------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: •••@••.••• Subject: #1] "New World Order" & optimism around citizen & NGO activists Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 12:06:43 Dear John: I share your concern about the growing imperialism in the world today which some would call "New World Order" and the " power of their media machine." However I am not entirely pessimistic - because there are so many thousands of citizen's and NGO's molilizing across many fronts to attempt to stay the growing corporatism and fascim of transnational corporations and their manservant governments and the international mafia of organizations such as the World Trade Organization, IMF, World Bank, and NATO amongst others -which constitute the machinery of this "New World Order". Some of these other fronts in addition to the anti-war and peace movement that are being fought include - the fight against the MAI which I was integrally involved in on the mai-not list which fought to prevent the signing of an egregious 'multilateral agreement on investment' which would have been the third pillar of the "global economy" following trade and finance. The MAI was being drafted in more or less secret in the basement of the OECD in Paris when two Canadians Maude Barlow and Tony Clark released it to the world. It was [ is] basically a treaty to entrench corporate rule ! However a massive mobilization of NGO's across all domains of interest [some 700] and hundreds of citizens stopped the signing - there is growing analysis on how a " ragtag band of internet activists" as the media portrayed the movement were involved in a new arean for global democracy - the internet. The fight still goes on in other venues as the MAI's content keeps croppingup in bi-lateral agreements, the proposaed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas [FTAA] the recent America Africa Agreement which Jesse Jackson fought so ardently to humanize and most notably the battle has shifted to the next round of the WTO coming up in Seattle- but there is a massive mobilization around that meeting as well!! And within this movement against globalization and its multifarous facets there are emerging alternative economic, political, environemntal, social voices, movements and policies as well. There has been and continues to be massive mobilization around genetically engineered food coming form Europe , the UK and India in particular as many on this list would well know- . Although it seems an uphill battle where citizens must be constantly on the watch in an era where national governments and the new world economic governance organizations have reneged on regulatory measures for the "common good" in exchange for efficiency, and profit while attmetpting to manufacture consent for many unproven attributions of GMO's etc. - in spite of that and the recalcitrance of governments to any longer "govern" for the common good- the citizen in their new role as citizen consumer seems to be making a difference if not in convincing their anti-democratic governments then directly in the marketplace where distributors and foodchains are taking a second look at what consumers want and don't want -- hence assisting a few gains recenlty in this major incursion of the "new world order" Following on that an advertising standards association yesterday upheld 9 of 14 complaints against the veracity of the advertising of Monsanto- and Monsanto released a major apology. And likewise another battle of the "new world - bigger is better -order" is also being played out in India just as the "Quit India" Monsanto campaign is raging so also are citizens and women in particular mobilizing in the Narmada Valley - against "Big Dams " displacing traditional lifestyle of tribal and peasant peoples without considering the full costs and manifest past failures of such structures. As Arundhati Roy - the tireless campaigner in that struggle among others including the anti-nuclear one as well has recently stated: " We have to fight specific wars in specific ways. Who knows, perhaps that's what the twenty-first century has in store for us. The dismantling of the Big. Big bombs, big dams, big ideologies, big contradictions, big countries, big wars, big heroes, big mistakes. Perhaps it will be the Century of the Small." http://www.the-hindu.com/fline/fl1611/16110040.htm FRONTLINE, Volume 16 - Issue 11, May. 22 - June 04, 1999 COVER ESSAY - THE GREATER COMMON GOOD And there is the fight against TNC pharmaceutical solutions to world poverty and population control which usurps women's reproductive rights and the proven and promised but reneged upon role of education and health programs for women in engendering meaningful development in underdeveloped communities and regions - a battle being courageously waged by a small but articulate and empowered band of international feminists. And then the fight against the unethical and unsustainable and unthinkable actions of NATO in Europe - - the new global cop of the new world order and the concern you speak of but again I don't dispair entirely for we have seen some significant mobilization around that issue and the fall out of the War in the Balkans is not over yet!! Re NATO and the "New World Order". Hear ye what Tony Blair sayeth: Speaking in the US and applauded by American Hawks --- Blair insisted that all national governments must be encouraged to abide by the dictates of the world market--as laid down by the international Monetary Fund and the World Bank--and allow the penetration of their economies by the transnational corporations in the name of "transparency" and "openness". Globalisation is not just an economic, "but also a political and security phenomenon," he insisted. The dependence of national economies on the performance of world stock markets means that "We are witnessing the beginnings of a new doctrine of international community." This required that all the institutions established at the end of the Second World War to regulate relations between nations be overhauled--particularly the respective functions of the United Nations and NATO. Blair explicitly linked the question of financial Interdependence with the military policy to be pursued by the major imperialist powers. [From the WSWS circa early June - sorry don't haven't the exact reference date and URL at hand.] And on and on - the battles against the "new world order continue with their modest successes against what seems to constitute insurmountable odds. But what I started out to do is to agree with you on the power of the media in perpetrating the "New World Order" and to forward to you and the list two articles on "globalization" which provide comprehensive and insightful analyses of this phenomenon of "Globalization" each with a reference to the petinent role of the media machine of the " New World Order" and both articles which also offer hope through the very awarenss, action and mobilization we have been considering above!! I am forwarding the two articles separately because of their length. Fwd #2 ] Susan George's paper delivered at the CONFERENCE ON ECONOMIC SOVEREIGNTY IN A GLOBALISING WORLD http://www.millennium-round.org/ BANGKOK, 24-26 MARCH 1999 A SHORT HISTORY OF NEO-LIBERALISM: TWENTY YEARS OF ELITE ECONOMICS AND EMERGING OPPORTUNITIES FOR STRUCTURAL CHANGE Fwd #3 Edward Henman's THE THREAT OF GLOBALIZATION ".... while globalization may sometimes yield economic benefits, both the process and economic-political regime it is helping bring about threaten progressive ends, and should be recognized as such and fought at every level." ----Edward S. Herman, Professor Emeritus of Finance, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania all the very best, janet eaton
