+++++++++++++++++++ WHAT'S NEW IN INES? +++++++++++++++++++
No. 9/1997 ---------------------------------------------------------
Dateline: 28 Sep 1997
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Editor: Tobias Damjanov, Kreutzkamp 33, D-21465 Reinbek, Germany
e-mail:
Proofreading by Kate Maloney, SGR UK
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++++++ INES MEMBERSHIP UPDATE ++++++
=== > 1997 INESAP CONFERENCE "Challenges and Opportunities
for a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World"
September 8-10, 1997, Fudan University, Shanghai
--- (I) ---
The following letter to President Bill Clinton was sent by 15 participants
of the INESAP 1997 Conference in Shanghai to protest against the announced
subcritical test in the USA.
September 10, 1997
President William Clinton
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC USA
Dear President Clinton,
We, the undersigned, write from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, where
for the last three days we have taken part in the Third International
Conference of International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against
Proliferation.
One year ago today, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), prohibiting "any nuclear weapon test
explosion or any other nuclear explosion." Since then the United States and
more than 150 other countries have signed the Treaty, and the U.S. has
pledged, in accordance with Article 18 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of
Treaties, to refrain from any action that would defeat its objects and
purpose. As stated in the Preamble, the objective of the CTBT is "to
contribute effectively to the prevention of the proliferation of nuclear
weapons in all its aspects [and] to the process of nuclear disarmament..."
During our conference we learned that the United States is preparing to
conduct its second "subcritical" nuclear test, code-named Holog, later this
month, underground at the Nevada Test Site. According to a public statement
by a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) official, Holog will be "important for
understanding performance" of nuclear weapons. Subcritical tests involve
chemical explosive and weapons grade plutonium. In our view, they violate
the spirit if not the letter of the CTBT. This would especially apply if
complete weapons configurations were tested, a possibility DOE has explicitly
kept open. Further, subcritical tests signal an unrelenting U.S. commitment
to nuclear weapons. We believe that subcritical tests are acts of bad faith,
provocative to other States, that jeopardize prospects for its global entry
into force.
We are deeply concerned that the subcritical tests and the huge "Stockpile
Stewardship" program of which they are part, are making it possible for the
U.S. to continue modernizing its nuclear arsenal, even under a CTBT. This is
also contrary to the Article VI Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligation to
eliminate nuclear weapons, an obligation affirmed unanimously by the
International Court of Justice in July 1996. U.S. failure to meet its Article
VI obligation threatens the long-term viability of the nonproliferation
regime.
We call on you as the leader of the world's most advanced military power to
reverse the dangerous and destabilizing effects of a renewed nuclear
research, development and testing program. We urge you to cancel Holog and
any other subcritical tests. We appeal to you to begin negotiations on a
treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons. The world is watching, and waiting.
For a nuclear weapon free world,
Signatures:
Signed:
Reiner Braun, on behalf of INES --- Jacqueline Cabasso, Western States Legal
Foundation, USA --- Merav Datan, USA --- Surendra Gadekar, India --- Martin
Kalinowski, Germany --- George Lewis, USA --- Allison Macfarlane, USA ---
Luis Masperi, Argentine Physical Society, Argentina --- Vijai Nair, India ---
Abdul Nayyar, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan --- Marco Martinez
Negrete, Mexico --- Goetz Neuneck, Germany --- Reuven Pedatzur, Israel ---
Juergen Scheffran, Germany --- Alice Slater, USA
--- (II) ---
At the 1997 INESAP Conference it was also agreed to send a collective message
of greetings to the International Conference on Central Asia Nuclear Weapon
Free Zone in Tashkent, Uzbekistan which we publish here as well:
To Abdulaziz Kamilov
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan
Message to the International Conference "Central Asia - Nuclear Weapon Free
Zone"
The participants of the 1997 Conference of the International Network of
Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation (INESAP), meeting in Shanghai,
China, September 8-10, send our warmest greetings to the distinguished
delegates to the International Conference on "Central Asia - Nuclear Weapon
Free Zone", being held in Tashkent, September 14-16, 1997.
We fully support and endorse the efforts of the people and governments of
Kazakstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to
create a nuclear weapons free zone in Central Asia.
At every stage of the nuclear weapon fuel cycle and testing, nuclear weapons
have contaminated the environment and harmed the lives of people throughout
the world for far too long. Central Asia has also suffered seriously from the
damage and consequences of nuclear testing. The bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki have convinced us that these terrible weapons of mass destruction
and genocide must never be used again. Nuclear weapons do not contribute to
our security and they threaten our health, peace and survival.
Your efforts to add your beautiful Central Asian Region to those in the
Pacific, Central and South America, Africa and South-East Asia, which have
already been declared nuclear-weapon-free zones, well contribute to the
establishment of more nuclear weapon free zones in the world. We heartily
welcome your initiative, which will constitute a major contribution to the
growing movement to abolish nuclear weapons altogether, to promote the
international goal of a Nuclear Weapons Convention, and to make the whole
Earth nuclear-weapon free.
=== > World Forum for Alternatives: Manifesto
(from the August 1997 INES Newsletter)
It is time to reclaim the march of history
(The full text of the Manifesto is printed in the INES Newsletter)
At a meeting held in mid-March of this year, a group of about thirty people
from all corners of the globe - North America, Latin America, Europe, the
Middle East, Africa and Asia - seized the initiative to create a World Forum
of Alternatives whose Manifesto is attached.
We are writing to solicit your participation in and support for this
initiative, and likewise we would be grateful if you could supply us with
names of people in your country or region who could be invited to join the
list of Forum members.
Once enough signatures have been gathered, we will make the Manifesto widely
known. We will equally keep you informed of all progress made in this
direction through our Newsletter.
Please send your response to the Secretary of the Monitoring Committee:
Samir Amin, Forum du Tiers Monde, P.O. Box 3501, Dakar, Senegal; Tel / Fax:
(
e-mail:
The full text of the Manifesto is printed in the INES Newsletter.
=== > FIET Code of Ethics
(from the August 1997 INES Newsletter)
Gerhard Rohde, Secretary General of FIET, and a member of the INES Council
sends us the FIET Code of
Ethics, which is published in full in the INES Newsletter.
FIET is the 11 million strong International Federation of Commercial,
Clerical, Professional and Technical Employees. FIET was founded in 1904 in
Amsterdam and is now based in Geneva, Switzerland. FIET has around 420
affiliates in over 100 countries. Within FIET, there is a special department
for professional and managerial staff, which represents also engineers and
scientists. FIET cooperates with INES. Together with INES, FIET has organized
a major international congress for engineers and scientists in Amsterdam last
year on "Challenges of Sustainable Development." Recently P&MS, the Committee
for Professional and Managerial Staff has adopted its own code on
professional, social and ethical responsibility which is meant to be kind of
guideline for professionals organised in the member organizations.
The Code represents the standards, which it is reasonable to expect members
to comply with when carrying out their duties within their special fields.
FIET affiliates represent a very broad range of individuals who are employed
as professionals or managers by corporate bodies operating in many countries
of the world and who consequently find themselves working under different
cultural, economic and social conditions, and under diverse laws, statutes
and regulations which frequently interact or overlap.
=== > The Baltic University Programme
(from the August 1997 INES Newsletter)
Project Director of the Baltic University Programme is Lars Ryden, Associate
Professor at Uppsala University.
The Baltic University Programme is a network of universities in the Baltic
Sea region. Some 150 universities and other institutes of higher learning in
14 countries take part. All countries within or partly within the Baltic Sea
drainage area are included: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia,
Belarus, Poland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden, and more marginally the
Ukraine, Slovakia, Norway and Czechia. Some 800 individuals take part in the
network, most of them being active within environmental science but also
within the humanities and the social sciences.
The programme has evolved into activities in four fields:
* Teaching. Making partly use of video presentations and TV broadcasting,
several courses have been developed:
The Baltic Sea Environment;
Peoples of the Baltic;
A sustainable Baltic Region.
* Cooperation with public and with educational TV companies for broadcasts to
the general public on the same
issues. Among others, the TV program Save the Sea on the environmental
situation of the European seas was produced by
the Swedish Educational TV.
* Research cooperation on a regional basis mostly on environmental issues.
Among others, a Baltic Region
environmental database was established (BUGIS project).
* A beginning cooperation with municipal and regional administrations and
schools.
=== > Open skies over Bosnia
(from the August 1997 INES Newsletter)
INES chairperson Hartwig Spitzer visited Bosnia in June as part of his
professional work on arms control research and image analysis. He writes:
"On June 17 and 18, 1997 I had the opportunity to participate in a joint
Hungarian-Romanian Open-Skies trial flight over Bosnia and Herzegovina. This
flight should support confidence building and reconciliation amidst a deeply
split population and high levels of tension. The actors behind such steps are
representatives of international organizations like OSCE as well as
courageous members of non-governmental organizations that are engaged in
Bosnia and Herzegovina. The addressees are both official representatives and
the threefold 'general' public."
The main action taken in this Open-Skies project, was a weapons verification
flight across Bosnia. Photographs taken during this flight were made
available to all parties concerned. Representatives of the three divided
Bosnian camps witnessed the flight.
Spitzer concludes his article with: "What is the outlook for lasting peace in
Bosnia? We cannot tell. Whenever I talked to representatives of the three
entities, I heard words of polarization, blaming the other sides. At the same
time, the outside world is being held responsible for solving the internal
problems. Everyone believes that an international force like SFOR has to stay
present for years in order to prevent the outbreak of new fighting. An
Open-Skies Agreement could be one of many measures (most importantly economic
reconstruction), which could support the parties in a true normalization of
their relations. This will take time, persistence, and dedication. The goal
is a transformation of hate, fear, and helplessness into an attitude of
taking care of oneself, and of accepting the others."
=== > Global Charter of Rights for Corporations
(This article was sent to us by Eric Fawcett, Canada <> and was already distributed to all INESnet
subscribers on 11 Sep 1997)
This issue is central to the mandate of INES--there will be no
sustainable deveopment if we lose control of all our economies to the
multinational corporations!
In Canada there has been NO public debate whatsoever, with a government
re-elected in June that won the 1993 election largely on opposition to
NAFTA, which it immediately signed! So much for democracy!
What about your country, where faceless bureaucrats are also presently
negotiating your future?
The Nation magazine: "M.I.A. Culpa"
In popular mythology, economic globalization is a natural phenomenon,
like continental drift: impossible to resist or control. In reality,
globalization is being shaped and advanced by carefully planned legal
and institutional changes embodied in a series of international
agreements. Pacts like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) promote the
unregulated flow of money and goods across borders and strip elected
governments of their regulatory authority, shifting power to
unaccountable institutions like the World Trade Organization. Virtually
unreported, the latest and potentially most dangerous of these agreements
is now under negotiation.
The Multilateral Investment Agreement (M.I.A.), as the proposal is
known, is under consideration at the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.). Its purpose is to grant
transnational investors the unrestricted "right" to buy, sell and move
businesses-and other assets-wherever they want, whenever they want. To
achieve this goal, the M.I.A. would ban a wide range of regulatory laws
now in force around the globe. It would also pre-empt future efforts to
hold trans-national corporations and investors accountable to the public.
The agreement's backers (the United States and the E.U.) intend to seek
assent from the twenty-seven industrial countries that make up the
O.E.C.D. and then pressure developing countries to sign.
Negotiations are already at an advanced stage. Yet few Americans have
even heard of the agreement. Trade officials are treating M.I.A.
information like nuclear secrets; the mainstream media are oblivious.
Whether the M.I.A. is adopted and, if so, just how far its deregulatory
tentacles will extend depend on whether opponents can force the proposal
from its present obscurity into the light of open debate. Although the
public has been denied access to actual drafts of the agreement, reviews
of O.E.C.D. working group reports and an official summary of the
M.I.A.'s main features provide a clear picture of its aims and
mechanisms.
As proposed the M.l.A. would force countries to treat foreign investors
as favorably as domestic companies. Laws placing conditions on foreign
investment -- like requirements that transnational firms form
partnerships with local companies or employ local managers -- would be
prohibited. Under this new regime, corporations would find it easier and
more profitable to move investments, including production facilities, to
low-wage countries. At the same time, developing countries would be
denied the tools necessary to wrest benefits from foreign investment.
Efforts to promote local development by earmarking subsidies for
homegrown businesses and limiting foreign owner ship of local resources
would also be barred. If adopted, the M.I.A. will mean foreclosure of
Third World development strategies, increased job flight from industrial
nations and enormous new pressures on countries, rich and poor, to
compete for increasingly mobile investment capital by lowering
environmental and labor standards.
A key M.I.A. provision could also threaten corporate accountability laws
championed by progressives in the United States. The M.I.A. takes aim at
statutes in any nation that link the provision of subsidies, tax breaks
and other benefits to a corporation's behavior. This ban could be used
to challenge a host of local, state and federal measures, including:
laws requiring subsidized companies to meet job-creation goals; community
reinvestment rules that require banks to invest in underserved areas; and
"living wages' requirements for companies receiving public aid or
contracts.
Perhaps most disturbing, the M.I.A. would pre-empt strategies for
restricting corporate flight to low-wage areas-a major cause of job loss
and income stagnation in the industrialized world. On top of the damage
done by plant closings and layoffs, corporations use the threat of flight
to undermine the bargaining power of unions and scare policy-makers away
from the regulation, taxation and public spending necessary to raise
living standards. Though remote from today's policy agenda, rules
limiting the capacity of corporations to flee are essential to restoring
the ability of government and labor to deal with corporations on a level
playing field. The M.I.A. would bar such rules as a violation of
investors' rights.
In its scope and enforcement mechanisms, the M.I.A. represents a
dangerous leap over past international agreements. It lets any
corporation that objects to a city, state or national law bring suit
before an international M.I.A. panel-which could then order the law
overturned as a violation of the pact. Governments would enjoy no
reciprocal right to sue corporations on the public's behalf The full
extent of the drafters' ambitions is reflected in W.T.O. director general
Renato Ruggiero's recent characterization of the M.I.A. negotiations:
"We are writing the constitution of a single global economy."
If the M.I.A. is a "constitution," its bill of rights is for investors
only. The agreement does nothing to protect workers or consumers or to
shield small businesses from anticompetitive practices by
transnationals.
The Clinton Administration backs the M.I.A. for the same reason it
supported NAFTA: the view that increased international commerce is
inherently beneficial and that whatever's good for corporations is good
for the nation. Negotiators plan to complete the agreement by June 1997,
and present it to O.E.C.D. countries for approval as a treaty. This could
mean a vote in the U.S. Senate by next fall.
Organizations like Citizens Trade Campaign, Public Citizen's Global Trade
Watch and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. have made major strides in educating Congress
and the public on trade and investment issues. If unions, consumer
groups, environmentalists, state and local officials and small businesses
build on this work and make their voices heard, it is not too late to
modify or even derail the agreement.
The outcome is critical-not just because of the destructive provisions of
the M.I.A. itself but because it is the next battleground in an
intensifying campaign to institutionalize corporate dominance. Francis
Fukuyama may be satisfied that the current winning streak of market
ideology heralds the end of history." The corporations, however, want to
put it in writing.
SCOTT NOVA AND MICHELLE SFORZA-RODERICK
Scot Nova is director and Michelle Sforza-Roderick is research associate
at the Preamble Collaborative/Preamble Center for Public Policy in
Washington, D.C.
From: ccpa <
Subj: MAI Analysis from The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Press Release April 10, 1997
Few Canadians have even heard of the Multilateral Agreement on
Investments (MAI), even though, if adopted, it would greatly expand and
entrench the rights of transnational corporations and investors-at the
expense of everyone else.
"The MAI is designed to establish a whole new set of global rules for
investment that will give transnational corporations the unrestricted
right to buy, sell, and move their operations whenever and wherever they
want around the world, completely free of government intervention or
regulation," says Tony Clarke, president of the Ottawa-based Polaris
Institute.
Spearheaded by the U.S. and Canada, the MAI is now being negotiated
behind closed doors at the headquarters of the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. It is intended to be ready
for ratification by the 29 OECD member states this fall.
Clarke, who recently obtained a draft copy of the full text of the MAI,
has done a preliminary analysis of the agreement's likely effects on
Canada, on its governments and citizens. His analysis, titled "The
Corporate Rule Treaty," was released today by the Canadian Centre for
Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
Calling the MAI "a charter of rights and freedoms for corporations only,"
Clarke says that a close study of the proposed agreement indicates that
its adoption by the OECD nations will greatly strengthen the power of the
TNCs, while correspondingly weakening the power of nation states.
"Increasingly," he says, "the role of democratically elected governments
will be confined to developing and implementing policies that serve the
interests of transnational corporations, rather than the broader
interests of their own citizens."
Deploring the secrecy of the MAI negotiations, Clarke stresses the need
for a full public debate on this latest international treaty and suggests
that such a debate would be timely leading into the impending federal
election. He says that the MAI would tie the hands of any new government
in several key areas, including job creation, culture, health care, the
environment, and even the constitution.
"If any semblance of democracy is to be salvaged in Canada," he says,
"steps must be taken to forestall this surrender to corporate tyranny."
!INFO! For more information contact Tony Clarke at . Copies of
"The Corporate Rule Treaty" are available from the Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives, 804-251 Laurier Ave. W. Ottawa, ON K1P 5J6, Canada; Tel:
, Fax: , e-mail: ,
http://www.policyalternatives.ca
[The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is an independent,
non-profit research institute funded primarily through organizational and
individual membership. It was founded in 1980 to promote research on
economic and social policy issues from a progressive point of view. The
Centre produces reports, books and other publications including a monthly
magazine. It also sponsors lectures and conferences.]
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++++++ NEW PUBLICATIONS ++++++
=== > Arkin, Bill: The U.S. Military Online: A Directory for Internet Access
to the Department of Defense
This book, writes "The Weekly Defense Monitor", "is a must have book for both
the merely casually interested and the serious researcher. Whatever your
fancy is--military budgets, weapons systems, contracts, U.S. military
presence overseas, speeches by Pentagon and military service officials,
military schools, major and minor bases, DoD field agencies,
military-published journals and magazines, and tons of other sites--you will
find sources here. And, in the future, those interested in receiving updates
to keep current will be able to do so online."
=== > Arnett, E. (ed.): Military Capacity and the Risk of War. China, India,
Pakistan and Iran
Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1997 [ISBN 0-19-829281]
=== > Gonchar, K.: Research and Development Conversion in Russia
Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC) Report 10, May 1997
!ADDRESS! BICC, An der Elisabethkirche 25, D-53113 Bonn, Germany; Tel.:
; http://www.bicc.uni-bonn.de
=== > Jarman, R.L. (ed.): Yugoslavia: Political Diaries 1918-1965 (4 volumes)
Archive Editions Limited, Slough: 1997 [ISBN 1-85207-950-9]
=== > Kempf, W.: Media Coverage of Third Party Peace Initiatives - A Case of
Peace Journalism?
Project Group Peace Research No. 37, Konstanz: 1997
!ADDRESS! Project Group Peace Research, Universitaet Konstanz, Prof. W.
Kempf, Postfach 5560, D-78457 Konstanz, Germany
=== > Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF): A Treaty on the Cutoff of
Fissile Material for Nuclear Weapons - What to Cover? How to Verify?
PRIF Reports No. 48, July 1997
!ADDRESS!
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++++++ CONFERENCES - MEETINGS - SEMINARS ++++++
NOTE: Events listed here are being published only once due to limited space.
Changes, however, will be taken into account - they will be marked with
"!CHANGE [reference to the issue of "What's New In INES?" in which they were
mentioned first]!"
=== > International Congress "Conversion. Challenges for Enterprises and
Regions in East and West
Kiel, Germany, 27-29 March 1998
!INFO! Schleswig Holstein Institute for Peace Sciences (SHIP), c/o
Christian-Albrecht-Universitaet Kiel, Kaiserstr. 2/Geb. C, D-24243 Kiel,
; http://www.uni-kiel.de:8080/schiff/
=== > 1998 Asian Popular Culture Conference
University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, 16-18 April 1998
The geographic focus of the conference will be East and Southeast Asia,
including Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan, and the present and likely future
members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): Brunei,
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia,
Laos, and Myanmar.
Also, selected papers will be published in a book, designed for a general
audience
!INFO! Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (CAPI), University of Victoria BC,
Canada; e-mail Tim Craig ,
http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/capipopcult
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++++++ INES WEB- AND EMAIL SERVICE ++++++
!ATTENTION! THIS TIME I HAD TO SKIP THIS SECTION BECAUSE MY EMAIL SOFTWARE
WOULD NOT ACCEPT THE LENGTH OF THIS WNII ISSUE OTHERWISE.
Tobias Damjanov