Message-ID: <19991127033818.AAA8027@jubilee.ns.sympatico.ca@LOCALNAME> Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 21:56:54 -04 From: Kerry Miller <mailto:kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca> Subject: WTO: Disarming the Beast To: mailto:DEVEL-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
Michel Chossudovsky: SEATTLE/WTO: DISARMING THE BEAST/ AVOIDING SLAVERY
[...]
A MORATORIUM ON LIBERALISATION NEGOTIATIONS
More than 1200 groups and organisations from more than 85 countries have called for a "Moratorium" on further liberalisation under WTO auspices including the holding of an "Audit" to be undertaken on the impacts of globalisation. Their consensus statement ("Statement From Members of International Civil Society Opposing A Millennium Round"):
"oppose[s] any further liberalisation negotiations, especially those
which will bring new areas under the WTO regime, such as
investment, competition policy and government procurement.
We commit ourselves to campaign to reject any such proposals.
We also oppose the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. We call for a moratorium on any new
issues or further negotiations that expand the scope and power of
the WTO. During this moratorium there should be a comprehensive
and in-depth review and assessment of the existing agreements."
Effective steps should then be taken to change the agreements. Such a review should address the WTO's impact on marginalised communities, development, democracy, environment, health, human rights, labour rights and the rights of women and children. The review must be conducted with civil society's full participation. The Statement constitutes an important step in challenging the official Agenda. It is based on a carefully worded consensus of a large number of individual organisations.
ILLEGALITY OF THE WTO
Yet this important Statement in demanding a "Moratorium" on further
liberalisation negotiations, fails to question the legitimacy of the WTO
as
an institution. And indeed this issue should have been included
explicitly in the Statement.
The Marrakesh Agreement of 1994 constitutes a blatant violation of fundamental social, economic and cultural rights. The stakes in Seattle are fundamental and cannot be addressed with a compromise Statement which tacitly accepts the legitimacy of the WTO as an institution. The WTO was put in place following the signing of a "technical agreement" negotiated behind closed doors by bureaucrats. Even the heads of country level delegations to Marrakesh in 1994 were not informed regarding the statutes of the World Trade Organisation which were drafted in separate closed sessions by technocrats.
"The Final Act Embodying the Results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations", was signed by ministers in Marrakesh on 15 April 1994. The Final Act is a "technical agreement" which instates the WTO as a World body. "The WTO framework ensures a "single undertaking approach" to the results of the Uruguay Round - thus, membership in the WTO entails accepting all the results of the Round without exception."
[...]
In other words, the process of actual creation of the WTO following the Final Act of Uruguay Round is blatantly "illegal". Namely a "totalitarian" intergovernmental body has been casually installed in Geneva, empowered under international law with the mandate to "police" country level economic and social policies, derogating the sovereign rights of national governments. Similarly, the WTO almost neutralises "with the stroke of the pen" the authority and activities of several agencies of the United Nations including the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
[...]
THE MILLENIUM ROUND IS ALREADY "DE FACTO"
What happens to the World system does not depend solely on the results of the Millenium Round. We must understand that in many developing countries, many of the clauses of the Millenium Round are already a "fait accompli". The are part of the "conditionalities contained in ad hoc loan agreements with the IMF and the World Bank. Under the structural adjustment programme as well as in the context of the IMF sponsored "bailout agreements" (eg. Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Brazil), developing countries have already committed themselves to many of the propositions contained in the Millenium Round.
Moreover, the hands of Third World delegates to Seattle are tied, the vote of most of the trade ministers from developing countries at the Seattle Ministerial Conference is controlled by Western creditors. It is unlikely that much opposition will be voiced from the official delegations from developing countries.
Many developing countries have accepted in the context of agreements signed with the Bretton Woods instititions to liberalise trade, deregulate capital movements, privatise State public utilities, dismantle social programmes and provide "national treatment" to foreign investors in a large number of economic activities including services, banking, procurement, etc. These provisions are often coupled with a "bankruptcy programme" under the supervision of the World Bank with a view to "triggering" the liquidation of competing national enterprises. An "enabling free market environment" is implanted (without recourse to WTO clauses pertaining to "effective access to markets"), national producers are brutally displaced and destroyed, countries are casually recolonised
[... ]
Moreover, the clauses of the defunct MAI which was to provide "national treatment" to foreign banks and MNCs (leading to the dislocation of municipalities and local governments) is also in the process of becoming a "fait accompli". The financial conglomerates are now fully integrated with the insurance companies. In turn, the latter oversee and control the multinational health care providers which are actively lobbying in Seattle for the deregulation of public health care under the GATS. The institutions of the Welfare State are to be scrapped. The struggles of the entire post-war period are to be erased.
The Worldwide scramble to appropriate wealth through "financial manipulation" is the driving force behind this restructuring of the global financial architecture of which the new US banking legislation and the "Seattle Round" are an integral part. In concert with the WTO, the US legislation favours the elimination of remaining barriers to the free movement of finance capital. In practice it empowers Wall Street's key players including Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, J. P, Morgan, Deutsche Bank- Bankers Trust, etc. to develop a hegemonic position in global banking overshadowing and ultimately destabilising financial systems in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe... and this process is ongoing irrespective of the actual outcome of the Millenium Round.
[...]
WAR AND GLOBALISATION
And War is also part of the Millennium Round. What happens to countries which refuse to deregulate trade and foreign investment and provide "national treatment" to Western banks and MNCs? The Western military-intelligence apparatus and its various bureaucracies routinely interface with the financial establishment. The IMF, the World Bank and the WTO --which "police" country level economic reforms-- also collaborate with NATO in its various "peacekeeping" endeavours, not to mention the financing of "post-conflict" reconstruction under the auspices of the Bretton Woods institutions...
At the dawn of the Third Millennium, War and the "Free Market" go hand in hand. War does not require a multilateral investment treaty (ie. an MAI) entrenched in international law: "War is the MAI of last resort." War physically destroys what has not been dismantled through deregulation, privatisation and the imposition of "free market" reforms. Outright colonisation through war and the installation of Western protectorates is tantamount to providing "national treatment" to Western banks and MNCs in all sectors of activity. "Missile diplomacy" replicates and emulates the "gunboat diplomacy" used to enforce "free trade" in the 19th Century. The US Cushing Mission to China in 1844 (in the wake of the Opium Wars) had forewarned the Chinese imperial government "that refusal to grant American demands might be regarded as an invitation to war."11 The "Seattle Round" purports to "peacefully" recolonise countries through the manipulation of market forces, -- ie. through the "invisible hand". It nonetheless constitutes a form of warfare.
More generally, the dangers of war must be understood. War and globalisation are not separate issues. The citizens' campaign against the WTO must be integrated with the anti-war movement against the bombing of sovereign countries by the US and its European allies.
DISARMING THE NEW WORLD ORDER
The WTO created from a "technical agreement" (Final Act of the Uruguay Round) provides entrenched "legal" rights to banks and global corporations. In turn the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement sets up procedures --including manipulative Dispute Settlements-- which are now conveniently embodied in international law but which blatantly violate the rights of citizens all over the World.
Under WTO rules, the banks and MNCs can legitimately manipulate market forces to their advantage leading to the outright recolonisation of national economies. In other words, the WTO articles provide legitimacy to global banks and MNCs in their quest to destabilise institutions, drive national producers into bankruptcy and ultimately take control of entire countries.
Moreover, the Agreement formally instates a "triangular division of authority" between the WTO, and its sister organisations the IMF and the World Bank in a system of "global surveillance" of developing countries' economic and social policies. This means that enforcement of IMF-World Bank policy prescriptions will no longer hinge upon ad hoc country-level loan agreements (which are not "legally binding" documents). All the main clauses of the IMF's deadly "economic medicine" will eventually become permanently entrenched under the Seattle Millenium Round. Countries will not only be "bonded" by external debt, they will be permanently "enslaved" by an international body controlled by the World's largest business syndicates. These WTO articles will set the foundations for "policing" countries (and enforcing "conditionalities") according to international law.
In other words, we must act in relation to the original "iniquity" and "illegality" of the Final Act of the Uruguay Round which creates the WTO as a "totalitarian" organisation. There can be no other alternative but to reject the WTO as an international institution, to imprint the WTO as an illegal organisation. In other words, the entire process must be rejected outright.
And this means that citizens' movements around the World must pressure their governments to withdraw without delay and cancel their membership with the WTO. Legal proceedings must also be initiated in national courts against the governments of member countries, underscoring the blatant violation of domestic laws and national constitutions.
[...]
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References (or the complete 40k text) can be provided on request.
C Copyright by Michel Chossudovsky, Ottawa, 1999. All rights reserved.
Permission is granted to post this text on noncommercial community
internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To publish this text in printed and/or other forms contact the author at <underline><color><param>0000,8000,0000</param>mailto:chossudovsky@videotron.ca</underline></color>, fax: 1-514-4 56224.
Michel Chossudovsky
Department of Economics,
University of Ottawa,
Ottawa, K1N6N5
Voice box: 1-613-562-5800, ext. 1415, Fax: 1-514-425-6224
E-Mail: <underline><color><param>0000,8000,0000</param>mailto:chossudovsky@videotron.ca</underline></color>
Other writing on The Globalisation of Poverty and the Financial Crisis:
<underline><color><param>0000,8000,0000</param>http://wwwdb.ix.de/tp/english/special/eco/6373/1.html</underline></color>
<underline><color><param>0000,8000,0000</param>http://www.transnational.org/features/chossu_worldbank.html</underline></ olor>
<underline><color><param>0000,8000,0000</param>http://www.transnational.org/features/g7solution.html</underline></color>
<underline><color><param>0000,8000,0000</param>http://www.twnside.org.sg/souths/twn/title/scam-cn.htm</underline></color
<underline><color><param>0000,8000,0000</param>http://www.southside.org.sg/souths/twn/title/trig-cn.htm</underline></col r>
<underline><color><param>0000,8000,0000</param>http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/eco/</underline></color>
<underline><color><param>0000,8000,0000</param>http://heise.xlink.de/tp/english/special/eco/6099/1.html#anchor1</underli e></color>
<underline><color><param>0000,8000,0000</param>http://www.ased.org/resources/global/articles/chossu.htm
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