U R A C C A N U P D A T E <*><*><*><*><*> June 2, 1998 <*><*><*><*><*> URACCAN >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Managua Support Center and Liason Office >>> del Puente del Eden 1 cuadra arriba, 2 cuadras al sur Casa D-10 Barrio Ducuali Managua, Nicaragua Voice Phone: 248 4658 Fax: 248 4685 Email: uraccan@ibw.com.ni [Managua Support Center] autonomy@ibw.com.ni [Bluefields-RAAS Campus] *>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*> *> In This Issue *> O J O D E U R A C C A N *> NORTH AMERICAN URACCAN SUPPORT MEETING *> EDUCATION AS WORK AND WORK AS EDUCATION *> THE UNIVERSITY: From Science to Apologetics *> STUDYING PATTERNS OF DEVELOPMENT IN LATIN AMERICA *> MAIL BOX *> HUMOR - GROUNDS FOR SUSPICION *> "QUOTE, UNQUOTE" <* *>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*> URACCAN UPDATE is published as a courtesy to URACCAN by the editor, Felipe Stuart Courneyeur. Opinions expressed in signed articles are those of their authors and do not necessarily reflect those of URACCAN or the editor. Those, when articulated, will be found in editorials or in formal statements issued by URACCAN. *>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*> *> O J O D E U R A C C A N "OJO DE URACCAN" is the editor's personal column. Usually you will find here a few tips on what's coming up in the UPDATE and/ or comments about some inspiring point or some vexing concern, and letters to the Editor. This issue of URACCAN UPDATE offers viewpoints on the issue of the current international crisis in higher education, a vision rarely presented in conferences and seminars on this theme in traditional university centers in the so-called 'developed' world. A great deal of discussion has been taking place in the Nicaraguan press and in educational cirlces attempting to analyze changes and challenges as seen from a national point of view. The crisis in Nicaragua is compounded by a radical change in the nature of the forces controlling the educational system. Education in Nicaragua at the state level is now in the control of a Ministry and planners with a pronounced conservative agenda related to the ideology of the Catholic Church and Opus Deus. The system is also under enormous strain related to under-funding and a classist approach pointings towards a "pay for service" approach to education that favors wealthier and urban middle classes to the detriment of poorer sectors of society, particularly rural and Indigenous sectors, ethnic minorities, and women. A similar approach is being taken in relation to the country's health model where the concept of preventive health and grassroots participation in the system is being replaced with idolatry of market-driven services. The two articles appearing below by Dra. Myrna Cunningham and by Sergio Barrios challenge that ideology-based stream stream and offer an alternative perspective to prevailing trends. <~> Recently URACCAN welcomed another volunteer to its Bilwi team. Quebecoise Marie Helene Bergeron has assumed a three-month commitment to work in the RAAN with the Institute for Tradtional Medicine and Community Health. She is training personnel to program a computerized data-base for the Institute's work. Bienvenue Maria Elena! <~> URACCAN's President and Rector, Dr. Myrna Cunningham Kain, is currently on a European tour that will take her to Germany and to the UK. She is accompanied by Bilwi Vice-Rector Albert St-Clair. Further information about this visit will appear in subsequent issues. <~> *>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*> *> North American URACCAN Supporters Meeting [The following is a circular letter from Lorena Klinnert of Pastors for Peace of the United States, announcing the forthcoming June 13 Chicago Conference of URACCAN Support groups. URACCAN will be represented ick you up and take you to Chicago State University. Arvis has to know about your plans ahead of time. The Nicaragua Network is also having a meeting the same weekend and they will join us for at least part of the day and will be meeting at the same location. It will be a good opportunity for all of us to get acquainted and share common goals and plan projects. Please contact Arvis Averette in Chicago or Lorena Klinnert by June 6 about your intentions for participating. Arvis' telephone number is 312-236-3150 and fax is 312-236-3151. Both of these numbers are at Dearborn Homes where he works. Lorena Klinnert's home telephone number is 612-290-7756 or you can contact her at the email address . I hope you can fit this meeting into your summer plans and we can share our interest and resources. In peace and justice, Lorena Klinnert PASTORS FOR PEACE P.O. Box 408130 Chicago, IL 60640-8130 (773) 271-4817 tel (773) 271-5269 fax p4p@igc.apc.org (email) "Let us not love in word, neither in tongue: but in deed and in truth." 1 John 3:18 *>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*> Lifelong Education: *> An Indigenous Outlook on Education as Work and Work as Education by Dr. Myrna Cunningham Kain President and Rector The University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast [URACCAN] [Presentation for the Mumbai Meeting on Lifelong Learning, Active Citizenship, and the Reform of Higher Education, University of Mumbai in Mumbai, India, April 21-23, 1998] The task and scope of my presentation is to offer a Nicaraguan example about the role of universities for lifelong learning. In doing so I want to share with you the broader context of our university - URACCAN: The University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast. URACCAN is a university of a new type. We are not a traditional university because we are the project of an entire community of people - young and old - who have already attended the university of life. The knowledge they bring to our educational institution is just as important to our approach to pedagogy as any curriculum material we may borrow from "modern" sources. URACCAN is a multiethnic project dedicated to strengthening the autonomy of the Caribbean regions of Nicaragua in which the majority of the country's indigenous peoples live -- Miskito, Mayangna, Rama, and Garifuna. Living together with us in the autonomous regions are the Creole people, descendants of Africans dragged in chains to our coasts by European slavers some centuries ago. And lastly, the more recent immigrants to our area, Spanish-speaking Mestizos from Pacific Nicaragua, engaged in subsistence farming along Nicaragua's agricultural frontier. Our country's autonomous regions gained their new status in 1987 during the Sandinista Revolution. Two autonomous entities were established in the Constitution of the Republic -- the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN) and the South Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS). However, despite strong support for real and effective autonomous governing among our people, our autonomy has been inhibited ever since it was decreed. The autonomy law remains constricted to its general clauses, lacking any enabling legislation that would provide regulations and procedures to clarify division of powers between our regions and the Central government. Our two regions contain almost 80% of the country's gold, forest, and maritime resources and is the most richly endowed with biodiversity. Legal and political barriers are not the only obstacles we have faced. Analyzed from the perspective of the long view of history, we believe that our principal failing lies in the lack of trained personnel able to assume the responsibilities of self-government, community administration, regional planning, and provision of vital public services such as health and education. Furthermore, we need people capable of managing effectively and the domain of lifelong education. Almost half of Costeno preschool, primary and secondary school students use Spanish as a second language. URACCAN became convinced from its inception that unless the public educational system in our regions offered education in the mother tongue of the pupils, then we would continue to inherit generations of ill educated and semi-literate young people. We also realized from our first two years of experience that URACCAN had to play an active role in helping to shape methodologies and curriculum for the public school system; and we had to take the main responsibility for raising the educational level of teachers - most of whom are working in the classrooms without degrees. We call them empirical teachers. URACCAN is offering Bachelor-level degrees to teachers in our region and many have already graduated through part-time courses over the last few years. A similar program is in place to graduate nurses at the Bachelor level and to enable nurses to return for ongoing training and upgrading. Teachers and nurses are not the only Costenos engaged in "lifelong learning". URACCAN's participation in our communities ranges all the way from offering special diploma courses in community leadership, management skills in public administration or small businesses, agricultural, fishing, and forest management skills, public and preventive health management, promotion of gender consciousness, adult literacy in a multilingual context, and community-level, project-formulation skills. Lifelong education also means knowledge of individual and collective human rights. Therefore, URACCAN is offering certified courses in Indigenous rights to grassroots leaders who are sharing their concepts and acquiring new skills in community organization, sustainable development, and multicultural harmonic coexistence, as a basis for constructing new inter-ethnic relations. We believe that the university must be conceived as part-and-parcel of the broader community; it is an institution that is constantly challenged to assume leadership and to initiate new approaches at the community level, and in particular within the overall formal educational system. Our Indigenous cosmovision, ironically, prepares us better to assume the challenges of educating for and in the next century because it expresses a holistic or integral approach to education -- our elders teach the young, but the youth also build on those teachings, create new knowledge, and pass it back to their parents and elders. Life itself is our classroom and the main job of our teachers is to learn. We are all teachers and we all continue to learn. Within the context of lifelong education, URACCAN has joined efforts with the Education Commissions of the Regional Autonomous Councils, our regional parliaments, in the drafting of a proposed Regional Autonomous Education System with the following objectives: To build an educational model based on our multiethnic, multilingual, and pluricultural reality and oriented to the integral development of individuals; one that strengthens their ethnic and cultural identity; and one rooted in a culture of peace and solidarity, promoting intercultural relations and respect and understanding among all. One of the axes of this educational approach is bringing about a convergence to enable the endogenous development of the knowledge of the Atlantic Coast peoples and linking that knowledge effectively with universal knowledge. In that framework we believe that lifelong education for all requires a participatory research program involving the people themselves and their communities; a program that systematizes their knowledge and experiences. We have made studies on the educational situation of Mesoamerican Indigenous Peoples in which researchers from their own communities have been able to analyze endogenous educational practices and to compare them with exogenous educational experiences. This research has led to interesting conclusions -- reflecting the role of nature in teaching, the example of adults, conversations with elders, learning by doing what has educated and forged others, and thereby enabling us to maintain our culture and our identity. The challenge now is to bring this experience to university education, to our classrooms. Our country - Nicaragua - is one of the poorest in the Americas, second only to Haiti. Our regions of Nicaragua are areas where that poverty has been traditionally concentrated and kept hidden away behind barriers of inaccessible hinterlands, communities without roads or communications services, without public health attention, without schools...but an area producing a significant part of the country's foreign earnings. Very little of that wealth, if any, stays with us. This background of impoverishment and cultural assault finds our peoples and communities at a special crossroads, a special place and time in our history. New convergences and new challenges, coming together with our appropriation and adaptation of new technologies, offers us an opportunity to take on a new profile in a world where borders mean less and less. If we can consolidate new approaches to education - post-secondary through secondary and primary, new approaches to public health, new approaches to joining state-of-the-art scientific technology with traditional values and ways of living and working together, our marginalized and isolated region may well be able to leap ahead. We may be able to by-pass some of the difficult stages other parts of our region are being compelled to go through, passing on to the next generation a better life in harmony with their environment and at one with their world. But even more -- if we manage to enrich these experiences with those of other peoples in the world; if we manage to to show in practice, at the level of higher education, that we are committed and open to discover new educational paradigms and new pedagogical models for formal educational systems -- new, but also old in terms of the experience of our communities. If we achieve that, then our work will have greater impact and much more satisfactory and gratifying results. Lifelong education for all is the fundamental road to empowering those of us who have not had access to the spaces necessary to decide our own future. Moreover, it is the indispensable tool for the building truly democratic societies and social models. Working to learn and learning to work all our active lives is genuine knowledge we would recommend to one and all. Bilwi, RAAN, Nicaragua ------------------------------- *>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*> *> The University: From Science to Apologetics [The following article was originally published in May 19 edition of the Managua daily El Nuevo Diaro under the title "La Universidad, entre la ciencia y la justificacion". Authored by Sergio Barrios, translated by Felipe Stuart Courneyeur] For some time now in this neck of the woods we've been hearing, from specialists from different parts of the world, warnings and voices of alarm about the crisis higher education is going through on a world scale. It's evident that apart of this crisis has to do with rapid economic and technological changes that have been taking place globally. Nonetheless there is an important, but often ignored aspect to that problem that has to do with the critical and creative aspect of university work. The university has been taking more and more distance from its essential role as advocate of alternatives and concrete solutions to the cardinal problems of society, transforming itself slowly into apologist for those problems. Brecher and Costelo reminded us in their book "Global Village, Global Pillage" that the growing integration of teachers, researchers, deans, and other university functionaries into advisory positions with large multinational companies and, especially with international financial organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF has deprived many European, North American and other universities (from other parts of the world) of their autonomous and critical spirit. This problem does not have the same connotation in Latin American universities; but it must be made clear that in our region universities also lost their autonomy of thought, basically and more for political than economic reasons. However the result is the same -- lack of a coherent and integral vision defining the key role of the university in society. There is notorious ambiguity about whether the university's ongoing task and aspiration is helping to bring about positive change of reality; or else, if it must now limit itself to justifying that reality. Today we hear reiterated more and more the idea that a large part of the current crisis of the university has to do with the quality of knowledge; but rarely is anything heard mentioned about the very spirit of knowing, that is about the fundamental mission of the university and its "raison d'EAtre". "Ciencia sin conciencia conduce a la ruina...[Science with out conscience leads to ruin]", I once read somewhere. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge can only bring us more absurdity and egocentrism. It's evident that the crisis of the university has to do with the virtual separation of the notions of human development from actual economic and technological processes taking hold in the word in an overwhelming manner. It's also clear that science development is not only being de-gutted of is social nature, but also, unlike during the age of the Enlightenment and the Renaissance, its process and dynamic structure is taking shape outside the university ambit. In other words, scientific work is being "kidnapped" and monopolized by the big super-national consortia; hence science no longer responds basically to the overall benefit of humanity. The benefits of science have been privatized. One little illustration of that is seen in the actual technical disparity that many university science labs in the first world are falling into and that many doctoral students have complained about and suffered from. Today the best equipment is found in the science labs of large North American and European companies. And when it comes to the Humanist Sciences, what can we say? They are undergoing their worst identity crisis, to the point that, to cite the example of Political and Social Sciences, their very existence is under question. It's as if it were a matter of some absurdity from the Jurassic Period, or as if it were no longer necessary to explore societies' political directions. In essence, this is so-called post-modernism, a true antithesis of the Enlightenment and the Renaissance...a return to the medieval past when the life of thousands of human beings was decided by a few lords parapetd in their ivory towers. Sergio Barrios *>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*> Probing Patters of Development Latin in America *> URACCAN Teachers Going for their Masters Degree "We need to try to change the system in the University and the skills of our students. This course is helping to raise the academic levels of URACCAN teachers and also its students" --Yuri Zapata, URACCAN Professor and York University Masters' Student-- -- "Having the classes on different campuses allows us to learn more about the different areas of our Regions. It's a way to strengthen the university as a whole." --Nubia Ordonez, URACCAN Administrator and York University Masters' Student-- By Tim Hansell (*) Lisa North, seemingly unaware of the flies covering her books and coffee cup, momentarily unconscious of the heat, smiles and eagerly leans forward. She is listening to docentes [teachers, but students in this setting] as they animatedly discuss the historical development of their Atlantic Coast region of Nicaragua. Hitting upon more recent themes, a "student" presentation on economic development over the different eras explodes into a lively discussion drawing in the entire class. It was so fast-moving that the next day one of the docentes brought in chart paper outlining proper classroom behavior. The course succeeded because of this dynamism. It reached people by dealing with issues they all have a stake in; it is something they have all lived. One participant, Bromeliad Camps Joy put it this way: the best part of the course was "the appropriation of information to our own situation; analyzing it with our own experiences in the region." Lisa North is a professor of Political Science at York University (Ontario, Canada). She came to Bilwi to teach a three-week masters level class on "Patterns of Development in Latin America: a socio-economic and political-cultural analysis". Her qualifications are too long to detail here. She has lived and worked in many Latin American countries, coordinated projects, headed institutes, written numerous books and papers, and is currently doing research in Ecuador. Students mentioned that here vast experience clearly enhanced the course. However one of the things Lisa liked the most about this course was the fact that she was learning at the same time. She seemed happiest when the docentes were teaching and applying their own knowledge. I think this genuine interest allowed everyone to feel more at ease, as contributors to the process rather than simply "receivers" of knowledge. The course was a success; but that doesn't mean everything went smoothly. Even before getting started, it was beset by difficulties. Lisa arrived in Managua from Quito, but her luggage didn't. With one set of clothes and a minimum of personal affects she came to Bilwi to begin teaching the course. She soon discovered that a significant number of readings had not made it into the docentes' course kits. For three days we waited for news of the missing luggage while people in Managua responded with a rush photocopying bee. Finally, the afternoon before the syllabus was about to be changed to correspond to available readings, the luggage was delivered right to the classroom! Everyone cheered and clapped. The newly photocopied coursed readings came along with her luggage and the course went on as designed. That was not the end of small, unavoidable hassles. For several days the only photocopier in town refused to work and we had to wait for a part to be flown in from Managua to put it in working order. During the frequent pre-March 1 regional election power cuts we discovered that the new computer room had been wired to hook up directly to the ENEL (electrical utility) power lines and not through the URACCAN generator. Several peoples disks corrupted leaving their essays salvageable, but hidden in 162 pages of garbage. On the same day the printer decided to die a slow and ungraceful death. The temperature went shooting up and we had to enjoy the latter half of each class outside under the trees. The bus clutch broke one morning, so we all had to pile into the back of a pickup to get to campus. None of those snags, however, took away from the course. The positive atmosphere was strong enough to make them seem but humorous and passing distractions. I even believe that such occasional distractions were necessary and welcome. The course was intense. People were on the bus to Kambla (**) by 7:30 every morning. Classes went on for five hours each day, split into lectures and discussion time, followed by group work and presentations. Lunch was served at campus, and later people did independent and group study of the readings or they discussed their thesis work with Lisa. Dinner was also served at campus, and then around 8:30 in the evening the bus took us home where more work awaited us -- homework and housework. Nobody took breaks on the weekend either. Course members went up to campus to type their essays and assignments or to discuss the readings. Everyone worked at this pace for nearly a month; humor seemed to the one way people used to keep going and keep their cool. Mishaps were met with humor --both verbal and practical jokes. Friendship and amiability sustained peoples determination to succeed. On the Monday of the third week Lisa convened the class by the river near Tuapi -- an incredible beautiful site where tall trees overlook the river's stunningly clear salt water. At lunch some dove off cliffs or from trees while others just waded into the water. Events like this helped to release the pressure build-up, allowing us to feel more relaxed and content. Bluefields participant Nubia Ordonez told me that "despite the rapid pace, participation and group work made the effort seem less difficult". The lectures and readings, in and of themselves, were really fascinating. We looked at different factors -social, economic, political, and cultural - that impacted on the development of Latin America and, more specifically, Central America. Central American countries were compared and contrasted with the 'Asian Tigers" and the myths surrounding the latter. We looked at recent grassroots development projects around the world and the methodology used to sustain them. We discussed the struggle between urban elites and rural masses throughout Latin America following the wars of independence from Spain. Class discussions also dealt with issues such as the effects on development of factors such as racism, sexism, classism, and urbanism. Docentes also talked about URACCAN, its role, its strengths and weaknesses, and its contribution to the development of the Coast. Docentes took up each and all of these topics, analyzing their relation to the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast region in group sessions. Likewise they applied these criteria to developing theses topics and in weekly assignments. I could sense that the course presented material and ideas that grabbed us and made us want to learn even more. The course achieved its goals. Moreover it showed us that hard study can be enjoyable given the right approach. Yuri Zapata put it this way: "When we need to work hard, we work hard. When it's time to play, we play!" This group of people come together once or twice a year to pursue this course(***). Although everyone was happy to return to their homes, families, and work, I'm sure people miss being together in the course. I know I do. _____________________ [* Tim Hansell is a graduate physicist from York University, working as an ESL teacher with URACCAN teachers enrolled in York's Masters Degree program in Nicaragua. He "audited" the course described below and acted as an assistant to Dr. Lisa North during her stay in Bilwi, RAAN. His article was written just after the February course it describes; the publication delay is due to lost mail] [** The URACCAN campus is located almost ten kilometers outside Bilwi on lands within the Indigenous community of Kambla ] [*** The next course session will be in July on the Kambla campus of URACCAN. Another session is being projected for the December '98 URACCAN break] *>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*> *> thesd d MAIL BOX URACCAN UPDATE welcomes letters and press releases on matters of interest to grassroots issues and struggles, particularly those affecting Indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, youth, and women; and of course, education and the environment. thesd d *> -- "Meanwhile, an incredible wave of repression is hitting Geneva" -- May 18th, 1998 3rd international press release from Peoples' Global Action Today the Second Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) starts in Geneva, in the context of a hundreds of protests all over the World. Nearly a million of people from all social sectors (farmers, indigenous peoples, workers, women, ethnical groups, unemployed and many other groups) are expressing since the 1st of May our rejection to the WTO, the multilateral trade system, and neoliberal policies - participating in the first international days of action of Peoples' Global Action (PGA) against "Free" Trade and the WTO. Actions during the G8 Summit in Birmingham (16th/17th May) and during the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Geneva (18th-20th May) On Saturday, at the same time as the beginnung of the G8 Summit, over hundred thousand people throughout the world protested against the WTO and their neoliberal policies: Global Street Parties were celebrated in 35 cities all over the world, for example in Geneva, Birmingham, Sydney, Toronto and Prague with several thousand people in each town. In Brazil, a protest march of 40000 landless and homeless people reached the capital Brasilia; 10000 unemployed joined them on Monday. On Wednesday, the final day of the WTO conference, a demonstration through the government district of Brasilia is planned. In India, 23 regional conferences against the WTO are occuring today. In Hyderabad, WTO symbols are being burned in several public places. On Saturday, there were more than 100 actions against the WTO and on May 1st, hundreds of thousands of peasants and workers urged the Indian to withdraw from the WTO. In Canada, a protest against the planned Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) is scheduled for today. There will be further demonstrations and direct actions in different Canadian cities on Wednesday. The OECD meeting starting this weekend in Montreal shall be blocked throughout its duration. On "Peoples' Trade Day today, actions are being carried out in the United States and in Geneva against different symbolic centres of global capitalism. This is just a selections of actions. Meanwhile, an incredible wave of repression is hitting Geneva: Throughout the town, people are being stopped by the police at random, arrested and jailed for hours without any given reason - without judicial basis. Foreign persons which "do not carry enough money on them" (about 500 SFrs.) are registered for police records and then deported with a prohibition of re-entry. Many people got heavily injured by the police on Saturday evening, although they behaved passively. At least one young man from Geneva still is in intensive care due to inner bleeding. The bicycle caravan "Money or Life" organized by WiWa Wendland in Germany was already stopped before reaching Geneva, all foreign participants were arrested, deported and are not allowed to re-enter Switzerland for two years. 40 Italians were arrested on their arrival at the train station in Geneva and also deported. On Sunday afternoon, the caravan travelled to the French border to return the waggons, tractors and further equipment back to the German participants banned from Switzerland who were waiting at the other side of the border. On their way back to Geneva, ten people were arrested, among them two journalists from Switzerland and from Berlin. These were also registered for police records and had to spend hours in a freezing cold civil service building wearing summer clothes. After this custody they were given a paper written in French accusing them of having participated in all actions and demonstrations and were urged to sign it. We condemn these arbitrary acts of the Genevan police and justice. These arrests are clearly illegal. We especially protest against the detention of journalists. Peoples' Global Action is a worldwide alliance of organizations and grassroots movements that was formed the last February in a conference where representatives of grassroots movements from 56 countries of all continents came together. The conference produced the Manifesto of the PGA (available at www.agp.org) that states: We live in a time in which capital, with the help of international agencies like the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and other institutions, is shaping national policies in order to strengthen its global control over political, economic and cultural life. Capital has always been global. Its boundless drive for expansion and profit recognises no limits. From the slave trade of earlier centuries to the imperial colonisation of peoples, lands and cultures across the globe, capitalist accumulation has always fed on the blood and tears of the peoples of the world. This destruction and misery has been restrained only by grassroots resistance. Today, capital is deploying a new strategy to assert its power and neutralise peoples' resistance. Its name is economic globalisation, and it consists in the dismantling of national limitations to trade and to the free movement of capital. The effects of economic globalisation spread through the fabric of societies and communities of the world, integrating their peoples into a single gigantic system aimed at the extraction profit and the control of peoples and nature. Words like "globalisation", "liberalisation" and "deregulation" just disguise the growing disparities in living conditions between elites and masses in both privileged and "peripheral" countries. (?) Land, water, forest, wildlife, aquatic life and mineral resources are not commodities, but our life support. For decades the powers that have emerged from money and market have swelled their profits and tightened their control of politics and economics by usurping these resources, at the cost of the lives and livelihoods of vast majorities around the world. For decades the World Bank and the IMF, and now the WTO, in alliance with national governments and corporate powers, have facilitated manoeuvrings to appropriate the environment. The result is environmental devastation, tragic and unmanageable social displacement, and the wiping out of cultural and biological diversity, much of it irretrievably lost without compensation to those reliant on it. (?) The WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, and other institutions that promote globalisation and liberalisation want us to believe in the beneficial effects of global competition. Their agreements and policies constitute direct violations of basic human rights (including civil, political, economic, social, labour and cultural rights) which are codified in international law and many national constitutions, and ingrained in people's understandings of human dignity. We have had enough of their inhuman policies. We reject the principle of competitiveness as solution for peoples' problems. It only leads to the destruction of small producers and local economies. Neo-liberalism is the real enemy of economic freedom. The need has become urgent for concerted action to dismantle the illegitimate world governing system which combines transnational capital, nation-states, international financial institutions and trade agreements. Only a global alliance of peoples' movements, respecting autonomy and facilitating action-oriented resistance, can defeat this emerging globalised monster. If impoverishment of populations is the agenda of neo-liberalism, direct empowerment of the peoples though constructive direct action and civil disobedience will be the programme of the Peoples' Global Action against "Free" Trade and the WTO. In a press briefing that took place today at United Nations the representatives of PGA declared: "The struggle that takes place in these days will continue until the disappearance of the WTO and all other institutions and agreements that cause misery and death. It is part of a process of convergence of millions of people fighting all over the planet for a just society in harmony with the environment. The movements that participate in this process want to send a clear message to the WTO: we will not allow economic globalisation to destroy our environment, our culture, our future, our lives. Consequently, we reject the treaties of the WTO and we will not allow their implementation". For more information please contact our press office: phone: (0041) 22/ 344 47 31 fax: (0041) 22/ 940 20 70 e-mail: press-action@agp.org *>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*> *> H u m o r<* *> Grounds for Suspicion or REASONS FOR BYING NICARAGUAN ORGANICA COFFEE, IF COFFE YOU MUST. [THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS PUBLISHED AS A COURTESY TO ALL THOSE INVOLVED IN SOLIDARITY EFFORTS TO PROMOTE NICA ORGANIC COFFEE IN THE CAFEINATED WORLD]. [with thanks for Jaime Kneen for having shared this with us]. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Dave Barry, The Washington Post, Sunday, November 9, 1997 I HAVE EXCITING NEWS for anybody who would like to pay a lot of money for coffee that has passed all the way through an animal's digestive tract. And you just know there are plenty of people who would. Specialty coffees are very popular these days, attracting millions of consumers, every single one of whom is standing in line ahead of me whenever I go to the coffee place at the airport to grab a quick cup on my way to catch a plane. These consumers are always ordering mutant beverages with names like "mocha-almond-honey-vinaigrette lattespressacino," beverages that must be made one at a time via a lengthy and complex process involving approximately one coffee bean, three quarts of dairy products and what appears to be a small nuclear reactor. Meanwhile, back in the line, there is growing impatience among those of us who just want a plain old cup of coffee so that our brains will start working and we can remember what our full names are and why we are catching an airplane. We want to strike the lattespressacino people with our carry-on baggage and scream, "GET OUT OF OUR WAY, YOU TREND GEEKS, AND LET US HAVE OUR COFFEE!" But of course we couldn't do anything that active until we've had our coffee. It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity. I bet this kind of thing does not happen to heroin addicts. I bet that when serious heroin addicts go to purchase their heroin, they do not tolerate waiting in line while some dilettante in front of them orders a hazelnut smack-a-cino with cinnamon sprinkles. The reason some of us need coffee is that it contains caffeine, which makes us alert. Of course it is very important to remember that caffeine is a drug, and, like any drug, it is a lot of fun. No! Wait! What I meant to say is: Like any drug, caffeine can have serious side effects if we ingest too much. This fact was first noticed in ancient Egypt when a group of workers, who were supposed to be making a birdbath, began drinking Egyptian coffee, which is very strong, and wound up constructing the Pyramids. I myself developed the coffee habit in my early twenties, when, as a "cub" reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pa., I had to stay awake while writing phenomenally boring stories about municipal government. I got my coffee from a vending machine that also sold hot chocolate and chicken noodle soup; all three liquids squirted out of a single tube, and they tasted pretty much the same. But I came to need that coffee, and even today I can do nothing useful before I've had several cups. (I can't do anything useful afterward, either; that's why I'm a columnist.) But here's my point: This specialty-coffee craze has gone too far. I say this in light of a letter I got recently from alert reader Bo Bishop. He sent me an invitation he received from a local company to a "private tasting of the highly prized Luwak coffee," which "at $300 a pound . . . is one of the most expensive drinks in the world." The invitation states that this coffee is named for the luwak, a "member of the weasel family" that lives on the island of Java and eats coffee berries; as the berries pass through the luwak, a "natural fermentation" takes place, and the berry seeds - the coffee beans - come out of the luwak intact. The beans are then gathered, washed, roasted and sold to coffee connoisseurs. The invitation states: "We wish to pass along this once in a life time opportunity to taste such a rarity."Or, as Bo Bishop put it: "They're selling processed weasel doodoo for $300 a pound." I first thought this was a clever hoax designed to ridicule the coffee craze. Tragically, it is not. There really is a Luwak coffee. I know because I bought some from a specialty-coffee company in Atlanta. I paid $37.50 for two ounces of beans. I was expecting the beans to look exotic, considering where they'd been, but they looked like regular coffee beans. In fact, for a moment I was afraid that they were just regular beans, and that I was being ripped off. Then I thought: What kind of world is this when you worry that people might be ripping you off by selling you coffee that was NOT pooped out by a weasel? So anyway, I ground the beans up and brewed the coffee and drank some. You know how sometimes, when you're really skeptical about something, but then you finally try it, you discover that it's really good, way better than you would have thought possible? This is not the case with Luwak coffee. Luwak coffee, in my opinion, tastes like somebody washed a dead cat in it. But I predict it's going to be popular anyway, because it's expensive. One of these days, the people in front of me at the airport coffee place are going to be ordering decaf poopacino. I'm thinking of switching to heroin. *>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*> "QUOTE, UNQUOTE" "Shelling it Like it Is" "For a commercial company trying to make investments, you need a stable environment. Dictatorships can give you that. Right now in Nigeria there is acceptance, peace and continuity" - Mr. N.A. Achebe, former General Manager Shell Nigeria who was promoted on the 19th July, 1996 to Shell International to fulfill a representative role for Shell at fora concerned with their operations in Nigeria. "Shelling it Like it Is" *>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*>*> E N D JUNE 2, 1998 U P D A T E