Now that medicines are off the table...

Excuse my cynicism, but is the recent agreement on drugs for AIDS-ravaged poor countries a quick PR excercise to cover for business-as-usual? Now that the organization has been seen to show "concern" for poor countries, will it return to the corporate agenda? How else to explain the quick adoption of one of the main US pet causes - getting the WTO to rule on the EU's restrictions on GMO foods?

Last week, the WTO reached an agreement to provide desperately needed medicines to poor countries struggling with epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases. This agreement came about because the United States agreed to drug plan proposals it had previously rejected. It also agreed to take up one of the Bush administration's pet causes: investigating the European Union's restrictions on Genetically Modified Foods.

The agreement on medicines gave the WTO something to brag about. Apologists at the WTO and in the rah-rah financial press crowed about how the system really was concerned about those less fortunate than multinational pharmaceutical companies.

Many countries and organizations were quick to point out that the deal was not as good as it sounded. While the WTO was trumpeting its victory for disease-stricken countries, the US was seeking to encure that pharmaceutical profits would be protected, and very few cheap drugs would reach the countries that need them but can least afford them.

Once it became clear how many conditions the United States had insisted upon before signing the agreement, many countries grew concerned that the deal would discourage the production and distribution of cheap generic drugs.
"Flawed WTO drugs deal will do little to secure future access to medicines in developing countries"

Medecins sans Frontieres was quick to point out that the United States was using another trade negotiating apparatus, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, to lessen the impact of the agreement.

It seems the US was giving (very publicly) with one hand, and taking away (very quietly) with another. Why do this? I suspect it was to start the negotiations with a positive accomplishment (no matter how little effect it will have) in order to counter critics later, when the WTO seeks to expand into areas it really should leave to the citizens and elected governments of the world.

The WTO power grab has already begun. The very next day, before the ink was dry on the medicines agreement, the WTO announced that it would look into the European Union restrictions on GMO foods - turning an issue of public and environmental health into a trade issue.

"WTO to probe Europe's GMO policy"

Find out more about the Precautionary Principle, which the US is opposed to in the EU's GMO policy

Why You Should Come to Cancun

From September 10-15, the World Trade Organization will attempt to hold a ministerial in Cancun, Mexico. They will be opposed by campesinos, students, international activists, NGOs, and a strong contingent of the Mayan Gods and Goddesses (at least, in the form of giant puppets.) Here’s why you should be there, too, if you possibly can—or in one of the many support actions around the globe if you can’t get to Cancun itself.

The WTO is the most ambitious and far-reaching of the various trade agreements and institutions that have codified and imposed corporate globalization on a reluctant world. The WTO'’s reach is global, and its power immense. It is, in a sense, an institution of global governance, making rulings that override the laws we make as citizens and that establish parameters for our policies not just on trade but on how we will feed and educate our children, care for our sick and elderly, provide for our common security, reward those who labor, develop or conserve our resources, and interact with our environment. Its agreements are hammered out in meetings which are not open to the public and in which the rich and industrialized countries hold inordinate power, and its rulings on disputes are made in secret tribunals by trade bureaucrats who are not accountable to the public, and who provide no public record of their deliberations.

On the agenda for this ministerial are some of the basic issues of life: food, agriculture, services. To simplify the complexities of tariffs and subsidies and all the rest of it, the vision put forth by the corporate globalizers is like a bad science fiction film. In their version of the world, no country will produce its own food, devote common resources to provide for human needs or the nurturing of the next generation. All food will be grown in large, industrialized farms for export, using chemicals and herbicides on patented, genetically engineered crops that are further packaged, irradiated, branded, and shrink-wrapped before being sold to you at your corner large corporate supermarket. Profit, not health or sustainability, will be the determining factor in agriculture as in every area of human endeavor. Should you get sick from the chemicals, a privatized medical establishment will minister to your every need as long as you can pay, just as you will pay for your drinking water and your children’s private school. And not through taxes, those subversive drains on the rewards of economic aggression, but through simple fees for the privatized services which can now be more ‘fairly’ distributed: that is, those who have money will get them, those who don’t, well, hell, they don’t deserve them anyway. Every service that human beings have provided for each other or organized governments to provide will now be privatized and become arenas for corporate profit-making—from teaching our children to running our prisons. The single exception, the last remaining role for government, is the police and military—and private security companies are even making inroads into that. A small elite will hold all the power and the bulk of the world’s wealth, and for the rest of us, the maquiladora, the prison, or a fine career in the military await. Environmental standards, labor laws, worker safety—forget all that!

The vast majority of us don’t see that world as desirable. We hold another vision, one that has something to do with community, with valuing human relationships of caring and nurturing, with a love for nature and the diversity and wonder of life. We want a world where everybody has enough: healthy, organic, locally grown food, clean water, comfortable shelter, opportunities to express our creativity and realize our dreams. We know that world is possible. We would like to get on with creating it, with healing the planet, raising our kids, and planting our gardens. But in order to do even these simple things we need to stand up and fight. And the place to do that is Cancun.

The Cancun ministerial has every chance of failing. The project of U.S. global hegemony has become so blatant and aggressive that it has alarmed even our allies. The U.S. is at odds with the E.U. on agriculture and other issues. The less developed countries are tired of being dictated to by the U.S. and the E.U. There is rebellion in the ranks, and we can further that with a massive presence in the streets.

Moreover, there’s currently a rift in the ruling classes, a subtle but real difference between the corporatists, who want to see corporate rule backed by U.S. military power, and the militarists, who want to see U.S. military hegemony, backed by corporate wealth. Take this simple test:

Do you believe the purpose of life is:

A. To produce corporate profit.

B. To produce weapons and consolidate military power.

C. Any of the following: love, human relationship;, art; beauty; balance; harmony with the natural world; spiritual growth; to live in praiseful relationship with the sacred; fun; freedom; a mystery that no one can define.

If you checked C, you need to be on the streets somewhere when the WTO meets. We need a mobilization approaching the scale of February 15, in Cancun and around the world. It is time for the world’s second superpower, the aroused ordinary people of the planet, to raise our voices again. This ministerial could become the third failure in a row. The Seattle ministerial dissolved in dissension, and the meeting two years ago in Qatar was merely a sequestered holding action. A WTO failure in Cancun would be a serious and possibly fatal setback for the WTO as an institution, and the entire project of global corporate rule.

In Cancun, we need numbers to fill the streets and to counter a very challenging tactical situation. A small turnout in Cancun could lead the globalizers to the mistaken conclusion that the people of the world have ceased to care about their activities. With large numbers, we can derail the meeting. Without numbers, our role will be merely symbolic, although still important. Cancun is expensive and hard to get to, very far away from most centers of population in Mexico. If you can’t come to Cancun yourself, students and campesinos need support to get there, and there will be mobilizations at borders and in cities around the world.

There will be forums beginning on September 8th, days of action starting on the 9th, and a legal march on the 13th. Ecologists and permaculturalists from the US and Mexico are working to set up the campgrounds as models or sustainability. Cancun is a chance to connect and meet with people from around the globe who are working for the same values of life and freedom.

So come if you can, and if you can’t, help someone else get there. Organize an event in your home town, or join one of the local or regional mobilizations. This is a crucial moment in history, when the tide could turn. And the moon is rising. Come dance on the shore!

For our report on organizing in Cancun, and to donate to help students reach Cancun, see:
http://rantcollective.org/

For information and updates on Cancun:
Indymedia Cancun: http://cancun.mediosindependientes.org/

To find out about mobilizations and actions, or for suggestions for organizing your own:
www.unitedforpeace.org (Scroll down to September 13 Global Day of Action.)

To donate online to help campesinos and indigenous people get to Cancun:
http://www.unorca.org.mx/omc/ingles/donate.html

(NOTE: pages will open in a new browser window).

By Starhawk

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Copyright (c) 2003 by Starhawk. All rights reserved. This copyright protects Starhawk's right to publication of her work. Nonprofit, activist, and educational groups may circulate this essay (forward it, reprint it, translate it, post it, or reproduce it) for nonprofit uses. Please do not change any part of it without permission. Readers are invited to visit the web site: www.starhawk.org.