[pf] Fw. Who are protesting against globalisation? TV doesn't know.

· I've just sent this to GV-NZ:

· Are you blinkered by watching TV?
  Those reporters only want to get _their_ story aired, so
it's_got_to_have_visual_impact_. That's pre-reporter editing.

· TV reporters aren't interested in:
- three students protesting against World Bank privatisation, shot in Papua
New Guinea;
- Young men fighting World Bank-imposed water privatisation, tortured and
killed in Cochabamba, Bolivia;
- the Zapatistas of Mexico protesting the signing of the NAFTA agreement,
which outlawed the common ownership of land;
- the slow sell-off of the British NHS to private healthcare multinationals.
   D.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
At 11:19 23/7/2001 -0400, Tom Wheeler sent to Positive Futures, with title:
[pf] Stay Home for a While :-

George Bush, Tony Blair and Clare Short, who portray those who protest at
the unaccountable institutions of global governance as ignorant, violent
enemies of the poor, do not seem to notice that the poor are leading the
worldwide] protests.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4226305,00.html
(Monday, July 23, 2001; the Guardian of London)
  is:

Stay home for a while 

Katharine Ainger
Monday July 23, 2001
The Guardian

Plenty of old hands were saying someone would die at Genoa. The signs were
clear in the escalating militarisation on both sides. But the members of
the Landless Movement of Brazil (MST) could tell you that Carlo Giuliani,
the young man shot dead as he protested at the G8 summit, is not the first
casualty of the movement challenging neoliberal globalisation around the
world. 

The MST suffer ongoing persecution for their campaign for land reform in
Brazil, their opposition to the World Bank's programme of market-led land
reform and to the corporate control of agriculture through patents on seed.
Recently three students protesting against World Bank privatisation were
shot in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Young men fighting World
Bank-imposed water privatisation have been tortured and killed in
Cochabamba, Bolivia. George Bush, Tony Blair and Clare Short, who portray
those who protest at the unaccountable institutions of global governance as
ignorant, violent enemies of the poor, do not seem to notice that the poor
are leading the protests. 

Those who run the global economy still seem to think their worst problem is
that they can't find a secure place to meet. Instead of addressing the root
causes of the protests, the World Trade Organisation is fleeing to the
Qatar desert, beyond the reach of even the most determined activist. The
real problem is that its ideological adherence to "free" trade is casting
it not just into the desert, but into the political wilderness. The regime
it is implementing is so destructive that it is sparking off a global
uprising against neo-liberalism. 

Broadly, these uprisings can be described as struggles against the
commodification of every aspect of life - water, genes, atmosphere,
healthcare, culture, public spaces, land. For each locality, the moment
when the people cry "Enough!" is different - but it is usually the moment
when something regarded as central to the culture becomes privatised. 

For the Zapatistas of Mexico it was the signing of the NAFTA agreement,
which outlawed the common ownership of land which Emiliano Zapata, folk
hero and revolutionary of 1911, had fought for. 

For much of southeast Asia it was the IMF austerity measures imposed on
their shattered economies after the financial crisis of 1997. In Britain,
it may be the slow sell-off of the NHS to private healthcare
multinationals. Antoni Negri and Michael Hardt, in their seminal work,
Empire, call this grassroots network of struggles "the multitude". It is
the opposite of a concentrated strata of power from above, in which
decisions that affect billions of human lives are made at a transnational
level. 

The multitude embodies the real world below: humanity, nature, culture,
diversity - all those factors not reducible to a commodity to be bought and
sold in a global marketplace. In fact, the movement is not
"anti-globalisation" at all. If anything, it embodies "globalisation from
below" - an international multitude which challenges the idea that "the
global surfaces of the world market are interchangeable". 

But the movement, particularly in the wake of the Genoa summit, urgently
needs to build its own, alternative democratic legitimacy. For
democratising the global economy will ultimately not come through
increasingly militant action at summits, but through building a genuine,
grassroots legitimacy from below. Instead of chasing into the desert in
Qatar, we should build a broad-based, pro-democracy movement at home. 

In a million small ways in Britain, that process has already begun. As a
result of campaigning by the World Development Movement, the Scottish
parliament will be holding the first parliamentary debate over WTO's
General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which threatens to lock
anything deemed a "service" into privatisation. Unions are beginning to
organise against GATS; the rank and file are already beginning to rebel
over public sector sell-offs. 

Middle England continues to complain about GM crops and the railways, while
Scottish crofters have joined the radical, anti-WTO, international peasant
farmers' union, Via Campesina - whose largest member is the MST. This is
the birth of a genuinely popular global uprising against corporate control
and the hijacking of democracy. The movement against economic
globalisation: coming to a town near you. 


• Katharine Ainger is editing an issue of the New Internationalist magazine
on global resistance. 

kat@newint.org 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

{Also at: http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0723-02.htm }
*************************************************
Alternative Press Review  -  www.altpr.org
Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream
PO Box 4710  -  Arlington, VA 22204

Mid-Atlantic Infoshop  -  www.infoshop.org
Infoshop News Kiosk - www.infoshop.org/inews

Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed
www.anarchymag.org/

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
sent on by David.
David MacClement [davd @ ihug.co.nz] (remove spaces)
http://davd.tripod.com/GrRR-010713_titles.html#top
http://www.geocities.com/davd.geo/index.html#top
***********************************************

==^================================================================
EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://igc.topica.com/u/?aVxifP.${encoded_sub_id}
Or send an email To: positive-futures-unsubscribe@igc.topica.com
This email was sent to: csf@moscow.com

T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail!
http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register
==^================================================================