INTERNATIONAL

The fatal error of perpetrators of Globalization

-Susan George, Paris

Globalization, as presently conceived, creates far more losers than winners. And as Susan George writes in this Inter Press Service commentary, no one has any plan for the losers.

Paris (IPS)- If human betterment were the object of globalization, its instigators would have to admit it has been a colossal failure. Market forces and unelected international bureaucracies have been allowed to dictate the rules, with consequences that are evident all around us.

Following the Mexican crisis and devaluation of 1994-95, half the Mexican population has dropped below the poverty line. A year or two ago the Asian tigers were singled out as paragons of economic virtue. Today, starvation has returned to Indonesia. A sharp increase in suicide has taken hold in Korea and Thailand where workers no longer see any hope for themselves and their families. In Russia, life expectancy for men has plummeted by 7 years in less than a decade, an occurrence unheard of in the 20th century.

Uncontrolled financial speculation in so called "emerging markets" has led to disaster for the majority of the population in the affected countries.

Citizens and their governments are, however, sometimes useful to the prime movers of globalization. Citizens are unwittingly forced to contribute their taxes of IMF bailouts—most of which don't go to the people who are suffering but to the very speculators who caused the crisis in the first place. And citizens are further obliged to save reckless private firms that are considered "too big to fail" – Saving and Loans in the US, Credit Lyonnais in France, and large firms or banks in Japan.

When the private US hedge–fund Long Tern Capital Management recently collapsed after borrowing hundreds of times its initial capital base, the Federal Reserve of New York coordinated a bail-out of the fund to which banks were obliged to contribute, because it feared that its failure could destabilize the entire global economy.

As presently conceived, globalization created far more losers than winners—and no one has any plans for the losers. People who will never meet are placed in direct competition, such that "Every Man is enemy to every man", to quote the seventeenth century philosopher Tomas Hobbes.

Such competition creates the now familiar "race to the bottom" in labor and environmental standards as countries compete for foreign direct investment. It allows capital total freedom to cross borders, whereas labor is rooted and cannot migrate freely. It allows transitional capita to escape taxation almost entirely.

According to the US government accounting office, three-quarters of the foreign firms on US soil pay no taxes at all. In Europe, corporate taxation supplies less than one third of state revenues; in the US the figure is a mere 17 percent.

Not taxation capital makes social protection much more difficult to pay for. Governments then tax local salaries, wages, and consumption more heavily to make up for the loss.

This "race to the bottom" strips well-endowed regions of their natural capital and leaves ecological devastation in its wake. It thus systematically externalizes environmental and social costs.

Economic globalization in its present form is no accident. Although technology made it possible, it was deliberately designed by neo-liberal economists and governments, international financial institutions, and corporate and banking leaders.

Operating in the interests of a tiny minority, this system should not be expected to concern itself with the plight of the majority. However, the social misery and upheaval already surfacing as a direct result of globalization will eventually strike that minority as well.

The fatal error of the perpetrators of globalization is their inability to supply long-term protection for the very system that sustains their power and profits.

Decisions-makers should recognize that the current model would necessarily produce and exacerbate poverty, exclusion and social conflict. The challenge is to demolish the reigning ideology that neo-liberal globalization is inevitable and will eventually shower its benefits on all. This is not reality but doctrine, a matter best left to religion.

Moreover, since globalization is withdrawing economic and therefore social power from citizens, communities and nation-states while simultaneously decreasing their capacity to protect themselves from the onslaughts of the market, there is an urgent need to re-empower communities and states while working to institute democratic rules at the international level.

Finally, at a fundamental level, we must re-examine the meaning of legitimacy. The major actors in the resent word system exert enormous influence on the basis of the self-conferred legitimacy.

Corporate directors and bankers, pension and hedge- fund manages, IMF economists, WTO trade arbiters—and most of the participants at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland – all are un-elected and unaccountable, yet they exert enormous power over other people's lives. Their self-conferred legitimacy also serves to exclude all other voices.

Exclusion from the decision-making process is no less important than exclusion from material behe\nefits and must be remedied if solidarity within and between nations is to be restored to the world. (Susan George, the author of many books, is associate director of the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, and president of the Observatorie de la Mondialisation, Paris-chief editor

India and Pakistan: A look at some of the CBMs employed in the region

There have bee a few tension free periods in South Asia. A number if ongoing conflicts between countries in the region have characterize relationships between South Asian nations. This is not to imply that the conflict resolution process has been dormant or unsuccessful. A number of conflicts have been resolved between South Asian nations and a number of CBMs have been successful in reducing tensions.

India Pakistan relations have suffered greatly since the time of independence due to mistrust, suspicion and uncertainty. But these two countries have also engaged in CBMs ever since their independence. In1947 and have managed to resolve a number conflicts between them.

These include the signing of a pact in April 1950 about the treatment of minorities in their respective countries, and the conclusion of the Indus water treaty for the joint sharing of water from the Indus basin in September 1960. Not only did they agree to transitional period, during which the sharing of the water was finalized, they also setup an Indo-Pakistani Permanent Commission with provision for arbitration. In 1968, a three-member commission was able to resolve the Rann of Kutch boundary dispute. In 1969, the two countries were able to resolve five disputed claims along the border.

The Simla agreement of 1972 attempted to create an order in the region after the formation of Bangladesh. Agreement were reached on a number of issues including the normalizing of diplomatic relations, resuming the trade, communications and travel, fixing the line of control in Kashmir and the elements of a Kashmir settlement.

The next three years saw India, Pakistan and Bangladesh involved in a series of negotiation, climaxing in the Pakistani recognition of Bangladesh and a tripartite agreement on Pakistani prisoners of war. In November 1947 the two sides agreed to life mutual trade embargoes and extend most favored nation status to each other. In 1978, the Saal Dam agreement was signed between the two countries.

 In 1988, an agreement on non-attack of each other's nuclear installations was formalized. India and Pakistan also entered into agreement not to violate each other's airspace and to notify each other of military exercises.

During spring of 1990, tensions were fuelled by large-scale violence in Kashmir, supported by Pakistan. The Indian government moved troops into Kashmir to contain the disturbances, but the Indian Chief of Army Staff, Gen. V.N Sharma kept his tank deployments behind the Indira Gandhi canal, so as to signal and intention as to signal an intention not to cross the Pakistani border. Moreover to clarify their peaceful intentions, both countries allowed US observers to monitor force deployments. For its part, Pakistan had permitted foreign defence attaches based in Islamabad to observe the 1989 Zarb-e-Moim exercise.

A joint declaration on the prohibition of chemical weapons was concluded in August 1992 when both countries agreed not to develop, produce, acquire or use chemical weapons. In short, though the record of peacemaking between India and Pakistan has been marred by failure, there has been success as well. The unresolved conflicts between India and Pakistan include Kashmir, Siachen, the Wuler barrage and the demarcation of Sir Creek.

An area that needs to be looked at is that of maritime CBMs looking to the nature of the coastline between India and Pakistan.  The main naval bases of the two countries, Karachi and Mumbai (Bombay) are only 400iles apart. Exercises at sea are therefore likely to rate tension in the country. The maritime region in dispute is also rich harvesting ground for fish and other marine life. Potential naval CBMs in the future must also include the Indian Coast Guard, and the Pakistani Maritime Security Agency, a these organizations would be able to safe guard environmental security as well.

Perhaps the most important of recent conflict resolution was the Lahore Deceleration of February 1999. A conference of parliamentarians held in Islamabad in the early part of 1999 brought together a number of MPs from India to interact with their Pakistani counterparts. This created an atmosphere that was suitable for the "bus diplomacy" of Prime Minister Vajpayee that followed shortly after this conference. But the increased tensions between India  and Pakistan over the Kashmir  since May this year have put a serious question on the validity of the Lahore deceleration and the future of India Pakistan relations.

The "Fortis" balloon in the Paris sky to celebrate year 2000

Claudine Canetti, France

The largest tethered balloon in the world, Fortis, which can take up to 30 adults or 60 children to an altitude of 150 meters, has, since the 1st.July, proudly floated in the Paris sky, a key attraction of the celebrations for the year 2000 which will continue until the 31st December 2000. It was designed by two young ballooning enthusiasts who are graduates from the prestigious "Polytechnique" school of engineering. It has already enabled thousands of visitors to admire one of the finest city views in the world, from the sky, a reminder that Paris was once the cradle and the world capital of ballooning.

"Fortis" is 32 meters high-the equivalent of a 12 storey building) and 22 meters across. It is a gas-filled balloon containing 5,500 cubic meters of helium-an inert gas-tethered to the ground by a cable operated by a winch. It can rise to a height of 300 meters that is the height of Eiffel Tower, but it is not authorized to rise higher than 150 meters which is already quite an expedition. Its huge golden-yellow sphere is decorated with rosy-cheeked children dancing around the globe, the symbol of earth, inviting people to "share the sky and share the century".

The balloon named after its sponsor, an international banking an insurance group, is tethered to the central lawn in the Asndre' Citroen park which is the only park in Paris located on the banks of the Siene river. All day long, riverboats link this new star attraction to Paris's favorite tourists' site, the Eiffel Tower, which maintains its privileged position for height both in the air and on the ground.

"Fortis" operates from nine 0'clock in the morning until the sunset, for the price of 10( 66 francs or about 11 dollars), with reduced rates for children. But all young Parisians under age of 12 are offered this adventure, lasting 10 minutes, free of charge. It will be a good way for remembering the arrival of the year 2000. An access ramp will enable the disabled to get into the balloon without any difficulty.

The only drawback to this spectacular balloon and the only damper on its passengers' enthusiasm is that it is at the mercy of the whims of the weather. When the speed of the wind is more than 35 kms. an hour or there is a risk of a storm, the balloon remains grounded. Future passengers are then extremely disappointed. Sometimes they wait their turn for more than an hour but do not hesitate to come back next day. "Fortis" truly earned its right to bein Paris as, for three centuries, the city played a major part in the history of ballooning. Indeed, on the 21st November 1783, the first human flight in a hot air balloon (invented by Montgolfier, a Frenchman) by Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d' Arlandes, took place. On that day, the first two flight passengers in the world took off from the Chateau de la Muette in Paris and landed 10 kms away after flying over the capital. A few weeks later, on the 1st December 1783, the Physicist Jacques Charles flew off from the Tuileries gardens in the presence of 400,000 people, in the first gas-filled balloon, containing Hydrogen, which he had built.

In 1870-1871, balloons enabled numerous Parisians, including the minister of the Interior Leon Gambetta, to escape from the capital, which was besieged by the Prussian army. The painter and photographer Nadar, a balloon enthusiast, who took the first aerial photograph from a tethered balloon and was the model for the hero of Jules Verne's novel "From the earth to the Moon", organized the first take-off from Montmartre. Meanwhile, Henry Giffard had invented the large tethered steam balloon. It became a traditional attraction at fairs and enabled tens of thousands of people to go up in the air for the first time. The star attraction of the 1878 exhibition did Giffard in the Tuileries erect the huge tethered balloon. It beat all the records for size and was able to carry 50 passengers to an altitude of 600 meters to view Paris from the air, 11 years before the Eiffel Tower. After the triumph of this huge balloon, from 1880 Paris became the cradle of the aeronautics industry with several workshops for manufacturing balloons including that of Louis Godard, a pupil of Giffard's and his pilot, who even sold his tethered balloons from a catalogue and thus enabled nearly 100,000 people fly in Europe, in America and in Africa,

After that, it took nearly a century for two 25 year old "Polytechnique" graduates, Matthieu Gobbi and erome Giacomoni, born on the same day and both of whom are pilots and keen on ballooning, to decide to build balloons which they called "Aerophiles" to "enable everybody to fly in a balloon at a modest cost and to discover the beauty of a site".

The first "Aerophile" was installed in the park of the Chateau de Chantilly not far from Paris in 1994, and the second one was placed above the Chateau de Cheverny in 1995, to make it possible to discover the chateaux of the Loire from a balloon. Today, there are 15 Aerophiles on four continents, including six in France. The others in Germany, Italy, China, Australia, the United States and Japan. The basket of the Fortis, made of aluminium and compound metals, and the winch operating the cable, were made in France, whereas the envelope of the balloon and the net restraining it (made in a traditional way and composed of 9,000 knots) were manufactured in Germany.

The Fortis balloon is a different from a traditional hot air balloon in which the pilot uses burners to heat the air to make the balloon rise. It can only move upwards and follow the direction of the wind. Fortis is a gas-filled balloon, full of helium, and it is tethered, linked to the ground by a steel cable. It moves thanks to a winch that winds and unwinds the cable. The pilot can thus make it move and stop at will to the delight of his passengers.

South Asian Perspective
The surprising fall of Nawaz Sharief

Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's freshly deposed Prime Minister of Pakistan, is a pale and plump man who long ago lost most of his hair. Under the courtroom's severe fluorescent lights, he often sits with a slump, his face given over to a grimace.

Two months back, say media sources, he and his six co-defendants were among the country's most powerful people. Now they appear pitiful, trying to face a future that is not what it used to be.

Since an Oct. 12 military coup, these men have spent most of their time in solitary confinement. Each time they are brought to the stately British-era courthouse, they grimly plead for the return of a few simple pleasures, asking the judge for a television, a radio and a copy of the Koran.

"I am forced to live like a caged animal," Sharif complained once again Monday, describing his 7-by-10-foot stone-floor cell.  His brother Shahbaz, the former chief minister of Punjab Province, told the judge at a pretrial hearing: "I am suffering terrible back pain. I need exercise. It is inhumane."  Shahid Khakan Abbasi, a former director of the government airline, said: "We have not offered our prayers in nine weeks. Even the Israelis allow their prisoners to say prayers."

Last Wednesday, when the prosecution formally charged the seven defendants, it turned over summaries of the statements of its 53 witnesses -- the guts of its case.  The collected stories make a sometimes convoluted narrative that could alternatively be read as the prime minister's understandable efforts to head off a military coup after he exercised his constitutional right to dismiss the army chief.

Memories differ about the timing of events, and it is often unclear who said what to whom at key moments. But witnesses seem to agree that Sharif replaced his army chief by 5 p.m. on Oct. 12 and that within the next 90 minutes the military took control of the government television station and moved to surround the prime minister's residence.

During that time, Sharif inquired about General Musharraf's flight, which was due in Karachi at 6:55 p.m. He wanted to divert the plane, preferably out of the country to Muscat, in the United Arab Emirates. But he was told that the aircraft lacked sufficient fuel.  Sharif then said the plane might as well land in Karachi or in nearby Nawabshah, says a statement by Zahid Mehmood, the director of protocol at Sharif's house.  At one point there was some discussion about taking General Musharraf into custody. Finally it was decided that no one should be taken from the plane or allowed to leave. The flight was simply to be refueled and sent on to Muscat.  In the plane, things were tense, the statements say. The general and aides were in the cockpit, making snap decisions as instructions from the ground kept changing. As late as 6:53 p.m. the pilot was told he could not land in Pakistan, said an air traffic controller, Manzoor Ahmed. Sharif's lawyers and some of his political confidants raise questions about the timing of such destiny. In fact, some contend that a coup had been in the works for months. A few even argue that the rebellion began as early as 10 a.m. and that the Prime Minister fired General Musharraf in reaction.

India rules out talks with Pak regime

Indian Prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee Sunday ruled out peace talks with the military rulers of Pakistan, India's Press Trust of India reported the other day.

"There is no such possibility," Vajpayee was quoted as saying in response to a question during a visit to the northern state of Himachal Pradesh writes the PTI.

Vajpayee, however, said India wanted normal relations with Pakistan as well as a resumption of talks in the spirit of a summit in the Pakistani city of Lahore, where he undertook a historic bus journey early this year. 

Vajpayee further said a two-month conflict with Pakistan in Kashmir in the middle of this year was due to a "breach of trust" by the other side.

 Asked if General Musharraf was to blame for the conflict, he said "I blame Pakistan and he (Musharraf) was the army chief." 

In the meanwhile, George Fernandes, Indian Defence Minister said Sunday said the recent military rule in Pakistan "did not bring any change in our defense needs or Pakistan's designs on us". Talking to reporters informally after addressing a Sainik Sammelan at the EME Centre in Bhupal, Fernandes said, "The military rule in Pakistan is nothing new since Pakistan had been under military rule for almost half its life," reports the PTI. 

Fernandes, however, clarified that talks with Pakistan would not have much relevance unless it stopped "the proxy war against India by helping terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir and some other parts of the country."  Asked what purpose the talks would serve if Pakistan could not be trusted, he said, although, the US and Vietnam fought for several years, their army spokespersons met at Paris twice every week while the war was on.-Compiled by the Telegraph from various sources.