oceania

Oceania is the powerful creation of thought which can move mountains and expand rivers.
It is the visualization of a place. I live in this mystical place which is known as the Pacific and surrounded by islands.
It is about these islands and the perception of them that I’d like to talk about and how the way we perceive certain things shape reality. Our perception creates an image, an idea and a limited way of seeing things which eradicates the pluralistic essence of that particular “image”. Furthermore, it is worth observing here how words create images and therefore shape reality.
The concept of ‘Pacific Islands’ connotes smallness while the term ‘Oceania’ defines vastness and a sense of infinity. Oceania – that’s the magical place where I live.
Hau’ofa is the author of “Our Sea of Islands”, a piece of writing which outlines the immensity of Oceania and the power of the people of the ocean.
I once asked myself a fundamental question: How is it possible that the minority controls the majority, namely what the media refer to as the first world and the third world respectively?
How is it possible that powerful people such as the people of the ocean were colonised notwithstanding their powerful energy and meaningful existence shaped by myths, legends, oral traditions and cosmologies?
How is it possible that people from Africa are considered poor despite their rich resources such as coffee, timber, gold and their powerful soul where music and vibration have their eternal stay?
In my previous posts about development I have outlined the causes which today shaped and separated the world into poor and rich, transforming the essence of humanity based on ‘oneness’ and ‘one people’ into first, second and third class citizen. Today those who are part of the first world are considered developed and rich, while those who live in the third world are the poor and underdeveloped ones.

However, “smallness is a state of mind” (Hau’ofa 1993, p.7). If you think of yourself as big, then you are big and therefore powerful.
We all are powerful creatures of the universe.
The issue is: Do we know it? Do we know how powerful we are? Do we believe in ourselves?
We are all spiritual beings having a human experience.
Once we realize this fact, then we need to make the next step: using powerful language. For instance, viewing the Pacific as ‘islands in a far sea’ and as ‘a sea of islands’ resonates a diverse energy and vibration. “The first emphasises dry surfaces in a vast ocean far from the centres of power. If you focus that way you stress the remoteness of the islands. The second is a more holistic perspective in which things are seen in the totality of their relationship” (Hau’ofa 1993, p.7).
The people of the ocean expand their stories everywhere they go when they cross the ocean. “The ocean is theirs because it has always been their home. Social scientists may write of Oceania as a Spanish Lake, a British Lake, an American lake, and even a Japanese Lake. But we all know that only those who make the ocean their home and love it, can really claim it theirs. Conquerors come, conquerors go, the ocean remains, mother only to her children. this mother has a big heart though; she adopts anyone who loves her” (Hau’ofa, 1993, p.10-11).
What we believe and how we think determines our life – our reality.
That’s how colonisation happened.
Atrocities happen because we allow them to happen. Because we expect them to happen. Because we think them to happen. Thoughts can be colonized. Thoughts can colonize.
Only by changing our thought pattern will we change reality, as Malcolm X says. He says: “Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it changes your behavior pattern. Then you go on into some action. As long as you have to sit-down philosophy, you will have a sit-down thought pattern. As long as you think that old sit-down thought, you will be in some kind of a sit-down action. They’ll have you sitting in everywhere. It’s not so good to refer to what you are going to do as a sit-in.”
Change the picture of your mind. Any picture is a crystallisation of the truth – that truth, however, is subjective. It is only your reality.
You create reality. Therefore, create it beautifully and holy as it is. In order to do this, comparisons need to drop.
“A picture is a fact”, as Ludwig Wittgenstein says.
So, change the picture of atrocities and substitute it with a positive one.
Only then the philosophy which holds one race superior while another inferior will finally be abandoned and permanently discredited (Haile Selassie).
Think big and you will be big.
We are the creators of the universe.
We are powerful beings. We came from love and we are love.
Therefore all we can naturally create is love – nothing else.
Stop any sort of corruption from fluttering your spirit.
Be love and live eternally.

Poetic Lyric

Reference

Hau’ofa, E. (1993). ‘Our Sea of Islands’. In E. Waddell, V. Naidu and E. Hau’ofa (eds.).
A New Oceania: Rediscovering our Sea of Islands. University of South Pacific,
Suva, pp. 2-17.

free trade: no trade – no freedom

Today we live in a world of consumerism and materialism. Money determines if you eat and what you eat. The insatiable desire of countries with economic wealth and technological power for resources has infected other cultures with the same illness of consumerism dragging them to a state of poverty, need and dependency – a condition alimented by “free trade”, a strategic and well thought method. Behind the apparent initial aspiration towards an equitable development through “free trade” there is a reality where disequilibrium and infinite disadvantages for the periphery occur. The purpose of this essay is to discuss the failure of “free trade” and show how this method adopted by “the new rulers of the world[1]” (Pilger J.) leads to poverty and creates intentional underdevelopment in the South. Moreover, my aim is to discuss the reasons of the implausibility and inadaptability of “free trade” in development by displaying some of the invisible and disastrous realities hidden in today’s process of globalisation.

“Free trade” is a strategic tool used by “private tyrannies[2]” as Noam Chomsky calls them (Pilger 2002, 72) to keep the economy under control. It has been disadvantageous for countries such as Chile, for instance, known to be the “new democracy” in Washinton (Pilger 1999, 64). In Chile, in the 1980s all state enterprises were sold off to multinational corporations in the name of “free markets”. As a result, a country which prior to Pinochet had maintained a reasonable standard of living for most of its people was ravaged. Industry was dismantled and currency was devaluated (Pilger 1999, 64). This dragged 40% of Chilean people into poverty (McMichael 2008, 159). As a result, “free trade” is not conducted between nations, but “as transactions within 180 multinational corporations” (Pilger 1999, 72). Underdevelopment is a consequence of the partnership formed between “developed” nations and powerful elite classes in less developed countries. This, for instance benefited the minority class of Latin American elites only, rather than its entire population. The independence of an ex colony from a nation during the period of decolonisation was transmogrified into dependence of the country on powerful multinationals using “free trade” as a development tool to play the game of dictating global rules. Taiwan, Singapore and Korea were those who succeeded by not using the Washington Consensus policy and therefore proofed “free trade” to be not functional. Korean steel and shipbuilding industries, for instance, developed and became more competitive than those of Britain in the industrial sectors, not because of hyper-mobile productive capital that relocated from high-cost Britain to low-cost Korea, but because of a successful alliance between the Korean state and local capital in developing these industries (Kiely 2008, 183).

Furthermore, “free trade” preaches “market freedoms” but celebrates control over resources threatening the environment and resource regeneration. Global managers of today’s “market freedoms” extract resources from resourceful and therefore developed countries to satisfy their own interests of high mass consumption for the North. This “under-develops” resourceful countries such as Chile, Ghana and Brazil. Chile’s export boom overexploited the country’s natural resources beyond their ability to regenerate. In Ghana timber exports increased from 16 million dollars to 99 million dollars from 1983-1988 reducing its tropical forest to 25% of its original size. Deforestation has led to sharp increases in malnutrition and disease. The deprivation of food, fuel and medicine in Ghana and the replacement of rainforests with cattle ranches in Brazil which contract with European markets have led to poverty in the South (McMicahel 2008, 161-164). These facts contradict the Millennium Development Goals of human rights – the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, security. In today’s society millions of acres once used to feed poor countries are now used to grow kiwis, strawberries and asparagus for upper-middle-class consumers (McMichael 2008, 161). “Free trade”, therefore, is being adopted to satisfy the needs of the insatiable desire of the rich towards more materialism and consumerism rather than eliminating poverty. This means that it is profit rather than development oriented. According to the Shamans of the Amazon, for instance, the frequent eruption of volcanoes, tsunamis and cyclones are the manifestation of the anger of nature which has not been looked after (Shamans of the Amazon 2010, youtube). I think that underdevelopment is being created intentionally by putting the South into a comparative disadvantage. As a result, liberalisation is not about freeing trade, but about consolidating a corporate food regime (McMichael 2008, 171). It is worth mentioning the invalidity and implausibility of Ricardo’s economic theory of comparative advantage rooted in “free trade” policy. Firstly, because as Engels claimed, when countries are progressing the demand for manufactured goods are superior to primary goods such as food. As a result, trade via specialisation is a comparative advantage for countries producing manufactured goods and a comparative disadvantage for those producing primary goods such as the South. Secondly, because specialising in the production of a particular commodity means overproducing resources for exports and consequently threatening resource regeneration. I believe that self-sufficiency is the equivalent of development. Therefore, a self-sufficient country does not need to overproduce since it is already developed. Overproducing resources means working for the development of other countries at the expenses of one’s own underdevelopment.

Another reason of why “free trade” leads to underdevelopment and poverty is because of the strategic and atrocious game played by undemocratic private tyrannies such as the WTO, a multinational corporation that is not elected by the citizens and is therefore more powerful than the state. This shows the inapplicability of Friedrich Von Hayek’s argument according to which “liberalism makes it possible to utilise the knowledge and skills of all members of society to a much greater extent than would be possible in any order created by central direction” (Peet and Hartwick 2009, 81). There are some facts outlined by the Australian journalist John Pilger which I find necessary to refer to in order to comprehend why “free trade” is a misnomer and how the WTO which is the pumping vein of “free trade” contradicts the principles it is based on, namely non-discrimination, reciprocity, transparency and fairness. These facts, therefore, show the imperialistic nature of “free trade”. “Children in Iraq die because there is no chemotherapy and no pain control. The UN Sanctions Committee had banned nitrous oxide as ‘weapons dual use’. Yet this was used in caesarean sections to stop bleeding, and perhaps have a mother’s life.” (Pilger 2002, 50). As a result, it is clear that development via “free trade” remains a quixotic fantasy created by powerful corporations in order to satisfy their personal needs. If “free trade” is supposed to eliminate poverty through an equal exchange of resources, then the UN Sanctions Committee in New York should provide the medicine to Iraqis to survive. As a fact “free trade” certainly does not eliminate underdevelopment. On the contrary, it creates underdevelopment. Moreover, although the medicines are made from material extirpated from the South, the countries which are allowed to obtain them get charged a high price. Also, “if diseases are common in developing countries but are not a particular public health problem in the developed world, there is unlikely to be a profitable market for new drugs” (Matthews and Munoz Tellez 2008, 565). “Free trade”, therefore consists in no trade and no freedom.

Moreover, “free trade” in practice turns out to be a comparative disadvantage of the South due to exploitation of the workers and unequal income distribution. In Haiti, for example, workers work overtime to produce baseballs for the USA and get paid 38 cents for every dozen baseballs sewn. Three and a half to four baseballs can be sewn a day. (Pilger 1999, 65). This contradicts one of the principles of neoliberalism according to which workers get paid what they are worth. According to Marx, the value of a commodity is calculated by the labour time invested in a product (Peet and Hartwick 2009, 151). Today, however, brands are produced as opposed to products. What determines the value of a commodity today, such as sugar for example is not labour time but the name of the brand. This makes the value unquantifiable. We are living in a “private label decade” (Klein 2001, 6). Unequal trade and income distribution determine the essence of “free trade”. Exploitation of workers in developing countries producing manufactured goods for First World countries seem to be inevitable since a similar or even better product and mass-production technologies could sooner or later be manufactured by other countries reducing the price of the product. Since these mass-production technologies may involve large amounts of labour, it is convenient for firms to move production to developing countries with lower labour costs (Gwynne, Klak and Shaw 2003, 164-6 as cited in Gwynne 2008, 202). According to United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) figures, by the late 1990s, almost 50 per cent of manufacturing jobs were located in the developing world (Kiely 2008, 183). As a result, while people in the North are being bombarded by products of mass consumption with the sole purpose of “getting the economy flowing[3]”, people in the South are being exploited in the name of “development” and “free trade”. Therefore, development connotes unlimited economic growth for rich countries at the expenses of the less privileged via “free trade”. “Underdevelopment is generated by the same historical process which also generates economic development: the development of capitalism” (Frank 1966, 18 as cited in Peet and Hartwick 2009, 168).

To sum up, “free trade” seems to be a quixotic development tool which in theory draws a positive picture of its intentional development policy, but in reality practices unfair trade. Its literal meaning and discourses allude to a utopian development where all countries can achieve economic growth and comparative advantage by “liberalisation”, that is to “free” markets for an equitable exchange of resources. In reality, trade makes poor countries poorer and rich countries richer since “freeing” markets actually means being under International Financial Institution (IFI) supervision and controlled by powerful multinationals such as the WTO. “Free trade” is a misnomer. It entails hidden but evident imperialistic goals. This means that in reality, progress and change are also illusions since nothing has actually changed in real life since the period of colonialism and imperialism: In the past people used to conquer territories through colonisation. Today they conquer resources via “free trade”.

Poetic Lyric

References

Brohman, J. (1995). ‘Universalism, Eurocentrism, and Ideological Bias in Development Studies:
From Modernisation to Neoliberalism’. Third World Quarterly 16(1), pp. 121-140.

Della Giusta, M. (2008). ‘Social exclusion and development’, in: V. Desai and R. Potter (eds)
The Companion to Development Studies. Hodder Education, London, pp. 136-139.

Gwynne, R.N. (2008). ‘Free trade and fair trade’, in: V. Desai and R. Potter (eds)
The Companion to Development Studies. Hodder Education, London, pp. 201-205.

Kiely, R. (2008). ‘Global shift: Industrialisation and development’, in: V. Desai and R. Potter (eds) The Companion to Development Studies. Hodder Education, London, pp. 183-186.

Klein, N. (2000). ‘New branded world’ in No Logo. Great Britain: Flamingo. Pp. 1-26.

Leys, C. (1976). Underdevelopment and dependency: Critical Notes’,
Journal of Contemporary Asia 7(1), pp. 92-107.

Matthews, D. and Munoz Tellez, V. (2008). ‘Intellectual Property rights and multilateral institutions’, in: V. Desai and R. Potter (eds) The Companion to Development Studies. Hodder Education, London, pp. 563-567.

McMichael, P. (2008). ‘Instituting the Globalisation Project’. Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective. Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks, Chapter 6, pp. 149-189.

Peet, R. and Hartwick, E. (2009). ‘Critical Modernism and Democratic Development’.
Theories of Development: Contentions, Arguments, Alternatives (2nd Edition). Chapter 8, pp. 277-291.

Peet, R. and Hartwick, E. (2009). ‘From Keynesian Economics to Neoliberalism?’
Theories of Development; Contentions, Arguments, Alternatives (2nd Edition). Guilford, New York, Chapter 3, pp.53-102.

Peet, R. and Hartwick, E. (2009). ‘Marxism, Socialism and Development’.
Theories of Development: Contentions, Arguments, Alternatives (2nd Edition). Chapter 5, pp.143-196.

Pilger, J. (1999). ‘The Crusaders’, Hidden Agendas. Great Britain: Vintage, pp. 59-98.

Pilger, J. (2002). The new rulers of the world, London: Verso.

Pushedforfreedom (2010, May 22), Shamans of the Amazon speak of our destructive
nature. This is a case of rebellion against technology and modernisation seen as the cause of destructive nature (Youtube clip). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udcSlVic2jg

Simon, D. (2008). ‘Neoliberalism, structural adjustment and poverty reduction strategies’, in: V. Desai and R. Potter (eds) The Companion to Development Studies. Hodder Education, London, pp.86-91.

Stiglitz, J. (2007). ‘Globalism’s Discontents’. In J.T. Roberts and A.B. Hite (eds.). The Globalisation and Development Reader: Perspectives on Development and Global Change. Blackwell, Oxford, pp.295-304.

[1] With this term Pilger J. refers to the multinationals.
[2] With this terms Noam Chomsky refers to the multinationals.
[3] Meaning the more people consume the more money circulates and finally the faster the economy grows. This, however, leads to global rather than national growth of the economy. I believe that development within a country can only be achieved if the focus is on the nation rather than the globe.