From magbubukid at hotmail.com Thu Jun 3 00:21:30 1999 From: magbubukid at hotmail.com (Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas) Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 08:21:30 PDT Subject: [asia-apec 1143] 2nd Call for Solidarity msg for KMP Congress Message-ID: <19990602152132.96439.qmail@hotmail.com> 2 June 1999 ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ Warm greetings of solidarity from the struggling Filipino peasants! The Peasant Movement of the Philippines (KMP) will be launching its Fifth National Congress this coming June 7-9, 1999 to be held at the De Meester Residence, St. Theresas's College, D. Tuazon St., Quezon City, Philippines. This congress carries the theme, "From the Triumph and Lessons (of the Past), Further Strengthen and Broaden the Peasant Struggle for Land! Isolate and Fight the US-Estrada Regime's Onslaught on the Lives and Rights of the People!" KMP is expecting 187 delegates from its 47 provincial chapters and 9 regional and sub-regional chapters nationwide. Representatives from peasant institutions, agrarian reform advocates from the church sectors, lawyers, academics and other professions are also expected. Philippine peasant support groups and supporters abroad is likewise anticipated. KMP's bilateral partners from the peasant and rural workers' movements from the Third World are enjoined to attend to grace the occasion and have the opportunity to exchange lessons and experiences in their common fight against local elite and globalization . In line with this, we would like to request you to bring or send solidarity messages to be read at the Congress, by email now since we are running out of time, if you have not sent them yet. We thank you for your favorable response. For details, please contact Ka Daning or Rhoda at KMP's tel. (632) 435-35-64/ telefax: (632) 920-56-68; or e-mail us at . For the Peasant and the People, Rafael V. Mariano National Chairperson, KMP ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From fod346 at hotmail.com Fri Jun 4 13:26:06 1999 From: fod346 at hotmail.com (winner white) Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 13:26:06 PKT Subject: [asia-apec 1144] New email list WitSoft -- For Youth 15 to 35 Message-ID: <19990604082639.56867.qmail@hotmail.com> Dear Friends, A new email list WitSoft is created for exchange of write-ups, articles, letters and thoughts of soft and witty nature. The teenager & young subscribers (between 15y to 35y ) can post announcements, events details, jokes, songs, poetry and reviews of movies, magazines, audio cassettes and books. You can also share your future plans, experiences regarding traveling, sports, campus life, romance, sexual life, literature, celebrities and popular culture with the WitSoft List members. Mails are expected to highlight and focus on the interplay of popular culture and youth awareness in any dimension of society. You can recommend books, articles, periodicals & films and can post job, scholarship & conference announcements, Requests for information or assistance & Offers of information or assistance. The LIST address is: witsoft@egroups.com For subscription write to: witsoft-subscribe@egroups.com or faraz_zar@hotmail.com or zarf2@deskmail.com In subscription request write your name, age, sex, city and email address. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Sat Jun 5 11:44:41 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sat, 05 Jun 1999 14:44:41 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1145] Re: Road to Seattle Road to Seattle: Early Planning In-Reply-To: <19990604172449669.AMK301.255@[208.141.36.73]> Message-ID: <7oqD0e7w165w@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> >From road_to_seattle@iatp.org Sat Jun 5 05:27:09 1999 Received: by corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Sat, 05 Jun 99 11:54:01 +1200 for gattwd Received: from mail.iatp.org (iatp-2.InnovSoftD.com [208.141.36.66]) by tofu.ch.planet.gen.nz (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA04797 for ; Sat, 5 Jun 1999 05:27:09 +1200 (NZST) Received: from [208.141.36.73] by mail.iatp.org (Netscape Messaging Server 3.62) with SMTP id 255 for ; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 12:26:11 -0500 From: "Road to Seattle" To: gattwd@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Subject: Road to Seattle Road to Seattle: Early Planning Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 12:24:50 -0500 X-Mailer: Allaire Cold Fusion 3.1 Message-ID: <19990604172449669.AMK301.255@[208.141.36.73]> ================================ Date Posted: 06/04/1999 Posted by: road_to_seattle@iatp.org ================================ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Road to Seattle - Road to Seattle: Early Planning June 4, 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Table of Contents - INTRODUCTION I. WHEN IS THE MINISTERIAL? - MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29 - THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1999 II. WHO IS DOING WHAT? - SEATTLE CITIZENS WTO PLANNING COMMITTEE - SEATTLE HOST ORGANIZATION (SHO) III. WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW? - TUESDAY, JUNE 8: LEARN ABOUT THE WTO'S PLANS FOR FORESTS - DEMOCRATIZE THE WTO! JUNE 26 PLANNING MEETING IV. WHAT IS HAPPENING DURING THE MINISTERIAL? - INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON GLOBALIZATION TEACH-IN ON THE WTO V. RECENT PRESS ON THE WTO/TRADE - WTO TARGETED BY CRITICS AT SEATTLE U TRADE FORUM - WTO: IS ITS CREDIBILITY IN PERIL? - WALL STREET JOURNAL, FRONT PAGE VI. WHAT ORGANIZATIONS ARE ACTIVE ON TRADE ISSUES? (INCOMPLETE LIST, MORE TO COME!) - PUBLIC CITIZEN'S GLOBAL TRADE WATCH - THIRD WORLD NETWORK VII. ARTICLES ON TRADE/WTO - WHY DEMOCRATIZE THE GLOBAL ECONOMY? - WTO AGREEMENTS: IMPLICATIONS AND IMBALANCES - WHAT'S AT STAKE? KEY ENVIRONMENT ISSUES IN THE UPCOMING WTO NEGOTIATIONS VIII. WHERE CAN I FIND MORE INFORMATION? - WTO BOOKLET: TRACK RECORD AND EXPECTATIONS - NATIONAL FARMERS UNION, CANADA: THE UNION FARMER QUARTERLY IX. AND THE WTO SAYS...? - MISUNDERSTANDINGS ABOUT THE WTO?? INTRODUCTION The World Trade Organization will be holding its Third Ministerial Meeting in Seattle, Washington, USA November 29 - December 4, 1999. The meetings will be held at the Seattle Convention Center, in downtown Seattle. This will be the first time the WTO will be meeting in the United States since its founding. Though November is 6 months away, much planning is already happening by various groups, organizations, etc. all around the planet. The "Road to Seattle" will keep you informed about this planning, and we invite you to tell us what your organization is doing, so we can share that information with others. There are events already being planned for the actual days of the Ministerial, as well as in the months preceding. The "Road" will also circulate articles pertaining to global trade policies and their impacts; resources for further information, including websites, documents, etc.; contact information of various organizations; and much more. All archived "Road to Seattle" bulletins can be accessed at http://www.newsbulletin.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WHEN IS THE MINISTERIAL? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29 - THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1999 At the Seattle Convention Center, downtown Seattle, Washington, USA. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WHO IS DOING WHAT? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SEATTLE CITIZENS WTO PLANNING COMMITTEE Citizens for a Fair Trade Policy/Democratize the WTO! is the citizens planning committee on the ground in Seattle. Working closely with Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, this committee is already meeting monthly to coordinate logistics, media, communications, education and research, outreach, etc. >From their flyer: The Seattle-based People for a Fair Trade invites activists from around the world to come to Seattle during the World Trade Organization meeting in November 1999. The WTO (World Trade Organization) came into being 4 years ago with the signing of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). It ahs elevated corporate power above the sovereign powers of all nation states. By means of panels composed of non-elected trade specialists, it ahs overturned laws affecting labor, community economies, health and environment. Democratize the WTO! hopes to bring together thousands of people to Seattle to educate citizens about the workings of the WTO and formulate alternatives. Reach the People for a Fair Trade Policy in the US at 1-877-786-7986, http://www.tradewatch.org, ssoriano@igc.org, 2343 NW 100th, Seattle, WA, 98177, USA SEATTLE HOST ORGANIZATION (SHO) [From the Seattle Host Organizations's website:] http://www.wtoseattle.org The Role of the Seattle Host Organization SHO is a division of WCIT [Washington Council on International Trade]. SHO will not participate in the Ministerial directly. The function of SHO is to facilitate all of the services necessary for Seattle to host the Ministerial. SHO is responsible for providing the Convention Center space, transportation, hotel accommodations, and all other amenities. The other major part of SHO's responsibility is to help educate and inform the public about the importance of trade through committees such as Programs, Media and Public Relations, Education and Outreach, NGOs, and Web Development. SHO will also assist the numerous NGO's in Seattle, and involve the interested public and press in events, programs, and other activities leading up to and surrounding the Ministerial meeting. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TUESDAY, JUNE 8: LEARN ABOUT THE WTO'S PLANS FOR FORESTS Learn More About the World Trade Organization, It's Plans for Forests and What You Can Do About Them. Please Join PAIGE FISCHER, Pacific Environment and Resources Center (Oakland, CA) ANTONIA JUHASZ, American Lands Alliance (Washington D.C.) in a presentation and discussion about the World Trade Organization's plans for the world's forests. The WTO will hold a high level Ministerial meeting in Seattle in November. At this meeting a number of agreements may be completed and/or discussed that will have a dramatic impact on our ability to protect the world's remaining forests and threatened eco-systems. Please join us for a discussion of the WTO, it's plans for forests and what you can do to stop them. DATE: Tuesday, June 8 TIME: 6:00 pm -- 8:30 pm PLACE: Olympia Center, 222 N. Columbia (off of Capital Way), Olympia, WA (for directions, call 360-753-8380) Paige and Antonia will present information about the WTO's plans for a Global Free Logging Agreement and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. We will lead a discussion about how citizens, environmental organizations and elected officials can work together to protect forest ecosystems and environmental regulations from international trade policies. DEMOCRATIZE THE WTO! JUNE 26 PLANNING MEETING For those of you in Seattle -- the next meeting of the People for a Fair Trade Policy will be held on Saturday, June 26th at the King County Labor Temple from 9:30 - 12:00 (lunch will be provided). For more information, call 1-877-786-7986, or email ssoriano@igc.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WHAT IS HAPPENING DURING THE MINISTERIAL? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON GLOBALIZATION TEACH-IN ON THE WTO The IFG is organizing a Teach-In on the World Trade Organization (WTO), to be held in Seattle, Washington, on November 27, 1999. The event will take place at the 2,500-seat Benaroya Seattle Symphony Hall and the Teach-In events will be free to the public. The Seattle Teach-In will focus on the problems of economic globalization and, specifically, on the activities of the WTO and other international agreements and institutions. Panels of speakers will address the current failed economic model, and focus on areas such as agriculture, the environment, human rights, labor rights, consumer rights, food safety, public health, and many more issues that are affected by the WTO. Visit the IFG website (http://www.ifg.org) for updated Teach-In information as it develops. Or, contact the IFG directly at 1-415-771- 3394, fax: 1-415-771-1121, mailto:ifg@ifg.org, 1555 Pacific Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94109, USA The following is a partial list of featured speakers for the November 27 Teach-In: Maude Barlow Council of Canadians - Canada Walden Bello Focus on the Global South - Thailand John Cavanagh Institute for Policy Studies - U.S. Tony Clarke Polaris Institute - Canada Edward Goldsmith The Ecologist - U.K. Randall Hayes Rainforest Action Network - U.S. Colin Hines Protect the Local, Globally - U.K. Martin Khor Third World Network - Malaysia Andrew Kimbrell International Center for Technological Assessment - U.S. David Korten People-Centered Development Forum - U.S. Tim Lang Center for Food Policy - U.K. Sara Larrain RENACE (Chilean Ecological Action Network) - Chile Jerry Mander Public Media Center - U.S. Anuradha Mittal Institute for Food and Development Policy - U.S. Helena Norberg-Hodge International Society for Ecology and Culture - U.K. Mark Ritchie Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy - U.S. Vandana Shiva Third World Network - India Steven Shrybman West Coast Environmental Law - Canada Victoria Tauli-Corpuz Indigenous Peoples' Network for Policy and Education - Philippines Lori Wallach Public Citizen - Global Trade Watch - U.S. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ RECENT PRESS ON THE WTO/TRADE ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WTO TARGETED BY CRITICS AT SEATTLE U TRADE FORUM (Seattle Post-Intelligencer; 06/02/99) Bill Bryant knew he would face some critics, but he hadn't expected this. Invited to a forum at Seattle University last week to speak in favor of the **World Trade Organization**, he found himself the only one of five panelists clearly defending it, and with the audience clearly against him. Bryant, of Bryant Christie Inc., trade consultants, spoke on behalf of the Washington Council on International Trade. The four other panelists ranged from progressive to Marxist to deep green. The forum was occasioned by the WTO's plan to hold a meeting of trade ministers in Seattle Nov. 30 to Dec. 3. Bryant started with a technical description of how the WTO resolves trade disputes. The audience wasn't interested; it was focused on the fundamental questions. The criticism that resonated most with the audience was the argument by Sally Soriano of the Washington Fair Trade campaign, who denounced the WTO for subjecting national laws to "an anti-democratic panel of three trade bureaucrats, operating in secret." The WTO, she said, is "a supranational legal system for corporations, outside our constitution and courts." An example, she said, was the dispute with Europe over hormone-fed beef. Europe's democratic governments banned it, and our beef industry, which uses hormones routinely, appealed to the WTO. The three trade bureaucrats agree with the American beef producers that the ban was an impermissible trade barrier. Bryant defended the ruling. He said the Europeans had offered no peer- reviewed science to implicate hormone-fed beef. The WTO nations WTO: IS ITS CREDIBILITY IN PERIL? http://www.hinduonline.com/today/stories/0602000a.htm THE HINDU, Wednesday, June 02, 1999 JUST HOW long does it take for an international organisation set up under a general agreement to establish its credibility among member countries? The case in point is the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that completed four years and four months by April last. Ever since its creation, the WTO has been steeped in controversies, the latest one being its inability to nominate a new head after Mr. Renato Ruggiero of Italy stepped down on April 30. Reaching a consensus on the new appointment has been made difficult by the intransigence of members with the leading trading partners U.S., Latin America and part of Western Europe supporting Mr. Mike Moore, a former Prime Minister of New Zealand, and most developing countries and Japan backing Mr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand. It is generally agreed that a vote on the issue should be avoided, as countries that vote against the ultimate successful candidate may in future face negative reactions from a system that smacks of highly discriminatory powers under the dispute settlement process. Developing countries' concerns One of the reasons for the crisis at WTO is due to the fact that perceptions of equitable, fair and free trade vary from country to country. Through the WTO, most countries were hoping to strengthen their current trade through access to new markets. At the same time, they were not inclined to further open up their own markets to others. With over three fourths of WTO members being from developing countries whose combined share in world trade in 1998 was only 26 per cent as compared to 70 per cent for the developed countries, any attempt at harmonisation is bound to be in favour of the stronger nations. Paradoxically, the developing countries' share in world trade have been declining over the last two decades, from close to 30 per cent in 1980. In such a lopsided environment, in spite of the so-called concessions available under the provisions of WTO, they are unlikely to improve their market share unless this matter, which hinges heavily on allowable tariffs to protect domestic industries, is sorted out at the ministerial meeting later this year. For example, India suffers due to high tariffs imposed by importing countries of the European Union on some of its important export commodities such as textiles and leather - the tariff is 12.1 per cent on textiles and apparel compared to an average of 4-5 per cent on industrial products. Another sensitive issue that affects the Indian pharmaceutical industry, which has attained a degree of maturity matching the developed world, is the allegation of dumping of Indian products - for example, ampicillin and amoxycillin - and the imposition of anti-dumping duties on them by the EU and South Africa. Along with many other issues affecting Indian industry, the number of disputes raised against India has risen to 20, ranging from prawn exports to lndia's automobile policies. For example, lndia's insistence that at least some parts for automobiles have to be made locally are considered violative of WTO norms. Two way traffic While disputes over India not amending its Patent Law to be consistent with Sec. 70.8 and 70.9 of Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) have been largely settled with Parliament passing the Patent Amendment Bill, several others are still pending with the European Union and the U.S. In general, what needs to be emphasised is that if the WTO is to be credible, it needs to ensure that market access is a two-way traffic with equal opportunities for developing and developed countries. Apart from manufactured goods, the differential treatment provisions for developing countries embodied in the WTO should be extended to the services sector where developing countries like India have major advantages. The justifiable concern of the developing countries is that the international trade regime monitored and policed by the WTO will be effective and advantageous for them only to the extent of the developed countries' political and economic will to support their growth and development. Increased market access can lead to deceleration of investments in developing countries thereby widening the gap between them and the developed economies. Yet another obvious fact is that countries like U.S. have not revoked many of their provisions to penalise their trading partners when their domestic economy is affected. Special and Super 301 provisions under the U.S. Trade Act are two examples of unilateral action within a professed multilateral system. Problems of the WTO also relate to those between two major trade partners - the U.S. and the European Union. With the trade between them exceeding $400 billion annually, acceptance of the WTO regime unconditionally by these powers is crucial for the effective functioning of the organisation. Ever since the inception of the world body, disputes have arisen on a number of basic issues between these two, the most notable and publicised disputes being the trade in bananas, hormone-treated beef, genetically modified foods in general, noisy airplanes, European subsidies for Airbus and geographical indication dispute on the labelling of Californian wines as Champagne. The U.S. strategy has been to impose tariffs whenever it felt that unfair practices affect its domestic industries and then let the WTO rule under the dispute settlement provisions. Thus, while the U.S. threatened to impose levies on over $520 million of imports from Europe to retaliate against its banana import policies, the WTO fixed the sanctions at $191 million. Similarly, the U.S. is planning to impose sanctions worth $300 million if Europe does not lift its ban on import of hormone-treated beef. The battle cry on this issue is loud and clear with Europe in turn wanting to ban all American beef unless they are proved to be hormone-free. Japanese steel makers dispute the ruling by the U.S. Commerce Department that Japan was dumping hot-rolled steel in the U.S. market. To what extent the WTO will be able to settle these disputes between the trading giants in a manner acceptable to both parties and in the event, one of the parties is aggrieved, what course it will take, remains to be seen. The credibility of the system will depend on the ultimate outcome on these major disputes. China's entry It is paradoxical that even though 134 countries are members of the WTO, China, the eighth largest exporting country after the U.S., Germany, Japan, France, Britain, Italy and Canada, with exports worth $180 billion (together with Hong Kong $353 billion) has not been admitted to the WTO. According to the rules governing entry, major trading partners of the country in question have to approve its entry. In the case of China, the U.S. is its largest trading partner, and therefore, China needs U.S. approval for its entry. The U.S.-China relationship has always been complex with the corporate world ever so eager to set up base in China, as major supply points even for the U.S. markets. In the field of electronic and electrical goods and various commodity items, the U.S. market is flooded with Chinese products. Four plants in China are producing toys for Mattel, the world's largest toy manufacturer. Tens of thousands of Barbie and other branded dolls are made in China. As against this, the U.S. Government believes that, with balance in trade between the U.S. and China very much in favour of the latter, unless more concessions are available for U.S. companies to gain market access to China, the U.S. economy, through bilateral trade, will be seriously affected. It is against this background that China's attempt for the last 13 years to join the WTO or its earlier version, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), has been thwarted by the U.S. The Chinese Premier, Mr. Zhu Rongji, during his recent visit to the U.S., assured that several major concessions had already been granted to the U.S. that should make it possible for China to gain entry into the WTO. For example, China insists that it has cleared the way for export of U.S. wheat and citrus fruits, allows 25 to 30 per cent equity holding for foreign companies in the Chinese telecommunication industry and has opened up further the insurance sector for foreign companies. The U.S. still feels that these concessions have not gone far enough to justify early entry of China in the WTO. On the financial sector, the U.S. does not want China to devalue its currency to create new export opportunities for its industries and further upset the trade deficit. NATO activities against Yugoslavia and the recent bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade have further complicated pending issues even though there is a general feeling that separating politics from trade matters will be advantageous to both parties. In the recent trade talks organised by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) between the U.S., Japan, European Union and Canada in Tokyo, China's admission was on the top of the agenda. The Pacific Economic Co-operation Council (PECC), consisting of business leaders, government officials and academics that report to the Asian Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum (APEC), declared that China's membership of the WTO is critical to sustain recovery and growth in the Asia-Pacific region. What then are the credibility problems? Unlike in the case of the IMF, the World Bank and the International Court of Justice, world trade is far too close to the political systems and economic well being of countries. One of the cardinal objectives of setting up the new body was to ensure that protectionism, which is counter to free trade, will be minimised. However, when countries differ so widely not only in their economic status but also in their labour, service and environmental standards, attempts at harmonisation become perilous. The frame of reference and the rules for member countries thus will need to be re-evaluated taking all these aspects into consideration. Second, the WTO today is largely reactive rather than pro-active, which means that much of its time and energy are devoted to settlement of disputes rather than their avoidance. Third, rulings of W'TO have not only to be fair but have also to be seen as fair by all members and once they are made, have to be implicitly complied with by all including the U.S. and the EU. Fourth, consensus, which is the preferred route for administrative changes, seems to be running into rough weather as in the case of nomination of the new head. Fifth, the timing of the coming into being of WTO in retrospect looks to have been jinxed. As many developing countries went through a financial crisis and serious unemployment problems, further liberalisation of domestic policies as required by the WTO is deemed to have disastrous consequences. Sixth, some of the world's leading countries like China are yet to be admitted to the WTO. Finally, the organisation has problems of managing its affairs due to lack of adequate and appropriate skilled manpower and even financial resources. It has been stated that the annual budget for WTO today is only $80 million, equivalent to the travel budget of the IMF. What should be lndia's strategy'? Most countries are gearing themselves to present their cases at the ministerial conference to be held in Seattle in November. Members of regional trade blocs, set up partly as preferential trade areas, are getting together to define their approach and strategies. The recent quadrilateral meeting of Japan, the U.S., the EU and Canada, discussed in detail all issues impinging on trade between them and the rest of the World. This group which commands two thirds of the world trade wants to redefine the contours and nature of global trade. The 15-nation EU is meeting to discuss priority for a comprehensive round of trade talks. The Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC), part of APEC, is planning to discuss the Pacific Rim's role in world trade. India, which is not a member of any of these powerful trading blocs, has a great obligation to restructure its policies and evolve common interest groups to pursue its own goals for increased trade and economic growth. The three segments identified as high priority areas for further negotiations at the proposed talks in Geneva in January 2000 are agriculture, services and import tariffs - all three of great importance to the Indian economy. Growth in Indian exports had shown a sharp decline in the last two years. In the last 12 months, exports were $34.1 billion compared to $180 billion from China, $119 billion from Singapore, $71.6 billion from Malaysia and $52.4 billion from Indonesia. It is imperative that all issues connected with trade in items, where India has inherent advantages to produce and market, should be studied in detail for ensuring meaningful pro-active negotiations at the summit in Seattle and at the next round of trade talks in Geneva. M. D. Nair WALL STREET JOURNAL, FRONT PAGE Friday, April 23, 1999, Front Page, Washington Wire "Seattle is Bracing for Protestors at a Trade Meeting in November" Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club plan big showings at a World Trade Organization gathering to protest environmental harm from globalization. Steelworkers hope to turn out 50,000 people to protest labor disparities. The Web Site of activists group Public Citizen says: "Mobilization on Globalization. If you oppose the WTO, you must go to Seattle." Seattle's City Council takes a stand on treaty talks, voting to make the city a global-investment-treaty-free zone. China could be a new WTO member at the November round of global talks. Americans, by 60% to 26%, think China joining the WTO would have a major impact on the U.S. economy. Planners picked Seattle partly because of its experience with environmental protestors; "It's going to be like Chicago '68," says one trade lobbyist. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WHAT ORGANIZATIONS ARE ACTIVE ON TRADE ISSUES? (INCOMPLETE LIST, MORE TO COME!) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PUBLIC CITIZEN'S GLOBAL TRADE WATCH Global Trade Watch is the Public Citizen division that fights for international trade and investment policies promoting government and corporate accountability, consumer health and safety, and environmental protection through research, lobbying, public education and the media. Global Trade Watch is on the cutting edge of research and advocacy in the field of international trade and investment. Public Citizen is a national consumer and environmental organization founded by Ralph Nader in 1971. To contact Global Trade Watch, visit their website at http://www.tradewatch.org, or email: gtwinfo@citizen.org The GTW website contains many valuable links on issues such as: The Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Trade and the Environment, and many more. THIRD WORLD NETWORK The Third World Network is an independent non-profit international network of organizations and individuals involved in issues relating to development, the Third World and North- South issues. Its objectives are to conduct research on economic, social and environmental issues pertaining to the South; to publish books and magazines; to organize and participate in seminars; and to provide a platform representingly broadly Southern interests and perspectives at international fora such as the UN conferences and processes. Its recent and current activities include: the publication of the daily SUNS (South - North Develoment Monitor) bulletin from Geneva, Switzerland, the fortnightly Third World Economics and the monthly Third World Resurgence; the publication of Third World Network Features; the publication of books on environment and economic issues; the organizing of various seminars and workshops; and participation in international processes such as UNCED and the World Bank - NGO Committee. The TWN also has a collaborative relationship with the South Centre in Geneva, and has been invited to participate in the Non- Aligned Movement's Expert Group on Third World debt. Contact address: Third World Network, 228 Macalister Road, 10400 Penang,Malaysia. Telephone: 60-4-2266728/2266159 Fax: 60-4-2264505 E-mail:twn@igc.apc.org, twnpen@twn.po.my URL: http://www.southbound.com.my/souths/twn/twn.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ARTICLES ON TRADE/WTO ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WHY DEMOCRATIZE THE GLOBAL ECONOMY? >From the New Economy Information Service, http://www.newecon.org A central feature of the global economy is increasingly mobile capital. To attract it, governments, like companies, can adopt "high road" competitive strategies to improve infrastructure, expand workforce training and education, increase transparency, simplify regulations, reduce corruption, safeguard a free press, and guarantee the rule of law. Or they can take the "low road" and lower labor standards, reduce public spending through cuts in education and health, take bribes, do favors for cronies, take on unsustainable debt, subsidize industries with political connections, and hide unpleasant financial statistics. There is evidence that democracy, especially in the more developed countries, encourages high-road strategies that result in greater prosperity. National institutions have developed to regulate market competition and mitigate its social disruption. At the global level, however, few such institutions exist. As a result, pressures on governments to abandon high-road strategies have increased. The current system of international trade and investment appears increasingly difficult to sustain politically. The world economic crisis and the human havoc that it has wrought, as well as the continuing insecurity about jobs and income inequality in this country, have created a backlash against globalization. Can a new consensus be crafted based on a democratic framework of rules for the global economy that balances the needs of commerce with the quest for democracy, workers' rights, and religious freedom? This section of NEIS considers several mechanisms for democratizing the global economy, including: A non-protectionist enforcement mechanism to ensure that internationally recognized core worker rights and environmental protections are not undermined by unfair trade and investment practices. An international financial mechanism to discourage short term capital flight and currency speculation, and encourage long-term productive investment. Conditioning aid and international loans on respect for worker rights. The use of economic sanctions to further democracy, respect for human rights and religious freedom. Use of independent monitoring of corporate codes of conduct. One difficulty is that large, international public institutions may themselves undermine democracy if they are excessively bureaucratic and remote, making their decisions removed from the public eye. Their development must therefore go hand in hand with a flowering of global civil society -- a proliferation of cross-border NGOs, environmental groups, trade unions, and independent media which have access to information and can monitor the conduct of multinational bodies, be they corporations or public institutions. Another difficulty arises when decisions of international institutions are subject to veto by countries that are themselves undemocratic. Can such institutions be structured in ways that ensure control by democratic governments while allowing economic sanctions and incentives to be used to foster the democratization of the world's remaining dictatorships? The transition to a more democratic system of global economic governance will be long and difficult. One way to start building is through the Transatlantic community, where all the countries are democratic and roughly at the same level of development, thereby lessening fears that such mechanisms can be misused for protectionist purposes. The recent election of social democratic governments in major European countries provides a window of opportunity for creating a viable Third Way for the global economy. WTO AGREEMENTS: IMPLICATIONS AND IMBALANCES By Bhagirath Lal Das This paper, by the former Director of UNCTAD's Trade Programmes, provides a critique of some of the imbalances existing in the Uruguay Round agreements, for the South countries. He argues that since these agreements were targetted to obtain commitments and concessions from the South, severe imbalances with adverse effects have resulted for the South. Thus, the South should aim to correct these imbalances and allow the WTO system to work for them. Read the full text of the article at: http://www.southbound.com.my/souths/twn/title/imp-cn.htm WHAT'S AT STAKE? KEY ENVIRONMENT ISSUES IN THE UPCOMING WTO NEGOTIATIONS What's At Stake? Key Environment Issues in the Upcoming WTO Negotiations Discussion Paper Prepared for the IFA meeting, Cuernavaca, Mexico February 4, 1999 ------------------------------------ The following topics are major environment and health items currently being debated in the run-up to the World Trade Organization ministerial. Forestry The United States government has proposed that a zero-tariff forestry and wood products agreement get completed for signing at the Ministerial meeting in November in Seattle. This agreement is designed to greatly accelerate the importing and exporting of logs and other timber products and would be counter to current efforts to both protect the forests as eco-systems and to control climate change. Marine Conservation A small group of nations has proposed that fishing issues become part of the WTO negotiations in November. At the same time, recent rulings by the WTO on the US Marine Mammal Protection Act, including the overturn of U.S. rules designed to protect dolphins and sea turtles, are likely to become the basis for more strict limits on the rights of countries, including the US, to use domestic laws to protect marine life. Climate Change & Greenhouse Gas Emissions One result of the Uruguay Round agreement is a significant increase in the emission of climate changing gases due to increasing importing and exporting and due to the increasingly energy intensive production practices in agriculture and other sectors that have occurred as a result of the GATT/WTO. There are new proposals to alter WTO trade rules to encourage changes in the farming and food systems to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. In addition, many groups are calling for formal recognition by the WTO that Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), like the Montreal Protocol or the Convention on Biodiversity, cannot be compromised in any way by trade rules or trade practices. ================================ How to Use this Mailing List ================================ You received this e-mail as a result of your registration on the road_to_seattle mailing list. To unsubscribe, please send an email to listserv@iatp.org. In the body of the message type: unsubscribe road_to_seattle To post messages, send email to road_to_seattle@iatp.org. For a list of other commands and list options, please send email to listserv@iatp.org. In the body of the message type: help For other questions email support@iatp.org From kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk Sat Jun 5 12:30:17 1999 From: kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk (kevin.li@graduate.hku.hk) Date: Sat, 5 Jun 1999 11:30:17 +0800 (HKT) Subject: [asia-apec 1146] Hong Kong: Workshop On Globalisation and Free Trade Message-ID: <199906050330.LAA19486@hkusub.hku.hk> A Workshop on Globalisation. China's entry to World Trade Organization (WTO) becomes an international issue of concern. Media and governments fully support such action, while there are no alternative voices in Hong Kong. We believe this workshop can serve as a cooler for the widespread call for "(pseudo)-liberalisation". Workshop On Globalisation and Free Trade Organizer: Greenpeace China, Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee Venue: Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee, Room 704-5, 57 Peking Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. (Opposite to HMV) Date and Time: June 12 1999 (Sat), 2:00 - 6:00 PM Target Group: Grassroot groups workers, students, academics, cultural workers, and social movment concerned groups Contact: Lo Sze Ping (Phone: (852)2854-8399, E-mail: splo@ust.hk) Following the end of Cold War, the ideology of Globalisation and Free Trade seems to prevail worldwide. However, in European, American, South Asian, and Latin American regions, the civic and grassroots organizations including labour, women, peasants and indigenous groups voice out their opposition, since the globalisation of capitalism, for the sake of benefits of few people, exploit the earth resources without limit and overlook the livelihood and basic human rights of people. Civic organisations of Hong Kong have very few discussions in this area. However, the establishment of WTO and the China's entry to it make the problems so urgent and close to us. And most issues of our concern are closely linked with each other, such as "Free" trade of toxic waste, exploitation of workers and environment by Transnational Corporations (TNC), alignment of opposite voices, impact on nature and peasants from Genetically-modified Food, Privatisation of Public sectors, corporate cut-down and etc. What are the problems with Globalisation, Free Trade, TNC and WTO? How do they operate? What are the impacts on environment, workers and under-privileged? What are the responses from civic groups? Schedule: Video Show 2:00-3:00 PM Dolls and Dust: A Documentary on the Impact of Industrial Restructuring and Globalization on Women Workers in Sri Lanka, Thailand and South Korea 60 mins Produced by Committee for Asian Women Forum 3:15-6:00 PM The challenge of Globalization and the responses from civic groups Speaker: Apo Leung, Asian Monitor Resources Center Disney: The new development of Globalisation Speaker: Chan Ka Wai, Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee The WTO, the World Food System and the Politics of Harmonized Destruction Speaker: Gerard Greenfield, International Union of Food ¡V Asia Pacific >From Banana Trade War between Europe and USA to the impacts on Chinese peasants by WTO Speaker: Luk Tak Chuen, Sociology Lecturer, Hong Kong Baptist University Response Chan Wai Fong, Department of Education and Promotion, Oxfam Hong Kong Man Si Wai, Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Chinese University of Hong Kong This year, June 18 is an international action day of people against Globalisation. At that day, The Seven Industrial Countries (G-7) will hold a summit in Koln, Germany, to promote the Economic Globalisation, Free Trade and TNC as the solutions for the Earth. Meanwhile, the environmentalists, workers, the unemployed, peasants, indigenous people, women, student and peace activists will hold demonstrations, street parties, occupation, carnivals and various forms of action to protest Capitalist Globalisation in the financial centers in many cities. For further enquiries, http://www.gn.apc.org/june18 From jaggi at vcn.bc.ca Tue Jun 8 14:01:03 1999 From: jaggi at vcn.bc.ca (Jaggi Singh) Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 22:01:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [asia-apec 1147] nz: funky smiling apec ambassadors Message-ID: [the following is an excerpt from an article in the may 28 New Zealand Herald.] ... An Auckland City Council submission on the bill sought reimbursement for costs of $5.2 million. Apec officials have since expressed surprise at some of the costs claimed, including money for taking foreign media to the zoo. The council last night approved using unemployed people as smiling ambassadors during Apec and the America's Cup and millennium events. The council will employ 10 ambassadors and two supervisors for six months at a cost of $49,808. Work and Income New Zealand will pay $59,390 towards the scheme. After training, the ambassadors will hit downtown streets in a "funky" uniform to greet passersby with a smile, maps and suggestions for places to park, visit and eat, and will keep an eye on rubbish and graffiti. - STAFF REPORTER, NZPA From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Thu Jun 10 14:02:53 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 17:02:53 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1148] NZ: SIS targets immigrant groups as Apec nears Message-ID: Lead item, Evening Post (Wellington, NZ) 9.6.99 SIS targets immigrant groups as Apec nears by Brent Edwards, Political Editor Immigrant groups in Wellington are being monitored by the Security Intelligence Service in the lead-up to the Apec leaders' meeting in Auckland later this year. SIS officers have been visiting immigrant groups in the capital over the last few months to establish how many are here and whether members of specific immigrant groups meet regularly. Arab and Serbian migrants have received visits. One woman said a man interviewing her husband identified himself as an SIS officer and asked whether they knew about the Apec (Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation) meeting. SIS head General Donald McIver today confirmed that groups had been approached. He said in a statement that as part of the SIS's responsibility for security in the runup to Apec, it had been talking to members of various community groups over the past six months. "We have been talking to them to see if they have any concerns about security issues. For the most part people have told us that they have appreciated the opportunity to talk with us and have found our approach reassuring," he said. Both Mrs Shipley and Miss Clark are aware of the SIS's approach. Alliance MP Matt Robson said today he would be very concerned if the SIS was making such visits. The police should be making those inquiries and informing people of their right not to answer questions. Mr Robson said many migrants were vulnerable. They did not know New Zealand law, English was their second language and they were often still going through immigration procedures to get full residency. "I would be concerned if there was an assumption because you came from the Middle East or you are Muslim or you are anything the SIS might consider out of the ordinary that you automatically become a suspect. They should not work from that basis." Mr Robson said the SIS's record was such that it categorised people on the basis of assumption, not proof. Green co-leader Rod Donald said the SIS's involvement was "obnoxious". Mrs Shipley should instruct the SIS to stop harassing people. "It is totally inappropriate where there is no suspicion of any illegal activity for the SIS to go fishing." Labour leader Helen Clark, who is a member of Parliament's intelligence and security committee responsible for monitoring the SIS's activities, said it was acceptable for the SIS to investigate possible threats to leaders before the Apec meeting. "In the end New Zealand would not want as assassination or an attempted assassination on its hands. That justifies precautionary measures but not a blanket sweep," she said. Mrs Shipley would not comment. From ngls at undp.org Thu Jun 10 23:51:08 1999 From: ngls at undp.org (UN-NGLS (NY Office)) Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 14:51:08 +0000 Subject: [asia-apec 1149] Workshop in NY - 28-30 June Message-ID: <199906101857.OAA15086@nygate.undp.org> Pro-poor, Gender and Environment-Sensitive Budgets June 28-30, 1999 Location: TBA, UN Headquarters, New York You are cordially invited to attend a workshop on "Pro-poor, Gender and Environment-Sensitive Budgets" to be held in New York 28-30 June, 1999. The workshop, organized by UNDP's Bureau for Development Policy in partnership with UNIFEM, aims to explore the question of how national and local budgets can be formulated toward the reduction of poverty, gender inequality and environmental degradation. The workshop will examine and share the experiences of various budget initiatives including those in South Africa, Barbados, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Brazil and Canada. Workshop participants will consist of an international group of experts and practitioners from governments, civil society organizations, UN agencies and other development partners. Please note that registration is required. For further inquiries regarding the workshop venue and registration, please contact Mumtaz Keklik at +1-212/906-5038 (mumtaz.keklik@undp.org) or James Lang +1-212/906-5848 (james.lang@undp.org), United Nations Development Programme. From ngls at undp.org Thu Jun 10 23:49:17 1999 From: ngls at undp.org (UN-NGLS (NY Office)) Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 14:49:17 +0000 Subject: [asia-apec 1150] Financing for Development Status Report Message-ID: <199906101859.OAA15233@nygate.undp.org> We are forwarding the following update from the Secretariat regarding the final financing for development process. If you do not have internet access, contact NGLS for a copy of the final document. _________________________________________________________ Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 10:46:06 -0400 From: gleckman@un.org Subject: Financing for Development : Status report of 2 June 1999 The Ad hoc Open-ended Working Group of the General Assembly on Financing for Development has successfully completed its work and made its recommendations on the scope, agenda and form of the 2001 high-level international inter-governmental forum on financing for development. The report of the working group concludes : We have an opportunity to begin the new millennium with a historic and goal oriented collective political gesture of global solidarity for development and practical commitment to achieving it. To be successful, ...the momentum that is building at the United Nations will have to be nurtured and made to include all our prospective partners. An inclusive and continuing preparatory process will increase awareness and build international support and participation, while it deepens the substance of the final event... (para. 20) The working group recommended that the high-level intergovernmental event in the year 2001 address national, international and systemic issues relating to financing for development in a holistic manner in the context of globalization and interdependence. The Group's view was that by doing so the event will also address development through the perspective of finance. The discussions of the working group which took place in informal and formal sessions were rich, intense, constructive and conducted in a positive and participatory spirit. The nine page report of the working group and its annex is available on the FfD website (www.un.org/esa/analysis/ffd) along with additional information on the latest developments. The report itself will be considered by the General Assembly in October. During the General Assembly, delegations will discuss further how the preparatory process can engage effectively all relevant stakeholders and how to maintain the dynamic, open intergovernmental process. From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Fri Jun 11 12:13:36 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 15:13:36 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1151] NZ: Women to debate Apec Message-ID: City Voice, Wellington, New Zealand 10 June 1999 Women to debate Apec by Sian Robinson Are women exploited or advantaged by Apec and free trade? Two women's conferences next week take opposite positions in the debate. The Women Leaders' Network Meeting (20-23 Jun) is being organised by Diana Burns of the Ministry of Women's Affairs to "give women a greater voice in the Apec process". In contrast, organisers of the 'Beware the Miss-leaders' Women's Conference Against Apec (19-20 Jun) see no point in participating in a forum they believe should be destroyed rather than "feminised". There's also a "Women as Leaders in Business' conference (18-19 Jun) which will be addressed by the founder of the Apec Women Leaders' Network, Andrina Lever, as well as NZ businesss such as Fran Wilde and Roseanne Meo. It's all part of the lead-up to September's summit in Auckland of the 18 [sic] countries in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group. They will be looking at what makes women leaders "special and different" and aim to inspire NZ women with successful women's stories. But Trade Union Federation president Maxine Gay, an organiser of the 'Miss-leaders" event, says, "Apec stands for everything that feminism is against. It's the ultimate in exploitation. Despite the fact that we have a woman Prime Minister and a woman Leader of the Opposition, and an unprecedented number of women MPs, the lives of ordinary women have not improved." Writer Anne Else says free trade has destroyed jobs and pushed down wages and conditions here, particularly for women, as they are disproportionately employed in casual and part-time work. Because of the removal of protection, the same work can now be done much more cheaply in places like Bangladesh under "appalling conditions". "Would you rather have really cheap T-shirts and all be on the dole, or have to pay 50c more and all have jobs?" Ministry of Women's Affairs chief executive Judy Lawrence says concerns about the negative effects of free trade will be one of many issues at the Women Leaders' meeting. ______________________________________________________ Letters to the editor at: cvoice@actrix.gen.nz From deo at igc.org Sat Jun 12 15:35:01 1999 From: deo at igc.org (David E. Ortman) Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 23:35:01 -0700 Subject: [asia-apec 1152] Latest WTO hit in the Seattle Weekly Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19990611233501.0077900c@pop2.igc.org> Latest WTO hit in the Seattle Weekly: 10 June 1999 Seattle Weekly Quick & Dirty by Eric Scigliano HOW THE MINISTERIAL SET RELAXES So what are 135 trade ministers really coming here to do when the World Trade Organization holds its global confab in November? The Wall Street Jounral/Northwest (5/19) had Michael Mullen, director of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation center, complaining about this state's lack of a "cabinet-level trade director" to properly receive and schmooze these poohbahs. "These are senior-level people with a lot of free time," Mullen told the Journal. "If the state had a cabinet-level trade director who was focused on this and could say, 'Here are the people we need to get together.' and do it, there are tremendous opportunities for bringing foreign investment into the state." Maybe that's what Journal readers want to hear. But when he was rebutting charges that the WTO hosts were "sellilng access" to the foreign officials, Mullen told the Weekly (4/23) just the opposite: "The [foreign] government people are going to be so tied up in negotiations that we don't even think they're going to have much time for any kind of meetings with the private sector." From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Sun Jun 13 14:11:46 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 17:11:46 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1153] NZ: Shipley's Apec bubble begins to burst Message-ID: Evening Post, Wellington, 12/6/99 Shipley's Apec bubble begins to burst by Brent Edwards It looked like a political strategist's dream. Just a month or two before this year's election campaign, New Zealand will host the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation group in Auckland. No one - not even the cleverest spin doctor - could have organised a bigger photo opportunity for Prime Minister Jenny Shipley. There she'll be on the Apec podium rubbing shoulders with some of the world's heavyweights, including United States President Bill Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Then follow State visits from President Clinton and other world leaders before National launches into its election campaign. On paper it looks a great election campaign idea. But the dream is quickly turning to a nightmare. Apec is becoming more problematic and the photo opportunities might not be enough to boost either Mrs Shipley's or National's support. Indeed, Apec has all the potential for derailing National's election campaign before it starts. This will be no easy meeting for Mrs Shipley - still a tyro in international relations - to chair. Member economies will bring to the summit a host of difficulties which, if anything, have grown worse in the past year, not better. And, depending on what President Clinton does over the lamb question, it could even be soured by testiness between New Zealand and the US over trade issues. Who's going to take President Clinton seriously preaching free trade at a time when the US is becoming more protectionist? Nor do the Asian economies, still beset by economic difficulties, appreciate American arrogance over free trade. Throw in the bitter battle over the head of the World Trade Organisation - with the US and New Zealand on one side and the Asian countries on the other - and a growing dispute between Japan and New Zealand over blue fin tuna and this Apec meeting has the potential to go off the rails. The best Mrs Shipley can possibly hope - despite the optimistic hype of the Apec taskforce's publicity machine - is that the voluntary grouping of economies sticks together and continues to make generalised commitments to free trade. Even if Apec does make some substantive statement it's hardly likely to impress a New Zealand electorate which, at best, is disinterested in the process and, at worst, is deeply suspicious of it. That's why the Government is running a strong public relations campaign to convince New Zealanders that Apec's good for all of us. The theme Trade Minister Lockwood Smith is trying to promote is that more trade means more jobs. But tell that to workers laid off in a number of industries as this Government has opened up our economy before many of our competitors. And recent trade statistics also fail to back up claims that free trade is good for us. The export-led recovery National boasted about earlier in the decade appears to have petered out. For the year to the end of April this country imported more goods than it exported. The trade imbalance was nearly $1.3 billion. Increasingly the Government's looking defensive over Apec. Labour leader Helen Clark accuses National of simply using the meeting to boost its chances of re-election. After spending $44 million on hosting Apec, all National might get out of it is a group of Aucklanders upset that their city was disrupted for a few days in September. Meanwhile the rest of the country could hardly care less. Now about that clever election year strategy... From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Sun Jun 13 15:12:55 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 18:12:55 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1154] NZ: Editorial - Silence of the lambs Message-ID: <9NTs0e1w165w@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> NZ Listener, June 12 1999 Editorial By Finlay Macdonald Silence of the lambs Dear President Clinton, I realise you're terribly busy, what with deciding which sovereign state to bomb next and fending off the latest allegations of sexual impropriety, but I hope you really have taken the time to listen to that nice, well-meaning Lockwood Smith, and to Jenny Shipley, too, and I hope your ambassador has passed on a message from the farmers who protested outside your embassy, because we jolly well mean what we say about free trade. New Zeland hasn't spent the last 15 years taking US economic rhetoric literally just to have you whack a tariff on our lamb exports, you know. I mean some of the brightest minds of their generation have built careers out of swallowing and parroting the dogma that spews out of your think-tanks and government departments. The least you could do is let them down easy! You can be candid with me, though. In fact, I've been doing a little research of my own into your great nation's real commitment to free trade, as opposed to its lip service, and I think you'll agree that it's a tribute to the power of your public relations industry that people here with lots of letters after their names have taken it all so seriously. Anyway, most people, if they were asked, would tell you that the Gatt and Nafta are "free trade" agreements, but that's a bit of an overstatement, isn't it? From what I read, nearly half of what qualifies as "trade" is actually the exchange of goods and payments within individual US corporations. About 40 percent of US "exports" to Mexico, for instance, don't enter the Mexican market, but their producers do benefit from cheaper labour rates, lower environmental standards and so on. You know, Mike Moore and Lockwood Smith never talk about that kind of thing. I know it's easy to dismiss critics of globalisation and transnational corporations as lefty, anti-prosperity flakes, but I'm really into growth and profits and all that, honestly I am. I just worry about those transnationals controlling one-third of the world's private sector productive assets, that's all. The UN produced a study of this back in 1993, which said that the Gatt increases the rights of transnationals to do business the way they like it, but does nothing to impose formal codes of conduct on them in return. This is all "advancing the economic integration of the global economy on a scale and at a pace that is unprecedented", apparently. Quite a lot of people in New Zealand think that's a good thing, by the way. I know, I know, Nato's calling... What I'm getting at is that this might all be okay if the proverbial playing field really was level. But the reality is that most industrialised nations have become more, not less, protectionist in recent years. Why, your predecessor Ronald Reagan reportedly doubled import restrictions to a level greater than all postwar administrations combined. He was also into a thing called "voluntary export restraint", which some think-tank guru in Washington described as "the most insidious form of protectionism" because it "raises prices, reduces competition and reinforces cartel behaviour". Hey, your own Treasury Secretary was once quoted as saying, "I'm tired of a level playing field. We should tilt the playing field for US businesses. We should have done it 20 years ago." I'm not telling you anything you don't know, I guess. But don't you find it amazing that people in New Zealand are acting all surprised because you might make it tougher for our farmers to sell their sheep meat in the US? You'd think they would have worked it out by now, wouldn't you, that the real trend in the world is towards promoting economic development by ignoring, even violating, pure free market lore. I think some politicians here might be waking up a bit, but it's hard to say. In the meantime, can you please not give them too many surprises, they're not used to it. And you know how badly people take it when you shatter their illusions. Best wishes etc... _______________________________ Letters to the Editor to editor@listener.co.nz From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Sun Jun 13 15:48:26 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 18:48:26 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1155] APEC 99: Sunday Supplement, Radio NZ Message-ID: For Sunday Supplement, RADIO NEW ZEALAND, June 13, 1999 by Prue Hyman By now, most New Zealanders know that we are hosting the 1999 APEC meetings. This stands for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation and covers 21 countries accounting for 44% of world trade. There will be protests at the leaders' meeting in September as there were in Manilla in 96 and Vancouver in 97. All police leave has been cancelled and business in central Auckland urged to close at peak hours to avoid 'congestion', ironically when gains to the local and national economies have been claimed for the meetings. Parliament has passed legislation to allow bodyguards of visiting dignatories to carry guns, and new Security Intelligence Service legislation allows breakins to houses of those regarded as being a threat to security, with few safeguards. With a wide definition of 'security' adopted in 1996, it effectively allows surveillance of anyone opposed to current policies. The break in that year at the house of Aziz Choudry, a staunch campaigner for social and economic justice, was ruled illegal by the courts, leading to this new legislation. All this is ironic when government claims its hosting of APEC will "demonstrate to the international community New Zealand's ability, as a participatory democracy, to accommodate debate and dissent". Demonstrations always hit the media and will make it evident that globalisation and its free trade/ more market/ deregulation agendas meets considerable resistance here. I wish the reasoned opposition expressed by many organisations received the same attention. But this is wishful thinking in a small country where the media is mostly owned by overseas transnational corporations and is very limited in its investigative role. Next week sees an APEC Women Leaders' Network Meeting in Wellington. The Prime Minister opens it with an address entitled "Women's Contribution to Economic Prosperity" and the brochure talks of " promoting women's full participation in Apec policy and decision-making". But except for Marilyn Waring's contribution on "Mapping the Whole Economy", the focus is clearly on business and its benefits. Those opposed to this agenda are organising an alternative conference, with the main themes Maori rights as indigenous people, the negative impacts on women's paid work of globalisation, the more market approach in health and education, and concerns about genetic engineering and food safety. Their leaflet changes the meaning of the initials of APEC to A Patriarchal Exploiters Club, while another version is Anti People Economic Control. Why then are so many people concerned about APEC, the globalisation agenda, and the power of big business? Those conference themes speak volumes on some of the issues - we already see job losses, greatly increased inequality and poverty, foreign ownership of most of our major assets, and exploitation of Maori knowledge for overseas profit. With the mobility of business, expendable low paid workers in one country are played off against those in another. Manufacturing is down to 15% of employment while car assembly has gone altogether. Jobs in the clothing industry have halved in ten years, yet Air New Zealand buys uniforms from Australia. And support for free trade, investment and capital flows is based on the simplest economic models of gains from trade, ignoring the substantial distributional impacts, possible long term costs, and a unrealistic assumptions. Even many advocates of free trade in goods and services are more doubtful about money movements. Concern about speculative capital flows, now about about 90% of the total, has led to considerable support for an international financial transactions tax, use of capital controls when a currency is under attack, and international buffer funds. But the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, halted last year partly due to worldwide grassroots pressure, is not dead. It is to be revived in the Millennium Round of the World Trade Organisation, planned as an enormous globalisation fair where the removal of the final obstacles to capital's freedom of action could be negotiated pell-mell. What can we do about all this? First be informed and decide for yourself - alternative views take a bit of finding from the opposition's writing, on the web, at these conferences, but they're around. Second, inform others. Only steady work will turn the tide and shift policies at government and international levels. Third join the movements creating alternatives at local levels: Green Dollar schemes, ethical investment, and the like. We can all make a difference. Prue Hyman, WOMEN'S STUDIES Victoria University of Wellington PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand PH: (0064) 4 4955285 (or 4721000 ext 5285) FAX: (0064) 4 4955046 e-mail address: Prue.Hyman@vuw.ac.nz (or HymanP@Matai.vuw.ac.nz) From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Mon Jun 14 06:57:58 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 09:57:58 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1156] Re: APEC In-Reply-To: <000b01beb593$c8be7ea0$e2f6fea9@laptop> Message-ID: Article by Aziz Choudry, GATT Watchdog February 1999 >From Ottawa To Wellington: APEC, Co-option, Control and Colonization "OC is designed to work on principles of pain compliance and temporary visual impairment....If subject exhibits symptoms or complains of severe after effects after one (1) hour provide medical attention". (RCMP training overhead on the use of oleoresin capsicum (OC) - pepper spray). This is not a story about pepperspray. That wasn't the only obstacle to seeing what really happened in Vancouver around the 1997 APEC Summit. Tucked away behind the never ending story of the RCMP Public Complaints Commission, soundbytes and images of security overkill are the games which the Canadian state has been playing to try to co-opt "civil society" (whoever that overused phrase refers to) into legitimising both APEC's trade and investment liberalisation agenda and the myths which Ottawa wants the rest of the world to believe about Canada. Pain compliance and visual impairment are nothing new in colonial settler states like Canada. They are fundamental to maintaining the continued occupation of unceded indigenous territories by the Canadian state. And fundamental to providing the false sense of stability and security necessary to maintain a market-driven economy. It is no coincidence that the countries which have led the charge within APEC for further, faster, more comprehensive liberalisation - Canada, New Zealand, the USA, and Australia - are the same ones which continue to deny Indigenous Peoples' rights to decolonisation and self-determination, while disguising this fact with mythical notions that governments in these countries are inherently humanitarian, democratic and forward-thinking. The commodification of peoples, knowledge, and nature itself that underpins the APEC and WTO agendas are sourced in the same unbalanced, short-sighted, arrogant and greed-driven worldview which characterises the coloniser's mindset. Understand how these "democratic" governments can sanction ongoing assaults on indigenous lands and resources and it's not hard to see why, at an international level they are forcefully following down the same free market path. Understand what Canada is based on and it's easy to see the clampdown at UBC in a context which puts it a world away from the view that such events are aberrations in "civilised" Canada. Documents produced for the Public Complaints Commission (PCC) by DFAIT, the PMO, and other government agencies tell a sordid tale of Ottawa's good cop bad cop dual strategy to try to control debate and set the parameters for discussions about APEC by appearing to support "civil society" initiatives on globalisation while funding the largest security operation in Canadian history. In today's deregulated global economy, like everything else, dissent seems to be a commodity to be manufactured, manipulated, packaged, bought and sold in the marketplace. The stakes are high in the battle to win hearts and minds to the brave new world of globalisation. With cracks in the global trade, investment and financial framework widening almost daily, public relations - "communications strategy" has become increasingly vital in this war. Manufacturing consent and managing dissent are intimately related. The state sets up bodies like the RCMP Public Complaints Commission to act as a safety valve, restore public faith in the Police, and further obscure the roots and nature of injustice. Aiyanas Ormond of APEC Alert says the PCC allows the venting of steam "in a way that is socially affirming but does not challenge power in any meaningful way". Not unlike government-funded "civil society" meetings on APEC.... In 1996 just prior to the Manila APEC Summit the Ramos Government in the Philippines orchestrated the Asia-Pacific Sustainable Development Initiative conference, including several pro-engagement, pro-government NGOs precisely so it could loudly proclaim to have consulted with the "overwhelming majority" of people's organisations, and was a "government that listens to its people". It could then label the meetings to expose APEC's corporate agenda and discuss genuine alternatives as the work of subversives, troublemakers and radicals. Federal and BC provincial funding for the 1997 Peoples' Summit on APEC - the acceptable face of "opposition" to APEC - was clearly designed to blunt criticism of the APEC process. Some of it was stage-managed by Canadian-government funded organisations like the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, who sought a seat at the APEC table for "civil society" - i.e. those NGO and union bureaucrats who believe that APEC can somehow have a caring human face. The $100,000 which Ottawa put into the Peoples' Summit for administrative expenses was just part of the same gameplan which spawned the security overkill at UBC. The NDP provincial government had its own political reasons for supporting the Summit. Ironically, while such a government-supported event would be rightly considered extremely suspect by western NGOs and unions were it held in Jakarta, Manila, or Beijing, the same view did not appear to apply to taking money from Ottawa and Victoria. What better way to control dissent? Corral the critics in a lavish venue some distance away from the official event (now ironically the site of the PCC hearings). Minimise the risks of political embarrassment to Ottawa and other APEC "economies". Engage people in an "NGO Olympics" which looks good but challenges little. Identifying and throwing money at the "constructive elements" within "civil society" and surveillance, violent arrests and pepper spraying are two sides of a coin. Environmental activist/author Andrew Rowell writes: "Dialogue is the most important tactic that companies are using to overcome objections to their operations. It is a typical divide and rule tactic. One PR guru has outlined a three step divide and conquer strategy on how corporations can defeat public interest activists who apparently fall into four distinct categories: "radicals", "opportunists", "idealists" and "realists". The goal is to isolate the radicals, "cultivate" the idealists and "educate" them into becoming realists, then co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry." Ottawa must consult the same guru. According to DFAIT, some NGOs in the Peoples Summit were "engaged in constructive discussion on how to broaden APEC's work to include views of civil society". "There was no doubt that Canada wanted to work with civil society organizations (CSOs) and to try to broaden APEC's discussion to include views from NGOs, academic and other component [sic]of the civil society," it said. But others were "involved in a less constructive process that could undermined (sic) both the efforts of Canada to engage civil society and efforts of the latter to have its voice heard by APEC". Ottawa "was conducting ongoing discussions with constructive elements among the organizers, which we hoped would be helpful to vent steam," Deputy Trade Minister Len Edwards told Indonesian officials in September 1997. New Zealand trade unionist, Robert Reid says trying to get a seat at the APEC table for "civil society" "will be as successful as urging a tiger to become a vegetarian. For those organising at the grassroots...exploitation, discrimination and repression in the workplace are the natural consequences of globalisation, not an unfortunate by-product that can be fixed with a social contract." Most Asia-Pacific NGOs which met in Osaka at the 1995 NGO Forum on APEC opposed any engagement with APEC, arguing that would help legitimise the forum as a powerful and permanent feature of the regional landscape. If you can co-opt you can set the agenda. If you cannot, then people might set their own. And apparently, that's a problem, to be avoided at all costs. So it was no coincidence that while there was a strong focus on denouncing "human rights violations" in various Asian countries at the Peoples Summit, few voices were raised pointing out the links between the impact of globalisation on peoples in the South and domestic concerns such as the impact of NAFTA and market policies on Canadian (and other Northern) workers, and the continued colonisation of indigenous lands, lives and resources within the unceded territories claimed by Canada. The doomsday scenario of a world under corporate rule, of transnational plunder, environmental and social disaster which many NGOs and people's organisations which oppose APEC and free trade warn of has long been everyday reality for the Indigenous Peoples of North America. But while many in the Peoples Summit identified the corporate sector as the driving force behind APEC, struggles like that of the Lubicon Cree in Northern Alberta against gas, oil, and timber transnationals which have been invading their unceded territory with the complicity of the Canadian state barely rated a mention. Nor did the fact that the same "liberal democratic" government which claimed it could influence Asian trading partners with Canadian values by engaging them through APEC sent more armed forces against the Mohawk people in the 1990 standoff near Oka, Quebec than it sent to the Gulf War, or that the Feds and BC's NDP government sanctioned a similar massive military operation only a few hours drive from Vancouver at Gustafsen Lake in 1995, against a small group of Indigenous Peoples defending sacred lands. Less than a year later, Ottawa was at it again over APEC. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) gave $60,000 to support an international conference on the engagement of civil society in the APEC process, last October in Malaysia. Its focus was on reconciling "Civil society" with APEC, and moving towards a "deeper and more formal process of engagement between civil society and APEC governments." Then it put $25, 000 into the Asia Pacific Peoples Assembly held parallel to APEC 1998 in Kuala Lumpur, and another $25,000 to a meeting of the International Monitoring Group on Trade and Media (also in Kuala Lumpur around the same time). At the past two APEC Summits, held while the "Asian" economic crisis deepened and broadened, Ministerial Meeting joint statements have only just stopped short of tacit acknowledgement that APEC's credibility is on the line. It faces a crisis of legitimacy as the economic agenda which underpins it is questioned, and countries become ambivalent about further trade and investment liberalisation. The solution? More PR. In Vancouver ministers endorsed a public relations campaign because "support among the people of the region for continuing trade and investment liberalisation is essential". Last May, the Singapore-based APEC Secretariat called for proposals from communications consultants to help raise "understanding and support for liberalisation". In Kuala Lumpur, rather than addressing the economic crisis and reexamining the market model of economic development, APEC "ministers tasked officials to develop effective communication strategies to build community understanding for liberalisation" The quest is on to find new ways to sell the message that APEC is good for us all. Now it's 1999. The Public Complaints Commission hearings are on again. Halfway across the world, this year's APEC host, the New Zealand government, is using similar strategies to try to sell APEC and build the meetings into a platform to promote its own extremist model of a free market economy internationally: "Through APEC we are able to encourage regional colleagues to follow the type of reforms undertaken in New Zealand," opined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. "[E]nsuring constructive participation by NGOs in the APEC process will be a critical part of the overall strategy of communicating the what, why and how of APEC to the New Zealand community. It would also serve to demonstrate to the international community New Zealand's ability to accommodate debate and dissent among a variety of NGOs" Its strategy of constructive engagement "will require engaging effectively with responsive groups and helping to meet, as far as possible, their own objectives of being seen to influence to outcomes", and "involves building broad public support for APEC and actively managing the risk of disruption". Like Ottawa before it, Wellington will decide who to foster token "dialogue" with, and about what, and define what constitutes "acceptable" dissent. Keeping the focus away from the substance of APEC's economic agenda, domestic injustices and encouraging organisations to expend energy on lobbying to reform a process which has always been and will always be dominated by big business and private sector free marketeers is part of that strategy. The more people it can get to participate in its activities, the more support it will claim for APEC's free market goals. And the easier it will be to marginalise those strongly critical of APEC and the package of economic reforms it promotes - which we are already grimly familiar with here in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Meanwhile, at home and abroad, the Canadian government continues to talk of the need to involve "civil society" and pursue environmentally sustainable goals within APEC. But the crackdown at UBC shows the true face of the neoliberal agenda. As always, the police, army and intelligence agencies provide the muscle for the free market economy. Human rights abuses have become synonymous with the hosting of APEC Summits around the region. Security operations and the sanitised, embarrassment-free cocoon woven around such meetings aim to iron out the rough spots that the government/corporate good news outreach campaign couldn't quite reach. It's time some hard questions were asked about the agendas of "democratic" governments which promote "constructive engagement" and "dialogue" with non-governmental organisations about issues like APEC. And it's time to be asking the organisations which buy into this cosmetic process just who they claim to represent, and whose bidding they are really doing. (Article may be reproduced with permission of the author) From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Tue Jun 15 11:45:02 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Tue, 15 Jun 1999 14:45:02 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1157] NZ: Smith defends Apec TV ads Message-ID: From: Evening Post, Wellington, 8 June 1999 Smith defends Apec TV ads By Brent Edwards, Political editor Trade Minister Lockwood Smith has defended a TV advertising campaign which he says is to convince New Zealanders that more trade means more jobs. Labour leader Helen Clark has criticised the campaign to promote the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) leaders' meeting in Auckland during September. The first ad was shown on TV at the weekend. Miss Clark said today she had never believed Apec should be held in New Zealand during an election year and the Government had to be very careful how it promoted the meeting. "The ad is entirely misdirected. It is part of a soft-sell background to National's election campaign." But Dr Smith told National Radio that the ads had been checked by the Auditor-General David Macdonald and he was satisfied they contained no political content. There were nine ads in total, which were designed to make New Zealanders aware of the benefits of Apec. "This is something important for New Zealand. It is important New Zealanders understand what Apec is about: more trade, more jobs," he said. Miss Clark also criticised commercial sponsorship of Apec, saying it was unprecedented for a leaders' meeting to be sponsored. Ford, Telecom and Air New Zealand are sponsoring the meeting and they get mentioned at the end of the TV ads. "It is really weird for an international leaders' meeting to be sponsored in this way," Miss Clark said. Dr Smith said the sponsorship had enabled the Government which was spending $44 million on Apec to do things it would not have been able to do. But obviously the sponsors wanted something out of it. "People don't sponsor if there is not a plus in it for them," he said. Apec monitoring group spokesman Aziz Choudry said the Government was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting Apec at a time when more and more people were questioning the free trade agenda. From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Mon Jun 21 09:44:15 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 12:44:15 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1158] NZ: MEDIA RELEASES FROM APEC MONITORING GROUP Message-ID: AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND APEC MONITORING GROUP PO Box 1905 Christchurch and PO Box 106 233 Auckland Email: notoapec@clear.net.nz MEDIA RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE USE 18 June 1999 Women Can Think For Themselves About APEC Agenda - Beware the "Miss-Leaders"! Organisers of this weekend's Women's Conference against APEC which begins tomorrow in Wellington say that the official APEC Women Leaders Network Meeting (WLN) is a vain attempt to give the 21-country-grouping and its women-last profits-first agenda a human face. And they say that documents obtained from the Ministry of Womens Affairs under the Official Information Act show that the government aims to manage the outputs of the official women's meeting. "The talk about integrating "gender perspectives" into APEC through this meeting is laughable," says Leigh Cookson, of the APEC Monitoring Group. The WLN meeting has been dubbed the "Miss-Leaders" Meeting by its opponents. "The government hopes to sell the APEC "brand image" to the public and avoid any genuine debate about the free market, free trade and investment economic model of development which APEC promotes. It believes that it can tell us what to think". "Yet it is women who bear the brunt of the economic reforms, and market-driven policies which underpin APEC's goals. While a tiny handful of women may have benefitted from the extremist free trade, open investment regime of successive governments, the rights of women have been eroded even further," she says. "Documents released by the Ministry of Women's Affairs in the lead-up to the APEC WLN meeting, which begins on Sunday, prove that women's issues and concerns only have a place within APEC if they can be redefined in market-friendly terms. And the fact that the overwhelming emphasis of the APEC WLN meeting is on women in business and women's contribution to "economic growth" is consistent with the fact that APEC has always been shaped and influenced by business interests, not people's needs, not environmental concerns, not the rights of indigenous peoples to self-determination." "The Women Leaders Network meeting will operate within the parameters set by APEC's deregulation, privatisation, free trade and investment agenda. That agenda has been tried, tested and failed in New Zealand for the past 15 years. A Ministry of Women's Affairs report on the 1998 APEC Women Leaders Network Meeting in Kuala Lumpur states: "It also became apparent that many of the meeting participants did not know what APEC was and how it operated. At the 1999 meeting we will wish to ensure that specialist APEC advice is "on hand" to workshop participants so that workshop recommendations are couched in APEC language and directed to the appropriate APEC processes and working groups." A Ministry of Women's Affairs report on preparatory meetings for the 1998 APEC women's ministerial meeting states: "It was acknowledged that issues for women had to be linked to the mainstream concerns of APEC leaders and presented in APEC language, i.e. language that Ministers understand in the APEC context." "Given all this, says Ms Cookson, "the gender language in APEC is quite clearly cosmetic windowdressing. Even the women selected to attend the official meetings will be carefully managed to make sure that they toe the line on APEC." "The APEC WLN is supposed to be a showpiece of how "sensitive" APEC is towards women's issues. But the WLN is really about attempting to integrate women into a preset market agenda which has benefitted global capital at the expense of the region's peoples." For further comment: Please contact Leigh Cookson or Maxine Gay at 021 217 3039 From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Mon Jun 21 09:52:21 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 12:52:21 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1159] Women's Conference Against APEC - Media Release Message-ID: AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND APEC MONITORING GROUP PO BOX 1905 CHRISTCHURCH or PO BOX 106 233 AUCKLAND EMAIL: notoapec@clear.net.nz MEDIA RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE USE 19 June 1999 ORGANISERS DELIGHTED AT INTEREST IN ANTI-APEC WOMEN'S CONFERENCE APEC AGENDA SLAMMED: "WE ARE NOT COMMODITIES" Organisers of the "Beware The Miss-Leaders" Women's Conference Against APEC are delighted at the high interest in their meeting, which began today in Wellington on the eve of the official APEC "Women Leaders Network" Meeting. "Unlike the APEC Women Leaders Network Meeting, our conference is open to all women. Women from right around Aotearoa - and overseas - have travelled here to take part in this important meeting to look at the real issues relating to the narrow more-market APEC agenda, the human and environmental costs of the free trade, open investment, free market model of development," said an organiser, Leigh Cookson of the APEC Monitoring Group. 150 women attended today's session. "This ideology is visibly falling apart day by day, so it's all the more vital that we work to build genuine alternatives. Women are not commodities to be bought and sold in the market place," she said. Today's session kicked off with a powerful presentation from a panel of Maori women, Mereana Pitman, Leonie Pihama, and Jessica Hutchings on the links between the colonisation of Aotearoa, its impact on Maori women, and the globalisation agenda promoted by APEC. "They have tried to commodify everything. And now it is banks, multinational corporations and the state, acting together, that are the new colonisers," said Mereana Pitman, of Ngati Kahungunu. Leonie Pihama, a Ngati Mahanga educator and lecturer at Auckland University, challenged the government's attempts to encourage Maori to support APEC: "Indigenous Peoples are clearly a threat to the APEC and wider globalisation agenda. We see that particularly clearly here in Aotearoa. The intense public relations programme that the government is currently engaged in is evidence of the desire to have all people in this country support APEC and the ideologies that underpin globalisation. That includes Maori." Debbie Stothard, a Bangkok-based co-ordinator of ALTSEAN (Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma) spoke of the impact of the APEC agenda on Asian women. She said: "Being more committed to trade than the rights of human beings is the ultimate hypocrisy". Trade Union Federation President Maxine Gay spoke of the "high cost of fashion" to women workers. She said: "Jenny Shipley says that APEC and the Employment Contracts Act will bring prosperity to New Zealand workers. What a joke!" Ms Gay said that government support for "free trade" through APEC and the GATT/WTO and its support for a "flexible" labour market through the Employment Contracts Act "combine to ensure that not only women garment workers, but all women manufacturing and service workers are caught in a downward spiral of wages and conditions." Annie Newman and Luci Highfield of the Service and Food Workers Union outlined how privatisation, labour market deregulation and contracting out had impacted on women workers in cleaning and healthcare jobs. "APEC is about deregulation - reducing workers to a tradeable commodity. You cannot get a more "tradeable commodity" than the worker whose future lies in the hands of two bodies who conspire to produce a cheap fast machine that can't answer back. The government is responsible. The employers are responsible. They are powerful and workers are their prey", said Annie Newman. Day Two of the conference starts tomorrow (Sunday) at 9am with Radha D'Souza, Indian human rights lawyer and labour unionist of Asia Pacific Workers Solidarity Links giving an overview of the implications of the APEC agenda on women workers in the Asia-Pacific, and strategies to oppose this agenda. Linda Hill, feminist activist and writer from Auckland will speak on the links between class issues and feminism. There are also sessions on campaigns to rebuild the women's movement and improve lives of working women, building feminism within the Trade Union movement, strategies for dealing with the "Miss-Leaders" (like the APEC "Women Leaders") here and internationally, and building and strengthening the sisterhood internationally. For further comment contact: Leigh Cookson (021) 217 3039 From koshida at jca.apc.org Fri Jun 25 14:09:10 1999 From: koshida at jca.apc.org (KOSHIDA Kiyokazu) Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 14:09:10 +0900 Subject: [asia-apec 1160] AMPO e-mail bulletin part1 Message-ID: <37730EF6212.F593KOSHIDA@mail.jca.apc.org> AMPO:E-mail Bulletin Part1 -- /This article is selected from "AMPO: Japan Asia Quarterly Review"Vol.29 No. 1. The special issue of this volume is 'Taking the Initiative: Okinawa's People's Movements Works toward the Future'. /Contents fo this bulletin 1.The Protests Suicide of a Company Man: An Interview with Shitara Kiyotsugu 2.Crisis in the Judicial System- The Arrest of Yasuda Yoshihiro: An Interview with Kaito Yuichi 3.Korean Society and Education: By Honda Masakazu ??????????????????????????????????? The Protests Suicide of a Company Man An Interview with Shitara Kiyotsugu Shitara Kiyotsugu is the chief secretariat at Tokyo Manager?s Union. He is tackling problems of severe restructuring forced by Japanese companies. We reproduced this article from ?Rodo Joho?No. 526, Japanese biweekly magazine giving information on real situation around Japanese laborers. On March 23rd, a tragic event occurred. Nonaka Masaharu committed suicide in protest in the President?s office of Bridgestone (Japan?s No.1 company in the tire manufacturing industries) . What do you think about this incident? Shitara: Bridgestone has been restructuring since ?94. They proceeded with a wage cut for middle-aged and elderly managerial employees with the ?selective age retirement system? and the ?early preferential retirement system.? They reduced the number of employees by 3,400 in these 6 years. Mr. Nonaka should have risen in protest against this restructuring. Had he intended to protest, there would have been several chances in the past, when retirement was encouraged with the introduction of the ?selective age retirement system? and the ?early retirement system? more than five years ago. He must have heard of friends and colleagues being cruelly bullied and forced to be in the middle of restructuring. He had a chance before he was transferred to Bridgestone Sports, where he could have risen against the company, calling on his colleagues who had experienced the hardship. He once accepted to retire from Bridgestone. Is ! ! Bridgestone worthy to commit suiKnocking On The Union?s Door Bridgestone is in good shape, in the black, and has been executing a thorough restructuring. Firing employees when the company is in the black is real restructuring, rather than the simple cut of personnel in a red ink situation. In short, business management is becoming more American style, incessantly replacing personnel. It is believed that tension and fluidity invigorate work. In the spring of 1994, a manager of Bridgestone came to the union for consultation, explaining that he was being urged to retire. His desk was moved to a corner of the factory floor, and he was forced to write a report titled ?My Second Life? (meaning ?my life after retirement?) once every two weeks. He asked me how to write the reports rather than requesting collective bargaining, and endured for three more years before retiring. The mentality to endure this is held by the majority of managerial salaried people in large enterprises. Most of the salaried-men in big compa! ! nies who come to the union canno?How do you see the restructuring in Japanese society today? Shitara: It is now in its third stage. From around May ?93 to May ?96, the first stage of restructuring, affecting middle-aged and elderly managerial employees was completed. Since then, the constitution of human relationships in Japanese companies has changed considerably. Typically, bullying in the work place has become frequent. From May 1997 to the end of 1998 was the second stage. The target was spread from all mid and advanced aged employees to women and young people. Since the beginning of 1999, companies have been continuously competing with each other in the restructuring race. Now it seems to be getting into a new phase. I need to look further into the meaning of the current phase. The restructuring may continue, maintaining a certain unemployment rate, with the transformation of the employment structure. This transformation means that the companies can pick up available labor whenever they want, on very flexible terms. Regarding this trend, Bridgest! ! one?s restructuring styleare is what we can do to prevent the recurrence of incidents like Nonaka?s. We will win by1992 (age 51) Leaves Bridgestone as section manager and enters Bridgestone Sports, a subsidiary. 1997 (age 56) Retires as general affairs department manager and purchasing section manager. Appointed chief inspector of administration without subordinates after being appointed chief inspector of general affairs. 1998 Fall (age 57) All employees in managerial positions receive notice of the ?early retirement system.? 1999 Spring (age 58) Commits suicide in protest in the ??President?s office at the HQ. Translated by Sato Hiroko Further Information to Tokyo Managers? Union: +81-3-5248-5231 ???????????????????????????????????? Crisis in the Judicial System- The Arrest of Yasuda Yoshihiro An Interview with Kaito Yuichi Yasuda Yoshihiro, a lawyer, was arrested on November 7, 1998, for ?having obstructed a forcible execution at the law.? He has been leading the movement in favor of the repeal of the death penalty for a long time and also he was the chief lawyer of the defense counsel for Aum Supreme Truth Cult leader Asahara Shoukou, who is examined as the mastermind of the case where Aum believers scattered sarin into coaches of the subway in Tokyo in March 1995. Yasuda has been in charge of many cases concerning violations of human rights in Japan. The reason for the arrest was that Yasuda advised the ?Sunz Enterprise? (Mr. Yasuda was its legal advisor) to hide its assets, pretending as if another company, which does not exist, was paying the rent so that they can they can avoid a mandatory bankruptcy order. However, Yasuda insists that the measures which Sunz took were different from what he had advised. Immediately after his arrest, the press reported that ?the civil liberties lawyer who has been promoting the abolition of the death penalty suggested to hide assets,? insinuating that Yasuda was acting maliciously. Some of the people who have been arrested in the case have not been indicted and have been released, and the executive of the company who was considered as Yasuda?s ?accomplice? was also released. However, Yasuda?s petition to be released has been denied and up until today (February 9) he is not allowed to see visitors. Why was Mr. Yasuda arrested? Why now? What is the crisis in the judicial system which shows up clearly in this case? We interviewed Attorney Kaito Yuichi, a lawyer and a staff member of lawyer?s network, which opposing a bill providing countermeasures against organized crime. AMPO: Why did they arrest Yasuda Yoshihiro now at this moment? Kaito: We infer that when they were investigating Housing Loan Administration Corporation, this case was found out.1 There are many policemen involved in the investigation of Housing Loan Administration Corporation. They know very well that Yasuda was leading the movement for the repeal of the death penalty and was the leading figure in the Asahara defense counsel. Then they tried their best to arrest Yasuda. If it had happened on another occasion, then the prosecutors would have stopped the police from going so quickly, but in Asahara?s case, the advocacy of Yasuda was an obstacle for them to impose the death penalty on Asahara. It is a serious problem for the prosecutors. I think that they thought if they could get rid of Mr. Yasuda, then they could prosecute the case a little bit faster. Also they might have thought that if Mr. Yasuda is arrested in such a financial incident, they could hold off the possible opposition of the Lawyers? Association. Since the p! ! resident of the Housing Loan Adm Kaito: Just before the subway incident, in March 1995, Attorney Takimoto, who was defending victims of Aum, submitted written reports many times to the police and the government warning that ?soon the members of Aum will disappear. They may scatter sarin in the capital area. Please prepare the Self-Defense Force to be sent out at any moment.? But the people used the procedures for public security officers by which they do not arrest anyone until an incident really happens. It is possible that they made a mistake by following this procedure, but we can not be sure that they arrested Mr. Yasuda because they were afraid that this could be found out. The other point about the scenario of the subway sarin incident which the public prosecutor has been making was based on the testimony given by Inoue Yoshihiro who is a leading member of the Aum. I heard, however, that new testimony by other leaders of Aum who have started to talk just now differ from Inoue?s testimony. Now, the details of the scenario are in doubt and it is becoming clear that the truth of the incident was not the same as the scenario which the public prosecutor had described. I think the public prosecutor is acting dangerously on this point. AMPO: The former Minister of Justice, Nakayama made comments at his New Year?s Press Interview criticizing the defense action of the lawyers, citing examples such as the Aum case.2 Kaito: The criminal court is the place where the power of the state and the individual confront each other. Even though individuals may be innocent, they cannot prove their innocence by themselves under conditions in which they do not have any freedom. In this situation the lawyer is the only person who supports the individual as a legal specialist in the fight against the state. We thought that was the ideology of the modern criminal court which requires legal advisors for the accused. At least the leading figures of the judiciary of a country, the police and public prosecutors, should hold to this ideology. However, recently they do not have this ideology in Japan. AMPO: Housing Loan Administration Corporation accused him after Mr. Yasuda was arrested. Kaito: There are two problems I consider the most serious to concern the attitude of the Housing Loan Administration Corporation. In the first place, Housing Loan Administration Corporation did not accuse Mr. Yasuda until an arrest warrant was issued. I guess that they did not have enough evidence to indict him. However once the arrest warrant was issued and Mr. Yasuda was arrested, then they dared to indict him. They were daunted by the pressure of the state and accused Mr. Yasuda, knowing how carelessly the warrants were being issued. That was really regrettable. Secondly, it is a fact that Mr. Yasuda and the Sunz Enterprise have been negotiating together with Housing Loan Administration Corporation, in order to refund the debts. But Housing Loan Administration Corporation decided to discontinue the negotiation when the criminal investigation authority started to prepare the investigation. We can see that the arrest of Mr. Yasuda was a more important matter than collecting debts. Financial Institutions Strongly Protected This case differs from other cases because the problem is what the client and the lawyer talked about. The client asked the lawyer for advice explaining that his company had excessive debts but still they wanted keep the business in operation. According to the public prosecutor?s point of view, the lawyer should have advised them to close down the company offering all the remaining assets to the creditor. It is possible that they consider it illegal if the lawyer gives any other advice such as how they can survive without closing down the company. Up until now both of the parties, on the one hand, the financial institutions such as banks who are the creditors and on the other hand, the parties who borrow money, were making free use of various measures within the bounds of civil cases. One party tries to collect the debts and the other fights to survive. The rule applied was civil law. Except in extreme cases, these cases were dealt with under the principal of ?no! ! t intervening in civil affairs. AMPO: You said this incident has brought changes in the system in advance to limit the capacity of advocacy, for example a bill which provides countermeasures against organized crime, didn?t you? Kaito: The bill, a countermeasure against organized crime is known as the ?wire tapping? bill, and this bill creates more problems through countermeasures for money laundering. Once this bill is approved, if they find out that there are strange sources of money which can be related to a crime in the lawyer?s income, the lawyers will be checked or investigated and in some cases they will be arrested and accused, and also can be stripped of their lawyers? license. For example, we suppose that the crime of ?gift and acceptance of a bribe? is considered as a crime of ?money laundering.? In fact, this is still not included in the act of the money laundering since the Liberal Democratic Party carefully omitted it, but in case it had been included, when a politician is arrested for a bribe, no lawyer would accept to defend this politician because they could not receive any fees from him. Also it will be difficult for lawyers to defend so-called radical groups such as the New Left Wing factions, striking labor unions, etc. Unfortunately as we can see in a 1989 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which said the only lawyers chosen by the government should take on cases for the defense of organized crime groups, the Japanese Ministry of Justice and the public prosecutor share the same opinion. If this bill is approved, there will be a critical change in the balance of power between the prosecutor and the public defender. It is probable that the arbitrary arrests like this case will be repeated many times in the future. But the judgment of this case of Attorney Yasuda will serve as a precedent. In this sense this is the start of a very important criminal court trial. Notes 1. In 1996, the Housing Loan Administration Corporation in set, invested Deposit Insurance Corporation. It is the purpose that this institution transfers loanable assets of real estates assets from 7 housing loan corporations in failure, and arranges management, payback and disposition them. So it is collecting credit obligations around about $57 billion of bad loan and $1,270 million of deficit. 2.Some comments made by Nakamura Seizaburo, the former Minister of Justice: He criticized the lawyers activities saying ?the people are losing their confidence,? ?it is true that people started to feel that lawyers are so terrible,? giving examples such as the Aum incident and stressed the necessity to reform the judicial system in the speech he gave at a New Year?s Party held on January 4, 1999 attended by 300 heads of the Ministry of Justice and the Agency of the Public Prosecutor. In the same speech, he also criticized the Constitution. n Translated by Yoshida Rika ?????????????????????????????????? Korean Society and Education By Honda Masakazu The General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chosen Soren) has played the important role of a national education among north Korean residents in Japan. However, they have suffered from discriminative treatment. Especially now, the girls with Chima Chogli often are thrown stones on their way from or to the Korean schools. Their parents or the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, driven by necessary. Honda Masakazu, a writer at the department of city news, Asahi Shimbun, reported this article in Asahi Shimbun on April 3rd. There is an on-going dispute over the ethnic education among the north Korean community in Japan. The Korean schools originated in the National Language Training Schools which were founded immediately after Japan?s defeat in World War II. The Korean schools developed quickly after the foundation of the General Association of Korean Residents (Chosen Soren), the largest organization in Japan in 1955, with subsidies for education and scholarships initiated by former President Kim Il-sung in 1957. This financial assistance has amounted to more than ?40 billion so far, and contributed greatly to building Korean University and other school buildings, a very difficult process considering the historical background in which the Japanese government neither guaranteed the right to ?ethnic education? nor even admitted the Korean schools as proper ?schools? under the School Education Law. In fact, it even ordered them to close down. Korean schools have decided to stop the use of chima chogli (Korean traditional clothes) as school uniforms. Behind this decision was a series of requests for educational reform submitted by a group of parents to the General Association of Korean Residents. Their statement calls not only for a change in the school uniforms but also foe changes of the present curriculum, which emphasizes the ?greatness? of Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) leaders and ?loyalty? to the homeland, toward that to respond to the practical needs of north Korean residents in Japan. It suggests changing these ethnic schools into ?Korean? schools, that even children of south Korean nationality can attend. This is the first instance in the half-century history of these schools for parents to present a unified statement calling for ?democratization.? The Committee for Building New School Houses submitted the statement which is chaired by Hwang Seiichi, who represents the Saitama branch of the Association of Korean?Business People with Permanent Residential Status in Japan. The committee was formulated through the Tokyo Korean High School and held a series of Ethnic Education Forum in April and December, 1998, with the participation of some 260 people. The opinions and issues presented by the participants were compiled into the statement, which is more than 35,000 words long. Copies of the statement were made and distributed to parents in other areas, as a proposal for reform that reexamines the whole education system of the Korean schools in Japan. Questioning north Korean-Centered Education The request admitted the importance of ?protection? by ?the Head Kim Il-sung,? ?General Kim Sung-il? and ?the Socialistic Motherland? as a precondition for the progress of their ethnic education. However, it also stated that it is ?self-evident and natural? for north Korean residents to seek ?an education which fits into their daily situation in Japan and satisfies their compatriots? needs.? As the second and third, those who were born in Japan and their children and who never saw there ?motherland?, generation emerged, the number of north Koreans who have chosen to reside in Japan permanently rather than going back to their native country has increased. Recognizing this situation as ?natural?, in the statement they insisted that: (1) The education for Korean residents in Japan should have its uniqueness identity, differing from that provided in the socialist mother country. (2) More focus should be given on teaching the politics, economy, society and culture of South Korea. (3) International values such as respect for human rights and culture should be taught. (4) Members of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan should not use military terms or militant language such as ?the spirit of the suicide bomber.? In terms of school uniforms, according to a survey conducted at the forum, 64% of the participants answered that chima chogli ought to be abolished as school uniforms. They said this for the following reasons: (1) Some Japanese have assaulted students wearing chima chogli, leading parents to concern for their children?s safety. (2) Chima chogli is not functional as a school uniform. The statement basically places importance on strengthening ethnic education, such as raising the standard of Korean language education, as well as establishing self-identity with an understanding of history at the core. While the number of Korean residents who got Japanese nationality is increasing, the low birth rate has led to a lowering of the number of students, and the Korean schools are being streamlined. Thus, the first and second generations there is widespread sense of crisis concerning whether ethnic education can be maintained. At the Forum, some participants wondered self-critically whether too much focus on north Korea in the education might lead to a narrowing of the potential capacity of Korean schools. There were even suggestions that the portraits of Kim Il-sung should be removed from classrooms. However, this suggestion was not included in the current statement, since the participants concluded that they would aim for gradual and realistic improvements which could be accepted. Both chairman Hwang and the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan refused our interviews, on the grounds that this statement was an internal document of their organizations. According to one source, ?the central committee of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan is taking the requests seriously and are dressing it internally. They reexamine the textbooks and curriculum regularly, and the next reexamination is scheduled for 2003.? Yet, improvements have been limited to small areas, such as the issue of school uniforms. Even though it is clear there is anguish within the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, it seems difficult for them to accept the entire demands considering the reality of a divided North and South. A Step to Multi-cultural Society Throughout its history, the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan has treated all internal arguments like this as ?confidential matters.? Their arguments can be understood within the recognition of rooted discrimination and prejudice against Korean residents in Japanese society and Japanese government policies which have been hostile to the DPRK. Whenever an incident related to the DPRK happens, the north Korean residents have been blamed even when they had not responsibility. This has formed the feeling of the executives of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan. However, it is undeniable that this secretism has contributed to a view of the the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan as ?closed? and ?undemocratic? to people outside. Today, the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan and the Korean schools are at crossroad. If they can not publicly admit the existence of internal criticism and arguments of this degree, there is little hope for reform. The General Association of Korean Residents in Japan was originally formed as an organization to protect the human rights of north Korean residents, and they are not supposed to be an agent of the DPRK. Now may be the time for them to go back to their starting point. On the other hand, guaranteeing ethnic education for minority groups will enrich Japanese society. While the slogan of ?internationalization? is repeated over and over, it is worth wondering why Japanese public education does not include any teaching of the language which not only is spoken among the largest ethnic minority group in Japan, but is also used in Japan?s closest neighboring countries. It seems that in these movements there is a good chance for Japan to transform itself into a multicultural society, and away from its narrow-minded nature that is symbolized by its history of carrying out forceful assimilationist policies against minorities. n Translated by Sugiyama Fumiko ???????????????????????????????????? The E-mail Bulletin of AMPO ( Vol.29 No.1 Japan Watch and ODA Watch) /This article is selected from "AMPO: Japan Asia Quarterly Review"Vol.29 No. 1. The special issue of this volume is 'Taking the Initiative: Okinawa's People's Movements Works toward the Future'. /Subscription Rates of Per Year of AMPO Individual-US$28.00 (4,000 yen) Institute- US$40.00 (7,000 yen) Single issues are available for US$7,00(1,000yen). List of back issues: US$5.00 /Please contact to PARC (Pacific Asia Resource Center): PO Box 5250 Tokyo International, Japan (TEL) 81-3-3291-5901 (FAX) 81-3-3292-2437 (e-mail)parc@jca.apc.org (Home Page)http://www.jca.apc.org/parc From koshida at jca.apc.org Fri Jun 25 14:09:38 1999 From: koshida at jca.apc.org (KOSHIDA Kiyokazu) Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 14:09:38 +0900 Subject: [asia-apec 1161] AMPO e-mail bulletin part2 Message-ID: <37730F1210E.F594KOSHIDA@mail.jca.apc.org> Subject: AMPO: E-mail Bulletin Part2 -- /This article is selected from "AMPO: Japan Asia Quarterly Review"Vol.29 No. 1. The special issue of this volume is 'Taking the Initiative: Okinawa's People's Movements Works toward the Future'. /Contents fo this bulletin 1.On the Trail of a Pair of Fishing Boats: By Jens Wilkinson 2.Article 9: And Now It?s Gone?: By Douglas Lummis -------------------------------------------------------------------- Article 9: And Now It?s Gone? By Douglas Lummis Douglas Lummis is a member of AMPO?s editorial board and has long been involved in anti-war movement. Article 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not recognized. It was surely one of the greatest collective decisions of the century, and one of the greatest peace initiatives of all time. It defied common sense, flew in the face of the ordinary understanding of international politics, contradicted the very definition of the modern state, and outraged practitioners of (what they believe to be) realpolitik. Yet for half a century Japan?s ? unrealistic? Peace Constitution has kept this country from direct participation in any war. Consider the scale of this achievement: a nation whose culture was once believed to be militaristic to the core made a massive decision to turn away from war.1 Since that day no person has been killed or injured under the authority of the right of belligerency of the Japanese state. Of course, this only applies to direct participation. The Japanese Government gave diplomatic and military support to the U.S. during the Korean, Vietnamese, and Gulf Wars. Under the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty there are U.S. bases scattered from Hokkaido to Okinawa (mostly in the latter). And despite language that clearly makes this unconstitutional, the Japanese Government has reestablished a military force called the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), and built it up into one of the largest (at least statistically) in the world. This contradictory situation, which looks to many outsiders like hypocrisy, is in fact the paradoxical result of a long tug-of war between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the general public. The LDP has always wanted to rebuild the military and to amend Article 9, but the public has never permitted this. So the LDP has resorted to a policy of gradualism, starting with a harmless-seeming Police Reserve, and building it up into the present SDF. As a result of this the part of Article 9 that prohibits the maintenance of ?land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential? can be considered dead letter. The same can be said for the renunciation of the ?threat. . . of force? (it is meaningless to possess a military force without the implied threat to use it). Does this mean that Article 9 itself is destroyed or, as some put it, it is now no more than an ?ideal? rather than a binding constitutional provision? The answer at the time of this writing (May 1999) is ?no? ? but this may change in the next few months or even weeks. If the legislation supporting the new ?Guidelines for U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation,? which is presently before the Diet, is enacted, that will probably be the deathblow to the Peace Constitution.2 Article 9 before the New Guideline Legislation To understand why this is so, it is necessary to understand in what way Article 9, though bruised, battered, and badly compromised, still has power today as binding positive law. Under it, the SDF is an utterly anomalous existence ? a body of uniformed men and women organized in military hierarchy, with weapons, military training and discipline, without the legal authority to take military action. The last sentence of Article 9, which denies the state the right of belligerency, is still in effect. The right of belligerency is the essential right of a state to make war: the right of soldiers to kill people and destroy property without being arrested for murder or arson. Government spokesmen argue that the state has an ?inherent? right of self-defense, and so the Japanese state has the right of belligerency no matter what the Constitution says. But as a matter of fact, the SDF has never been provided with rules of engagement ? the rules that specify u! ! nder what circumstances troops m are willing to sacrifice the lives of their members. It will be easy to see why the SDF troops sent to Cambodia were kept away from dangerous areas, used primarily for road construction, and sent home as soon as possible. New Guideline Makes SDF to Military Organization The ?Guidelines for U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation?, first adopted in 1978, specify how the SDF and the U.S. military will cooperate under the Japan-U.S. Mutual Security Treaty. The Guidelines are not a treaty, but an administrative agreement between the two military establishments, and as such do not require legislative approval. But the so-called New Guidelines, adopted in September 1997, specify operations that go far beyond anything provided for in the Security Treaty, or permitted by Japanese law. Put bluntly, they require actions by the SDF that are illegal and unconstitutional. To remedy this the Government is pressing the Legislature to revise the law to make the Guidelines legal. It is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog: the military announces a major change in national policy, and the Legislature obediently cobbles together legislation to make the change legal. Some have compared it to a military coup. The New Guidelines do not say that the SDF now has a free hand to join the U.S. in any of its wars. Japanese public opinion would not permit that. What is new in the New Guidelines is that they provide for U.S.-Japanese military cooperation not only in the event of a direct attack on Japan (as provided in the 1978 Guidelines) but also in the event of ?situations in areas surrounding Japan.? The term ?situations? is about as vague as language can get, and the expression ?areas surrounding Japan? is, according to the Guidelines, ?not geographic, but situational.? That is, no one will say where these ?areas? are ? it depends on the situation. Would ?situations? include NATO-type air attacks on North Korea? Would they include war in the Taiwan straits? Would they include the next Gulf War, if Japan?s oil supplies were threatened? No one will say. In the event of such a ?situation,? the New Guidelines do not say that the SDF can leap into battle alongside the U.S. forces. Rather, they provide that ?Japan will provide rear area support to those U.S. Forces that are conducting operations for the purpose of achieving the objectives of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty.? This rear area support is to be provided not only within Japanese territory, but also ?on the high seas and international airspace around Japan, which are distinguished from areas where combat operations are being conducted.? This innocuous language is intended to deceive the Japanese public into believing that their war-renouncing Constitution is not being violated. The SDF will not be engaged in war, they will only be carrying supplies to the U.S. military which is engaged in war, or inspecting ships on the high seas to make sure they are not, for example, carrying supplies to the ?enemy.? On January 27 Foreign Minister Kohmura Masahiko told the Appropriations Committee of the Lower House of the Diet that rear area support ?will not be something that will give the other side the basis in international law for attacking (Japan).? (Asahi Shimbun, February 17, 1999) But a spokesman for the Defense Agency is quoted as asking, ?The Japanese government says this will not be hostile action, but will the other side think in the same way.?(ibid) Of course, no one can say how the other side will think, but the point is that under international law the other side will have every right to attack Japanese forces engaged in rear area support. Whether they actually do so will depend on their strategic decisions. Even merchant ships, when they are carrying military supplies, have been accepted as legitimate military targets in all the wars where they have been used in this century. (Attackers are supposed to give crew members time to save themselves before sinking the ship, but this rule has rarely if ever been followed). The case is even clearer with regard to armed merchant ships: in the Nuremberg Trials German Admirals Doenitz and Raeder were convicted of ordering submarine attacks on neutral and enemy merchant ships without giving warning, but they were acquitted of the charge of attacking armed merchant vessels. In the case of Japan?s ?rear area support,? the situation will be clearer still. Think of it from the standpoint of the other side. You are being attacked by the U.S. military. Behind the U.S. forces support is being supplied, not by merchant vessels, but by armed naval ships. On those ships are uniformed personnel with military rankings, military training, and the legal authorization from their government to use their weapons. The Japanese Government tells you not to worry, they are non-combatants and you should not attack them. They are ? what? A boy scout troop? A package-delivery team? Uniformed building guards? The other side will no doubt see them as military forces ? combatants ? and under international law they will have every right to attack them where they can. That means the SDF forces that participate in rear area support must be prepared for this, that is, prepared to fight. New Anti-war Movement under the New Article 9 Among the legislation designed to support the New Guidelines is an amendment to the Self Defense Law authorizing the SDF to use their weapons if attacked while giving rear area support. This is where the matter becomes rather surreal. The amendment uses the same language as the Peacekeeping Law, saying that the use of weapons must be based on Article 36 or 37 of the Criminal Code. As I mentioned above, on this legal basis the SDF were not even able to participate fully in peace-keeping operations; what will they do if, in a war situation, they are subjected to military attack? If you are on a ship or in an airplane that is under attack, you cannot use weapons for ?individual self defense.? If the ship is sunk or the airplane shot down, everyone?s life is in danger. You must either surrender, or fight back as a unit ? that is, take military action. AInterestingly, as the old Article 9 fades away, a new Article 9 is moving to the center of attention. ! ! This is Article 9 of the ?(Oc??ti?, wh?h ?s ?d ?s ???s to ??e th? ? was ?t a ?decision? at all, but was forced on Japan by a conquering power. But the ?decision? can be seen less in the adoption of the Constitution (though this received widespread support at the time) than in the decades-long struggle to support it and to preserve it even after both the U.S. government and Japan?s ruling party turned against it. 2. As it turned out, the change came in a few days. On May 24, just after the draft of this article was submitted to AMPO, the Guideline legislation received final approval by the upper house of the Japanese Diet, the House of Councilors. It is suggested that this article be read as a historical document ? one of the last pieces written on the subject during the era of Japan?s Peace Constitution. n -------------------------------------------------------------------- On the Trail of a Pair of Fishing Boats By Jens Wilkinson Jens Wilkinson is a translator and rewriting staff for AMPO. He is editing ?the New Observer? which is the newsletter for foreigners in Japan, analyzing and criticizing a real situation around Japanese Politics. At the end of March, 1999, an extraordinary event took place off the coast of Japan, in the seas between Japan and the Korean Peninsula. According to official accounts, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces detected the presence of a pair of suspicious foreign ships, disguised as Japanese fishing trawlers, in Japan?s territorial waters. A pursuit ensued, and although the Japanese forces were unable in the end to capture either of the two vessels, it became a major scandal. For reactionary forces, it was a disgrace ? why were the Japanese forces unable to capture these two ships, which they alleged were from North Korea (and indeed, the charge seems valid). For progressive forces, it represented an important milestone, the first time that Japanese military forces used weapons outside of Japan?s own territory under the Self-Defense Force Law. The facts are clear enough. On the evening of March 23, Japanese forces apparently caught sight of two suspicious vessels, and began a pursuit that was to last for nearly a day. Several Maritime Safety Agency (basically a coast guard) ships began the chase, and later received the assistance of two Maritime Self-Defense ships, which fired repeatedly on the fleeing vessels. In addition, two PC-3 anti-submarine planes dropped bombs in the vicinity of the ships (but not directly on them) in an attempt to halt them. The MSA ships apparently tried a maneuver in which they would ensnare the fleeing vessels in nets, but this tactic was not successful. In the end the two alleged North Korean spy ships escaped in territorial waters of a third country (in this case, Russia), and the chase had to be abandoned. For the far right, naturally, this case represented a failure of Japanese ?crisis management,? in what has become a familiar refrain. Why, they wondered, had the Japanese pursuers let their prey escape, and why indeed was Japanese security so weak that foreign powers sent spy ships into its territorial waters with impunity? To them, this represented all that was wrong with Japanese security policy ? the hesitation to use force when force was called for. Of course, they failed to ask themselves the question of whether a fleeing ship ? whether suspected of spying or not ? was a valid target to destruction, but since the ships escaped (or perhaps were allowed to escape) this became an academic question anyway. They were let free to harp on about another lapse of ?crisis management.? Ulterior Motives One wonders, of course, whether their indignation was righteous or merely a disguise. Several issues stand out which make this pursuit more abnormal that it might appear at first. First, critics have pointed out that such incursions are actually quite frequent, almost an everyday event. For whatever reason, there are ships from various countries of the region ? with North Korea no exception ? that trawl the Sea of Japan, and presumably sometimes enter into Japan?s territorial waters. They are never pursued, for there is little danger in what they are doing. It appears that there was a deliberate choice by the Japanese government ? or perhaps the Self-Defense Forces ? to take this chance and create an incident. This may appear odd, but it is not if one considers the timing of the episode. It just so happens that a few days before the ?incursion,? the Japanese National Diet took up deliberations on a remarkable set of laws, which have since been enacted into law, which will give the Self-Defense Forces increased powers, and which will require Japan to provide increased support to the United States forces in case of a ?situation in areas surrounding Japan,? a code word for a U.S. action against North Korea or, perhaps, China. It seems quite obvious that the incident was carefully selected, that security elites engineered a situation where it would appear that Japan?s defenses were woefully inadequate, and where the new legislation would be necessary to defend the country in our new era of ?regional instability.? A History of Events Intriguingly, this is not the first time that such a breach of Japan?s national interests has been used as a lever to lessen resistance to new militaristic policies. One need not go back to Japan?s incursion into China in the 1930s, where ?terrorist? incidents were manufactured to allow Japanese troops to enter, under the pretext of ?protecting? Japanese lives. In more recent years, the MRTA takeover of the Japanese ambassador?s residence in Peru provided a golden opportunity for proponents of ?crisis management? to cry out for a greater ability to project military might abroad. And more recently, during the unrest preceding the resignation of President Suharto in Indonesia, the Japanese government dispatched a squadron of airplanes to ?rescue Japanese citizens? if their lives came in danger. Of course, with the resignation the unrest subsided, and most of the Japanese nationals ended up staying on, so the planes became unnecessary. It was, however, a demonstration by the government that it was prepared to take military action to protect the interests of its citizens. It is worthwhile to remember through all this that in recent years ? through the Gulf War, the subsequent attacks on Iraq, and more recently the NATO war in Yugoslavia ? the Japanese government has toed the U.S. line, and indeed the boat-chase incident seems engineered as part of a policy of an American-Japanese alliance to promote stability (meaning to protect corporate interests, of course), in the Asian Pacific region, and indeed into faraway places such as the Persian Gulf. It seems, unfortunately, that despite Japan?s Article 9, which commits the country to resolving conflicts ?without the use of military forces,? the government fundamentally is committed to an opposite course, and the recent moves to amend the Constitution (removing the prohibition against the use of military force) can only be seen as part of an attempt to create what opposition politician Ozawa Ichiro has called a ?normal country,? meaning essentially a copy of the U.S. model, AWACs, Stealth Bombers, Tomahawks, and all. n ------------------------------------------------------------------- The E-mail Bulletin of AMPO ( Vol.29 No.1 Japan Watch and ODA Watch) /This article is selected from "AMPO: Japan Asia Quarterly Review"Vol.29 No. 1. The special issue of this volume is 'Taking the Initiative: Okinawa's People's Movements Works toward the Future'. /Subscription Rates of Per Year of AMPO Individual-US$28.00 (4,000 yen) Institute- US$40.00 (7,000 yen) Single issues are available for US$7,00(1,000yen). List of back issues: US$5.00 /Please contact to PARC (Pacific Asia Resource Center): PO Box 5250 Tokyo International, Japan (TEL) 81-3-3291-5901 (FAX) 81-3-3292-2437 (e-mail)parc@jca.apc.org (Home Page)http://www.jca.apc.org/parc From koshida at jca.apc.org Fri Jun 25 14:09:57 1999 From: koshida at jca.apc.org (KOSHIDA Kiyokazu) Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 14:09:57 +0900 Subject: [asia-apec 1162] AMPO=?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCISEbKEI=?= e-mail bulletin Part3 Message-ID: <37730F253DE.F595KOSHIDA@mail.jca.apc.org> AMPO:E-mail Bulletin Part 3 -- /This article is selected from "AMPO: Japan Asia Quarterly Review"Vol.29 No. 1. The special issue of this volume is 'Taking the Initiative: Okinawa's People's Movements Works toward the Future'. /Contents fo this bulletin 1.Looking Beyond Cologne: G7 Governments Race for Debt Relief By Inoue Reiko 2.Article 9: And Now It?s Gone?: By Douglas Lummis -------------------------------------------------------------------- Jubilee 2000 Looking Beyond Cologne: G7 Governments Race for Debt Relief By Inoue Reiko Inoue Reiko is the co-president of PARC, and now working as an active member of Jubilee 2000, Japan. The global peoples movement named Jubilee 2000, which was launched in the UK in 1994 and spread to other European countries, Africa, the United States, Latin America, Japan and other countries, with the aim of cancelling the unpayable debts of the poorest countries before the end of this century, has successfully pushed G7 governments into a sort of mutual competition to offer better-looking debt reduction proposals for the coming G8 summit to be held in June in Cologne, Germany. The Debt Relief Race Germany, the host of this year?s G8 summit, has proposed the cancellation of all debt from development loans (aid debt or concessional debt) and the full cancellation of export credit debt in exceptional cases, plus three years instead of six years of structural adjustment for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs). Under the HIPC Initiative of the IMF and World Bank, a country can only become eligible for debt relief if it can carry out three years of implementing Structural Adjustment Program, and even then a decision is made and another three years has to pass before the debt reduction is implemented). It also suggested the sale of gold as a source of funding for debt reduction, an idea which the Kohl administration had always opposed, together with Japan. In February, the United Kingdom proposed that all 41 HIPCs receive debt reductions by the end of 2000, and in March, US President Clinton announced the ?US New Initiative on Debt?, which proposed a total debt cancellation for bilateral ODA and a 90% reduction of non-concessional debt for all HIPCs. Since the US was offering only 50 million US dollars as its contribution to Trust Fund of IMF/WB, its proposal has been considered a ?generous offer funded by other creditors.? France, Canada and Italy have followed with their own debt relief proposal. The French government, which is the largest holder of debt next to Japan (see table 2) has emphasized equal burden-sharing among creditors. Japanese Government Proposal Finally the government of Japan, the biggest bilateral creditor, which had kept silent until the last moment, issued a ?Comprehensive Plan for Development and Debt Relief for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries? on April 28. The proposal included the following concrete points: ? Increase the current Paris Club debt relief ceiling of 67% for bilateral ODA loans to 100% (Japan would provide grant assistance for debt relief, a measure which effectively results in the cancellation of debt. Japan introduced voluntary debt relief measures equivalent to over 80% debt reduction in 1998.) ? When necessary, go beyond the debt relief ceiling of 80% for non-ODA claims. ? Enhance the relief measures of international financial institutions for loans extended to HIPCs in order to revive their debt burden, while at the same time giving due consideration to ensuring a fair sharing of the bilateral burdens of debt relief. For this purpose, member countries should make fair contributions to the debt relief trust fund for the HIPC Initiative in the IMF and World Bank, guaranteeing their total contributions to the overall initiative are fairly shared. The IMF will secure the resources by selling gold. ? Ensure flexibility under the HIPC Initiative for indebted countries which have made clear and demonstrative achievements toward reform, or for those which are in urgent need of assistance. Beyond Cologne We at Jubilee 2000 Japan appreciate the acceptance of 100% debt reduction by Japanese government as a step forward toward the relief of the debt burden of poor countries. But at the same time, this proposal is not real debt cancellation as we proposed. The Japanese government has rescheduled and provided Grant Assistance for Debt Relief in past debt reduction initiatives, including the Naples Terms (Paris Club agreement for debt reduction up to 67%, which was agreed at the Naples G7 summit in 1995). The idea of the Japanese plan for Grant Assistance for Debt Relief will be to provide each year a grant which is equivalent to the amount of principal and interest due on the yen loan. But this grant will have to be spent for the purchase of commercial commodities from abroad (imports). Furthermore information on purchased commodities, such as category, names of manufacturers and the names of countries, will not be disclosed at all, though Japanese government says they will be untied. Since the fund source of Japanese yen loan is the trust fund of Japanese Ministry of Finance which come from pensions, post office savings, etc., the Japanese government has applied the rescheduling as a means of debt reduction as agreed under the Toronto Terms or Naples Terms. In the case of Bolivia, for example, they have agreed to reschedule the overdue principal and interest on December 12, 1995 to ?30 years repayment with a 10-year grace period.? Thus this debt relief arrangement involving rescheduling plus grants is different from the cancellation of the debt stock itself, though the government insists it is a measure which will effectively result in the cancellation of debt. First, indebted countries will still be kept under the chain of debt for 40 to 50 more years in future. Second, the grant for debt relief is a part of Japanese ODA, which means that new ODA money might be reduced for those who receive this grant. Additionally, the proposal says ?the debt relief measures must be extended only under the condition that recipient countries will make active efforts to effect structural reform and that they will result in positive outcomes.? Though the Japanese government, especially the Ministry of Finance made critical remarks on the effects of Structural Adjustment Program on the occasion of Asian financial crisis, there is no critical review to be found in its HIPC framework. In June in Cologne, a more or less 100% cancellation of ODA debt for HIPCs will be agreed to, but a more important issue will remain: the mechanism for implementation, including a review of HIPCs, of the structural adjustment program, the role of IMF/WB, and especially importantly for Japan, the reform of ODA itself. The voices of people of indebted countries need to be heard, and cooperation between NGOs and peoples organizations of both creditors and debtor countries needs to be strengthened. n --------------------------------------------------------------------- The New Miyazawa Initiative By Kanda Hiroshi Kanda Hiroshi is the director of Institute for Alternative Community Development (IACOD), which has long researched and criticized on Japanese ODA. In October, 1998, the Japanese government announced the ?New Miyazawa Initiative? as a scheme to deal with Asian economic crisis. It is unusual for Japan to announce special packages of aid destined for countries in economic crisis ? the last time occurred in 1988, when special assistance was offered to Latin American countries. The 1988 plan was ironically called the ?Miyazawa Initiative,? since current Finance Minister Miyazawa Kiichi was also in the same position at the time (though under a different prime minister), and thus the new scheme has been dubbed the ?new Miyazawa Initiative.? The new initiative stands out both in terms of size and in terms of the urgency it holds for Japan itself. A total of $15 billion medium-to long term financial support and $15 billion in short-term support will be disbursed. This assistance will go to Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, and there has also been a request from Vietnam for funds under the scheme. While the $15 billion in short-term funds will be provided when recipient countries are in need of money for trade, the other half will be given in four ways. First, aid will be provided as official cooperation through the Japan Export-Import Bank (JEXIM) or the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF), a fund managed by the Ministry of Finance. Second, it will be disbursed in a way that supports the efforts of Asian countries to get money from the international capital markets using credit from the JEXIM or applying the trade insurance to the recipient countries. It will also be used to set up a ?Asian Currency Crisis Support Facility,? under which the crisis-hit countries will be given subsidies for paying the interest on loans. The third is co-financing with Asian Development Bank (ADB). Fourth, World Bank(WB) and ADB will provide technical cooperation using special funds from Japan. Many assistance agreements have been set since the first one for Thailand in December, 1998 (see the graph in the next page). The decisions on how to spend roughly $11.5 billion of the $15 billion have been made or planned by the end of FY1988, under the new Miyazawa Initiative. Most of the money will be disbursed by JEXIM or OECF as program loans, some co-financing loans with the WB or ADB. Unfortunately, the program loans under the new initiative will hardly bring benefit to the poor who are suffering from the economic crisis. Under the scheme, new co-financing loans will be given to Thailand, in disregard of charges that the country?s Constitution was violated by conditionalities of agricultural sector program loan for the by ADB. The New Miyazawa Initiative will have significant impact on the recipient countries, and it is quite obvious that there is much time to consider the initiative. At the very least, it is the responsibility of NGOs to reveal the realities of the scheme and disclose as much concrete information as possible. n Translated by Ito Asahi /New Miyazawa Initiative The First Stage (monetary unit: a million U.S. dollars) Thailand Total ? 2,350 (Dec. 16. 1999) Medium-to Long-Term Financial Support JEXIM: Two-Step-Loan for Manufacturing Sector Support 750 Economic and Financial Adjustment Loan 600 OECF Economic Recovery and Social Sector Program Loan 250 Agricultural Sector Program Loan 250 TradeInsuranceFacility 500 Malaysia Total ? 3,220 (Dec. 16. 1999) Medium-to Long-Term Financial Support JEXIM: Two-Step-Loan for Export Industry Support 500 OECF: Official Development Assistance Yen Loan (7Projects) 1,000 TradeInsuranceFacility 560 (Mar. 31. 1999) JEXIM: To Strengthen the Infrastructure of Physical Distribution 700 (Apr. 28. 1999) JEXIM: Two-Step-Loan to the Development Infrastructure Bank of Malaysia for Physical Distribution 460 South Korea Total ? 1,000 (Jan. 15. 1999) The Two-Step-Loan to the Korean Industrial Bank Philippines Total ? 3,000 (Jan. 15. 1999) Medium-to Long-Term Financial Support JEXIM: Power Sector Restructuring Program Loan 300 Banking System Reform Project Loan 300 Two-Step-Loan for the Private Sector Development through the Development Bank of Philippines 500 OECF: Metro Manila Air Quality Improvement Sector Development ProgramLoan 300 (Mar. 25. 99) Medium-to Long-Term Financial Support JEXIM: Guarantees for the Public Sector Entities in the Power Sector 500 OECF: Official Development Assistance Yen Loan (13 Projects) 1,100 Indonesia Total ? 1,400 Medium-to Long-Term Financial Support JEXIM: 1,500 OECF: 900 Notes: To Vietnam, the Government of Japan is ready to provide the yen loan (Economic Reform Support Loan) amounting to 20 billion yen, in the context of the Miyazawa Initiative. -------------------------------------------------------------- The E-mail Bulletin of AMPO ( Vol.29 No.1 Japan Watch and ODA Watch) /This article is selected from "AMPO: Japan Asia Quarterly Review"Vol.29 No. 1. The special issue of this volume is 'Taking the Initiative: Okinawa's People's Movements Works toward the Future'. /Subscription Rates of Per Year of AMPO Individual-US$28.00 (4,000 yen) Institute- US$40.00 (7,000 yen) Single issues are available for US$7,00(1,000yen). List of back issues: US$5.00 /Please contact to PARC (Pacific Asia Resource Center): PO Box 5250 Tokyo International, Japan (TEL) 81-3-3291-5901 (FAX) 81-3-3292-2437 (e-mail)parc@jca.apc.org (Home Page)http://www.jca.apc.org/parc From tpl at cheerful.com Wed Jun 23 23:42:38 1999 From: tpl at cheerful.com (tpl@cheerful.com) Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 22:42:38 +0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1163] Solidarity message to women's conference against APEC Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19990623224238.006a1284@pop.skyinet.net> >Message of Solidarity >Fourth International Women's Conference Against APEC >June 19-20, 1999 >Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand > >by Elisa Tita Lubi of >GABRIELA (National Alliance of Women's Organizations in the Philippines) >BAYAN (National Patriotic Alliance, Philippines) and >APWLD (Asia-Pacific Forum on Women, Law & Development) > > >GABRIELA, BAYAN and APWLD send greetings of solidarity and friendship to the organizers and delegates to the Fourth International Women's Conference Against APEC. I would have been with you if not for the revival of a decade-old case against me. This is an example of harassment and intimidation that the Estrada government resorts to against Filipino activists who criticize the state for its adherence to imperialist globalization and its violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. Estrada's Philippine National Police and Armed Forces of the Philippines are no different from Cretien's Security Intelligence Service, Mahathir's National Security Agency and, definitely, Jenny Shipley's SIS. > >We congratulate you on the holding and timing of this Beware the Miss-Leaders conference. It will be an effective foil to the Women Leaders' Network Meeting and the 'Women as Leaders in Business' Conference being held to deceive women into thinking that 'women can have a greater voice in the APEC process' and that APEC will mean more jobs for them. Making a mockery of what the global and national women's movements have achieved through relentless struggle, APEC passes itself off as a 'gender-sensitive' forum aiming to 'feminize' economic development. > >Looking back, one of the resolutions in the 3rd International Women's Conference in Kuala Lumpur was Actively expose the fallacy of the World Bank-APEC strategy of mainstreaming women in the globalization model. GABRIELA specifically proposed this after the 1998 APEC Ministerial Meeting on Women, which theme was "Women and Economic Development and Cooperation," was held in Manila in October. APEC leaders made the ridiculous boast that "women have clearly benefited from trade liberalization and globalization." > >On the contrary, 'mainstreaming' women in the neo-liberal economic model has meant women workers for low-paying employment in export-oriented sectors, where women in the APEC countries today comprise three-quarters of the workforce. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are actually sub-contracting and home-based work arrangements under the labor flexibilization scheme characterized by depressed wages, no benefits, terrible working conditions and fewer unions. > >Or, they are small income-generating activities which women resort to in their earnestness to augment their diminishing family income, which is hardly enough to meet the family's basic needs. They are increasingly being included in statistics as 'small entrepreneurs.' Thus, unemployment is obscured and women's longer work hours are glorified as taking on 'viable economic activities and sustainable livelihood sources.' > >Peasant women are utilized as cheap and flexible labor for the contract growing of cash crops, which are raw materials for TNC/MNC products. An example is that of peasant women being 'organized' into supposed cooperatives and contracted as growers of coffee beans for Nestle products. > >While women's community-based and self-help projects such as health-care, child-care and crisis centers help a lot of women, we should not allow government to abandon its social responsibility and pass it on to the women in the guise of 'mainstreaming.' The state, especially in Third World countries, has never been able to provide sufficient basic social services, and the situation worsens because of cutbacks in government budget for public facilities and the privatization of basic social services. >'Mainstreaming' makes use of income-generating and self-help community projects that are delinked from organizing, education and political mobilization of women. The World Bank (WB) encourages and supports such micro-projects to direct women's attention to the hand-to-mouth everyday economic struggle and make them forget about awareness raising, bonding together and taking action to emancipate themselves. > >We should never allow this 'mainstreaming' strategy to depoliticize the women's movement and take women's initiatives away from the struggle for emancipation. It is part of the over-all strategy conjured by the forces of monopoly capitalist globalization. Their aim is to keep women and men under their control and negate the gains that women's and peoples' movements worldwide have achieved. > >We cannot allow the situation to continue where more women workers lose their jobs as factories shut down or retrenched workers. Job security is subverted by the shift to contractualization and casualization under the policy of labor flexibilization. Wages are frozen and are way below cost of living. Unions are busted and strikes are violently dispersed. Union leaders are harassed and trade union repression makes up most of the human rights violations in the urban areas. Because of intense competition for employment, sexual harassment thrives along with unbelievably oppressive workplace regulations such as: no smiling, curtailed visit to the toilet, checking of underwear when entering and leaving the premises to ensure that those being sold are not stolen by the supermarket sales personnel. > >A lot of women are forced to take jobs abroad for lack of opportunities to earn income in their own countries. The labor export policy continues, despite so many cases of physical and sexual abuse of women, because OCW remittances are a major source of revenue for Third World governments whose balance of payments is usually in the negative. Trafficking of women, whether for slave labor or prostitution, is unabated. > >Opening up of land ownership to foreign mining, logging and other TNCs intensifies landlessness of the peasantry and the indigenous peoples. The scheme of 'corporative farming' overrides land reform with stock options instead of land distribution to farmers, who become landless agricultural workers of agrocorporations owned by TNCs and the local big business/land-owner. Food security is endangered by conversion of agricultural land to tourist resorts and supposed industrial enclaves; and conversion of staple foodcrops to export crops. > >The youth's future under imperialist globalization becomes limited to being underpaid, overworked workers constantly bearing the TNCs/MNCs on their backs. Education is commercialized and tailor-fit to the needs of monopoly capital. > >Even the professionals and local entrepreneurs reel from the impact of trade and investments liberalization, deregulation and privatization. > >We have to fight globalization until it is totally discarded. We have to rout completely the monopoly capitalists and the retinue of neoliberal apologists who have been discredited by the global recession and are at a loss on how to save the sick global economy. But as Jose Maria Sison wrote, we "should diagnose the fatal disease not only of 'free market' globalization but also of the entire capitalist system, whatever policy stress it adopts." > >Let us resist imperialist control by the centers of global power -- the US, Japan and EU. Their conduits are the multilateral agencies such as the IMF-WB-WTO and regional formations such as APEC and NAFTA . Let us protect our economies and patrimony from the insatiable multinational firms and banks. Their eager partners are our domestic ruling elite - local big business and the land-owning class. Let us question and take to task our governments. They are the most effective instruments by which imperialist globalization is institutionalized in our countries. > >Women have been in the forefront of the struggle against globalization. This conference is a continuation of our resistance. > > > > > From amittal at foodfirst.org Sun Jun 27 06:56:10 1999 From: amittal at foodfirst.org (Anuradha Mittal) Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 14:56:10 -0700 Subject: [asia-apec 1164] Food First Action Alert: NAFTA for AFRICA Message-ID: ACTION ALERT - ACTION ALERT > >Possible vote on THE "NAFTA for AFRICA Bill" next week! >Call your Member of Congress toll-free at >1-888-449-3511 (or long distance 202-224-3121) TODAY > >The NAFTA for Africa bill, the so-called African Growth and Opportunity >Act (H.R. 434), was marked up in the Ways and Means Committee on June >10th. This means that it could go to the floor anytime, and rumors on >Capitol Hill say that we could see it on the floor of the House as early >as next week! > >Get to the phones and call your Member of Congress to *oppose* the NAFTA >for Africa Bill. Get your friends & family & networks to do the same. Call >early - call often, and let us know what you hear from your Member's >office. > >Talking Points: >_______________ > > The "NAFTA for Africa" bill (H.R. 434) provides no debt relief to >the Sub-Saharan countries, it sets no requirements to use African labor, >and it ignores the AIDS crises in Africa. It grants extensive rights and >benefits to multinational corporations operating in Africa, but requires >nothing of them with respect to workers and protection of the environment. >H.R. 434 requires the African countries to meet a long list of U.S. >imposed, IMF-style conditions (like slashing spending in areas like health >and education). It also requires the sub-Saharan countries to open their >markets to foreign speculators and multinational corporations, similar to >the MAI-model. > > Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s forward-looking "HOPE for Africa Act" >(H.R. 772), promotes equitable, sustainable and sovereign African >development. The key elements of the "HOPE Act" are unconditional debt >relief, self-determination of economic and social policies best suited to >meet the needs of African people, requirements to employ African workers >and to have African ownership. It also requires foreign corporations >operating in Africa to pay a living wage and operate by the same labor and >environmental standards as they do in their home countries. Failure to do >so results in barring of the products of the offending corporation from >import to the US. > >______________________________________________________________________ > >The NAFTA for Africa Bill is a model example of a failed trade policy. >Urge your Member to oppose H.R. 434 when it comes to a vote. > >For more information about the NAFTA for Africa Bill and the HOPE for >Africa Act, check out our web page: www.tradewatch.org, or call any >member of the Global Trade Watch Field team at 202-546-4996. > >CALL CONGRESS TOLL-FREE 1-888-449-3511 (or long distance 202-224-3121) Anuradha Mittal Policy Director Institute for Food and Development Policy - Food First 398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94618 USA Phone: (510) 654-4400 Fax: (510) 654-4551 http://www.foodfirst.org From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Wed Jun 30 14:44:16 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 17:44:16 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1165] APEC in Auckland Message-ID: APEC-PROTEST APEC PROTESTERS PUSHED ALONG AUCKLAND WATERFRONT Auckland, June 29 NZPA - Police today pushed and jostled about 30 protesters more than 50 metres along Auckland's waterfront this afternoon to clear them away from a jetty where visiting Asia Pacific trade ministers were due to board a luxury ferry. More than 40 police formed a tight line and pushed the protesters, who chanted and carried placards opposing the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) organisation, through a carpark away from the jetty. One of the protesters was briefly separated from his young daughter when an officer pulled him back into the protest group after he had split off from the group and begun taking photographs of it from a short distance away. While a line of officers held the protesters in place about 50 metres from where the ministers were due to board the boat, several members of the public -- along with media and Apec officials and security staff -- mingled just metres from where the ministers' bus pulled up. A senior officer told NZPA the protesters were told to move only after being given a ``split second'' of warning before they were pushed back. The police action in pushing the protesters back created some tetchiness on both sides, but it never threatened to escalate beyond jostling. Protesters, who included unemployed workers' rights activist Sue Bradford, responded by accusing the police of being ``servants of foreign powers'' who were committing ``thuggery'' against their own people. Police media manager Robyn Orchard said the protesters were not given warning because it was known they would not co-operate anyway. The same protest group had also gathered outside Apec events at Aotea Square in the central city on Saturday and yesterday, when their megaphones were confiscated because police believed they were too loud and their hearing was threatened. Security at this week's meeting, attended by trade ministers or senior officials from many of the world's most powerful countries, including the United States, China, Russia, and Japan, has otherwise been low-key. NZPA PAR bs gt 29/06/99 20-45NZ APEC-TRADE-D/L APEC AGREEMENT A TRADEOFF FOR LOWER BARRIERS ON NZ PRODUCE By Bernie Steeds of NZPA Auckland, June 30 - A small but significant stepping stone towards New Zealand's goal of lowering world trade barriers for primary produce was put in place yesterday with Asia Pacific trade ministers' agreement to press for the scope of key World Trade Organisation talks this year to be broadened. The agreement, made by ministers meeting in Auckland, whose economies together represent more than half of the world's trade, was hailed as a ``global breakthrough'' by Trade Minister Lockwood Smith. Any tangible benefits are likely to be some years off, but Dr Smith yesterday indicated some hope of an ``early harvest'', in which countries agree to start lowering tariffs on some sectors from next year. Australian Trade Minister Tim Fischer said Auckland's Apec had got off to a ``flying start'' and yesterday's agreement had shown it was regaining momentum after its free trade agenda stuttered during the Asian crisis last year. The key point of the agreement, which was achieved despite some countries having said early yesterday they would not support it, was for Apec to push for lower trade barriers on industrial goods to be included in the WTO millennium round of talks. Though agriculture and service industries were already set down to be included, the move to bring in industrial goods -- anything from processed fish to cars -- is seen as a crucial incentive for larger economies to take part in the round. The hope, from New Zealand's point of view, is that countries like Japan might be enticed to lower their high tariffs on primary produce in exchange for easier access for their manufactured goods into other markets. New Zealand is regarded as having more than most other countries to gain from any moves for tariff reductions across a broad range of goods, as our relatively open markets and other countries' protectionist agriculture policies mean New Zealand faces higher average tariffs than most other countries. Ministers, including Dr Smith, last night defended yesterday's decision against accusations it was a kick for touch, similar to last year's when Apec abandoned a plan to phase out tariffs among its members in eight industrial sectors and instead referred the talks on to the WTO. ``It is not a cop-out... It is a breakthrough,'' Dr Smith said, arguing that more benefits would come by opening up trade talks among the WTO's 130-plus members than by seeking deals within Apec's 21 members. The ministers pointed out that 14 of Apec's 21 economies had presented plans this week to unilaterally knock down their own trade barriers in some sectors of the economy, as part of a move to achieve fully free trade in the region. China's vice minister for trade, He Long Yongtu, said Apec -- as a body that operates on consensus -- could not deal with the ``nitty gritty'' of detailed trade negotiations. Yesterday's decision was made during a retreat at the exclusive Gulf Harbour country club, north of Auckland, where ministers spent two hours meeting before climbing in to a fleet of golf carts to inspect a reputedly infamous hole on the club's World Cup golf course. Earlier in the day, more than 40 police had pushed and jostled a smaller number of anti-Apec protesters about 50 metres along Auckland's waterfront away from the jetty area where the ministers were to board the luxury boat which was taking them to Gulf Harbour. Mr Fischer said he wanted to talk to the protesters but was not allowed to. He would have told them there was ``no doubt that the Asian meltdown would have been a whole lot worse'' if not for the contact and financial support Asia Pacific countries provided for each other because of Apec. One of the themes of this year's Apec is broadening support for the free trade process. NZPA PAR bs rap 30/06/99 08-00NZ