---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 16:28:03 -0800 (PST)
From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: LABOR-L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Progressive Economists' Network <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: MAI, Fast Track, USA (fwd)
> ___________________________________________________________
> THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST:
> A MONTHLY JOURNAL FROM THE HEARTLAND
> January 1998 -- Volume 4, Number 1
> ___________________________________________________________
>
> EDITORIAL
> Jim Cullen
> The Next Battle: MAI
>
> The good news is that the move to stop "Fast Track" for international
> freebooters in the House of Representatives has gotten the attention of
> the Washington elites. The bad news is that the corporate lobby not only
> will make another run at the House to pass Fast Track this spring, but
> it will seek to belittle us, divert our attention and neutralize our
> leaders before the next big battle, over the Multilateral Agreement on
> Investments.
>
> Already we are being dismissed by the State Department as "the flat
> earth and black helicopter crowd." The government has deposed Teamsters
> President Ron Carey and is gunning for AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and
> Secretary Richard Trumka, who helped mobilize the anti-Fast Track
> insurgency; and Congress is aiming to defund unions and other progressive
> groups that might organize a populist movement.
>
> What is at stake with MAI? Ronnie Dugger, co-chair of the Alliance
> for Democracy, which has made fighting the treaty its top priority,
> raised the alarm at a public forum in Austin on December 3: "This
> secretly concocted MAI treaty is all-out war by the transnational
> corporations on democracy itself. It is the second Cold War."
>
> The treaty would protect the rights of international investors, but
> it also would make it easier to shift production to low-wage countries,
> without setting standards for fair treatment of employees, environmental
> protection or anti-competitive practices. It would accelerate the "race
> to the bottom," as nations would be pressured to lower living standards
> and weaken environmental safeguards in order to attract capital.
>
> Most importantly, the treaty would allow corporations to sue
> governments if they believe a national, state or local law violates the
> MAI or poses a barrier to investment. And the corporations could bypass
> regular U.S. courts and take their complaints to international tribunals
> or arbitration according to rules set by the International Chamber of
> Commerce.
>
> "We should never give up our right to pass national laws, state
> laws or local laws in our own interest, but if and when this treaty is
> adopted, that is exactly what we shall be doing," Dugger said. "GATT,
> NAFTA, the World Trade Organization [are] steps along the road. MAI is
> the shoe dropping."
>
> Over the past two years the treaty has been drawn up secretly in
> the basement of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
> a group that represents 27 of the richest nations and two Third World
> nations - South Korea and Mexico. Yet it was only in January 1997, when a
> preliminary draft of the document was leaked to the Third World Network,
> that MAI became semi-public.
>
> I say semi-public because although it got some notice in
> publications such as The Nation, in these pages and on the Internet, it
> had received scant mention in the corporate-controlled big-city dailies
> through November. It was ignored during the debate on what sort of trade
> agreements might get "Fast Track" treatment by Congress.
>
> After the Fast Track retreat from the House, Peter Beinart analyzed
> MAI in the December 15 New Republic as "The Next NAFTA" and
> R.C. Longworth wrote of MAI in the Chicago Tribune of December 4.
>
> Beinart noted that the story has gone "wholly unnoticed in the
> elite press." Longworth also noted the lack of attention it has received,
> and observed, "This obscurity seems deliberate." He noted that the
> Clinton Administration has done nothing to promote public interest.
>
> Apparently, if they didn't issue a press release, neither the New
> York Times, the Washington Post nor the Los Angeles Times, much less the
> network news, were interested. We really hate to sound like conspiracy
> theorists, but there is very little in the conduct and reporting of these
> treaty negotiations to inspire confidence that U.S. trade officials or
> media moguls are acting in the best interests of the American people.
>
> For more information on MAI, as well as a draft of the treaty, see
> the Public Citizen web site at [www.citizen.org] or contact the Preamble
> Center for Public Policy, 1737 21st St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20009; phone
> 202-265-3263. For the text of Dugger's remarks, see the Progressive
> Populist web site at [www.eden.com/~reporter]
>
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> MAI-NOT DISCUSSION GROUP.....................................
>
> Mai-not@flora is a Canadian based email discussion group about
> the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment). The list was
> first organized by a student group in Ottawa (OPIRG-Carleton)
>
> You can subscribe to this discussion group, or you can read it
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>
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> It then takes a few minutes to download the list of messages,
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> Then go to the bottom of the list where you will find the search
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