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Dear Sust-Mar People, nov. 26 At first blush, trade liberalization may not seem to have much to do with our efforts to protect our natural heritage. But deep down, I think we all know that "free trade" is one of, and perhaps *the* biggest force propelling the destruction of the Earth's ability to sustain life. Free trade is just one plank of an agenda I call corporate globalization, an agenda that sees huge corporations buy natural resources at cheap rates from countries desperate for income, then hire desperate people to manufacture consumer items in dangerous conditions and then ship these things usually over huge distances to sell them to the few "consumers" left in the world. Since some exploited people naturally try to resist this arrangement, usually by nonviolent means first, military/police power is often brought down against activists, especially in countries of the "Third World". As Noam Chomsky and others have amply demonstrated, Western governments have aided and abetted this type of repression, which is targetted at people like you and me: activists trying to make their part of the world a better place to live. In other words, corporate globalization is more than an economic system; it is basically a process that exploits the Earth and its peoples, by force when necessary. I believe our biggest challenge as activists is to halt this process and replace it with a sustainable system. Anyhow, part of what we need to do is understand how resisting free trade is crucial to saving the Earth. With that in mind, I would like to share with you a message from David Orton, which I got yesterday. all the best, Jan *************************************************************** Date: Thu, 25 Nov 1999 21:48:45 To: leftbio@flora.org From: David Orton <greenweb@fox.nstn.ca> Subject: WTO Meeting: Proposed Controlling and Absorbing Dissent Hello left bios: For quite a while now much of our electronic mail has concerned the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle. Gradually the significance of this meeting has been sinking in to me. I have just read the most scary yet realistic analysis of what this meeting is actually about. The analysis is by Michel Chossudovsky, who is a professor of economics at the University of Ottawa and is called "Seattle and Beyond: Disarming The New World Order". This prof is the author of a number of books including _The Globalization of Poverty_. The article is very long (39 K), but very well worth the effort to read. I understood for the first time how increasing poverty in Canada and the dismantling of the social safety net, the farm crisis in the West, etc. is tied to the growing pauperization of most people in other countries. (The author see this as a world economic crisis, much more socially and environmentally significant than that of the Great Depression.) This new Global Great Depression is flowing out of the globalizing corporate economic policies, backed up by military intervention where required, of a small club of so-called developed nations, led by the United States. Chossudovsky argues that NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) going to Seattle must reject the WTO as an international institution and its fundamental legitimacy, and go beyond what he calls "free-market criticism.". He notes how deals have already been made with some infiltrated NGOs to bring them on board the WTO and diffuse opposition to globalization and free trade. We can send this text by Chossudovsky to anyone who asks. David Note from Jan: I too have the Chossudovsky text and can send it to you if you like. I also wrote a pamphlet last year on What Corporate Globalization means for Canadians (eg. in terms of forests, oceans and other sectors). It is three photocopied pages long, with 3 cartoons... I wrote it with people who live here in Weymouth and environs in mind; in other words, I tried very hard to make a complicated subject understandable to people whose main source of information would be the mass media. I would be happy to send copies to any of you who would like one.... If there seems to be lots of interest in either of these texts, I will edit them down so they could be shared with everyone on the Sust-Mar list. -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- The preceding message was posted on the Sustainable Maritimes mailing list (sust-mar). http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/lists/sust-mar -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
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