|
I believe it is mainly to further big business's power and control over labour and government and to make it harder for governments to respond to the needs and best interests of their constituents. The goverments will be forced to respond to the best interests of multi-national coporations instead. Here's a couple links to some Globalization aritcles on Greg Palast's web site One set of documents, minutes of the private meetings of the Liberalization of Trade in Services (LOTIS) committee, obtained by BBC television's Newsnight program and CorpWatch, record 14 secret meetings, from April 1999 and February 2001, between Britain's chief services trade negotiators, the Bank of England and the movers and shakers of the Euro-American business world. Those attending the closed LOTIS include Peter Sutherland, International Chairman of US-based investment bank Goldman Sachs and formerly the Director General of the World Trade Organization.
<snip>
Barry Coates, director of the WTO watchdog organization the World Development Movement, said he was surprised to learn that the LOTIS industry members received documents which the British government had refused to give his organization, even papers "which they told us did not exist."
<snip>
The necessity test requires nations to prove that their regulations -- from pollution control to child labor laws -- are not hidden impediments to trade. Industry wants the WTO to employ a necessity test similar to the one in the North America Free Trade Agreement which has worked to reverse local environmental rules. For example, Mexico has been forced to pay $17 million to an American corporation, Metalclad, for delaying the operation of the company's toxic waste dump and processing plant. Local Mexican officials had attempted to block the plant's operation on the grounds that it was built without a construction permit, and would not have received one, as the plant handling toxins was placed above the area's drinking water supply.
According to the secret March 19 memo from the Working Party on Domestic Regulation, issued to WTO members by the organization's Secretariat, European negotiators reached a private consensus to change the worldwide GATS agreement to include a much stronger form of the necessity test than found even in NAFTA. The Agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico only requires that a nation's regulations be "least trade restrictive."The WTO's hidden agendaJoseph Stiglitz was once the cheif economist for the World Bank. He was fired in 1999 after voicing dissent at the bank's globalization policies. Stiglitz helped translate one from bureaucratise, a "Country Assistance Strategy." There’s an Assistance Strategy for every poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation. But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank’s staff ‘investigation’ consists of close inspection of a nation’s 5-star hotels. It concludes with the Bank staff meeting some begging, busted finance minister who is handed a ‘restructuring agreement’ pre-drafted for his ‘voluntary’ signature (I have a selection of these).
Each nation’s economy is individually analyzed, then, says Stiglitz, the Bank hands every minister the same exact four-step program.
Step One is Privatization - which Stiglitz said could more accurately be called, ‘Briberization.’ Rather than object to the sell-offs of state industries, he said national leaders - using the World Bank’s demands to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water companies. "You could see their eyes widen" at the prospect of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billion off the sale price of national assets.
And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest ‘briberization’ of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. "The US Treasury view was this was great as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We don’t care if it’s a corrupt election. We want the money to go to Yeltzin" via kick-backs for his campaign.The Globalizer who came in from the coldFinally here's a snip from a speech by the activist Granny D. I started a thread on DU already with this, but her thoughts are relevant in this context, so I'll repost here. On July 24, three armed gunmen broke into the home where my young friend was staying in Guatemala, dragging her and another young woman to the ground, covering their heads with blankets. These young women began to count their lives in seconds. For three-quarters of an hour, the gunmen went through the biodiversity files in the home. Big business interests in Guatemala, in league with elements of the military, are trying to push through the passage of free trade agreements and to do it they must supress all dissent. Their partner and blood brother is the U.S. government. Not the U.S. government that we see, but the U.S. government that much of the rest of the world sees: a world of CIA treachery, the training of death squad leaders in our own Army facilities within the U.S., and a big business-friendly White House that winks and nods as great injustices continue.
The two women survived, but tens of thousands have not, because they are in the way of big business. It is not an honest difference of opinion; it is a global struggle of people versus a global crime syndicate that counts taken-over governments and multinational corporations among its members.
There is a term now in common use in Latin America that is confusing to us Americans. It is called neoliberalism and it is a very dirty word indeed among the brave pro-democracy and fair trade groups throughout the Americas. "Neoliberal" sounds like the happy return of the Kennedys, but it is not. Nor is it about some resurgence of the liberal values of the Square Deal or the New Deal or the War on Poverty or any of those great moments when we called upon our best instincts to cooperatively address our largest needs as a free and self-governing people. The liberation that we meant then when we used the word "liberal" was the liberation from poverty, despair and ignorance, the liberation of the mind through public education, the liberation of the citizen through universal voting, equal rights and equal opportunity, and the freedom to prosper from the fruits of our labors. But that is not the liberal that is meant by neoliberal. It means newly free to rampage. It means free of government constraint. It means free trade over fair trade.
"Neoliberalism" refers to the liberation of a giant beast that we, the ordinary people of America – the farmers, the townsmen and townswomen, the trade unionists – tied down to the earth early in the 20th century and it is that beast that has now gotten himself loose again to do great damage to us all. The deadly meanderings of this beast are most apparent in the most labor-intensive regions of the world, but the beast is here, too, and he has brought misery and suffering into your life and mine, stealing our water, blowing up our mountains, fouling our air and seas, and stealing our lives and our future at every turn. Neoliberalism is the colonialism department of neoconservatism. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16643 |
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
