| nettime's_roving_reporter on Fri, 19 Nov 1999 19:50:32 +0100 (CET) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
| <nettime> WTO digest (2) |
From: John Armitage <john.armitage@unn.ac.uk>
Subject: FW: WTO Special Coverage! CORPORATE WATCH
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 08:52:46 -0000
-----Original Message-----
From: Cyber Society [mailto:CyberSociety-owner@listbot.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 1999 8:58 AM
To: Cyber Society
Subject: WTO Special Coverage! CORPORATE WATCH
Cyber Society - http://www.unn.ac.uk/cybersociety
Forward From: Corporate Watch [mailto:corpwatch@igc.org]
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 1999 4:52 AM
To: corp-watchers@igc.topica.com
Subject: WTO Special Coverage!
[Moderator's note: the articles below on the Corporate Watch site will be
of particular interest to anyone on the Cyber Society list interested in
trade, technology, and intellectual property issues. John].
WHAT'S NEW ON CORPORATE WATCH
The Watchdog on the Web <http://www.corpwatch.org>
November 17, 1999
OUR SPECIAL WTO SEATTLE COVERAGE BEGINS NOW!
http://www.corpwatch.org/feature/index.html
Who Owns the WTO?
When officials from 134 countries and tens of thousands of protestors
from around the world descend on Seattle later this month for the World
Trade Organization summit, Corporate Watch will be there.
We will be doing daily updates on the web as well as co-hosting World
Trade Watch, a nationally and internationally syndicated radio
broadcast. We are covering this historic summit because the decisions of
this world body affect our daily lives, from the air we breathe, to the
food we eat to our access to information.
Our special WTO coverage begins with "Who Owns the WTO?" We've put
together articles and fact sheets that look at who's who in the Seattle
Host Organization and others that follow the corporate money. Our
Feature includes:
7 Case studies on WTO rulings
7 What issues to watch for in Seattle
7 Actvist perspectives from around the world
7 Current News Stories...and more
7 Take Action! No New Round
We will update Corporate Watch daily from Seattle starting on Monday,
November 29th and running throughout the week. In addition to our
in-depth feature, you will be able to listen to the audio of World Trade
Watch Radio, get daily headlines and check out photos of breaking events
and protests.
So, go to the Feature, Who Owns the WTO? before the Seattle Round opens
and come back for daily coverage starting November 29th.
Look at the list of stations carrying World Trade Watch radio or contact
wtw@radioproject.org to find out how you can get us on your local
airwaves.
TAKE ACTION!
http://www.corpwatch.org/corner/alert/wto.html
Tell US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky to declare a
moratorium on further WTO negotiations. Citizens around the world are
demanding that the WTO review its decisions and repair damage they've
done to the environment and human rights. Add your voice, send a FREE
FAX today!
SUPPORT Corporate Watch:
We depend on donations from people like you. Make a donation through
the web at https://swww.igc.apc.org/trac/donation.html
Or send us a tax deductible US bank check or international money order
in US dollars make out to TRAC/Tides to PO Box 29344, San Francisco, CA
94129.
###
_____________________________________________________________
Have you seen our List Picks of The Week?
Get Informed, Entertained, Enlightened at Topica.
http://www.topica.com/t/7
______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, write to CyberSociety-unsubscribe@listbot.com
Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 10:50:48 -0500 (EST)
From: David Mandl <dmandl@panix.com>
Subject: WSJ on WTO
FYI: Exceedingly lame article on the anti-WTO movement from today's
Wall Street Journal
-----------------------------------
[The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition]
November 18, 1999
Politics & Policy
As Personal Income Increases,
So Do the Cries of Social Dissent
By BOB DAVIS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Late this month in Seattle, thousands of protesters organized by area
churches plan to ring a World Trade Organization conference and make a plea
for rich nations to forgive the debts of poor ones. "We need to correct the
imbalances," says the Rev. John Boonstra, who heads the Washington
Association of Churches.
The protest reflects the most contemporary of concerns: whether the poor
benefit from the global economy. But it also taps a tradition that runs
deeply through U.S. history. During times of prosperity, social movements
focusing on moral issues come to the fore.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prosperity and Protest
During times of prosperity, social movements focusing on moral issues come
to the fore.
ERA ECONOMY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Abolitionism, communal
1846-1857 Gold rush, railroad living
boom
experiments
1896-1907 Gilded Age Progressive era,
prohibitionism
Consumer buying Nativism,
1922-1929 spree, anti-immigration
stock-market boom measures
1950s Post-World War II Civil-rights movement
boom
Vietnam War protests,
1960s Boom continues youth
rebellion
Late 1990s Information-age ???
economy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abolitionism gained momentum during the gold rush and railroad booms of the
1840s and 1850s, prohibition during the Gilded Age at the turn of the
century, and civil rights during the post-World War II era. Some of the
movements seem deplorable today; during the Roaring '20s, blacks, Asians and
other ethnic groups were repressed because they didn't seem sufficiently
"American."
"Prosperity gives people who want to start movements a sense that they can
get the resources together," says Michael Kazin, a Georgetown University
historian. "Movements aren't usually made up of people who are desperate."
'Values Trump Economics'
Social movements don't appear merely because a society is wealthy, of
course. But economic growth is an important element. When personal income
rises and individuals become increasingly confident about their future,
economic worries begin to fade, and social issues are spotlighted. "Values
trump economics in economic good times," says David King, a Harvard
University political scientist.
For the past few years, personal incomes have been rising, inflation is down
and unemployment is at a decades-long low. That is hardly enough time for
'60s-style mass movements to develop. But historians say that a number of
activist causes today have the potential to capture national attention.
Churches and other religious organizations are often involved --
institutions that the largely secular mass media tend to overlook. For
instance, many conservative and evangelical churches have made commitments
to help women once on welfare to find and hold jobs. The Christian Women's
Job Corps in Birmingham, Ala., recruits and trains volunteers in about 110
locations around the country. They serve as "mentors" for at least one year
to help former welfare recipients find child care, arrange transportation
and navigate the other problems that crop up in the job world.
Role of Religious Instruction
Religious instruction plays an important role. "When someone is introduced
to Bible study, they find a support system they never had before," says
Trudy Johnson, director of Job Corps.
Although the mixture of social counseling and religious instruction makes
some secular advocates of the poor uncomfortable, Vice President Al Gore and
Texas Gov. George W. Bush have courted the activist groups. Appearing at a
Salvation Army adult-rehabilitation center in Atlanta, Mr. Gore talked of a
"dramatic transformation in America," which he identified as "a newly
vigorous grass-roots movement tied to nonprofit institutions, many of them
faith-based and values-based organizations."
Church members' welfare activism makes them aware of other political issues
-- politicizing them, in the lingo of the '60s. Many of the new issues
involve the global economy. "There is an overlap," says Ms. Johnson, ticking
off issues such as debt relief and sweatshop conditions abroad. "We have had
to learn a lot about fair trade."
On U.S. campuses, improving working conditions in foreign sweatshops is a
burgeoning cause. Organized under the banner of United Students Against
Sweatshop, activists are pressuring college administrators to guarantee that
T-shirts and other goods printed with college logos aren't imported from
factories that violate basic labor rights. The effort is led by several
student activists who learned organizing techniques during summer
internships in 1997 with Unite, the textile-workers union. As part of their
campaign, students at the University of Michigan held a sit-in at an
administrator's office.
Eric Brakken, the group's national organizer, says the students want
universities to disclose the names and locations of the factories and
dismiss a Clinton administration-led effort to get clothing makers to agree
on codes of conduct as a "whitewash." But Terry Collingsworth, general
counsel of the International Labor Rights Fund, a church-backed group, says
that the student activities could backfire by prompting importers to switch
factories -- and leave poor workers jobless.
Echo of the 1960s
Todd Gitlin, a New York University sociologist who studies social protest,
says the sweatshop movement echoes '60s student causes because both made a
link between "moral passion and the university environment."
Starting Nov. 29, globalization issues will be at the forefront of protests,
as the WTO, the international body that sets trade rules, meets in Seattle
to launch a new round of global trade negotiations. Thousands of activists
are expected, with the bulk consisting of union members who worry about a
classic pocketbook issue: Expanded imports could threaten their jobs.
But many of the others expected in Seattle will focus on predominantly moral
issues: Do rules crafted to expand trade internationally conflict with
environmental laws in different countries? Will worker protections become
obsolete if companies find it even easier to invest abroad? Do nations
themselves become outmoded if capital and goods controlled by private
investors determine a nation's economic prospects?
Mike Dolan, who is coordinating the protests, says he relies on local
churches to help organize teach-ins and seminars on the subjects. "It's not
coincidental that the principal venues we have organized for our parallel
critique of the WTO are all churches," he says.
During another period of prosperity, the Gilded Age, another group of
reformers asked similar questions about the role of big business in the
economy. The Progressives successfully pushed for stiff enforcement of laws
to break up monopolies and to regulate food and drugs.
But the protesters in Seattle face a more difficult challenge. The
Progressives could argue that government ought to contain corporate power.
But now that corporate power is transnational, few are arguing for
transnational bodies to regulate them. Indeed one of the themes of the
antiglobalization protesters is that international bodies, such as the WTO,
already have too much power.
But the dilemma hasn't dimmed the enthusiasm of protesters. "Economic
justice is strongly biblical," says the Rev. Boonstra. "It's a uniting point
and brings together people of faith."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
URL for this Article:
http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB94288558590678116.djm
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net