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.
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