Brazilian dreams and African queens

Like Michael Jackson’s face, globalisation is constantly morphing. And, like the superstar’s face, globalisation may be entering a stage of crisis. Deep economic troubles in Japan and the US, war clouds over Iraq, and a revolutionary outcome to Brazil’s presidential elections are the latest nips and tucks in a complex and unsettling process of transmogrification.

Brazilian elections

If Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva wins the second round of the Brazilian presidential elections on 27 October it will be an extraordinary moment in world politics (as momentous, some say, as Salvador Allende’s election in Chile or Nelson Mandela’s in South Africa). It could also have big ramifications for the global economy.

Only recently (as Isabel Hilton has reported), eminent critics of globalisation such as George Soros have been saying that international financial markets would never allow Lula to become president: ‘In the Roman empire, only the Romans voted. In modern global capitalism, only the Americans vote. Not the Brazilians.’

If the warning is proven wrong that must be good news. At a time of regional crisis, when at least 90% of people in neighbouring Argentina say they have no confidence in either their government or their democratic institutions, the right-of-centre Economist is surely correct that ‘a victory for Mr da Silva would be a triumph for Brazilian democracy’. But what follows?

If elected, Lula will have a tough row to hoe. He has said his government would not default on debts or reverse privatisations undertaken during the 1990s, and in August he pledged to stand by a $30 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan, which commits the next Brazilian government to maintaining strict fiscal and monetary policies.

The practical implications will be hard to sell to 170 million Brazilians over the coming months, as expectations would rise under an administration led by his party, the Workers’ Party (PT). And it will be no easier now that Lula has said he will seek the support of those opposed to the country’s current, free-market economic model to win the second round. Proving that ‘another – and better – world is possible’ will be a supreme challenge.

Prominent critics of the ‘Washington Consensus’ model of globalisation, including ‘big gun’ economists such as Dani Rodrik and Joseph Stiglitz say just and sustainable progress in places like Brazil can only be delivered if under-girded by radical changes to the international financial architecture. Something could break here.

Russian–US tango

At the time of writing it is not known whether the explosion on the French supertanker Limberg off the coast of Yemen on 6 October (see news article) was an attack or an accident. If it was an attack it was meant to send shock waves through the global economy, which depends on cheap, reliable supplies of oil. But even if it was an accident, concern about acts of attempted destabilisation was an important factor behind a meeting of US and Russian cabinet ministers with the executives of more than 100 oil companies in Houston, Texas, on 1 and 2 October to discuss increased investment, cooperation and trade. Activists opposing a meeting of the World Bank and the IMF in Washington over the previous weekend let the event go by without a murmur.

These days, a guarantee of steady Saudi oil supplies looks as uncertain as a baby’s bottom, and to maintain business as usual the US needs secure alternatives. In the medium term, Iraq, with the world’s second largest reserves, could fill that role; but to get Iraqi production up to scratch would take about five years (following, presumably, regime change that did not entail wholesale destruction, and which resulted in a governable region). Meanwhile, Uncle Sam must smooch with The Bear; the US needs Russian oil and needs it real bad.

Like that dark, passionate and hopelessly kitsch dance fatale the tango, Russian–US relations hum with both conflict and mutual dependency. A coy smile here: 300,000 barrels from Tyumen Oil for the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. A slap on the wrist there: Putin wrings concessions out of the US at the United Nations (UN) in return for promises that Russia’s biggest oil company Lukoil will keep its huge stake in Iraq’s oil fields should Saddam Hussein be deposed. Ooh, you are awful, but I like you!

Internationalism and Iraq

Protestors in Europe, the US and elsewhere have mobilised in large numbers to oppose a US attack on Iraq, crying ‘No War for Oil!’ and ‘Justice for Palestine!’ One may agree with these sentiments (often expressed by the same people who campaign against globalisation on the current model) and still ask whether they are enough.

It may be an exaggeration to say Saddam Hussein makes Pol Pot look like Betty Boop, but if in any doubt about the man saluted by George Galloway (the Labour member of the UK parliament who is a frequent visitor to Iraq) for his ‘courage, strength, and indefatigability’, turn to the relevant section of The 2002 World Report from Human Rights Watch. This documents ‘widespread and gross human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests of suspected political opponents and their relatives, routine torture and ill-treatment of detainees, summary execution of military personnel and political detainees as part of a “prison cleansing” campaign, and forced expulsions of Kurds and Turkmen from Kirkuk and other regions.’

On a conservative estimate, Saddam is directly responsible for the deaths of a million people. Tragedy or statistic, the true figure may be two million or more (and this is not counting the effects of sanctions, which his critics say he has cynically exploited).

Courageous Iraqis have outlined the urgent need for action on openDemocracy (Yasser Alaskary, Faleh A. Jabar and Hamid Ali Alkifaey). The trouble is, as James Fallows outlines in an outstanding article in The Atlantic to be published in November, the likely consequences of what look like the most plausible approaches to changing the regime are pretty forbidding. British humanitarian groups also point to trouble ahead.

But what if, following massive US pressure, Saddam were overthrown – say by some of his henchmen who promised to torture and kill fewer Iraqis in return for a slice of the oil revenues…and, er, of course, a massive international programme to rebuild hospitals, schools and so on? Would the US pressure have been justified?

Climate change

In all the fuss, it is easy to forget that the European Union (EU), which likes to preen its feathers as the world leader in meeting the challenge of climate change, is actually more dependent on Middle Eastern oil supplies than the US. News that the EU may miss its Kyoto targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, even if it launches new policies on boosting cleaner energy, is all the more disappointing.

Images of Hurricane Lili, which struck the coast of Louisiana with great force last week, were a nice irony for aficionados of climate change. Now, it may be that warmer global temperatures will not lead to an increase in the number and severity of tropical cyclones (see a report). Nevertheless, the world’s insurance industry is betting on a significant increase in the number of extreme weather events. Lili, with maximum sustained winds of around 164 kmh (about 80 knots) closed the largest oil port in the region for a while, taking more than 600,000 barrels a day offline.

The terrifying sight put me in mind of my own experience in a small yacht, escaping from cyclone Ikala in the Indian Ocean in March of this year. We had to beat a hasty retreat from an experiment on the remote mid-ocean Saya de Malha bank to construct a ‘coral ark’ that would withstand the bleaching events that have killed so much coral in the Indian ocean, and are thought to be caused by global warming. At one stage, Ikala had maximum sustained wind speeds above 184 kmh (105 knots) and gusts of over 240 kmh.

Romanian gold

The Apuseni Mountains of Western Romania, one of Europe’s remotest and most beautiful regions, have a long history of gold and conflict. In ancient times, Dacians, Celts and Romans fought bloody wars but also left magnificent traces of their cultures. Now an altogether different kind of prospect – one for the globalised age – unfolds.

Gabriel Resources, a Barbados-registered entity, has approached the International Finance Corporation (IFC) for $250m to back the Rosia Montana Gold Corporation (RMGC), which would be Europe’s largest open-cast gold mine.

In the next few days, the IFC, which is the World Bank’s private lending arm, will decide whether the project will enter its finance ‘pipeline’. If approved, this will mean that the project, which requires total capital of $440m, will be as certain as anything can be in the business.

Opponents to the mine say the mine would contravene fundamental principles on which the IFC is supposed to base its operations – including poverty reduction and sustainable development. Alburnus Major, a local opposition group, argues that the development is unsustainable in that it considers only the short-term gains and disregards long-term environmental and social impacts.

What’s more, say the activists, RMGC and Gabriel Resources have already engaged in irregular behaviour in breach of Romanian mining law. World Bank guidelines not been adhered to, they say: the prerequisite environmental impact assessment (EIA) and Public Consultation will be released next year even though the mining company have already started relocating the local population. Some 1800 people – 750 family farms – will lose their land and livelihoods.

‘These people are the owners of their lands. But they haven’t been asked whether they agree that their source of living, their homes, cemeteries are to be bulldozed over in order to make way for a mine that will last 15 years and employ a workforce of 250–300 people,’ Stephanie Roth of Alburnus Major tells openDemocracy.

‘Highly misleading information about the impact of the project, including wildly unrealistic estimates about the number of jobs to be created have been made,’ she adds.

Allegations of strong-arm tactics and a criminal past hang over the Director of Gabriel Resources. It is alleged that Mr Frank Timis, a Canadian national of Romanian origin, was ‘twice convicted in Australia in 1990 and 1994 of heroin possession, including a charge of intent to sell’, according to a statement said to have been published on 7 August 2001 by Toronto-based Dundee Securities Corporation.

Opponents of the mine are particularly concerned about the project’s environmental impact. The use of a cyanide leaching process will create large amounts of contaminated sludge, which will be stored in a large tailing pond. Local and national authorities in Romania have a poor record in enforcing or maintaining technical standards, and a failure in the dam would have catastrophic results. In January 2000, a spill from a smaller project killed all aquatic life in the tributaries of the Tisza and Danube rivers for 300 kilometres downstream.

The impact on a unique culture and history also raises eyebrows. Rosia Montana is the oldest recorded town in Romania and the area is packed with archaeological sites. Ruins from the Romano–Dacian period, including an extraordinary mausoleum, have only recently been discovered.

Greenpeace has started an Internet protest at www.greenpeace.at. It is asking national governments and scientists of all fields to take action and to send protest notes to the Worldbank Group.

As GLOBOLOG puts this report online (10 October), we learn that the IFC has just decided not to extend funding for RMGC. The IFC has issued the following statement:

"In light of the indications from the sponsor that there is available commercial financing for the project, and our concern that IFC's involvement may require the company to proceed with the project more slowly than they wish, we have concluded that it is in everybody's best interests that we do not pursue discussions with the company regarding IFC's involvement in the project".

Miss World 2001, Agbani Darego

African Queens

Urban legend has it that Black Beauty, an English children’s story about a horse, was banned in South Africa under the apartheid regime, whose censors thought the title referred to a woman. Government policy held that no black woman could be beautiful.

Racist or not, judges in the Miss World contest seemed to agree; an African woman never won the pageant – or not until last October, when Agbani Darego of Nigeria won the title at Sun City, South Africa. But, as Norimitsu Oshini reports in Globalization of Beauty Makes Slimness Trendy, Ms Darego is no traditional African beauty; at over six foot tall and skinny, she is much more like a typical Western model. Since her victory, ‘voluptuousness is out and thin is in’ among young, fashionable Nigerians. A new film Lepa Shandi, which means the girl as slim as a 20-naira bill, catches a ‘major cultural shift’ in a region where brides-to-be traditionally spent weeks at fattening farms. Whatever else is true, Ms Darego is much more beautiful than Michael Jackson, and has undergone no surgery.