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G8: Watch What They Do, Not What They Say
It is time once again for that touching annual ritual, in which the world's most powerful people move themselves to tears. At Heiligendamm they will emote with the wretched of the earth. They will beat their breasts and say many worthy and necessary things — about climate change, Africa, poverty, trade — but one word will not leave their lips. Power. Amid the patrician goodwill, there will be no acknowledgement that the power they wield over other nations destroys everything they claim to stand for.
The leaders of the G8 nations present themselves as a force for unmitigated good. Sometimes they fail, but they seek only to make the world a kinder place. Bob Geldof and Bono give oxygen to this deception, speaking of the good works the leaders might perform, or of the good works they have failed to perform; but not mentioning the active harm. They refuse to acknowledge that what the rich nations give with one finger they take with both hands.
Look at what is happening, right now, in the Philippines. This country has many problems, but one stands out: just 16% of children between 4 and 5 months old are exclusively breastfed(1). This is one of the lowest documented rates on earth, and it has fallen by a third since 1998(2). As 70% of Filipinos have inadequate access to clean water, the result is a public health disaster. Every year, according to the World Health Organisation, some 16,000 Filipino children die as a result of "inappropriate feeding practices"(3).
These are the deaths caused only by acute results of feeding children with substitutes for breastmilk. A summary of peer-reviewed studies compiled by the campaigning groups Infact and Ibfan suggests that breastfeeding also reduces the incidence of asthma, allergies, childhood cancers, diabetes, coeliac disease, Crohn's, colitis, obesity, cardiovascular disease, poor cognitive development, ear infections and poor dentition(4). Switching from bottle to breast could prevent 13% of all childhood deaths(5): a greater impact than any other measure. Panaceas are rare in medicine, but the mammary gland is one.
Both the government of the Philippines and the UN blame the manufacturers of baby formula for much of the decline in breastfeeding. These companies spend over $100m a year on advertising breastmilk substitutes in the Philippines, which equates to over half the department of health's annual budget(6). Those who appear most susceptible to this advertising are the poor, who are also the most likely to be using contaminated water to make up the feed. Some spend as much as one third of their household income on formula. Powdered milk now accounts for more sales than any other consumer product in the Philippines(7). Almost all of it is produced by companies based in the rich nations.
Since Ferdinand Marcos was deposed in 1986, the government of the Philippines has been trying to stand between these corporations and vulnerable mothers(8). It has failed. It plugs one loophole; the formula companies find another. Baby Milk Action, one of the world's most impressive public health campaigns, has compiled a dossier of breaches of the marketing code drawn up by the World Health Organisation. Formula companies have been dispensing gifts to both health workers and mothers, running promotional classes and meetings and advertising their wares on television and in magazines and papers(9,10). These practices, though mostly legal in the Philippines, are all discouraged by the code(11).
In February this year, the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP), which represents multinational companies, ran a series of advertisements expressing concern for women unable to breastfeed their children. The campaign was described by the UN's special rapporteur, Jean Ziegler, as "misleading, deceptive, and malicious in intent". He claimed the adverts "manipulate data emanating from UN specialized agencies such as WHO and UNICEF … with the sole purpose to protect the milk companies' huge profits, regardless of the best interest of Filipino mothers and children."(12)
Last year, in the hope of arresting this public health disaster, the Philippines Department of Health drew up a new set of rules. It prohibited all advertising and promotion of infant formula for children of up to two years old. It forbade the formula companies from giving away gifts or samples or from providing assistance to health workers or classes to mothers(13). The new rules seem stiff, but they all come straight from the WHO's code. PHAP, whose members include most of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies(14), went to the supreme court to try to obtain a restraining order. When it failed the big guns arrived.
The US embassy and the US regional trade representative started lobbying the Philippines government. Then the chief executive of the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington — which represents three million businesses — wrote a letter to the president of the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo. The new rules, he claimed, would have "unintended negative consequences for investors' confidence". The country's reputation "as a stable and viable destination for investment is at risk."(15) Four days later, the Supreme Court reversed its decision and imposed the restraining order PHAP had requested. It remains in force today. The government is currently unable to prevent companies from breaking the international code.
So the Department of Health asked a senior government lawyer, Nestor Ballocillo, to contest the order. In December Ballocillo and his son were shot dead while walking from their home. The case remains unsolved: Ballocillo was working on several contentious issues. Last month the US regional trade representative paid another visit to the Philippines government(16). The department of health now appears to be wavering. In two weeks' time the campaigners trying to promote breastfeeding will present their arguments to the Supreme Court to try to get the order lifted, and the formula companies will try to stop them. If the companies win, thousands of children will continue to die of preventable diseases.
The pressure to which the US government and the US Chamber of Commerce have subjected the government of the Philippines is at odds with almost everything the G8 now claims to stand for: the millennium health and education goals, the eradication of poverty, fair terms of trade. But the G8 nations will pursue their stated objectives only to the point at which they collide with their own interests. Away from their sentimental summits, they pull down everything they claim to be building.
The G8 demands action on climate change; the World Bank, controlled by the G8 nations, funds coal burning power stations and deforestation projects. The G8 requests better terms of trade for Africa; Europe and the United States use the world trade talks to make sure this doesn't happen. The G8 leaders call for the debt to be reduced; the IMF demands that poor nations remove barriers to the capital flows which leave them in hock. The G8 leaders simultaneously wring their hands and wash their hands. We have done what we can; if we have failed, it is only because of the corruption of third world elites.
The question is no longer whether the undemocratic power the G8 nations exert over the rest of the world can be used for good or ill. The question is whether it will cease to be used.
George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper.
References:
1. Baby Milk Action, 9th November 2006. International campaign aims to save Philippines baby milk marketing law — and infant lives. http://www.babymilkaction.org/press/press9nov06.html
2. Connie Levett, 3rd February 2007. Formula for profit seen as recipe for disaster. Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/formula-for-profit-seen-as-recipe-for-disaster/2007/02/02/1169919531018.html
3. Jean Marc Olivè, WHO country representative, cited by the Philippines Sunday Times, 5th November 2006.
4. INFACT Canada and IBFAN, July 2006. Risks of Formula Feeding: a brief annotated bibliography. http://www.infactcanada.ca/mall/risks-formula-feeding.asp
5. Gareth Jones et al, 5th July 2003. How many child deaths can we prevent this year? The Lancet, Vol 362, pp 65-71.
6. AC Nielsen, cited by Maricel E Estevillo, 14th July 2006. Business World, Philippines.
7. Connie Levett, ibid.
8. The current rules are contained in Executive Order 51, passed in 1986.
9. Alessandro Iellamo, WHO Philippines, 30th May 2007. Description of the Bonna Kid Bigay Tibay sa Barangay, 29th May 2007, pers comm.
10. Alessandro Iellamo, May 2007. Philippine Struggle for Child Survival: Call for International Solidarity.
11. World Health Organisation, 1981. The International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/code_english.pdf
12. UNHCR, 26th February 2007. Un Special Rapporteur Appalled with the Deceptive Tactics of Milk Companies in the Philippines. http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/3035D668F9E92329C125728F00294A69
13. Department of Health, 15th May 2006. Revised Implementing Rules and Regulations of Executive Order no 51. Administrative Order 2006 — 0012.
14. The members are listed here: http://www.phap.org.ph/directory.aspx
15. Thomas J Donohue, 11th August 2006. Letter to Gloria Arroyo.
16. Manila Standard Today, 9th May 2007. Report of visit of Barbara Weisel to Philippines Department of Trade and Industry.
13 Comments so far
Show AllKivals: Your timing is probably right on. I didn't google the dates, but I remember the case... so many injustices these days, our minds grow weary and tired trying to keep track. Thank you for adding that piece of relevant evidence. These creeps remind me of corporations that do their damage, fold up and re-arm using a new name and charter. Presto! All damages (not to mention karma) miraculously erased! Sure... the time of reckoning to all those who have found it so easy to profit on the blood, tears and destruction of others will have a HIGHER court to answer to. That does not mean we mortals can step away from our sincere efforts at establishing justice; but right now, that's like putting our fingers into dams everywhere bursting.
The exact same thing took place in Africa about 15 years ago. Billboards were used to convince impoverished new mothers that formula was better than breast milk. This is the classic litmus test of the manmade marketplace co-opting nature in its claim to a better product. Without the capacity to sterlize the formula, African mothers lost their children. If memory holds, I believe a boycott of Nestle ensued which led to a change in tactics. Advertising is a very powerful media, how else would so many people inhale something as noxious as cigarette smoke were it not for the glamour campaigns that extend some false sexual allure to the act of smoking? This article and its exposure of the greed of corporations is reminiscent of another posted this week on the WTO. As this body of global industries over-rules the laws of sovereign nations, we can forget any notion of freedom. The fact that food is not labeled for biogenetic adulteration, or irradiation is an insidious inroad into poisoning a population. The Bible cites the LOVE of money as the root of all evil, and the way these corporate institutions go for mankind's jugular in pursuit of yet more barren profits, it's the devil's dream.
Siouxrose,
Didn't this begin in the 1970s with Nestle, which was far and away the main supplier of infant formula throughout the Third World? The WHO found that the propaganda of companies like Nestle was reducing the incidence of breastfeeding all over the world, with serious health consequences. In 1981 the WHO/UNICEF code was passed with regard to the marketing of infant formula, 118-1, with Reagan's US government the only vote against. But a boycott, begun in 1977, finally brought Nestle to its knees and it agreed to abide by the WHO code in 1984.
But the problem has never gone away.
And hopefully more progressives will understand that it is not that Republican policymakers only care about unborn babies and do not care about those already born, but that such policymakers do not care about any babies, born or unborn, or any people of any age if they are not wealthy elites, and they only spew the nonsense about abortion to get the support of uneducated, ignorant useful idiots.
I second that.
Ken
I am a high school biology teacher. The other day as I was walking down the hall I overhead a "conservative" 10th grader remarking that his biology teacher had made the class watch a terrible movie last period: March of the Penguins.
He said, "That movie was pure liberal propaganda. They might as well have come right out and concluded that capitalism is bad for the environment. If we fish too much in Antarctica or pollute the air, then these stupid penguins are going to die. It was a bunch of liberal dribble."
I couldn't contain myself. I asked him what he would think if the actual data from Antarctica, collected and analyzed according to the objective rules of science, suggested that capitalistic activities had a negative impact on the environment? Can facts be liberal or conservative?
He answered, "Well, yes."
Unfortunately, this is what we are dealing with in today's American culture. The Fox News gurus and Rush Limbaughs of talk radio have poisoned American culture to a new all time low: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN OBJECTIVE FACT ANYMORE! Our national debates have regressed into simple-minded dog eat dog brawls.
In other words, since the corporations have gained control over the majority of the airways, they more or less control every national debate.
Al Gore and Michael Moore and the inter-net neutrality are our only hopes...if the fascists take away net neutrality, I will move to a real democracy.
What about the cheap labor overpopulation and plutocracy issues underlying all our problems?
We are in ORwellian wonderland now, if the prez says we are winning, then we ARE winning; if the right wing says that global warming is a hoax (their latest is that ALL planets are heating up, so human beings are not responsible. Use/abuse on! Why conserve and cause any pertubation in the corporate profit graphs), etc. I wish Rod Serling was around to make this into an episode of the Twilight Zone. Only in fiction these days can most countenance the truth!
As we are a century or more into the Age of Propaganda, we must cling to the lessons thus far learned or else condemn ourselves to eternally suffer the consequences of our credulity and confusion. We have learned, for example, that "in the beginning... was the NAME". Names have come to be designed by our masters to subtley, and quite effectively, mislead us. In the present case, the name "G8" is a clever deception which invites the ingenue to conclude that "governments" are the true principals and power brokers in matters of global economics and finance. Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth. Governments, it turns out, are mere hood ornaments on the corporate limousines in charge of this much ballyhooed parade. In the real world of cause and effect, gravity, slavemaster and slave, puppeteer and puppet, rapist and rape-victim, government bureaucrats are mere shills and errand boys for the true masters of the universe, the hordes of Leer-jetting capitalist commandos who's greed is equalled only by their ruthless disregard for the human race and the biosphere it, for the time being, inhabits. And thus a gentle reminder for future reference, when you think NAMES, think "Clear Skies", "Patriot Act", "Operation Just Cause", "No Child Left Behind"...and you will be armed. "G8" could more accurately be replaced by "CORPORATE GLOBAL CRIME SPREE AND YOU ARE NOT INVITED!!!"
The illusion of "government" involvement in the "G8 Summit" (hey, isn't a "summit" something involving highly placed government officials?)is designed to calm us outsiders by tapping into that subconscious democratic fantasy, with which we Americans continue to be afflicted, a fantasy which comforts us and blinds us to the fact that General Electric and Boeing and Citigroup and Bechtel and United Technologies are regularly engaging in top-secret meetings at various rendevous points all over the world in an effort to systematically divvy up the wealth of said world, while we stone-stupid mammals stand idly by, benighted and voiceless and distracted by today's Hollywood Minute.
And just when, you might ask, is the corporate media going to reveal all of this and more so that something, well, DEMOCRATIC, might be done to correct it? Well just as soon as they emerge from the G8 meeting I'm sure.
fd32: your pithy comments allow me to segue into something I like to mock: names! Suppose America's indigenous left a curse behind in the following form. Their own names frequently mirrored aspects of the person, say like "sitting bull." I made up one for the arrogant young brave, "shits on cloud." So given this hypothetical curse: we have (drum roll, please): DELAY, and (Dick) Armey. (Did you see the Saturday Night life spoof of Vagina Navy, Dick Army and penis coast guard?) Then there's Oliver North by Northwest, Madeline All-bright on the Western Front, Alan born to span the range of fiscal Green, Old Jessie no longer at the Helms. There' s she don't grow no RICE, and he that hides in the burning Bush (or should); and Kenny boy lay who pretty much told Americans to get laid (or f--ked). In one city there's a police comissioner SAFIR, there to make it safer; and a friend knows an obnoxious mortgage brokern who's last name is GENTLE: that's the last thing this guy is. Was Bob on the Dole? Ralph entered at the NADIR of American justice thanks to its corporate contamination. One could go on an on... Shakespeare asked, "What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Given US politics, the rose has gone rotten.
Breastfeeding is not just a matter of quantifiable nutrition; it is an integral part of children's mental and emotional development; it is what creates the bond between mother and child. You cannot replace that, let alone SELL a cheap knockoff to people who have no reason why they can't just use the biological process that is already there. That industry should be shut down completely, and formula distributed only to those who actually need it by a nonprofit health system.
I'm glad we finally see an article here that acknowledges the G8 is inherently corrupt.
http://www.dreamingearth.net
after 62 years on this earth, i still can't find humanity.
At best advertising is an selective exaggeration of the facts, at worse and out right lie, but most often somewhere in-between: a distortion bordering on propaganda. Capitalism which needs constant stimulation (for growth) is hand and glove with advertising.
The cockiness of the madison avenue set is legend with their ability to turn a pigs ear into a silk purse. Got a product, they'll create a demand for it, shine it up with hustling hyperbole and make you rich. It doesn't really matter if the product (or service) is needed or beneficial (for individual, society and environment). In general more businessmen are republicans then democrats so their working knowledge of the efficacy of advertising is superior. Thus the republican party is head and shoulders ahead of the democrats in the advertising (think propagandizing) of their own self serving interests. Distortions, half-truths, lying, no problem as it's all about winning and burying the opposition. They are so single-mindedly focused on winning that it is quite easy for many to slip over the line into borderline sociopathic behavior.
Of course the corporation infinitely magnifies these negative individual characteristics until one gigantic global consuming colossus with ever increasing glutenous appetite is created with no off switch. The Japanese animi director Myasaki has brilliantly depicted such a monster in his signature film "Spirited Away."
How to correct the problem? If Gandhi, Christ, and Buddha couldn't solve the problem then how can we? I guess we must revisit their teachings which have been so corrupted that you have psychopathic leaders planing to nuke Iran right after a morning prayer breakfast.
With technology man has gotten much to big for his proverbial dockers and maybe "nature" has to compost us for a few millennium so we can mutate a superior genetic code..... But then a lot of the right wing mischief makers don't believe in evolution. Alas a stone falling from a cliff doesn't believe in gravity but it still finds it's way to the bottom.
Ralph 442: Great points! I know a millionaire who once offered me "first entry status" on a pyramid scheme he was beginning. I asked him what the product WAS and he said "that's not important," do you want to get in on it, or not. (I didn't) Dr. Seuss explains this to children in the important book, The Lorax (which if memory serves was banned in certain school districts in Ct.) And in the hilarious film (version starring Dudley Moore) the Devil is shown to feel quite proud that after all these years, he's come up with an 8th sin: advertising!