Past, Present, Future...
vendredi, juin 24 2005
...a post in English for those who feel resentments creeping in when trying to recall french lessons...
It's gonna be about Poliiiitiiica ! (bun dem babylon fightaz!
I really have the intention of protesting against WTO (World Trade Organization, OMC in french) and European Union actions about historical traditions, and especially public intervention. Hence I recommand all my stockholder readers to leave this website. Back off ! (as well as all who believe that everybody's role is to produce wealth no matter what one sacrifies).
Services such as advertising or tourism have always been open to competition, and it seems to regulate very well. On the contrary, education and health have been non-commercial structures and under public intervention for long. When it comes to culture or wellness, the stakes are so important that it would be completely horrific to make it lucrative. Right ?
However, the WTO and the European Union are proceeding filthy agreements behind our backs. Of course, don't expect the media to mention any of these... Actually they are stepping up the process of GATS, against which a lot of countries were till now reluctant. What is GATS ? GATS is "General Agreement on Trade in Services". It's an agreement signed in 1994, currently in negotiation at WTO. It's an agreement aiming to the liberalization of the services. Some examples? Water, education, health, tourism, energy, transport... But who wants to give our schools to Microsoft? Who wants to give the management of our forests to a big Paper company or our hospitals to the king of hamburgers? How could a state have a long-term energy management when companies benefits from liberalization ? Indeed, with these agreements, public intervention can be blamed as unfair competition !
Until now, only a few fifty states had proposed a liberalization of services sectors, but EU estimates that those propositions are of really poor quality. In the meantime it seriously eggs WTO on, EU requires quality criterias that would lead to wider openings of services markets, i.e. stronger liberalisations. Thus, EU, with the complicity of WTO secretary, is currently blowing up our future for the sake of rentability !
I don't pretend to get the hang on all these stakes, but scientists council of Attac wrote excellent synthesis. The aim of this post is only to get responsive readings or talks. Of course I only call in question the fact that serious things are happening, and nobody give's a rat's ass. Just think of your children futurities.
Protest! Use the logo (download international versions). Put it on your door, your mailbox, your bicycle, your school, your town hall, in your headings of letters, on your Internet sites. Make flags and tee-shirts... Spread it at much as possible. Explain GATS to your friends, your parents, your neighbors. Do like many cities in the world, be a GATS Free Zone and show it.
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