USAID - BEYAZ SARAYDAN DEPREM BRIFINGI -BASIN BILDIRISI (fwd)

[Federation of Turkish American Associations]

>>><<>><<>><>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<><
<>>><<>><<>><>><<> T U R K I S H   F O R U M >><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>
>>><<>><<>><>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<><
Federation of Turkish American Associations, Inc. 
821 United Nations Plaza, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10017 
Tel: (212) 682-7688 Fax: (212) 687-3026

BASIN BILDIRISI - 5 Eylul, 1999

Genis Bilgi icin :  Egemen Bagis, Genel Sekreter(212) 697-0509
Nevzat Ayar, Baskan Yardimcisi  (212) 986-2448

BEYAZ SARAYDAN DEPREM BRIFINGI

Beyaz  Saray yetkilileri ABD devletinin deprem sonrasi Turkiye’ye yaptigi 
katkilari anlatmak ve bundan sonraki yardimlar hakkinda karsilikli gorus alis 
verisi yapmak uzere ABD’de yerlesik Turk toplumunun liderlerini ve yardim 
kuruluslarinin temsilcilerini Beyaz Saray’a davet ederek bir brifing verdi. 

ABD Devlet Baskanligi Mustesar Yardimcisi (Deputy Chief of Staff) Maria 
Echaveste baskanliginda gerceklestirilen toplantiya New York merkezli Turk 
Amerikan Dernekleri Federasyonu Baskani Dr. Ata Erim, Genel Sekreteri Egemen 
Bagis, Baskan yardimcilarindan Nevzat Ayar, Washington merkezli Turk Amerikan 
Dernekleri Asamblesi Baskani Tolga Cubukcu, Icra Direktoru Guler Koknar ve 
yardimcisi Aylin Acikalin, New York merkezli Turk Is Forumu Baskani Erol 
Benjenk ve yardimcisi Erden Arkan. Washinton Merkezli Amerikan Turk Konseyi 
Icra Direktoru Jennifer Snyder davet uzerine katildilar. 

Toplantinin acilis konusmasi ABD Devlet Baskanligi Mustesar Yardimcisi 
(Deputy Chief of Staff) Maria Echaveste yaptiktan sonra sozu Amerika 
Uluslararasi Yardim ve Gelistirme Teskilati  (US Agency for International 
Development) Genel Muduru Brady Anderson’a verdi. Kurulusunun calismalari 
hakkinda bilgi veren Anderson daha sonra sorulan sorulari cevapladi. 

Turk Amerikan Dernekleri Federasyonu  Genel Sekreteri Egemen Bagis soz alarak 
Turk toplumun sukranlarini dile getirdi.  Turk Amerikan Dernekleri 
Federasyonu Baskani Dr. Ata Erim ise ABD yonetiminin onumuzdeki yilin 
butcesini hazirlarken Turkiye’ye ciddi kapsamli bir yardim paketinn 
konulacagini temenni ettiklerini belirtti. 

Toplanti sonrasi kendi aralarinda da ayri bir toplanti yapan toplum liderleri 
ileriye donuk ortak projeler konusunu gorustuler. Federasyon 2. Baskani Kaya 
Buyukataman’in da onayi alinarak kendisinin yonetiminde bulunan bilgisayar 
agindan da faydalanilarak, ABD makamlarina tesekkur kampanyasi baslatilmasi 
kararlastirilan konular arasinda yer aldi.

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 basinb~1.doc

Re: THE ECONOMY GREAT BUT SOME SUFFER

[Ray E. Harrell]

Johnny Holiday said: (snip)

> Technocracy contends that to understand today’s society, one must have
> an understanding of how our age differs from those of yesterday. Part of
> the organization’s research: Since the dawn of civilization, mankind has
> lived in primitive societies and austerity was an imposed condition that
> only a limited few could escape from. Conditions were barbaric with
> scarcity of the wherewithal of life as the main controlling factor of
> people’s actions. Life was rough and cruel. Working from dawn to dusk
> and living short lives at backbreaking toil prevailed. Wars were
> constant.

Grossly inaccurate.  Sounds like you are selling something.
The Puritans and other immigrants came here with skills
that were not consonant with what had been developed but
they did not have the technology to live anywhere other than
where indigeneous people had died out due to their diseases.

On the other hand there are many environments of plenty
such as polynesia and the rain forests where strategies were
worked out that included a lot of leisure time.  Europe itself
had more trouble with its political and religious systems than
it did with food and shelter until the great plagues.  But the
short and brutish life described by certain social scientists and
philosophers with a religio-economic agenda has been greatly
exaggerated.

> Selfishness and greed were omnipresent. Nevertheless, there never was a
> lack of self-rightious people preaching and preaching. They might as
> well have been preaching to the wind as far as changing human being’s
> behavior. Why?

Actually they absorbed the older behaviour like theMithrians and the Celts
because their cultures worked.
Even the Roman Catholic Cardinal's hat is of Mithric
origin not to mention the four directional shaman's
circle found around the world including the Sistine
Chapel.  As for wars, over the last thousand years
it has been about one war every 25 years on average.
The invention of canning and the importation of certain
foods like potatos from the Americas, made European
armies more able to travil than before.  That and the
new rifle technology speeded up the occurance of
wars into the modern age.  But there are many who
know more about this than I on this list.  I'm just the
local art's administrator.

> Technocracy finds that the environment dictates behavior.

Yes but

> In scarcity
> conditions, selfishness and greed are the major components of the
> prevailing drive for survival.

Actually there is quite a bit of research to the contrary.It seems that
scarcity creates teams as strategies
for survival.

> Yes, one strived for one’s family to
> live. If your neighbor could or couldn’t live, that was up for grabs.

I'm sure this was true in societies that were broken downby stress from
plagues, wars, oppresive political systems
or proscylitization,  but generally this is over simple.

> There was hardly a year that some war was not being fought somewhere.

one every 25 years on the average in Europe.  As for thepre-contact America,
the histories are all myth.  They
don't have a clue and don't bother them.  It upsets
their forcing others to play out their fantasies.   First
it was the White Man's Burden, then it was animal
experimentation and now it is robotics.  Each makes it
easy to avoid learning one's self.


> Technocracy advises North Americans that today we have the wherewithal
> to turn yesterday’s way of life completely on its head.
> Science/technology, not politics, makes this possible. But to turn life
> on its head, we have to make a huge change. The change involved has
> nothing to do with morality nor with an attempt to bring into existence
> a Utopia. Such thinking belongs to dreamers.

Cute.  You may have something worthwhile but yourlanguage is not up to your
claims.

> We must initiate a social structure that is compatible with modern
> times, with our scientific-technological age. Technocracy has laid out a
> design of social operation meets modern day requirements. The design is
> called Technocracy’s Technological Social Design. Check it out.

Where is it?  I looked up the Technocracy web site and didn't
find it.

REH

Labour Day message from United Church moderator

[Melanie Milanich]

Labour Day message from The Right Rev. Dr. Bill Phipps, Moderator of
theUnited Church of Canada
as printed in the Toronto Star, Monday, Sept. 6, 1999, p.A9

"Thanking People Who Do Real Work"
   Work. Vocation. Job. Calling. The nature of work and how we view it
is changing rapidly.
With cell phones glued to the ear and constant access though personal
computers, many people are "working" all the time.
With downsizing, cutbacks and wage depression, many more are scrambling
to survive.
   What is happening?
A few years ago, a lawyer friend told me that work wasn't fun
anymore.  Although, he is highly successful,
the pressure to bill clients for every possible minute was becoming
oppressive.  Competition and the pursuit
of ever increasing profits deflated his love of practising law.
Another friend, a "hot shot"  in the corporate world, confesses that
his valuesoften conflict with the profit-
driven bottom line.  People are expendable.  Money, ever-larger profits
and so-called efficiency are the only
things that matter. He feels trapped.
Other people I meet are struggling at part-time jobs with no
benefits and little future.  Young people wonder
about the benefit of university graduation with huge debt and no
apparent career opportunity.
 Labour Day used to be a day of celebration.
 We valued the dignity of real work, the contribution of all to the
common good with reasonable compensation
to the individual.  With globalizaiton and the market as god mentality,
this has all changed.  People are seen, not as
human beings but as "human resources" picked upand discarded as easily
as anyother piece of equipment.
  We were once citizens of a vibrant democracy.
  Now, we are commodities valued only as consumers in one hugh
impersonal global market. With some exceptions,
the idea of a large corporation being loyal to its employees and
thecommunity is almost quaint.  Similarly the dignity of human
work is eroding in the devotion to profit at any cost.  Our values are
changing.  We are losing our communal moral moorings.
 Why it is we value speculators who make millions on the casino-like
global financial markets, yet  devalue the real work of
teachers, nurses, socialworkers, farmers?  Why is it we seek to emulate
people with exorbitant wealth, yet pay ridiculously low
wages to child-care workers and those who look after the elderly?
 Why do we squeeze the life out of those who grow our food, teach
our children, care for the sick, while we coddle the
money changers?
 At one stroke, the governemnts in Alberta and Ontario declare
nurses redundnat. A few years later, they say we need them back.
We play with people's lives.  Just another unit to be bought and
trashed.
 The economy is booming you say?  Well it is for the fortunate few
at the top of the money ladder.  Yet for the 60 per cent of
Canadians whose income is less than it was 15 years ago, life is often a
fear-filled struggle.  Incredibly, 10 per cent unemployment
is now considered normal--though not by those who are unemployed.
  For the poorest it is a disaster.
  Twenty-five years ago most of the poorest Canadians had some kind
of employment.  Today, most do not.  Since the free trade
agreement with the United States, 37 of our largest corporations have
laid off nearly 30 per cent of their employees--some 215,000
people--while revenue increased.  Brain washed by the inevitable magic
of the market, we are allowing dangerous divisions to infest our social
fabric.
 ...This Labour Day, I thank those who do real work, who grow
our food, create local busiensses, teach our children, build our
shelter, care for the sick,produce products we need.  I challenge all of
us to think about  what we truly value and why.
There is so much creative work to be done in enhancing life,
expanding well-beingforthose from whom it is being taken away,
and building a society of genuine enterprise and self respect.  To do so
requires a change of mind and heart.



*
The CBC also has a program on the 20% of the working population that is
being stressed out with overwork, overtime, long hours
and taking home work.

Re: THE ECONOMY GREAT BUT SOME SUFFER

[Victor Milne]

- Original Message -
From: Johnny Holiday/John A. Taube <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: September 05, 1999 2:12 PM
Subject: THE ECONOMY GREAT BUT SOME SUFFER


THE ECONOMY GREAT BUT SOME SUFFER

[snip]

Technocracy contends that to understand today's society, one must have
an understanding of how our age differs from those of yesterday. Part of
the organization's research: Since the dawn of civilization, mankind has
lived in primitive societies and austerity was an imposed condition that
only a limited few could escape from. Conditions were barbaric with
scarcity of the wherewithal of life as the main controlling factor of
people's actions. Life was rough and cruel. Working from dawn to dusk
and living short lives at backbreaking toil prevailed. Wars were
constant.

Selfishness and greed were omnipresent. Nevertheless, there never was a
lack of self-rightious people preaching and preaching. They might as
well have been preaching to the wind as far as changing human being's
behavior. Why?

Technocracy finds that the environment dictates behavior. In scarcity
conditions, selfishness and greed are the major components of the
prevailing drive for survival. Yes, one strived for one's family to
live. If your neighbor could or couldn't live, that was up for grabs.
There was hardly a year that some war was not being fought somewhere.

**

Though superficially common sensical, the above premise (that scarcity
engenders selfishness) is not borne out in reality.

Here in Canada the statistics show that the biggest per capita contributions
to charities come from the poorest regions of the country like Newfoundland
and Cape Breton. I imagine it's the same in other nations. In Toronto
panhandlers find the most generous response in poor neighbourhoods.

Victor

Re: The Hungersite.com

[Christoph Reuss]

TUN MYINT forwarded:
> Don't forget about the food revolution that is going on right now!
>
> www.thehungersite.com
>
> Go there, click on a button, and give food to hungry people through the UN
> food program. Sponsoring companies are paying for the feast.

The idea is interesting, but since the site only pays 3 cents per click
(of which only 2 cents actually pay for the food), it costs me more to
surf there  than  to donate the 3 cents directly to a hunger relief
organization.

And since this page only allows 1 click per day, even if you click every day,
you can only "score" less than $8 per year.  I guess it's more efficient
to donate $12 directly in a single transaction...

Chris

Fw: The Criminal Element

[Michael Gurstein]

- Original Message - 
From: Michael Givel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, September 06, 1999 5:04 PM
Subject: The Criminal Element


> 
> The Criminal Element
> By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
> 
> The criminal element has seeped deep into every nook and cranny of
> American society.
>  
> Forget about the underworld -- these crooks dominate every aspect of
> our market, culture, and politics.
>  
> They cast a deep dark shadow over life in turn of the century
> America.
>  
> We buy gas from them (Exxon, Chevron, Unocal).
>  
> We take pictures with their cameras and film (Eastman Kodak).
>  
> We drink their beer (Coors).
>  
> We buy insurance from them to guard against financial catastrophe if
> we get sick (Blue Cross Blue Shield).
>  
> And then when we get sick, we buy pharmaceuticals from them (Pfizer,
> Warner Lambert, Ortho Pharmaceuticals).
>  
> We do our laundry washers and dryers from them (General Electric).
>  
> We vacation with them (Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines).
>  
> We buy our food from them (Archer Daniels Midland, Southland, Tyson
> Foods, U.S. Sugar).
>  
> We drive with them (Hyundai) and fly with them (Korean Air Lines).
>  
> All of these companies and more turned up on Corporate Crime
> Reporter's list of the Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s,
> released
> this past week at a news conference at the National Press Club.
>  
> Standing before a roomful of reporters and cameras (including a
> C-Span camera which took us live to our TV nation), we made the
> following
> points:
>  
> Every year, the major business magazines put out their annual surveys
> of big business in America.
>  
> You have the Fortune 500, the Forbes 400, the Forbes Platinum 100,
> the International 800 -- among others.
>  
> These lists rank big corporations by sales, assets, profits and
> market share. The point of these surveys is simple -- to identify and
> glorify the biggest and most profitable corporations.
>  
> The point of releasing The Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the Decade,
> on the other hand, was to focus public attention on the pervasive
> criminality that has corrupted the marketplace and that is given little
> sustained attention and analysis by politicians and news outlets.
>  
> To compile The Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s, we used the
> most narrow and conservative of definitions -- corporations that have
> pled
> guilty or no contest to crimes and have been criminally fined. And
> still,
> with the most narrow and conservative of definitions of corporate crime,
> we came up with society's most powerful actors.
>  
> Six corporations that made the list of the Top 100 Corporate
> Criminals were criminal recidivist companies during the 1990s.
>  
> Exxon, Royal Caribbean, Rockwell International, Warner-Lambert,
> Teledyne, and United Technologies each pled guilty to more than one
> crime
> during the 1990s.
>  
> And we warned that we in no way imply that these corporations are in
> any way the worst or have committed the most egregious crimes.
>  
> We did not try to assess and compare the damage committed by these
> corporate criminals or by other corporate wrongdoers.
>  
> We warned that companies that are criminally prosecuted represent
> only the tip of a very large iceberg of corporate wrongdoing.
>  
> For every company convicted of health care fraud, there are hundreds
> of others who get away with ripping off Medicare and Medicaid, or face
> only mild slap-on-the-wrist fines and civil penalties when caught.
>  
> For every company convicted of polluting the nation's waterways,
> there are many others who are not prosecuted because their corporate
> defense lawyers are able to offer up a low-level employee to go to jail
> in
> exchange for a promise from prosecutors not to touch the company or
> high-level executives.
>  
> For every corporation convicted of bribery or of giving money
> directly to a public official in violation of federal law, there are
> thousands who give money legally through political action committees to
> candidates and political parties. They profit from a system that
> effectively has legalized bribery.
>  
> For every corporation convicted of selling illegal pesticides, there
> are hundreds more who are not prosecuted because their lobbyists have
> worked their way in Washington to ensure that dangerous pesticides
> remain
> legal.
>  
> For every corporation convicted of reckless homicide in the death of
> a worker, there are hundreds of others that don't even get investigated
> for reckless homicide when a worker is killed on the job. Only a few
> district attorneys across the country (Michael McCann, the DA in
> Milwaukee
> County, Wisconsin, being one) regularly investigate workplace deaths as
> homicides.
>  
> We pointed out that corporations define the laws under which t

The Hungersite.com

[TUN MYINT]

FYI.

=

Date: Mon, 06 Sep 1999 18:24:07 GMT
From: Karin strandås <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Don't forget about the food revolution that is going on right now!

www.thehungersite.com

Go there, click on a button, and give food to hungry people through the UN 
food program. Sponsoring companies are paying for the feast.

Check out "donations to date" where you can see how many donations have been 
made in your country.

SPREAD THE WORD!

Karin

__
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

Re: Work on work (Futurework and @Work)

[Ray E. Harrell]

Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote:

> Ray E. Harrell wrote:
> [snip]
> > Mothers are not ready for the virtual world.
> [snip]
>
> Neither is the virtual world ready for
> mothers.  Donald Winnicott's enormous contributions
> to understanding (to borrow the title
> of one of his books: "The Maturational Processes
> and the Facilitating Environment" (International Universities
> Press, 1965) have not been metabolized by our so-called
> society (i.e., what calls itself such without earning the
> honorific).

I agree about "so-called" especially in the over-simplifiedmass
production anti-creative models of the past 100
years or so.   They break their arms patting themselves
on the back about how they have developed technology
but most science is pretty simple and relativity is something
that has been in the arts and languages for at least three
hundred years.   I believe history will not tie the advances
of cultural anthropology to science and psychology but
to the arts and languages which have done it first and
with fewer genocidal wars.   Even the scientists at the
old Einstein "Think-Tank" in Princeton have trouble with
Clifford Geertz because he just isn't linear (Darwinian?)
enough and grounds his work in observation and language.
Even Murray Gell-Mann's seminal study was as a linguist
before he decided that he couldn't make a living at it and
chose physics instead.   But his basic impulse and
understanding is still linguistic and pedagogical as well as
talmudic.

In music we call relativity "style analysis".   And if
you want to see real complexity then analyze a late
romantic chromatic symphony on the computer or
better still, compare the memory necessary to simply
write it down.  Of course the dull simplicities of
mathematics which do just fine on the computer.
Language is another matter.  I suspect that the
science of the future will consider "higher" Mathematics
much as we consider the use of leeches in medicine.

I suspect physics is crucial but it will be
forced to join the complexities of language and the
abstract expressions (the arts) in a grand "unified theory"
because Math  will be to the understanding
of the universe as "Country Western Music" is to
Schumann or Debussy.

Or as Debussy said over 70 years ago about Sousa's
marches:

"These cakewalks are the best that America
has to offer the world of art?  This military music is to
music as military justice is to the world of jurisprudence!"

Meanwhile America's over-simplified economics
complains about the bureaucratic complexities of
socialism while creating corporations larger than
most socialist countries.  What do we call them?
Monarchies?  Marauding armies?   I can't give you
the name of the executive officer who said that IBM
was a "socialist" system, because he asked me not
to, but he preferred the description "socialist" to
"marauding army", feudalism, or monarchy.  What
he couldn't call it was democratic.   I tend to think of
these companies as "Hunter/Gatherers".

It is interesting that these totally inaccurate
descriptions of indigenous people's politics and
culture have arisen with the rise of the great corporations.
Hunter/Gatherer was included in the dictionary only
in the publication of American Heritage II.

The Sioux, a late horse culture,  are closer to the
meaning of "virtual" than they are to Hunter/Gatherer
according today's social sciences.   And the H/G
term is totally inaccurate to the agricultural populations
of all but the plains cultures prior to contact.   It isn't
even an accurate description of the rain forest peoples.
The term came out of the simple-minded thought of
19th century economically oriented social scientists.

So Brad this is not a dualistic answer.  There are not
simply demons and angels but a whole universe of
ideas and paths that see the world in ways that
Winnicott and the others have only begun to explore
from their own cultural context.  They remind me a bit
of the Jacobin Era's attitude about the universality
of all art and their being the only one's practicing it.

The French were the first to break this provincial idea
with the word "Musics."It is also interesting that
the first founders of the baby science in France were
artists and writers.  Men familiar with the multiplicity of
things.   Even the great Beaumarchais was an expert
in Time.  But science was practical while art and language
was theoretical.  Today the science and simplicities
of  economics, math and the social sciences demand
that art justify itself practically by being simple and giving
up its history (birthright) to science.   Shades of the
first Jacob and Esau.  Most artists have been exiled to
the mountain when they sold out!

> Both the basic nurturance of the
> infant and the nurturance of creativity at any age
> "require" a "holding environment": a safe space in which
> the individual can explore, and, if things go wrong,
> count on it to come to his or her aid.

How very Iroquoian of him.   This doesn't come fromEurop

FW U.S. Multinationals, Ethics, and the Law [fwd]

[S. Lerner]

>>From: "Webb, Kernaghan: OCA" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>To: volcodes-l <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>Subject: U.S. Multinationals, Ethics, and the Law
>>Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 17:08:00 -0400
>>MIME-Version: 1.0
>>Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>Precedence: bulk
>>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>>Greetings, online Voluntary Codes Research Forum members.  It may be thought
>>that voluntary codes have no legal implications, since the corporations
>>which make the commitments have not necessarily been legislatively required
>>to do so. It may also be thought that the behaviour abroad of U.S. based
>>multinational corporations may be largely beyond the reach of domestic laws.
>>In fact, however, corporations which make commitments and representations
>>concerning the ethical nature of their products and production processes --
>>be they claims concerning human rights and workers, the environment, or some
>>other matter, be they concerning conduct domestically or abroad -- may face
>>significant legal implications.  These implications may arise under consumer
>>misrepresentation laws (virtually very jurisdiction has legislation
>>concerning deceptive or misleading representations) or through tort law.
>>With respect to the former, Nike has been the subject of a legal action
>>pursuant to California consumer misrepresentation legislation laws,
>>concerning its human rights practices. (information concerning the Nike is
>>located at:
>>).
>>Concerning tort claims, an interesting development is the resurrection of
>>the
>>1789 U.S. Alien Tort Claim Act, which was originally designed to provide
>>redress for foreigners against sea pirates and slavers.  On August 9, 1999,
>>four of the 18 American retailers and clothes manufacturers charged with
>>unethical labour practices in a $1 billion alien-tort suit, filed on behalf
>>of some 50,000 garment workers in Saipan, agreed to settle, without
>>admitting liability. (This case was the subject of a previous volcodes forum
>>posting).  For more information concerning the case, see:
>>
>>
>>More generally, Volcodes Forum participants might also wish to check the
>>"Multinational
>>Corporations and Human Rights" website which has been established by the
>>Department of Public International Law, Erasmus University, Rotterdam.  The
>>website includes links to recent cases and statements of claims, such as
>>those pertaining to Unocal, Texaco, Ford, and Nike.   There are also links
>>to research sites, sustainable development websites, as well as those
>>regarding international law, NGOs, international organizations, and
>>mulitnational corporations.
>>For further information, visit:
>>http://www.multinationals.law.eur.nl/documents/
>>
>>Regards,
>>Kernaghan Webb
>>Facilitator, Online Voluntary Codes Research Forum
>>and Senior Legal Policy Advisor,
>>Office of Consumer Affairs
>>Industry Canada
>> 
>>To post messages to the online Voluntary Codes Research Forum, send your
>>e-mail to:
>>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>To visit the VolCodes Research Forum website, go to:
>>  http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/ca00973e.html
>>To subscribe to the online Voluntary Codes Research Forum, contact Kernaghan
>>Webb at:
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FW Millenium Round (citizen's guide) (fwd)

[S. Lerner]

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>Date: Sat, 4 Sep 1999 11:00:41 +0200
>Organization: ATTAC
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>Subject: [ATTAC] Millenium Round (citizen's guide)
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>For your information...
>
>
>   THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION: A Citizen's Guide
>
>   The World Trade Organization is quickly emerging
>   from the shadows as the most powerful international
>   organization in the world today.  Some analysts
>   see it as the new world government, millenium style.
>
>   The WTO has proven that it can successfully order
>   governments to set aside their own policies in
>   favour of WTO measures.
>
>   Canada has seen the WTO intervene in cultural
>   policy to force the abandonment of measures
>   protecting Canadian magazines.  Europe has seen
>   the WTO order European countries to accept the
>   importation of hormone-treated Canadian beef in
>   spite of healt concerns.
>
>   Now the WTO is expected to attack Canadian drug
>   patent policy, the auto pact, and farm marketing
>   boards.
>
>   The WTO has become the enforcement arm of the
>   world's largest corporations who demand unfettered
>   access to all countries' markets and elimination
>   of any measures that they consider harmful.
>
>   In this pioneering book, trade expert Steven
>   Shrybman offers an independent, knowledgeable
>   intorduction to the WTO, its history, structure
>   and its policies.  His analysis of recent WTO
>   decisiions shows what kind of a world we will
>   have if national governments continue to allow
>   their sovereign powers to be subjected to the WTO.
>
>   Steven Shrybman is a lawyer, and is executive
>   director of the West Coast Environmental Law
>   Association.
>
>   Co-published with the Canadian Centre for Policy
>   Alternatives.
>
>   In (Canadian) bookstores in September.
>   $19.95 (Cdn) paperback
>
>   James Lorimer & Company Ltd, Publishers
>   ...
>For more info, try contacting:
>
> The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 804-251 Laurier Ave. W. Ottawa, ON  K1P 5J6
> http://www.policyalternatives.ca
>
>
>
>--
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Re: Work on work (Futurework and @Work)

[Ray E. Harrell]

To the list,

I agree about making the archives more usable.  I have
found the hyper-mail functions of the Learning Org. list
to be very handy when researching or keeping a
thought going.  It also saves me space on my hard drive.

However there is one drawback.  Britton's comments
about intelligence are correct but easy access to the
archives would shoot his comments about our lack of
contentiousness all to hell.  Consider the following:

As for the other two issues 1. the issue of sustainable
work in today's society and 2. the issue of unions and
their relevance.

1. I find very little willingness on the part of any of these
lists to discuss anything more than the old industrial
system's models cast in the guise of the Information
Era.  Not to be disagreeable but I think that the new
IE has been discussed rather well by such people as
William Greider, Hedrick Smith and Fortune Mag.
columnist Thomas A. Stewart for the general public.

What I don't understand on these lists,  is how a
continual repetition of Industrial Era models
proves their value.  If Greider, Smith and Stewart
writing for the layman can articulate why the
old models don't work then why can't we hear it?

Britton refers to the continual high level of discussion
at FW and I agree.  He also says that we are civil
with one another and on that I would say that we operate
on a level of democratic rigor that is built on practical
experience and less on political formula.  We do have
a very low BS tolerance with the deft hands of Arthur
and Sally making a point without being obvious enough
to stir resistance or counter-transference.   Their rigor
and our unwillingness to be exposed in our foolishness
serves as a governor on our word processing.

As for the other lists on the nature of work that I have
visited:

As I stated above too often their new models are
not really new at all.  Even their information models
are the models of the Art's and Entertainment
Industries cast in the mode of "re-something or other."
e.g.
In the arts we often barter, use other models to
substitute for cash exchange, thrive on linkage
(connections) and drive ourselves to finish a project
no matter what the fiscal, emotional, familial or
physical cost.

As I have pointed out and documented for a couple
of years now on this list,  this new Information work
world IS brave AND has many problems already
demonstrated in the pioneer world of the Arts and
Entertainment Industry.

That does not mean that we can reference
past Industrial models as an answer for a hyper-
democratized world built around a plethora of information.
The past is not the answer and the futurist models
potential "success" can be seen in the ruined lives of
the Arts and Entertainment industry pioneers.

There is no COMMON on the planet that exists like the
COMMON of the world of the musical ensemble.   They
make all of the mistakes that could bankrupt the planet
if the rest of the work sector follows suit. (And it seems
to be!)

In addition their use of Unions creates work for a
few but is largely impotent at the kind of creative
work that builds the industry.   What Hedrick Smith
calls the need for "constant learning, constant
technological change and constant self-improvement
as the engines of long term success"  is largely
impossible in Union companies.

The most creative
work being done, the R & D of the music world is
being done in small high pressure companies that
are self-funded by the artists themselves.   This is
what the composer Charles Ives observed 80 years
ago when he said that true creativity was impossible
in the "professional" musical world.   He opted to
earn his money in insurance and write and fund
whatever he pleased.  (We have basically done the
same.)

Musical ensembles are pure learning organizations
built around the exploration of the values of abstract
aural formal information.   They even define the
abstract thought of whole nations and cultures by
translating the deepest psycho-physical intentions
of the time into visual, theatrical and aural art forms.

They give aid, comfort and even create a meaningful
life when practiced by amateurs, but when the models are
"professional" in the Union worker sense, they are often
an unmitigated disaster for the creative life of most of
their "workers."   The music business is a microcosm
of the world at large with the upper one to two percent
making most of the money with the rest forced to
subsist out of love and work at other jobs.  Not unlike
that NYTimes article on wealth that I posted yesterday.

Lest one complain that this is too complicated for the
average person, I would point to the great amateur
Concert Bands of the coal miners in England which
fostered the tradition of the greatest brass players in
the Western world or the choruses of Wales  which
even in their dying has recently given us magnificent
Bryn Terfel or the new orchestra at Hewlett Packard.

The first two built the finest Instrumental and choral
organizations on t