Clinton Bombshell on WTO Movement
--Laissez Faire Basis of WTO Annihilated
Reports by Vigdor Schreibman, Federal Information News Syndicate
Washington, DC--The White House released, Nov 16 and 19, a series of initiatives -- Executive Order, Fact Sheet, Policy Statement -- which if actually put in use would utterly annihilate the present laissez faire basis of the WTO, viz, the prohibition against "non-tariff barriers to trade"! The documents, which speak for themselves, are posted online at Fins Information Age Library, URL:
White House Executive Order, Environmental Review of Trade
Agreements (released 16 Nov 1999)
<http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Sustainable_Development/Fins-SD-18.txt>
White House Fact Sheet on Trade and Ensuring a Healthy
Environment (released 16 Nov 1999)
<http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Sustainable_Development/Fins-SD-19.txt>
White House Fact Sheet on Policy Declaration on Environment and
Trade (released 19 Nov 1999)
<http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Sustainable_Development/Fins-SD-20.txt>
Mixed reaction to the President's initiative was expressed by a number of environmentalists, reported by the UN Foundation, according to an email message posted by Oliver Hoedeman, 19 November, on the StopWTO list:Environmentalists Differ On Whether It's Enough
William Eichbaum, vice president of the World Wildlife Fund, said the announcement "represents a significant and positive change in the way US trade policy is formulated" (WWF release, 16 Nov). URL: <http://www.worldwildlife.org/news/headline.cfm?newsid=73>
But Patti Goldman of the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund pointed out that the White House "has still not committed to conduct a review of the existing [WTO] rules" (ELDF release, 16 Nov). And Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope said, "Unfortunately, this review process also puts the fox in charge of the henhouse. Environmental officials -- not the US Trade Representative -- should oversee the review process to make sure that future trade agreements protect our families' health, safety and environment"
(Sierra Club release, 16 Nov).
National Wildlife Federation President Mark Van Putten: "The administration should take off the brakes and urge the WTO to issue a ministerial declaration in Seattle recognizing the validity of legitimate national environmental standards" (NWF release, 16 Nov).
URL: <http://www.nwf.org/nwf/international/trade/wto/nwfefforts.html>
FINS has inquired but no word has been issued yet by Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky, United States Trade Representative, as to the make up of the staff (and their qualifications) to assure fair implementation of the Clinton Administration's new environmental policy. There is a significant difference, as environmentalists suggest, between the espoused policies issued in word or writing by the Clinton Administration, and the values-in-use that are critical to implement a new paradigm of democratic sustainability.
Harvard University professor of organizational behavior, Chris Argyris dropped his own bombshell in a book (Reasoning, Learning, and Action Jossey-Bass, 1982), when he revealed a decade of research suggesting that there was an "epidemic" of individuals and organizations tending to falsify their "espoused values," when compared to their "values-in-use," which are implicitly designed to assure short-term control over their own environment. Argyris has spent a lifetime attempting to help people overcome this dicotomy in their behavior, which severely limits genuine progress.
The Clinton/Gore team is, perhaps, one of the leading examples of this phenomenon: bold faced liars of gigantic magnitude. They promised during their first election campaign in 1992, to "restrain insider lobbyists." Once elected, they tagged the chief lobbyist of the Information Industry Association as chairman of the transition group in charge of the Federal Communications Commission. I told the story in the inaugural issue of FINS, Jan 11, 1993.
Participatory Democracy in the Information Age
http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/News_Columns/Fins-NC1-01.txt
More on the "credibility-gap" of Clinton/Gore appeared in a story I published Nov 29, 1993.
Sustaining Confidence In Government
http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/News_Columns/Fins-NC1-23.txt
Clinton's story boards on his personal conduct and with regard to the conduct of the public's business, e.g., WTO/NAFTA/Yugoslavia, provide little comfort for those who would like to believe the seriousness of the recent environmental initiatives undertaken by Clinton/Gore. Nevertheless, there is this one important exception: the time is right and everyone wins with such an initiative. While keeping watch over the events as they unfold, very carefully, let us hope and continue to work hard for the best.
FINS SPECIAL REPORT November 22, 1999
THE MISSING CORE OF CLINTON'S PROPOSED REVOLUTION
Flawed New Framework for "Sustainable Development"
The US White House Policy Declaration on Environment and Trade, and related White Papers (released via Internet, 16 and 19 Nov 1999) establishes a framework in the Executive Branch of the American Government for the revolutionary idea that, "Economic growth must be pursued in the broader context of sustainable development, which integrates economic, social, and environmental policies."This new public policy in the US is a sharp reversal of the basic idea upon which the World Trade Organization (WTO), was founded. The WTO would prohibit, "non-tariff barriers to trade," thereby, disregarding under classic market theory the interdependent social and environmental attributes of democratic sustainability. The whole idea of WTO is bizarre. American sociologist James S. Coleman (1990) has observed that classic market theory is a "broadly perpetrated fiction," possessing no logical intellectual foundation. Similarly, we have learned that the attempt to derive social meaning by aggregating individual and subjective "importance voting" [which is the way market theory operates] "leads to spurious priorities and ineffective actions," according to systems research carried out by Dr. Alexander N. Christakis, a renowned practitioner of global transformation leadership process, employing his group CogniScope methodology. See http://www.cwaltd.com/index1.htm
The President's Executive Order would now recognize the interdependency of the economic, social, and environmental attributes of democratic sustainability. Nevertheless, the struggle to bring ideas about democratic sustainability into greater prominence must overcome the supremacy of the fictions of capitalist "free market" theory over democracy so as to change capitalist institutions in ways that they themselves prohibit. This very struggle was at the heart of, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," written by professor of history of science, Thomas S. Kuhn (1962). That book has become a profoundly influential landmark of 20th-century intellectual history. In Kuhn's masterpiece he points out that, "the parallel between political and scientific development should no longer be open to doubt" [Id., at ch IX].
A key historical fact about the paradigm shift that defines both political and scientific revolutions, is that the new paradigm cannot build on the one that precedes it. It can only supplant it. The two, Kuhn said, were "incommensurable." Let me suggest, therefore, that democratic sustainability cannot be built upon the old capitalist system. Such a shift, said Kuhn, demands, "the destruction of the prior paradigm" [Id.].
The Executive Order establishing the Clinton/Gore Administration's new policy framework requires "Environmental Reviews of Proposed Trade Agreements" as the basis for public policy, and directs the United States Trade Representative and Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality to oversee implementation of the Order in consultation with economic, environmental and foreign policy agencies. The proposal would, thereby, squarely attempt to build the new paradigm on the old, increasingly discredited market system.
To get a preliminary appraisal of the new policy framework announced by the President, FINS consulted with transformation leadership expert Dr. Christakis. Responding via Internet, Nov 22, Christakis told FINS that the President's proposal should logically be viewed as a "profound paradigm shift requiring a major transformation in the values that control implementation of sustainable economic, social, and ecological programs." Christakis then explained that, "This kind of shift requires a transformation in instrumental structures, which can support those new values. Nevertheless, the Executive Order and policy statements issued by the President appear to rely primarily on the existing personnel and public agencies, which do not have the present critical capacity to implement the President's revolutionary plan. Rather, these agencies and their managers are the main sources of the existing stalemate between the economic, social, and environmental spheres."
In short, the new policy framework is missing the core structures that are absolutely essential to Mr. Clinton's proposed revolution. "StopWTO" is, therefore, the right course for "the People"!
What is needed at this time is not a new swan song called "sustainable development" to dress up a failed market system. Genuine transformation must be based on a new systemic structure for the future desired by the global people. One really must take seriously the President's declaration that, "Economic growth must be pursued in the broader context of sustainable development, which integrates economic, social, and environmental policies."
This is not a mandate for a market based trade organization called WTO. What is critically needed is an organization rooted in democratic sustainability - a democratic World Sustainability Organization (dWSO). A dynamic setting designed to support dWSO, really would pursue economic prosperity, social equity, and ecological integrity as mutually reinforcing goals.
DEMOCRATIC SUSTAINABILITY AND CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURE VIA INTERNET
Federal Information News Syndicate, Vigdor Schreibman, Editor &
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