Message-ID: <37B19381.8288D158@direct.ca> Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 08:15:13 -0700 From: Cyril Belshaw <mailto:cbelshaw@DIRECT.CA> Subject: Re: Action against the WTO To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
No Kerry you're wrong. I protest against many things. But I don't respond to requests to protest unless I am given a convincing reason. So far II've not seen one. I have seen many convincing reasons to change WTO, which is a different matter.And I most certainly do not hold to the view that the individual cannot effect changes in association with others. Read my book on line about the way individuals can fundamentally change what is going on -- and have to --, including world government, in the 21st century. There is a link to the site at the URL below.
And since you are close to home, look at http://www.webzines-vancouver.bc.ca/issues/index.htm for a few local perspectives about change.
Sorry I used the word "isolationist" which may not be true. What would you replace the WTO with??????
Cyril B.
Kerry Miller wrote:
> Cyril Belshaw wrote,
>
> > Why the heck should we do that? And who give it the title International Day?
> > Sure there are things wrong with the WTO but we also need it badly.
> > Fix what is wrong, don't set out to destroy. That's isolationism.
>
> To my mind, your reaction illustrates exactly what ails the world
> these days: the dementia or delusion that any individual has at
> least the power of royalty (if not supreme commander of the
> universe). It has two major manifestations: first, that one 'should'
> speak out, either in support of X or in protest against it, only if one
> has the *authority to decide whether X lives or dies (is 'fixed' or
> destroyed); secondly, that those who have such authority *do
> speak in support or in protest so that oneself, the humble person-in-
> the-street, need only listen to them in order to learn what is best for
> everyone.
>
> When its put so baldly, of course everyone indignantly objects that
> they behave in no such way -- but the evidence is everywhere, from
> the credentialism that passes for North American education to
> implying that working to get public concerns on the agenda of an
> unelected group of economic 'ambassadors' is the equivalent of
> destroying it!
>
> So the delusion grows: those who still have a grain of sense learn
> to say nothing, even in electronic fora where one might have
> supposed the topic to be highly relevant to an understanding of
> "international development," while those who are completely
> befuddled rave about meaningless issues, like whether Cassini
> should enter the Earth's atmosphere, or TWA-800 was a military
> training blunder -- and both thus allow those who have the authority
> to keep it securely in place, and to design an economic hegemony
> that would turn Caesar green with envy, all without saying anything
> substantive to the hoi polloi -- certainly not in *their 'real time,' and
> absolutely not as actual questions for them to answer.
>
> If this sketch seems too melodramatic, do you perhaps have a
> sociological explanation for why so many people around the world
> are, in all seriousness, discovering that they share a sense that
> decisions affecting their lives are being made entirely invisibly to
> them? One might call it a sort of mass paranoia, except that
> 'incidents' such as the OECD and ICANN reveal that the main
> ingredient in the recipe for invisibility is simply *spin*: make the
> decisions, but dont admit they have been made until the public
> consciousness has moved on to other Roman or fashionable
> spectacles, conjured up just for the sake of the distraction.
>
> Btw, Prof Belshaw, do you think the 50 experts at the recent
> Columbia seminar are isolationists -- or are they bent on
> destruction? Could it be that they, like the 9/15 protestors, are
> merely saying that the world ought to get back on a single time
> track, so that those whose lives are involved can be *deliberately
> involved? And if you can entertain that hypothetical, to which
> authority do you advise them to appeal to order it done?
>
> As it happens, the remedy for this dementia is simple enough: the
> power that everyone *really has is the power of speech. Admittedly,
> it takes some practice, but any one can learn to use it fairly
> effectively -- and helping one another do that is the furthest thing I
> can imagine from isolationism. Why, it might almost be worth
> trying to find a mailing list for it, on that international network for -
> what is it, co-money-cations?
>
> Cheers,
> kerry
>
> =========
> TRADE EXPERTS CAUTION AGAINST WRONG ISSUES IN A
> NEW ROUND
>
> New York 24 July (by Martin Khor)
>
> A seminar of trade experts on the next WTO Round ended at
> Columbia University in New York on 23 July with several
> participants cautioning against new issues and the chief convenor
> in concluding remarks saying it is better not to have a
> comprehensive new Round if it meant taking the WTO down the
> wrong road by adding inappropriate non-trade issues onto the
> trading system.
>
> "If the price of having a new Round is to throw all kinds of
> inappropriate issues into it, at the expense of developing countries,
> then the route of unilateral liberalisation may be better," said
> Jagdish Bhagwati, Economics Professor at Columbia University,
> (and a former economic policy advisor to the GATT director
> general) and the meeting's chief organiser.
>
> [...]
> =========
>
> Mark your calendar for the international Day of Action against the
> World Trade Organization (WTO), September 15, 1999. There will
> be simultaneous press conferences around the world, call-in
> campaigns to members of Parliaments/Congress, protests,
> hearings and teach-ins etc., to launch the international campaign
> against a "New Round" in Seattle.