Corporate Foreign Policy

Multiple reports have been emanating from Zimbabwe, claiming that Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF has established secret militia bases in Masvingo and some parts of Manicaland province.

We can only document the reasoning behind and the existence of these bases as unsurprisingly abhorrent and furthering the lack of fundamental human rights that has plagued Zimbabwe. However, Radio VOP’s correspondents in Masvingo and Nyanga continue to report that the party had indeed deployed youths at the bases which were being used to intimidate villagers.

With elections imminent and no doubt in dire need of severe international scrutiny and with current governance at a perpetual standstill, this is distressing news for the once-breadbasket of Africa.

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One of the principle driving factors behind our ideas in corporate foreign policy is the bifurcation of global financial and political influence.  With the rise of strong emerging economies such as China, India, and Brazil, and the steep losses in soft power suffered by the United States along with Wall Street’s struggles, it is only natural that we gradually see signs that the reallocated capital begin to shift the direction of investments - with entirely different actors (sometimes government) making the decisions.  This is a process that I see reflected in everything from Fareed Zakaria’s proclamation of the post-American world, up to all the tomes on your bookshelf heralding the tectonic shift in wealth from West to East and South.

Today in the Financial Times I was struck by the importance of an article highlighting comments made by several bankers and analysts who feel that the moment has finally come for some of these emerging markets to begin pumping their accumulated capital into domestic markets to fund infrastructure development.  If this does indeed begin happening, and we do see a surge in local markets surging, it will be an entirely new corporate policy ballgame … before one of these high growth markets blows up in our faces.  Check out the excerpt after the cut.

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When your President tells you that ‘Playstation is poison‘, you know you’ve got a problem with the way things are being run. When hunger and power deficits are perpetual issues in your country yet those in the executive branch are more focussed on controlling industry for their own agenda, you know you have qualms with governance.

Indeed the statements and actions of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez are erratic to put it modestly, yet all flowing on the same perturbed course – socialist authoritarianism.

Chavez said yesterday that a nationalized retail chain previously controlled by France’s Casino Guichard-Perrachon S.A. will become part of a new group of ‘socialist supermarkets‘.

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This article was first published in The Wall Street Journal.

Human rights are under attack, and language is the weapon. The very grammar of justice has fallen into the wrong hands, instrumentalized in the elaborate and sensational theaters of due process. A trial without any rights of defense is still called a “trial,” a conviction ordered down from an autocratic president rather than a judge is still called a “conviction,” and there continues to exist an overwhelming and damaging perception that the law and courts work just fine—an assumption eagerly embraced by the financial community looking to toss heaps of capital into subprime judicial environments.

When Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian political prisoner whose case I am involved in, was put on trial for the first time in 2004, the government applied all its media powers to project the language of justice: They held him in shackles, placed him in a cage on television, and put on a good show trial where a judge pretends to listen to the defense as though the verdict would not arrive via a call from the Kremlin. This is what the Russians call “telephone justice.”

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Journalist Stanley Kwenda has fled to South Africa after alleging that he received a death threat by telephone  from a senior police officer, linked to a story he wrote in The Zimbabwean. The newspaper says that “‘impeccable sources” have supplied them with the name of a senior member of the police’s law and order section, a member who has been associated over the years with the arrest and torture of opposition politicians, journalists and human rights activists, but they cannot publish it for legal reasons.

Meanwhile, the Media Institute of Southern Africa has “cautiously welcomed” the appointment of commissioners to the Zimbabwe Media Commission, while recognising that the commission could still be used to enforce the repressive provisions of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Kwenda, who is a member of MISA-Zimbabwe’s Harare Advocacy Committee, and is the director of the Artists for Democracy Zimbabwe Trust (ADZT).

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There are scant signs of help from the Haitian government during the ongoing crisis that has truly shook the world. The government appears scattered by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake Tuesday evening. The streets were filled with beleaguered residents milling about, left with no jobs, no instructions on what to do, and no place to buy food or to take the injured. Many said they felt totally alone and saw no evidence that relief was on the way, as their mournful pleas began to give way to anger.

“The government is mute,” a dismayed young Haitian said while he hurried past a body left on a traffic median. “They do nothing.”

The dead and injured were pushed through the streets in wheelbarrows. At the overwhelmed central hospital, anguished patients lay in a weedy parking lot on gurneys fashioned from wooden doors. Calls for help went unanswered, and no doctors were in sight.

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Honduran Congress has approved a decree handed down in December by President Roberto Micheletti to end Honduras’ membership in the Bolivarian Alternative to the Americas (ALBA), a regional organization started by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

Presidential spokesman Rafael Pineda, in an apparent reference to Venezuela, explained that the decision to leave was taken because “some of the countries in the organization have not treated Honduras with the respect it deserves.” Pineda also cited the constant Venezuelan threats to invade Honduras emanating from the office of Mr. Chávez during the initial stages of the ouster of Manuel Zelaya.

Honduras joined the regional organization on August 25, 2008, during a meeting between former President Zelaya and President Chávez. However, it was not until October 9 that the membership agreement was ratified by the Honduran Congress.

Google’s dramatic threat to close its business in China unless the authorities allow it to provide uncensored search results throws into stark relief the limits to globalization.

The dream of  google spearheading the initiative to unify the World Wide Web by flattening the Earth into a single cyberspace has been shattered by that governments’ determination to control the information their citizens see.

The search engine and e-mail behemoth yesterday stated that  it had uncovered “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China” aimed at accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

The level of censorship is of course no surprise. Whilst in Beijing, the Arcadia Foundation’s Public Relations Director was quoted on their site as finding it difficult to access certain news websites, sometimes at such a delay he could “swear someone was picking up the metaphorical reciever along the way to check” on him.

Google’s new refusal to submit to such controls in China illustrates how its global business model could flounder in an international clash of values.

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“Venezuela is going to rack and ruin. Chavez is in serious trouble. The economy is heading for the sewer,” stated Robert Amsterdam today on ‘Montel Across America’ on the Air America Radio Network.

The international attorney explained that Chavez has devalued the currency by 50% in order to “have more money to throw around to keep his movement going”, however, “the man can’t manage his way out of a paper bag and is starting to lose control.”

Corruption in Venezuela is massive and on an unparalled scale, complicated by incompetent management, he explained. Opposition has begun to form against Chavez, including the present mayor of Caracas, but whether Chavez can be toppled is questionable.

As documented on KandyStroud.blogspot.com, “it remains important for the world to recognize how dangerous Chavez is, to understand how he has thrown his lot in with Russia and Iran and is laundering Iranian money and nationalizing banks which want to return to the rule of international law.”

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Zimbabwe’s attorney general today claimed that the state would move to have its key witness in the terrorism trial of an ally of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai impeached for giving contradicting evidence.

The trial of Roy Bennett -who astonishingly faces a possible death sentence on charges of illegal possession of arms for purposes of committing terrorism, banditry and sabotage -resumed with chief state witness Peter Hitschmann testifying.

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