On Mon, 11 Mar 2002 18:29:30
Gene Mechtly wrote:
>Marcus,
>
>The Newsletter of NIST-OWM for 2002 February, arrived today.
>
>A Workshop on Packaging and Labeling was recently conducted in Miami
>by Cesar Luis da Silva (of Brazil) as Chairman of the Legal Metrology
>Working Group (LMWG) of the Interamerican Metrology System (SIM).
>
>You will be pleased to know that (among ten agreements) "The LMWG agreed
>to:" ...
>
>"- encourage exclusive use of the SI System for package labeling."
>...
Dear Gene,
Thank you for sharing this piece of news with us and for your words of encouragement.
However, without wanting to throw ice in your bucket of water, please allow me to
adopt a more cautious tone about the above.
I sincerely hope that my concerns will not be founded, but the wording above seems to
me as effective as the likes of "preferred" that we find in some piece of legislation
that you probably know what I'm referring to... I really hope I'm wrong on this, but
I was expecting more from this workshop in terms of more forceful resolutions than
just this kind of soft language. I'd rather see it stated thus: "- require that
member countries make exclusive use of the SI system for package labeling." That type
of language would certainly reassure me a lot more. But perhaps you can convince me
that your sense of this outcome is far more positive than I'm willing to concede.
In any case, I'm just afraid that this would not deter the US from using whatever
labeling they'd care to throw at us in Latin America once and if ALCA becomes a
reality.
>
>Many thanks for your contributions to the achievement of this agreement.
>
Thank you for your kind words, Gene. However, I'm not sure I could claim all the
credits for this achievement to my personal efforts. More below.
>Please give us more details of your work with LMWG and SIM.
>
My liaisons are tied more directly to the Cabinet of our Presidency. I rely on some
internal contacts there to do the necessary behind the scenes lobbying that may
involve organizations such as LMWG and SIM. Political contacts with Senators, few
workers unions and influential politicians in Brazil, plus a contact I made with our
official Metrology authorities complete my sphere of activity vis-a-vis my birth
country. Therefore, I do not hold direct contacts with Mr. Cesar. But I'm sure that
he must have been "tipped-off", so to speak by any level of influence these contacts
of mine may have triggered.
But you can rest assured that I will not sit idly by or "on my laurels", so to speak.
Much work still remains to be done. I'm about to start another campaign to reach a
couple of the potential presidential candidates there, Mr's. Jose Serra and Luis
Inacio ('Lula'), especially the latter, since I feel he'll most likely be our next
President.
IMHO the members of this forum should root for Lula, too. He is the candidate that
would most likely be the most helpful one in killing or significantly stifling the
progress towards ALCA (FTAA). I'm absolutely convinced that he would certainly have
the most sympathetical ears to our cause, as I believe he would see this as an
invaluable tool to really put the brakes on ALCA! He would probably welcome any great
ideas to advance his agenda on this, and the SI system could be seen by his team as
just the powerful tool he'd be looking for towards that goal.
Marcus
>Gene.
>
>
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