If we continue business as usual, we will not be able to see our grandchildren.
--Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed
A decade ago, the coalition of "Teamsters and turtles" that disrupted the WTO talks created some space for developing nations to more effectively oppose the agenda being pushed by US and other advanced industrial nations. But many of those nations were not that prepared for opposition. Ten years later, in Copenhagen, the what had been a fairly adventitious and partial convergence had matured to the point where the official representatives of the underdeveloped nations have become some of the most eloquent and advanced advocates for a fundamental transformation in how the world works. Here are a few examples.
Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed addressed the UN climate summit on Wednesday. Here is what he said, as broadcast on Democracy Now!:
PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED: Developed countries created the climate crisis. Developing countries must not turn into a calamity. Therefore, I invite the leaders of big developing countries to recognize their responsibilities. I urge them to come forward at Copenhagen with quantifiable and verifiable actions to reduce emissions 30 percent below business as usual by 2020.
Let me be plain. We urgently need to move forward. Giving us intensity targets that are close to business as usual is not acceptable at this stage.
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that you should not ask others to do something you are not prepared to do yourself. The Maldives has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2020.
And I have been hugely encouraged by the steps already taken by least developed countries and small island states to begin getting their economies green. At the recent Climate Vulnerable Forum in Male, eleven states pledged to raise their ambitions in leading the world towards carbon neutrality. This is an enormous opportunity to reduce future emissions before fossil fuel infrastructure is built. But it cannot be done without the financial support from rich countries. I say to the industrialized world, you have the finances and much of the technology; please help us go green.
When we say this, please bear in mind that climate change negotiations have nothing, nothing at all, to do with money. Maldives is a very small state. We have never received aid from European Union countries. Whatever we have been able to do, we have been able to do with our friends and neighbors, and we have been able to fend for ourselves. Climate change negotiations have, for me and for our country, everything to do with our grandchildren. I have two daughters. I want to see grandchildren. If we continue business as usual, we will not be able to see our grandchildren. To assume that climate change has anything to do with money, in my mind, is the height of arrogance.
I am also encouraged by regional climate initiatives in places like California and Quebec, where true leadership is being shown. Outside the rim of the nation state, their standards, their ambitions are much, much higher than the center. Climate change, I do understand, is an issue that transcends nationality, that trandscends the nation state. And what we have on offer from the centers, from heads of states, falls far shorter than what we are seeing from sub-regions or from provinces and from states.
Ladies and gentlemen, Kyoto divided the world. It divided us between rich and poor, developed and developing, Annex I and Annex II. Our task now is to unite the world behind the shared vision of low carbon growth. The Maldives is trying to lead the way. I call upon every country in this room to join us, not just for the sake of the Maldives, but for the sake of the entire planet. If we are not able to seize this opportunity, and if we are not able to come to an understanding during the course of next forty-eight hours, I'm afraid we might very well be doomed. I hope that that is not what we are contemplating. Thank you very much.
A decade ago tomorrow, the "Battle in Seattle" touched off a series of protests against corporate globalization and neoliberal ideology which meet with intense levels of political repression, police violence and massive media dysinformation. The wave of protests would not subside until the terrorist attacks of 9/11 provided a pretext for the much more hardline repression of neoconservatism to take over from its neoliberal predecessors.
Now, just over a year after the election of Barack Obama put an end to the neoconservative dominance--at least for now--it's a particularly apt moment to look back 10 years and see just what the neoliberal style of repression was like, and how it responded to a diverse coalition of actors calling for global justice. The kind of repression seen back then may help people newly activated in political struggle to better make sense of the perplexing continuities between the Bush and Obama eras.
Protests against the IMF, the World Bank and other global institutions are nothing new. But since most such protests--many involving tens or hundreds of thousands--have taken place outside the US and are routinely ignored by the corporate media, the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle late last year came as quite a surprise to most Americans.
The media and the police had no such excuse for their surprise. Unlike the American public at large, they had all the information beforehand and simply chose to ignore it. Demonstrations accompanied related events throughout the year, with scattered acts of violence at times despite organizers clear commitment to non-violence.
A New York Times article on October 13,1999 reported that, "[t]hree hundred groups are vowing to bring 50,000 people or more to downtown Seattle to picket, demonstrate, hold teach-ins and cause general disruption . . . that could turn the city's streets into a carnival of protest and, perhaps, a morass of gridlock." This was six weeks before the anti-WTO demonstrations took place. Both the Seattle police and the corporate media had plenty of warning, which they chose to ignore.
Protests against the IMF, the World Bank and other global institutions are nothing new. But since most such protests--many involving tens or hundreds of thousands--have taken place outside the US and are routinely ignored by the corporate media, the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle late last year came as quite a surprise to most Americans.
The media and the police had no such excuse for their surprise. Unlike the American public at large, they had all the information beforehand and simply chose to ignore it. Demonstrations accompanied related events throughout the year, with scattered acts of violence at times despite organizers clear commitment to non-violence.
A New York Times article on October 13,1999 reported that, "[t]hree hundred groups are vowing to bring 50,000 people or more to downtown Seattle to picket, demonstrate, hold teach-ins and cause general disruption . . . that could turn the city's streets into a carnival of protest and, perhaps, a morass of gridlock." This was six weeks before the anti-WTO demonstrations took place. Both the Seattle police and the corporate media had plenty of warning, which they chose to ignore.
The ACLU report, "Out of Control: Seattle's Flawed Response to Protests Against the World Trade Organization" (pdf) contains a timeline which makes the sequence of events abundantly clear. On November 30, the first day of scheduled WTO talks, police first showed up at 7 AM, after protesters had begun to arrive. Blocking intersections began by 8 AM, and by 10 AM only a handful of delegates had been able to enter the building where the opening procedures were then scheduled to take place.
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