interest, to increase sales of North American arms, even though they are causing misery and terror throughout the world, including in the US itself. It is more palatable for politicians in the US and UK to have soldiers from other nations doing the actual fighting and dying in the conflicts these arms-producers support. This is an age-old military strategy which was used by the British throughout the colonial era, which was continued in the Second World War and after it concluded. Lyons writes: Defence planners want Australia to become more involved in coalition operations such as supporting the US in a Gulf War-like crisis since the US does not like to engage in military operations by itself. Increased inter-operability with the US coincides with Australias desire to improve its technology, part of what the Americans call the Revolution in Military Affairs, combining the emergence of new technology with advanced strike capability (p.25) The national affairs editor of The Bulletin explains that this change in Australian defence policy brings clear economic benefit to the US (but not to Australia): In order to become more of an all-rounder as a military force, the conclusion drawn by defence planners means it will be necessary for Australia to buy more military equipment and technology from the US. Under the hidden policy, virtually any purchase can be justified. This is reflected in the acquisitions Australia is considering, including Apache armed reconnaissance helicopters with Longbow radar and Hell-fire missiles,

which are designed essentially for attacking tanks or underground bunkers of the type found in Iraq or Northern Korea a long way from the air sea gap. The late twentieth century has been a time of global warfare, although this has often been disguised by euphemisms, particularly in countries like Australia which attempt to present to the world an image of a nation that is intrinsically peaceful. This is far from true. Australia has sent troops to fight in wars all around the world over the past century and even today Australian troops are involved in military activity far from the nations shores. Over the past one hundred years young Australian people have been sent to fight in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the pacific region. They have sometimes been called peacekeepers, sometimes allied forces, but rarely mercenaries. Sometimes they have been forced to go to war after being conscripted, as occurred in the Indo-China Wars. In more recent times forced conscription has not occurred, and Australian military personnel have been paid well for fighting or peacekeeping in foreign lands. In fact, it is doubtful that these soldiers would leave their homes in Australia were it not for the fact that they are paid well to do so. In this case, mercenaries would surely be a more appropriate term to use to describe these people. Such views are not likely to be popular in Australia, since the troops currently in Timor are being heralded as heroes who are keeping the peace and preventing genocide by Indonesians who committed mass-murder of the indigenous Timorese population for two decades before the recent events in the island. It should be recognised, however, that the Indonesian (Javanese) invasion of the previously Portuguese half of Timor occurred with the complicity of the Commonwealth Government in Canberra, and despite International opposition to this act of political and military aggression. It should also be

noted that West Timor remains occupied by Javanese troops and is still accepted by the Australian Government (and others) to be a legitimate part of Indonesia. Historically, though, Indonesia is synonymous with the Dutch East Indies, the political and military centre of which was Batavia (Java). Thus Indonesia is really a result of neocolonialism, with Java-controlled troops occupying the surrounding islands: Sumatra, Sulawesi, Borneo and Timor included. During the past century, the Dutch-instituted exploitation of these islands has continued, with western governments supporting what was widely recognised as a corrupt Javanese political hierarchy. This hierarchy was ruled until recently by the Suharto family, who became, in essence, an aristocracy in the region. President Suharto, who ruled Indonesia for several decades, placed his own children and family members in positions that enabled the family to exploit the natural resources of the area, particularly the forests and minerals in the surrounding islands. They also suppressed the growing calls for independence in brutal ways in Timor and other parts of Indonesia. The Australian government supported the Suharto regime for many decades, including providing military equipment and training as well as financial support, incongruously described as international aid. International aid comes in many forms and it is a massive multibillion-dollar industry. It is also a euphemism, since the aid is inevitably accompanied by a hidden agenda. In the case of Australian aid to Indonesia, the hidden agenda was poorly disguised. Australian industrialists and politicians intended profiteering from the Indonesian islands along with the corrupt Javanese regime it propped up, armed and collaborated with in other ways. When the Labour Party and Gough Whitlams Government supported the annexation of East Timor in the early 1970s, the motive was clear: petroleum deposits in the Timor Sea. It was supposed, at the time, that Australia would be better able to negotiate with the

Indonesians for a share of Timorese oil than with an independent Timor, particularly a communist, socialist or nationalist independent Timor. For over two decades Australia turned a blind eye to mounting evidence of atrocities committed against the indigenous Timorese population by the Indonesian military, including the genocide of a third of the population of East Timor: some 200,000 men, women and children. So why the sudden concern that justifies sending troops to East Timor to stop the atrocities and keep the peace at the cost of over $500,000,000? Military, political and economic strategy, or genuine concern about human rights abuses? John Lyons wrote, in The Bulletin, in August 1999: If Australia is forced to engage overseas in the next 12 months, East Timor is the most likely flashpoint. Previously, the Korean peninsula was Australias biggest regional security concern. While neither necessarily involves combat troops, they could see an Australian peacekeeping role with a dangerous edge. East Timor holds both a humanitarian and strategic significance. The Timor Gap and Arafura Sea provide one of the best deep-water tunnels for submarines moving between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. In this analysis, the battle for oil deposits in the bed of the Timor Sea are not mentioned, but this is another of the strategic (economic) considerations fuelling desire by Australian politicians to control the sea between Timor and Australia. Despite Australias less than enviable human rights record, and recently revealed abuses by and corruption in our police forces, it is claimed by Lyons that: If Timor votes for independence, a new country will need to be built with independent political systems, police force and education. Much will depend on Australian funding, backed by Australian peacekeepers.

Australia itself has an appalling human rights record. Only a fraction of the aboriginal population survived the initial onslaught by British colonists, and today most live in desperately impoverished circumstances, in aboriginal settlements where they have a life expectancy about twenty years shorter than the rest of the Australian population. Abuses by State police against aboriginal people (especially those in custody) and psychiatric patients (many of whom have been shot in recent years) have received limited media attention in Australia, but more so in the foreign press. It is worth noting that during what was indisputably a genocidal campaign against the indigenous population of the continent, the officials who presided over this carnage were called protectors of the natives. It is also worth noting that in the 1840s, when aboriginal people were still being hunted for sport, enslaved and massacred, the British Government, which claimed to be protecting the natives, was engaged in a cruel war against the Chinese, now known as the opium wars. During these wars opium was forced into China from India and Burma (where it was grown on British-owned and controlled plantations), with the intent of addicting and subjugating the Chinese population to the addictive drug. The justification given to the British population for these wars was ensuring free trade.

FREE TRADE AND REPRESSION It could be said that free trade values the freedom of industries more than the freedom of people. Unfortunately this means that industries that result in disease and death of humans are protected in the modern world more than people are. It is also the case that free trade zones are poorly disguised concentration camps of economic, and sometimes

physical, slaves. So-called free-trade zones have been established by action of first world countries throughout the third world, with the objective of exploiting cheap labour in poor nations. An example of modern economic slavery in Indonesia and the political repression that accompanied it during the rule of the Suharto regime is given in The Global Trap by Hans-Peter Martin and Harald Schumann (1997): The Asian miracle does, of course, have its darker side. The boom goes hand in hand with corruption, political repression, massive environmental destruction, and often extreme exploitation of a labour force with no rights (most of it made up of women). Take Nike, for example. Its expensive trainers, costing up to 150 dollars a pair in Europe and the USA, are stitched and punched by some 120,000 workers in the contract companies that supply Nike in Indonesia, for a wage of less than three dollars a day. Even in Indonesian conditions that is a starvation wage, but it complies with the legal minimum applicable to more than half the countrys 80-million labour force. To make sure that it keeps this advantage, the military regime headed for the last thirty years by the dictator Suharto nips every workers protest in the bud. For example, when Tongris Situmorang a twenty-two-year-old working for Nike in Serang mobilized his workmates for a strike in autumn 1995, local army men simply shut him up for seven days in one of the factorys storerooms and kept an eye on him around the clock. Still, he was later released and all he lost was his job. Others, such as the two women trade unionists Sugiarti and Marsinah, who are celebrated throughout the country, paid with their lives for their courageous action. Their dead bodies, mutilated by torture, were found on the rubbish tip of the factories where they had tried to organize a strike. (p.146)

In China, according to the same book, Chinas socialist market economy has been accompanied by terrible atrocities: More than a million women workers have to stitch, punch or pack on the work-benches for fifteen hours a day, or more in exceptional circumstances. People are forced to work like machines, says a local newspaper. Often they must pay a deposit worth several months wages when they first start work at the factory, and it is not returned to them if they leave the company without the managements approval. At night they are crammed together in narrow and often locked dormitories which become death-traps in the event of fire. Even the central government in Beijing has admitted that labour legislation is being ignored; the first six months of 1993 alone witnessed 11,000 fatal work accidents and 28,000 fires. Yet those who rule in the name of the Chinese working class prevent any resistance, above all in the special economic zones for foreign investors: those who complain or attempt to form unions are likely to be sentenced to three years in a labour camp and there are currently hundreds of trade unionists in prison. When faced with East Asias (by Western Standards) unacceptable campaigns to capture world-market shares, most governments in the West exercise astonishing restraint. (p.147) The restraint that Western governments display towards these abuses may seem astonishing to the authors of this book, but they are hardly out of character given the long history of Western Governments supporting slavery under the pretext of protecting free trade. This book was written prior to the collapse of the Asian Tiger economies in 1997, which was blamed, in the Australian media, on various factors that had little to do with mass opposition in these countries to the conditions in these forced labour camps. The Economist claimed, for example, on 10 January, 1998, that the crisis in

Asia shows no sign of abating despite the vast sums of money that the International Monetary Fund is applying to the problem. This included a rescue plan worth $43 billion for Indonesia, which followed a package of $57 billion for South Korea in 1997. The magazine claimed that the economic crisis in Asia was due to failure of Asias domestic regulators to strike a balance between the risk of lenders and depositors: The failure of Asias domestic regulators to strike such a balance is the chief cause of the regions problems. For years, lenders and depositors felt too safe for their own good. Yet the Funds response to the crisis is to make another set of lenders, foreigners this time, feel safe. Some argue that the true cost of that costless Mexican bail-out is todays crisis in Asia because foreign lenders learned in 1995 that they would be rescued if their loans turned bad, and therefore lent more than they should in Asia. (p.12) The Economist fails to mention an author for this short article, which describes the costless Mexican bail-out as follows: Recall the Mexican bail-out of 1995. Nobody feared a global meltdown in that case, though there were worries (justified, it turned out) about Latin American contagion. Guided by other considerations, America and the IMF nonetheless arranged support amounting to $40 billion. It worked. Confidence was restored. Growth in exports allowed the emergency loans to be serviced at market rates and repaid. American investors in Mexico didnt lose their shirts and, in the end, American taxpayers didnt pay a cent. (p.11) The global meltdown scenario is explained as a possible apocalypse involving a systemic breakdown caused by nations defaulting on loan repayments: Invoking the risk of systemic breakdown is the most obvious way to justify the IMFs intervention. Without an emergency injection of dollars, it is argued,

companies in South Korea and the rest would default on their debts. This would cause distress everywhere, especially in Japan, where stagnation could turn into outright depression. From there the crisis could spread to the United States, Europe and the rest of the world, as banks fail, credit disappears, stockmarkets crash and economies collapse. This is the nightmare that has driven governments, notably Americas, to support and indeed insist upon the Funds course of action. It is interesting to note how much of the economic jargon used by The Economist is seconded from medical terminology, including injection of dollars, depression, systemic collapse and contagion. It is, by the way, likely that most of the worlds population could imagine worse nightmares and apocalyptic scenarios than a collapse of the International Banking system, including the grossly unfair claims of third world debt to first world bankers and creditors. In fact, with a longer view of history, one could reasonably ask as to who owes who in the world of macroeconomics. It is also evident that despite claims that these bankers are bailing out poor nations in crisis, the real motive is protection of the economies of rich countries (particularly the USA) rather than poor ones.

THIRD WORLD DEBT A capitalist perspective of the Third World debt problem was presented in an economics textbook by John Jackson of the University of Western Australia and Campbell McConnell of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The textbook, titled Economics was in its third edition in 1988. In the chapter titled Growth and the underdeveloped nations they wrote, under the subtitle The debt problem: In addition to the long-term deterioration of the

underdeveloped nations terms of trade, the global economic environment of the past decade has been very adverse for the non-oil countries of the Third World. A convergence of forces has greatly intensified their need for economic assistance. First, the dramatic run-up of oil prices by OPEC in 1973-74 and again in 1979-80 (raising the price of a barrel of oil from about $2.50 to $32) greatly increased the energy bill of the oil-importing underdeveloped countries. Similarly, the inflation experienced by the industrially advanced countries has increased the cost of non-oil imports to the Third World. Finally, the general stagnation of the advanced countries has slowed the growth of their demand for the underdeveloped nations raw material exports. The overall result has been that the exports of the poor non-oil nations have been insufficient to pay for their imports. The financing of this shortfall has been largely through borrowing, that is, increasing the international indebtedness of the non-oil Third World nations. The long-term external debt of these nations has grown dramatically from $97 thousand million in 1973 to over $1000 thousand million by the end of 1986. Many debt-ridden Third World nations want their debts cancelled or rescheduled so that current export earnings and foreign aid can be used for development purposes rather than debt servicing and repayment. (p.616) The textbook goes on to say that, in response to a crisis that threatened the international banking system, debts of many poor nations were rescheduled in the 1980s, giving them more time to pay back their debts. In reality, though, the post-WWII terms of international trade, including the activities of the World Bank and IMF ensure that regardless of how much time these nations are given to service their debts, they will continue sinking deeper and deeper into debt. Yet this debt does not really exist. The Third World owes nothing to the First World, and if anything the reverse is the

case. The rich (colonising) nations surely owe billions of dollars in compensation to the now poor nations that they have exploited for the past several centuries.

THE CURE Since a reductionist and discriminatory medical paradigm has been part of the sickness of the global economy, it is appropriate that a holistic medical analogy be used to lead to a natural cure for the worlds economic ills. The worlds economic problems might be diagnosed by looking at each of the human physiological systems, and extrapolating the systemic functioning of the human body to the global economy. These include the nervous system, the circulatory system, the respiratory system, the digestive system, the reproductive system and the excretory system. The biochemistry of the world can be approached scientifically to provide a solution to chemical pollution and toxicity. The imbalance in distribution of wealth can be rectified by a more healthy circulation of money and material possessions. The population of the world will breathe easier if people are provided with clean air to take into their lungs. The natural detoxification of the world will occur if the forests are regenerated, and the rivers and lakes contain pure water, rather than industrial pollutants. A depression will not occur if people look at their individual activities and focus on living a useful life in the service and support of other living creatures, rather than worry about unemployment. The world will not be overpopulated if there is a fair distribution of land and wealth, regeneration of plant life and cessation of unnecessary greed and waste. One can take this analogy further. The circulation of blood in the body can be compared to the

circulation of money in the world. For health this circulation needs to be vigorous and evenly distributed, with those areas that need more because of more activity, receiving more on the basis of requirement (need). Too much blood in one area leads to blockage and haemorrhage, and deficiency in others leads to infarction and death of tissues. Likewise, a poorly distributed fiscal policy leads to excess amongst some individuals and deficiency in others, within countries, and warfare and widespread misery when the poor distribution affects the global economy as a whole. Excess money can lead to real illness, and such diseases of excess (obesity and addiction, for example) are common causes of disease and death in western countries. Diseases of deficiency (such as nutritional deficiency, starvation and immune deficiency) are common in the poor nations. It is of note that blood is, itself, part of the world economy, and the sale of blood and blood products a multi-billion-dollar industry. Ironically, the Red Cross, which controls most of the circulation of blood products in Australia with a virtual (or actual) monopoly, was involved in the previously mentioned transfusions of malaria-infected blood to interred Italians, Jewish refugees and disabled soldiers in the Paludrine trials in Queensland in the 1940s. The circulatory system of vertebrates is not controlled by a single part of the body, and regulatory mechanisms exist around the body to ensure that only the correct amount of blood reaches different parts of the body, that the pressure and temperature of the blood are maintained at a healthy level, and that the heart, which pumps the blood around the body, continues to have a constant and ongoing rhythm. The blood is produced in a protected area, the bone marrow, and the iron that is necessary to carry oxygen around the body is recycled by action of the spleen and liver. If there is not enough blood in circulation, disease, in the form of anaemia develops. For health of the tissues, and the body as a whole, blood must be distributed by blood vessels to each and every cell in the body.

The circulatory system, briefly and simplistically described above, can be compared with the circulation of money, the generation of cash (by different nations, as in bones which contain the bone marrow), the International Monetary Fund and World Bank (the heart, which is suffering from potentially terminal illness, at present), individual national banks and ATMs (blood vessels), and tissues of different organs (towns and geographical regions). Every individual has need of money, and deprivation of individual cells (people) leads to disease in the whole. The body is much more than blood, however. People need much more than money for a healthy, happy life. They need food, air, light and shelter, just to survive. They also need clothing and warmth, emotional and environmental stimulation, meaningful activity and good education for a comfortable and healthy existence. The physiological analogy of the cardiovascular system can also be applied to other systems, with a focus on healing and regeneration. The respiratory system of vertebrates is centred on the activity of the lungs, but health cannot be achieved without clean air to breathe. This basic necessity for life is currently being threatened by pollution and the promotion of cigarettes throughout the world. The growth of the tobacco industry over the past three hundred years has been accompanied, in fact, by a dramatic rise in actual respiratory illness, particularly in industrialised countries, but also in other parts of the world at the hands of industrialised nations. These illnesses include lung cancer, asthma and emphysema, chronic bronchitis and respiratory infections. All these conditions are caused or aggravated by cigarette smoking, and smoking adversely affects both the smokers themselves, and other people who breathe in the smoke that they exhale. The tobacco industry is one of those destructive industries that

became wealthy with the sweat of slave labour. African slaves were taken to work on tobacco plantations in the Caribbean, South America and elsewhere throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by Dutch, Spanish and English slavers, with the complicity of the governments and monarchies of these colonising countries. Tobacco plantations were also created in the Dutch East Indies, which later became Indonesia. In these islands indigenous and migrant workers were employed, after the abolition of slavery, to continue the monocrop agriculture that supports one of the biggest killers of the modern world: the tobacco cigarette industry. The fact that cigarette smoking is a major cause of respiratory disease was denied for many years by tobacco companies decades after the medical evidence demonstrating this fact was overwhelming. During the first and second world wars cigarettes were promoted as of benefit to psychological stress although, in reality, withdrawal from the drug actually causes this problem, since nicotine causes physical addiction. When it became impossible for cigarette companies to promote their product in this way in western countries due to public and medical awareness of the risks of smoking, the same companies sold heavy nicotine cigarettes throughout the third world instead, whilst finding ways around the laws against public advertising of cigarettes in European nations. When opportunities arose, in the 1980s and 1990s, to sell American and European cigarettes in previously communist countries, every effort was made to addict the populations of Russia, Eastern Bloc countries and China to high-nicotine cigarettes despite their known dangers. It is encouraging, however, that recently compensation has been paid, although belatedly, to some of the victims of the cigarette trade. Cigarette addiction worldwide can be alleviated by a global ban on public cigarette advertising, and the same applies to alcohol, which also causes untold health damage throughout the world. This is not the same as prohibition. It is well

established that prohibition fails as a policy to stop drug abuse, and can make the problem worse. A ban on cigarette advertising in public places and the mass-media is a cost effective solution, which does not interfere with the individuals right to smoke. While this right may exist, the right to knowingly poison the lungs of the innocent does not exist. The savings to the global health budget from such a ban would be massive, particularly in countries such as Australia, where heart disease and cancer are major causes of disease and death. The respiratory health of the global population will also benefit from a cessation of industrial pollution, but this is not as easy to achieve as a cessation of cigarette smoke pollution. A significant reduction in global pollution could be achieved, however, by greater corporate and governmental support for renewable energy sources, and with foresight this is a wise thing for governments and industry to do, since coal and petroleum deposits are limited. Air itself can provide significant amounts of energy, in the form of wind power, and sunlight is another clean source of energy, which is sustainable in the long term. Freedom can be equated with the breath of life. It is a fundamental requirement for a just society. This freedom includes freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of association, freedom of movement and freedom of procreation. Yet these are all basic rights which have been, and are currently, denied to large proportions of the worlds population. This is to the detriment of the global economy, and more importantly, to the cause of humanity, justice, peace and tranquility. Food is necessary for the digestive health of the global population. Contrary to claims of overpopulation, it is well recognised that starvation and malnourishment do not occur because there is not enough food to go around, but because of

warfare and wastage. The advice of Mohandas Gandhi 50 years ago, that the world provides enough for every persons need but not every persons greed remains true today. Huge amounts of wheat and other staple foods are regularly destroyed to maintain high prices of resources that could be used to feed the poor. Rather than encouraging people in poor nations to grow their own food using environmentally sensible multiple crop agriculture, for several centuries large areas of the worlds fertile regions have been, and continue to be, used for environmentally destructive monocrop agriculture. This monocrop agriculture involves the deforestation of mixed vegetation and replacement with single crops such as tobacco, coffee, tea, wheat and sugar. The prices of these commodities have consistently fallen, while the technology required to maintain these crops has become more expensive. These crops are also of little benefit to the essential dietary needs of the nations in which plantations were established during the era of slavery. Monocrop plantations are being maintained for the convenience and economy of rich countries rather than poor ones. Efforts to become self-sufficient in terms of food grown in individual nations are regularly thwarted by the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which support the interests of established industries and large companies based in affluent nations. Yet even the description of these nations as affluent makes little sense if the claims of debt to international bankers are to be accepted. By these terms the United States of America is one of the poorest nations on earth, since this first world nation, like Australia, also considered affluent, apparently also owes many billions of dollars to the IMF and World Bank. For what? For policies forced on the nations of the world that are increasingly creating a global wasteland? Looking at the digestive system of the global economy on a broader level, the total amount of ingested substances by humans can be looked at as a whole. Recent years have seen

humans being described by economic rationalists as consumers rather than people, and it is evident that in countries such as Australia, people are generally consuming too much and consuming the wrong things if they intend their health to improve. These include pharmaceutical drugs as well as animal products, particularly meat. On 10.1.2000, The Australian contains a page three article titled Bad habits push up $3bn pill bill. In it, John Kerin writes: Hectic lifestyles, poor diet and too little exercise are driving up Australias $3 billion-a-year prescription drug bill. An examination of prescription drug-taking patterns over the past 12 months shows the big growth has been for the treatment of cardiovascular ailments, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Almost 140 million scripts were issued in 1998-99. Some 18 million were issued for blood pressure-related complaints in 1998-99 and a further 8 million for drugs needed to lower cholesterol. Kerin adds that, the use of expensive stomach ulcer and gastric reflux drugs and anti-depressants is also on the rise, with a decrease in scripts for antibiotics. The reasons given by Dr David Brand, national president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA) for this debacle are confused and confusing. While admitting that diet and exercise are important in both high blood pressure and lowering cholesterol and that the average Australian has been gaining a gram of fat a day over the past 15 years, he also claims that the growth in use of prescription drugs could also be explained by tremendous improvements in drugs. In reality, though, the increase is more likely to be due to extraordinarily aggressive campaigns by pharmaceutical companies to sell these expensive drugs and the failure of doctors to resist their marketing strategies. Dr Brand himself admits that, a few years ago you had a bloody hard time

convincing patients to take some blood pressure preparations or anti-depressants. This statement is a disturbing indicator of the medical professions role in pushing drugs, especially when he also admits that the resistance of the population to taking these drugs was because, they ended up feeling more awful from the side effects than they did from the original complaint. In fact, high blood pressure and high cholesterol in themselves do not usually make people feel awful: the reason they are treated is for the prevention of heart disease, stroke and other consequences of atherosclerosis (hardening of arteries). Furthermore, drug treatment by itself, without behavioral change, has been repeatedly shown to be ineffective in reducing this risk. Taking cholesterol lowering drugs without reducing meat and saturated animal fat intake does not reduce overall risk of illness and death, and the same applies for taking blood pressure lowering drugs without reduction of mental stress, obesity and other lifestyle factors. The health problems which are responsible for most of the pharmaceutical expenditure of Australia and other first world countries are conditions caused by excess, rather than deficiency. This point is missed by Kerin, and by Brand. They also fail to mention the major additional risk factor for heart disease and atherosclerosis: cigarette smoking. Brand also makes the rather contentious claim that, rather than, again, aggressive marketing campaigns for new antidepressants, and broadened criteria for diagnosis of the condition, higher rates of prescribing for depression were linked to improvements in its diagnosis. Actually, this improvement in diagnosis just means that doctors and the public are more likely to call sadness, frustration, boredom, anxiety, worry and distress depression. The diagnosis of depression has been marketed ruthlessly in

the mass media, including medical educational literature provided by the pharmaceutical industry and health-promotional campaigns, such as those of the Federal Governments mental health strategy. In these campaigns, spearheaded in Australia by the Mental Health Foundation, propaganda from the drug companies Smith Kline Beecham, Roche, Pfizer and Eli Lilly (list is not exhaustive) exhort patients to self-diagnose themselves as suffering from a medical illness termed depression. This illness is said to be caused by chemical imbalances, which are sometimes specified as affecting the neurotransmitters serotonin and noradrenaline (called norepinephrine in the USA). This theory, which conveniently acts to theoretically justify the prescription and ingestion of chemicals (antidepressants) to correct the chemical imbalance is the mainstay of modern biological psychiatry. This chemical theory of depression is pushed by these drug companies through Mental Health Foundation literature, which is sponsored by the above named companies. All these massive pharmaceutical companies sell new antidepressants. Eli Lilly produces Prozac, Smith Kline Beecham markets Aropax, Pfizer produces Zoloft and Roche offers Aurorix, all to treat depression. The first three of these are SSRI antidepressants, the marketing of which has constituted one of the biggest scientific frauds of the twentieth century. The fraud regarding these drugs involves information given to doctors and the public about the neurotransmitter serotonin, and the pineal organ in the brain where the chemical is concentrated and converted to the neurohormone melatonin during hours of night-time darkness. Serotonin was discovered in the early 1940s and melatonin was discovered in 1958. The biochemical pathway involved in the synthesis of serotonin from the amino acid tryptophan was discovered in the early 1960s along with the pathway for synthesis of melatonin from serotonin. It was discovered at this time that serotonin and melatonin are concentrated in the pineal and that light shone

into the eyes during the night (when melatonin is usually synthesised) suppresses melatonin production. It was also discovered in the 1960s and 1970s that melatonin and the pineal affect the secretion of other brain hormones, particularly those secreted by the pituitary gland located at the base of the brain. Melatonin and serotonin were found to have effects on mood, blood temperature, sleep and other important aspects of physiology. Melatonin and the pineal were also found to have effects on sexual maturation (probably via pituitary gonadotrophin hormones) as well as the immune system. It was also discovered, over thirty years ago, that the pineal is connected to the eyes and visual system via the suprachiasmatic nucleus and sympathetic nervous system, and that the neurotransmitter noradrenaline is involved in the conversion of serotonin to melatonin. The scam involving the pineal, melatonin and serotonin has involved a systematic removal of scientific information about known pineal physiology from medical and scientific textbooks, as well as disinformation about serotonin and other neurotransmitters. This coincides with the marketing of a melatonin as a sleeping tablet and natural cure for jet lag and seasonal affective disorder together with drugs which affect serotonin metabolism, notably the SSRI antidepressants.

The American producer of Prozac, Eli Lilly, was the first to develop and market globally a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI): a new class of expensive antidepressants derived from the stimulant MDMA. The designer drug commonly known as Ecstasy shares its origin in MDMA, but cannot be patented, hence its illegality. These are the realities of modern drug laws: they are based on economic, not public health considerations. Several dangerous man-made drugs are illegal, but far more dangerous drugs are legal. The illegal drugs include heroin (derived from opium poppies), and other opiate narcotics. They are not illegal, however, if prescribed as

pain-killers by doctors, in which case they are greatly overused. The exception to this is the opiate codeine, which is available over the counter in Australia in the form of Panadeine, Dymadon and Tylenol tablets (forte preparations). These are also overused in Australia along with the non-forte preparations which contain paracetamol alone (without codeine), but can cause fatal liver and kidney damage, particularly in overdose. Drug overdose is one of the growing causes of death in the modern world. These include both intentional and unintentional overdose. Unintentional overdoses include those due to the self-ingestion of drugs, including paracetamol, aspirin, tranquillisers, sleeping tablets, anti depressants and alcohol. These avoidable deaths include mortality from drugs given in excess amounts by doctors and hospitals to people who are considered in medical need of them by some doctor or another. Often different doctors contribute to a cocktail of drugs that individuals in the modern world consume. Individuals who look to these doctors for medical advice, but receive secondhand advertising for and from the pharmaceutical industry instead.

CONCLUSION Turning to the brain of the economy, it becomes evident that wherever it is, it is not working well. If it was, the economy would not be a sick as it is. The brain controls and regulates the other systems of the body, including the rest of the nervous system. The brain is inextricably connected to the mind, and the minds that have devised the current economic system were obsessed by war, nationalism and beating the opposition. This has had a direct effect on the economic decisions which have been made in the past fifty years, despite claims of globalism.

The paradigm of the United Nations organisation, which grew out of the League of Nations is still one of perpetual war and conflict, with a hidden agenda in favour of the nations that formed the United Nations in the first place. These were the victors of the Second World War: the United States, Britain and other permanent members of the UN Security Council. Institutions such as the World Health Organization (WHO) are part of the UN and World Bank systems, and again represent the interests of dominant nations rather than smaller or less industrialised ones. In the lingo of the UN, non-industrialised nations are termed Third World or Underdeveloped, with development equated with corporate-ruled industrialisation. This is one of the biggest problems that face the United Nations, World Health Organization and populace of the world. A fundamental change in paradigm from one of nationalistic aggression to international cooperation and support is desperately needed. Governments around the world need to encourage their people to be productive human beings rather than consumers or pawns in a global game of perpetual warfare. A realisation must be made that conflict between nations is not necessary or inevitable and that the majority of the worlds population would rather live in peace and harmony. REFERENCES: 1. Burne, J. (Editor). Chronicle of the World. Penguin: London (1991) 2. Henderson, I. Rate fears spark $15b share slide. The Australian. 6.1.00 3. Kandel, E., Schwartz, J., Jessell, T. (Editors). Essentials of Neural Science and Behavior. Prentice Hall: USA (1995) 4. Kotulak, R. Inside the Brain. Universal Press: USA (1996) 5. Lemonick, M. The mood molecule. Time. November 1997. 6. Lyons, J. Operation backflip. The Bulletin. August 1999. 7. Martin, H and Schumann, H. The Global Trap. Zed books: London, New York (1997) 8. Thomas, H. The Slave Trade. Papermac (Macmillan): London 1997