-Caveat Lector- [radtimes] # 145 An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to assist RadTimes--> (See ** at end.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --Less talk and more action --Nortel unveils tracking technology --Monsanto sees U.S. bio-crop growth despite GM row --Jose Bove: "Asterix" is at it again --U.S. Grants $36.8 Billion in Arms Export Licenses for 1999 --World Bank blames head =================================================================== Less talk and more action <http://www.globeandmail.com/gam/Commentary/20010131/COKLEIN31.html> by NAOMI KLEIN Toronto Globe & Mail Wednesday, January 31, 2001 It looks a little like one of those press conferences announcing a merger between corporate giants: a couple of middle-aged guys shaking hands and smiling into a bank of cameras. Just like on CNN, they assure the world their new affiliation will make them stronger, better equipped to meet the challenges of the global economy. Only something is askew. More facial hair for one thing: The man on the left has a scruffy beard and the one on the right has a rather distinctive handlebar moustache. And come to think of it, their alliance is not a merger of corporate interests -- designed to send stock prices soaring and workers wondering about their "redundancy." In fact, the men say, this merger will be good for workers and lousy for stock prices. Another clue we're not watching CNN: Someone passes a message to the man on the right. It seems the police are threatening him with arrest. That definitely doesn't happen during your average corporate merger announcement -- no matter how flagrantly the consolidation violates antitrust laws. The man on the left is Joao Pedro Stedile, national director of Brazil's Landless Peasants Movement. The man on the right is José Bové, the French cheese farmer who came to world attention after he "strategically dismantled" a McDonald's restaurant, protesting a U.S. attack on France's ban on hormone-treated beef. And this isn't Wall Street; it's the first annual World Social Forum, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. To read the papers, these men should not be sharing a platform, let alone embracing for the cameras. Third World farmers are supposed to be at war with their European counterparts over unequal subsidies. But here in Porto Alegre, they have joined forces in a battle much broader than any inter-governmental trade skirmish. The small farmers both men represent are attempting to fight the consolidation of agriculture into the hands of a few multinationals, through genetic engineering of crops, patenting of seeds, and industrial-scale, export-led agricultural policies. They say that their enemy is not farmers in other countries, but a system of trade that is facilitating this concentration, and taking the power to regulate food production away from national governments. "Today the battle is not in one country but in every country," Mr. Bové tells a crowd of several thousand. They break into chants of "Ole, Ole, Bové, Bové, Bové" and, in a matter of hours, hundreds are wearing badges declaring, "Somos Todos José Bové (We are all José Bové)." These types of cross-border alliances -- a globalization of movements -- are the real story of the World Social Forum, which ended yesterday and attracted over 10,000 delegates. After 13 months of international protests against international trade institutions, the forum has been a chance to share ideas about social and economic alternatives. It is a new kind of intellectual free trade: a Tobin tax swapped for a "participatory budget"; national referendums on all trade agreements in exchange for local lending alternatives to the International Monetary Fund; farming co-operative models traded for community policing. But there is one idea with more currency than any other, expressed from podiums and on flyers handed out in hallways, "Less talk more action." It's as if talk itself has been devalued by overproduction -- and little wonder. In Davos, Switzerland, this week, the richest CEOs in the world sound remarkably like their critics: We need to make globalization work for everyone, they say, to close the income gap, end global warming. Oddly, at the Brazil forum, designed to help talk our way into a new future, it seems as if talking has become part of the problem. How many times can the same story of inequality be told, the same outrage expressed, before that expression becomes a paralyzing, rather than catalyzing, force? Which brings us back to the two men shaking hands. The reason the police are after José Bové (and why Mr. Bové is being treated like a cheese-making Che Guevera) is that he took a break from all the talk. While in Brazil, Mr. Bové travelled with local landless activists to a nearby Monsanto test site, where three hectares of genetically modified soy were destroyed. Unlike in Europe, where similar direct-action has occurred, the protest did not end there. The Landless Peasants Movement has occupied the land and members are planting their own crops, pledging to turn the farm into a model of sustainable agriculture. Why didn't they just talk about their problems? In Brazil, 1 per cent of the population owns 45 per cent of the land. In the past six years alone, 85,000 families have joined the ranks of the landless. At the first World Social Forum, the most talked-about alternative turns out to be an alternative to talking: acting. It may just be the most powerful alternative of all. =================================================================== Nortel unveils tracking technology <http://www.msnbc.com/news/524257.asp#BODY> Software lets network operators study how people surf online NEW YORK, Jan. 31 (AP) Nortel Networks unveiled an online technology that would let network operators keep track of where and how individuals use the Internet. THE CANADIAN COMPANY said Tuesday its new line of "Personal Content" network software will make it easier to customize online services to individual preferences and needs, but some consumer advocates attacked it as a potential invasion of privacy. Either way, new software tools like Nortel's are meant to help network service providers grapple with the ever-growing crush of Web traffic as more people and companies incorporate the Internet into daily activities, adding to demand for heavy-duty services such as streaming video and audio. The challenge is to make networks more efficient and swifter by using a person's location, type of device and preferences to identify an appropriate source, format and route for delivering information. Nortel, a leading supplier of network switches and routers that direct traffic on telephone networks and Internet backbones, is targeting a full range of communications service providers, including companies that produce Web content and streaming media, and those that keep Web sites running and distribute content to users. "If you want to do content distribution, you place data centers around the world and place the content closer to the end user," explained Clay Ryder, an industry analysts for Zona Research in Redwood City, Calif. "But if the closest data center is clogged, the next closest one would be tapped," by Nortel's equipment, said Ryder. "It would appear that they are trying to provide the best path or route for getting content to the user." Despite such potential benefits, privacy advocates were critical of the powers Nortel's products would give Internet service providers. "The idea that ISPs are watching where (customers) go is unacceptable," said Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters, a privacy protection organization. Nortel quickly brushed aside such criticism, arguing that the new technology actually can be used to enhance privacy by letting a service provider shield user information from being collected at every Web site a person visits. Instead of clicking privacy options on each Web site or using "suppression" software to hide information while roaming the Web, a person might now establish privacy preferences with a single network service provider, said Anil Khatod, president of global Internet solutions for Nortel. "There's already a lot of information about you being collected every time you log onto the Internet. The question is where you place a block," said Khatod. "What we are doing is giving that information to your service provider, and you can negotiate with your service provider as to how much privacy you want. It gives you greater control over what personal information you are allowing the network to have." Catlett, however, rejected that approach. Network equipment suppliers like Nortel "are pushing into the infrastructure a technology that can be very, very damaging to privacy, and in some way shirking their responsibilities by saying it's up to the people we sell it to to implement it in a suitable manner," he said. Ryder, the Zona analyst, disagreed. "I don't see this as a security issue. People have to wake up to fact that there isn't any anonymous usage of any communications services. They have to get over that." =================================================================== Tuesday January 30, 2001 Monsanto sees U.S. bio-crop growth despite GM row By Ben Hirschler DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto Co (NYSE:MON - news) said on Tuesday U.S. farmers would plant more land with its genetically modified seed in 2001, despite global concerns about such crops. ``We are very confident that in 2001 there are going to be more biotech acres than there were in 2000,'' Chief Executive Officer Hendrik Verfaillie told Reuters on the fringes of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting. ``The intention surveys indicate we are going to have significant growth in Roundup Ready soybeans, moderate growth in corn and good growth in cotton...our seed sales in December confirm that.'' U.S. farmers buy most of their seed for spring sowing between November and February and widely plant genetically modified crops, despite consumer resistance in major markets like Europe and Japan where health concerns have been raised. More than half the U.S. soybean crop, 25 percent of corn and over 70 percent of cotton output is produced from GM seed, analysts estimate. Monsanto's Roundup Ready varieties are resistant to the weedkiller Roundup, allowing more effective crop management, while its Bt corn contains an in-built pesticide. Controversy over GM crops reached a new peak at the end of last year following the discovery that many brands of taco shells and chips contained StarLink, a biotech corn variety sold by Aventis SA which is not approved for human consumption. StarLink's Cry9C protein was also found in another variety of corn, raising fears about the uncontrolled spread of foreign crop genes. Monsanto, a unit of drug group Pharmacia Corp (NYSE:PHA - news) which listed on the New York Stock Exchange in October, has been at the forefront of controversy over GM crops. Verfaillie said his company was listening hard to activists. The company two months ago issued a pledge on GM food, including a commitment not to use animal genes in food or feed crops. SPREADING IN LATAM, ASIA Farmers around the world were following the U.S. example of buying more of the company's GM seed, he said. ``We expect the whole of Latin America is going to move very rapidly. In Argentina we went in three years from zero to 90 percent market share in soy,'' Verfaille said. "I think we are going to see the same kind of penetration in corn in Argentina and with soybean, corn and cotton in Brazil. In Asia, biotech crops were making ``very good progress'' in India, Thailand, Malaysia, China and Australia. ``Even in Europe, Bulgaria and Poland have gone biotech...Western Europe is the only one holding out.'' According to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, an independent agency tracking the use of biotech crops, a total of 13 countries planted GM crops in 2000. The U.S. accounted for 68 percent of the world's transgenic crop, followed by Argentina with 23 percent and Canada with seven percent. Monsanto plans to build on that market in the years ahead by extending its gene-splicing technology to other crops. It hopes to introduce a new GM wheat variety in the United States as early as 2003. =================================================================== Tuesday, January 30 2001 Jose Bove: "Asterix" is at it again PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Jan 30 (AFP) - Jose Bove, the anti-globalisation activist who has been given an ultimatium to leave Brazil, revels in controversy. Already under threat of a prison sentence for his part in ransacking a McDonald's fast food outlet in his native France, Bove is a determined campaigner who refuses to compromise his firmly-held principles. This time he is in hot water for leading an invasion by 1,300 Brazilian farmers of plantations run by US biotechnology firm Monsanto. They uprooted genetically-modified corn and soya bean plants, burned seeds and destroyed documents in the company's offices. His initiative at an anti-globalisation forum here -- an alternative to the annual gathering of the world's political and business elite taking place in Davos, Switzerland -- was another publicity-seeking success. Bove, 47, has become an instantly recognisable figure, with his extravagant moustache and pipe-smoking habit, popping up wherever there is an ecological axe to be ground. He has travelled the world lecturing anyone who will listen on the evils of globalisation and genetically-modifed crops and has earned the nickname 'Asterix' -- after a French comic strip character -- for his determination to repel alien invaders in the form of foreign capitalist concerns. A sheep-farmer and producer of the celebrated Roquefort cheese, he has become the standard-bearer of the fight against new economic and gastronomic imperialism. His appearances at anti-globalisation gatherings in Seattle and Davos shot him to fame and his conviction for the trashing of a McDonald's fast-food restaurant in his home town of Millau served only to reinforce his reputation as a swashbuckling resistance hero. A crowd of 30,000 turned out in Millau to support Bove when he and nine colleagues from his radical farmers' union, the Peasant Confederation, went on trial over the McDonald's escapade. Popular French singer Francis Cabrel has described Bove as "one of the last courageous, natural, honest voices left in a world where the rest are tarnished by compromise." Ironically, for a man who epitomises the virtues of the traditional French son-of-the-soil, Bove speaks faultless English, learned when his bourgeois parents spent four years in the United States. His story is typical of many of the 1968 generation of French students who rose up against middle class conservatism, turning his back on the city in search of a simpler life on the land. In the 1970s he and his wife Alice were among the leaders of a successful campaign to defend the starkly beautiful Larzac plateau outside Millau against plans to extend a military camp there. In 1987, he helped set up the Peasant Confederation, whose aim has been to champion the cause of small producers against the interests of big business and agricultural barons. With his honed sense of publicity Bove once organised the ploughing of the park under the Eiffel Tower in the centre of Paris to protest EU farm policies. In 1995 he was aboard the ship Rainbow Warrior in the south Pacific to protest France's resumption of nuclear tests. Three years later he was convicted for destroying a consignment of genetically-modified maize. But it took the shock-tactics of an act of criminal damage against McDonald's to propel him into the public eye. Bove enjoys broad public support. Criticism of America comes easy in France and most French people believe the cause of small farmers is just. Both Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and President Jacques Chirac have felt it worth their while to hear Bove's views at first hand. =================================================================== U.S. Grants $36.8 Billion in Arms Export Licenses for 1999 <http://www.clw.org/cat/atn0101.html#U.S.> January 2001 According to a recently released U.S. government report, the United States issued export licenses for over $18 billion in military equipment and $28 billion in military services during the 1999 fiscal year. This figure is a 40% increase from the $26.4 billion in defense equipment and services licensed for export the previous year. The new export license figures are a part of the annual"655 report," the primary disclosure of annual U.S. arms exports data. The Department's of State and Defense are required by law to submit the report to Congress by February, but this year's report was delayed for over eight months. It is not clear what slowed delivery of the report to Congress, other than the fact that it is a "large report," a State Department spokesperson noted. The latest report separates licenses for defense services from defense equipment to give a clearer picture of the type, number and value of equipment for sale compared to licenses for co-production and manufacturing assistance. Increasingly, U.S. weapons makers are engaging in cooperative manufacturing of defense equipment, noted by a gradual increase in the value and number of license applications for defense services. The number of licenses for defense services have increased fourfold since 1994 to over 4,000 in 1999. Further, the report bears out another trend - the number of sales that exceed the $14 million threshold for mandatory notification to Congress has increased steadily since 1994. During 1999 the State Department notified Congress of 165 sales, which was up from 144 for the previous fiscal year, and was four times as many licenses notified in 1994. Licenses for sales of defense equipment to Japan topped the list at $3.1 billion, followed by deals with South Korea and the United Kingdom at $3 billion and $2.9 billion respectively. The United Kingdom toped the list for defense services with over $4.2 billion in licenses. Behind the U.K., defense service licenses for Canada and Japan were valued at slightly over $4 billion, licenses for sales to France reached $2.1 billion, followed by licenses with Russia valued at $1.6 billion. =================================================================== Financial Times / Stephen Fidler - January 30 2001 World Bank blames head James Wolfensohn, the World Bank president, has criticised bank employees for disloyalty and lacking commitment, which has in turn led to his being blamed for creating a climate of fear at the bank. James Wolfensohn, the World Bank president, has criticised bank employees for disloyalty and lacking commitment, which has in turn led to his being blamed for creating a climate of fear at the bank. Mr Wolfensohn, who was reappointed last year for a second five-year term, asked the bank's 8,000 Washington-based employees to respond to his view that mistrust, a lack of team spirit and a "malaise" pervaded the headquarters. He told senior managers last month following a trip to India that there was a puzzling and striking "disconnect" between the positive assessments of the bank he heard when he travelled the world and the "bitchy" atmosphere he found when he returned. Staff have responded with an outpouring of internal correspondence, much of it identifying Mr Wolfensohn as an important but not the only cause of the morale problems. One response - a memorandum written by an individual in the bank's Middle East and North Africa (MNA) department - has achieved notoriety. It describes Mr Wolfensohn as "quick to rebuke and humiliate managers, often in open meetings . . . .He does not practise the values and behaviour he espouses for the rest of us." It adds: "Managers at all levels live under fear." The managing director of the MNA department, Jean Louis Sarbib, said on Tuesday that while the discussions encouraged by Mr Wolfensohn brought forth a lot of frustration, he and other colleagues felt the memo was too one-sided. "It placed way too much at the feet of the president," he said. "The issue of fear is something that predates the arrival of Mr Wolfensohn, but it's something that is being talked about more openly than I remember it." However, other feedback from staff suggested a strong perception within the bank that it is poorly managed. Criticisms are levelled at many aspects of management, in particular the diffuseness of its objectives and the uncertainty over its budget. The bank's internal market, the system which departments charge others for services rendered which was first used before Mr Wolfensohn arrived at the bank but was broadened under his tenure, also comes in for fierce criticism. One bank official describes it as "a source of competition, hostility and huge transaction costs". The bank's SAP information technology system is also widely criticised as a "disaster". However, the one aspect of MrWolfensohn's reorganisation that is widely regarded as successful is the decentralisation of the bank, which means 2,000 staffers are now operating in borrowing countries. Mr Wolfensohn's defenders argue that the morale problems at the bank are long standing. They also say he heads an institution often seen by the bank's political masters in industrialised countries as a kind of clothes-horse on which to hang new initiatives. If there is a lack of clear focus, it is because of these mandates, many of which the bank is expected to carry out without adequate funding. They also say that Mr Wolfensohn's efforts at reorganisation have met resistance. But some of Mr Wolfensohn's critics paint such comments as disingenuous, and say that more than five years after he joined the bank he has to take responsibility for its failings. Three of the five managing directors under him were brought into the bank by Mr Wolfensohn, and he appointed 36 of the 38 vice-presidents. Moreover, while he has not been the sole author of all the new missions the bank has undertaken, they say he has added its share. They question the bank's World Faiths Initiative, in which the president brought together the heads of the world's religions, and they criticise lending for cultural issues he has introduced. They also say one reason for low morale is botched previous attempt at reorganisation. Under the so-called strategic compact, the bank's board agreed to increase the budget of around $1bn by $250m over three years starting in 1997, to allow for job redundancies and reorganisation. Yet the time and money were used in part to increase hiring and move into new business areas. Now three years later, with the budget returning in real terms to its 1997 level, the bank is going through a hurried and poorly planned effort to rein in costs. Caroline Anstey, bank spokeswoman, attributes some of the perceived morale problems as a fear about downsizing. In the last six months, some 300 jobs have been cut from the staff of more than 10,000. The bank is also working on a new strategic framework, now in its draft phase, which has been discussed by managers, staff and the board. The document promises greater selectivity as the bank attempts to meet the goal of reducing by half the proportion of people living in poverty by 2015. While there is no doubt that some participants in these strategic discussions are enthusiastic about the changes that are promised, others are more sceptical. "The bank survives by repeatedly asking people to forget about the past and to look to the promise of the future," said Robert Myers, a former senior economist at the bank. =================================================================== "Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control." -Jim Dodge ====================================================== "Communications without intelligence is noise; intelligence without communications is irrelevant." -Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ====================================================== "It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society." -J. 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