Posted by WTO Watch Qld on January 7, 2003 at 00:23:22:
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Trade liberalisation is a policy that commits countries to dedicating their human and natural resources
to serving the needs of foreign nations rather than their own.
G.Edwards
'Our Brothers Keeper
The National Interest and Responsibility for Others Wellbeing'
http://www.iipe-online.org/conference2002/papers/Edwards.pdf
WTO Watch Qld would like to wish all our readers a Happy, Peaceful and GATS -free New Year.
1) CALLS TO ACTION
[ Please note that TWO submissions are called for here. It is VITAL that we all put in TWO submissions.
Submissions into the proposed US/Australia free trade agreement are due on January 15. 2003. (See WTO Watch Qld bulletin 71 for details)
Submissions into the Senate Inquiry into the GATS and the US/Australia free trade agreement are due on the 21st March, 2003 ]
a) Terms of Reference of the Senate Inquiry into the GATS and the US/Aus free trade agreement
b) DFAT call for submissions into the proposed US/Australia free trade agreement
c) International action against Nestle (for unbelievable corporate greed)
2) Court orders Bush administration to give Trade Documents to the public
3) WTO Staff in go-slow mode
4) The 10 worst corporations of 2002
==============================================
a) Senate Inquiry submissions due March 21, 2003.
The Senate has decided on the terms of the Inquiry into the GATS and the US/Australia Free Trade Agreement
Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee
General Agreement on Trade in Services and Australia/US Free Trade Agreement
Terms of reference
On 12 December 2002, the Senate referred the following matters to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and
Trade References Committee for inquiry and report by 27 November 2003:
1. The relevant issues involved in the negotiation of the General Agreement on Trade in Services
(GATS) in the Doha Development Round of the World Trade Organisation, including but not limited to:
(a) the economic, regional, social, cultural, environmental and policy impact of services trade liberalisation
(b) Australia’s goals and strategy for the negotiations, including the formulation of and response to requests, the transparency of the process and government accountability
(c) the GATS negotiations in the context of the ‘development’ objectives of the Doha Round
(d) the impact of the GATS on the provision of, and access to, public services provided by government, such as health, education and water
(e) the impact of the GATS on the ability of all levels of government to regulate services and own public assets
2. The issues for Australia in the negotiation of a Free Trade Agreement with the United States of
America including but not limited to:
(a) the economic, regional, social, cultural, environmental and policy impact of such an agreement
(b) Australia’s goals and strategy for negotiations including the formulation of our mandate, the transparency of the process and government accountability
(c) the impact on the Doha Development Round
Submissions
The Committee invites individuals and organisations with knowledge and information relevant to the inquiry's terms of reference to lodge submissions by Friday, 21 March 2003 with:
The Secretary
Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee
Suite S1.57
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600
or Email: fadt.sen@aph.gov.au
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b) Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement: Call for Submissions by Jan 15
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Office of Trade Negotiations has called for public submissions on the proposed Free Trade agreement (FTA) between Australia and the United States.
The deadline for receiving submissions is 15 January 2003. A background paper on the Australia-United States FTA proposal, including information on issues that might be covered in an agreement, and studies on the benefits and implications of an Australia-US FTA, is available via DFAT's website at: www.dfat.gov.au/tr de/negotiations/us.html
Submission enquiries: Ph: (02) 6261 2019/ 1811 Fax: (02) 6261 3514
Submissions may be lodged electronically at us.fta@dfat.gov.au or by post at the following address:
US FTA Task Force
Office of Trade Negotiations
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
BARTON ACT 0221
(ED: WTO Watch Qld bulletin 70 included suggestions for points you might like to make in this submission.)
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c) TAKE ACTION AGAINST NESTLE
The $6m Question: 'Does Nestle know it's Christmas?'
Nestle, the world's largest coffee company, are demanding millions
of dollars from a country where 11 million people are facing famine.
Take action to stop this scandal now!
Ethiopia is currently experiencing a terrible drought. This crisis has
been compounded by the collapse in the global coffee price, which
many of you have been helping us campaign on. The Ethiopian
government fears this drought could cause the worst famine the
country has ever faced.
Nestle has demanded that Ethiopia pay over $6million in
compensation for a company that was nationalised 27 years ago, a
company that Nestle didn't even own at the time.
The $6m represents 0.007% of Nestle's turnover last year. But for
Ethiopia, $6m would buy food for over a million people for a whole
month.
Take action now:
- go to www.maketradefair.com and email Nestle
- forward this information onto friends
======================================================
2) Court Orders Bush Administration Must Give Trade Documents to the Public
By Earthjustice, Public Citizen, FOE and CIEL
Ruling sets precedent for greater transparency in FTAA and future
December 19, 2002
Washington, DC - A U.S. District Court today ordered the Bush
administration to make public documents by revealing U.S. and foreign
government positions in trade negotiations with potential impacts on
domestic public health, labor, and environmental laws. The court
ordered the Office of U.S. Trade Representative to reveal the
documents by January 17, 2003.
At issue in the court's order were documents requested by public
interest organizations that the U.S. had already shared with foreign
governments - in this case, Chile - but had refused to show to U.S.
citizens. While the U.S.-Chile trade agreement was finalized last week
and now heads to Congress for approval, this decision sets a legal
precedent for a more transparent and democratic process that has been
sought by public interest and environmental organizations for years
but denied by both the Bush and Clinton administrations.
The court's order was the result of a lawsuit filed in November 2001
by Earthjustice on behalf of the Center for International
Environmental Law, Friends of the Earth, and Public Citizen. These
groups are concerned that the new international trade rules could
weaken U.S. and Chilean environmental and health standards.
"This ruling raised the bar for transparency in future free trade
negotiations like the Free Trade Area of the Americas," said Martin
Wagner, director of international programs for Earthjustice. "From now
on the government can no longer negotiate in secret, hiding its
actions from the public until it's too late to change the terms of the
agreement. The court's decision will give the public the information
it needs to make sure the government is truly negotiating in the
people's interest."
Marcos Orellana of the Center for International Environmental Law
said, "This ruling will finally provide an entry point for meaningful
public participation in trade negotiations. The public can only
provide meaningful input if the trade negotiation process is open and
transparent."
Contact: Brian Smith, Earthjustice, (510) 550-6714 Chris Slevin,
Public Citizen (202) 454-5140 David Waskow, FOE, (202) 783-7400 Marcos
Orellana, CIEL (202) 785-8700
===================================================
3) Protesting WTO staff in go-slow mode
Bangkok Post, 22 December
GENEVA, 21 November -- Negotiations at the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) have been hit by a work-to-rule protest by staff.
The WTO's 560 employees, who are pressing for an 8% pay rise, are
refusing to work evenings or weekends.
The protest comes at a delicate time for the WTO, whose 145
member states are battling to meet end-year deadlines for accords on
sensitive trade issues. Meetings that normally begin at 10am have
been brought forward an hour because staff are sticking rigidly to the
official 8.30am to 5.30pm working day.
An independent wage review has recommended an 8% wage rise but
member states, which pay the bills, say the figure is too high. --
Reuters
Focus on the Global South (FOCUS)
c/o CUSRI, Chulalongkorn University
Bangkok 10330 THAILAND
Tel: 662 218 7363/7364/7365/7383
Fax: 662 255 9976
E-mail: N.Bullard@focusweb.org
Web Page http://www.focusweb.org
==========================================
4) The 10 Worst Corporations of 2002
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
2002 will forever be remembered as the year of corporate crime, the year
even President George Bush embraced the notion of "corporate
responsibility."
While the Bush White House has now downgraded its "corporate
responsibility portal" to a mere link to uninspiring content on the
White House webpage, and although the prospect of war has largely bumped
the issue off the front pages, the cascade of corporate financial and
accounting scandals continues.
We easily could have filled Multinational Monitor's list of the 10 Worst
Corporations of the Year with some of the dozens of companies embroiled
in the financial scandals.
But we decided against that course.
As extraordinary as the financial misconduct has been, we didn't want to
contribute to the perception that corporate wrongdoing in 2002 was
limited to the financial misdeeds arena.
For Multinational Monitor's 10 Worst Corporations of 2002 list, we
included only Andersen from the ranks of the financial criminals and
miscreants. Andersen's assembly line document destruction certainly
merits a place on the list.
As for the rest, we present a collection of polluters, dangerous pill
peddlers, modern-day mercenaries, enablers of human rights abuses,
merchants of death, and beneficiaries of rural destruction and misery.
Multinational Monitor has named Arthur Andersen, British American
Tobacco (BAT), Caterpillar, Citigroup, DynCorp, M&M/Mars, Procter &
Gamble, Schering Plough, Shell and Wyeth as the 10 Worst Corporations of 2001.
Appearing in alphabetical order, the 10 worst are:
Arthur Andersen, for a massive scheme to destroy documents related to
the Enron meltdown. "Tons of paper relating to the Enron audit were
promptly shredded as part of the orchestrated document destruction," a
federal indictment against Andersen alleged. "The shredder at the
Andersen office at the Enron building was used virtually constantly and,
to handle the overload, dozens of large trunks filled with Enron
documents were sent to Andersen's main Houston office to be shredded."
Andersen was convicted for illegal document destruction, effectively
putting the company out of business.
BAT, for operating worldwide programs supposedly designed to prevent
youth smoking but which actually make the practice more attractive to
kids (by suggesting smoking is an adult activity), continuing to deny
the harmful health effects of second-hand smoke, and working to oppose
efforts at the World Health Organization to adopt a strong Framework
Convention on Tobacco Control.
Caterpillar, for selling bulldozers to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF),
which are used as an instrument of war to destroy Palestinian homes and
buildings. The IDF has destroyed more than 7,000 Palestinian homes since
the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967, leaving 30,000 people
homeless.
Citigroup, both for its deep involvement in the Enron and other
financial scandals and its predatory lending practices through its
recently acquired subsidiary The Associates. Citigroup paid $215 million
to resolve Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges that The Associates
engaged in systematic and widespread deceptive and abusive lending practices.
DynCorp, a controversial private firm which subcontracts military
services with the Defense Department, for flying planes that spray
herbicides on coca crops in Colombia. Farmers on the ground allege that
the herbicides are killing their legal crops, and exposing them to
dangerous toxins.
M&M/Mars, for responding tepidly to revelations about child slaves in
the West African fields where much of the world's cocoa is grown, and
refusing to commit to purchase a modest 5 percent of its product from
Fair Trade providers.
Procter & Gamble, the maker of Folger's coffee and part of the coffee
roaster oligopoly, for failing to take action to address plummeting
coffee bean prices. Low prices have pushed tens of thousands of farmers
in Central America, Ethiopia, Uganda and elsewhere to the edge of
survival, or destroyed their means of livelihood altogether.
Schering Plough, for a series of scandals, most prominently allegation
of repeated failure over recent years to fix problems in manufacturing
dozens of drugs at four of its facilities in New Jersey and Puerto Rico.
Schering paid $500 million to settle the case with the Food and Drug Administration.
Shell Oil, for continuing business as usual as one of the world's
leading environmental violators -- while marketing itself as a socially
and environmentally responsible company.
Wyeth, for using duplicitous means, and without sufficient scientific
proof, to market hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to women as a
fountain of youth. Scientific evidence reported in 2002 showed that
long-term HRT actually threatens women's lives, by increasing the risks
of breast cancer, heart attack, stroke and pulmonary embolism.
What's the lesson to draw from this year's 10 worst list? Not only are
Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco and the rest indicative of a
fundamentally corrupt financial system, they are representative of a
rotten system of corporate dominance.
The full 10 Worst Corporations of 2002 list is available at Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman ======================================================= Terrie Templeton WTO Watch Qld gumbus@powerup.com.au
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are
co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the
Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).