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LUND, Sweden -- If the West 'won' the Cold War, the loss of its favorite enemy, the Soviet Union and Communism, deprived it of vital elements of its own identity.
Incapable of living without enemies, its depressive side created scores of rogue states, dictators, terrorists, while its manic, messianic side invented grandiose projects -- Western controlled globalization, disciplining interventions, cultural supremacy and renewed militarism.
It is a profound paranoia of the privileged - fearing to loose what others rightfully envy them. Liberalism, human rights and democracy, 'humanitarian' interventions, peace: all this idealism risks turning ugly and disguise that pathology.
They signal not the 'end of ideology' but an ideology that brings us to the end. What civilizational grief was all this supposed to cure? Two Western-based world wars, nuclear bombings and overkill, some 150 wars since 1945, most fought with Western arms, has not persuaded those in power that war as a legitimate social institution must go. Or we must.
In 1989 billions yearned for the post-Cold War peace dividend, for justice, for closing the gap between the rich and the poor, for a nuclear-free world and for partnership with Nature - all perfectly possible. Democracy should be the most efficient and least violent to bring us there. But American and other Western leadership has failed abysmally.
No, the West is neither at peace with itself nor the rest of the world.
Mindful of this possibility, economics and politics - theories and practice - must be re-thought and rooted in global care, choice preservation and humility vis-a-vis the larger Whole. There are limits to quantity and materialism, but not to quality and wisdom. We are not saying no to growth, we say yes to another growth that mainstream science, politics and economics ignore.
It is important to learn from the 20th century that violence is rooted less in human evil than in ignored or mismanaged conflicts. Conflicts are neither good nor bad, they happen. They are problems that reside in the relations between people, in the situation and structure -- they tend to manifest themselves when people feel that their deep seated needs and rights are frustrated.
[Editor's Note: Dr. Jan Oberg is Director of the TFF Conflict-Mitigation team to the Balkans and Georgia in Lund, Sweden. His Email is - tff@transnational.org].1999 copyright, The Daily Republican Newspaper. All rights reserved.
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SAN DIEGO -- Venturing forth on the eve of the millennium to make grand predictions or sweeping declamations about any region or people is a fool’s mission at best. This is especially true of Asia, a region that’s the graveyard of the cliché.
Thus, what probably is my favorite quote of this past year, appearing in this column in October, probably came from Singapore’s ambassador to the United Nations, Kishore Mahbubani: “The Asian financial crisis was not necessarily a bad thing; there was too much Asian triumphalism. It was good to have our egos deflated and recover what I call our natural humility.”
A healthy measure of natural humility will work well for us all, as many comments in 1999 served to remind. Consider the daunting question of globalization’s impact on Asia. Joseph Stiglitz, then the World Bank’s chief economist, began the year by dissing complacent Western colleagues who would rather point fingers than uncover true underlying causes. “It is easier to blame the Asian countries and their banking systems for the lack of transparency than to question the policies of Western lenders. There is a lot of hypocrisy.”
Last month, the controversial Stiglitz resigned. Also in January, speaking from the podium of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Guillermo Ortiz Martinez, governor of the Bank of Mexico, foretold much of the anti-globalization angst that was to throw the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle into tumult in December: “It is difficult to explain to a Mexican housewife why she has to pay higher interest rates on her housing loan because Russia has defaulted.”
Then this fall, again before the Seattle debacle, another observer underscored what was at stake: “The margin for unsound and inconsistent macroeconomic policies is narrower than ever,” said Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo. “In fact, that margin is practically nil. There is not the tiniest room for relaxation or complacency.”
Washington, take note: There remains an urgent need for world financial reform. One more Asian-like crisis will rock the world. This past year was generally one of pessimism about slumping and troubled Japan, once the planet’s resplendent model of economic performance and still the world’s second biggest economy. But a lot of my sources had other ideas.
In January, back from an Asian trip, Defense Secretary William Cohen wholeheartedly rejected the Japan-in-decline hypothesis and instead saw signs of a new Japan emerging from years of national recession: “Japan is starting to reach out. It is a very positive sign.”
A half year later, as the Japanese economy finally began to show signs of recovery, the Keizo Obuchi government got involved in the heartbreaking plight of oppressed East Timor and put an initial $100 million on the international table to help the multinational peacekeeping force there. The Japanese upsurge was attributed to the political endurance of Obuchi, the plain-vanilla prime minister who gets no respect.
As internationally noted Japanese columnist Yoichi Funabashi put it in May: “Obuchi is frighteningly common. But people are comfortable with him. He doesn’t intimidate. Obuchi will probably last two more years.” That prediction is looking less implausible by the month, but the conflicted Japanese political system has the ability to destroy any politician, no matter how adroit.
Indeed, when I interviewed Obuchi in September, this self-effacing man seemed more daunted than triumphant: “It is difficult to run policy when the leader does not have a fixed term of office,” he commented, almost bitterly. The Japan agony is far from over.
Sino-American relations were on a roller-coaster course all year, but few of my sources were prepared to put all the blame on Beijing. In March, when the Cox Report on China’s “spying” surfaced and began to whip up an anti-China scare, New York University Prof. Joanna Waley-Cohen opined: “Westerners who blame [anti-American] Chinese rhetoric for the lion’s share of the mutual hostility between the People’s Republic and the United States fail to acknowledge the role of the American anti-Communist movement, which for years led the United States to treat the People’s Republic as a virtual pariah.”
That comment seems as apt now as it did then. By July, the Cox Report was starting to get bad reviews. Jonathan Pollack, Asian analyst at RAND -- no den of mushy pro-Beijing sycophancy -- denounced the report as “an unbelievable rush to judgment. There are too many unhedged judgments, too many unexplained statements. One has to conclude that the committee knew the answers it wanted before it started out.” Well, of course.
Kosovo, half the world away, prompted analysts in Asia to sense regional fibrillations. In April, Felix Soh, the veteran foreign editor of the Straits Times of Singapore, reflected that Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo brought “into sharp focus the horrors that could engulf Asia if ethnic and religious strife unleashed by the breakdown of the region’s economic, social and political order is not contained....Considering what a melting pot of ethnicity Indonesia is, we cannot be complacent about the situation there.” That same month, Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard told me that Indonesia had to accept that “it’s time for a change” -- “that there should be some act of self-determination, self-expression by the people of [East] Timor.”
Could Australia and others in the region handle this potential tragedy without outside help? Would America look the other way in Asia, as it often does?
Said the prime minister, diplomatically: “I would have to say that in the global reach of American foreign policy, there’s still a little bit of detail deficit in this part of the world. This is not meant critically of the United States; this is just a fact of life.”
It’s almost impossible to find a single source to disagree with Howard’s mild-mannered concern. “Detail deficit” -- what a kind way to put this perpetual truth about U.S. foreign policy’s debilitating Eurocentrism, which is a continuing theme of this column. Even so, have a Happy New Year -- and enjoy the millennium.
[Editor's Note: Tom Plate is Director and Founder of the Asia Pacific Media Network, a regional alliance of blue-chip news-media institutions. Professor Plate is a public policy ethicist at UCLA. Asia Pacific is edited by Alice Wu. She may be contacted at Email alicewu@ucla.edu -- Prof. Plate's Email is plate@ucla.edu].1999 copyright, The Asia Pacific Media Network
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WASHINGTON -- Albert Einstein, an avowed atheist, has been designated by Time Magazine editors in the December 31, 1999 issue as Person of the Century.
Professor Einstein would neither want nor does he deserve honors for the events he set in motion, however. In an attempt to disown his own Judaic hertitage during Adolf Hitler's Nazi purge of German Jews, Einstein made a public speech to the German League in Berlin, in the Autumn of 1932. He denounced his birthright and his family's religious beliefs when he told a Berlin audience, "I do not believe in a personal God....If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for science....To me it suffices to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is."
Einstein was referring to what he called the properties of the universe. He had first described his ideas in a 1905 research paper at the University of Zurich. His work focussed on questions and ideas associated with scientific properties of time as a constant. In it he suggested the relative speed at which atomic particles moved. By 1912 Einstein had attracted the interest of the German University of Prague where he was hired as a full professor. The ambitious Einstein soon resigned the post, however, for greener pastures and a chair of theoretical physics at the Federal Institute of Technology back in Zurich.
By 1921 he was back in Berlin again where he received the Nobel Prize in Physics just as Adolf Hitler was gathering a rag-tag following. When Hitler became chancellor in 1933 Einstein was conveniently in Southern California lecturing at Cal Tech.
In 1934 he received word that Hitler had confiscated his house, books, manuscripts, bank accounts and revoked his German citizenship, as well. It was under these circumstances that Einstein accepted a teaching post at the "Institute for Advanced Studies" at Princeton University safely removed from Hitler's angst.
In an urgent letter addressed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt(D) in 1939, he made the startling offer to help Roosevelt build a bomb which would contain enormous destructive power through the splitting or fission of a uranium nucleus. The fusion of a single uranium atom was said to be able to release 2,000,000,000 destructive electron volts.
Roosevelt got Einstein and the world was introduced to the atom bomb. The test explosions of the atomic device startled military leaders, politicians, philosophers, moralists, and everyone else in the world demonstrating the cataclysmic future of civilization on this planet.
Time Magazine editors, however, depict Einstein as a ``kindly, absent-minded professor whose wild halo of hair, piercing eyes, engaging humanity and extraordinary brilliance made his face a symbol and his name a synonym for genius.''
The destructive genius Einstein died in 1955. In our time we have Professor Einstein to thank for showing us and the Chinese Red Army the way to get to thermonuclear devices with 10,000 times more destructive power -- the little ones conveniently miniaturized to the size of a lunch pail. Will the wonders of science never cease?Copyright ©1999, The Daily Republican Newspaper. All rights reserved.
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PHILADELPHIA - Less than three years after his retirement from the Presidency, George Washington died on Christmas Eve at the age of 69 at his Mount Vernon, Virginia plantation. He is mourned by millions of Americans.
Yesterday presented a scene of public mourning, of solemnity and respect, which this city has never before on any occasion witnessed in an equal degree.
At 11:00 o'clock, conformable to orders, the United States corps under Brigadier General Macpherson paraded in the center of Chestnut Street, opposite Congress Hall.
The Militia Corps composing the Republican legion, commanded by Colonel Shee paraded Fifth Street.
The procession commenced at twelve o'clock, with a troop of horse leading down Walnut to Fourth Street, where they turned to the left and crossed Chestnut, Market and Arch Street, until they arrived at the German Lutheran Church.
The bier was carried by six sergeants, pall supported by six veterans. The President of the United States and his lady were present.
[Editor's Note: The American Aurora news of Philadelphia, PA was a heroic little newspaper that reported what has become the suppressed history of our nation's beginnings. This year, just as on this day two centuries ago the next President of the United States will begin the new century, as leader of the greatest nation in the history of the world, and of a nation whose future may be in doubt. "...we stand all alone, what we are managing to do is alienate almost everyone," says James Schlesinger, former secretary of defense and energy. The danger, he says, is that the American people, who like to be loved, won't take well to being the world's target and "...will lose interest in the outside world." The challenges of the next 100 years could prove even more difficult than those since the death of President George Washington on this day in history.]Copyright ©1999, The Daily Republican Newspaper. All rights reserved.
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WASHINGTON -- Two Republican House members yesterday called on President Clinton to demand his press secretary's immediate resignation for what they called his "hateful remarks" about Southern Baptists, the president's denomination and the country's second-largest.
"We were appalled to read the recent comments of your spokesman, Joe Lockhart, denigrating the Baptist faith by saying that Southern Baptists 'perpetuate ancient religious hatred,' " Reps. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) and J.C. Watts (R-Okla.), both Baptists, wrote to Clinton. "What makes it even more disturbing is that in making these hateful remarks, Lockhart was supposedly expressing your views."
The letter refers to Lockhart's response, in a Dec. 16 briefing, to a reporter's question about the statements Southern Baptists issued "against Hindus first, then Jews, and now this week they did against Muslims during the special holidays."
The reporter was presumably referring to the Southern Baptists' recent distribution of prayer guides targeting these three religious groups for conversion during their own holy days, although the reporter wasn't specific.
Lockhart responded by talking about the president's "views on religious tolerance" and on "dealing with ethnic and religious hatred and coming to grips with the long-held resentments between religions." He concluded by saying, "So I think he's been very clear in his opposition to whatever organization, including the Southern Baptists, that perpetuate ancient religious hatred."
Lockhart said he regrets the statement and that he had no idea what, specifically, the reporter's question referred to. He said his rambling answer wound up with some unfortunate juxtaposition of words.
"I can absolutely see why they're upset," Lockhart said. "It was just poorly phrased. I had no specific information about what this reporter was talking about, so I had no reason to allege that the group perpetuates ancient religious hatred. It was definitely not my intention to single out the Southern Baptists, or any group."
Hayworth does not accept the explanation or apology. "I believe the president's spokesman is charged with knowing the mind of the president and speaking on his behalf," he said. "He should still tender his resignation. And if the president allows this to stand, he is endorsing the statement."
The flap began Monday, when the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, a long-time Clinton critic, seized on the remark. "Apparently, because the president has very few convictions, he harbors deep resentment against those who do," Paige Patterson told the Baptist Press. "I would say that the president, or his press secretary, or both have once again demonstrated that the one thing for which they have no regard is the truth."Copyright ©1999, Washington Post. All rights reserved.
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WASHINGTON - The holidays are upon us and across our nation, families and friends are shopping and gathering together to celebrate.
Today I want to talk about why 1999 has been a prosperous year for many Americans, but also how it could have been even better.
If the Republican tax relief plan had not been vetoed by the president this year, you would have had more to give this holiday season to your families, friends or those in need. Remember just five short years ago, many of us were afraid of losing our jobs, our savings and our future.
And who could blame us? Our government was spending our Social Security on big government programs, and raising our taxes. We were working longer and harder than ever before, yet we were still struggling to make ends meet.
And while we spent more time at work, Washington politicians spent more and more of our hard earned money. A congress controlled by Democrats never seemed to care that the money they spent was wasted on government programs that didn't work. And they policed the system with an IRS that treated everyone like suspects, not honest citizens.
And do you remember the old welfare system? It was a system fraught with abuse, mismanagement and it too often destroyed the lives of families. Well, Americans decided that something had to change. The people took control and said to Washington: ``Enough is enough.''
When Republicans were put in control of Congress, we jumped right in and went to work and we got things done quickly.
First we totally overhauled the welfare system. Poor Americans were stuck in a cycle of dependency while working Americans were angry that their taxes supported this never-ending cycle.
Second, we provided valuable tax relief to American families because we want you to keep more of your hard earned money.
Third we stopped the IRS from treating honest taxpayers as criminal suspects.
And fourth, we forced Washington to live within its means instead of ringing up charges on a national credit card for future generations to pay out of their retirement security. We balanced the budget.
Today I'm proud to say that the raid on Social Security has ended. For over a quarter of a century the Democrats used the Social Security trust fund as a slush fund to pay for more big Washington programs.
And I promise that as long as Republicans are in charge of our nation's pocketbook, Social Security will never again be used for anything but Social Security.
Fifth, I am proud to say that we provided our men and women in uniform their first pay raise in over a decade. It is a disgrace when our sailors, soldiers and airmen are living off of food stamps. Those who risk their lives for our freedom, should be paid a living wage for the sacrifices they make.
And sixth, we are returning power over our children's education to parents, teachers and local school boards, and away from Washington bureaucrats.
Our children deserve every opportunity to succeed in the new millennium. Our nation's future prosperity depends on providing our children with a quality education.
In this season of giving and reflection, we look to the future and consider what we intend to accomplish this coming year. We believe that you, the American people, are responsible for the greatest period of economic prosperity, innovation and success in history. And if we can continue to get Washington out of the way, we believe the future will be even brighter.
The tax burden on Americans is still too high. We want you, not the government, to decide how to spend your heard-earned money. Despite the president's opposition, we will fight to put an end to the destructive tax that punishes Americans for getting married.
We are committed to never going back to the old ways of raiding the Social Security trust fund, to pay for new big government programs.
We are committed to keeping your retirement secure forever.
We have been paying down the national debt every year and will continue to do so. Americans have asked for a Congress that is responsible to the American people. We're listening, we're working and we're getting real and historic things done. But we will continue to need your support to build a better America for the next millennium.
[Editor's Note: The text for this column is a portion of those remarks made by Congressman Tom DeLay(R) and carried live on the Internet, radio and television December 18, 1999 immediately following Pres. William J. Clinton's weekly address in which no mention was made of the state of the nation's economy at the close of 1999. Mr. Clinton, instead, preferred to voice his thoughts on religious diversity and public education. However, following Mr. DeLay's commentary the Clinton administration's Commerce Department reported the U.S. economy saw a "growth sprint" to an annualized rate of 5.7 percent in the Fall, even faster than the Mr. Clinton had previously estimated. All in all, the changes show the economy growing at an annual rate of $122 billion in the third quarter of the year, pushing the country's total output of goods and services to $8.9 trillion, after adjusting for inflation. Government spending for this fiscal year has already totaled more than a staggering $5.6 Trillion.]1999 copyright, The Daily Republican Newspaper. All rights reserved./Font>
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FRESNO - In 1995, the Palo Alto Internet entrepreneuer from Fresno State, Tom Hobbs of WebPortal.com wrote an Internet script that would change the world. It came to full flower in the Tower2000.com Internet Web Site, a Fresno Calif. community node on the World Wide Web designed for the Tower District Marketing Committee and launched less than a year later.
The first of its kind, that model has now been emulated all around the world. Tower2000.com was an immediate sensation Hobbs' fame spread from Silicon Valley around the world as Internet designers studied Hobbs' style and the structured experience surfers were enjoying as they toured Tower200.com
Launching Tower2000.com in 1996 forced traditional stores to look into the face of the tiger, a high technology that every business now realizes is a powerful fast-moving technology. It has shaped local business decisions, drives politics and is opening a new portal to world intellectual culture across geographic borders, time-zones and language differences.
This internet economy is now a burgeoning $9 trillion national economy composed of borderless free markets in a global fast moving technology network of low-cost communications that has significantly lowered transactions costs between sellers and buyers.
"The Internet has given us the greatest rate of return on a public infrastructure investment ever," said Robert Litan, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution. "And it has flourished because we have not yet taxed or regulated it to death -- though those are live issues."In the face of this Internet event economists are predicting that the economy will expand 3.9 percent this year, with inflation at 1.4 percent. For 2000, the consensus is growth of 3.2 percent and inflation of 1.7 percent. In February, the economy should set the record for the longest expansion, surpassing the 106-month record set in the 1960's.
Hobbs, says "For established companies with an Internet presence, the challenge will be to adapt to a new business strategy in the accelerated technological shift now taking place. Those who are not taking steps now to convert their traditional brick-and-mortar businesses to World Wide Web virtual e-stores are shutting out and turning away that bricks-to-clicks business activity and a valuable profit center."
"The Internet's electronic network has already transformed many business practices and is a new medium of informal communication with customers" he says.
The speed at which the Internet is morphing across the globe and pushing both the tools and values of high technology onto socieety is daunting. Hobbs predicts that the pace of technological change will not slow, and the willingness of customers to accept new technology suggests the "...last great frontier of economic opportunity for those who have access to a computer terminal and the skills to prosper in the new digital economy at the Millennium."
With the introduction of easy Internet access through WebPortal.com technology, there is excitement and a high-tech glamour in e-business. In fact, other Silicon Valley companies like Phone.com, the telephone Web browser company based in Redwood City, Calif., have just announced that next month, almost half the cellular phones sold will come equipped with the ability to surf the Internet. They predict the number of Web browsers in cell phones will exceed the number of personal computers in the world.
Wireless technology is well on the way in taking the Internet outside the home and office through all sorts of miniature communication devices based on cellular phone types of air signals.
Laurie Kobliska, a Fresno State alum, and founder of the world famous Fremont, Calif. InteriorDeco.com, predicted that e-commerce on-demand "...is providing mothers and working women with the ability to shop in their limited down-time in between working, child-care, and home-making activity.
"This marked change in behavior is wide-spread and is requiring that e-commerce sites, be designed to provide tons of informational content web customers demand. Retailers now are required not only to provide secure financial transactions, intractive product catalogs and fun, but they now must be able to quickly adapt to the limited time consumers say they have and the news and information they want on-site," she said. Kobliska is the editor & publisher of the widely acclaimed family oriented e-journal Mother Wire Magazine.Copyright 1999 The Fresno Republican Newspaper. All rights reserved.
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SAN DIEGO -- Is the Clinton administration still sulking over Seattle? Many in Asia will decide that for themselves in February, when some 188 nations converge on Bangkok for the first major international economic conference since the World Trade Organization fiasco. Ordinarily, any meeting of the UN Conference on Trade and Development wouldn't merit much more than a yawn or a laugh from the West. Instead, UNCTAD X (for the 10th annual one), is looming as something like Global Bowl II.
Unlike WTO, which is run by the world's economic heavyweights, the UN trade organization is dominated largely by developing nations. Its organizers are anxious that the U.S. show up with an A-team, not a token presence. "By taking UNCTAD seriously," says a Thai official, "the West and the developed parts of the world might just begin the process of healing the wounds that have been inflicted in Seattle. Reconciliation might just start in Bangkok."
Leading the reconciliation effort there will be Kofi Annan. The West ought to listen to this thoughtful man: As far back as January, at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, he explicitly warned an obviously over-confident West that globalization might not raise all boats -- only the yachts -- and in the process wind up overturning a lot of canoes.
The West didn't listen, of course; neither did its hand-picked World Trade Organization Secretary General Mike Moore, who Washington hoped would "knock heads together" and slap Asian delegates around if they tried to resist the Western globalization agenda.
That backfired big time. Moore will get a chance in the UNCTAD limelight to make amends and show he's no toady of Washington, or some Don Rickels in a diplomat's suit. It's fitting that International Monetary Fund managing director Michel Camdessus, who last month surprisingly announced he’d be resigning early next year, will be there; the Asian financial crisis began in Thailand in 1997 -- and with it a series of IMF mistakes that Camdessus has more or less owned up to.
It is mean to say it, but the unpopular IMF head may get a standing ovation just for leaving. For the host Thai government, the UN trade meeting offers an opportunity not only to serve as a neutral go-between, bringing East and West closer together, but also ease its international image as an IMF basket case.
Anyone else coming to the Thai dinner? Top UNCTAD and Thai officials are praying that the Clinton administration will show up with a high-level delegation and erase the impression that it's uncaring of Third World concerns.
Key issues include externally enforced national labor standards that raise export prices of developing economies to uncompetitive levels, and environmental standards that are unaffordable for such economies without further development. And there are other globalization issues that just won't go away, like the two-edged sword of free-flowing Western capital.
"Tensions and imbalances of a systemic nature have arisen," says one UNCTAD official. "Given the high degree of interdependence in the world economy, the risk of financial upheavals spreading across other countries and nations has greatly increased."
So whoever shows up from America will get an earful. Indeed, the UN trade body is more open to the input of nongovernmental organizations and academic critics than was WTO. It's not set up as a rich man's show but it’s far better for the West to show up in the lion cub's den and take its licks than to dodge the moment.
UNCTAD-X is the perfect platform, not only because it's not so Western a show, but also because Thailand offers a suitable host environment for what is at issue right now -- certainly more than Seattle, where Third World delegates were absolutely flabbergasted and in some cases revolted to see Western protesters in the streets of a city that the fruits of globalization had virtually paved in gold.
Bangkok, which is nowhere near Seattle wealth-wise, is, of course, an important international city that's hoping for U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to show in February. Many Asians would read her presence as proof of US determination to put all the rancor behind.
"I hope Western governments and leaders will not try to derail it or 'bonsai' it by refusing to send meaningful delegations or not sending them to Bangkok at all," said a source close to the UNCTAD planning group. Indeed, if a smashingly successful Bangkok confab, led by the Third World, were to dilute the sour taste of the smashingly unsuccessful Seattle disaster, led by the U.S., the result might turn out to be the best of all possible global worlds.
[Editor's Note: Tom Plate is Director and Founder of the Asia Pacific Media Network, a regional alliance of blue-chip news-media institutions. Professor Plate is a public policy ethicist at UCLA. Asia Pacific is edited by Alice Wu. She may be contacted at Email alicewu@ucla.edu -- Prof. Plate's Email is plate@ucla.edu].1999 copyright, The Asia Pacific Media Network
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PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter symbolically placed the Panama Canal into Panamanian hands on Tuesday with the simple words, ``it's yours,'' granting the tiny Central American nation sovereignty over all its territory for the first time since its birth in 1903.
``Today we are gathered in the spirit of mutual respect, acknowledging without question the full sovereignty of Panama,'' Carter told hundreds of Panamanian and foreign dignitaries gathered under a light rain at the Miraflores Locks at the Canal's Pacific entrance.
In what Carter and Panama President Mireya Moscoso called a pivotal moment in the history of the hemisphere, the two leaders signed a symbolic accord marking the Canal's passage to Panama.
Under the 1977 Panama Canal Treaties brokered by Carter, the United States officially relinquishes control of the famous waterway at noon on Dec. 31.
``At last we have reached victory, the canal is ours,'' Moscoso said, framed in the backdrop of the canal boat Atlas, decked in festive maritime bunting.
``Your presence here is not just a reflection of your belief in the justice of our nationalistic aspirations, but also proof of your confidence in Panama in the face of the grave challenge placed before us by the new millennium,'' she told visiting delegations from around the world.
She singled out Carter as a statesman ``committed to the truth and to justice, who understood despite internal opposition that the United States had a moral obligation to recognize Panama's demands.''
Outside the locks, demonstrators burned an American flag, rejecting any future U.S. presence in Panama and protesting a plan to flood indigenous and peasant communities to increase the canal watershed. Police reported no injuries or arrests.
``We reject any plan for a North American presence beyond 2000,'' the group of students, poor farmers and workers said in a written statement. ``We reject the intent to flood the lands where we were born, where we live and work.''
Inside the gates, Carter and Moscoso looked back on a century of U.S.-Panama relations marred by turmoil over America's domineering presence here, and forward to a new century of brotherhood based on democratic principles and mutual interests.
Carter recalled the ``political courage'' of U.S. Republican and Democratic members of Congress who voted to ratify the 1977 treaties amid Cold-War fears of communist encroachment. Many sacrificing their political careers to do so.
And he dismissed ``demagogues'' who continue to promote ''false stirrings'' of concern over the future of the waterway.
Congressional Republicans still criticize the handover, raising concerns that Panama has no standing army and the canal's security could be threatened by Colombian guerrillas.
They also allege China is seeking to control the waterway through the Hong Kong-based multinational Hutchison Whampoa Ltd (0013.HK), which runs cargo terminals at both ends of the canal, a charge the White House and Pentagon have dismissed.
Panama representatives of Hutchison Whampoa roundly denied the possibility that the Chinese could gain control.
``We don't actually operate the ports, we operate the loading and discharging of containers,'' John Meredith, president of the local subsidiary Panama Ports Co., told a news conference. The ports are managed independently by Panama's National Maritime Authority, he said.
The ceremonies began on a mournful note as Carter laid a wreath at an American military cemetery on the banks of the Canal, honoring 5,000 Americans who gave their lives building and defending the 50-mile waterway.
As a bugle sounded the dying notes of Taps (the U.S. version of the Last Post) and the U.S. role in Panama slipped into history, many in Panama lamented the absence of President Clinton at this pivotal moment in history.
Carter's arrival on Monday, as head of the U.S. delegation, was greeted with none of the fanfare reserved for heads of state like Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, Colombian President Andres Pastrana.
``We regret that President Clinton has not come to this event, which is unique and historic for Panama and the United States,'' Moscoso told reporters after receiving Spain's King Juan Carlos at Panama City's international airport on Monday.
Washington insiders say that brokering the transfer of the Canal proved political hemlock for the Democrats in the 1980 presidential elections, and that Clinton stayed away to avoid damage to Vice President Al Gore's presidential bid.
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SAN DIEGO -- It looks like globalization will need a better running mate than Bill Clinton.
As the Seattle shamble showed, the Clinton administration has persuaded scarcely none beyond Wall Street (which needed little convincing) that globalization is some kind of Santa Claus. The president has been clever at grabbing the middle ground on so many issues (and pushing everyone who disagrees to the marginal extreme) that much of the color has gone out of politics; major issues get Cuisinarted into mush. The activists and the protesters, mad as hell, aren't going to take that anymore.
These days, trying to globalize them is to mobilize them -- the internationalization of national economies has given those who wish to stay rooted in the present, if not mired in the past a huge cause. For them, at least, Christmas in the form of the scary globalization target came early.
And this is a gift that will keep on giving. It's a way of getting back at Microsoft and Boeing without actually taking a stand against cheaper computers or air travel. But there is self-defeating potential in the revolt against globalization, which has every chance of raising wages worldwide and advancing helpful technologies. Consider the obvious case of biotechnology.
It's hard to imagine any of the well-off thousands demonstrating in Seattle's streets going to bed hungry or malnourished, as about 800 million people on this planet do.
Biotech is “an example of something new in the world, something that offers great promise," in alleviating hunger and disease, said Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Richard Fisher, in an interview in Seattle with Richard Feinberg, a UC San Diego Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies professor.
"But by stressing only the negative, we shortchange what is the dramatic human potential of biotechnology.... We are not quite sure what people are afraid of," Fisher said.
It's understandable that Clinton administration officials were shaken. Seattle's streets were filled with the kinds of liberal activists who not long ago might have praised to the skies almost any world government idea, however foggy or mild. Without the support of conservative American businessmen, where would WTO be? But these were the very people a generation ago who might have been denouncing the World Trade Organization as some kind of communist conspiracy.
Asia reacted, in general, with a sort of knowing surmise, believing that Washington has been heading for a fall for a long time. Opined the Times of India, "Given the aggressive manner in which the host country, the United States, sought to determine the WTO agenda, the collapse which eventually occurred was perhaps inevitable. Why bother about what the world wants or thinks when it is only the big who really count?"
Asian irritation originally rose when the world's richest nation began bad-mouthing the Asian economic miracle, as if it had been some kind of mirage, and when the West began claiming that the shock outflow of Western short-term capital had played no substantial part in Asia’s economic woes of the past two years.
That made Asian leaders see the need to come together. They noticed how American leaders, including both current Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and especially his predecessor, Robert Rubin, would so often speak about the need for Asian economies to open up their books and let everyone see what the true balance sheets looked like.
This is called national transparency -- and there's a huge argument for it. Yet until very recently, American leaders did little to assure the world that the decisions made by new international bodies like the World Trade Organization would be equally transparent. "Trade hypocrisy may be a thing of the past," writes The Japan Times in Tokyo.
Why is secrecy OK for WTO but not for anyone else? Who's hiding what? "The Seattle failure appears to herald an increase in disputes," concludes The Korea Times, "particularly between rich and poor countries over trade issues in the coming century."
Not surprisingly, Asia, like Europe, which has its European Union, is now focused more on regionalism than internationalism. In fact, the weekend before the Seattle disaster, there was a bit of a tiny thriller in Manila, at least as far as the ordinarily unremarkable get-togethers of the Association of South-East Asian Nations tend to go.
On this occasion, the region's Asian leaders, meeting at an ASEAN summit that for the first time included nonmembers China, Japan and South Korea, talked more warmly and animatedly than ever about forming a common market -- maybe someday even a regional currency union.
Sure, talk is cheap, but these 13 countries constitute a potential rival to Europe and even, some day, America. They represent 40% of the world's population and a collective Gross Domestic Product of $7.75 trillion.
The meaning of Seattle for Asia is that Asia needs to get not just its regional act together, but its political one as well. With the WTO now a mess, regional organizations like ASEAN are more vital than ever. If there is a silver lining for Asia in the Seattle cloud, it is this -- recognition that Asia needs to look more inward than outward for answers.
[Editor's Note: Tom Plate is Director and Founder of the Asia Pacific Media Network, a regional alliance of blue-chip news-media institutions. Professor Plate is a public policy ethicist at UCLA. Asia Pacific is edited by Alice Wu. She may be contacted at Email alicewu@ucla.edu -- Prof. Plate's Email is plate@ucla.edu].1999 copyright, The Asia Pacific Media Network
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WASHINGTON -- On the 31st of December, at 12 noon local time, the Panama Canal, one of the engineering wonders of the 20th Century, will be turned over to Panamanian control by the Clinton administration.
The huge waterway, linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the narrow isthmus of Panama, was built by the United States and has been operated by Washington since its completion in 1914. The canal reduces the shipping distance between New York and San Francisco from nearly 30,000 kilometers to 8,400.
Panama and President Jimmy Carter(D) authored and signed a set of questionable treaties in 1977 to nullify the original law under which the canal was built at US taxpayer's expense. Mr. Carter's action gave Panama control over the Canal Zone in 1979, on December 31, 1999 turns over control and operations of the canal and the nearby Howard Air Force Base to Panama.
There is growing public apprehension aout the unintended consequences resulkting from Mr. Carter's policy and President Clinton's action giving away the strategic military and commerce asset this month.
Senate leader Trent Lott(R)has charged that the Chinese government will be gaining undue control over the canal at the give away. The charge has merit. In recent weeks it has been learned that Panama has awarded a contract for operating the canal's two main ports to a Chinese Red Army front orgasnization.
The controversial treaty was signed by Jimmy Carter and ratified in the US Senate with the support of senators who went against public sentiment for the United States to keep the canal. Now, two decades later Americans are stunned at the spectacle of the Panama Canal giveway in less than three weeks.
The problem, as seen by some, is that the Chinese Communists will be in a strategic position to degrade US strategic defense by maintaining potentially hostile control of two ports at either end of the canal.
The alleged Chinese Red Army front, Hutchison Whampoa based in Hong Kong, claims to be a publicly traded legitimate corporation with no interest in controlling canal operations from its strategically located bases at either end of the canal.
Chinese Communist influence and control; of the canal has sparked renewed public concern in the United States.
Critics, including former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, say the Hutchison Whampoa company will do the Chinese government's bidding, and could become a source for collecting important intelligence. Making matters worse, qestions have been raised about irregularities in the bidding process that gave Hutchison Whampoa company its contract just two years ago.
Retired Navy Admiral Thomas Moorer is a former chairman of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff. At a Washington news conference Admiral Moorer said, "China plans to seize control of the canal through the Hong Kong company."
China could fire mobile, nuclear missiles at the United States from such a base in Panama, "...consequently, we have a situation where the Chinese are in a position today to secret these kinds of missiles into Panama and use Panama as a launching point for missiles to attack the United States," he said.
Admiral Moorer concluded that the Chinese threat "is more difficult to handle" than the Cuban missile crisis. The admiral also disputed the Clinton administration's contention that the United States retains the right after surrendering the canal to use force to ensure free passage through the waterway. However, Panamanian officials contacted by the Republican this week would not confirm that contention.1999 copyright, The Daily Republican Newspaper. All rights reserved.
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WASHINGTON -- The U.S. State Department reports major European news media commentators see "chaos" and, ultimately, the breakdown of the "Clinton Round" of WTO talks. Under the headline "An American Failure," Paris' Le Figaro Economie banner reads, "Seattle's failure is a humiliation for Bill Clinton." The headlines in Great Britain accuse the Clinton White House as being not well prepared for the negotiations. Glaring headlines point single out the Clinton administration as "woefully underprepared for the conference and deserved fully to be embarrassed," and variously blamed "the irresponsibility of Bill Clinton," "the lack of adequate preparation," and the "unwieldiness of a meeting of 135 members" for the outcome.
In Asia, most newspaper, including The Hong Kong Standard used the word "fiasco" to despict the failure" of the Seattle WTO meeting and seemed to agree that the "collapse" of the negotiations was brought on by a perceived "overconfidence" on the part of the U.S.--and, to some extent, the EU--in their ability to launch a new round of global trade liberalization "without the cooperation and support of developing countries." Seoul's Dong-A-Ilbo concluded that the "clear lesson" of Seattle was the U.S. and EU "must...stop trying to maximize their control" of the WTO. Writers in Australia, South Korea and India also termed the "acrimonious disintegration" of the talks as an "enormous foreign policy failure" for the Clinton ministration.
In East Africa, the news media played up "the failure" of Seattle because it meant "thwarting the hegemony of the industrial countries led by the U.S." Several Arab papers said the region must unite in order to join the economic global trend. A number of Latin American pundits also urged that a "strong alliance" be "forged" among hemispheric nations. In Africa, analysts spoke of rich nations' hypocrisy and the unfair treatment in Seattle of delegations from the developing world. A Zimbabwean daily intoned that the Seattle demonstrations were a "warning to the industrialized countries of the possible reactions by the millions of marginalized people in the 21st century to the unfairness of free trade."
[Editor's Note: The WTO's Third Ministerial summit held in Seattle, closed on Friday without reaching an agreement to launch a new round of global trade liberalization talks. The State Department survey was based on 48 reports from 59 countries, December 1-3. Editorial excerpts were grouped by region.]1999 copyright, The Daily Republican Newspaper. All rights reserved./Font>
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NEW YORK -- President Clinton wanted to launch a new round of global trade talks to burnish his postimpeachment record. What he got instead could be called The Tear Gas Round.
The public-relations fiasco here is making it harder for U.S. negotiators to convince other members of the World Trade Organization to agree to an agenda for global negotiations -- the purpose of the Seattle meeting. The meeting is also highlighting how controversial trade issues have become and how ineffectual Mr. Clinton has been at convincing ordinary Americans that free trade benefits them. That diminishes the president's legacy and causes big problems for his would-be successor, Vice President Al Gore.
"Trade has the potential to do what civil rights and the Vietnam War did-split the Democratic Party," said Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. "You could have Democrats voting for [Reform Party hopeful Patrick] Buchanan or not voting at all."
Publicly, Mr. Clinton's aides are trying to put the best face on the sprawling protests, arguing that WTO delegates are now more committed to launching a new round of talks. "People want to leave this city with some declaration" of global negotiations, says Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman.
But privately, administration officials know the protests have hurt their ability to craft compromises. Some comfort themselves with gallows humor. "Number one, we got people to notice the WTO," says a Clintonite facetiously. "Number two, we lowered expectations. We're masters" of public relations.
The stakes had seemed far lower in the spring of 1998 when the White House agreed to host the WTO meeting at the urging of U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky. Following the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which erupted earlier that year, the White House was looking for proposals to demonstrate that Mr. Clinton was engaged and looking forward.
In his State of the Union address in January, Mr. Clinton called for a new round of trade talks to go along with the WTO meeting, as part of his postimpeachment agenda. Seattle was chosen as the site, in part because its economy has thrived through trade, with such export giants as Boeing, Microsoft, and Weyerhaeuser Co. located nearby.
While demonstrations were expected, their intensity has clearly caught the White House and the Seattle organizers by surprise. In Seattle, Mr. Clinton has tried to identify with the demonstrators' complaints, while distancing himself from the violent tactics of some protesters. He also met last night with leaders of four environmental groups and AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney to discuss strategy for reforming the WTO.
"What [protesters] are telling us on the streets here is ... "we're not going to be silent on [trade] anymore,' " Mr. Clinton told WTO ministers during a luncheon.
"The sooner the WTO opens up the process and lets people representing those who are outside in," the president continued, "the sooner we will see fewer demonstrations, more constructive debate and a broader level of support" for expanded trade. Mr. Clinton said that trade was essential for global prosperity.
The White House also announced several initiatives to benefit poor nations. The U.S. Trade Representative's office and the Department of Health and Human Services will work together to help poor nations obtain affordable medicines. Currently, U.S. officials threaten trade sanctions against poor nations that use unorthodox means to produce or import drugs cheaply in violation, the U.S. contends, of patents of U.S. pharmaceutical companies.
Separately, the U.S. is working with other wealthy nations to slash tariffs for poor nations. But it's not clear that the program will include tariff cuts on textiles, apparel, shoes and other goods that compete with domestic industries in wealthy countries.
But with demonstrators still being rounded up here by police, it's far from clear that such initiatives will persuade skeptics of trade liberalization. While that could embarrass the president, it could be debilitating for the vice president, whose campaign depends on the support of labor activists-much like the ones who make up the bulk of the protesters here.
The marchers in Seattle "are precisely the kinds of people who man phone banks, who deliver campaign literature and who are core activists," says Harley Shaiken, a labor economist at the University of California at Berkeley. "For Gore, they're pivotal to his election."
Mr. Gore has remained largely silent about the WTO and the protests. While his campaign turns out a steady stream of pronouncements (yesterday, it highlighted World AIDS Day and Mr. Gore's endorsement by Maryland Democrats), it hasn't made any pronouncements on the WTO.
When asked about the issue in New Hampshire on Tuesday, Mr. Gore said the WTO ought to put greater emphasis on environmental protection and labor rights. "We need to expand trade on a fair basis," Mr. Gore said, "but in that process we need to take labor protection and the environment into account."
Former Sen. Bill Bradley also faces criticism. He put out a lengthy statement on the WTO this past weekend, in which he endorsed free trade, but called on the WTO to include labor and environmental concerns.
Nevertheless, Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, an environmental group that has endorsed Mr. Bradley and has given his campaign a big lift, said he was disappointed. "It doesn't help give us greater confidence that Bradley will follow through," on environmental issues, said Mr. Blackwelder.
Perhaps the only political gain the administration can claim is that press coverage of rampaging protesters may tarnish their cause -- and make some lawmakers less likely to oppose trade liberalization. Next year, Congress will vote on a trade package with China that would allow Beijing to enter the WTO.
"Conservative Republicans will be pushed by their leadership to go with the corporations" who back the WTO deal, says Rep. Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat and trade critic. The violence of some protesters could provide an "excuse to back off" from their alliance with WTO opponents and endorse the pact.Copyright © 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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SAN DIEGO -- A lot of the people are demonstrating in the streets of Seattle this week. It's an effort to embarrass the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting. Some are scared witless of this new thing called globalization.
They fear its steamroller march - blasting over environmental standards, penetrating the borders of little nations to puree indigenous cultures into one homogenized global soup, blowing gigantic gales of foreign capital in and out of small economies and dissing human- rights values in favor of shareholder values. This is not globalization's kinder, gentler wealth-producing, raising-all-boats image, of course, but the icy cold face of a relentless modernity that the environmentalists, union activists, human-rights lobbyists, anti-multinationalists and crank opportunists milling around outside Seattle's five-star hotels want in plain view.
What these fearful demonstrators do not know is that many of the big-shot foreign ministers at the WTO conference hovering in the halls and conferring in the closed conference rooms are fearful, too.
For globalization is now the huge new force stalking the earth, creating great uncertainty as well as vast new opportunity. East Asia itself is as plagued by doubt as it is resigned to the inevitable. Globalization tells the Japanese, which in a mere five decades raised their nation from a nearly-bankrupt third-world country to the second-largest economy, to abandon their system of promising workers a job for life simply because it makes their economy uncompetitive with ones that treat workers little better than tissue paper.
The Japanese aren't sure about this. The imperatives of globalization instruct the Chinese, determined to enter the world economy but cautious about every step, to open up their currency market to the rest of the world. But the Chinese say, 'We weren't ready for that two years ago, which helps explain how we managed to escape the worst ravages of the Asian currency crisis.'
Who's sorry now? And two years ago globalization was whispering in the ears of the South Koreans to borrow and borrow -- so as to invest and invest; but when Western creditors all started calling in all these loans, the South Korean economy imploded.
No wonder people are scared by globalization. For Asians at least, the key to succeeding with globalization, observed Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong last week in his native Singapore, is learning how to ride the tiger without being devoured by it. In a long interview in the tiny nation's Istana governmental compound, the successor to modern Singapore's founder Lee Kuan Yew said: "We need to move with the times, that's basic."
To this end, his nation, a mere 249 square miles in size and 3.1 million in population, has probably more extensively embraced global technology like the Internet than any government on earth. Before long, all schools and homes will be wired. This will be good for the national economy, the government believes; but will it be good for the national soul?
Goh knows that with the latest market information comes a lot of garbage, whether pornography or hate webpages. Even now, the Singaporean way is to keep the streets so clean you can almost eat off of them and keep people so glued to work, study and the family that no one would have time to read Playboy Magazine even if it were available to buy -- which it isn't. Goh shakes his head and says you just have to accept that the old days are over: "We have even removed censorship of plays," reports Goh. "With the Internet, you have got to change the way you manage society.
You can't stop information or materials coming in." Don't believe for a second that others in Asia who agree with Goh are entirely happy about that. Still, there's an upside, says the Williams College-educated politician: "People now can at least begin to experiment and test other ideas. That's what I have in mind, to be more innovative." Blame that on globalization, too.
How America handles itself as globalization proceeds apace will help determine whether nations adapt to its requirements wisely or resist it irrationally. Like China or Japan or Korea or Thailand, Singapore is very much its own place with its own mind about things. Changing your ways to survive globally is unavoidable but cultures and polities won't abdicate to foreign influences unless economic survival absolutely depends on it. T
The soft-spoken Goh surely reflects widespread concerns when he pleads for more tolerance of political diversity from the West as other nations sort out their new role in the world: " .... The U.S. model of democracy may not apply to everyone. Don't go for 'one size fits all'. Try custom-made democracy for individual countries, taking into account their cultural differences, their lack of a middle class, and their readiness for democracy. Apply your norms in a general way but don't insist that everybody should follow the way you do things." What chance of this is there? Goh laughs loudly: "I think the average American will not know, or the average congressman, will not understand that."
In a different life or with a different fate, at least a few of the ministerial leaders inside Seattle's hotels might have wound up on the other side of the barricades.
[Editor's Note: Tom Plate is Director and Founder of the Asia Pacific Media Network, a regional alliance of blue-chip news-media institutions. Go to Prof. Plate's exclusive interview with Prime Minister Goh. Plate teaches at UCLA and may be contacted at Email: tplate@ucla.edu].1999 copyright, The Asia Pacific Media Network
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SEATTLE -- President Clinton went to the defense of street protesters in fray over WTO meeting in Seattle at the World Trade Organization meeting. He told reporters, "They should be allowed to take their protest inside the building." However, the mele was so violent that Seattle Mayor Paul Schell declared a state of emergency Tuesday night and Gov. Gary Locke called in the National Guard as protesters continued to run wild in the streets of downtown Seattle after Mr. Clinton's remarks.
The day was filled with stalled traffic, blocked streets, and police confrontations that so distrupted the first day of the World Trade Organization conference that opening ceremonies were cancelled.
As night approached, Mayor Schell ordered a city-wide curfew ordering tens of thousands of protesters off the streets. The protestors refused to clear the streets and police lobbed tear gas canisters and fired pepper-spray pellets and rubber bullets into the crowds of demonstrators.
WTO officials declared Seattle streets unsafe for delegates and requested delegates to remain inside their hotel rooms and not to attempt to come to the convention center.
Mayor Schell told reporters, "This was a planned demonstration. Obviously, we're not happy with the outcome. We're urging people to give us back the streets for tomorrow. The point's been made. The last thing I ever wanted to be was the mayor of a city where I had to call out the National Guard, where I had to see tear gas in the streets. It makes me sick."
The mayor's office confirmed reports that 200 National Guardsmen were called up and would be available Wednesday morning. There will also be 300 Washington State Patrol troopers sent to help Seattle Police maintain civic order.
Meanwhile, rioters set fire to an overturned police van and fought running battles with officers in central London last night during a coordinated protest against Britain's prticipation in the WTO meeting in Seattle.1999 copyright, The Daily Republican Newspaper. All rights reserved./Font>
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