IN THIS ISSUE
AFTER SEPTEMBER
11: A TESTING TIME FOR THE ANTI-GLOBALISATION MOVEMENT
A short statement from Focus on the Global South
ENDLESS WAR?
By Walden Bello
RACISM CONFERENCE A VISTORY
FOR EU
By Ben Cashdan & Dennis Brutus
NEXT: A WORLD CONFERENCE
AGAINST FINANCIAL RACISM
By Trevor Ngwane
BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME:
ANTI-GLOBALISATION ACTIVISM CANNOT IGNORE COLONIAL REALITIES
By Aziz Choudry
THE CONGLOMERATE
THREAT TO CRITICAL JOURNALISM
By Walden Bello
LIKE all our friends, we have spent the past week in a state of shock, absorbing, analysing and discussing the extraordinary events of September 11, the "day that changed the world." Without doubt, the world will change, but we don't yet know how.
Confronted with the faceless, stateless enemy of "terrorism" and a global recession, how will the elite react? In the short term, there has been an almost unanimous show of solidarity. NATO's invocation of Article 5 ("anyone who brings harm to a member country brings harm to the alliance") and the unprecedented cooperation between the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank says it all. Countries beyond the Centre are being dragged willingly or otherwise into the "war against evil." While the case of Pakistan is profoundly ambiguous and it would be foolish to guess at all the deals and counter-deals, the reported promises of debt cancellation and threats of delaying IMF funds proved to be effective substitutes for carrots and sticks. We will soon see whether the mood of wartime determination and unity spills over into the WTO negotiations. Martin Wolf, a well-respected antagonist of the anti-globalisation movement and Financial Times columnist certainly thinks so.
In his 17 September piece "Guarding the Home Front" (which is a serious contender for the "Best of Wolf" award) he writes:
"There is an equally important way to enhance confidence in the future of an open economy and society: agree on a new round of multilateral trade negotiations during the November ministerial meeting in Doha. The chances of success must have been enhanced by this tragedy. Could Congress fail to grant the president a trade negotiating authority if it was presented as a way to strengthen the global co-operation and open international economy that the World Trade Center so powerfully symbolised? Could any other country refuse to enter into a round promoted by an internationally engaged US? Could anyone miss the symbolism of a global trade round launched in a Muslim country?"
Could anyone resist his call to arms? Language like this is meant to make your eyes sting and your chest swell in patriotic pride. Instead, it should make us worried. This is what the establishment thinks. This is how they will bleed every single advantage out of the terrorist attack, without learning any of the lessons. The noble cause of corporate globalisation will march onward, but now in the name of Peace and Freedom. Haven't we heard that before?
In this issue of Focus on Trade, we have two immediate responses to 11 September from Focus staff while the articles by Ben Cashdan and Denis Brutus, Trevor Ngwane and Aziz Chowdry appropriately enough look at race, imperialism, colonialism and anti-globalisation. Cashdan and Brutus report on the under-reported UN conference on race and xenophobia, including the 20,000 strong "pavement" conference of the Durban Social Forum, and Ngwane describes how the demands of the financial markets perpetuate apartheid in South Africa. In his piece on anti-globalisation and colonialism, Chowdry argues that we cannot build alternatives to globalisation on the "rotten foundations of the denial of occupying indigenous lands and the ongoing suppression of Indigenous Peoples' rights." Potent words in these times. Finally, Walden Bello looks at the role of the corporate media. His final plea, that "journalism cease being a dispenser of factoids and once again become an instrument of liberation by being reflexive, critical, and a partisan of the truth" will resonate with anyone who has spent the past week enduring the excesses of CNN.
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.