THE FLAT EARTH SOCIETY
COMES TO GENOA
By Shalmali Guttal
EYEWITNESS
ACCOUNT: THE BATTLE OF GENOA
By Walden Bello
LETTER TO
THE ITALIAN AMBASSADOR
From the Assembly of the Poor, Thailand
GENOA STIRS
MEMORIES OF THE SEVENTIES
By Marco Mezzera
BRUISED, SHAKEN
BUT DEFIANT: SOME REFLECTIONS ON WHAT HAPPENED IN GENOA
By Nicola Bullard
"CREATIVE DESTRUCTION":
NEXT PHASE OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY?
By Walden Bello
SOLD TO THE
HIGHEST BIDDER: A REVIEW OF THE 2001 HUMEN DEVELOPMENT REPORT
By Anoop Sukumaran
WHAT ARE
THE LEGITIMATE CLAIMS OF THE SOUTH?
By Lorna Salzman
PART II of Focus on Trade is a collection of articles about what happened during the G8 meetings in Genoa and its aftermath. They include Walden Bello's report on the now notorious police attack on protestors sleeping in a school building, Shalmali Guttal's observations on the historical legacy of Genoa's favourite son, Christopher Columbus, and Marco Mezzera's flashbacks to the political dark times of the 1970s. The state-endorsed violence in Genoa has triggered an incredible reaction around the world, and we include here the Assembly of the Poor's militant letter of protest to the Italian ambassador in Bangkok and some reflections on the lessons of Genoa. Finally, Walden Bello argues that we may be entering the trough of a Kondratieff supercycle and a global economic crisis that the G8 ostriches show no sign of acknowledging.
Recalling the G8's failure to hammer out an agreement on the Kyoto protocol,
and their starry-eyed optimism about bridging the digital divide, the two
final articles highlight the gap between the fact and the fiction of globalisation.
Anoop Sukumaran reviews this year's UNDP report on "Making new technologies
work for human development" which, he says, is little more than an "exercise
in corporate sales." And US ecologist Lorna Salzman argues that "without
agreement on definitions of what constitutes "legitimate" claims
or development, or for that matter on what constitutes "reasonable"
demands by the north in terms of environmental standards, we could well end
up arguing about the arrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic rather
than forming a transnational global partnership and strategy to confront globalization."
Focus-on-Trade is a regular electronic bulletin providing updates and analysis of trends in regional and world trade and finance, with an emphasis on analysis of these trends from an integrative, interdisciplinary viewpoint that is sensitive not only to economic issues, but also to ecological, political, gender and social issues. Your contributions and comments are welcome. Please contact us c/o CUSRI, Wisit Prachuabmoh Building, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330 Thailand. Tel: (66 2) 218 7363/7364/7365, Fax: (66 2) 255 9976, E-Mail: admin@focusweb.org, Website: http://focusweb.org. Focus on the Global South is an autonomous programme of policy research and action of the Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute (CUSRI) based in Bangkok.