Letters - Letter to the Editor

New Internationalist, Sept, 2002

The New Internationalist welcomes your Letters. But please keep them short. They may be edited for purposes of space or clarity. Letters should be sent to letters@newint.org or to your Local NI office. Please remember to include a town and country for your address.

When in Rome...

It is a pity that your `Short History of Corporations' (Inside Business, NI 347) did not begin two millennia ago because it was the Romans who gave us the concept of the limited-liability company.

Wealthy Romans wishing to expand their business interests, but without jeopardizing their existing fortunes, could establish a business called a cartellum. The requirement was that the cartellum had to have seven partners with equal shares. Once set up, individual partners could be sued only to the extent of their capital in the cartellum.

There was also the fiction that anyone who wished to serve the state was obliged to relinquish all commercial benefits and positions. As a result, every aspiring senator devolved the day-to-day running of his businesses to an assortment of subordinate family members, who took the business titles - and any responsibility for problems -- without actually controlling the businesses. At this distance in time it is not possible to know if any of the Caesars had connexions with a Grupus Carlylus but I bet they did!

James Cannell Dilwyn, England

Wind of change?

After reading NI 347 all I found out was that companies influence government policy. This is not exactly shocking.

All this talk of dastardly conspiracies, GATS and corporate lobbying couldn't hide the central flaw in the analysis -- governments are still in control. The GATS treaty may be terrible, but it is in the hands of our government to sign it (or not). While it may not have the revolutionary chic of knee-jerk antiauthoritarianism, why can't the Left lobby to stop the Government signing away our sovereignty?

If we are going to get 'Inside Business' why can't we hear about it? Now that Enron, Worldcom, shareholder value, mergers and acquisitions, accountancy firms, 'market populism' and ratings agencies are discredited, even within the business community, what does that mean for the future? A whole raft of events and trends show that the business world is experiencing its biggest shift for decades, but the NI prefers to talk about Latin America. Look around and you'll see that events are going against neoliberalism, the climate is changing.

Tom Freke London, England

Stopping the juggernaut Each week I write a column in the local paper on behalf of the Anglican Church of which I am a priest. I try to bring large issues home to my rural Aussie readers in the hope that they will act locally for justice and peace. Some weeks I lean back after writing my 600 words and wonder whether it will do any good at all.

Tomorrow I will put fingers to keyboard; but tonight I read the most dismal issue of NI (347) yet -- the power of corporations seems infinite against what's left of people power. Then I turn to this one-page gem on the Mujeres Creando of Bolivia (Making Waves), and I begin to believe that it is still possible to stop the juggernaut.

I am due out now, to a meeting to help establish a community fund to help those who fall between the cracks in an affluent and self-satisfied society. I go with renewed hope.

By all means keep up the battle on the large global issues--but never stop telling us the small good-news stories that energize us in an overwhelming world.

Peter Liewellyn Bombal, Australia

Young women at risk

Increasingly, the HIV/AIDS crisis is disproportionately affecting women -- in sub-Saharan Africa, women make up more than half of all HIV-positive adults (How to crush AIDS, NI 346). The virus is transmitted from men to women up to four times more easily than vice versa. It is also disproportionately affecting young women. Women tend to become infected at a younger age, and develop full-blown AIDS mare quickly than men do.

You rightly highlight the link between poverty and HIV/AIDs. Recent estimates suggest that women make up nearly three-quarters of the world's poor. This places young women in double jeopardy. Y Care International, the development agency of the YMCA movement, agrees with Wayne Ellwood's assertion that, without skills, too many young women face a life of few opportunities, and may even face the bleak choice of becoming sex workers or starving. Our recent report, Young women: learning to earn, looks at how to reach this particular group, who have so often been marginalized within development policy. We would like to see more opportunities for young women everywhere to access training in ways which suit them, in supportive environments and taking account of their existing commitments.

Dr Christopher Beer Director, Y Care International, London www.ycare.org.uk

Castro's plan

This is a quote from Fidel Castro, speaking at the UN Millennium Summit, 7 September 2000: 'Our country has sufficient medical personnel to co-operate -- if the UN agrees -- with the World Health Organization and the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, who are suffering from this destructive scourge to the greatest degree, in order to organize the infrastructure needed to administer those medications in Africa on an emergency basis. I am not exaggerating. This could signify 1,000 doctors, and 2,000 or 3,000 health workers...'