[let page fully load first]
- the UN and the Corporate Agenda by David Korten
-
- Czech anti-nuclear activists on the web
-
- clip from a letter to Terence McKenna
-
- Compounds found in Cannabis sativa
-
- El Nino
-
- environmentally sound garment cleaning process
-
- browser watch
-
- after effects of the bio-war in the Gulf
-
- the seven most-wired countries
Message 1 (263 lines)
Mon Jul 14 18:53:25 1997
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 1997 18:53:24 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: David Korten
>Return-Path: <rachel!rachel.clark.net!peter@clarknet.clark.net>
>>Received: by rachel.clark.net (UUPC/extended 1.12r);
> Wed, 09 Jul 1997 18:05:42 -0400
>Date: Wed, 9 Jul 97 18:05:41 -0500
>From: Peter Montague <peter@rachel.clark.net>
>Subject: David Korten
>To: gacc@rachel.clark.net (Corporations Group)
>Reply-To: peter@rachel.clark.net
>X-PMFLAGS: 36700288
>
>To: GACCers
>From: Peter Montague
>
>The following came to me via E-mail and I am passing it along:
>
>
>
>On June 24, 1997 the CEOs of 10 TNCs met over lunch at the United
>Nations with the UN leadership and a number of senior government
>officials to chart a formalization of corporate involvement in
>the affairs of the United Nations. I attended the lunch. It is
>rare that any of us from the NGO community has such an
>opportunity to sit in on a meeting of the powerholders in the
>private chambers. I found it a shattering experience for it
>revealed a seamless alliance between the public and private
>sectors aligned behind the consolidation of corporate rule over
>the global economy. It raised serious questions in my mind as to
>whether progressive civil society organizations should in fact be
>aligned behind the United Nations and its funding.
>
> The following is a personal report. I'm sending as an
>attachment a memo I subsequently wrote to Ambassador Razali
>Ismail, President of the UN General Assembly who chaired the
>meeting.
>
> An insightful cartoon foreseeing a UN in which the global
>corporations sit as equals with nations in the UN chambers and a
>list of luncheon participants will be posted to the PCDForum web
>site in the next day or two. See:
>
>http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf
>
>David C. Korten
>
>
>
>THE UNITED NATION AND THE CORPORATE AGENDA
>by David C. Korten
>
>It was a true power lunch of lobster and an exotic mushroom salad
>held in a private dining room at the United Nations on June 24,
>1997. Thirty seven invited participants were co-hosted by
>Ambassador Razali Ismail, President of the UN General Assembly,
>and Mr. Bjorn Stigson, Executive Director of the World Business
>Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD) to examine steps
>toward establishing terms of reference for business sector
>participation in the policy setting process of the UN and
>partnering in the uses of UN development assistance funds. The
>players in the meeting were 15 high level representatives of
>government, including three heads of state, the Secretary General
>of the UN, the Administrator of UNDP, and the UN Under Secretary
>General responsible for presiding over the UN Commission on
>Sustainable Development, the Secretary General of the
>International Chamber of Commerice, 10 CEOs of transnational
>corporations. The CEOs were mostly members of the WBCSD, a
>council of transnational corporations (TNCs) originally organized
>by Stephan Schmidheiny and Maurice Strong to represent the
>interests of global corporations at the United Nations Conference
>on Environment and Development in Rio in 1992.
>
> In a limited gesture toward transparency and
>multi-stakeholder participation, two "academics" and two NGOs
>were invited to observe. The academics were Jonathan Lash of
>World Resources Institute and myself. Chee Yoke Ling of the Third
>World Network and Victoria "Vicki" Tauli-Corpuz of the Indigenous
>Peoples' Network, Philippines were the NGO participants.
>
> The meeting's outcome was preordained. It closed with
>Ambassador Razali, President of the General Assembly, announcing
>that a framework for the involvement of the corporate sector in
>UN decision making would be worked out under the auspices of the
>Commission on Sustainable Development.
>
> Listening to the presentations by the governmental and
>corporate representatives left me rather deeply shaken, as it
>revealed the extent to which most of the messages the world's
>NGOs have been attempting to communicate to the UN and its
>governmental members at UNCED and the other UN conferences have
>fallen on deaf ears. On the positive side, Mr. Thorbejoern
>Jagland, the Prime Minister of Norway, called for a tax shift to
>place the burden of taxation on environmentally damaging
>consumption. Both Ms. Clare Short, Secretary of State for
>International Development of the United Kingdom and Mrs. Margaret
>De Boer, Minister of Environment for the Netherlands, called for
>giving high priority to ending poverty.
>
> Ms. Chee Yoke Ling of the Third World Network, the only
>non-corporate stakeholder voice given the floor, spoke eloquently
>of the growing concentration of wealth being created by the
>corporate sector and of the corporate commitment to the
>unattainable agenda of creating a universal consumer society. She
>observed that there are not enough resources in the world for
>everyone to live even at the current level of consumption of the
>average Malaysian, let alone the level of the United States or
>Europe. She further noted that people are becoming increasingly
>cynical about the professed corporate commitment to
>sustainability given that in corporate dominated forums such as
>World Trade Organization (WTO) they talk only of the rights of
>corporations and nothing of their obligations.
>
>
>Such moments of enlightenment were the exception. On the less
>enlightened side, we were treated to the views of Mr. Samuel
>Hinds, the President of Guyana. He was the only speaker to take
>any note of Chee Yoke Ling's comments and he dismissed out of
>hand. Indeed, he accused NGOs of causing popular unrest by trying
>to postpone in the name of environmental protection the
>development that people so desperately want. Besides, he pointed
>out, if he does not cut down his country's forests someone might
>grow marijuana in them.
>
> The United States sent Larry Summers, Deputy Secretary of
>the Treasury as its representative to the luncheon. The Clinton
>administration could hardly have sent a clearer message as to how
>it views the trade-off between its commitment to sustainability
>and its commitment to its corporate clients. Summers is the
>former Chief Economist of the World Bank who gained public fame
>for advocating the shipping of more toxic wastes to low income
>countries because people there die early anyway and they have
>less income earning potential so their lives are less valuable.
>Summers treated the luncheon guests to a litany of neoliberal
>platitudes. He praised privatization, noting that people take
>better care of their homes when they own them, implying that
>environmental resources will be better cared for when they are
>all privately owned by the corporate sector. He assured us that
>economic growth leads the way to creating both the will and the
>means to deal with the environment. In other words, he believes
>that the more a person consumes the more careful that person will
>be of the environment. And he noted that by attracting private
>foreign capital to build bridges and roads on a fee for use
>basis, the receiving countries will eliminate their need to use
>scarce public funds for physical infrastructure. He might well
>have noted as a further advantage that the private toll roads and
>bridges will be less congested than open public facilities as
>fees will exclude their use by the poor.
>
> Mr. Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN, gave the
>corporate CEOs a warm welcome with his message that he sees
>opportunities for the private sector and the UN cooperating at
>many levels. He referred to the Rio meeting as an example of
>where the private sector participated in setting the standards
>rather than the UN or government imposing them. He of course made
>no mention that corporate participation in Rio helped assure that
>few standards were actually set and that even fewer have been
>met. He called on the private sector to come up with alternative
>energy sources for the poor so they "don't have to cut down every
>tree in sight," while making no mention of the corporations that
>are strip mining the world's forests. He praised UNDP for its
>role in preparing the way for private investment to come into
>Third World countries and called on governments to provide
>incentives to move business in this directionin short he is
>firmly committed to using UN and other public funds to subsidize
>the corporate buy-out of Third World economies.
>
> Gus Speth, the Administration of UNDP, said that the best
>hope for the 3 billion people in the world who live on less than
>$2 a day is to bring them into the market by redirecting more
>private investment flows to low income countries. UNDP is
>apparently facilitating this process by giving priority to using
>its limited funds to "leverage," read "subsidize," private
>foreign investment. He mentioned that peace and justice will
>require a particular kind of development, but did not elaborate
>as to what kind that might be.
>
> Underlying the words of everyone who was allowed to
>speak, with the sole exception of NGO spokesperson Chee Yoke
>Ling, was an embrace of the neoliberal logic of market
>deregulation and economic globalization. According to the
>prevailing official wisdom, economic globalization and the
>economic dominance of corporations are irreversible realities to
>which we must simply adapt. Since global corporations have the
>money and the power, any viable approach to dealing with poverty
>and the environment must center on providing market incentives
>(read public subsidies) that will make it profitable for them to
>invest in job creation and environmentally friendly technologies.
>Thus it follows, by the twisted official logic, that corporations
>need to be brought in as partners in public decision process to
>assure that the resulting policies will be responsive to their
>needs. If any speaker other than Chee Yoke Ling saw any problem
>in giving over ever more power to global corporations, they
>revealed no hint of it at this power luncheon.
>
> The underlying commitment to the use of public resources
>to advance unrestrained global corporate expansion brought to
>mind the central message of a book that first appeared in 1980
>written by Bertram Gross titled FRIENDLY FASCISM: THE NEW FACE OF
>POWER IN AMERICA. Gross looked beyond the familiar racism, hatred
>and brutal authoritarian rule associated with the practice of
>fascism to describe the institutional structure of fascist
>regimes. Herein he revealed a nasty little secret. The defining
>structure of fascist regimes is a corporate dominated alliance
>between big business and big government to support the expansion
>of corporate empires.
>
> Those of us who have been studying these issues have long
>known of the strong alignment of the World Trade Organization
>(WTO), the World Bank, and the IMF to the corporate agenda. By
>contrast the United Nations has seemed a more open, democratic
>and people friendly institution. What I found so shattering was
>the strong evidence that the differences I have been attributing
>to the United Nations are largely cosmetic.
>
> It seems that all our official forums function within the
>culture of ideological dogmatism that international financier
>George Soros denounced in his ATLANTIC MONTHLY article on "The
>Capitalist Threat." With dissenting voices quickly silenced,
>there is no challenge within the halls of power to flawed logic
>and assumptions.
>
>
>So long as official forums remain captive to this closed and
>deeply flawed ideological culture, our governmental and corporate
>institutions will almost surely lead our world ever deeper into
>crisis. The burden of providing alternative leadership that falls
>on those elements of civil society that are not captive to the
>official culture is thus enormous. We must speak fearlessly with
>force and clarity in an effort to penetrate the veil of silence
>that shields our official and corporate institutions from
>confronting the devastating consequences of their ideologically
>driven leadership.
>
>David C. Korten PCDForum - Fax (1-212) 242-1901
>
>Globalize Consciousness - Localize Economies
>
>Visit our web site: http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf
>
>
>
>
Message 2 (147 lines)
From netaction-owner@manymedia.com Thu Jul 10 00:46:14 1997
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 00:27:36 -0700 (PDT)
From: Audrie Krause <akrause@igc.apc.org>
Subject: NetAction Notes No. 22
Sender: netaction-owner@manymedia.com
Reply-To: akrause@igc.apc.org
To: "undisclosed-recipients:;"
NetAction Notes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Published by NetAction Issue No. 22 July 10, 1997
Repost where appropriate. Copyright and subscription info at end of message.
* * * * * * *
IN THIS ISSUE:
Atoms in Cyberspace
Cyberspace Spyglasses
About NetAction Notes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Atoms in Cyberspace
In a remote corner of the Southern Czech Republic, near the tiny village of
Temelin, several hundred anti-nuclear activists from all parts of the globe
are half way through a week-long blockade of the Temelin Nuclear Power
Plant. You won't see this demonstration live on the 6 o'clock news, but you
can get blow-by-blow reports on the Web at: <www.ecn.cz/temelin>.
Anti-nuclear protests have attracted little media coverage in recent years,
in part because the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council, and
other high-profile environmental organizations have trivialized nuclear
pollution in their zeal to win minor concessions on air quality emissions.
And what media coverage there has been has generally been lacking in
substance. But as this week's Temelin blockade dramatically demonstrates,
the Web offers anti-nuclear activists a powerful new medium for
communicating their concerns directly to the public.
The Temelin Web site is being updated several times each day, with print
quality photos, reports from participants, and other details. An English
language version of the site is available in text-only format as well as
with full graphics.
Four years behind schedule and many millions of dollars over budget, the
plant has recently become the focus of renewed debate both within the Czech
Republic and internationally. While a leader of the Czech opposition party
has condemned the plant as a bad investment and is seeking a local public
referendum to decide the plant's fate, representatives of the Czech electric
utility have claimed that protest organizers invited violent anarchists from
Germany to participate in the blockade.
Protesters hope to stop all construction work on the plant during the week.
Supporters from around the world can find out whether they succeed by
clicking on the site.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cyberspace Spyglasses
As the Czech anti-nuclear activists are demonstrating with this week's
blockade, the Internet can give us an immediate connection to events taking
place in distant corners of the globe. It can also be used to monitor, and
regularly report on, an infinite range of issues, industries, and political
activities.
This issue of NetAction Notes reports on two organizations, with vastly
different agendas, using the Internet in similar ways to monitor and report
on developments in their areas of interest:
U.S. West Territory Consumer Watch, sponsored by a multi-state coalition of
consumer rights organizations, uses the Web to monitor regulatory and
legislative developments in states where U.S. West is the incumbent local
exchange carrier. The site, with links to regulatory agencies in the states
served by U.S. West, is at <http://www.seanet.com/~westwatch/>.
Visitors to the site can register consumer complaints and provide
suggestions on what sorts of services they want from their local phone
company. In addition, it features a report on the top ten anti-competitive
and anti-consumer tactics of U.S. West.
Participating organizations include Arizona Citizen Action, Colorado PIRG,
Idaho Citizens Network, Minnesota COACT, Oregon CUB, and Washington Citizen
Action.
Using similar tools for a very different purpose, People for the American
Way (PFAW) publishes Right Wing Watch Online, a free electronic newsletter
on the Religious Right political movement. The site, at
<http://pfaw.org/rww>, includes an archive of past issues as well as other
information on right-wing religious groups that use the political process to
impose their values on all U.S. citizens. Subscription information is on
the site.
Right Wing Watch Online monitors all aspects of the Religious Right's work,
and PFAW maintains a library that archives the movement's political
propaganda, including videos of television and radio broadcasts, direct
mail, newsletters, and books.
PFAW describes the newsletter as an objective source of information: "We'll
tell you what they're saying and doing in their various communications, and
you can draw your own conclusions."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
About NetAction Notes
NetAction Notes is a free electronic newsletter, published by NetAction to
promote effective grassroots organizing on the Internet. NetAction is a
national, non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public, policy
makers, and the media about technology-based social and political issues,
and to teaching activists how to use the Internet for organizing, outreach,
and advocacy.
To subscribe to NetAction Notes, send a message to: <majordomo@manymedia.com>
The body of the message should state: <subscribe netaction>
To unsubscribe at any time, send a message to: <majordomo@manymedia.com>
The body of the message should state: <unsubscribe netaction>
NetAction is supported by individual contributions, membership dues and
grants. For more information about contributing to NetAction, contact Audrie
Krause by phone at (415) 775-8674, by E-mail at akrause@igc.org, visit the
NetAction Web site at: http://www.netaction.org, or write to:
NetAction * 601 Van Ness Ave., No. 631 * San Francisco, CA 94102
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Copyright 1997 by NetAction/The Tides Center. All rights reserved.
Material may be reposted or reproduced for non-commercial use provided
NetAction is cited as the source. NetAction is a project of The Tides
Center, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
----------------
Subject: clip from a letter to Terence McKenna:
I used to think we each create our own universes. Now I think we just
stumble into them---an entirely new one, in fact, every Plank second!.
Each moment or Plank second(10 to the minus 23rd seconds) I think contains
a new and unique universe created at the branching point of the previous
moment. The path you take may be best understood in terms of
willingness---your path is the one you are willing to take. And your
willingness is product of who you are-----and who you are is little more
than the sum total of your beliefs about the way the world is. A real
change in your world will be associated with a change in your beliefs, but
that is highly unlikely because of the tenacity with which the as yet
poorly identified belief molecules at the brain stem level resist change.
You don't change them! Life does. You don't create anything since you are
nothing. Life creates---and you, as Kahlil Gibran says, are but a witness.
I think we should be more afraid of Hubris than we commonly are. The
Greeks were very respectful of her.
Run out of time, Tom.
Tom Stringer
tstring@worldpassage.net
------------------
Compounds found in Cannabis sativa
----------------------------------
(-)-[delta 1]-3,4-trans-tetrahydrocannabinol (most active cannabinoid)
(-)-[delta 6]-3,4-trans-tetrahydrocannabinol tetrahydrocannabitriol
(aka cannabitriol) cannabidiolic acid cannabidiol cannabinol (forms
after plant dies) THC acids A and B (inactive unless smoked)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Minor constituents:
cannabigerol
cannabigerolic acid
cannabichromene
cannabichromenic acid
cannabicyclol (aka cannabipinol)
cannabicyclolic acid
cannabicitran
cannabielsoic acids A and B
cannabinolic acid (neutral cannabinoid)
cannabichromanon
cannabifuran
dehydrocannabifuran
2-oxo-[delta 3]-tetrahydrocannabinol
cannabigerol monomethyl ether
cannabidiol monomethyl ether
cannabinol methyl ether
propylcannabidiol (aka cannabidivarol & cannabidivarin)
propylcannabinol (aka cannabivarol & cannabivarin)
propyl-[delta 1]-THC (aka [delta 1]-tetrahydrocannabivarol &
tetrahydrocannabivarin) propylcannabigerol propylcannabicyclol
propylcannabichromene methylcannabidiol (aka cannabidiorcol)
methylcannabinol (aka cannabiorcol) methyl-[delta 1]-THC (aka [delta
1]-tetrahydrocannabiorcol) [delta 1]-tetrahydrocannabivarolic acid
Nitrogen-containing compounds:
choline
trigonelline
muscarine
piperidine
N-(p-hydroxy-B-phenylethyl)-p-hydroxy-trans-cinnamide
neurine
L-proline
L-isoleucine betaine
hordenine
cannabisativine (alkaloid found in the roots)
source: earth@erowid.com
------------------------------
LOOKS LIKE AN EL NINO YEAR
WASHINGTON, DC, May 16, 1997 (ENS) - Atmospheric and oceanic conditions in
the tropical Pacific during the past few months are early indications of
warm episode (El Nio) conditions, according to a special El Nio/Southern
Oscillation Diagnostic Advisory issued by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center.
Several of the forecast models for El Nio supported by NOAA, including the
ones at the Climate Prediction Center, predicted the onset of a warm event
already late in 1996. The models indicate continued warming through 1997.
El Nio is an abnormal state of the ocean-atmosphere system in the tropical
Pacific having important consequences for weather around the globe.
Increased rainfall across the southern tier of the United States and in
Peru, sometimes resulting in destructive flooding and drought in northeast
Brazil, southeastern Africa, and in the west Pacific can be expected.
Better predictions of extreme climate episodes like floods and droughts
could save the United States billions of dollars in damage costs.
El Nios, warm episodes, usually occur approximately every two to seven
years. Recent El Nio events occurred in 1976-1977, 1982-1983, 1986-1987,
1991-1993 and 1994-1995. The first half of the 1990s is unusual in that
four out of five years featured warm episode conditions in the tropical
Pacific. However, a cold episode occurred in 1995/96 and its effects
lingered until late 1996.
The EnviroNews Service | E-Mail: newsdesk@envirolink.org
A Project of the EnviroLink Network 19 May 1997
--------
Manhattan Residents Victorious Over Perc Dry Cleaners Ecomat
Purchases and Replaces Toxic Dry Cleaner
MAMARONECK, N.Y., May 16 -/E-Wire/-- Ecomat Inc. (Nasdaq: ECMT)
announced today that the company has closed on an asset purchase
agreement pursuant to which it acquired White Glove Cleaners, a New York
"perc" dry cleaner which had previously filed for bankruptcy. The
company will operate the facility using an environmentally sound garment
cleaning process and no perc. The company also announced that a press
conference will be hold on Monday May 19, 1997 at 12:30 p.m. in front of
the former White Glove Cleaners at 39 North Moore Street in New York
City.
The New York City dry cleaner that put residents at risk from perc
emissions (the toxic solvent used by dry cleaners) was the target of a
battle waged by outraged residents, the Public Advocate Mark Green,
Unite and Greenpeace. Perchloroethylene (or "perc") has been classified
a probable human carcinogen by the International Agency For Research on
Cancer. Perc can also affect the liver, kidneys and central nervous
system and it can also accumulate in human breast milk and is suspected
of causing developmental effects on the unborn. More than 69,000 other
New York City apartment residents and 30,000 dry cleaning workers are at
risk from dry cleaning emissions as over one-half of New York City's dry
cleaners are located in such buildings. Through their organization,
Perc Alert, residents from this and other Manhattan buildings had
publicly protested to city officials about the city's granting of an
operating permit to White Glove Cleaners.
Ecomat's President and C.E.O. Diane Weiser stated that, "This first
acquisition of a controversial perc dry cleaner by Ecomat is a stunning
example of the successful cooperation between community residents,
public officials, unions, environmental organizations and
environmentally and socially responsible businesses such as Ecomat. I
want to personally thank each and every shareholder of Ecomat for
believing in our company's goal to end the risks from perc emissions
beginning here in New York City and continuing through our national and
international expansion."
The environmental and health impact of perc on the public is a
nationwide issue. There are approximately 35,000 dry cleaners in the
United States who use perc as their dry cleaning solvent.
Ecomat is the nation's first cleaner and laundromat franchiser to
offer total professional garment care using no toxic chemicals. The
company has contracted for the opening of thirty-three domestic
franchises throughout the United States as well as three master
franchise licenses internationally, and plans to open more company-owned
facilities throughout the Tri-State region. SOURCE Ecomat Inc.
-0- 05/19/97
/CONTACT: Laine Wilder of Ecomat, 914-777-3600, ext. 12/
(ECMT)
**********************************************************************
To Find Out How To Transmit Your News On E-Wire Call 1-800-832-5522.
E-Wire Is Broadcast To Millions Of Readers Worldwide.
**********************************************************************
------
I have a counter on my page which tells me what kind of browser people
are using. 75% of them use Netscape, 10% IE. Out of those with
Netscape, 95% of THEM are 3.0 or above. Very few people stick with the
2.02 when they can download the 3.01 or 4.0 for free.
Does that help?
-------
Washington admits that some 84,000 Desert Storm veterans are ill with a
constellation of symptoms, including memory loss, rashes, insomnia, night
sweats, weight gain, rashes, sensitivity to light, bleeding gums and
rectums, chronic coughs, shortness of breath, hair loss, dizziness and
blackouts. But the Washington-based Gulf war Veterans Association insists that
possibly twice that number of vets are "sick, disabled, or dying."
6,526 deceased Persian Gulf war veterans, who have died since returning
home of illnesses contracted in the Gulf. Studies have shown as many as
three out of four spouses of sick veterans suffer the same symptoms.
birth deformities in 65% of the infants conceived by
veterans after the war.
The implications of bio-war in the Gulf could put a severe dent in the
popularity of future wars.
Environment News Service
MEMORIAL DAY COMMENTARY: THE WAR THAT WOULD NOT DIE
Tue, 27 May 1997
By William Thomas
-------
In descending order, the seven most-wired countries based
on networks per million of population are: Canada (192), United States
(114), Australia (110), France (37), Britain (24), Germany (22), and Japan
(15). (Toronto Globe & Mail 23 May 97)
-----------