With Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum, 2004

David Miller 1 July 2007

According to the liberal press Gordon Brown has made a good start as Prime Minister because he has started to show that he is different to Blair.  According to the press this is because he has appointed Iraq 'sceptic' David Miliband as Foreign Secretary and Mark Malloch Brown formerly of the UN as Foreign Office minister.

The new Foreign Secretary David Miliband is apparently a well known sceptic on the Iraq war.  This is strange since, with the exception of one vote at which he was not present, Miliband has, since 2001, been a staunch supporter of the attack on Afghanistan and the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.  As well as being in favour of foundation hospitals and other pro market measures Miliband has consistently voted with the government on anti-terrosim measures, even on the Terrorism bill vote in late 2005 where the government was defeated Miliband voted for extending the period that terror 'suspects' could be locked up.[1] Miliband is no opponent of the war.

Malloch Brown on the other hand is said to be a 'a strong critic of US policy' (The Times , 29 June) and a 'critic of Iraq', making him a 'daring' appointment.(The Guardian , 29 June)  This is true in the sense that he has criticised the United States government for allowing ‘too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping’ from critics, such as conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.[2] The US representative to the United Nations John Bolton, responded, ‘I spoke to the secretary-general this morning, I said "I've known you since 1989 and I'm telling you this is the worst mistake by a senior U.N. official that I have seen in that entire time."[3] 

But it is a little bit of a stretch to pretend that Malloch Brown is in any way a plain speaking progressive.  On the contrary Malloch Brown has had a career long involvement in pushing neo-liberal reform first in journalism with the Economist and then in a series of appointments in the spin and propaganda industry.  

Malloch Brown started his career at the Economist, that leading organ of market friendly ideas.  After the Economist Malloch Brown went to work at the UNHCR, briefly returned to the UK to try and fail to beome a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the Social Democratic Party, and in 1986 was appointed to the Sawyer Miller Group an international PR firm specialising in managing elections on behalf of pro Western candidates. ‘As head of its international division’, noted the Guardian, ‘the Cambridge-educated Briton turned up in Peru with helicopters to help the presidential campaign of his old friend, the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.’[4]  In Bolivia he advised the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, ‘a Bolivian ruler so hated by the population for his neoliberal zeal and subservience to Washington that he had recently had to flee the presidential palace by helicopter, and make for Miami’.[5] He also advised Corazon Aquino of the Philippines when she ran against Ferdinand Marcos. In Colombia Malloch Brown advised the rulers of the country most favoured with US military aid to crush leftist guerrillas.

Doug Stokes has catalogued the campaign and its effects:

Sawyer Miller’s Opinion polls conducted in 1987 found that 76% of all Americans thought that the Colombian government was corrupt, and 80% wanted sanctions imposed upon it. In 1991, amidst the refusal of the Colombian State to hand over the notorious drug-trafficker, Pablo Escobar, the image of the Colombian State suffered further setbacks. In response to all this, the Colombian state embarked on its own Low Intensity Conflict to win the hearts and minds of the American people. It employed the services of a PR company, the Sawyer/Miller Group, which earned nearly a million dollars in fees and expenses in the first half of 1991 alone. The PR specialists job was to transform the perceptions of the Colombian state as a corrupt and brutal abuser of human rights, to a staunch ally of the US in its so-called “war on drugs”. The director of Sawyer/Miller’s Colombia account explained that "the main mission is to educate the American media about Colombia, get good coverage, and nurture contacts with journalists, columnists, and think tanks. The message is that there are ‘bad’ and ‘good’ people in Colombia and that the government is the good guy." In fostering these perceptions the Sawyer/Miller group conducted opinion poll surveys and focus group sessions to evaluate public opinion. In 1991 alone, Colombia gave over $3.1 million to an advertising campaign. The campaign placed newspaper adds and TV commercials aimed at American policymakers in Washington. The adds all had a similar theme. They asked the American people to remember the bravery of the Colombian military in its war against drugs, and attempted to change perceptions of Colombia from being a drug supplier to the US as drug consumer.

 Media requests for interviews with Colombian government officials went through Sawyer/Miller. They steered sympathetic reporters to key government ministries and made sure that critics of Colombia’s appalling human rights record were kept away. In one instance, after a meeting with Warren Hoge, the editor of the New York Times Magazine, the Times printed a long and inaccurate story glorifying the then Colombian President, Cesar Trujillo, whose campaign had been heavily funded with drug money. The Colombian government bought the reprinting rights to the article and sent thousands of copies to US Journalists and Embassies. Sawyer/Miller group regularly use the American press to distribute pro-Colombian government propaganda with the routine production of pamphlets, letters to editors signed by Colombian officials, and ads placed in The New York Times and The Washington Post. However, it is the transformation of the armed protagonists in Colombia’s conflict that has had the most effect. In recently declassified documentation, the US Ambassador to Colombia in 1996, Myle Frechette, admits that the perception of the FARC as narco-guerrillas, “was put together by the Colombian military, who considered it a way to obtain U.S. assistance in the counterinsurgency.” The PR job seems to have worked as the US has now made Colombia the third largest recipient of US military aid in the world today. This aid is allegedly for a counter-offensive against what have been constructed as the primary narco-terrorists in Colombia, the FARC.[6]

In 1993 Malloch Brown was co-founder of the International Crisis Group, which claims to be a non governmental organisations but is mostly funded by Western governments and largely staffed by ex government officials (often from the US). Chris Patten the former Conservative minister, the last governor of Hong Kong and Chair of Crisis Group's Board of Trustees writes that ‘What Crisis Group does is to fill the need that policy-makers in national governments have for smart, honest analysis and practical proposals for preventing disaster, or at least mitigating its consequences. We often find ourselves saying the things that governments would like to say but find too difficult.’[7] In other words the ICG is the vehicle for Western interests.  A non governmental organisation in name, but in practice a covert cipher for western interests. After setting up the ICG Malloch Brown was appointed as a spin doctor for the World Bank – along with the IMF and the WTO the main vehicles of global neoliberal reform.

It is unsurprising then to find that Malloch Brown’s comments on elements of the US right do not make him a critic of US power.  On the contrary as he himself has noted he is  ‘very pro-United States ... I've an American wife, kids. I love the country.’ He is also close to leading neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz the architect of the Iraq war and Elliot Abrams also of the Project for a New American Century.[8] At the ICG Malloch Brown rubs shoulders with co-Chair Thomas Pickering and his advisory board which includes figures such as Anwar Ibrahim, Morton Abramowitz, Kenneth Adelman, Leslie H. Gelb and Stephen Solarz.

Between them this small selection of the 44 strong advisory  board are linked to the following elite and neoconservative think tanks and lobby groups:

# Aspen Institute
# Eurasia Foundation
# International Institute for Strategic Studies
# American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus
# National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
# Brookings Institution
# Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
# Council on Foreign Relations
# Committee on the Present Danger
# Freedom House
# Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
# National Democratic Institute for International Affairs

The Committee on the Present Danger is a neocon lobby group first set up in the Reagan era which is currently active in the push to war with Iran. Note also the links with the neocon Israel lobby groups such as the far right Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs. Indeed Pickering is so close to the Israel lobby that he joined Ariel Sharon’s Kadima party in December 2005.  Anwar Ibrahim is the West’s favourite former Malaysian politician, who, through his connection with the rather dubious Foundation for the Future, links to the Wolfowitz World Bank scandal.  Wolfowitz’s partner Shaha Riza was seconded to the Foundation following a request from Ibrahim.[9]  These links hardly support the notion of a dangerous radical in the Foreign Office.

Furthermore it has been argued that Malloch Brown’s role at the UN was actually part of US manipulations of the UN. Perry Anderson notes one of the operatives in the manipulation was Malloch Brown. Anderson writes:

During his second mandate, floundering in the Oil for Food crisis, Annan was summoned by Richard Holbrooke to his residence on the Upper West Side for a secret meeting, attended by Orr, Ruggie and Mousavizadeh, and three other Democratic insiders. There Annan was enjoined to fire unwanted colleagues, and accept a more competent minder, in the shape of Mark Malloch Brown… Without a murmur, Annan accepted him as the power in front of the throne. Holbrooke was pained that news of the arrangement leaked out. ‘The intention was to keep it confidential. No one wanted to give the impression of a group of outsiders, all of them Americans, dictating what to do to a secretary-general.’ Impressions, apparently, are everything. [10]

Let us take as an example a long speech that Brown made in January 2005 in the run up to the G8 meeting at Gleneagles. In its own terms the speech sounded serious about Brown's concern to make poverty history. He noted the 'hopelessness and human loss that lies behind the numbers' and reported that in Tanzania he 'saw 8, 9, 10, 11 year old children begging to continue in school - but denied the chance because their parents could not pay the fees.' He concluded with a clarion call to make the 'arc of the moral universe… bend towards justice'[11] On the launch of the Commission for Africa Report, the centrepiece of the government’s policy for the G8, the BBC listed eight findings requiring action by the West. They included doubling or trebling aid, forgiving debt, spend more on HIV/AIDS, fund African universities, remove trade barriers to African exports in the West. [12] Not much there to disagree with. But, in the report itself, a different picture emerges. Journalists need only read the summaries of the various chapters to get a clue about the real agenda. For example goals for economic growth in Africa are said in Chapter 7 to be possible 'only if the obstacles of… a discouraging investment climate are overcome'. This involves 'public and private sector working together to identify the obstacles to a favourable investment climate'.[13] What this means is more liberalisation and privatisation and more opportunities for western corporations to exploit African resources and labour. 'Investments in infrastructure and the enabling climate for the private sector are at the top of the agenda' says the summary of the next chapter.[14] These passages are available for all to see but are commonly suppressed in the mainstream media (including the allegedly left leaning papers the Guardian [15] and the Independent[16]). They provide a clue to the real agenda of the government, which is to spearhead neoliberal reform in Africa.

Also closely involved with the work of the Commission for Africa is Business Action for Africa (BAA) a coalition of over 250 senior business representatives. BAA met with the Commission for Africa prior to finalising their report in February 2005. This followed a 'programme of formal consultations between the CFA and the private sector in Africa, Europe and North America'.[17] This was accomplished through the 'Business contact group' established in July 2004 at a meeting chaired by Niall Fitzgerald of Reuters and Gordon Brown. Its programme was managed by the 'private sector Advisor' to the Commission for Africa, an employee of Shell, and input in the US and Canada was ensured through business lobby groups the Corporate Council on Africa and the Canadian Council on Africa, both representing trans-national capital.[18]

The corporations involved can barely contain their excitement. The 'outlook' of the business community is a 'positive one' says one of the CFA commissioners.  'It believes Africa is the next frontier for investment'. James Smith, the UK chair of Shell, which co-hosted the meeting noted that progress 'requires that the private sector has a bigger role'.[19]  The chair of the Commonwealth Business Council, the business lobby group co-hosting the meeting, read out the concluding statement. Dr Mohan Kaul affirmed that 'getting the conditions right for doing business in Africa is the biggest single investment for the future well-being of its citizens'. A 'vibrant and successful private sector… is required' he noted.[20]

Amongst their duties in this adventure corporations 'should' sign 'leading codes of good social and environmental conduct'. The one apparent crumb of comfort is that 'Corporate governance principles should clearly identify and punish malpractice'. But this is a mirage as there is no requirement to sign and the codes noted (such as the UN global compact and the Global Reporting Initiative) are all voluntary and do not have any provisions or appetite for 'punishing' corporate wrongdoing.[21] This is their unifying and defining characteristic. Unsurprisingly, therefore we find that the corporations sponsoring the BAA conference are amongst the worst currently engaged in the exploitation of Africa including Shell (oil), Anglo American (mining), Rio Tinto (mining), De Beers (diamonds), Diageo, SAB Miller (both Drinks industry, use vast quantities of water), GSK (pharmaceuticals), British American Tobacco, and Unilever, (food and consumer products).  Also involved are the providers of capital who profiteer from exploitation such as Standard Chartered bank and the venture capital fund Capital for Development.[22]

This pro-business agenda is nowhere clearer than in the statements of the IMF. Its International Monetary and Financial Committee, met on 16 April 2005 in Washington and reiterated the neo-liberal mantra that 'the key challenge remains to press ahead with reforms to strengthen the investment environment and foster private sector led growth’ The Committee ‘emphasizes that successful and ambitious multilateral trade liberalization is central to sustained global growth and economic development'.[23] This is as unsurprising as it is damaging to Africa and the rest of the world. The committee met in the middle of an election campaign in the UK, but the chair of the committee - Gordon Brown - managed to find time to attend. 

Brown's mention of Tanzania in his speech in January 2005 is particularly inappropriate since the problems of education fees in that country are the direct result of IMF structural adjustment which forced the Tanzanian government to introduce the market into education. ‘Education's share in total budget percentage fell from 11.85% in 1983/84 to 6.95% in 1990/91’. ‘Government expenditures on education, health, and other social sectors had to be cut in order to meet conditions of donor countries and international lending institutions’[24]. What Brown gives, with apparent sincerity, with one hand is the means for the corporations to take away with the other. He offers, in other words not fine words unmatched by practice, but the very tools for the corporations to swoop on Africa and bleed it dry.

This is nowhere more apparent than in relation to aid, where the promised increases come with strings attached - they require liberalisation. Even worse, the Department for International Development aid budget directly funds privatisation PR campaigns run by the far right Adam Smith Institute and others. [25]  In such obscene circumstances cutting aid to the developing world would be a better policy.

In fact the UK government is at the forefront of the new corporate drive to open up markets throughout the developing world. The adoption of some of the rhetoric of the Make Poverty History campaign is both a sign of the success of the movement and an indication of the dangers of co-option. Sadly some of the organisations involved in MPH are less than clear about this. For example Justin Forsyth Oxfam's campaign manager noted in 2002 that ‘When you speak to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, they really understand these issues. They are easily some of the best leaders when it comes to talking about development and dismantling subsidy, and they are making the right arguments time and again.’[26] 

In 2004 Forsyth left Oxfam to work as Blair's advisor of International Development. Meanwhile Brown's advisor on International Development, Shriti Vadera, described by the Guardian as 'tough-talking' and 'not suffering bright junior officials, let alone fools, gladly' is a former director at the US bank UBS Warburg and 'expert' on, and advocate of, 'the complex funding behind public-private partnerships'. She was influential in pushing through utilities privatisation in South Africa despite popular opposition. Amongst her other roles Vadera sits on the Oxfam Council of Trustees, Oxfam’s the governing body. [27]

 Notes

[1] People MPs > Labour David Miliband > How they voted> Details of key votes> David Miliband,The Guardian http://politics.guardian.co.uk/person/howtheyvoted/0,,-8431,00.html
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/08/wun08.xml .
[3] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,198535,00.html
[4] The Guardian profile: Mark Malloch Brown 'The thing Mark did not bring to the job was a political connection with the most vociferous US critics of the UN’ Annan's right-hand man has criticised Bush and Blair but has friends on the US right, Oliver Burkeman in New York, Friday August 4, 2006, The Guardian http://politics.guardian.co.uk/development/story/0,,1837128,00.html
[5] Perry Anderson, ‘Our Man’ http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n09/print/ande01_.html , London Review of Books, 10 May 2007.; See also Gerry Sussman, ‘Our Brand is Crisis: Exporting neoliberal spin’, Spinwatch, 23 May 2007, http://www.spinwatch.org/content/view/4225/24/
[6] Doug Stokes ‘Perception Management and the US Terror War in Colombia’ ZNet, June 07, 2002, http://www.zmag.org/content/Colombia/stokes_perception-management.cfm
[7] Jan Oberg, The International Crisis Group: Who Pays the Piper? Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, Spinwatch, 15 April 2005 http://www.spinwatch.org/content/view/1043/9/
[8] The Guardian profile: Mark Malloch Brown 'The thing Mark did not bring to the job was a political connection with the most vociferous US critics of the UN' Annan's right-hand man has criticised Bush and Blair but has friends on the US right, Oliver Burkeman in New York, Friday August 4, 2006, The Guardian http://politics.guardian.co.uk/development/story/0,,1837128,00.html
[9] Mickie Ojijo Wolfowitz-Riza juicy scam story for WB loanees' Kenya Times, 8 May 2007 http://www.timesnews.co.ke/08may07/nwsstory/opinion1.html .
[10] Perry Anderson, ‘Our Man’ http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n09/print/ande01_.html , London Review of Books, 10 May 2007.
[11] Brown, G. 'Speech by the Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer at a DfID/UNDP seminar - 'Words into Action in 2005', Lancaster House, London., 26 January 2005. http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom_and_speeches/press/2005/press_09_05.cfm
[12] BBC Online 'Africa Report at a glance' 11 March 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4337239.stm
[13] Summary Chapter 7, Commission for Africa Report. http://www.commissionforafrica.org/english/report/chapter7.html
[14] Summary Chapter 8, Commission for Africa Report. http://www.commissionforafrica.org/english/report/chapter8.html
[15] The Guardian's main report was subtitled 'on a report aiming to put an ailing continent on the road to recovery' hardly a balanced perspective. Ashley Seager and Charlotte Moore, the greatest tragedy of our time: how the world can help and why it must do so now' the guardian, 11 March 2005. http://www.guardian.co.uk/hearafrica05/story/0,15756,1435198,00.html
[16] The Independent's leader described the report as a 'call to action - it must not go unheeded', again not much of a critique there. The Independent, 11 March 2005. The Independent journalist Paul Vallely was seconded to the Commission for Africa for six months and was the principal author of the report. His account of the process gives no sign that he understands the role of capital, or neoliberalism in Africa. Paul Vallely ‘Africa Commission had to work out what was wrong and how to fix it’ The Independent, 11 March 2005 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=618858  
[17] Commission for Africa, 'Commission for Africa meets global business leaders', 23 February 2004, cfapn07/05 http://www.commissionforafrica.org/english/about/pressroom/pressreleases/2005/23-02-05_pr_global_business_meeting.pdf
[18] Business Action for Africa, Statement Issued by Business contact Group on Commission for Africa Report, 11 March 2005, http://www.cbcglobelink.org/cbcglobelink/events/baa05/Background.htm
[19] Commission for Africa, 'Commission for Africa meets global business leaders', 23 February 2004, cfapn07/05 http://www.commissionforafrica.org/english/about/pressroom/pressreleases/2005/23-02-05_pr_global_business_meeting.pdf
[20] Commission for Africa, Business Action for Africa Conference, Concluding Statement, Delivered by Dr Mohan Kaul, CEO, Commmonwealth Business council, 5 April 2005. http://www.commissionforafrica.org/english/about/documents/05-04-05_ev_business_concluding_statement.pdf
[21] Concluding Statement, as above
[22] Concluding Statement, as above
[23] Communique of the International Monetary and Financial Committee of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund, 'The Global Economy and Financial Markets - Outlook, Risks and Policy Responses', Press Release No. 05/87, April 16, 2005. http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2005/pr0587.htm
[24] Joseph Figaro 'Debt Spotlight: Kenya & Tanzania’ Economic Justice News Online, June 2002 Vol. 5, No. 2 http://www.50years.org/cms/ejn/story/94
[25]. George Monbiot, On the Edge of Lunacy: British foreign aid is being directed to countries willing to sell off their assets to big business, Published in the Guardian 6th January 2004 http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/01/06/on-the-edge-of-lunacy/
[26]. Cited in Johann Hari. ‘The comfortable rich are being protected from the desperate poor’  Independent Wednesday, June 4, 2003.
[27].Heather Stewart, 'Those who count in the Treasury', The Guardian, 15 April 2002, http://www.guardian.co.uk/budget2002/story/0,11219,684809,00.html ; http://www.oxfam.org.uk/about_us/trustees.htm#shriti