Hi, getting visibility among core literary public is benchmark
of publishing success and this message is part of an aggressive online campaign
for the promotion and visibility of my two books [1] Political Internet and [2] Intimate Speakers among core reading public in
online space.
It will be really helpful if you are able
to help me forward, share, tweet, post, or tag this message or parts of this
message among potential
beneficiaries of the ideas in the books in your network, your friend’s
network or their networks?
Or anyone should according to you
benefit if they work broadly on anything related to social media, Internet,
society, politics, cyber sexuality, Internet pornography, intimacies,
women and online misogyny, introverts, underprivileged people, Diaspora,
cyberspace, Internet in education, International relations, digital politics,
social media and state, public sphere, civil society, social capital,
contentious politics and so on.
Buy it on Amazon:
Preview on Google Play:
Preview on Google Books:
Preview on Kindle:
Publisher Website:
2. Intimate Speakers: Why Introverted and Socially Ostracized Citizens
Use Social Media, (Fingerprint! 2017).
Buy it on Amazon:
Flipkart:
Blog Review:
goodreadsreviews:
Contact the author
Facebook: https://www.facebook
Twitter: https://twitter.com/b
Blogger: http://bijugayu.blogs
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin
WordPress: https://bijugayu.wo
Tumblr: http://bijugayu.tumblr
Google +: https://plus.google.com/102
Twitter: https://twitter.com/b
Blogger: http://bijugayu.blogs
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin
WordPress: https://bijugayu.wo
Tumblr: http://bijugayu.tumblr
Google +: https://plus.google.com/102
Biju
P R
Author,
Teacher, Blogger
Assistant
Professor of Political Science
Government
Brennen College
Thalassery
Kerala,
India
My Books
1. Political Internet: State and Politics in the Age of Social Media,
(Routledge 2017), Amazon https://www.amazon.in/
2. Intimate Speakers: Why Introverted and Socially Ostracized Citizens Use Social Media, (Fingerprint! 2017)
Amazon: http://www.amazon.in/dp/
1. Political Internet: State and Politics in the Age of Social Media,
(Routledge 2017), Amazon https://www.amazon.in/
2. Intimate Speakers: Why Introverted and Socially Ostracized Citizens Use Social Media, (Fingerprint! 2017)
Amazon: http://www.amazon.in/dp/
WTO principles
Founded in 1995 after the 8-year “Uruguay Round” of talks,
it succeeded the General Agreement on Tarrifs and Trade (GATT), which was
created in 1948 to lower trade barriers. The scope of the WTO is greater,
however, including services, agriculture, and intellectual property, not just
trade in goods.
The main principles of the WTO boil down to the following:
Non
discrimination
National treatment implies both foreign and national
companies are treated the same, and it is unfair to favor domestic companies
over foreign ones. Some countries have a most favored nation treatment, but
under WTO the policy is that all nations should be treated equally in terms of
trade. Any trade concessions etc offered to a nation must be offered to others.
Reciprocity
Nations try to provide similar concessions for each other.
Transparency
Negotiations and process must be fair and open with rules
equal for all.
Special and
differential treatment
A recognition that developing countries may require “positive
discrimination” because of historic unequal trade.
Criticism
Stop the anti-democratic practices of the WTO
The WTO is supposed to
operate by consensus where each member country has equal say. The reality is
very different. At the 4th WTO Ministerial in Doha, Qatar in November 2001,
this was apparent. Key decisions were made in small "by invitation
only" meetings and the U.S., EU, Canada and Japan (known as the
"Quad" countries within the WTO) drove most of the agenda, despite
opposition from countries in the South. In the run-up to the Cancun
Ministerial, "Mini-Ministerials" are being organized in Australia,
Japan and Egypt. Despite the fact that key decisions and discussions that
affect all WTO members are on the agenda for these meetings, only a certain
group of countries is invited. The powerful Quad countries will participate in
all of the Mini-Ministerials, as will a small number of developing countries
and the WTO Secretariat. The Mini-Ministerial process is aimed at forging
consensus for the 145-member WTO with only a handful of countries - is
fundamentally flawed and demonstrates the undemocratic nature of the WTO.
Stop the GATS Attack!
Initiated in February
2000, far-reaching negotiations are taking place which aim to expand the WTO
General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) regime which could subordinate
democratic governance in countries throughout the world to global trade rules.
These GATS 2000 negotiations are taking place behind closed doors with little
or no consultation of the sectors most affected by them.
For many countries in the
South, this invasion of peoples basic rights is not new. Over the last several
decades, the structural adjustment programs of the IMF and the World Bank have
been used to force many governments in the South to dismantle their public
services and allow foreign-based healthcare, education and water corporations
to deliver services on a "for profit" basis. Under the proposed GATS
rules, developing countries could experience a further dismantling of local
service providers, restrictions on the development of domestic service
providers, and the creation of new monopolies dominated by corporate service
providers based in the North. By dramatically increasing market control by
corporations and by threatening the future of public services, the GATS 2000
agenda could trigger a global assault on the commons and democracy both in the
North and the South. Moreover, the binding enforcement mechanisms of the WTO
will ensure that this agenda is not only implemented, but rendered
irreversible.
Stop Corporate Patent Protectionism –
Seeds & Medicine are
Human Rights, not Commodities
All intellectual property
policies must allow governments to limit patent protection in order to protect
public health and safety. This is especially essential in relation to
life-saving medicines and life forms. The patenting of life-forms and their
parts, including microorganisms, must be prohibited in all national and
international regimes. Current intellectual property rules in trade pacts, such
as the WTO’s Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement,
obstruct consumer access to essential medicines and other goods, lead to
private appropriation of life forms and traditional knowledge, undermine
biodiversity, and keep impoverished countries from increasing their levels of
social and economic welfare. There is no basis for inclusion of such
intellectual property claims in a trade agreement.
At the Doha Ministerial,
the WTO agreed to non-binding language stating that the TRIPS agreement should
not prevent WTO members from taking measurers to protect the public health.
Since the language was non-binding, the reality is unfortunately that the TRIPS
agreement still makes it hard to make affordable medicines available to people.
In addition, pharmaceutical companies are angling to weaken and destroy even
this non-binding pro-public health interpretation at the Cancun Ministerial.
No Patents on Life
The patenting of life
forms and their parts, and other intellectual property rights over biological
resources must be prohibited in all national and international regimes. Genetic
diversity is not a category of private property, and biopiracy or theft of
traditional knowledge must be stopped.
Food is a Basic Human
Right: Stop the Agriculture Agreement Fraud and Calamity
The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) is fraudulent because the subsidies going to export oriented industrial farming have not been reduced (but instead have gone up), whereas the small farmers are suffering from import liberalization wiping out their livelihoods and incomes. To avoid further calamities to millions of small farmers, action must be taken immediately to drastically reduce or remove support for export-oriented agriculture and to reverse import liberalization.
The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) is fraudulent because the subsidies going to export oriented industrial farming have not been reduced (but instead have gone up), whereas the small farmers are suffering from import liberalization wiping out their livelihoods and incomes. To avoid further calamities to millions of small farmers, action must be taken immediately to drastically reduce or remove support for export-oriented agriculture and to reverse import liberalization.
Measures taken to promote
and protect genuine food sovereignty and security as well as to promote small
farmers practicing sustainable agriculture must be exempted from international
trade rules. The trading system must not undermine the livelihood of peasants,
small farmers, artisanal fishers and indigenous peoples that support local
economies.
The basic human right to
food can only be realized in a system where food sovereignty is guaranteed,
meaning the right of peoples to define their own food and agricultural policies
as well as the right to produce their basic foods in a manner respecting
cultural and productive diversity.
No Investment Liberalization
The WTO Trade Related
Investment Measures (TRIMS) Agreement must be eliminated. All countries and
especially third world countries must have the right to use policy options
(such as local content policy) to increase the capacity of their own productive
sectors, especially small and medium enterprises. One of the outcomes of the
Doha ministerial was to open the door to possible negotiations on the so-called
"New Issues" (investment, competition policy, procurement and trade
facilitation) despite opposition from countries in the South. This will be one
of the main points of controversy in Cancun, as the EU and Japan in particular
continue to push for these negotiations. OWINFS opposes any attempts to start
negotiations on investment rules, investment framework or an investment
agreement of whatever kind in the WTO.
Prioritize Social Rights and the Environment
Trade liberalization
encourages richer countries to consume more and poorer countries to export
more. The end result is an increasingly polluted environment (through spiraling
waste and transport-related pollution levels, for example) and the alarmingly
rapid loss of irreplaceable natural resources. Furthermore, the WTO and other
free trade agreements, which drive this destructive process, also include rules
that undermine hard-won national and international legislation designed to
protect peoples' environment. The "environment" will be a key
negotiating topic for governments meeting in Cancun. It has been placed on the
agenda by the EU in a very limited way, but there is little prospect of any
real change, since the WTO's raison d'être is to increase the pace of the
overall liberalization process.
‘The WTO only serves the interests of
multinational corporations’
The accusation
“The WTO is not a democratic institution [1],
and yet its policies impact all aspects of society and the planet. The
WTO rules are written by and for corporations with inside access to the
negotiations [2]. For example, the US Trade Representative
relies on its 17 ‘Industry Sector Advisory Committees’ to provide input into
trade negotiations. Citizen input by consumer, environmental, human rights
and labor organizations is consistently ignored. Even
requests for information are denied [3], and the
proceedings are held in secret.”
|
‘The WTO undermines national sovereignty’
The accusation
“By creating a supranational court system
that has the power to economically sanction countries to force them to comply
with its rulings, the WTO has essentially replaced national
governments with an unelected, unaccountable corporate-backed government [1].
For the past nine years, the European Union has banned beef raised with
artificial growth hormones. The WTO recently ruled that this
public health law is a barrier to trade and should be abolished. The EU has
to rollback its ban or pay stiff penalties [2]. Under the
WTO, governments can no longer act in the public interest [3].”
|
‘The WTO is killing people’
The accusation
“The WTO's fierce defense of intellectual
property rights — patents, copyrights and trademarks — comes at the expense
of health and human lives [1]. The organization's support for pharmaceutical
companies against governments [2] seeking to protect
their people's health has had serious implications for places like
sub-Saharan Africa, where 80 percent of the world's new AIDS cases are found.
The US government, on behalf of US drug companies, is trying to block
developing countries' access to less expensive, generic, life-saving drugs.
For example, the South African government has been threatened
with a WTO challenge over proposed national health laws that would encourage
the use of generic drugs [3], ban the practice of manufacturers offering
economic incentives to doctors who prescribe their products [4]
and institute ‘parallel importing,’ which allows companies to import
drugs from other countries where the drugs are cheaper [5].”
|
The WTO undermines local development and
penalizes poor countries’
The accusation
“The WTO’s ‘most favored nation’ provisions
require all WTO member countries to treat each other
equally and to treat all corporations from these countries
equally regardless of their track record [1]. Local policies aimed at
rewarding companies who hire local residents, use domestic materials, or
adopt environmentally sound practices are essentially illegal [2] under
the WTO. Under the WTO rules, developing countries are prohibited
from following the same polices that developed countries pursued, such as
protecting nascent, domestic industries until they can be internationally
competitive [3].”
|
The WTO is increasing inequality’
The accusation
“Free trade is not working for the majority
[1] of the world. During a the most recent period of rapid growth
in global trade and investment — 1960 to 1998 — inequality
worsened [2] both internationally and within countries.
The UN Development Program reports that the richest 20 percent of the world's
population consume 86 percent of the world's resources while the poorest 80
percent consume just 14 percent. WTO rules have
hastened these trends [3] by opening up countries to foreign
investment and thereby making it easier for production to go where the labor
is cheapest and most easily exploited and environmental costs are low. This pulls
down wages and environmental standards in developed countries who are having
to compete globally [also 3].”
|
The WTO is destroying the environment’
The accusation
“The WTO is being
used by corporations to dismantle hard-won environmental protections, who
call them barriers to trade. In 1993 the very first WTO panel ruled that a
regulation of the US Clean Air Act, which required both domestic and foreign
producers alike to produce cleaner gasoline, was illegal [1]. Recently, the
WTO declared illegal a provision of the Endangered Species Act [2]
that requires shrimp sold in the US to be caught with an inexpensive device
that allows endangered sea turtles to escape. The WTO is
currently negotiating an agreement that would eliminate tariffs on wood
products, which would increase the demand for timber and escalate deforestation
[3].”
|
The WTO undermines national sovereignty’
The accusation
“By creating a supranational court system
that has the power to economically sanction countries to force them to comply
with its rulings, the WTO has essentially replaced national
governments with an unelected, unaccountable corporate-backed government [1].
For the past nine years, the European Union has banned beef raised with
artificial growth hormones. The WTO recently ruled that this
public health law is a barrier to trade and should be abolished. The EU has
to rollback its ban or pay stiff penalties [2]. Under the
WTO, governments can no longer act in the public interest [3].”
|
