STWR - Share The World's Resources

The push for more trade to solve the food price crisis is actually aimed at bringing more profits for a handful of multinational corporations rather than providing food to hungry millions, says Devinder Sharma.

Philip Morris International today starts business as an independent company, no longer affiliated with Philip Morris USA or the parent company, Altria. Philip Morris USA will sell Marlboro and other cigarettes in the United States. Philip Morris International will trample over the rest of the world. 

Sickly and malnourished, Kirana Kapito began his working life on a large commercial tobacco estate in Malawi's northern region. The farms sell their produce on the country's auction floors directly to international corporations including Limbe Leaf Tobacco, majority owned by the Swiss-registered Continental Tobacco Company and U.S.-based Alliance One Tobacco.

No one blinks when the editor of a magazine called Multinational Monitor (that's me) suggests that multinational corporate interests diverge from and frequently contradict those of regular people.

We are used to thinking of the world in terms of nation-states and, in the era of globalization, have heard all too often from various quarters that they are on the decline, as economic integration of markets across the globe grows rapidly. However, the developments since the end of the Cold War, not just in India but in the world as a whole, are actually pointing in a different direction altogether: while the nation may be on the decline, the state is not.