Friday, January 28, 2005

What Rights & Whose

by Peter G. de Krassel

Hong Kong. January 28, 2005. America lecturing China about human rights is another perennial electoral classic pot calling the kettle black - or to paraphrase Deng Xiao-ping, is it the black cat trying to determine whether it is white while it catches mice?

Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the prime movers behind the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Nevertheless, America still has a pathetic record of living up to her standards while again being a verbal bully on the question of China's human rights abuses during a presidential election.
Let's look at the record. Instead of leading, America has merely taken the politically expedient move when it comes to human rights. It has merely ratified many of the human rights treaties only after most other countries have already done so. It took 40 years to ratify the Genocide Convention, 28 for the Convention Against Racial Discrimination, 26 for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the most important treaty of all. At the dawn of the 21st century, over 160 countries have ratified the convention banning discrimination against women -- but not the United States. Only two in the world have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the U.S. and Somalia which has no effective government. And even when America has ratified treaties, it has often attached extensive reservations, making them inapplicable to America.

In the 1990s, the United States played the key role in setting up tribunals to put on trial individuals accused of war crimes and genocide in Rwanda and ex-Yugoslavia. Yet alone among its allies, it refused to sign the treaty that established the permanent international criminal court -- because it could not win an absolute exemption for its own soldiers.

The Bush administration then launched a global campaign to shield U.S. military personnel from the new court once it was established. America demanded countries sign bilateral treaties if they wanted America's support to join NATO or the EU. An obstructionist approach to public diplomacy, which can only backfire on America and reduce it to a Pacific Power. America has to lead by example not by exemption. Practice what it preaches and the values it stands for and advocates to China.

While seeking support of its war on terrorism America not only opposed the establishment of the International Court of Justice, but also the International Convention on Torture, which allows an independent prisons inspection system. The Convention on Torture was passed in 1989 and has since been ratified by over 130 countries. The non combatant prisoners, American citizens and foreigners, held in Guantanamo is a violation of international treaties and the U.S. constitution according to U.S. federal courts. The court judgments are naturally being appealed by the Bush White House to the friendly Supreme Court that put him in the White House to rewrite the constitution.

This while America has also refused to back ratification or ratify the treaty to ban land mines.

Bush's decision to reject the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, the Biological Weapons Convention and rescind the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty are 21st century millennium examples of U.S. double standards and how it will turn its back on any global rules to suit its geopolitical agenda. The U.S., the world's largest polluter, repeatedly lectures China and the developing world to cut back pollution. Yet the U.S. is the biggest producer of man-made carbon dioxide emissions which many scientists say is the main greenhouse gas causing global warming.

If America wants China to warm up to the various rights conventions China and America have signed, isn't it time America also become a signatory to the rights convention?

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Free China Trade

by Peter G. de Krassel

Hong Kong. January 23, 2005. When it comes to free trade Vice President Dick Cheney acts and talks as if America is in the forefront. The global warrior against protectionism. His demands that China open it's markets to U.S. manufactured products and services sounds like a broken political record. For decades America's mantra to the world has been Leave it to the market. State governments should not intervene. Nothing could be further from the truth, especially when it comes to trade with China.

China seems to be blamed for everything that is going wrong for America-except the war in Iraq! China is being blamed for the failed 2003 WTO meeting in Cancun, and accused of keeping the value of the Yuan artificially low to maintain a trade advantage over US based manufacturers. Economists who warn the Bush administration of the potential trade war that will destabilize China's economy and set off a global financial crisis are shunned aside in favor of the political spin meisters who want to appease the voters in the critical states and races in an election year.

High poll ratings do not stop America's politicians from bashing China during an election year. U.S. politicians want to make sure that whatever blame is directed their way for their voodoo economics it is deflected and redirected at China. This is happening again as the 2004 presidential and congressional campaigns get under way. The US decision to impose quotas and tariffs on certain Chinese textiles and televisions because of the trade imbalance between America and China is pure political spin. Quotas on textiles and televisions from China will not save jobs or create the illusory jobs the quotas politically imply. The quotas will only increase imports from other low cost manufacturing centers that have lost market share to China.

China is a convenient political scapegoat. Trade imbalance, devaluation of the Chinese yuan, quotas and U.S. sanctions if China fails to comply have become the political rallying call of politicians fighting for votes. So much so that the Department of Commerce set up a political team to 'take care of China. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans is leading the charge in speeches across America.

To blame China for manipulating its currency and saying that is the cause for the trade imbalance between America and China is just more political and economic fiction. The fact is China has kept its currency pegged to the U.S. dollar since 1995. It has also taken the billions it has earned in trade and invested them in the U.S. buying U.S. federal bonds that help U.S. career politicians underwrite their rapidly growing budget deficits. China is the second largest purchaser of U.S. bonds.

Instead of blaming China for America's economic woes caused by self serving career politicians, America should lift many of the export restrictions it has imposed on goods and services that can be exported to China. That would certainly help balance trade. Let us not forget that America had the trade surplus with China for 21 straight years from 1972 until 1993. China only started having a trade surplus with the U.S. since 1993. More importantly, more than half of the Chinese exports to the United States are produced by foreign-funded enterprises in China, many of them U.S. companies.

Isn't it time for America to start practicing what it preaches? Isn't it time America stopped imposing quotas, tariffs and sanctions that protect campaign donors for their unprecedented campaign contributions? Isn't it time for America to get up front and lead the free trade opportunities with China?

Saturday, January 15, 2005

UNfunded Failure

by Peter de Krassel

Hong Kong, January 15, 2005. Listening to President Bush back pedal on Kofi Annan's fitness to lead the UN and UN involvement in Iraq are the latest reminders of America's determination to remain in the geopolitical 20th century instead of taking the lead in the 21st.

The UN is a Cold War relic. Now that the Cold War is dead and buried isn't the UN funeral overdue? The high profile public squabble between America and Old Europe on whether the UN should authorize an attack against Iraq or give the inspectors more time, highlighted the UN's dysfunctional irrelevance to the world's 21st century geopolitical needs. The thought of expanding this dysfunctional dinosaur with more Security Council members is unrealistic and short sighted.

Just as the League of Nations became obsolete, so has the UN. The UN was established to ensure peace globally, primarily in Europe. Today, the biggest threats to peace and world security are in Asia. Cambodia, Indonesia, Korea, Sri Lanka and Taiwan. Afghanistan and Iraq are reminders that the end of the Cold War does not mean the end of local and regional conventional conflicts, most notably in Asia.

The new global successor of the UN should be named Global Security Council (GSC). The GSC should be headquartered in Hong Kong, the apolitical civilization crossroads of the world. Hong Kong was founded as a commercial trading center and has deliberately kept politics and religion out of its daily life.

English and Chinese are the most numerously spoken languages in the world. Mandarin is clearly the largest language group, with more than eight hundred thirty five million native speakers. English is a distant second, with four hundred and seventy million, followed by Spanish at three hundred and thirty million.

Why is it then that the lingua francas of international organizations like the U.N. are English and French? French should go with the UN bureaucrats and join Latin on the geopolitical lingua and institutional garbage heap. Isn't it time Chinese became one of the two official languages of international organizations instead of French?

Just as the UN Building was built on the rubble brought over from the London Blitz, the Global Security Council building must be built on the rubble of the World Trade Center at the world's trade center.

The UN Security Council should be replaced by a GSC with representatives from all major civilizations. Its members should be limited to the core states of each civilization with rotating membership for the civilizations that do not have a core state. The members of this body would be America, China, India, Russia, with representatives from the Muslim world to be determined by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Europe to be determined by the European Union, a representative from Africa to be determined by the African Union, a representative from Asia to too be determined by ASEAN, and a representative from Latin America to be determined by the Organization of American States. Each major civilization would have an equal say and vote in the GSC.

In view of the current ongoing threat of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, the Muslim world should nominate Pakistan as its first representative. This would, hopefully eliminate pakistan's opposition to India playing a major role in such an organization.

The U.S. and China should attach the highest priority to our global security needs. Isn't it time America and China finally come together as partners at the dawn of the 21st century to spearhead a GSC?

The rebuilding of post Saddam Iraq can be the seed to germinate the GSC. A body representative of the geopolitical reality of the 21st century's reawakened civilizations contributing the best they have to offer in the rebuilding of a global Garden of Eden a cradle of fused 21st century civilizations brought together - in Hong Kong.

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