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April 23-27, 2001 - Global Policy Forum - Email 'Listserv' News
GPF List-Serv
April 23-27, 2001Greetings from Global Policy Forum!
Global Tax Conference by GPF
On Saturday, May 5, GPF is holding a conference on “Global Taxes for Global Priorities” with partners WEED and the Heinrich Boell Foundation. The conference will take place at 777 UN Plaza, 2nd floor, from 8:45 AM to 4:00 PM. The conference program is posted on the GPF web site. Those interested in attending should phone the GPF office at (212) 557-3161 or send us an email.
Free Trade Battle
On April 20-22, the third Summit for the Americas took place in Quebec City. Leaders of all countries of the Western hemisphere except Cuba met to negotiate the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), an ambitious new trade and investment compact. With a population of 800 million and a combined GDP of US $11 trillion, the FTAA would be the largest free trade zone in the world.
The FTAA will almost certainly have negative consequences for many of the region’s people. Since the beginning of the eighties, the Bretton Woods Institutions have forced most Latin American countries to implement dramatic measures for open investments and trade. During the same time, poverty, unemployment and income inequality have risen, while governments have cut back on public spending in health, education and many other fields. The FTAA agreement is likely to worsen the situation.
Organizations throughout the hemisphere have set up national and sectoral anti-FTAA networks. Only days after the Quebec City meetings, trade union leaders from the 34 countries gathered in Washington to denounce the Free Trade Area of the Americas as a dangerous “race to the bottom” for the region’s workers.
Critics insist that the secret negotiations will not lead to equitable and sustainable development and they demand that citizens participate in such important decisions. But the leaders evidently plan to speed ahead with their project, which has the strong support of investors and big North American companies.
Analyzing the FTAA
Maude Barlow, chairperson of the Council of Canadians, has written a very useful pamphlet called “The Free Trade Area of the Americas: the threat to social programs, environmental sustainability and social justice.” Barlow warns among other things that the FTAA will give “unequalled rights to the transnational corporations of the hemisphere to compete for and even challenge the publicly funded service of governments, including health care, education, social services, culture and environmental protection.” As in NAFTA, corporations will be able to sue governments for infringement of their “rights” to do business, even if this means weakening national environmental or health protection standards. Barlow tells of the nine special negotiating groups that have been working in secret to iron out differences in a wide spectrum of issues, granting unprecedented rights to corporations while paying no heed to human rights. The “trade in services” provisions, already far advanced at the WTO, appear especially pernicious in the FTAA. They lead towards massive privatization of public services. Barlow’s pamphlet has been published by the International Forum on Globalization. To obtain a copy, consult the IFG web site at www.ifg.org.
Dollars for the Americas
News reports from the financial press suggest that a single hemispheric currency is already far along. The Financial Times recently reported that El Salvador has just replaced the colon with the American dollar, importing $176 million in greenbacks and another $40 million in coins, effectively turning over management of the national economy to the US Federal Reserve Bank. The government has promoted its policy with the slogan “Monetary integration: Good for you, good for the country.”
Ecuador substituted the dollar for the sucre last year. In Guatemala, Peru and Bolivia, the law allows free circulation of dollars alongside the national currency, while Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica are thinking about switching completely to the dollar sometime soon. As we reported a few months ago, the dollar also functions as a parallel currency in several other big countries of the region, facilitated by a direct dollar “peg” of the local currency. In Argentina and Uruguay, merchants often advertise prices in dollars, which circulate ever more frequently as the national legal tender. Panama has used the US dollar longest -- since 1904. Since the Panamanian economy is one of the region’s weakest, it serves as an object lesson to those who see dollarization as a sure route to Yankee prosperity.
A New European State?
Sealand, a World War II British gunnery platform in the North Sea, may be further along towards statehood than many supposed. Founded as a sovereign Principality in 1967, it lies in international waters, six miles off the eastern shores of Britain and outside of British jurisdiction. Ruled by a self-proclaimed Prince and Princess (Roy and Joan Bates), this barren, storm-swept isle has seemed more a jest than a candidate for statehood. But according to recent reports, including a lengthy article in the Los Angeles Times, several countries have accepted its passports and it may be about to experience an economic boom. HavenCo Ltd., a provider of secure off-shore infrastructure for electronic business, has begun operations in Sealand to set up the world's first data haven. Sealand, it seems, has no laws governing data traffic, nor does it have banking laws or laws of any kind. So HavenCo is hoping to take advantage by offering services to companies like Napster that have problems with national regulators. Banks may soon follow. Will competition with the City eventually force London to re-claim this wayward child?
Cruise Ship Nation
In another bid to beat the tax collector, a new luxury cruise liner, ResidenSea, will cruise around the world and provide the owners of its cabin-apartments with tax-free living. According to a recent advertisement in the New York Times, over 80 of the 110 apartments in the ship have already been sold and it will be ready to set sail on December 2001 in what the ad describes as a “fantastic and unprecedented moment in the history of the sea.” Those interested in buying one of the remaining suites can contact Christie’s Great Estates. Asking price -- $2 million and up!
Security Council Jottings
Global Witness released its latest report on diamonds, reviewing the Sierra Leone diamond certification process, established by Security Council Resolution 1306. Compared to the hard-hitting report that started Global Witness’ conflict diamond campaign over two years ago, this report sounds a bit soft and it seems remarkably forgiving of the mess that is the Sierra Leone Export System.
On the eve of the international conference on diamonds in Antwerp, the Belgian General Intelligence Service has released a secret report accusing Belgian diamond dealers of continuing trafficking in embargoed diamonds from UNITA in Angola. This has deflated the diamond industry’s claims that it was following a new “clean” path to conflict-free diamonds.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, President Joseph Kabila has cancelled the monopoly deal on diamonds that his father contracted with the Israeli firm, International Diamond Industries. As a recent UN report reveals, the Israeli dealer failed to supply arms as had originally been promised. The young president has decided to “liberalize” the DRC diamond market to decrease underground trading and smuggling that was taking much of the DRC diamond business across the river into Congo Brazzaville.
The Security Council has hired Kroll, a private investigating company, to help enforce financial sanctions in Angola. Kroll specializes in finding hidden bank accounts and it will look for the accounts of UNITA, Jonas Savimbi’s rebel group. The Council also plans to use the services of Space Imaging Inc., a satellite-imaging company in Colorado to help UNMOVIC detect Iraqi weapons. This latter step may anticipate a new regime of “targeted” sanctions for Iraq, reportedly under secret negotiations among the Council’s permanent members.
Here are the links for this week . . .
