----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Hart-Landsberg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The discussion of Cancun is interesting but... < snip> ...the question I would like to pose concerns how best to deal with this situation. Should our conversations about the WTO remain focused on agriculture and the need to demand an end to subsidies for agri- business so as to help the third world? ======================= With the usual caveats on errors etc. I would propose that on the issue of ag. we pull what we need from the way some greens are critiquing the US subsidies/patronage system: http://www.iisd.org/economics/subsidies/perverse_subsidies.asp If the establishment were *serious* about free trade the US would have gone unilateralist on farm subsidies etc. a decade or two ago. Demanding they go unilateralist on that sector doesn't seem too much to ask, sympathies to what Peter Bohmer is saying notwithstanding. Plenty of Kaldor-Hicks mechanisms could be put in place to 'protect the workers and not the jobs.' > Or should we also be finding a way to reignite attention on and concern about these other agreements? And if so how should we do it? Obviously the U.S. is going to push them in the FTAA and other venues, and I hear very few progressives discussing this and strategizing over what we should do about it. So, how can we build opposition to government procurement and somehow tie that work into revitalizing a sense of the importance of public services. Are there ongoing struggles that can be tapped? What about the service agreement? How do we make connections between these agreements and the Bush attempt to commodify and marketize our lives? ===================== Link the other issues; investment agreements, gov. procurement, GATS etc. to all the examples we have of failed privatizations/corp.'welfare'/rent seeking/crony capitalism that folks can find in just about any newspaper or agitprop magazine. 'The same people who brought you Enron want to give you the FTAA etc.' kind of storytelling. > It is probably worth noting that these other agreements would also greatly hurt third world working people so this struggle against them is not just a developed capitalist struggle. ===================== The key issue, at this stage of the struggle is to couch alot of the stuff our adversaries are trying to pull off as the socialization of risks and costs and the privatization of gains. Obviously that's not the whole story, but it makes for a storytelling ear grabber that people can relate to the kinds of politics they know is going on in their own town/metropole. The 'democracy deficit' issue never loses in a conversation or debate. As regards the FTAA and the one-two inside/outside strategies, I would say demand number one should be the complete unequivocal termination of the US embargo against Cuba and the immediate cessation of all CIA activity with regards to not only that country but every nation in the hemisphere those murderers have a footrint. If the US negotiating team won't even listen to that bargaining move the whole world will know whatever treaty emerges, if there is one, will be a complete fraud. As for other possible positive demands: 1)A hemispheric judicial forum for enviro. and labor rights torts. Since many of the countries in the hemisphere don't have decent judicial systems - fro a partial explanation, see CIA reference above- one ought to be created that goes well beyond the court for capital that's in place in NAFTA. The mere existence of the latter shows it's possible to achieve the former. 2)Any institutionalization of analytical models of the hemispheric political economy must incorporate all the insights gleaned thus far from ecological economics/environmental accounting/materials flow analysis/pollution metrics etc. etc. They must also include mandatory reporting requirements for all firms engaging in commerce in more than one country to open it's books on all financial data, project management strategies as they pertain to environmental impacts etc. 3)A regional office of the ILO should be created to track labor relations in the hemisphere. Obviously alot more could be said on this score but that's for other posters as I'm going to shut up now.... Ian
