DEVELOPMENT AND ‘ECONOMIC HITMAN’ CAN OUR NEW NATIONAL TRADE POLICY ESCAPE THESE ‘LOOTERS’?

by CYRIL GARE
One of the greatest challenges for our new first time politicians is to acquaint themselves with and understand the country’s foreign policy among others. It is even challenging for a first-time Minister. In many democracies in the world, a first-time politician does not become a Minister immediately. The reason is obvious. He or she must first understudy and learn the trade skills of the game before taking on a ministerial responsibility in Government.

Last week, we boasted about the launch of PNG’s first ever National Trade Policy (NTP). In time, many Papua New Guineans including myself will be able to read and understand the NTP from an available copy. For now, let’s just deduce from information provided in media reports that the NTP now “gives an upper hand to negotiate trade with its partners”.

In essence, trade involves supply and demand; i) we supply others with what they do not have, and ii) in reciprocate buy from them what we do not have such as medicine and fuel. A third component in trade is surplus, to sell away what is extra from what we produce.

Since Independence, PNG has never produce surplus and will remain so for some time yet. Instead, we are a trade-dependent economy - for without trade we will crumble.

We supply the world with best tuna steaks yet we do not have village base artisan fishery. Our families in villages do not even own fish farms for domestic feed hence, protein deficiency and lags behind UN health standards. We cannot even commercialize taro, pawpaw or banana and supply the world with surpluses. Yet we invite Israelites – a desert country - to teach us farming techniques. But our ancestors practiced agriculture more than 60,000 years ago. Our recently launched rice policy is only a ‘wake up’ from a deep sleep. We supply the world with best timber yet landowners in logging sites sleep in either haus morata or in make shit structures and lags behind UN basic shelter standards. The Tari’s contribute PNG’s first LNG yet they do not have electricity and miss out on resource development benefits since May, 2014 (first shipment of LNG cargoes @ around US$150 million per shipment out of 250 shipments so far). And the list goes on and on, year after year.

United Nations’ ratings for Papua New Guinea in the last 40 years was not good at all in terms of delivery of basic goods and services in areas of infrastructure, health and education services among other world nations:

• 1975 PNG ranked 77th;

• 2004 PNG dropped to 139th place;

• 2008 PNG plummeted to 149th placing; and in

• 2012 PNG further plummeted to 156th placing in the world;

This is stunning. In 37 years we were passed by 79 countries. We are still in deep sleep despite every efforts.

We are at the cross road with more questions than answers. Is our system of Government the correct one? Is our model of democracy a correct one in spite of policy change every now and again? Have our leaders really failed us or is it the ‘structure’ of the statecraft that is imperfect, inappropriate and unsuitable for ‘our kind’? Why is that so much of our gold, copper, timber, fish, oil and gas have been going out yet with little in return and less to show?

This has been the inherent fixture of our wished-for-millennium pathway since Independence. For nearly 11 lives of Parliament, the ‘vicious circles’ of poverty have become a companion deep within every strive for better life.

The idea of development stands like a towering light house. It has been guiding oriented emerging nations like sailors towards the coast – post war era since January, 1949 – The ‘Age of Development’. Whether it was democracy or dictatorship, the countries of the South proclaimed development as their primary aspiration, after they have been forced from the colonial subordination of the North.

For nearly seven decades on, governments and citizens alike have their eyes fixed on the light flashing as far as ever. Every effort and sacrifice is justified in reaching the beacon but the light keeps receding into the dark. Today, the lighthouse show cracks and is starting to crumble.

The idea of development stands like a ruin in the intellectual landscape. Delusion and disappointment, failures and crime have been the steady companions of development and they tell of a common story – it did not work but a fallacy. And we are recycled in the ‘vicious circle’ of poverty once again.

Papua New Guinea became a member of World Trade Organization since 9 June 1996 and a member of GATT since 16 December 1994. The WTO deals with the global rules of trade between 153 nations. Its main function is to ensure that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible.

The WTO is the body responsible for overseeing the rules of international trade or global capitalism. Its duties include monitoring trade agreements, settling disputes, and facilitating trade talks. Established in 1995 and based in Geneva, Switzerland, the WTO is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a twenty-three–member organization founded in 1948 whose rules provided the principal foundation for international trade in goods.

Who runs the WTO?

The organization is headed by Director-General Roberto Azevêdo (of Brazil, since 1 September 2013), and its daily operations are overseen by a General Council, elected at biennial conferences of member-state representatives but with great influence from the Bilderberg Group (BG) who has influence over the Trilateral Commission of the United States Government and the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR). The General Council then elects a director-general. WTO ministerial conferences also serve as a forum to negotiate agreements that set the legal ground rules for international commerce. Decisions are binding and made by consensus. Member nations enforce WTO rules by imposing trade sanctions on states that break them.

Who benefits from the WTO?

Nations that rely heavily upon trade are the most likely to benefit. Papua New Guinea is the 89th largest export economy in the world out of 221 countries. In 2015, Papua New Guinea exported $9.1 billion and imported $4.54 billion, resulting in a positive trade balance of $4.52 billion.

The WTO establishes rules and structure for international trade, providing stability for these nations' commerce. The rules are intended to make trade as free and fair as possible. Free-trade advocates say freer, fairer trade can lower the cost of living while providing consumers with more choices. It can also stimulate growth, fuelling development and making people more prosperous.

Opponents of the WTO say that negotiations conducted without public scrutiny end up benefiting wealthy nations. They say the organization infringes on the sovereignty of member states and trade deals don't consider the impact on the environment. Developing countries, which often have uncompetitive industries that rely on government support, can be hurt by opening up to global trade as their companies struggle against more efficient foreign rivals. Many economists view this dislocation as a temporary setback that reverses developing countries like PNG into global control using tough competition.

Fallacy of Wealth Creation

All of us who inhabit the earth share in the common fact that our very existence depends on the shared availability of the natural resources. But the global economy has been engineered only to create an illusion that it is creating wealth - fallacy of wealth creation. In fact, it is not but concentrating the declining pool of wealth into fewer and fewer hands.

World governments are serving the interest of a few rich and powerful class of International ‘Banksters’ and ‘Economic Hitman’ who are “looting the resources” of the world through control and influence of world trade.

Who really are these international banksters? Among hundreds of secret societies and shadowy global governments is the Bilderberg Group (BG). It was founded by former Nazi, Prince Bernard of Holland. In France in 1991, David Rockefeller, a member of the BG, defined the new World Order (WO) – the system of world governments serving the international banking elites. David Rockefeller also founded the Trilateral Commission of the United States Government which was dominant since the Carter administration.

BG is intricately kowtow to the TC with primary intention to be “the vehicle for multinational consolidation of commercial and banking interest by ceasing interests of the political government of the United States. It represents a skill full coordinated effort to cease control and consolidate the four (4) centers of power; political, monetary, intellect, and ecclesiastical,” said Author and Historian, Webster Tarphley, adding that in this way, “they create a worldwide economic power, superior than political governments of nation states, it involved managers and creators of the system that will rule the future”.

BG issues executive decisions and prime directives to its sub directors. TC executes through round table groups throughout Europe, Asia and the United States.

“It is a polycentric oligarchic system, you’ve got to get them out”, Tarphley lamented.

Author and Economist, George Humphrey believed “they have created a power elite. We’re not talking about a millionaire down the street, you can’t even become a member of their club, unless you’re a multi billionaire. This is about rich versus the poor, this is about a very, very small handful of the worst criminal elements in this planet”.

Within hours after his inauguration, President Donald Tump made sweeping changes and new appointments to key strategic positions of his administration. Most of these positions comprised members of the BG, TC and the CFR, affirming the suspicion of not just the American people but the world to new heights.

CFR also has several levels of corporate membership among them are ExxonMobil Corporation, Chevron Corporation, Shell Corporation, BP plc, Barclays plc, and Coca Cola Company who operates multi- million businesses in PNG.

The real estate billionaire Trump himself fits in perfectly well in the team following his January, 2017 inauguration.

In an interview with BBC News’ Bill Hayton in Brussels in 2005, BG Chairman, Viscount Etienne Davignon blatantly stated: "It is unavoidable and it doesn't matter," he says. "There will always be people who believe in conspiracies but things happen in a much more incoherent fashion" when responding to allegations that Bilderberg is a global conspiracy secretly ruling the world. "I don't think (we are) a global ruling class because I don't think a global ruling class exists. I simply think its people who have influence interested to speak to other people who have influence.

"Bilderberg does not try to reach conclusions - it does not try to say 'what we should do'. Everyone goes away with their own feeling and that allows the debate to be completely open, quite frank - and to see what the differences are.

"Business influences society and politics influences society - that's purely common sense. It's not that business contests the right of democratically-elected leaders to lead," Viscount Davignon said.

‘Confessions of an Economic Hitman’ by John Perkins is a ‘must to read’ book by every literate Papua New Guineans. His many public presentations on video are also posted online.

John Perkins was formerly an Economic Hitman working for a major international consulting firm that advises the World Bank, UN, US Treasury department, Fortune 500 Corporations, leaders of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. He is founder and board member of ‘Dream Change’ and ‘The Pachamama Alliance’, a non-profit organization devoted to establishing a world that future generation will want to inherit and author of the New York Times best seller ‘Confessions of an Economic Hitman’.

The Confessions of an Economic Hitman’ by John Perkins – a must to read book by the Third World literates.

An Assertive Global Economy

Mal distribution of wealth therefore provides the leeway for a build-up of economic power which is increasingly concentrated not with governments but with global corporations such as the Bilderberg Group. Corporate executives wield unprecedented power over societies. They form part of a newly-dominant and assertive global institutions, state bureaucracies and inter government agencies. These Multinational Corporations (MNCs) are among the key agents in the process of globalization. They embody the emerging logic of global accumulation as they mark our new physical culture and economic frontier for global capitalism.

Capitalism, in the form of all transnational corporations has monopolized the production of manufactured goods using high tech machineries and equipment, commerce and marketing, banking and information. It is maintained that they use not only their enormous economic but also corruption and unfair or immoral practices to eliminate competition and preserve their dominance.

Third world countries including Papua New Guinea are therefore forcefully made dependent on developed countries for capital, technology and markets. These rich countries using WTO as shield set interest rates, terms of trade, the tariffs and import barriers generally, through their economic power and drain off surpluses in the poor countries. In the making, the world is polarized into the rich and powerful ‘haves’ and the poor and dependent ‘have nots’.

The fight against the looters and Economic Hitman requires much more than a single government, a single third world. At least for now, our new politicians as well as eight million Papua New Guineans should apprehend the extent and magnitude of the decay we are shrouded in. You job as a new politician is not just about providing roads, bridges, schools, aid posts, and water supply to your electorates!

The writer can be contacted via e-mail: cyril.gare@gmail.com