from No Logo

"Until the mid-eighties, foreign corporate investment in the Third World was seen in the mainstream development community as a key to alleviating poverty and misery. By 1996, however, that concept was being openly questioned, and it was recognized that many governments in the developing world were protecting lucrative investments - mines, dams, oil fields, power plants and export processing zones - by deliberately turning a blind eye to egrecious right violations by foreign corporations against their people. And in the enthusiasm for increased trade, the Western nations where most of these offending corporations were based also chose to look the other way, unwilling to risk their own global competitiveness for some other country's problems. The bottom line was that in parts of Asia, Central and South America and Africa, the promise that investment would bring greater freedom and democracy was starting to look like a cruel hoax.

And worse: in case after case, foreign corporations were found to be soliciting, even directly contracting, the local police and military to perform such unsavory tasks as evicting peasants and tribespeople from their land; cracking down on stricking factory workers; and arresting and killing peaceful protestors - all in the name of safeguarding the smooth flow of trade. Corporations, in other words, were stunting human development, rather than contributing to it.

(...)At the heart of this convergence of anticorporate activism and research is the recognition that corporations are much more than purveyors of the products we all want; they are also the most powerful political forces of our time.

(...)If multinationals have become larger and more powerful than governments, the argument goes, then why shouldn't they be subject to the same accountability controls and transparecy that we demand of our public institutions?"

( NAOMI KLEIN - NO LOGO )