'
The New Rulers Of The World (2001) analyses the new global economy and
reveals that the divisions between the rich and poor have never been
greater - two thirds of the world's children live in poverty - and the
gulf is widening like never before.
The film turns the spotlight
on the new rulers of the world - the great multinationals and the
governments and institutions that back them such as the IMF, the World
Bank and the World Trade Organisation under whose rules millions of
people throughout the world lose their jobs and livelihood.
The
West, explains Pilger, has increased its stranglehold on poor countries
by using the might of these powerful financial institutions to control
their economies. "A small group of powerful individuals are now richer
than most of the population of Africa," he says, "just 200 giant
corporations dominate a quarter of the world’s economic activity.
General Motors is now bigger than Denmark. Ford is bigger than South
Africa. Enormously rich men like Bill Gates, have a wealth greater than
all of Africa. Golfer Tiger Woods was paid more to promote Nike than the
entire workforce making the company’s products in Indonesia received."
To
examine the true effects of globalisation, Pilger travels to Indonesia -
a country described by the World Bank as a model pupil until its
globalised economy collapsed in 1998 - where high-street brands such as
Nike, Adidas, Gap and Reebok are mass produced by cheap labour in
'sweatshops' and sold for up to 250 times the amount received by
workers.
He films secretly in one of the biggest sweatshops in
the capital, Jakarta. Over footage of hundreds of mostly women and
children in the camp, with its open sewers and unsafe water, Pilger
reports that workers are paid the equivalent of 72p a day - about one
American dollar - which is the legal minimum wage in Indonesia but
acknowledged by that country’s own government as only just over half a
living wage. Many children there were undernourished and prone to
disease. While filming, Pilger himself caught dengue fever.
He
also recounts the previously untold story of how globalisation in Asia
had begun in Indonesia and how Western politicians and businessmen
sponsored the dictator General Suharto, who brutally seized power in the
mid-1960s. "The great sweatshops and banks and luxury hotels in
Indonesia were built on the mass murder of as many as one million
people, an episode the West would prefer to forget," he reveals. "Within
a year of the bloodbath, Indonesia’s economy was effectively redesigned
in America, giving the West access to vast mineral wealth, markets and
cheap labour - what President Nixon called the greatest prize in Asia."
'The
New Rulers Of The World' is a collision of two of Pilger’s continuing
themes - imperialism and the injustice of poverty. It observes the
parallel between modern-day globalisation and old-world imperialism.
"There’s no difference between the quite ruthless intervention of
international capital into foreign markets these days than there was in
the old days, when they were backed up by gunboats," says Pilger. "Much
of my global view has come over years of seeing how imperialism works
and how the world is divided between the rich, who get richer, and the
poor, who get poorer, and the rich get richer on the backs of the poor.
That division hasn’t changed for about 500 years, but there are new,
deceptive ways of shoring it up and ensuring that most of the world’s
resources are concentrated in as few hands as possible. What is
different today is there is a worldwide movement that understands this
deception and is gaining strength, especially among the young, many of
whom are far better educated about the chameleon nature of capitalism
than those in the 1960s. Moreover, if the intensity of Establishment
propaganda is a guide, at times bordering on institutional panic, then
the new movement is already succeeding."
The New Rulers Of The
World was a Carlton Television production for ITV first broadcast on
ITV1, 18 July 2001. Director: Alan Lowery. Producer: John Pilger.
Associate Producers: Chris Martin and Laurelle Keough.
Awards: Gran Prix Leonardo Award, 2003; Certificate of Merit, Chicago International Television Awards, 2003.
