>Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 23:04:03 +0000
>From: Titus Alexander <[log in to unmask]>


>Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 12:02:49 -0500
>
>From: "*Noquisi* (Day Starr)" <[log in to unmask]>

A Zimbabwe politician was quoted as saying that children should study the
US presidential election closely for it shows that election fraud is not
 only a third world phenomenon:

1. Imagine that we read of an election occuring anywhere in the third world
in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime minister
and that former prime minister was himself the former head of that nation's
secret police (CIA).

 2. Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won
based on some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the nation's
pre-democracy past.

3. Imagine that the self-declared winner's 'victory' turned on disputed
votes cast in a province governed by his brother!

 4. Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district
heavily favoring the self-declared winner's opponent, led thousands of
voters to vote for the wrong candidate.

 5. Imagine that the members of that nation's most despised caste, fearing
for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in
near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner' candidacy.


6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were
intercepted on their way to the polls by state polic operating under the
authority of the self-declared winner's brother.

7. Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and that
the self-declared winner's 'lead' was only 327 votes. Fewer, certainly,
than the vote counting machines' margin of error.

 8. Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party opposed a
more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the ballots in the
disputed province or in its most hotly disputed
district.

 9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a major
province, had the worst human rights record of any province in his nation
and actually led the nation in executions.

10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was
to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions on the
high court of that nation.

None of us would deem such an election to be representative of anything
other than the
 self-declared winner's will-to-power. All of us, I imagine, would wearily
turn the page thinking that it was another sad tale of pitifulpre- or
anti-democracy peoples in some strange elsewhere.

Added - Tom Wengraf -
11. Imagine that virtually no major Anglophone media (electronic or paper)
-- even outside the USA -- brought out the deep level of corruption and
disenfranchisement in the way that the above summary does, but instead
'prepared' the readers to chucklingly or wearily turn the page and tolerate
a 'Bush victory'.

What does that tell us about the corruption of the world Anglophone elites,
particularly in Great Britain, the USA's unsinkable aircraft carrier and
offshore laboratory for neo-liberal strategies to penetrate Europe?




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Red Alert

European Commissioner Pascal Lamy and the transnational corporations close
to the Commission have good reason to believe that the Inter-Governmental
Conference [IGC] to be held in Nice 7-8 December will modify Article 133 of
the Amsterdam Treaty. If this happens, the struggle against corporate-led
globalisation will receive a serious setback.

Although treaty revisions may sound technical and boring, the implications
are of the utmost gravity:

Article 133 covers the relations between the Commission and member
countries with regard to international trade. Trade, according to the
Treaty, is an area of "mixed competence" between the Commission and the 15
member states, at least in the crucial fields of services, intellectual
property and investment. This means that national parliaments have to
approve Agreements concerning these subjects and member country governments
can veto them. A 1994 judgment of the European Court guarantees mixed
competence in these three areas [services, intellectual property,
investment] whereas industrial goods are governed by the "qualified
majority voting" system which gives broad powers to the Commission.

The French government which until recently opposed any changes is now
proposing to modify Article 133.

Since July, Commissioner Lamy has undertaken a campaign to obtain broad
powers and qualified majority voting for services [including health,
education, audio-visual, transport, environment and all public services];
intellectual property [including Genetically Manipulated Organisms] and
investments [along the lines of the failed MAI]. In September, he
announced to a French Parliamentary Commission that "only France and Spain
remained to be convinced" of the need to change in Article 133 to give the
Commission far greater power.

We have now learned that the French government is espousing the "socialist"
Commissioner Lamy's cause. The preparatory texts for the IGC, under the
French Presidency, no longer even suggest that Article 133 should be left
as it is; that member states should retain the veto and national
parliaments the power to ratify future trade agreements. The texts now
circulating propose three "options", all of which would significantly
extend the powers of the Commission and dramatically reduce democratic
space and citizen involvement.

The differences between the "options" France is now proposing concern
mainly points of detail. Option "A" has two variants: the first places
only servics and intellectual property under qualified majority voting; the
second adds investment. This doesn't matter greatly since the services
agreement in the framework of the World Trade Organisation [GATS] protects
the investments of foreign service suppliers anyway.

Option "B" proposes that member states can change Article 133 by qualified
majority voting in order to include the three presently excluded areas of
services, intellectual property and investment. Here is a question for
legal specialists: since the European Court says that Article 133 does not
apply to these three areas, and that any decision concerning them has to be
unanimous, how can this decision be changed by qualified majority voting?
This sounds suspiciously like a conjuror's trick.

Option "C" consists in a Protocol of 8 articles and 19 paragraphs in all.
This protocol would apply only to negotiations within the WTO, which is, of
course, by far the most important forum for trade negotiations. In this
case the Commission would have far greater powers than today--not just over
the three areas of services, intellectual property and investment but over
all the Agreements overseen by WTO, more than two dozen all told. The
Commission's negotiating mandate would be set by qualified majority voting,
the Commission would represent all member states in the Dispute Resolution
Body etc.

Commissioner Lamy wants trade liberalisation across the board; what he is
asking for can be compared to the "fast-track" powers which the US Congress
refused for President Clinton.

If any of these changes to Article 133--whether Option A, B or C--are
accepted, the door will be open to neo-liberal doctrine and corporate
demands with which both the Commission and Commissioner Lamy agree
wholeheartedly. The structures of European government will become even
more opaque, centralised and anti-democratic.

There is still time to stop the revision of Article 133. Our governments
must not be allowed to hand over their sovereignty in this area, however
>desirable it might be to have qualified majority voting in other areas, for
example social policy, where a single government like the UK can block
policies which would be advantageous to citizens. The gains of the past
one hundred years at least, including our social rights, our public
services, health-care and education systems, are all at risk. We must
mobilise against any changes to Article 133 and prevent France from
capitulating in Nice.

Susan George
President of Observatoire de la mondialisation.
Vice-president of ATTAC France

Information:
Demonstrations called by many organizations will be held December 06 and 07
in Nice. A counter-summit will be held in Nice from December 06 to the O8th


More information about international agreements and the European commission

a) Presentation and main documents:
http://attac.org/ang/themes/mondialisation.htm
b) All the documents.
http://attac.org/ang/themes/mondialisation/accords.htm

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Tom Wengraf
24a Princes Avenue
Muswell Hill
London N10 3LR
UK

(44)/(0) 20 8883 9297