Global playing field far from level

Re: "In global scheme of things, no one's innocent", Letters, December 30.

Songdej Praditsmanont offered no specifics in the defence of the new global rules, but here are some specifics and questions on the other side of the issue.

The US Congress turns a blind eye to the biggest source of women and children who have been forced into the international sex slave industry ("India's sex slaves face lifelong cycle of abuse", CNN, October 10 2012; "India escapes US list of worst human traffickers", CNN, October 15 2007).

One Russian lawyer died in a Russian prison (counted as a human rights abuse) and so the US Congress passed a law (the Magnitsky Act) that is creating a cataclysmic international diplomatic dispute and deep international divisions - and those will spill over into Asean countries.

Why is it for the US Congress that millions of missing Indian women and children (apparently not even counted as human rights abuses) are nothing, but that one dead Russian lawyer is everything?

Are millions of missing Indian women and children less important than trade issues?

In 2009, US automaker General Motors was bailed out when the US government bought 60.8 per cent of the company, but buybacks of stock by GM will cost the US Treasury an estimated US$10 billion to $13 billion - which is a gift (subsidy) to a US automaker that will end 2012 with an estimated liquidity of about $38 billion.

How many Asean governments would be allowed to subsidise an automaker that way under WTO rules?

The above are but tips of the iceberg - the new-global-rules iceberg - and I hope that this letter contains some tips for those who study Songdej Praditsmanont's "unevenness of members' conduct."

Guy Baker

Bangkok