Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Australia and New Zealand have concluded a Free Trade Agreement claimed to be the most comprehensive of its type with the 10 country members of the Association of South East Asian Nations.The deal which is expected to be signed later this year follows three years of negotiations and comes after several days of talks in Singapore with ASEAN ministers and Australia's Trade Minister Simon Crean.......

 

Mr Crean says the flow on will be immense.

"ASEAN as a group of countries is Australia's largest trading partner its trade in goods and services is worth $(AUD)71 billion its the first region wide agreement that Australia has ever negotiated and its the most comprehensive that ASEAN has done because it includes goods services and investment," he said.

DOHA might be struggling, but well done to Simon Crean for successfully negotiating an ASEAN Free Trade Agreement.

As some of the worlds biggest economies come together the US will be left out in the cold.

The document is dated August 13, two weeks after the US clashed with emerging powers led by China and India over farm import rules, leading to the collapse of nine days of talks on a new global trade deal.

The US questions take aim at an article of China's business law which "wholly exempts agricultural producers from the payment of enterprise income taxes with regard to the 'rearing of livestock', including pork."

The US argues that the loophole also exempts processors of pork from the tax, and has asked the Chinese government how much revenue its pork producers and processors are generating each year.

China will have a chance to respond at a WTO meeting September 17-18, when the Asian country's next "transitional review" will be taken up.

Why doesn't the US clean up its own act before it criticizes others?

Between 1996 and 2002, an average of $16 billion/year was paid by programs authorized by various U.S. farm bills.

The Australian and Brazilian governments have reaffirmed their commitment to achieving a successful conclusion to stalled global trade talks following a meeting in Canberra.

The so-called Doha Round of trade talks broke down last month because of a dispute between India and the United States over agricultural tariffs.

Australia and Brazil are trying to breath life into DOHA. It is time for the US to give a little and stop playing the role of a spoiler.

John Pratt: "Global power is shifting towards Russia and China. At the same time US influence is falling. Unless democracies unite we will be picked off one by one."

You old Neocon, John.

Anyway, I was particularly struck by Paul Kelly's completely unoriginal observation, namely;

"Then comes the qualification: the US cannot use military force."

Well, isn't that what we "want"?

Listen and you detect the sense of US shock and impotence about Russia's move. Georgia's President, Mikheil Saakashvili, says it is a war over "the kind of Europe our children will live in". The bell is tolling: the warning goes out that Russia's attack is a turning point and its aggression must be met. Then comes the qualification: the US cannot use military force. This is overlaid by a strategic confusion: an unresolved debate in the US about whether its NATO expansion strategy was right or wrong.

The unipolar moment for the US is long gone. American analyst Fareed Zakaria argues that "on every dimension other than military power - industrial, financial, social and cultural - the distribution of power is shifting away from US dominance."

This is not a prediction of US demise. Such a claim would be absurd. Nor does it overlook the immense problems facing Russia and China, and the guaranteed crises they face down the track. It does, however, assert that the time when the US could determine the global order is finished.

Russia is resisting encirclement by Western powers and Western values. China will not acquiesce in any US-led containment ploy in Asia, in the unlikely event that the US attempted such a strategy.

The moral for Australia is that realpolitik never died. Yes, the Rudd Government's multilateral dreams should be pursued, but they need to be hedged against the possibility that competition, not co-operation, will define the coming disorder.

Paul Kelly in today's Australian.

Global power is shifting towards Russia and China. At the same time US influence is falling. Unless democracies unite we will be picked off one by one.

Democracies should unite in trade and strategic cooperation. A strong EU and US are a necessary counter balance to the aggressive approach we are witnessing from a resurgent Russia. We need multilateral ties with all democracies if democracy is to survive.

Ian MacDougall, I've written I believe free trade (true free trade) is the best option. We haven't got that, and we're not likely to have it in the near future. That's the way the cookie crumbles as they say - I work with what I've got and so on.

Hari says that the first world concept of 'free trade' is a marked deck. I think he is right.

Life isn't fair, and never likely to be. All Mr Hari is really saying, is let's cut the sucker an even break. Which is fine and good luck with that. I doubt most multinational corporations could care less - they'd probably support him - they're not themselves a very nationalistic bunch.

Companies don't move to Mexico under the cover of NAFTA to flood the Mexican market. They move there for cheap labor, and then they send the goods back. They'd probably celebrate the fact they could move to even cheaper places (with even less regulation), and gain the same advantage. Hell, every Australian company could move to Indonesia or some such place. Many (Australian and American companies) are already going to China anyway (and pushing for a free trade agreement). They'll eventually need a cheaper place as China enjoys success - and prices move with that success.

Mr Hari's problem isn't people like me (I want things cheaper; the cheaper the better). What do I care some dude in Africa wants to pay three times more for a chicken etc? No, Mr Hari's real problem is western democracy - because it's highly unlikely people will vote to lose their jobs and livelihoods.

Politicians don't come up with subsidies to screw the third world (as romantic a notion that may be to believe) - you give them far to much credit. They come up with subsidies to get elected, and for the most part it works.

Your real problem is thus with democracy more than anything else. The way to solve that problem is to convince the majority (in that democracy) that they're really better off poorer. I wish you the best of luck with that.

Remember: Every job you send off shore, is a job you're screwing somebody at home out of (and they vote). That's the real facts of life.

Ian MacDougall: "I have never been impressed by arguments in favour of gross inequalities of wealth and power."

I've never argued for such a world. I've written that I believe my option to be the best way forward - I've never written it would be perfect - it just beats the alternatives.

I believe you are a farmer? Well, I've traded a number commodities and currencies on and off for twenty two years. Never in that time have I traded live or dead animals for that matter. It's not something that particularly appeals to me, and I rather like our furry and not so furry friends. Though I understand that such markets are a necessary, and worthwhile (and legal) part of people's lives - and I personally do indeed enjoy such things on the dinner plate. I just prefer not to think about how they got there (I watched the process once and I was like that kid on the Simpsons episode).

I make my own personal moral judgement on what I do or don't do; I don't extend that judgement upon others.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland says Australia will end the "hypocrisy" of lecturing its neighbours on human rights without always setting a good example of its own.

The federal government on Thursday issued a standing invitation to the United Nations Human Rights Council to visit Australia to monitor and report on human rights in the country.

It is part of a broader move by Labor to re-engage Australia with the UN after a strained relationship between the former Howard government and the international body.

The council has a mandate to examine, monitor, advise and publicly report on human rights situations in countries but must receive permission from the nation involved.

Mr McClelland told ABC Radio the move was part of the government's aim to rejoin the "good citizens" of the world.

"It signifies that the Rudd government is re-engaging with the international community and joining international good citizens such as Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand in recognising and facilitating the international human rights system," he said.

As many of the world's political leaders gather in Beijing for the Olympic Games, some are taking a shot at China's political leadership. It is good to see Australia is re-engaging with the international community in the fight for an international human rights system.

It is sickening to see Bush going to China handing out lectures on human rights. I haven't noticed many Chinese invasions in the last decade or so.

The pot calling the kettle black, President Bush has hit out at the Chinese government for its crackdown on dissent during the Olympics.

President George Bush has always routinely denied that the US government used torture, but initially his Justice Department legal advisors effectively defined torture out of existence. According to their twisted reading, abuse is not torture unless the pain is equivalent to death, or the loss of a major bodily organ – a definition which, for example, would excuse the mere ripping off of fingernails. That definition has now been abandoned, but it is not clear what Washington’s new definition is, and whether it accords with the internationally mandated prohibition of the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental.

For several years, the administration also contended that the parallel prohibition of ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’ applied only to US citizens, or to foreigners in the US, but not to non-Americans held overseas. That fabricated loophole was part of the rationale behind Guantánamo Bay and the CIA’s secret detention facilities. Legislation today makes clear that the prohibition applies to all people, wherever they are held.

The US may hold more respect when it rejoins the "good citizens" of the world.

The 21st century feels like a letdown. We were promised flying cars, space colonies and 15-hour workweeks. Robots were supposed to do our chores, except when they were organizing rebellions; children were supposed to learn about disease from history books; portable fusion reactors were supposed to be on sale at the Home Depot. Even dystopian visions of the future predicted leaps of technology and social organization that leave our era in the dust.

Looking beyond the blinking lights and whirring gizmos, though, the new century is shaping up as one of the most amazing periods in human history. Three great transitions set in motion by the Industrial Revolution are reaching their culmination. After several centuries of faster-than-exponential growth, the world's population is stabilizing. Judging from current trends, it will plateau at around nine billion people toward the middle of this century. Meanwhile extreme poverty is receding both as a percentage of population and in absolute numbers. If China and India continue to follow in the economic footsteps of Japan and South Korea, by 2050 the average Chinese will be as rich as the average Swiss is today; the average Indian, as rich as today's Israeli. As humanity grows in size and wealth, however, it increasingly presses against the limits of the planet. Already we pump out carbon dioxide three times as fast as the oceans and land can absorb it; midcentury is when climatologists think global warming will really begin to bite. At the rate things are going, the world's forests and fisheries will be exhausted even sooner.

These three concurrent, intertwined transitions--demographic, economic, environmental--are what historians of the future will remember when they look back on our age. They are transforming everything from geopolitics to the structure of families. And they pose problems on a scale that humans have little experience with. As Harvard University biologist E. O. Wilson puts it, we are about to pass through "the bottleneck," a period of maximum stress on natural resources and human ingenuity.

As we begin to move through the bottleneck, do we face the future with optimism or pessimism? Do we look forward to the future with excitement or with fear? Do we believe the human race has the wisdom and courage to survive the next 100 years?

What do you think the Earth will look like at the end of this century?

I would like to see an end to war, famine, environmental degradation, and poverty. I would like to see universal human rights and justice for all. I guess that makes me an optimist.

How do we get through the bottleneck? Do we fight for our individual needs continually looking for a bigger share or do we accept that the way forward will involve some give and take? We may have to live more simply so that others can simply live.

We are all brothers and sisters in the human race.

We should try and walk in our sister's shoes for awhile. Instead of trying to protect everything we have out of fear, we should be looking for ways to share out of love.

As an old sixties song goes:

The road is long
With many a winding turn
That leads us to who knows where
Who knows where
But I'm strong
Strong enough to carry him
He ain't heavy, he's my brother

John, thanks for your reply to my comment. Your assumption is correct: I am the author of Humanity or Sovereignty.

In answer to your question I think something like a Human Union requires political advocacy to make it happen. There is no guarantee of political reform in life. Nor does history work to some sort of iron law which determines the next stage of human development.

Building a Human Union is part of moving closer to a genuine political recognition of our common humanity. We have taken steps like this in the past with such reforms as the abolition of slavery and the extension of equal rights to women. Each of these other steps, when looking backwards from today’s perspective, seems logical and “natural” and impossible to argue with. Yet at the time they appeared unnatural reforms, going against the “natural” way of the world, and could only be achieved after considerable argument and struggle.

It will be the same with a Human Union or world federation. It will require a lot of argument and debate before it gets to the next stage. But that is where the Human Union project appears easier to achieve. Because it can start with as few as one Country declaring it is willing to negotiate to form a Human Union it is a more manageable project and easier for people to conceive of it being done. A Human Union Declaration is a Declaration by a country that it is willing to negotiate, on the basis of respect for democracy, human rights and our common humanity, with any other country interested in sharing those values to start building a Human Union.

If activists in Australia, or some other country, can persuade the government of that country to issue a Human Union Declaration, then the process has started. This is the lesson from the European Union; it started small and evolved in small stages. An attempt to leap from nothing to an EU like the one existing today in one giant leap would have been a total failure. One of the main arguments against ideas like world federation is the seeming impossibility of getting the whole world to agree in one moment to transform. The Human Union idea does not have this problem as it is only asking for change in small steps. But it is change that over a period of time will genuinely transform the world. It will enable the building of a human political community that can address problems like world hunger and environmental degradation whereas competing nation states cannot.

So in answer to your question about ideas to progress the Human Union I can only say that the next step is up to activists to put pressure on the governments wherever they live to make a Human Union declaration and take it form there. When champions of conventional wisdom like Kevin Rudd propose unimaginative concepts like the Asia-Pacific community it is very fair to join into political debate and make the obvious criticism and obvious counter policy suggestion.

The obvious criticism: The EU, which Rudd cited as a model for his Asia-Pacific Community, only allowed countries in if they could meet democratic and human rights criteria, the idea of countries like China and Vietnam being part of the proposed Asia-Pacific Community simply because they are in the region is ignoring, not learning the lessons of the EU.

It is values which appeal to our common humanity; such as democracy and human rights, not the magic of regionalism, which have helped the EU succeed as it has. The really big idea we can get from the EU is that shared human values can eventually trump what appear to be irreconcilable national and religious differences as while building the EU Europe (that is the EU members) has gone from being the incubator of global warfare to being a zone of peace and economic development.

The obvious counter policy suggestion: We should seek to build a new international political community on the basis of respect for human values; that is the lesson of the EU. Such a community should not be based on regionalism but based on respect for democracy and human rights. What Australia should call for is a Human Union not another regional association. Australia can take positive steps to build a Human Union by issuing a Human Union Declaration. This is a Declaration that Australia is willing to negotiate, on the basis of respect for democracy, human rights and our common humanity, with any other country interested in sharing those values to start building a Human Union.

These are the sorts of arguments people can make in Australia (as well as all the excellent points you make yourself). Different but related positions may be appropriate in other parts of the world. There is also an embryonic Human Union Movement in existence to try to co ordinate political activists around the world. But it is in its infancy and so far and is more a base for people in different parts of the world to get in contact with each other than a mass political movement. Building a Human Union will be one of the great political projects of this century. If we don’t do it this century we will only have to do it next century.

"Alexander doesn't seem to realise that he's part of the problem.'

And that's why we're sending him off to Cyprus where he will be unable to create mischief and no-one will take notice of him. One small problem solved.

Excellent article John. As you point out, the core issue in relation to hunger, as it is for so many other matters, is that we have a human (or global) problem, and we only have national institutions to deal with the problem. It is easy to find people who point to the global nature of these problems. But it is rare to find people who go beyond platitudes about a new age of co-operation and actually advocate that we start building a human system to replace our current self defeating national systems.

One such project, similar I assume to your global union of nations proposal, is the Human Union proposal, which calls for the slow development of a Human Union just as the European Union slowly developed to its current level. Another such project is the call for a Democratic World Federation. I prefer the Human Union proposal myself as it allows more scope for incremental change not necessarily involving all countries at once. It seems almost inevitable that the only way such a political system will develop is through a small number of countries starting and then others joining later, as with the EU.

For the Human Union see http://www.humanunion.info/ and my article at online opinion. For the democratic world federalists see here. Today many people around the world understand that in politics putting our religious identity before our common human identity is only a recipe for insecurity, conflict and misery. It is exactly the same when we put our national identity before our common human identity. We need to start building a political system which makes respect for our common human identity a political possibility rather than a breach of the national interest as it is at the moment.

Anyhow excellent article, thank you.

Ian MacDougall, I believe in free trade, and it would be the best system for the world. Problem for me is: Most people don't and never will. Eventually this will change - I, however, like all of us, will have long since been placed in a box.

The truth is that Peru wasn't any better before trade agreements - much worse in fact. Poverty just didn't spring up over night like some magic trick.

Free trade has never offered to get "every single man, woman, and child out of poverty - no system will ever achieve that. The truth is that we all live in a world of disparity, and we will always live in a world of disparity. What we attempt to achieve is giving people the best possible chance - and I believe free trade does this as compared to the other options.

Fair trade? There will never be such a thing. The article writer isn't really writing of trade at any rate. What he would like to see is charity. Unfortunately with all the trillions, yes trillions, spent on third world charity post WWII, it becomes apparent that this option is the world's great underachiever. Pride comes through individual achievement not the begging bowl.

If agricultural subsidies would've been reduced, you would now be hearing the story of poor western farmers, and their plight at the hands of uncaring governments. The story of these people leaving the land, leading to third world food shortages etc.

Vested interest will always win out in a democracy. In the case of "free trade", there is so many vested interests in seeing failure it's hardly worth mentioning. Most damaging of all is that these interest of captured the imagination of the middle-class, making realfree trade, another pipe dream, along side the all encompassing world peace.

A middle-class neighbourhood will accept a Mexican gardener, Thai house cleaner, Afghan taxi driver etc. Competition with an Indian PR guy, Pakistani accountant, Peruvian dentist? Well that's another story.

Naomi Klein: You've found your money train.

Attorney-General Robert McLelland on Sunday told the International Conference on Child Labour and Child Exploitation:

...in June, we were pleased to support the adoption by the ILO of a landmark Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalisation.

This will strengthen the ILO’s capacity to promote its Decent Work Agenda, and forge an effective response to the challenges of globalisation – including the abolition of child labour.

I’d also like to say that the Rudd Government is looking forward to a very positive and productive engagement with the ILO – both as a Government Member and as a member of the ILO Governing Body, representing our close neighbours in the Pacific.

We’ll be doing all we can to promote decent work, human rights and economic development.

Some nice noises being made there, but naturally any public avowal by any goverment mouthpiece must be taken with a grain of salt.

"It's not the end of the world," says Downer.

For seven years, Western nations have refused to liberalise their bloated, over-subsidised agricultural sectors. The developing world, in return, has denied full market access to Western goods and services. Inevitably, agriculture was the sticking point in Geneva - rendering pointless a raft of agreement elsewhere.

Congress just passed a bill lavishing even more money on US farmers, so distorting global markets and crushing millions of peasant farmers. So a deal was always going to be tough. And against that backdrop, some of the big developing nations were in no mood to compromise.

The real losers are the poorest - those living in countries already at the margins of the world economy and, without the support of multi-lateralism, likely to be marginalised further still.

Fat cats may not think it is the end of the world. What do you think the millions of peasant farmers think? I bet you they think it is the end of the world.

John, a thoughtful piece and problem that must surely be addressed. 

Ian, a great link, thanks.

One of the best pieces I have read on the collapse of Doha is this one, by Johann Hari.

Says it all, really.