Posted on 10th November 2001

Where The Hell Is Doha?
(picture, Mike Moore)

The debt-financed world we live in has turned the machinery of economics
from a tool into a despot. There is now only one decision to be make in
respect of economics, either you support the status quo or you are looking
for alternatives. The WTO has opted for the former and has taken on itself
the role of the public face of debt-finance, the spin-master for an
economic holocaust that dwarfs all previous.

www.pl.net stands with the alternatives, yet to be clearly defined enough
to grip global consciousness - and that is the one and only legitimate
claim of the status quo for its existence. Until there is a defined and
widely accepted alternative monetary system www.pl.net does what we can to
get alternatives into the public arena and to practically use our own
(launching online early next year).

Meanwhile, back in the world of bank-control and universal insolvency the
propagandists of the WTO meet in secret, huddled down in their
back-of-beyond bunker. At least those who had the guts to go are meeting,
while hundreds backed out due to fear of personal security, commitment indeed.

In an unprecedented collaboration, Greenpeace, the international
environmental organization, and the Independent Media Centers (IMC), a
communications and media network of activists and amateur journalists, are
teaming up to report and broadcast live from the 4th Ministerial Meeting of
the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Doha, Qatar.

The project plans to Webcast at least one hour of English programming daily
during the WTO meeting, more if possible, looped for 24-hour access. (On
November 9, tune in at: www.greenpeace.org or www.indymedia.org.) Plans for
Arabic programming are also in the works. The origin of the "broadcasts"
will be the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, as it is docked in Doha, Qatar
during the WTO meeting.

The IMC, also known as Indymedia, was founded in Seattle in 1999 to cover
the protests at the World Trade Organization Summit. With 80 sites now in
more than 50 cities worldwide, the IMC has grown out of proportion to
anything its founders had anticipated. This partnership with Greenpeace is
the most recent step in the dramatic history of Indymedia and the road it
has taken since Seattle.

Reporting from the inside Anuradha Mittal , Co-Director of Food First, is
in Doha attending the WTO Conference and representing the voices of people
from developing nations.

I arrived in Doha yesterday at 10 pm and was taken directly to the Ritz
Carlton hotel. The skeleton U.S. delegation had reduced from over 200 in
number to some 45-50 delegates, as the delgates took the option of not
attending given the security concerns. The Congressional delegation and
even the Secretary of Commerce and Agriculture had opted out. This resulted
in the USTR inviting US NGOs and the press to stay at the fancy Ritz
Carlton to fill the rooms.

This morning was the security briefing for the US delegates. Once they
realized that I am an Indian national, I was unceremoniusly escorted out of
the room. The USTR representative that had called the Food First office to
invite me to stay at the Ritz exclaimed, "I had no idea that you are not a
US citizen." The others were given a security briefing including an
emeregency cell phone in case they had to be evacuated.

At the inaugural session, Mike Moore, the Director General of the WTO
proclaimed, "The transparency and inclusiveness, which is to say the
legitimacy, of the Geneva process has been universally acknowledged." He
credited Chairman Stuart Harbinson and ambassadors and delegates in Geneva,
who he said have worked in an open process, marked by honor, integrity and
good humor. This contrasted sharply with what the delegate from Ghana based
in Geneva, Lawrence Yaw Sae-Brawusi said to me. As we talked during our
flight from Bahrain to Doha, he explained to me that since Seattle there
had been a change in process. "It was more accountable, open and
democratic. But the way the final draft was presented by Harbinson, it
completed violated the spirit of the whole process. All the praise that has
been showered on him is now wasted. The process needs guidelines of
engagement by the Third World countries and cannot depend on the
benevolence of chairpersons like Harbinson."

Message from Kofi Annan to the inaugural session claimed that since Sept.
11, the world has two choices: First, a mutually destructive clash of
civilizations or second, a world united through a global economy. As the
economic heads meet to discuss international economy, they do so without
discussing international politics. They are like ostriches with their heads
in the sand who are not acknowledging the ongoing war in Afghanistan. They
do so without acknowledging the Third Choice--not Tony Blair's Third Way,
but a choice based on viable alternatives that the international civil
society has offered that make the possibility of a better world a reality.