Spring Break
Did We Get Hosed? The Other Side of Globalization
Using leaked memos and interviews with former officials, a new book makes explosive claims about the IMF, World Bank, U.S., Enron, and BP
Nick Will, Editor In Chief
Issue date: 4/16/02 Section: News
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Two weeks ago, Lord John Browne, CEO of BP, spoke to a crowded Burden Auditorium about the virtues of BP and global corporate citizenship. In his speech, he defended globalization and multinational corporations such as his own and suggested that corporations can play a vital, if limited, role in securing social welfare around the globe. RC students studied BP cases and the positive NPV forecasts of the firm's decision to unilaterally reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Now, the author of a new book makes provocative allegations against BP and the entire globalization movement as it is practiced. In his new book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast contradicts John Browne's central claims, and moreover, suggests that BP, like Enron and United States officials, is profiteering from globalization in emerging nations. His evidence and conclusions might leave some wondering if John Browne's pro-globalization speech was part of a calculated public relations effort.
Palast is a lead investigative reporter for the BBC, an American journalist in self-exile who often complains that his inflammatory findings are not aired by U.S. corporate media. Last November, he was the reporter who broke the story about the mistaken disqualification of thousands of legal voters by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who hired a Texas-based company to "purge" illegal voters from voter eligibility lists. The report aired in November on the BBC, before the Supreme Court stopped recount attempts. The story was run in the U.S. in The Washington Post seven months later.
A former post-graduate student in economics under Milton Friedman, where he says "What I saw there was a kind of mad, almost religious fervor for free markets which had almost nothing to do with reality," Palast is an unrelenting critic of U.S. corporate media and the "pro-globalization consensus" in America. In a recent interview, he gives a powerful presentation of "the other side" of globalization theory, which stands in contrast to the markedly pro-globalization speech excerpts of John Browne featured in last week's Harbus.
Now, the author of a new book makes provocative allegations against BP and the entire globalization movement as it is practiced. In his new book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast contradicts John Browne's central claims, and moreover, suggests that BP, like Enron and United States officials, is profiteering from globalization in emerging nations. His evidence and conclusions might leave some wondering if John Browne's pro-globalization speech was part of a calculated public relations effort.
Palast is a lead investigative reporter for the BBC, an American journalist in self-exile who often complains that his inflammatory findings are not aired by U.S. corporate media. Last November, he was the reporter who broke the story about the mistaken disqualification of thousands of legal voters by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who hired a Texas-based company to "purge" illegal voters from voter eligibility lists. The report aired in November on the BBC, before the Supreme Court stopped recount attempts. The story was run in the U.S. in The Washington Post seven months later.
A former post-graduate student in economics under Milton Friedman, where he says "What I saw there was a kind of mad, almost religious fervor for free markets which had almost nothing to do with reality," Palast is an unrelenting critic of U.S. corporate media and the "pro-globalization consensus" in America. In a recent interview, he gives a powerful presentation of "the other side" of globalization theory, which stands in contrast to the markedly pro-globalization speech excerpts of John Browne featured in last week's Harbus.
