COMMENTATOR (COMM): Life. And is there a more vivid celebration than the carnival in Brazil? In Sao Paulo they celebrate the past and the future. But for some Paulostans the carnival is an escape. An escape from the present. Take one face in the crowd. Last year, Geraldo de Souza lost his job in a car factory.
His is our first story in Life.
GERALDO: My name is Geraldo. I work for six years in this Ford factory, here. At the end of last year, or to be more precise, on December 22, I was laid off. They sent a letter to my house. There was my Christmas present.
COMM: The car industry in Brazil, the experts and bosses told Geraldo, has suffered as a result of financial crises in far away Asia.
MIGUEL JORGE: When you have a crisis, like in Russia, all the money, foreign money that was in Brazil was very afraid about what would happen in Brazil. When this money went out, the Brazilian government put very high the interest rate. What happened? People could not buy the car. The production was very small. People like Geraldo suffer because they don't have work.
COMM: And so Geraldo took to the streets of the capital, Brazilia, this time not in celebration but in protest.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION: It took us fifteen hours to get here. We are demonstrating for our rights as Brazilian citizens. Our right to democracy, to employment, to healthcare and to housing. These are our rights and we don't have them here.
COMM: Geraldo is a victim of what's been called 'globalisation'.
LESTER THUROW (Massachusetts Inst. of Technology, Author 'The Future of Capitalism'): When we talk about globalisation it means that when businesses look at the world, when they think a bit where they put their factories, they scan the globe to find the most efficient place to put their factories and when they look at where they're gonna sell their products they scan the globe er to see where that is.
COMM: One world: technology, free trade and free markets making - of boundaries seem meaningless. But globalisation also creates winners and losers, included and excluded. The planets top three billionaires now own an eighth of the Gross National Product of its forty poorest nations.
SUSAN GEORGE (Author 'A Fate Worse Than Debt'): Globalisation is a process which is creating untold numbers of losers. There are some who win but there are more and more who are being left behind. We're going towards a world which will be in the year 2020 a world of eight billion people of which, I would estimate, basically six billion will not be included. What happens then?
JAMES WOLFENSOHN (President of the World Bank): It's a challenge, certainly, to developing countries, but it's also a great opportunity. An opportunity for new markets, an opportunity for investment. Opportunity for global services, for knowledge, for health, for education. Many aspects of globalisation that I think of, I think of very positively.
NAOMI KLEIN (Author 'No Logo'): Increasingly, what people are saying is that globalisation can mean anything we want it to mean and that the choice is not between nationalism and globalisation it's, it's that as citizens - as global citizens - we can shape the, the values of, of our - of this planet that we share. Um, we just haven't had a say yet - I think we're beginning to.
COMM: The winners from globalisation include once isolated and centrally planned China with an Annual Growth Rate over twenty years of at least ten percent. In Shanghai they count success, just like in the West, in stock market prices.
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA (George Mason University Author, 'The End of History'): Overall, it's been a remarkable er period of, of, of world growth that, you know, doesn't have many other precedents. Globalisation has essentially modernised, you know, a very large and important part of the Third World which is a good deal of Asia and important parts of Latin America. And that is actually, you know, in a way, closing some of those gaps and, and, you know, turning into winners a large part of the world that we thought were losers, you know, twenty or thirty years ago.
COMM: But in Life we visit the people who have not been included in the Global Economy like the people of Benin in West Africa. We visit the family of thirteen year old Dopé who has been selling food on the streets since she was five and who, like almost half the girls in Benin, will never go to school.
DOPÉ (ENGLISH TRANSLATION): Here I cook and wash dishes. But I prefer cooking to washing. I've never been to school. I would like to go to school but now I think it's too late. I'd like to go and learn something. I'd like to learn to be a tailor.
COMM: For many of Dopé's friends who do go to school, globalisation causes new problems. Often their fathers work abroad in countries that are part of the Global Economy.
PROF. LESTER THUROW (Massachusetts Inst. of Technology Author 'The Future of Capitalism'): Now the interesting thing about globalisation of course is every country's on the globe but every country is not in the global economy, because there's some country's they just get dismissed, you know, if you don't have educated people you don't have infrastructure, you don't have social organisation, nobody pays any attention to you, they never put factories there, they don't try to sell to you, you're on the globe but not in the global economy. So you can think of you know - Central Africa's probably the biggest er continuous area - but large parts of the globe are not in the global economy.
FUKUYAMA: Well, I would say that most of the people in that situation haven't really tried to play the game seriously. And that those countries that have accepted the, you know, the rules, and the demands of globalisation and tried do that seriously, have actually succeeded quite well. And these are the countries in East Asia that have seen now forty years of growth interrupted only briefly by the Asian economic crisis. These are countries in Latin America like Chile and Argentina and, you know, now increasingly Brazil that have, you know, figured out how to play by those rules.
COMM.: But some countries that have tried to join the Global Economy have lost out things on streets like Russia. Here, living conditions for many have actually worsened. Life expectancy has fallen even though a few make untold riches. But equality within nations and between nations: that, it seems, is what makes the new Global Economy different to previous plans.
ROBERT REICH (Brandeis University Author 'The Work of Nations'): The dangers of the new Global Economy essentially are to er, to split societies, to cause all of our societies to become composed of richer and poorer, but also to split the world as a society - making certain countries and certain populations within those countries extraordinarily wealthy. But subjecting other countries around the world to extraordinary poverty and insecurity.
COMM: At the Headquarters of the UN in New York, they've tried to meet that challenge. In 1995 the UN called a summit of world leaders who made the extraordinary pledge to eradicate poverty altogether. But The Social Summit, as it was called, had mixed reviews.
SUSAN GEORGE (Author 'A Fate Worse than Debt'): There was a lot of 'we must' and 'we should' and 'wouldn't it be nice if'. But there was very little in the way of 'this is how we're going to do it and this is our plan for getting that done'. In other words, real politics and identifying what is in the way of social development.
JUAN SOMAVIA (Director General, International Labour Organization'): I think that it is rather of a success that in relatively short period of time, from '95 to the beginning of this century, people have acknowledged that the three issues of the summit: poverty, unemployment and social exclusion, are really the central issues of our societies.
INTERVIEWER: The United Nations Social Summit, five years ago in Copenhagen fell rather flat!
NOAM CHOMSKY: Among whom? Among the poor?
INTERVIEWER: No - it, it fell flat amongst, in terms of publicity and amongst governments. Did that surprise you?
NOAM CHOMSKY Massachusetts Inst. of Technology Author 'Manufacturing Consent': Yeah - which means that it 'fell flat' among the rich and powerful. Well, suppose you had a meeting of kings and princes, three hundred years ago. And one of them said, look, we ought to be more benevolent, you know, we ought to treat our slaves better - would you expect great excitement and enthusiasm in response?
COMM: Kosovo, and the refugee crisis showed how the international community can respond to an emergency.
The pictures shocked - the aid flowed in. But what didn't make the headlines is that quietly, away from the cameras, most of the world's rich governments have been cutting aid to poor countries, despite the promises made at the Social Summit.
CAROL BELLAMY (Executive Director United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef)): I think, actually very few of the promises made at that Social Summit have been fulfilled. At a time when business in the private sector actually seems to understand how interconnected it is with the other - with all parts of the world, governments seem to think that they are less connected from other parts of the world. And yet, this - it is a smaller world we live in these days. It doesn't mean every moment has to be devoted to thinking about someplace else. We want, in UNICEF, to see economic growth. We want to see people better their conditions. But it seems really appalling that this disparity seems to get greater at a time when there is so much wealth in the world today.
COMM: After the break: how some locked out of the Global Economy are taking their futures and their lives into their own hands.
PART TWO
COMM: Off Italy's Adriatic coast, the navy patrols for illicit cargo. These are migrant families from Albania trying illegally to seek a better life in Italy. They want to join the Global Economy, but the rules are against them.
NOAM CHOMSKY: One of the interesting aspects of this today's globalisation as compared with a century ago is that movement of people is much less free. In the peak period of population movement for the industrial societies the - the days of industrial societies was a long time ago. For example, in the United States the peak period of immigration relative to population I think was around 1850, and the early part of the century - for example, when my parents and grandparents came - there was a huge flow of population. That's been very sharply cut back.
INTERVIEWER: Are you saying that money and capital can flow freely...
NOAM CHOMSKY: Capital can flow quite freely -
INTERVIEWER: But labour can't.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Labour can't.
COMM: Now people are taking to the streets, convinced that globalisation is one-sided and favours bosses over workers, rich countries over poor. Here in Seattle, they've come to a meeting of the World Trade Organisation to convince the hardened sceptics.
BYSTANDER: When I was a student we demonstrated against the Vietnam war, against missiles, not against things like that person there. I just want to understand what's going on!
SUSAN GEORGE: This is the first time in history where - as we say - ordinary people are getting excited and mobilised around something which seems basically technical, economical, difficult, international, hard to understand, etc. And in fact, mobilising around that which is - perfectly well. And they are saying 'this is not the kind of globalisation we want!'
PROTESTORS: We don't have a voice; we don't have a seat! Listen to the voices of the people on the street!
COMM: The mood is turning nasty. Now in Seattle's aftermath, the United Nations will to review progress on the Social Summit and the impact of globalisation. The stakes are higher and higher.
INTERVIEWER: What would you like to see come out of June 2000 review of the Social Summit?
JAMES WOLFENSOHN President of the World Bank: I'd like to see not only a recommitment in terms of words, but a real commitment on behalf of our leaders to action. And that includes not just the writing of cheques, that includes a massive education campaign. That includes more discussion among the people of our countries - the sort of thing that you do on this programme. I'd like to see many more programmes er dealing with these issues, because for me these are not fringe issues. Er, my colleagues and I work in this because we believe they are the issues for the millennium.
COMM: In Life, we'll report on the human stories and the issues of the globalised world. Japan, where globalisation is causing unexpected strains on traditional society. Here, many young women prefer working for big transnational companies to the conventional role of carer.
COMM: Meanwhile, advances in healthcare mean the Japanese can look forward to a time when one in four will be over sixty-five. The result: old people with no-one to care for them; women and men. Toshiko's a business woman in her forties. But she has to double as full time carer for her eighty-four year-old mother.
TOSHIKO (ENGLISH TRANSLATION): I'm very busy at work and in the evenings I like to go to a concert or out to - with my friends. If we didn't live here in this special house we wouldn't have been able to overcome our problems. I would have collapsed. I'd have had to stop work and leave my company.
FRED SAI (Professor of Community Health, University of Ghana): We need to re-think our social structures because even in our communities which are not as rich as Japan, today we have got old people whose children have gone away to do work or to stay in foreign countries and they have nobody to look after them. Our social structures have broken down. So another wave of social evolution taking care of this situation is what is needed.
COMM: In Nigeria, many young women never have the chance of a job in the Global Economy. In Kano, most girls are married by sixteen, some even younger. Zadia is one of three wives of a used-car dealer.
ZADIA (ENGLISH TRANSLATION): I was brought to this house at thirteen when I didn't really know anything. I was brought into a household where the women were wives and children all much older than me. I can't look on these women as my co-wives. They are all the same age as my mother. A man of fifty taking up a child of nine or ten or 13 years old. After he has impregnated the woman and the woman has given birth. Who takes care of the child? The girl is only thirteen. No education. No skills to get any income. Nothing, nothing!
JAMES WOLFENSOHN (President of the World Bank): Well, I think that women are central to the whole issue of development.
in fact, in most of the developing countries they do most of the work. Secondly, they guide the family. Thirdly, they educate the kids. Fourthly they've typically to determine, sort of, how many children they have. So women are absolutely central. But for cultural reasons and historic reasons in many countries they've never been given a fair shake.
COMM: South Africa, and the Phelophepa Health Train. A clinic on wheels.
PHILOPHEPA MANAGER: What attracted me about this train was that it was giving health care, affordable health care, to the rural people of South Africa. Every bit of my learning was meant for the Phelophepa. From birth. It just went round and round and round. Until I finally came to help the rural people of South Africa.
(Over loudspeaker): We know you have got no money, we know you've got no transport and this is why we're here, to support and help you. But unfortunately we cannot see all of you. If I tell you that the dental clinic or the health clinic is full and you haven't got a sticker by that time: apologies, you'll have to go home.
COMM: Some conditions are life-threatening, some are job threatening. Either way: a visit from the nurse, always a chance to be seized.
MALE PATIENT: As long as you can tell me if you are married. I've got three sons... what?
NURSE: [Laughs] You are embarrassing me!
AMARTYA SEN (1998 Nobel Laureate Author 'Development as Freedom'): The fact that people die needlessly - millions of them - across the world in Africa, in Asia, Latin America too and elsewhere and, to some extent, even in North America and Europe - completely needlessly from lack of medical care and sometimes even lack of nutrition is - is totally scandalous. It's within our means, within our er feasibility to eliminate these deprivations altogether. And that's what I think you ought to focus on.
COMM: The USA, globalisation's model economy. Down in the streets of Philadelphia, a story from the other side of the American Dream.
CAMPAIGNERS SINGING: I took back my humanity! Well, I went down to the rich man's house And I took back what he stole from me: Took back my dignity, I took back my humanity!
COMM: A bus load of activists with a bus load of faith: two of Philadelphia's forgotten movements.
CAMPAIGNER SINGS: Well it's under my feet, under my feet, well...
COMM: Next stop, Philadelphia's Glass Bending Company, one of the few factories around here still working.
CAMPAIGNER: D'you just wanna welcome the sisters and brothers from the United Electrical Workers and wanna thank you for allowing us to visit you today and hear about the struggle that you're dealing with...
COMM: With a globalised economy it's easy to import basic goods like glass fittings more cheaply from abroad. Jobs have been cut and in real terms, so have wages.
1st CAMPAIGNER: I started here twenty-eight years ago with two dollars and ten cents. Twenty-eight years later I'm only making eleven dollars. That's a disgrace.
2nd CAMPAIGNER: I'm fifty seven years old, will soon be fifty eight, and I've spent all my time with Philadelphia Glass Bending. It'll be hard for me to go someplace and try to get another job someplace.
3rd CAMPAIGNER: I'm proud to stand here with these Union members because our Union is in the forefront of fighting against this corporate greed driven 'Race to the Bottom' on wages, living standards and environmental issues where the country that'll sell its labour for the cheapest price will attract all the corporations and their factories...
COMM: In the globalised economy, the Race to the Bottom takes jobs from the rest and gives them to the sweatshops of Asia. But is that necessarily such a bad thing?
FUKUYAMA: If a company takes advantage of the fact people are desperately poor and have no other opportunities in a peasant, subsistence economy and actually gives them work, what actually constitutes exploitation under those circumstances when their alternative er, you know, is have no, you know, employment in the modern sector of the economy at all?
I mean I'm, I'm not saying that I know what the answer to that is, but, it's just not obvious that a multinational corporation comes and actually gives people work in a job, even at what we would regard as sweatshop wages, you know, is necessarily exploiting them.
NAOMI KLEIN (Author 'No Logo'): This is presented to us, to concerned citizens, over and over again as this terrible choice we have to make: either these workers will have terrible jobs or they will have no jobs at all. And I think we have to start rejecting, we have to stop rejecting that dichotomy and saying no, in fact we can have both.
COMM: But is time running out? At Seattle the protest degenerated into a science fiction... Some demonstrators continue to say 'no' to globalisation. Some onlookers still claim 'it's nothing to do with us'. Either way, the globalised world will mean new and difficult choices.
POLICE MEGAPHONE: This is a final warning, please move to the doors!
ROBERT REICH: In many of our countries we find that there are two powerful political forces. On the one hand, people who want to preserve the old, the past, the old jobs, the old industries, who are afraid of change. And they are exercising their rights in a democracy; there's something of a backlash against globalisation, against technological change. They are fearful, and understandably fearful.
On the other hand, we have people who've already made it to the other side. Safely. They're well educated, they're prospering in the new global economy. They don't want to share their benefits with many of their compatriots. They don't feel a particular kinship or connection or social solidarity with others. And they are, to some extent seceding. They say, 'let the free market do it's will, I don't have any responsibilities as a citizen'. If those are our only options: either preserve and protect the old; or usher in the new with no social responsibility at all, then we are in trouble!
END
His is our first story in Life.
GERALDO: My name is Geraldo. I work for six years in this Ford factory, here. At the end of last year, or to be more precise, on December 22, I was laid off. They sent a letter to my house. There was my Christmas present.
COMM: The car industry in Brazil, the experts and bosses told Geraldo, has suffered as a result of financial crises in far away Asia.
MIGUEL JORGE: When you have a crisis, like in Russia, all the money, foreign money that was in Brazil was very afraid about what would happen in Brazil. When this money went out, the Brazilian government put very high the interest rate. What happened? People could not buy the car. The production was very small. People like Geraldo suffer because they don't have work.
COMM: And so Geraldo took to the streets of the capital, Brazilia, this time not in celebration but in protest.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION: It took us fifteen hours to get here. We are demonstrating for our rights as Brazilian citizens. Our right to democracy, to employment, to healthcare and to housing. These are our rights and we don't have them here.
COMM: Geraldo is a victim of what's been called 'globalisation'.
LESTER THUROW (Massachusetts Inst. of Technology, Author 'The Future of Capitalism'): When we talk about globalisation it means that when businesses look at the world, when they think a bit where they put their factories, they scan the globe to find the most efficient place to put their factories and when they look at where they're gonna sell their products they scan the globe er to see where that is.
COMM: One world: technology, free trade and free markets making - of boundaries seem meaningless. But globalisation also creates winners and losers, included and excluded. The planets top three billionaires now own an eighth of the Gross National Product of its forty poorest nations.
SUSAN GEORGE (Author 'A Fate Worse Than Debt'): Globalisation is a process which is creating untold numbers of losers. There are some who win but there are more and more who are being left behind. We're going towards a world which will be in the year 2020 a world of eight billion people of which, I would estimate, basically six billion will not be included. What happens then?
JAMES WOLFENSOHN (President of the World Bank): It's a challenge, certainly, to developing countries, but it's also a great opportunity. An opportunity for new markets, an opportunity for investment. Opportunity for global services, for knowledge, for health, for education. Many aspects of globalisation that I think of, I think of very positively.
NAOMI KLEIN (Author 'No Logo'): Increasingly, what people are saying is that globalisation can mean anything we want it to mean and that the choice is not between nationalism and globalisation it's, it's that as citizens - as global citizens - we can shape the, the values of, of our - of this planet that we share. Um, we just haven't had a say yet - I think we're beginning to.
COMM: The winners from globalisation include once isolated and centrally planned China with an Annual Growth Rate over twenty years of at least ten percent. In Shanghai they count success, just like in the West, in stock market prices.
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA (George Mason University Author, 'The End of History'): Overall, it's been a remarkable er period of, of, of world growth that, you know, doesn't have many other precedents. Globalisation has essentially modernised, you know, a very large and important part of the Third World which is a good deal of Asia and important parts of Latin America. And that is actually, you know, in a way, closing some of those gaps and, and, you know, turning into winners a large part of the world that we thought were losers, you know, twenty or thirty years ago.
COMM: But in Life we visit the people who have not been included in the Global Economy like the people of Benin in West Africa. We visit the family of thirteen year old Dopé who has been selling food on the streets since she was five and who, like almost half the girls in Benin, will never go to school.
DOPÉ (ENGLISH TRANSLATION): Here I cook and wash dishes. But I prefer cooking to washing. I've never been to school. I would like to go to school but now I think it's too late. I'd like to go and learn something. I'd like to learn to be a tailor.
COMM: For many of Dopé's friends who do go to school, globalisation causes new problems. Often their fathers work abroad in countries that are part of the Global Economy.
PROF. LESTER THUROW (Massachusetts Inst. of Technology Author 'The Future of Capitalism'): Now the interesting thing about globalisation of course is every country's on the globe but every country is not in the global economy, because there's some country's they just get dismissed, you know, if you don't have educated people you don't have infrastructure, you don't have social organisation, nobody pays any attention to you, they never put factories there, they don't try to sell to you, you're on the globe but not in the global economy. So you can think of you know - Central Africa's probably the biggest er continuous area - but large parts of the globe are not in the global economy.
FUKUYAMA: Well, I would say that most of the people in that situation haven't really tried to play the game seriously. And that those countries that have accepted the, you know, the rules, and the demands of globalisation and tried do that seriously, have actually succeeded quite well. And these are the countries in East Asia that have seen now forty years of growth interrupted only briefly by the Asian economic crisis. These are countries in Latin America like Chile and Argentina and, you know, now increasingly Brazil that have, you know, figured out how to play by those rules.
COMM.: But some countries that have tried to join the Global Economy have lost out things on streets like Russia. Here, living conditions for many have actually worsened. Life expectancy has fallen even though a few make untold riches. But equality within nations and between nations: that, it seems, is what makes the new Global Economy different to previous plans.
ROBERT REICH (Brandeis University Author 'The Work of Nations'): The dangers of the new Global Economy essentially are to er, to split societies, to cause all of our societies to become composed of richer and poorer, but also to split the world as a society - making certain countries and certain populations within those countries extraordinarily wealthy. But subjecting other countries around the world to extraordinary poverty and insecurity.
COMM: At the Headquarters of the UN in New York, they've tried to meet that challenge. In 1995 the UN called a summit of world leaders who made the extraordinary pledge to eradicate poverty altogether. But The Social Summit, as it was called, had mixed reviews.
SUSAN GEORGE (Author 'A Fate Worse than Debt'): There was a lot of 'we must' and 'we should' and 'wouldn't it be nice if'. But there was very little in the way of 'this is how we're going to do it and this is our plan for getting that done'. In other words, real politics and identifying what is in the way of social development.
JUAN SOMAVIA (Director General, International Labour Organization'): I think that it is rather of a success that in relatively short period of time, from '95 to the beginning of this century, people have acknowledged that the three issues of the summit: poverty, unemployment and social exclusion, are really the central issues of our societies.
INTERVIEWER: The United Nations Social Summit, five years ago in Copenhagen fell rather flat!
NOAM CHOMSKY: Among whom? Among the poor?
INTERVIEWER: No - it, it fell flat amongst, in terms of publicity and amongst governments. Did that surprise you?
NOAM CHOMSKY Massachusetts Inst. of Technology Author 'Manufacturing Consent': Yeah - which means that it 'fell flat' among the rich and powerful. Well, suppose you had a meeting of kings and princes, three hundred years ago. And one of them said, look, we ought to be more benevolent, you know, we ought to treat our slaves better - would you expect great excitement and enthusiasm in response?
COMM: Kosovo, and the refugee crisis showed how the international community can respond to an emergency.
The pictures shocked - the aid flowed in. But what didn't make the headlines is that quietly, away from the cameras, most of the world's rich governments have been cutting aid to poor countries, despite the promises made at the Social Summit.
CAROL BELLAMY (Executive Director United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef)): I think, actually very few of the promises made at that Social Summit have been fulfilled. At a time when business in the private sector actually seems to understand how interconnected it is with the other - with all parts of the world, governments seem to think that they are less connected from other parts of the world. And yet, this - it is a smaller world we live in these days. It doesn't mean every moment has to be devoted to thinking about someplace else. We want, in UNICEF, to see economic growth. We want to see people better their conditions. But it seems really appalling that this disparity seems to get greater at a time when there is so much wealth in the world today.
COMM: After the break: how some locked out of the Global Economy are taking their futures and their lives into their own hands.
PART TWO
COMM: Off Italy's Adriatic coast, the navy patrols for illicit cargo. These are migrant families from Albania trying illegally to seek a better life in Italy. They want to join the Global Economy, but the rules are against them.
NOAM CHOMSKY: One of the interesting aspects of this today's globalisation as compared with a century ago is that movement of people is much less free. In the peak period of population movement for the industrial societies the - the days of industrial societies was a long time ago. For example, in the United States the peak period of immigration relative to population I think was around 1850, and the early part of the century - for example, when my parents and grandparents came - there was a huge flow of population. That's been very sharply cut back.
INTERVIEWER: Are you saying that money and capital can flow freely...
NOAM CHOMSKY: Capital can flow quite freely -
INTERVIEWER: But labour can't.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Labour can't.
COMM: Now people are taking to the streets, convinced that globalisation is one-sided and favours bosses over workers, rich countries over poor. Here in Seattle, they've come to a meeting of the World Trade Organisation to convince the hardened sceptics.
BYSTANDER: When I was a student we demonstrated against the Vietnam war, against missiles, not against things like that person there. I just want to understand what's going on!
SUSAN GEORGE: This is the first time in history where - as we say - ordinary people are getting excited and mobilised around something which seems basically technical, economical, difficult, international, hard to understand, etc. And in fact, mobilising around that which is - perfectly well. And they are saying 'this is not the kind of globalisation we want!'
PROTESTORS: We don't have a voice; we don't have a seat! Listen to the voices of the people on the street!
COMM: The mood is turning nasty. Now in Seattle's aftermath, the United Nations will to review progress on the Social Summit and the impact of globalisation. The stakes are higher and higher.
INTERVIEWER: What would you like to see come out of June 2000 review of the Social Summit?
JAMES WOLFENSOHN President of the World Bank: I'd like to see not only a recommitment in terms of words, but a real commitment on behalf of our leaders to action. And that includes not just the writing of cheques, that includes a massive education campaign. That includes more discussion among the people of our countries - the sort of thing that you do on this programme. I'd like to see many more programmes er dealing with these issues, because for me these are not fringe issues. Er, my colleagues and I work in this because we believe they are the issues for the millennium.
COMM: In Life, we'll report on the human stories and the issues of the globalised world. Japan, where globalisation is causing unexpected strains on traditional society. Here, many young women prefer working for big transnational companies to the conventional role of carer.
COMM: Meanwhile, advances in healthcare mean the Japanese can look forward to a time when one in four will be over sixty-five. The result: old people with no-one to care for them; women and men. Toshiko's a business woman in her forties. But she has to double as full time carer for her eighty-four year-old mother.
TOSHIKO (ENGLISH TRANSLATION): I'm very busy at work and in the evenings I like to go to a concert or out to - with my friends. If we didn't live here in this special house we wouldn't have been able to overcome our problems. I would have collapsed. I'd have had to stop work and leave my company.
FRED SAI (Professor of Community Health, University of Ghana): We need to re-think our social structures because even in our communities which are not as rich as Japan, today we have got old people whose children have gone away to do work or to stay in foreign countries and they have nobody to look after them. Our social structures have broken down. So another wave of social evolution taking care of this situation is what is needed.
COMM: In Nigeria, many young women never have the chance of a job in the Global Economy. In Kano, most girls are married by sixteen, some even younger. Zadia is one of three wives of a used-car dealer.
ZADIA (ENGLISH TRANSLATION): I was brought to this house at thirteen when I didn't really know anything. I was brought into a household where the women were wives and children all much older than me. I can't look on these women as my co-wives. They are all the same age as my mother. A man of fifty taking up a child of nine or ten or 13 years old. After he has impregnated the woman and the woman has given birth. Who takes care of the child? The girl is only thirteen. No education. No skills to get any income. Nothing, nothing!
JAMES WOLFENSOHN (President of the World Bank): Well, I think that women are central to the whole issue of development.
in fact, in most of the developing countries they do most of the work. Secondly, they guide the family. Thirdly, they educate the kids. Fourthly they've typically to determine, sort of, how many children they have. So women are absolutely central. But for cultural reasons and historic reasons in many countries they've never been given a fair shake.
COMM: South Africa, and the Phelophepa Health Train. A clinic on wheels.
PHILOPHEPA MANAGER: What attracted me about this train was that it was giving health care, affordable health care, to the rural people of South Africa. Every bit of my learning was meant for the Phelophepa. From birth. It just went round and round and round. Until I finally came to help the rural people of South Africa.
(Over loudspeaker): We know you have got no money, we know you've got no transport and this is why we're here, to support and help you. But unfortunately we cannot see all of you. If I tell you that the dental clinic or the health clinic is full and you haven't got a sticker by that time: apologies, you'll have to go home.
COMM: Some conditions are life-threatening, some are job threatening. Either way: a visit from the nurse, always a chance to be seized.
MALE PATIENT: As long as you can tell me if you are married. I've got three sons... what?
NURSE: [Laughs] You are embarrassing me!
AMARTYA SEN (1998 Nobel Laureate Author 'Development as Freedom'): The fact that people die needlessly - millions of them - across the world in Africa, in Asia, Latin America too and elsewhere and, to some extent, even in North America and Europe - completely needlessly from lack of medical care and sometimes even lack of nutrition is - is totally scandalous. It's within our means, within our er feasibility to eliminate these deprivations altogether. And that's what I think you ought to focus on.
COMM: The USA, globalisation's model economy. Down in the streets of Philadelphia, a story from the other side of the American Dream.
CAMPAIGNERS SINGING: I took back my humanity! Well, I went down to the rich man's house And I took back what he stole from me: Took back my dignity, I took back my humanity!
COMM: A bus load of activists with a bus load of faith: two of Philadelphia's forgotten movements.
CAMPAIGNER SINGS: Well it's under my feet, under my feet, well...
COMM: Next stop, Philadelphia's Glass Bending Company, one of the few factories around here still working.
CAMPAIGNER: D'you just wanna welcome the sisters and brothers from the United Electrical Workers and wanna thank you for allowing us to visit you today and hear about the struggle that you're dealing with...
COMM: With a globalised economy it's easy to import basic goods like glass fittings more cheaply from abroad. Jobs have been cut and in real terms, so have wages.
1st CAMPAIGNER: I started here twenty-eight years ago with two dollars and ten cents. Twenty-eight years later I'm only making eleven dollars. That's a disgrace.
2nd CAMPAIGNER: I'm fifty seven years old, will soon be fifty eight, and I've spent all my time with Philadelphia Glass Bending. It'll be hard for me to go someplace and try to get another job someplace.
3rd CAMPAIGNER: I'm proud to stand here with these Union members because our Union is in the forefront of fighting against this corporate greed driven 'Race to the Bottom' on wages, living standards and environmental issues where the country that'll sell its labour for the cheapest price will attract all the corporations and their factories...
COMM: In the globalised economy, the Race to the Bottom takes jobs from the rest and gives them to the sweatshops of Asia. But is that necessarily such a bad thing?
FUKUYAMA: If a company takes advantage of the fact people are desperately poor and have no other opportunities in a peasant, subsistence economy and actually gives them work, what actually constitutes exploitation under those circumstances when their alternative er, you know, is have no, you know, employment in the modern sector of the economy at all?
I mean I'm, I'm not saying that I know what the answer to that is, but, it's just not obvious that a multinational corporation comes and actually gives people work in a job, even at what we would regard as sweatshop wages, you know, is necessarily exploiting them.
NAOMI KLEIN (Author 'No Logo'): This is presented to us, to concerned citizens, over and over again as this terrible choice we have to make: either these workers will have terrible jobs or they will have no jobs at all. And I think we have to start rejecting, we have to stop rejecting that dichotomy and saying no, in fact we can have both.
COMM: But is time running out? At Seattle the protest degenerated into a science fiction... Some demonstrators continue to say 'no' to globalisation. Some onlookers still claim 'it's nothing to do with us'. Either way, the globalised world will mean new and difficult choices.
POLICE MEGAPHONE: This is a final warning, please move to the doors!
ROBERT REICH: In many of our countries we find that there are two powerful political forces. On the one hand, people who want to preserve the old, the past, the old jobs, the old industries, who are afraid of change. And they are exercising their rights in a democracy; there's something of a backlash against globalisation, against technological change. They are fearful, and understandably fearful.
On the other hand, we have people who've already made it to the other side. Safely. They're well educated, they're prospering in the new global economy. They don't want to share their benefits with many of their compatriots. They don't feel a particular kinship or connection or social solidarity with others. And they are, to some extent seceding. They say, 'let the free market do it's will, I don't have any responsibilities as a citizen'. If those are our only options: either preserve and protect the old; or usher in the new with no social responsibility at all, then we are in trouble!
END