MAI

NATIVE INTELLIGENCE

A Column By

Jack D. Forbes

Native American Studies

University of California, Davis

This column's focus:

MAI: A NEW THREAT TO

TRIBES AND ALL NATIONS

The Clinton administration has sometimes pretended concern for tribal governments, but at the same time has planned deadly assaults upon sovereignty in the form of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs). Clinton has even sought to expand NAFTA to include Chile and other states which repress Native Americans.

Now a new attack on the sovereignty of all states, provinces, and tribal governments is being concocted secretly by the United States and other powerful corporate-dominated governments. This new proposal is known as the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), an international treaty which will fundamentally alter the entire meaning of sovereignty, independence, and self-government.

The big, rich states, dominated as they are by giant corporations (private for-profit governments), will seek to force all (or almost all) of the richest as well as poorer governments of the world to sign on to the treaty. The threat will be a loss of foreign (corporate) investment and loans if they refuse, along with stagnation and economic strangulation. Native American tribal governments will not even be offered a choice, since the U.S., Canadian, Mexican, Brazilian and other governments will simply force the tribes, as well as their own provinces, to comply as simple subdivisions of the larger states.

Once MAI is activated there will be no such thing as national, provincial, or local economies in the developed world. Economic planning will be utterly impossible. The protecting of an economy from economic plundering or raiding will be virtually impossible. Rates of growth will be totally unpredictable. Environmental protections will be difficult to retain.

Why? Because MAI is intended, literally, to eventually guarantee absolute, unrestricted, freedom for money (electronic and otherwise) to move across frontiers while greatly restricting freedom for human beings (except insofar as they are owners of great amounts of money). Under MAI no government will eventually be able to restrict the movement of money (investments) or other assets including production facilities across its borders, either leaving or entering.

The basic idea is this: if a corporation wants to obtain an oil concession in a particular area, no government may restrict them from moving money in, buying a concession (using bribery very often, or bribery combined with the help of corrupt officials, or combined with local military leaders, or using phony deeds, etc.). Nor will a government be able to restrict them from moving their total profits out as well as their original investments.

Let us suppose that a Native reservation possesses some allotted land. The tribe will not be able to prevent a white Anglo, Japanese, German, or other investor from gaining control of that (or those) allotment (s) and doing what it wants on the land. The tribe cannot restrict investment to tribal members only, nor can it insist that part or all of the profits remain on the reservation for future development. Nor could the tribe confiscate any property of the corporation as punishment for illegal activities (bribery, for example, or environmental damage, or discrimination against employees, and so on).

MAI is ultimately designed to give absolute freedom to the rich to plunder the entire planet, regardless of national or other political boundaries. It will make the nation-state, the tribe, and all other governments helpless except in so far as these governments are, of, by, and for the wealthy. It is, in effect, the "privatization" of government.

Does it sound as if most of us will be reduced to a kind of helpless slavery? Some readers may find this hard to believe, given that Clinton, Gore, and other leaders pretend friendship for indigenous Americans. But just think for a moment about the U.S.-supplied arms, training, and helicopters being used right now against the First Nations of Chiapas (as well as the same thing having gone on in Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, and elsewhere since 1981 at least). When resources are at issue, the Native People receive no support. The situation of the Uwa people, battling against huge corporate interests in collusion with the corrupt government of Colombia, is a case in point.

This is an era in which Clinton-Gore, and the people who control them, intend to complete the conquest of the last "undeveloped" areas of the Earth, the destruction of the last-remaining free indigenous peoples, and to begin the invasion of "outer space" and other planets.

Traditionally, it has been the responsibility of governments, at least in theory, to protect their own citizens and their own resources from unrestricted exploitation by outsiders. Under MAI that will no longer be possible, as corporations will be able to penetrate every signatory country at will, and under terms set by the corporations. What will "sovereignty" mean after MAI? Now is the time to study the issue, by reading the publication of the Alliance for Democracy (The Alliance Reports,<Peoplesall@aol.com>); or writing to The Preamble Center for Public Policy, 1737 21st. Street, NW, Wasington, D.C. 20009 (or on the web at <http://www.rtk.net/preamble>). Also a booklet on MAI is available at <www.greenecon.org>.

(Professor Jack D. Forbes, Powhatan-Delaware, is the author of

COLUMBUS AND OTHER CANNIBALS, AFRICANS AND