Subj:         Countdown to Qatar: be counted!
Date:   01-10-30 20:49:38 EST
From:   [log in to unmask] (Jim Diamond)
Sender: [log in to unmask] (Biotech Forum)
Reply-to:   [log in to unmask] (Biotech Forum)
To: [log in to unmask]

     Do you remember the anti-WTO spirit of Seattle?  The WTO is having
another go at it in Qatar starting on November 9th.  The site was certainly
picked to minimize NGO and other citizen participation -- Qatar is an emirate
located on a peninsula in the Persian Gulf.  You can find it on the map about
halfway between Kuwait and the Straits of Hormuz.  This isn't a location
where a lot of trade unionists and college kids were likely to show up to
demonstrate, but events in that part of the world have made this even less
possible.
       The next 10 days are a good time to do something to honor the spirit
of Seattle.  You and I won't be in Qatar, but we can remind our government
that we haven't changed our mind about the corporate "globalization" agenda
-- that environmental and labor safeguards continue to be important, that
globalization can't be allowed to trump democratic values, that free trade
isn't as important as free people, etc.  In this "post 9-11" world, we need
to say that homeland protection must include environmental protections and
human rights protections.
       One place to say these things will be your family and your friends.
Another will be to the broader community.  Yet another audience is our
Congress.  I hope you'll reformulate this message and pass in on to as broad
an audience and as many audiences as possible.
       The Congress is dealing with a "stimulus" package which gives tax
breaks to corporations and the wealthy and contains almost nothing for people
who've been laid off.  This is "business as usual" with a vengeance.  The
majority party is pushing for "Trade Promotion Authority" = "Fast Track" and
trying to pretend that trade will counter terrorism.  We should remind them
that the alliance between labor and environmentalists is still important,
never more than at this moment.  We should say that we want our
representatives to speak up for working people and for all the values
(including environmental, including personal freedoms) which make "life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," a meaningful foundation for our
social contract.
       We should say that if the "war on terror" involves the difficult task
of balancing police powers against personal freedoms, that we want a brave
Congress with all of its Constitutional powers intact, and that the most
powerful man in the world -- the chief of the Executive Branch who is also
the Commander in Chief -- doesn't need any more authority, "trade promotion
authority" or any other.
       We should try to understand too, how it feels to live in a country
where AIDS is a leading killer and to hear the nations which develop
treatments for the epidemic insist on royalty payments for their corporations
-- for TRIPS, Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property, is among the
topics to be taken up at these WTO meetings.  In a world in which the CIA is
asserting a right to use selective assassination to counter terrorism, might
it be okay for impoverished nations to disregard drug patents to save lives?
       Life patents are also part of the WTO agenda.  Should secretive
negotiations -- and negotiations, remember, favor the powerful, who have
something to bargain with -- decide on the morality of who has an
intellectual property claim to the genetic choreography of life?
       Ten days -- time now to speak up if you want to be counted!
             Jim Diamond

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For SC email list T-and-C, send: GET TERMS-AND-CONDITIONS.CURRENT
to [log in to unmask]