As a boy growing up in an Irish-American family I always wanted to go to Ireland. After all the stories I heard at home I thought it must be a beautiful place, filled with brave and witty people, full of the past and poetry. It wasn't quite like that when I finally had a chance to go there, but it was never disappointing, even when it rained for days on end. 

From the time I came to Asia years ago I wanted to visit Bali, where nature and people were said to live in perfect harmony amid old traditions, beautiful women, dances and temples. When I finally received an invitation to visit Bali it was to attend a meeting on globalization of the economy. I thought it was funny. How could such an abstract topic be discussed in paradise? 

We soon learned Bali was the perfect place for such a discussion since it teaches what is most needed in the struggle against uncontrolled free trade and foreign control, namely, faithfulness to a traditional way of life and traditional values. In Bali, for example, people continue to design their homes the old way with priority given to the family temple; they grow rice the old way though it costs more than the miracle rice varieties; they have faithfully held on to their old Hindu rites though Hindus are a small minority in a sea of Muslims. They say to the hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit Bali each year: this is what we are; we are proud of what we are. 

In our seminar on globalization, an Indonesian woman talked of its dangers. The rich countries will, unless checked, control the world's food supply (Bt corn, for example), medicines, finance and manufacturing, natural resources (mining), basic services such as water and light (Manila Water Co., Manila Electric Co.), intellectual patents, weapons of war and all political decision-making. She showed a film on the subject in which a US steelworker protesting uncontrolled free trade says, "The one thing the rich want is everything." It was a good summary of her talk. 

The Philippines has a good example of this over-arching power in the Bt-corn controversy in which several people, including my parish priest Father Robert Reyes, are on hunger strike. The fasters are protesting the danger Bt corn poses to other varieties of corn, animals and humans, but it is also a question of control. Does the country want its corn industry and food security controlled by foreign companies, such as Monsanto that now propagates the Bt corn? Does it want its native varieties and, eventually its native growers, to disappear? 

Poor countries do not have to accept foreign control. There are alternatives. "Another world is possible" in the words of the World Social Forum, the response of civil society worldwide to excessive free trade. 

It's not easy to reject Monsanto's efforts here. Father Reyes told the writer that the US Agency for International Development had given the government a loan of 200 million pesos to help the spread of Bt corn. The farmers get free seeds for a year. The promised increases in production are dramatic, but problems are downplayed. 

It comes down to basic values. In Bali the more obvious values have to do with the Balinese remaining themselves no matter who governs them or who arrives by the hundreds of thousands to visit. In the Philippines the basic value has been, unless I'm mistaken, political freedom. The country was the first republic in Asia. More Filipinos died fighting the colonial powers here (Spain and the United States) than died in any other country in the anti-colonial wars. More Filipinos fought the Marcos dictatorship than Koreans fought the dictatorship of Park Chung-hee or Indonesians that of Suharto. 

Maybe if the struggle against Bt corn and the other excesses of the new global economy was seen as a struggle for national liberty, more people here would join in. Time is running out. Some local industries have disappeared already. I met a taxi driver who said he was from the province of Romblon. When I asked how the marble business was, he told me it was nearly crippled by the entry of inexpensive, good quality marble from China that is allowed in now as tariffs are lowered to stimulate free trade.

(Dennis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates)