To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Organization of American States Meeting
From: bpr-list@philologos.org("Moza")
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 09:31:24 -0400

Organization of American States Meeting
Triggers Protester-Police Face-Off

WINDSOR, Ontario, Canada, June 2, 2000 (ENS) - The Organization of
American States (OAS) is opening its 30th General Assembly here on
Sunday, a meeting that will further plans for a free trade agreement to
encompass the entire Western hemisphere. Headquartered in Washington,
DC, the OAS represents 34 nations from Canada in the north to Chile in the
south.

The meeting at Windsor's Cleary International Centre will be chaired by
Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lloyd Axeworthy. It is taking centre
stage in this city of 262,000 directly across the river from Detroit, Michigan.

Peter Boehm, Canada's Permanent Ambassador to the Organization of
American States, wears an OAS t-shirt. (Photo courtesy OAS)

The OAS foreign ministers have other issues on the agenda besides the Free
Trade Area of the Americas - everything from the legality of recent elections
in Peru to human security, "protecting people from threats to their rights,
their safety and their lives," according to the Canadian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs.

But free trade is the issue of greatest importance to a newly formed coalition
of organized labor, environmentalists, human rights activists and students -
aside from the issue of their own security on the streets of Windsor and
Detroit.

The critics fear the free trade agreement will weaken protection of the
environment and export jobs out of the United States and Canada to Latin
American countries where wages are low and environmental safeguards are
weak.

Aurita Withers, a writer published on the OAS Shutdown Coalition website,
writes, "The FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas] is an agreement
designed to help fuel capitalism. Capitalism and environmental protection are
directly contradictory as capitalism must exploit and destroy to survive.
Unlimited economic growth is impossible in a finite ecological system."

Full Story:
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2000/2000L-06-02-01.html

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To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - Clinton urges EU to include Russia
From: bpr-list@philologos.org("Moza")
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 09:39:53 -0400

Clinton urges EU to include Russia

As summit nears, leader says united Europe is not complete

AACHEN, Germany, June 2 — With an eye toward a weekend summit in Moscow, President Bill Clinton urged America´s European allies Friday to ensure that Russia becomes “fully part of Europe.”

“THE JOB of building a united Europe is certainly not finished, and it is important not to take all of this self-congratulation too far,” Clinton said in becoming only the third American to receive the prestigious International Charlemagne Prize for promoting European unity.

Clinton spoke in a sun-filled courtyard of the magnificent cathedral that holds the remains of the 18th-century Holy Roman emperor for whom the prize is named. Nearby, several thousand Germans watched the ceremony on an open-air screen set up on the market square in front of the 14th-century town hall.

Clinton, who travels Saturday to Moscow for a two-day summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, their first meeting, recited a litany of challenges facing the new leader and the Russian people.

“We don´t yet know if Russia´s hard-won democratic freedoms will endure,” Clinton said, citing the country´s deep-seated economic problems and the war in Chechnya. But he was hopeful to the point of envisioning the day when a democratic and prosperous Russia would be offered a place in NATO, the alliance created 50 years to contain the Soviet threat.

“Because the stakes are so high, we must do everything we can to encourage a Russia that is fully democratic and united in its diversity — a Russia that defines its greatness not by dominance of its neighbors, but by the dominate achievements of its people and its partnership, a Russia that should be — indeed, must be — fully part of Europe,” Clinton said.

“That means no doors can be sealed shut to Russia,” including NATO and the European Union, the president said. “The alternative would be a future of harmful competition between Russia and the West and the end of our vision of an undivided continent.”

CRITICAL ROLE OF THE U.S.

Europe is “more united, more successful and more peaceful than ever,” Clinton said. But he stressed that a truly united Europe remains a work in progress. Among unfinished business, Clinton said was to bring splintered southeastern Europe into the Western fold, along with Turkey.

“That is the only way to make peace last in that bitterly divided region,” Clinton said. “Our goal must be to debalkanize the Balkans.”

In honoring Clinton for his contributions to European unity, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder praised him for “preserving, strengthening and further developing” America´s partnership in Europe during the transitional decade following the end of the Cold War.

Full Story:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/414926.asp

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To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - China 'sex workers' treaty backed
From: bpr-list@philologos.org("Moza")
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 09:47:32 -0400

June 1, 2000

China 'sex workers' treaty backed

By George Archibald
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Clinton administration will push for Senate approval of a United Nations treaty used to promote legal prostitution in China, Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala said yesterday.

A U.N. committee recently ordered China to allow women to sell their bodies as "sex workers." The order, issued by the body that will oversee the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, calls prostitution a "reproductive right" over one's body.

The treaty has 165 signatories —including China — with the United States the sole Western Hemisphere holdout.

Miss Shalala said she saw no inconsistency in the Clinton administration's efforts to overcome Senate opposition to the treaty and to end global sex trafficking.

Asked whether the United States endorsed the instruction to China by the U.N. committee that implements the treaty, Miss Shalala responded firmly, "No."

Asked why the U.N. committee issued the instruction for China to legalize prostitution, Miss Shalala said, "You'll have to ask them. We're not on the committee."

Miss Shalala seemed frustrated by questions about the U.N. CEDAW committee's instruction to China to legalize prostitution.

"Anyone want to talk about Fiji?" she asked as questions were raised.

Linda Tarr-Whelan, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, said the U.N. instruction to China was just "one line in a very long report," which had no mandatory significance.

Asked whether the treaty can force China to legalize prostitution, Miss Shalala said, "It has no power to do so."

"The country has the right to reject" a U.N. order to legalize prostitution, Miss Tarr-Whelan said. The United Nations cannot supersede a country's national sovereignty, she said.

Anita K. Blair, president of the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative group that opposes treaty — known as CEDAW — said the U.N. and World Bank consistently strong-arm poor countries to adopt social policies contrary to their own traditions as a price for global monetary aid.

"We continually hear that developing countries are forced, as a practical matter, to accept conditions stemming from U.N. documents in order to obtain international loans," Miss Blair said.

"This is a form of cultural imperialism to require other countries to adopt the failed social policies of the developed world in order to finance their own development," she said. "If they are going to get roads, bridges, schools and hospitals, they need capital from the developed world. It is used as a kind of blackmail."

Miss Shalala said the Clinton administration was "quite frustrated on the inability to ratify CEDAW."

The treaty has been held up by Sen. Jesse Helms, North Carolina Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has refused to bring it up for consideration.

"I'm not sure I want to get into the politics of who's opposing it," Miss Shalala said when questioned about the administration's priority to get Senate approval.

Meanwhile, the health and human services secretary yesterday said 700,000 women and children are trafficked each year as part of the global sex trade and for other illicit purposes.

"Many governments have taken action to blunt an alarming increase in trafficking of women," she said. "The United States is also working to stop trafficking on several fronts, ranging from public awareness programs to specialized training for police and immigration officials."

The Independent Women's Forum publicized in its April newsletter the U.N. order to China to legalize prostitution under the CEDAW treaty.

The forum's report said the U.N.'s treaty panel appeared "to be implementing only the vague language favored by the radicals" in the CEDAW treaty.

"Even the right to sell one's body is included in the radical interpretation of 'reproductive rights,' as China was recently instructed by the CEDAW Committee to legalize prostitution," the newsletter noted.

"Prostitutes are now referred to as 'sex workers,' connoting that prostitution is just another job."

Miss Shalala and Miss Tarr-Whelan responded to the report at a briefing at the State Department, where they outlined the administration's agenda for a fifth anniversary conference on implementation of the Platform for Action, a series of goals on women's issues, adopted in Beijing in 1995.

The meeting is set for next week at U.N. headquarters in New York. Miss Shalala will be one of the leaders of the U.S. delegation.

Miss Shalala said 3,000 official delegates and 7,000 non-government organization (NGO) delegates from 189 U.N. member nations would review country-by-country progress on promoting women's social, economic and political equality under the Beijing platform.

They conference also will announce commitments for further governmental action over the next five years.

Miss Shalala listed expanded health initiatives for women and children, preventing violence against women, economic investment initiatives to help women start small businesses and renewed action to prevent trafficking in women and children among the administration's top priorities under the U.N. women's agenda for the next five years.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200061224738.htm

Link via:
http://www.newsviewtoday.com

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To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - 'Third Way' gets world hearing
From: bpr-list@philologos.org("Moza")
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 09:56:00 -0400

'Third Way' gets world hearing
By Political Analyst Gordon Corera

The set of political ideas, known loosely as "The Third Way" will have its widest airing yet with world leaders in Berlin on Saturday.

For President Clinton, who has only a few months left in office, this meeting offers a chance to establish himself as the father of a new global political model.

The meeting is being billed as a discussion of "progressive governance in the 21st century".

For advocates of the Third Way, it is a chance to move beyond the old dichotomy of left and right towards a progressive new political philosophy.

Culture clashes

Unlike previous seminars in which Third Way politics have been discussed, the Berlin meeting will be attended by the leaders of about a dozen nations.

But the Third Way -which has its roots in Anglo-American political models - may be difficult to apply to other countries.

British proponents have had enough trouble in convincing France that the US-UK model has some relevance to it, and so divining exactly how it applies to countries as diverse as Argentina, South Africa and Israel may prove tricky.

The German host of this event, Chancellor Schr=F6der, himself backed off the Third Way after a joint manifesto he launched with Tony Blair was heavily criticised back home.

As for the French, they are especially sceptical about the Third Way idea, seeing it as a cover for the betrayal of socialist values in favour of the American free market.

One of the reasons that the title of this event is billed as the more vague "progressive governance" is that the French refused to attend anything that was too blatantly a Third Way jamboree.

But at Berlin, the leaders may struggle to define their collective philosophy in a way that does not make it so vague as to be meaningless.

Perhaps understanding this, Tony Blair - one of the leading proponents - has opted to stay away this time, preferring to spend time with his new born son.

What is the Third Way?

The vision of those behind the Third Way is the need to move away from what they see as a sterile debate between left and right -between those who favour either the state or the free market doing everything.

Instead, they are looking towards a new form of political philosophy that focuses on adapting economies and societies to the demands and pressures of globalisation.

In practise, the idea emerged in the US in the 1980s when a group called the Democratic Leadership Council was set up be people worried that the Democratic Party had drifted too far to the left, and needed to be brought back into the centre to appeal to a wider constituency.

This strategy culminated in 1992 when the Chairman of the DLC - Governor Bill Clinton -was elected President campaigning as a "New Democrat", stressing the themes of opportunity and responsibility and promoting programmes like welfare to work.

Some of the slogans - as well as specific policies - were adopted in the UK by Tony Blair as Labour became New Labour.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_771000/771608.stm

Link via:
http://www.newsviewtoday.com

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To: bpr-list@philologos.org (BPR Mailing List)
Subject: [BPR] - World's Prostitutes Confer at Other Berlin Summit
From: bpr-list@philologos.org("Moza")
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 19:46:20 -0400

Friday June 2 5:59 PM ET

World's Prostitutes Confer at Other Berlin Summit

By Adam Tanner

BERLIN (Reuters) - A 14-nation conference on modern government attended
by US President Bill Clinton is not the only global summit taking place in
Berlin. Hundreds of prostitutes were comparing notes on their ancient
profession at a gathering in the German capital aimed at improving the lot of
sex workers worldwide.

As stall-vendors offered advice on condoms and sold sex lubricants at a local
community center, speakers focused on healthcare, pensions and other
shortcomings in a profession prostitutes said deserved more respect and
recognition.

``The job I like, but the conditions I don't like,'' said Berliner Stephanie Klee,
39. ``I like the sexuality. I like to be together with different men, and I've
learned a lot from my clients. And I like the money.'' But she and many
others complained about the high cost of health insurance and the lack of a
pension and other social benefits that workers in Germany, at least, have
come to expect. ``We want our work to become a completely legitimised
profession,'' said Lady Linda, 41, a dominatrix in black lipstick, fishnet
stockings and a leather jacket.

Some visitors from abroad envied the better conditions in Germany, however,
including the wider recognition of the dangers of sexually transmitted
diseases.

Anne Macharia of Kenya said most men in Africa refused to wear a condom
and often paid more for the privilege.

``We are trying to educate them and make a system in which no one will
come without a condom,'' she said. ``If you do not address sex workers, who
are a high-risk group, it will be fruitless to address HIV and AIDS.'' Ruediger
Grosch, 29, said he had worked for several years as an HIV-positive gay
prostitute, but told his clients about his condition and always used a
condom.

``Berlin is very crowded,'' said Grosch, who retired more than two years ago.
``It is difficult to make money in prostitution.'' Organisers said prostitutes in
Germany can make between 1,000 and 20,000 marks a month. By contrast,
some prostitutes in Kenya earn only $1 a client, Macharia said.

The five day-conference, which ends on June 5, offers a mix of art, film and
practical seminars, including self defence tips.

Some said it was fitting that the event was taking place as Clinton, who
survived a sex scandal last year, was in town.

Klee, a 20-year veteran of the trade, said that as she arrived on Friday she
had seen an official delegation with sirens racing up behind her. ``I thought
Bill Clinton was behind and perhaps he wanted to visit us,'' she said.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000602/hl/prostitutes_1.htm

via: End_Times_News-owner@egroups.com

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