Global Nation Organization

One objective at Global Nation is to uncover unscrupulous business practices. Our primary focus is on those who profit from dangerous or inferior goods; with a good being defined as a product or service. How we do this is quite simple: through exposure. Today, all eyes are on China, whose “states secrets system is dangerous to the health of people not only in China but also worldwide, and undermines healthy governance and rule of law.” It is apparent, China is not just poisoning American pets out of greed, but the entire planet.

As most of the world knows, this past March millions of cans of pet food was recalled from North American pet stores when thousands of animals died from kidney damage after eating tainted food. According to the FDA, the food contained the chemical melamine. In a statement on ChemNutra’s website: “We are concerned that we may have been the victim of deliberate and mercenary contamination for the purpose of making the wheat gluten we purchased appear to have a higher protein content than it did.” In fact, the wheat gluten may not have had any protein at all.

What is more frightening, this practice, which to me is fraud, is customary in China. According the the New York Times,

For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.

“Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed,” said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they? If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.” from the New York Times

Last year nearly 1,000 people in Panama were killed from cough syrup and other anti-allergy medicines. It was found that additives used in the compounding process were imported from China which contained diethylene glycol (DEG), more commonly known as anti-freeze. “Exposure to large amounts of DEG can damage the kidneys, heart, and nervous system.”

This week, toothpaste has been banned for the same reasons; it was found to contain DEG. It is further insulting to learn the types of stores buying this toothpaste are not regular supermarkets, but low priced dollar and discount stores; businesses that appeal to low income people. Chasing after the lowest price appears to come at a high price, loss of life.

What we don’t know yet is whether toothpaste not sold in the retail environment, but distributed to hospitals, nursing homes, schools, airlines, hotels and other places where the product is supplied unbranded and unlabeled, is also contaminated. Keep in mind, people in hospitals and nursing are already fragile. If they become exposed to these toxic chemicals the potential for disaster increases.

Most likely this is only the tip of the iceberg. China has never been highly regarded for respecting human or animal rights. So, at the very least we can expect to see these tainted products, products now banned in western nations, to not be destroyed, but to get dumped into third-world and emerging nations. In the end, will this fraud harm their GDP? Will China’s reputation be sufficiently damaged to result in a change to food safety policy? I don’t know. Hopefully, this will be their wake-up call. If not, I am sure another emerging nation has their eye on the prize; becoming the world’s most favored manufacturer.

“Welcome to the jungle…”

What’s news on the Global front? Well, currently the annual G8 Summit is wrapping up three days of talks on the global economy. However, I am not going to spend time recapping the events and agreements at this time; preferring to leave it for future discussion. You can click on the link I’ve provided for in depth information on the G8 Summit. Right now I would like to draw attention to my current favorite print magazine: The Economist.

If you have never read The Economist, and are interested in global affairs as they impact business and politics (two sides of the same coin), then I highly recommend you get a copy of the magazine. At the very least, please visit their website.

What I like the most about The Economist versus similar magazines, (such as, The Weekly Standard, Newsweek, Time, Business Week, et. al.) is that The Economist is not U.S centrist. I am sure this is because it is a U.K. publication. I know many people perceive the United States as the center of the universe, but it isn’t; it is only one player on a planet of around 194 countries.

The quality of the writing is outstanding and clearly stated; the content is thorough and topical; the opinions are in line with my thinking (what I like to call right-thinking); and they believe in free-trade and free-markets. When you read the magazine, or as they call it, their newspaper, you might not notice it at first, but the articles are written anonymously. “The main reason for anonymity, however, is a belief that what is written is more important than who writes it.”

Each week I will try to bring attention to one or more articles from The Economist that I believe reflect the work we do here at Global Nation.

The following is an article from the May 24, 2007 issue on Mo Ibrahim. Here, instead of charity, he uses courage to radicalize life in Africa; proving “the way forward for Africa is investment.” What is most remarkable is how he was able to establish wireless telecommunications in Africa without having to give out bribes. His vision for Africa, a continent ripe for investment, is to promote good governance in Africa with a system of rewards. His plan is “to award an annual prize of $5m to retired African leaders who rule well and then stand down, rather than trying to cling to power.” I believe his political model, rooted in good business practice will be successful.

Africa calling
May 24th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Mo Ibrahim helped to bring mobile phones to Africa. Now he has bigger plans

IN 1998, as the telecoms boom was under way, Mo Ibrahim was amazed that big companies were rushing into the mobile-phone business around the world, yet not in Africa. There they saw only problems: poverty, unrest and corruption. Mr Ibrahim, a veteran of the telecoms industry in Britain and Sudan, was at the time running a consultancy he had founded in London. Amid the cigar smoke and snifters that followed its directors’ dinners, an idea formed. Might it be possible to set up a pan-African mobile operator—and to do so without paying bribes?

This was the genesis of Celtel, which is now one of Africa’s largest mobile operators, with some 20m subscribers in 15 countries.When Mr Ibrahim sold Celtel in 2005 to MTC, a Kuwaiti operator, for $3.4 billion, it demonstrated that the continent was open for business. Rather than charity, he insists, “the way forward for Africa is investment.”

Building businesses in Africa is important to Mr Ibrahim, who had to leave the continent as a young man in order to pursue his career. Born in Sudan and raised and educated in Egypt, he started off as an engineer at Sudan’s national phone company. After further study in Britain he went on to become technical director at Cellnet, the wireless arm of BT, Britain’s biggest telecoms operator. (Cellnet was subsequently sold, renamed O2 and is now owned by Telefónica of Spain.) He left in 1989 to set up an engineering consultancy that designed mobile networks, and sold the firm for just over $900m to Marconi in 2000.

These experiences paved the way for Celtel’s emergence. The consultancy enabled Mr Ibrahim to peer into the business models of dozens of mobile operators, from which he concluded that an African operator would work. His time at BT was also informative: big companies, he says, teach a fellow everything he ought not to do in order to be successful. “Later on in life I was not worried about taking on the big guys, because you know they are not efficient,” he says. And Mr Ibrahim’s previous success meant that the motivation behind Celtel’s establishment was not solely commercial. He and his co-founders had already made their fortunes and regarded Celtel as a political and intellectual test. That is why they happily ventured into risky African markets and refused to pay bribes.

Now that mobile telephony is booming in Africa, Mr Ibrahim has other plans. Not for him the typical rush into private equity. Instead he set up a foundation last year with the novel (and, say critics, utopian) mission of promoting good governance in Africa. It plans to award an annual prize of $5m to retired African leaders who rule well and then stand down, rather than trying to cling to power. The foundation is working with Harvard University to establish a scoring system with which to assess potential candidates. The prize committee is chaired by Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations. The first award will be presented in October, though the prize will be presented only in years when a worthy winner can be found. By that point Mr Ibrahim plans to have stepped down as the chairman of Celtel to avoid any possible conflict of interest.

Meanwhile Mr Ibrahim has also put up $150m to establish a fund to invest in African businesses. From its newly opened offices in London, the Africa Enterprise Fund will seek out promising companies in financial services, consumer goods, energy and agricultural processing. The aim is to focus on established businesses that need cash and experienced management to grow, and the average investment is expected to be around $20m. Only companies that can expand their operations regionally or throughout Africa will be considered. Mr Ibrahim has appointed Tsega Gebreyes, Celtel’s former strategy chief, to help run the fund. This is because the fund’s approach is to apply the Celtel formula in other fields: identify inefficiencies, consolidate fragmented operations, go pan-continental and develop a respected brand. The goal is scale. A large company that operates in several African markets can attract a higher calibre of managers than a gaggle of local ones, and can have more political clout when demands for bribes crop up.

Politics, philosophy and economics

Though there are no direct links between the foundation and the fund, the two are symbiotic. Business and investment in Africa can succeed only if there is good governance, which is what the foundation is intended to promote. And economic development is necessary in turn to give people a stake in improving the political process. The foundation’s $5m prize is a pittance, it is true, when compared with the spoils that can be extracted by staying in power. But the initiative may not be totally futile: given the impotence of Africa’s intergovernmental bodies it will do no harm at all to produce an annual public ranking of African governance. And the foundation will offer a carrot where other non-governmental organisations carry sticks.

The investment fund is also tiny when set against the magnitude of Africa’s problems. But as Celtel shows, some businesses can have a powerful ripple effect, promoting economic activity and generating new investment. Celtel employs around 8,000 people directly, for example, but it and other mobile operators indirectly provide jobs to around 170,000 people in Africa who resell prepaid airtime. More broadly, mobile phones also promote entrepreneurship and economic activity by widening access to markets and making up for poor or non-existent transport infrastructure. Similar ripple effects ought to be possible in other fields such as financial services and energy.

Thirty years ago Mr Ibrahim had to leave Africa for Europe in search of education and professional success. He hopes that fostering indigenous African companies will help ensure that tomorrow’s engineers and entrepreneurs can find their opportunities closer to home. (source: The Economist)

So often we see the world become preoccupied with a single cause or event. Today’s headlines are Iraq and Madeleine, as if there were no other conflicts or missing children in the world. This is not to belittle the tragedies in Iraq, or the heart-break of a missing child. We must remember though, wars are being waged all over the world, children are being abducted everywhere. Saddam Hussein killed 2 million people long before the U.S. ever entered into a war to remove him from his dictatorship. We cannot allow a single cause célèbre to divert our attention away from protecting our future from harm.

While war is endemic to the human condition, it must and can be stopped. As the people of Earth, we cannot continue infecting our future with war. So once again I find myself demanding – if nothing else — do it for the children. Save them from death. Save them from starvation. Save them from the loss of clean drinking water. Save them from food-borne bacteria. Save them from landmines. Save them from the orphanages of the world. Save them from unnecessary danger. Save them from perversion. Save them from a past filled with hatred.

Do it for their future.

~ Sara Coslett

To all of the people in the world
Who are oppressed
They have beaten you
And put you in your proper place
They have read you your rights
You have been handed the paper
You have made your one phone call
You have voted for the ones they chose
You have paid your tithes to God
After taxes
You have ridden in the back of the bus
Gone into the fields to work for nothing
While others picked the fruits of your labor
You voted for the wrong political party
The one that promised you equality
Well
You’re all equal now
But you will never be equal to them
You naive fools
They taught their agenda
To your children in your schools
While you marched and you were hung
You suffered while others watched
Everyone has been indoctrinated
By some form of government
You shed your blood for oil and wealth
You warred against yourselves
You killed your brothers and you
Raped your mothers
While your fathers said ‘It’s all for the best’
You threw a Berka over your sister’s head
And bowed to them who whipped her
While you prayed to God for help
And grew your Poppies to ease the pain
Of your deceit
You strap ‘C Four’ to your sons
And send them out into the streets
To be blown to Kingdom Come
And the Virgins that will bury them
Are not so pure after all
You tear down schools walls of bricks
While you build chaos with your words and tricks
You all fuck yourselves to death
Without protection
While the famine continues in your land
The ground so hard and sand so dry
You can’t dig more than a shovel full from
A fathom of earth to bury the dead
That died from Aids and the Plague
While old grey haired Westerner’s
Sit in a Paradise and complain
Of budget cuts and such
As they pop three times a day
Their prescribed amount of Morphine
Needed to keep themselves sedated
From the ‘Truth’
And still oppressed Cuban refugees
Theaten to hit more home runs
Than the ’Great White Hope’
Some guy named Ruth
We send more armed troops
Into combat and many distant lands
Spread out to protect us from ourselves
As we piss our freedom away
Here in the U.S.A.
With strip search after strip search
Of our pockets and our homes
We are denied our dignity
With our hands spread on the hoods
Of our gas guzzling cars owned by the bank
We conform to ‘ANY’ situation
That faces us now
Terror has won over
The power is in our protector’s hands
The government will keep us secure
With more laws which oppress free expression
Designed with you and me in mind
Good citizens of the United States And Nations
World order has arrived…
What order
You’re all out of order for crying out loud
Oppressed people heed my call
They beat you and then they tell you
To stay down…
And so you have, do and always will…
 

Copyright ©2007 T Sheridan

I want to become a victim
I don’t care of what
just as long as I survive it long enough to spend all the money…
Allow me to lay it out…
I want to be compensated for being a victim…
I want a government check bi weekly
I want it signed by the Treasurer…
and direct deposited to my account…
I want one check for being born with all ten fingers and toes…
and another check for living past the age of twenty one
I want rent control or a habitat for humanity house for free
as long as I don’t have to pay it’s alright by me…
Add to that a Veterans package
with hospitalization and complete dental…
Throw in free prescription drugs…and I’ll be happy
And while you’re at it…
Food stamps should be good for purchasing Jack Daniels
Gas should be free for anyone driving a compact car
our insurance should be paid by the good hands people…
Replace Marlboros with high grade Marijuana…
that’s how the government can make the extra money
to give me the retirement package I require
when I get off of Disability and Unemployment
But back to my primary proposal and why I deserve all of this…
I’m an American…and I have a right…
To be a victim just like everyone else in this world!

2007 © T Sheridan

It was a nebulously mundane sort of day on the Animal Farm…
A very pink pig was rooting in his pen of watery slop…
hoping to cool his fat ass from the heat of the sun
The chickens had all retreated to a favorite shady spot
next to the barn…clucking like the hens they are…
bitching about the Rooster and his harem of younger chicks
who they accused of turning tricks for a handful more feed
All were ignorant of the facts…there are those hens who lay
and those chickens who get laid and eaten…
The horse was busy working up a sweat in front of the plow
as the crops needed planting to pay the bills…
The many cows in the pasture stood around and did nothing
as several sheep were feverishly counting to a pretty penny
who amongst them was reportedly missing…
Since long before the sun had begun to rise
in the usual peaceful countryside’s early morning sky
the Farmer had loaded up his truck and gone to market…
Meanwhile…
The dog put his head down on his front paws…
and dreamed of a Revolution…  

2007 © Ted Sheridan