09 June 2008

When left is right and down is up - the bizarre world of Sue Kedgley

Sue Kedgley reporting on the food conference she attended says "They argued that the main cause of the crisis was that food production in much of the developing world has been decimated by three decades of globalization and free trade liberalization policies. Previously self sufficient countries had been unable to compete with heavily subsidized, cheap European and American food and so small self sufficient agriculturalsectors collapsed in country after country, leaving developing countries dependent on imports and food aid."


Ok - now read that again. "three decades of globalization and free trade liberalization policies" (sic, what's those AmericaniZations Sue?)? Huh, might have missed that one while the EU Common Agricultural Policy was subsidising domestic production and exports and shutting out imports, the US doing a less protectionist version, Japan doing even worse on rice, and South Korea, EEA zone members all doing anything BUT free trade liberalisation and in most cases resisting efforts at the WTO to encourage multilateral agricultural trade liberalisation.

Then she goes on "New Zealand is seen, thanks to our flag waving for free trade liberalization policies, as ‘an enemy of the third world’ and a slave of America and Europe." which she didn't correct, because she thinks it is true too. If only Europe and the USA were slaves for free trade liberalisation in Agriculture.

Seriously, Sue is either:
1. Stupid.
2. Manipulatively lying or
3. Mentally deranged.

You cannot say something is what it isn't without being one of those. So which one is it?

4 comments:

Unknown said...

So. Depressing.

On the bright side, Russel Norman doesn't believe this. He runs the "fair trade not free trade" argument, which you might disagree with, but at least I hope you appreciate that it's a darn sight more reasonable.

Also, apologies for abandoning our previous transport thread. It was really interesting, unfortunately, things have been pretty manic since the Budget. (And as a journalist, I'm professionally obliged to have the attention-span of a gnat.)

Are you keen to have a chat (on or off the record) next time a transport issue comes up? Drop me an email via http://www.publicaddress.net/contact,onpoint.sm

Libertyscott said...

Yes, fair trade is at least acknowledging there is a problem.

Fine about the transport thread. Happy to chat on issues, and can forward you the big study I quoted before (it is being updated so the results of that should be interesting).

Anonymous said...

Liberty,

Its completely understandable when people like Sue Kedgley and Naomi Klein conflate "free trade" with the economic policies of the West, because since the 1980s under the aegis of "restructuring" loans to Third World countries, the West have demanded that nations in the developing countries open up their economies to "competition" and "free trade".
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEED71731F935A15756C0A961948260
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1990/04/interview-taylor.html

Funny how they never bothered to actually apply those policy prescriptions in their own countries.

A classic case of, "Do as I say, not as I do."

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