🚀 go-pugleaf

Just breaking news:

"GATS (i.e., corporation interests) can veto any national, local or
community legislation we (environmentalists, social reformers, economic
reformers) get enacted."   --Peter Skelling

This post contains (below) the just-breaking discovery that the GATS
treaties apply to government "services," i.e.,  that GATS overrides popular
sovereignty, holds veto power over the decisions of representative
government and holds the power to impose financial penalties on "offending
governments."  TO GET TO THIS STORY IN A HURRY, SCROLL PAST the immediatley
following  relevant but ancient quotation of Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge against
"men to whom all countries are alike provided they can make money out of
them" -- this  quote is needed for net-etiquette anti-spam reasons to
differentiate the content of this post from another in another thread in
this newsgroup.)

     "...I can never be anything else but
an American, and I must think of
the United States first in an arrangement
like this (i.e.,  the League of Nations --DE)
I am thinkingof what is best for the world, for
if the United States fails the best hopes of
mankind fails with it.  I have never had but one
allegiance--I cannot divide it now. I have loved
one flag and I cannot share that devotion and
give affection to the mongrel banner
invented for a league.  Internationalism, illustrated
by the Bolshevik AND BY THE MEN TO
WHOM ALL COUNTRIES ARE ALIKE
PROVIDED THEY CAN MAKE MONEY
OUT OF THEM (emphasis added--DE) is to me
repulsive.  National I must remain, and in
that way I like all other Americans can render
the amplest service to the world.  The
United States is the world's best hope, but if
you fetter her in the interests and quarrels of
other nations, if you tangle her in the intrigues
of Europe, you will destroy her power for good
and endanger her very existence.  Leave her
to march freely through the centuries to come
as in the years that have gone.  Strong, generous,
confident, she has nobly served mankind.
Beware how you trifle with your marvelous
inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty,
for if we stumble and fall   freedom and civilization
everywhere will go down in ruin.."
        (August 12, 1919, before the U.S. Senate)

-------------------------------
My  introduction to GATS expos�:

GATS  overrides any legislation activistism may get enacted.

Enlargement of the scope of the General Agreement on Trade in Services
(GATS) treaties -- has extended regulatory control to all services provided
by government and they have not told you about it.

WTO documentary evidence (below) proves that  government services including
health and education are regulated by the latest GATS.     Forced
corporatization of the public sector (the same "privatization" process
globalism has used to steal public manufacturing assets from national
populations all around the world)  under GATS is, as  the European
Commission's website on Services alerts us, "not just something that exists
between governments, but it is first and foremost an instrument for the
benefit of business."

The analysis below is made by one of the few "independent" (non-hireling)
economists to study the treaties in depth.  Dr.Sanders is, I believe,
exactly right in his assessment of  the inadequacy of public and
public-sector understanding of this series of treaties:

"The GATS is one of seventeen international trade
agreements administered by the WTO. These agreements
are so complex and full of jargon that possibly only their
architects fully comprehend their detail and more
importantly, their implications for society. Most people,
including our government ministers and elected
representatives, have little understanding of the secretive
world where an unelected elite shape the destiny of
humanity."

Here, then,  is the clear issue, the universal offense, the catching
red-handed,
the rallying infamy, and the long hoped-for pivot on which globalism's
intended
coup d'main can be turned to start the reaction that will end their 500
years
of destructive manipulation.

Distribute this intelligently.  You will not be alone.

Dick Eastman
223 S. 64th Ave.
Yakima, Washington
Every man is responsible to every other man.

--------

Jay Fenello's introduction (received by Eastman):

GATS: The End of Democracy

Richard Sanders investigates the forces behind its unseemly haste.

Printed in the Australian Financial Review, 15th June 2001.
(Some paragraphs omitted from the published version for space reasons have
been re-included in [square brackets])

Jay Fenello
----------------------

Dr. Richard Sanders' text:

"The liberty of democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of
private power to a point where it becomes stronger than that of the state
itself. That, in essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an
individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."

Franklin D. Roosevelt's warning of the fascist threat is as urgent today as
it was in the 1930s, particularly since the public is blissfully unaware of
the stealthy corporate assault on democracy occurring right now. We are
witnessing the economic colonisation of the world by corporate interests.
This is achieved through 'free' trade agreements designed to run the world
on economic rationalist lines.

Since negotiations began earlier this year, anti-globalisation activists
have been warning that the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)
poses a major threat to democracy and that proposed changes being negotiated
will lead inevitably to the demise of most public services including health
and education.

Little notice has been taken of these dire warnings, probably because they
sound so outrageous. After all, what government in its right mind would
voluntarily sign away public services and allow democracy to be severely
eroded?

Yet close scrutiny of the GATS text and related World Trade Organisation
(WTO) documents reveals that there is a great deal of substance to these
warnings. For example, WTO head Mike Moore and Trade Minister Mark Vaile
want the public to believe that all services provided by government are
excluded from the scope of the GATS. As we shall see, WTO documentary
evidence proves that most government services including health and education
will in fact be subject to the GATS in spite of the assurances from Moore
and Vaile.

The GATS is one of seventeen international trade agreements administered by
the WTO. These agreements are so complex and full of jargon that possibly
only their architects fully comprehend their detail and more importantly,
their implications for society. Most people, including our government
ministers and elected representatives, have little understanding of the
secretive world where an unelected elite shape the destiny of humanity.

The first step to understanding the GATS is to understand the forces driving
it and the other WTO trade liberalization agreements. On the face of it, the
WTO consists of representatives of 141 governments sitting around the table
negotiating international trade agreements that are mutually beneficial and
in the public interest.

However, the European Commission's website on Services alerts us that the
GATS is "not just something that exists between governments, but it is first
and foremost an instrument for the benefit of business."

Few realise that the GATS and even the WTO itself are part of a global
corporate power grab. As David Hartridge, the former Director of the WTO
Services Division explains: "Without the enormous pressure generated by the
American financial services sector, particularly companies like American
Express and Citicorp, there would have been no services agreement and
therefore perhaps no Uruguay Round and no WTO."

Few realise that the agendas for these negotiations are set behind the
scenes in private meetings involving a small but very powerful elite who are
avid proponents and beneficiaries of the free trade ideology.

Let us for a moment observe one such meeting that played a key role in
setting the GATS agenda. Our window is
http://www.globalservicesnetwork.com/Ditchley%20Park.htm. It is April 26,
1998, and we are at Ditchley Park, an English country estate near Oxford.

We are looking into a large room with bookshelves to the ceiling and
valuable paintings on the walls. Forty-two people are seated around an
enormous oval table. [The chairman of the meeting, Jaime Serra, a former
Mexican Trade Minister, was responsible for drafting the original GATS
text.]

 From a press release lying on the table entitled "Trade Experts and
Policymakers Gather at Ditchley Park to Determine Future WTO Role in
Services" we learn they are meeting "to chart a new direction for
liberalizing global trade in services". It tells us that this select group
of people includes corporate executives, public officials, academics and
advisers from the OECD, UNCTAD, and the WTO. This is clearly a private and
unofficial meeting as we read they are all "acting in their personal
capacity".

[The company executives there that day also launched the Global Services
Network, a powerful corporate lobby to "take the lead in building support
for liberalization of world services trade in the next big round for
services negotiations to begin in 2000". They emphasised that "greater
attention must be given to the importance of enlisting regulators in
furthering liberalization."]

This raises the question of how we, the public, can place trust in our
unelected and unaccountable public officials when they are being enlisted by
corporate interests to work unofficially behind the scenes [to promote the
corporate agenda of tying the hands of government so it can no longer do its
job of protecting the public interest?]

Corporations see government regulation and the provision of public services
as barriers to trade in services. The corporate agenda to remove these is
achieved through the process of 'progressive liberalisation' that lies at
the heart of all WTO agreements. It involves regular rounds of negotiation
where governments progressively negotiate away their regulatory authority
with no back-tracking allowed between rounds. The WTO calls this
'disciplining governments'. Like the ratchets on a pair of handcuffs, the
ties on the hands of government are progressively tightened. This is a
subtle but very real corporate assault on democracy as public control over
the economy, society and the environment is progressively removed.

Although the WTO denies it, the inevitable ultimate outcome of 'progressive
liberalisation' is the commercialisation, privatisation and deregulation of
the world's domestic economies. Essentially, it is like imposing National
Competition Policy at the global level.

The specific aim of the GATS is to remove barriers to trade in services.
Because most trade in services occurs within a country, rather than
targeting external barriers such as tariffs, it targets all internal
domestic laws, regulations and policies that may possibly discriminate
against foreign service providers or even` limit their profitability.

At the heart of the GATS lies the noble sounding concept of
non-discrimination. Its aim is to eliminate existing (and prevent new)
government measures which either discriminate between the services or
service suppliers of other member countries (Most-Favoured-Nation Treatment)
or between its own and those of other member countries (National Treatment).

The GATS rules place enforceable restrictions (disciplines) on what
government measures are allowed. Government measures are defined broadly as
any "law, regulation, rule, procedure, decision, administrative action, or
any other form" of measure and also include subsidies and grants. It also
covers every possible means (mode of supply) by which an individual or firm
based in one country may provide a service to a party in another member
country.

The GATS document consists of two sets of rules. The first, called General
Obligations and Disciplines, contains 17 Articles or sets of rules that
already apply to all government measures. Those requiring the closest
scrutiny are Article 6 (Domestic Regulation), Article 15 (Subsidies) and
Article 13 (Government Procurement).

The second set of rules, called Specific Commitments, has three Articles
that apply only to government measures in those sectors that a government
has committed to in negotiations. Article 16 (Market Access) requires the
closest scrutiny. The negotiating process pressures governments to increase
the number of service sectors they will expose to these disciplines in each
successive round.

The GATS contains a 'built in agenda' to renegotiate the agreement every
five years. [The first round was agreed to in January 1995 and the second
round started in January 2000.] Serious negotiations started on 19th March
this year and it is the implications of proposals currently on the
negotiating table that are the major cause for concern.

[Before considering these implications, it is worth noting that the
implications of the first round still remain obscure and many countries are
seeking clarification before moving on. This uncertainty arises because
these texts are wide open to interpretation and there will be no certainty
until there is a dispute and a WTO tribunal consisting of three trade
officials, wedded to the free trade ideology, adjudicate on the matter.
Because of this, and the sheer complexity of the agreements, governments are
often unsure of what exactly they are signing up to. Yet the WTO claims that
certainty is a benefit of GATS.]

The most serious concern about the GATS in current negotiations is the
extent to which WTO disciplines will apply to the provision and funding of
public services such as health and education. Based on the GATS text and WTO
documents there are very strong grounds for concern.

Echoing the WTO, and apparently seeking to allay growing public concern that
public services will be subjected to GATS disciplines, [Australian Trade
Minister, Mark] Vaile recently claimed: "Services supplied in the exercise
of government authority, such as public education, are not covered by the
GATS." However, according to Article 1:3(c) of the GATS, "a service supplied
in the exercise of governmental authority" means any service which is
supplied neither on a commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more
service suppliers." Very few public services would appear to be excluded by
this definition.

According to a 23 page Government of British Columbia discussion paper
devoted solely to interpreting this definition, "only a small sub-set of
services - those that are provided by completely non-commercial, absolute
monopolies - appear to be protected by this exclusion." In other words, most
public services would be subject to GATS disciplines.

Even the minutes of a WTO Council for Trade in Services meeting support this
view:

"Members drew attention to the variety of policy objectives governing the
provision of health and social services, including basic welfare and equity
considerations. Such considerations had led to a very substantial degree of
government involvement, both as a direct provider of such services and as a
regulator. However, this did not mean that the whole sector was outside the
remit of the GATS; the exceptions provided in Article I:3 of the Agreement
needed to be interpreted narrowly."

[There is also a legal precedent likely to be accepted by WTO dispute panels
that supports an even narrower interpretation. The European Court of Justice
has ruled that a virtually identical clause in the European Treaty did not
exclude Italy's non-profit job placement service provided as a pure public
monopoly with no private sector competition.]

If the GATS disciplines do apply to most public services, then this has
profound potential implications for the future of all publicly funded
services including health, education and the Australian Broadcasting
Commission, to name a few. The reason is that public funding is seen as a
subsidy under these agreements and GATS will treat subsidies as unfair
competition or barriers to entry for foreign services and suppliers.

National Treatment commitments already mean a country has to give out
subsidies on a non-discriminatory basis. Once Article 16 disciplines on
subsidies are developed and agreed to, governments will not be able to
discriminate between government and foreign service providers in their
funding decisions. This will massively reduce, and could end, public sector
funding.

As the WTO Secretariat has said, an obligation to give out subsidies on an
equal basis to foreign and domestic suppliers is a powerful inducement to
get rid of government subsidies altogether.

[Here is the WTO's public relations response to this concern: "The GATS has
no implications for the funding or subsidy of services provided in the
exercise of governmental authority. Negotiations are under way on subsidies
"with a view to developing the necessary multilateral disciplines" to avoid
distortive effects on trade. Whatever disciplines are developed will not
apply to governmental services, because these are simply outside the scope
of the GATS."]

Because the WTO can't deny that disciplines on subsidies are already
included in the GATS, or the impact of these disciplines on public services,
it dismisses these concerns by saying public services are excluded under
Article I:3. Yet as we have just seen, very few services are likely to be
excluded on these grounds.

Current negotiations on Domestic Regulation (Article 6) could impose new and
severe constraints on the ability of governments to maintain or create
environmental, health, consumer protection and other public interest
standards. Proposals include a 'necessity test' whereby governments would
bear the burden of proof in demonstrating that any of their countries laws
and regulations are the 'least trade restrictive,' regardless of financial,
social, technological or other considerations.

Market Access (Article 16) commitments are the basis under which countries
open up their markets to foreign service suppliers. Governments have a
single opportunity to list their market access restrictions when they first
sign up to the GATS. All signatories to the first round have a Schedule of
restrictions. These restrictions are the main bargaining chips traded off in
negotiations. In the current negotiating round, the pressure will be on for
each government to reduce the number and scope of their restrictions. [The
thrust of negotiations will be a push to expand the number and scope of
specific commitments in national schedules, to remove existing limitations
within already committed sectors, and to bind more new and existing
commitments so that future governments cannot reverse them.]

It wasn't protestors who scuttled the Millennium Round of the WTO in Seattle
in 1999. It was the discontent among less developed countries over bullying
and the undemocratic negotiating processes of the WTO. In spite of this
major setback, a year ago at the GATS 2000 negotiations in Geneva, the
president of the U.S. Coalition of Service Industries, said the U.S.
services industry lobby was very satisfied with the progress made in the
GATS: "Considering Seattle, we have every reason to be pleased. Where we are
now is effectively where we would have been if the Seattle meeting had
succeeded."

[The GATS is now the spearhead of a highly organised corporate campaign to
systematically sweep away government regulations that restrict corporate
activities and stand in the way of corporate profits. It will effectively
transfer the responsibility for balancing the public interest with
commercial considerations from elected government representatives to
appointed tribunals or WTO panels. It will place foreign commercial
interests above the public interest. It will intrude into many domestic
policy areas including environment, culture, natural resources, health care,
education and social services.]

There is one more thing we need to know - the theoretical basis for 'free'
trade is a sham. The theory of Comparative Advantage, formulated in 1817 by
David Ricardo, only applies under conditions where capital is not mobile
between nations as was the case in 1817. Under modern conditions of high
capital mobility there is no such thing as comparative advantage - only
absolute advantage and that means strong economic players win and the weak
lose. In the global scheme of things, Australia is a weak player.

Why then, is this subtle coup on democracy being allowed to happen? Indeed,
why is government actively facilitating it?

The WTO Training Package provides a powerful explanation: "there are various
economic and political advantages associated with liberalisation commitments
under the GATS . [including] . overcoming domestic resistance to change." In
other words, it provides an excuse for governments wanting to impose
economic rationalist policies against the democratic wishes of the public.
But why would they want to impose such policies?

The simple answer is that they have been conned by a long running corporate
propaganda campaign that stretches back half a century and arose as a
reaction against the prescriptions of Keynes. The message endlessly repeated
through the '60s, '70s and '80s was that the private sector is efficient
while the public sector is inefficient. In reality the efficiencies of both
sectors are, on average, similar. However, the public sector can provide a
service 10% more cheaply because a profit dividend does not need to be
extracted.

The more recent propaganda is that repetitive mantra: "Globalisation is
Inevitable". Of course, in the sense that it means running the world on
economic rationalist lines, globalisation is not inevitable as The Economist
admitted in its editorial in September last year. This clever use of
language serves two political purposes. First, if decision makers believe
this mantra, they will develop policies that accord with what they see as
'inevitable' and turn this 'inevitability' into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Secondly, it creates a mood of resigned acceptance on the part of the
population being impacted on by the structural changes flowing from economic
liberalisation. This also assists in allowing this 'inevitability' to become
a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The propaganda tells us economic liberalisation increases economic growth.
While this is true, what we are not told is that GDP does not subtract the
costs of economic growth from the benefits. A new measure that does this,
called a Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), shows that for most countries the
costs of growth equal, or are greater, than the benefits. According to the
UN, the gap between rich and poor has continued to grow over the past fifty
years and that the rate has been greatest over the thirty-year history of
economic liberalisation. The reality is that economic growth is taking us
slowly backwards.

The propaganda tells us we'll all be better off. The reality is that
business privatises benefits and socialises costs where possible.
Consequently, the benefits of economic growth flow mainly into private hands
while the social, environmental and economic costs (such as bailing out HIH)
are borne by society. Trade and investment liberalisation serve the
interests of the wealthy at the expense of society in general. Remember, the
words 'private' and 'privatise' derive from the Latin 'privare' meaning 'to
deprive'.

Finally, there are the bureaucrats who negotiate these agreements and advise
our ministers and as mentioned earlier, we must ask whose interests they
serve. The myopia of the bureaucracy is illustrated in the following
response from a Treasury official when a Parliamentary Inquiry was being
held into the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), a very similar
agreement to the GATS.

The official was asked: "So Treasury has made no attempt to quantify the
potential benefits or cost to Australia?

Treasury replied: "As economists, Treasury would argue that trade and
investment liberalisation is good for economic growth, both domestically and
worldwide."

This reply based on faith and without a fact in sight had the Committee
members shaking their heads in disbelief. This probably marked the turning
point in the demise of the MAI. Similarly, if the facts about the GATS,
rather than the baseless assertions and half-truths, are allowed to enter
the public debate, it is almost certain that the public will rally behind
democracy and the GATS will be scuttled.

* * * * *
Source:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~jenks/Sanders.html

Richard Sanders is an ecological economist and the world's leading
"outsider" authority on OECD's Multilateral Agreement on Investment.

[Sander's text received by Eastman from  Jay Fenello's
Aligning with Purpose list.]

Jay Fenello
www.AligningWithPurpose.com ... for a Better World
----------------------------------------------------------
"They become like machines whose sole purpose is to make a
living. This mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
   -- Henry David Thoreau

---------------------------------------
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