-Caveat Lector- >From http://ic.voxcap.com/issues/issue316/item7091.asp IntellectualCapital {{<Begin>}} The Message From Europe by Martin Walker Thursday, November 04, 1999 Comments: 1 posts LE BUGUE, Dordogne -- Here in the heart of France's Perigord region -- gastronomic home of foie gras and truffles and the medieval battleground of France and Britain during the Hundred Years War of the 14th century -- the locals are lining up to see their own home movie. "The Messenger", the biggest blockbuster the French cinema has produced in a decade, was filmed amid the old walled towns and castles of this photogenic landscape, and many of the locals were extras. A costume drama with big battles, this film about the peasant maid who heard divine voices and rallied the dispirited French armies to defeat the British, was made by Luc Besson. After directing "The Fifth Element," he is one of the few French directors bankable in Hollywood. But facing the uphill struggle of patriotism of foreign moviegoers when it leaves welcoming French cinemas to face the Hollywood-dominated global market, the film is still a risky bet. In many ways it embodies France's demand that the upcoming world trade talks in Seattle accept that free markets and culture do not necessarily mix. French leaders argue that the French film industry deserves state subsidies and protection against Hollywood. But France, with a host of big concerns to raise in Seattle, has made a crucial concession. During the last Uruguay Round trade talks that ended six years ago, France held out for "a cultural exception," a ban on even discussing audio-visual and cultural issues. But now, in order to get a common position among the European Union (EU) states at Seattle, France will settle for the protection of "cultural diversity" -- which means that this time the whole issue is up for discussion. What's at stake France and the EU, which first proposed the new Millennium Round trade conference, conceded because they have a much wider agenda to push. The United States wants to restrict the Seattle talks to a few key topics like dropping subsidies and non-tariff barriers on agriculture, financial and other services. But the EU wants to expand the scope. The EU proposed reforms making it impossible for the US to use unilateral trade sanctions The EU Commission, still smarting from a series of bruising trade rows with the United States, has proposed a series of major reforms that would make it impossible for the United States to use unilateral trade sanctions. First, the Europeans want "a framework of binding competition rules, encompassing key elements of a competition law structure." That would stop American hopes of using their massive stock markets to buy up competitors, and undermine U.S. domination in fields like computing. Second, the EU wants to block "extra-territoriality," the American insistence that their domestic laws apply to foreign companies seeking business in third countries like Cuba or Iraq. Just so Washington gets the point, the text of the proposal from the Brussels-based Commission to EU governments says this is designed "to prevent any country from exploiting its dominant position." Third, the EU wants "labeling schemes to provide consumers with comprehensive details of production methods." This means big signs warning that U.S. beef exports contain hormones, and that many other food products include genetically modified organisms (GMOs) with uncertain health consequences. This is the polite, bureaucratic version of attacks by French farmers on McDonalds restaurants. Fourth, to win over its own Green lobby, the EU is proposing that the Millennium Round adopt a general principle of "sustainable development." This will mean that all big new investment projects anywhere must undergo "sustainability impact assessments," similar to the environmental impact assessments that many U.S. businesses find so burdensome at home. The global dominance debate There is more than just trade at stake here. As Europe's new Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy warned the Europe-American Business Council in Washington, "disputes are in my view inevitable -- we are running into more and more behind- the-border, non-tariff measures based on sharply different societal values." Europeans are more eco-minded than their American counterparts; they are more suspicious of GMOs and the U.S.-dominated agri-industry; and they are more prepared to protect their small farmers and the distinctive countryside they help sustain. The Seattle meeting is just the start of a three-year process that will see hard bargaining between the United States and the European Union. The United States is constantly at risk of being isolated if it tries to block the EU's big agenda. And as the 900-pound gorilla of the global economy, the United States has a huge interest in liberalizing trade in all goods and services. American negotiators, with an eye on Congress where the 30 senators from the farming states will jump at a deal that opens markets to U.S. food exports, will have to pick their compromises with care. But Hollywood's Washington lobbyists may have a new issue. Trying to win "Joan of Arc" a clear opening run in French cinemas, Besson has found his new movie clashing with the producers of the American blockbuster, "The Phantom Menace," who are insisting on five-week screening contracts with Europe's cinema chains. "I felt like a French peasant confronted with a McDonalds,� Besson said, calling on the EU to help by applying their rules on free competition. Martin Walker, former European editor of The Guardian, is a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute in New York. He is also a contributing editor of IntellectualCapital.com. His e-mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED] {{<End>}} >From http://ic.voxcap.com/issues/issue316/item7103.asp IntellectualCapital {{<Begin>}} Last Stop for Corporate Globalization by Mark Weisbrot Thursday, November 04, 1999 Comments: 20 posts It is being billed in advance as the "protest of the century." A thousand non- governmental organizations (NGOs), and tens of thousands of people are expected to demonstrate their opposition to the World Trade Organization in Seattle beginning Nov. 29. How did something as arid and seemingly removed from people's lives as "the Third Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization" manage to attract this kind of opposition? The wrong place at the wrong time Most of America slept right through the birth of this 134-nation organization five years ago -- including many in Congress who voted to ratify U.S. membership. In fall 1994 Ralph Nader's Public Citizen offered $10,000 to any member of Congress that would read the 500-page treaty and answer 10 simple questions to prove they had read it. Sen. Hank Brown of Colorado, a Republican who had voted for NAFTA and planned to vote for the WTO, took the bet. He passed the quiz with a perfect score, collected the winnings (for a charity of his choice), and then proceeded to announce that having read the agreement, he felt compelled to vote against it. It passed anyway, but if it were up for a vote today it would probably lose. Why the fuss? To be sure, the WTO wields considerably less power in the international economy than other, similar institutions in which our government plays the leading role. The International Monetary Fund and its sister institution, the World Bank, for example, probably do more damage to humanity and our natural environment in a typical month than the WTO has done since it set up shop. But the WTO is meeting in the wrong place at the wrong time. The U.S. public has grown increasingly tired and suspicious of the whole process of "corporate globalization," in which the ability of multinational corporations to profit from expanding trade and commerce is assumed to be identical with the public interest. The protectionist WTO The debate is about who will be protected from unrestrained competition It is important to realize that the argument here is not "free trade vs. protectionism," as it is often framed by proponents of corporate globalization looking for a straw man to beat up on. The WTO is quite protectionist, and no friend of free markets, when it comes to the "intellectual property rights" -- patents, copyrights, and other monopolies created for the benefit of major corporations. Of course it is true that the monopoly profits received, for example, by pharmaceutical companies with patented drugs, are sometimes used to finance further research and development. But this is not necessarily the most efficient or effective means of financing the necessary research, and laws that balance competing interests on this issue vary greatly from country to country. Yet the WTO has adopted as its mission to protect and expand these monopolies for multinational corporations. So the real debate is not about protectionism, but rather who will be protected from the ravages of unrestrained competition. For the WTO, it is certainly not employees or the poor. The organization has no rules for the benefit of those who labor. Without any such standards, as the public has become increasingly aware, the majority of people can actually lose from expanding trade. The rapid expansion of our trade with Mexico over the last two decades, for example, has actually left workers on both sides of the border with a lower real wage than they had in the 1970s. Nor does the environment or public safety merit protection from the WTO. In every case brought to the organization that challenged environmental or public- safety legislation, the challengers won. When foreign commercial shrimp-fishing interests challenged the protection of giant sea turtles in our Endangered Species Act, the poor turtles -- who have glided through the Earth's oceans for 150 million years -- did not stand a chance. When it was Venezuelan oil interests versus the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's air-quality standards for imported gasoline, the oil interests won. When it was U.S. cattle producers against the European Union's ban on hormone- treated beef, European consumers lost. The list goes on -- and it would get a lot longer if the Clinton administration has its way in Seattle. One of the top items on its agenda is the much-dreaded "Global Free Logging Agreement," which would lead to increased unsustainable logging worldwide and threaten a number of initiatives to protect domestic forests. Last stop, Seattle These results are hardly surprising, given the way the deck has been stacked. Tribunals, in which the proceedings are kept secret, make the decisions. The judges tend to represent a narrow range of opinion on economic and social issues, and no conflict-of-interest rules prevent them from ruling on a case in which they have a direct financial stake in the outcome. This is the purpose of the WTO: to avoid the democratic processes and accountability (however scarce) that exist in the member nations, so that the rules that govern international trade and commerce can be made by those who run it. In the latest issue of Business Week, Jeffrey Garten, dean of the Yale School of Management, warns that if the NGOs are "are allowed to hijack the WTO talks, it will be a dangerous precedent that every government and every global company will regret long after the protests in Seattle." But this is just the kind of precedent that the world needs right now. The opposition is demanding that there be no new round of negotiations, and it's looking more and more like they are going to win. The Clinton administration's offer to establish a "working group" within the WTO to discuss labor rights is too little, too late. This World Trade Organization never is going to make any rules that would infringe on the prerogatives of corporations, for the benefit of labor or the environment; it will self-destruct before that happens. The train of corporate globalization -- with "trade first, people last" as its guiding principle -- has been headed in the wrong direction for a long time. Before it can turn around, it must be brought to a halt. Last stop: Seattle 1999. Mark Weisbrot is research director of the Preamble Center, in Washington, D.C. {{<End>}} A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." 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