The New Rulers of the World (2001)

The New Rulers Of The World analyzes the new global economy and reveals that the divisions between the rich and poor have never been greater - two thirds of the world's children live in poverty - and the gulf is widening like never before.

The film turns the spotlight on the new rulers of the world - the great multinationals and the governments and institutions that back them such as the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization under whose rules millions of people throughout the world lose their jobs and livelihood.

The West, explains Pilger, has increased its stranglehold on poor countries by using the might of these powerful financial institutions to control their economies. "A small group of powerful individuals are now richer than most of the population of Africa," he says, "just 200 giant corporations dominate a quarter of the world’s economic activity. General Motors is now bigger than Denmark. Ford is bigger than South Africa. Enormously rich men like Bill Gates, have a wealth greater than all of Africa. Golfer Tiger Woods was paid more to promote Nike than the entire workforce making the company’s products in Indonesia received."

To examine the true effects of globalization, Pilger travels to Indonesia - a country described by the World Bank as a model pupil until its globalized economy collapsed in 1998 - where high-street brands such as Nike, Adidas, Gap and Reebok are mass produced by cheap labor in 'sweatshops' and sold for up to 250 times the amount received by workers.

He films secretly in one of the biggest sweatshops in the capital, Jakarta. Over footage of hundreds of mostly women and children in the camp, with its open sewers and unsafe water, Pilger reports that workers are paid the equivalent of 72p a day - about one American dollar - which is the legal minimum wage in Indonesia but acknowledged by that country’s own government as only just over half a living wage. Many children there were undernourished and prone to disease. While filming, Pilger himself caught dengue fever.

He also recounts the previously untold story of how globalization in Asia had begun in Indonesia and how Western politicians and businessmen sponsored the dictator General Suharto, who brutally seized power in the mid-1960s. "The great sweatshops and banks and luxury hotels in Indonesia were built on the mass murder of as many as one million people, an episode the West would prefer to forget," he reveals. "Within a year of the bloodbath, Indonesia’s economy was effectively redesigned in America, giving the West access to vast mineral wealth, markets and cheap labour - what President Nixon called the greatest prize in Asia."

'The New Rulers Of The World' is a collision of two of Pilger’s continuing themes - imperialism and the injustice of poverty. It observes the parallel between modern-day globalization and old-world imperialism. "There’s no difference between the quite ruthless intervention of international capital into foreign markets these days than there was in the old days, when they were backed up by gunboats," says Pilger.

"Much of my global view has come over years of seeing how imperialism works and how the world is divided between the rich, who get richer, and the poor, who get poorer, and the rich get richer on the backs of the poor. That division hasn’t changed for about 500 years, but there are new, deceptive ways of shoring it up and ensuring that most of the world’s resources are concentrated in as few hands as possible. What is different today is there is a worldwide movement that understands this deception and is gaining strength, especially among the young, many of whom are far better educated about the chameleon nature of capitalism than those in the 1960s. Moreover, if the intensity of Establishment propaganda is a guide, at times bordering on institutional panic, then the new movement is already succeeding."

Awards: Gran Prix Leonardo Award, 2003; Certificate of Merit, Chicago International Television Awards, 2003.

johnpilger.com
Corporations   Globalization   Human Rights
Rate this video 
Corporations
Trending Videos
Louis Theroux: The Settlers (2025)
62 min - Fourteen years after his first visit and 2011 film The Ultra Zionists, Louis Theroux meets some of the growing community of religious-nationalist Israelis who have settled in the West Bank.Louis...
Jordan Klepper Charts Trump's Long History with Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell
13 min - With MAGA and Democrats demanding answers about the Epstein files and Trump denying their existence, Jordan Klepper charts the presidents well-documented history with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine...
Planet Community: A 5-Part Series Exploring Cooperation in Action (2019)
50 min - What happens when people work together to create solutions to the social, economic, and ecological issues we face today? Planet Communityis an exploration of intentional communities that are...
Waste = Food (2007)
49 min - Man is the only creature that produces landfills. Natural resources are being depleted on a rapid scale while production and consumption are rising in nations like China and India. The waste...
Red Path
7 min - "Red Path premiered at the Unmentionables Film Festival in New York, a festival dedicated to breaking taboos and this first year the taboo was menstruation. I truly believe
Why Does Trump Hate Sesame Street?
8 min - Why is Trump so hell-bent on defunding PBS? Its part of a larger plan one where he can control not just what we do, but what we think.
Carl Sagan
Popular Videos
Subscribe for $5/mo to Watch over 50 Patron-Exclusive Films
Subscribe $5/mo View All Patron Films

 

Your support keeps us ad-free and financially independent

Our 10,000+ video & article library is 99% free, ad-free, and entirely community-funded thanks to our patron subscribers!


Want to double your impact? You can subscribe for $10/mo or more as an extra show of support.