--- Begin Forwarded Message ---
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 18:45:52 -0700
From: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: september 26
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No-WTO

FYI...

best,
melissa

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: WTO - Shrink or Sink!
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 10:50:36 -0700
From: "Antonia Juhasz" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Organization: American Lands

On September 26, activists around the world will join activists in
Prague in their protest of the Fall meetings of the IMF and World Bank.

You can support these efforts by signing an international statement to
be released on the steps of the United States Capitol on September 26
calling for the absolute "shrinking" of the World Trade Organization
(WTO) or its "sinking."

American Lands is one of the organizations that authored the statement
which includes a strong condemnation of the policies of the IMF and the
World Bank.  The statement can be read and signed on the Public Citizen
web page at
http://www.citizen.org/pctrade/gattwto/ShrinkSink/shrinksink.htm.

An excellent article about the campaign follows.

Please sign the statement today and join in the campaign to create an
international trade system that puts people and the planet, not
corporations, first.

EU/WT0/NG0: COALITION OF NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS CALLS FOR TOTAL
REFORM OF WTO, RADICALLY REDUCING ITS POWERS AND AUTHORITY

Brussels, 13/09/2000 (Agence Europe)  On the occasion of the United
Nations Millennium Summit, a coalition of citizens nongovernmental
organisations published a statement eloquently entitled "WTO: Shrink or
Sink!", calling for a more equitable, sustainable and responsible
international trading system. The current system "has led to extreme
inequalities in the distribution of wealth and contributed to
environmental destruction across the planet, claim the 650 NG0s,
mouthpiece for civil society in 77 countries.

"We believe it crucial to seize the opportunity to alter course and
develop an alternative, sustainable and equitable type of trade, under
citizens' control, the coalition declares, identifying, as first stage
in the process. rolling back the power and authorily of the WTO.  It is
urgent, it continues, to protect cultural, biological, social and
economic
diversities; gradually to implement policies that play in favour of
local commerce and trade; guarantee universally recognised economic,
social and cultural rights; draw up new rules, based on the democratic
control of resources, the respect of ecosystems, equality, cooperation
and the precautionary principle.

To that end, the NG0s call on their respective governments to: 

I) refrain from launching a new round of negotiations and to extends the
WTO's "prerogatives" to the fields of investment, competition policy,
public procurement, biotechnologies, further tariff cuts and electronic
commerce;

II) not to implement WTO agreements to certain essential areas like
food, water, public services, health, personal security, and the
preservation of living species; 

III) repeal the general agreement on the trade in services (AGCS), given
the "harmful" consequences of the principle of gradual liberalisation
for foreign investments; 

IV) extract intellectual property from the WTO; 

V) prohibit the patentability of live beings in all its forms; 

VI) give priority to the right of people to feed themselves; 

VII)recgonise and extend the right of third world countries to a special
and differentiated treatment; 

VIII) give priority to social and environmental rights; 

IX) democratise the decisionmaking process; 

X) say no to the "single tribuna" that is the Dispute Settlement Body
(DSB) of the Geneva institution that "operates in secret, according to
antidemocratic procedures (and ) usurps the legislative and regulatory
role of sovereign States and territorial authorities".

The "radical change of course" that NG0s are calling for also goes for
the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the World Bank, regional
development banks, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whereas tax
havens, flags of convenience and "other" legal fictions that enable
transnational firms to shirk their legal and tax obligations and escape
all controls" "must go".

--
Antonia Juhasz
Director, International Trade and Forest Programs
American Lands Alliance
726 7th Street, SE
Washington, DC 20003
(202) 547-9230
http://www.americanlands.org

"I sympathize therefore, with those who would minimize rather than those
who would maximize, economic entanglement between nations.  Ideas,
knowledge, art, hospitality, travel, these are the things which should
of their nature be international.  But let goods be homespun whenever it
is
reasonably and conveniently possible; and, above all, let finance be
primarily national."  -- John Maynard Keynes, 1933.


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