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Friday, November 21, 2003

FTAA Talks Succeed Amidst Protest; Foundation Laid for World's Largest Free Trade Area 


The inaugural session of the eighth Free Trade Area of the Americas ministerial meeting at the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami, Florida. Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) member nations announced they had reached an accord at the ministerial summit here, one day ahead of the scheduled end of the meeting. AFP/Stephen Jaffe

Miami riot police fire on a Free Trade Area of the Americas protest after demonstrators became unruly. ALAN DIAZ, AP--Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press


Trade officials Robert Zoellick from the United States, Celso Amorim of Brazil, Soledad Alvear of Chile and Jorge Humberto Botero of Colombia, on the right, listen to the discussions during the closing press conference of the Eighth FTAA talks in Miami, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2003. (AP Photo/J. Pat Carter)--Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press

Protesters hurl objects at police during a Free Trade protest in downtown Miami, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2003. The Free Trade Area of the Americas free trade talks are being held several blocks away. (AP Photo/David Adame)--Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press

While thousands of protesters rallied in the streets of Miami, proponents of the World's largest Free Trade Area declared victory as the 8th Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Ministerial Meeting successfully came to an end. A final "watered down" FTAA draft establishing the general parameters of the agreement was approved by all FTAA members one day earlier than scheduled, drawing the trade talks to a premature close. The agreement was signed by trade representatives of all 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere excluding Cuba. The next round of talks will be held next year, when more of the nitty-gritty details of the agreement will be discussed upon and ratified. The FTAA is scheduled to come into full operation by 2005.

Although the initial FTAA draft has been signed by all member nations, there is still significant disagreement over the scope of the agreement. Some experts believe that as the details of the agreement are being hammered out in 2004, confrontation between nations with conflicting interests will become more imminent. FTAA member-nations critical of the FTAA agreement in its current state were quick to label it with names such as "FTAA Lite" and "FTAA a la carte" and stated that confrontation was simply being postponed to a future date.

Regardless of the opposition it has confronted and the blows it has been dealt in the past, the FTAA in its current embryonic state is a powerful testament to the great determination and will of the leaders of the nations of the Western Hemisphere, who nearly ten years ago, in the midst of great opposition at the Summit of the Americas in 1994, called for the formation of this great free trade area that would span the entire Western Hemisphere. Although in its current state the FTAA agreement is significantly watered down and less ambitious than it was originally intended to be (not all barriers to trade are being removed, and not all nations are participating in all aspects of the agreement), this historic occasion marks a significant step for humanity towards the establishment of a prosperous global commonwealth free of barriers to trade and commerce.

There are yet many more steps to take, however, before this can be achieved. The disparity in all economic and social measures between wealthy and poor nations of the Western Hemisphere and around the world, for example, has only increased over the past several decades; such polarization of wealth and poverty is only one of many issues that do not respect geographical boundaries that must be addressed if the FTAA is to become a positive influence on the American Hemisphere's economic and social conditions. If the FTAA is successful in its endeavors, it will be a shining example for other groups of nations around the world to follow, such as the African Union. This success, however, will most probably come with a heavy price tag. FTAA opponents in North America are expecting the creation of the FTAA to result in the loss of jobs in the United States and other countries where the cost of labor is high relative to other member nations, and in the rise and multiplication of multinational corporations that will exploit less expensive labor and less stringent legislation and enforcement in poorer countries.

Although these claims might be true in the short term, in my humble opinion these painful, possibly disastrous forecasted events will bring about the need for the establishment and enforcement of international legislation that will prevent such rogue corporations from profiteering from these disparities and will raise the standard of living in poorer countries and 'level the playing field' for all nations involved. In the long term, the FTAA will also discover that human rights, social and spiritual issues cannot be separated from economic issues, and must be addressed simultaneously in order to be 'tackled'. Economic unity in increasing and expanding circles of unity is only one of the first and most basic of a series of steps that humanity must take in order to achieve World Peace. Rather than continue with my own weightless opinionated statements, I would like to include some excerpts that expound on the subject of globalization from an enlightening document entitled, "Century of Light" commissioned by The Universal House of Justice:



"...The process of "globalization" that had been following a long rising curve over a period of several centuries was galvanized by new powers beyond the imaginations of most people. Economic forces, breaking free of traditional restraints, brought into being during the closing decade of the century a new global order in the designing, generation and distribution of wealth. Knowledge itself became a significantly more valuable commodity than even financial capital and material resources. In a breathtakingly short space of time, national borders, already under assault, became permeable, with the result that vast sums now pass instantly through them at the command of a computer signal. Complex production operations are so reconfigured as to integrate and maximize the economies available from the contributions of a range of specializing participants, without regard to their national locations. If one were to lower one's horizon to purely material considerations, the earth has already taken on something of the character of "one country" and the inhabitants of various lands the status of its consumer "citizens".

Nor is the transformation merely economic. Increasingly, globalization assumes political, social and cultural dimensions. It has become clear that the powers of the institution of the nation-state, once the arbiter and protector of humanity's fortunes, have been drastically eroded. While national governments continue to play a crucial role, they must now make room for such rising centres of power as multinational corporations, United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations of every kind, and huge media conglomerates, the cooperation of all of which is vital to the success of most programmes aimed at achieving significant economic or social ends. Just as the migration of money or corporations encounters little hindrance from national borders, neither can the latter any longer exercise effective control over the dissemination of knowledge. Internet communication, which has the ability to transmit in seconds the entire contents of libraries that took centuries of study to amass, vastly enriches the intellectual life of anyone able to use it, as well as providing sophisticated training in a broad range of professional fields. The system, so prophetically foreseen sixty years ago by Shoghi Effendi, builds a sense of shared community among its users that is impatient of either geographic or cultural distances.

The benefits to many millions of persons are obvious and impressive. Cost effectiveness resulting from the coordination of formerly competing operations tends to bring goods and services within the reach of populations who could not previously have hoped to enjoy them. Enormous increases in the funds available for research and development expand the variety and quality of such benefits. Something of a levelling effect in the distribution of employment opportunities can be seen in the ease with which business operations can shift their base from one part of the world to another. The abandonment of barriers to transnational trade reduces still further the cost of goods to consumers. It is not difficult to appreciate, from a Baha'i perspective, the potentiality of such transformations for laying the foundations of the global society envisioned in Baha'u'llah's Writings.

Far from inspiring optimism about the future, however, globalization is seen by large and growing numbers of people around the world as the principal threat to that future. The violence of the riots set off by the meetings of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund during the last two years testifies to the depth of the fear and resentment that the rise of globalization has provoked. Media coverage of these unexpected outbursts focused public attention on protests against gross disparities in the distribution of benefits and opportunities, which globalization is seen as only increasing, and on warnings that, if effective controls are not speedily imposed, the consequences will be catastrophic in social and political, as well as in economic and environmental, terms.

Such concerns appear well-founded. Economic statistics alone reveal a picture of current global conditions that is profoundly disturbing. The ever-widening gulf between the one fifth of the world's population living in the highest income countries and the one fifth living in the lowest income countries tells a grim story. According to the 1999 Human Development Report published by the United Nations Development Programme, this gap represented, in 1990, a ratio of sixty to one. That is to say, one segment of humankind was enjoying access to sixty percent of the world's wealth, while another, equally large, population struggled merely to survive on barely one percent of that wealth. By 1997, in the wake of globalization's rapid advance, the gulf had widened in only seven years to a ratio of seventy-four to one. Even this appalling fact does not take into account the steady impoverishment of the majority of the remaining billions of human beings trapped in the relentlessly narrowing isthmus between these two extremes. Far from being brought under control, the crisis is clearly accelerating. The implications for humanity's future, in terms of privation and despair engulfing more than two thirds of the Earth's population, helped to account for the apathy that met the Millennium Summit's celebration of achievements that were, by all reasonable criteria, truly historic.

Globalization itself is an intrinsic feature of the evolution of human society. It has brought into existence a socio-economic culture that, at the practical level, constitutes the world in which the aspirations of the human race will be pursued in the century now opening. No objective observer, if he is fair-minded in his judgement, will deny that both of the two contradictory reactions it is arousing are, in large measure, well justified. The unification of human society, forged by the fires of the twentieth century, is a reality that with every passing day opens breathtaking new possibilities. A reality also being forced on serious minds everywhere, is the claim of justice to be the one means capable of harnessing these great potentialities to the advancement of civilization. It no longer requires the gift of prophecy to realize that the fate of humanity in the century now opening will be determined by the relationship established between these two fundamental forces of the historical process, the inseparable principles of unity and justice.


In the perspective of Baha'u'llah's teachings, the greatest danger of both the moral crisis and the inequities associated with globalization in its current form is an entrenched philosophical attitude that seeks to justify and excuse these failures. The overthrow of the twentieth century's totalitarian systems has not meant the end of ideology. On the contrary. There has not been a society in the history of the world, no matter how pragmatic, experimentalist and multi-form it may have been, that did not derive its thrust from some foundational interpretation of reality. Such a system of thought reigns today virtually unchallenged across the planet, under the nominal designation "Western civilization". Philosophically and politically, it presents itself as a kind of liberal relativism; economically and socially, as capitalism -- two value systems that have now so adjusted to each other and become so mutually reinforcing as to constitute virtually a single, comprehensive world-view.

Appreciation of the benefits -- in terms of the personal freedom, social prosperity and scientific progress enjoyed by a significant minority of the Earth's people -- cannot withhold a thinking person from recognizing that the system is morally and intellectually bankrupt. It has contributed its best to the advancement of civilization, as did all its predecessors, and, like them, is impotent to deal with the needs of a world never imagined by the eighteenth century prophets who conceived most of its component elements. Shoghi Effendi did not limit his attention to divine right monarchies, established churches or totalitarian ideologies when he posed the searching question: "Why should these, in a world subject to the immutable law of change and decay, be exempt from the deterioration that must needs overtake every human institution?"

Baha'u'llah urges those who believe in Him to "see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others", to "know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbour". Tragically, what Baha'is see in present-day society is unbridled exploitation of the masses of humanity by greed that excuses itself as the operation of "impersonal market forces". What meets their eyes everywhere is the destruction of moral foundations vital to humanity's future, through gross self-indulgence masquerading as "freedom of speech". What they find themselves struggling against daily is the pressure of a dogmatic materialism, claiming to be the voice of "science", that seeks systematically to exclude from intellectual life all impulses arising from the spiritual level of human consciousness.

And for a Baha'i the ultimate issues are spiritual. The Cause is not a political party nor an ideology, much less an engine for political agitation against this or that social wrong. The process of transformation it has set in motion advances by inducing a fundamental change of consciousness, and the challenge it poses to everyone who would serve it is to free oneself from attachment to inherited assumptions and preferences that are irreconcilable with the Will of God for humanity's coming of age. Paradoxically, even the distress caused by prevailing conditions that violate one's conscience aids in this process of spiritual liberation. In the final analysis, such disillusionment drives a Baha'i to confront a truth emphasized over and over again in the Writings of the Faith:

He hath chosen out of the whole world the hearts of His servants, and made them each a seat for the revelation of His glory. Wherefore, sanctify them from every defilement, that the things for which they were created may be engraven upon them." 

(Commissioned by The Universal House of Justice, Century of Light, p. 131)


Great food for when one gets the mental and spiritual munchies, heheh.... speaking of which this dawn-breaker ought to begin his dawn raid of the refrigerator in search of break-fast, heheh ;) Til next post!


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Sunday, November 16, 2003

Victories for Peace in Burundi, Rwanda, Congo as Rebels Agree to Negotiate 



KIGALI: The leader of Hutu militia forces, which operate in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and are blamed for Rwanda’s genocide, has surrendered to the Rwandan army, officials told AFP here on Saturday Photo:(WN)

The protracted war has displaced hundreds of thousands of people-AP





The ruinous ethnic wars fueled by private, national and multinational interests over the past ten years in Rwanda, Burundi and Congo that have together directly claimed over 850,000 lives, indirectly claimed millions of lives, displaced millions of innocent bystanders, and have led to the first 'African World War', appear to be coming closer to an end as two separate but significant events take place in Central Africa.

The official surrender of the Rwandan Hutu Rebel forces in Congo which are implicated in the 1994 massacre of over 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda, and the agreement by a majority of Hutu Rebels in Burundi to sign a peace accord with the Tutsi-dominated Burundian Army today at the peace summit in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, mark a significant step towards the establishment of peaceful Hutu-Tutsi relations in Burundi and Rwanda. The violent ten-year civil wars between these ethnic groups, marred by horrific genocide, spilled over into the Democratic Republic of Congo, pulling into it the armed forces of Zimbabwe, Uganda, Namibia, Chad and Angola, in addition to those of Rwanda and Burundi.

As rebel forces in these countries opt for negotiation over armed conflict, the hopeful light of peace begins to shine at the end of the tunnel of these bloody civil wars. Statements that engender such hopes for peace are ones such as those made by rebel major General Paul Rwarakabije, commander of the rebel Army for the Liberation of Rwanda, who was quoted to surprisingly have said, "We see clearly that the use of a gun is not the best solution... We have now decided that we can use peaceful means to solve any outstanding issues."

On the other hand, there is also much skepticism over whether these peace accords and cease-fires will bring true peace to the region or not; agreements made in the past have been violated by both sides, and observing third parties are cynical and disillusioned. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), before the recent April power-sharing peace agreements between the DRC's many warlords, rebels and the new transitional government, United Nations peacekeeping forces in the region were able to do little to stop the warring factions, as they can only act in self-defense. As UN forces beef up their presence and step up their efforts to disarm any remaining warring factions in Congo, humanitarian aid is only now beginning to trickle into the region after five years of ravaging war; the dead in Congo (mostly from hunger and disease) are estimated to be over 3 million; half a million people there still face severe hunger, 3-4 million people are internally displaced and homeless. The intense hatred between the warring factions generated by years of bloodshed and genocide is not likely to disappear overnight; many fear there will be new breaches because of this hatred and animosity. There are also Burundian, Ugandan and Rwandan warring factions that have not been part of the peace agreements in these countries and are still fighting in several remote areas of the region such as Eastern Congo, where they are destroying, pillaging and raping as the Dar es Salaam peace summit is taking place.

Personally, I feel that these events are great steps toward peace, but there are many more steps yet to be taken before true peace is achieved in this blood-bathed region. The nations where these conflicts are taking place must agree to mutually obey and enforce the agreements they have signed, and allow for international monitoring and enforcement to take precedence over their own national interests so that they do not continue to allow multinational corporations to profiteer from the war by financing warring factions' military operations in exchange for plundering of these nations' precious minerals while blaming ethnic war for the destruction. Even after a successfully enforced region-wide peace accord, it will probably take generations for these ethnic groups to forgive each other for what has happened in the past ten years. Until then, there will be remnants of the bitterness, anger and hatred that caused these devastating civil wars. Until these groups recognize that they share the same land and belong to the same tribe, the human tribe; until these warring factions recognize they are essentially one, brothers and sisters, this hatred, animosity and bitterness will continue to linger, and rogue individuals, corporations and nations will try to exploit this situation and profit from it.

To close this post, a gleaning from the statement, "The Promise of World Peace" issued by the Universal House of Justice, and addressed to the Peoples of the World:


"...Two points bear emphasizing in all these issues. One is that the abolition of war is not simply a matter of signing treaties and protocols; it is a complex task requiring a new level of commitment to resolving issues not customarily associated with the pursuit of peace. Based on political agreements alone, the idea of collective security is a chimera. The other point is that the primary challenge in dealing with issues of peace is to raise the context to the level of principle, as distinct from pure pragmatism. For, in essence, peace stems from an inner state supported by a spiritual or moral attitude, and it is chiefly in evoking this attitude that the possibility of enduring solutions can be found.

There are spiritual principles, or what some call human values, by which solutions can be found for every social problem. Any well-intentioned group can in a general sense devise practical solutions to its problems, but good intentions and practical knowledge are usually not enough. The essential merit of spiritual principle is that it not only presents a perspective which harmonizes with that which is immanent in human nature, it also induces an attitude, a dynamic, a will, an aspiration, which facilitate the discovery and implementation of practical measures. Leaders of governments and all in authority would be well served in their efforts to solve problems if they would first seek to identify the principles involved and then be guided by them.

The primary question to be resolved is how the present world, with its entrenched pattern of conflict, can change to a world in which harmony and co-operation will prevail.

World order can be founded only on an unshakeable consciousness of the oneness of mankind, a spiritual truth which all the human sciences confirm. Anthropology, physiology, psychology, recognize only one human species, albeit infinitely varied in the secondary aspects of life. Recognition of this truth requires abandonment of prejudice -- prejudice of every kind -- race, class, colour, creed, nation, sex, degree of material civilization, everything which enables people to consider themselves superior to others.

Acceptance of the oneness of mankind is the first fundamental prerequisite for reorganization and administration of the world as one country, the home of humankind. Universal acceptance of this spiritual principle is essential to any successful attempt to establish world peace. It should therefore be universally proclaimed, taught in schools, and constantly asserted in every nation as preparation for the organic change in the structure of society which it implies..."


(The Universal House of Justice, 1985 Oct, The Promise of World Peace, p. 3)


Yet another long post. The above source is such a source of hope and inspiration in a world of turmoil and chaos... Until next post!

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