How Transnationals Buy Governments

(And Rule the World)
The War & Peace Digest
April/May 1996


Enron, the Houston-based multinational engineering giant, has finally
triumphed over a year-long, citizen-lead effort to halt a $2.8 billion
gas-fired power plant a hundred miles south of Bombay in India. Local
citizens have demonstrated violently against the project saying it was
overpriced and would destroy fisheries and coconut and mango trees. They
complained that the company would be "making profits off the backs of
India's poor." New Delhi's Hindustan Times complained, "It is time the
West realized India is not a banana republic which has to dance to the
tune of the multinationals."

Rashmi Mayur, a leading urban environmentalist and head of the
Bombay-based Global Futures Network, had led the opposition to the Enron
plant on grounds that it would be disastrous for the economy and ecology
of the area, with an inappropriately expensive, massive, centralized and
foreign controlled enterprise. But early in 1996 the Indian government
officially approved Enron's request to build the plant. "Even an
alliance of new political parties, pledged to halt the project, ended up
being bought by Enron after a secret meeting with the corporation's
senior executives," Mayur said bluntly.

He pointed to the case as a grim demonstration that the transnational
corporations have become the "real power of the Earth; the de-facto
governments, operating outside the rule of law." He said the
transnationals were now so rich they could buy up any government,
including the United States government. "The governments have become
merely the chauffeurs for the transnationals." he claimed. The
transnationals, operating outside any authority, had created what he
described as "the new global anarchy of the international marketplace."
The United Nations, he said, has proved ineffective in dealing with the
challenge of the transnationals. "The UN is only a club; a forum. It
cannot enforce a judgment against the actions of the transnationals.
Like governments, they can even walk out of the World Court if they
wish."

Environmental Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) were also powerless
to obstruct the juggernaut of the transnationals. "It was the same with
the French nuclear testing or the illegal Japanese and Norwegian
whaling." Mayur said. "The NGO's could do nothing to stop them."
The biggest transnationals, he pointed out, were the international arms
manufacturers feeding the world's arms bazaars. "That is why the
Pentagon is more powerful than any political party. Its annual
$260-billion budget represents one third of all military spending on the
planet. And in some third world nations, the military budgets are rising
by more than 10% a year."

Mayur is not optimistic that the media, as it presently exists, can --
or will -- do anything about the transnational anarchy. "The major media
are all controlled by multinational corporations." However, Mayur sees
some encouragement in the new global communications technology like
Internet. He also points to the global grass roots protest against
France during the recent nuclear tests. "The whole Earth must now become
the grassroots," he said. "Then, and only then, can we hope for an end
to the madness of the nation states and the transnationals who control
them, and look ahead to the coming unity of humanity."