A List of Environmental and Telecommunications Events and Issues

February 6, 1998









Published, Edited and Written by George Mokray for
Information Ecologies
218 Franklin St #3
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617)661-2676
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Listings


Berlin: Fashioning a National Capital at the End of the Twentieth Century
contact 495-4303 x240

10:30 am - 12 pm
Addressing Global Environmental Challenges: The Future Role of UNEP
Klaus Topfer, United Nations Environment Programme
contact 627-3645 or gshin@emerald.tufts.edu
Tufts, Fletcher School, Cabot 702

Sunday, February 8

Berlin: Fashioning a National Capital at the End of the Twentieth Century
contact 495-4303 x240

11 am
Mordechai Vanunu, Israel Nuclear Weapons Whistle-Blower
Barry H. Roth, M.D. and Hattie Nestel
contact 266-6710 or commchurch@igc.org
Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston St, Copley Sq, Boston
Editorial Comment: "In 1986, Vanunu told the world through a story in the London Times that Israel was producing weapons at Dimona, a facility where had worked as a technician. Abducted and secretly tried that year on charges of treason and espionage, he was sentenced to eighteen years of solitary confinementat Ashkelon prison in Israel." As far as I am concerned, Mordechai Vanunu is a prisoner of conscience and should not be forgotten.

Monday, February 9

12 pm
Families and Work: The Private Sector Approach to Work-Family Issues
Hilda Kahne, Brandeis
contact 495-8140
Harvard, Radcliffe College, Murray Research Center

Women Against the Good War
Rachel Goosen, Goshen College
Harvard Divinity School, Rockefeller Hall

12:30 pm
Constitutional Law in Slovenia: From Combat to Contract or What Does the Constitution Constitute
Bostjan Zupancic, Constitutional Court of Slovenia and UN Comm
Against Torture
Harvard Law School, Pound Hall, Romm 401

Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program Lunch Seminar
Susan Mayer, author of _What Money Can't Buy_http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0674587332/alistA/)
contact 495-4514
Harvard, Barker Center, Room 113

1 pm
The Chemical Weapons Convention in the Middle East: Israeli Ratification Dilemmas and Options
Gerald Steinberg, Bar Ilan Univ
contact 253-0133 or llevine@mit.edu
MIT Building E38, Room 630

3 pm
Reactions at the Gas-Liquid Interface
Paul Davidovits, Boston College
contact maffeo@eps.harvard.edu
Harvard, Fairchild Lecture Hall, 7 Divinity Ave, Room 102

4 pm
How Can the US Survive Information Warfare?
Howard Shrobe, MIT
contact 253-8529
MIT Building 34, Room 101
Editorial Comment: I heard the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff brag about the electronic battlefield of the future a few years ago at Tufts. He sounded way over-confident about our ability to wage electronic warfare and never really answered my objections to his depiction of the future. To believe that these systems will be robust, accurate, and immune to hacking is quite a stretch. Personally, I am waiting for someone to waste all my files with a simple electromagnetic pulse gun.

4:30 pm
Memorization or Understanding: Are We Teaching the Right Thing?
Eric Mazur, Harvard
Harvard, Jefferson 461

Press, Politics, and Public Policy: Shorenstein Fellows Introduction
Lisa Bennet, NYU; Tim Cooke, BBC; Charlotte Grimes, St Louis Post Dispatch; Thomas Keenan, SUNY; Stephen Ward, Canadian Press Agency
Harvard, Taubman Building, Room 275

Tuesday, February 10

12 pm
Pity the Poor Producer
Paul Solman, "The News Hour"
Harvard, Taubman Building, Room 275

12:15 pm
Molecular Genetics of Circadian Clocks
Steve Kay, Scripps Research Institute
Harvard Medical School, Goldenson Building, Room 122, Boston

12:30 pm
Malice or Muddle?: American Media Coverage of the "Asian" Political Funding Scandal
Marvin Kalb, Harvard; Paul Watanabe, UMass; Frank Wu, Howard Univ
Harvard, Center for European Studies, Lower-level Conference Room

3 pm
A New Approach to Effective Field Theory for Nuclear Physics
Mark Wise, CA Institute of Technology
Harvard, Jefferson Lab, Room 250

4 pm
A Molecular Cause of Aging
Leonard Guarente, MIT
Harvard Medical School, Building C, Cannon Room, Boston

Worker Ownership: Using Labor's Capital
Leo Gerard, United Steelworkers of America
contact 495-9265
Harvard, Kennedy School, Starr Auditorium
Editorial Comment: In one way, workers through their pension funds literally own this country and its multinational and transnational corporations. Unfortunately, they can not use that power directly. Their pension fund managers have a "fiduciary responsibility" to invest workers' money for the highest rate of return, whether or not that investment strategy is detrimental to the short or long-term interests of the workers whose contribution make up the funds they manage. The AFL-CIO is now beginning to examine how to use the leverage the union pension funds have. It should be an interesting experiment.

Emerging Design and Technology Challenges for Sub-100nm CMOS Transistor Scaling
Richard Green, Intel
contact 253-4799
MIT Building 34, Room 101

US Climate Change Policy After Kyoto
Michael McElroy, Harvard
Harvard, Coolidge Hall, Room 2

4 - 8 pm
MA Telecommunications Council: Venture and Government Sources of Early Stage Financing
MA Tech Dev Corp, MA Business Dev Corp, Atlas Ventures, Charles River Ventures, and Zero Stage
contact 292-0050
Volpe Transportation Building, 55 Broadway, Kendall Sq

4:30 pm
Daily Explosions: Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany
Bernd Widdig, MIT
contact 253-4965
MIT Building 14E, Room 304

Viewing Displacement Through a Development Lens
Steven Holtzman, World Bank
contact 253-3121 or lauries@mit.edu
MIT Building E38, Room 714

5:30 pm
Jacqueline Jones, author _American Work - Black and White Labor Since 1600_
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0393045617/alistA/)
Harvard, Barker Center, Thompson Room

6:30 pm
William Daley, U.S. Secretary of Commerce
contact 495-1380
Harvard, Kennedy School, 79 JFK St, ARCO Forum

7 pm
Internet: Copyright on the Net
Warren Agin, principal of Law Offices of Warren E. Agin (http://www.agin.com)ΚΚΚ
contact http://www.web-net.org/
MIT Building E51, Room 345
Editorial Comment: Copyright law has changed. According to the No Electronic Theft Act, a willful violation of copyright is now a criminal violation, even if no profit is involved. You can learn how often you should be arrested by checking the law at the Copyright Website (http://www.benedict.com), Intellectual Property Law Primer for Multimedia and Web Developers (http://www.eff.org/pub/CAF/law/ip-primer), or Internet Law Simplified (http://home.earthlink.net/~ivanlove/helpful.html). Good luck and please don't turn me in.

Wednesday, February 11

12 pm
One Insider's Look at the Quadrennial Defense Review
Paul Nagy, DFI International
contact 253-0133 or llevine@mit.edu
MIT Building E38, Room 630

4 pm
Promising Genomics
Michael Fortun, Hampshire College
contact 253-4062
MIT Building E51, Room 165

Linkage Analyses of Complex Traits: The Challenges of Psychiatric Genetics
Paul Van Eerdewegh, Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School, Building B, Goldenson 122, Boston

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Russia's Troubled Coal Industry
Stephen Crowley, Oberlin College
Harvard, Coolidge 215, Bergson/Ulam Room

4:30 pm
Women: The Dominant Force for Reconciliation in Bosnia- Herzegovina
Swanee Hunt, Harvard
Harvard, Coolidge Hall, Room 1

6 pm
Geoffrey Canada, author of _Reaching Up for Manhood: Transforming the Lives of Boys in America_ (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0807023167/alistA/)
contact 495-0740
Harvard, Longfellow Hall, Askwith Lecture Hall
Editorial Comment: Geoffrey Canada is also the author of _fist stick knife gun_ (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0807004235/alistA/), the best book I've read about the recent history of American violence. I expect his new book to be just as good.

6 pm - 9 pm
Managing the Transition from a Service Company to a Product Company
MIT Enterprise Forum
contact 253-8240
MIT Building 10, Room 250
$15 non-members, $10 members

7:30 pm
Urban Edge
Al Lovata, Boston Advisors, and Ronald Ferguson, Harvard
contact 495-2722
First Parish Church, 3 Church St, Harvard Sq

8 pm
How We Evolved a Sense of Self, and Understanding of Death, and a Moral Instinct
Marc Hauser, Harvard
Harvard Science Center, Lecture Hall D

8 pm
Dan Glickman, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture
contact 495-1380
Harvard, Kennedy School, 79 JFK St, ARCO Forum

Thursday, February 12

12 pm
Deformation Dynamics of Amorphous Solids and Implications for Fracture
Michael Falk, UC Santa Barbara
Harvard, Pierce Hall, Room 100F

Imperial Japanese Opium Operations in China and Postwar Political Correctness
Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, York Univ
Harvard, Coolidge Hall, Room 2

1:30 pm - 6 pm
Art and Entertainment in Periods of Transition
David Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin, GA Tech; Scott Bukkatman, Stanford; David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins, MIT
contact 253-3566 or http://media-in-transition.mit.edu
MIT Building E15, Bartos Auditorium

3 pm
A New Approach to Effective Field Theory for Nuclear Physics
Mark Wise, CA Institute of Technology
Harvard, Jefferson Lab, Room 250

4 pm
The Search for Black Holes
Ramesh Narayan, Harvard
Harvard, Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St, Phillips Auditorium

Pumping and Sucking: New Perspectives on the Evolution of Vertebrate Breathing Mechanisms
Elizabeth Brainerd, UMass Amherst
Harvard, Biology Labs, Lecture Hall

4:30 pm - 6 pm
UN Development Program's Gender Related Indices: A Critical Review
Stephan Klasen, King's College, Cambridge Univ
contact Sue Carlson at 495-2021
Harvard, 9 Bow St

6 pm
Rational Choice and Cultural Understanding
Russell Hardin, NYU
contact sarajane@mit.edu
MIT Building E38, Room 714

6pm
Environmental Roundtable
contact john.andrews@sierraclub.org, 981-7413 or julie_wormser@tws.org, 350-8866

7 pm
Boston Webgrrls: Marketing a Web-Based Product
Leslie Ray, Northern Light Technology
contact http://www.gen.com/bos-webgrrls/events/events.html
Virtually Wired, 19 Temple Place, Boston (http://www.vw.org)

7:30 pm
Boston Area Solar Energy Association: The Maine Solar House
William Lord (http://solstice.crest.org/renewables/wlord/)
contact 49-SOLAR or http://BASEA.org
3 Church St, Harvard Sq

Friday, February 13

Understanding Evangelicalism
Mark Noll, Harvard
contact 495-5737

US Student Associations' Grass Roots Organizing Weekend
Trainers: Craig Newby - UW- Madison '96; Monica Rios - USC '99; Sarita Gupta - MHC '96
contact (413)585 - 6287 or mahoward@sophia.smith.edu, llkane@mtholyoke.edu, namorse@student.umass.edu, dwoodruff@hampshire.edu
Amherst, MA

11 am
It's Not Easy Being a Woodland Herb
Dennis Whigham, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
contact rakern@fas.harvard.edu or 508-724-3302
Harvard Forest, Rt 32, Petersham, MA

12 pm
A Business in Search of a Product
Ray Suarez, "Talk of the Nation"
Harvard, Taubman Building, Room 275

2:15 pm
Economic and Monetary Union and Unemployment in Europe
David Cameron, Yale
Harvard, Center for European Studies, Cabot Room

4 pm
Why Do Some Planets Have Large Magnetic Fields (and What About the Others?)
David Stevenson, Caltech
contact bevkt@mit.edu
MIT Building 54, Room 915

Antiferromagnetism and Superconductivity in the High Tc Cuprates
Catherine Kallin, McMaster Univ
Harvard, Pierce Hall, Room 209

4:15 pm
The Confusion in Our Hearts and Minds: Feminism and Multiculturalism in Contemporary Europe
Seyla Benhabib, Harvard
Harvard, Center for European Studies, Garden Room

Saturday, February 14

Understanding Evangelicalism
Mark Noll, Harvard
contact 495-5737

US Student Associations' Grass Roots Organizing Weekend
Trainers: Craig Newby - UW- Madison '96; Monica Rios - USC '99; Sarita Gupta - MHC '96
contact (413)585 - 6287 or mahoward@sophia.smith.edu, llkane@mtholyoke.edu, namorse@student.umass.edu, dwoodruff@hampshire.edu
Amherst, MA

Sunday, February 15

US Student Associations' Grass Roots Organizing Weekend
Trainers: Craig Newby - UW- Madison '96; Monica Rios - USC '99; Sarita Gupta - MHC '96
contact (413)585 - 6287 or mahoward@sophia.smith.edu, llkane@mtholyoke.edu, namorse@student.umass.edu, dwoodruff@hampshire.edu
Amherst, MA

10:30 am
Our Addictive Economy and How We Can Recover From It
Barbara Brandt, author _Whole Life Economics_ (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1550922092/alistA/)
contact 628-5558
Old Cambridge Baptist Church, 1151 Mass Ave, Harvard Sq

Monday, February 16

7 pm - 9 pm
Massachusetts Green Party statewide steering comm. mtg
contact massgreens@igc.apc.org
Bernstein Bookstore, 468 Essex St, Lawrence

Tuesday, February 24

8:30 am - 10:30 am
NBEN Breakfast Meeting: The Strategic, Bottom-line Advantages of Better Environmental Management
Betty Diener, UMass-Boston and a tour of Malden Mills Industries
contact NBEN at (978) 557-5475, execdirector@nben.org, or http://www.nben.org
Malden Mills Industries, Building 30, 550 Broadway, Lawrence
NBEN Members: $20 Non-members: $40
Please respond by February 20, 1998. Seating is VERY limited. No- shows will be invoiced.

Sources for Listings:
MIT _Tech Talk_ :
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www
Harvard _Gazette_ :
http://www.news.harvard.edu/hno.subpages/hno.calendar.full.html
Harvard Environmental Resources On-Line:
http://environment.harvard.edu
MA Executive Office of Environmental Affairs calendar:
http://www.magnet.state.ma.us/envir/earth.htm
Earth Day Network international/national listings:
http://www.cfe.cornell.edu/EarthDay/ednethome.html
Earth Day Greater Boston calendar:
http://www.earthdaygb.org

act-ma the Massachusetts activists mailing list:
subscribe by emailing majordomo@igc.apc.org, leaving the subject line blank and typing "subscribe act-ma" as the message

Peace and Justice Events Hotline at (617)787-6809

Computer Organizations of NE (CONE):
http://www.ultranet.com/~als/
http://www.blu.org/cone
Boston Webmasters Guild
http://boston.webmaster.org

Community Technology Center Network
http://www.ctcnet.org

Table of Contents




True Name Fraud

Last week, I ran into my mailman at the letterbox and found out someone had hijacked my mail. He asked my why my mail was being forwarded "somewhere out West in Mass," was I moving? I had wondered why there hadn't been mail for the last few days. He promised to report it and had never really heard of anything like it. I had seen a TV show on true name fraud so I had my suspicions.

I visited the post office within the hour. Talked to the supervisor and let them know about the situation. Then I went downtown to Virtually Wired (19 Temple St, Boston or http://www.vw.org) where I spend Wednesday afternoons, available for teaching Intro to Internet. Nobody was signed up for the class so I had a chance to do some research. There's credit fraud information at http://www.igc.apc/pirg/consumer/xfiles/summary.htm "What To Do If It Happens to You" advice is at http://www.igc.apc/pirg/clapirg/consumer/privacy/toi/victim.htm

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (http://privacyrights.org) publishes the _Privacy Rights Handbook_ (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0380786842/alistA/) and has "How to Protect Yourself" online at http://privacyrights.org/fs/fs17-it.htm. One important thing anyone can do is check their credit once each year (a free option for all MA residents) with the major credit bureaus like Equifax (800-556-4711), Experian (800-353-0809), and Trans Union (800-680-7293).

When I came home, I called my sister's house and left them a message to talk to their local mail carrier and post office to protect themselves against such activity. The next day I called the State Attorney General who referred me to the postal inspector and gave me a number that didn't work. The number in the phone book referred me to yet a third number where I finally talked to someone.

It turns out that my mail was being forwarded to my sister's house, a suggestive prank that is also a Federal felony. I talk to the postal inspectors by the end of the week to see how their investigation is developing.

I guess the moral is "know your mail carrier" and guard your tender identity.

Table of Contents




What Your License Plate Can Say About You

The Massbike listserv (Massbike@cycling.org) has been discussing changes in access to MA license plate information. No longer will the Registry of Motor Vehicles release names and addresses of license holders to anyone except the police, lawyers, or licensed private investigators. Evidently, this change is in response to Federal legislation according to the RMV page explaining the change (http://www.state.ma.us/rmv/privacy/index.htm). You can see the United States Code at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/2721.shtml

Bikers who have used Registry information to report run-ins with dangerous or abusive drivers are a little upset by this change. Gregory Root (Gregory.Root@state.ma.us) suggests:

"Texas had a good way of dealing with this issue: if a person wanted to track down the registration information on a vehicle, they simply had to write a letter to the DMV with the plate number, the writer's own name, address, etc. and a statement that the information would be used for lawful purposes. It's kind of on the honor system, but certainly struck a balance between rights to information and a reasonable amount of privacy. We should have the same here."

Please note that MA license holders have the option of not using their Social Security numbers as their license number. Certainly one good way to make your official identity just a little more secure in this day and age.

Table of Contents




Technological Singularities

While I was under attack by someone with a change of address form from the US Postal Service, I was also reading _Computer One_ by Warwick Collins (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0714530336/alistA/), a novel set a few decades in the future when a worldwide self-replicating and self-innovating computer network is totally integrated into and supervising society. Computer One has two formal terms of operation: to serve the human race and to pursue knowledge. What happens if such a computer system decides the pursuit of knowledge is more important than serving meat-beings? Or even worse, that the poor humans are a hindrance to its pursuit of knowledge?

This reminded me of an article by Vernor Vinge in the Winter 1993 _Whole Earth Review_ called "Technological Singularity." Vinge believes that we are heading towards building an intelligence that is beyond human and at that point all "our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules." Vinge may even believe that this is the next step in evolution, possibly a non-human or meta-human evolution. The singularity could be a working artificial intelligence, either in a single machine or distributed across a network (as in _Computer One_); a computer/human interface (and you might want to check out information on the "remembrance engine" at the Media Lab's Wearable Computing Project at http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/wearables/projects/wearables for a possible inkling of what that might be); or a biologically optimized "person" grown through manipulation of the human genome and reprogramming DNA.

Last week, I attended a lecture on systems dynamics at which the lecturer stated that all his 11 year old daughter's possible suitors had parents who were survivors. "That's how nature works." I raised my hand and said that he could take a sample of his daughter's skin or harvest her eggs just at the onset of puberty and it wouldn't matter whether she lived or died. She could still have children. Conceivably. Survival is no longer a matter of life and death. We have, in some ways, already repealed evolution. We just don't admit it. Yet.

In the grip of a kind of giddy paranoia, I ordered Vinge's _True Names_ (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0312862075/alistA/) from the library to see what else Vinge had to say about computer intelligences and the coming technological singularity. It is an interesting story that presages much of the computer revolution of the 80s and 90s.

Might as well meet your master as you build it bit by bit, cell by cell, day by day. We probably have only a few decades before everything changes irrevocably in a way that history has never considered. Please consider it now.

Table of Contents




Patenting Life

I have been watching an interesting confluence of issues flow from enviro and business listservs like The Natural Step (tns-consultant@igc.apc.org) to the political listservs like the Alliance for Democracy (the-alliance-announce@igc.org) and the Democracy Teach-In (corporations@envirolink.org). One of those issues is genetically engineered foods and the patenting of genetic information.

The BanGenFood Digest (bangenfood-digest@MailingList.net) follows this issue and according to them, "what makes genetic engineering biotechnology dangerous, in the first instance, is that it is an unprecedented, close alliance between two great powers that can make or break the world: science and commerce... The worst aspect of the alliance is that it is between the most reductionist science and multinational monopolistic industry at its most aggressive and exploitative... Reductionist because it sees the world as bits and pieces, and denies there are organic wholes such as organisms, ecosystems, societies and community of nations." Monopolistic because "by 1993, agricultural biotechnology was being controlled by just 11 giant corporations, and these are now undergoing further mergers" with the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreements allowing "patents of life."

A SEED Europe (PO Box 92066, 1090 AB Amsterdam, Netherlands tel: 31-20-668-2236 fax: 31-20-665-0166 email: aseedeur@antenna.nl WWW: http://www.antenna.nl/aseed/) is planning a Hot Spring for globalization. One of the events they are tracking is:

LIFE PATENT DIRECTIVE
European legislation which could allow the privatisation of life itself through a scheme of patenting on plants, animals and humans is at a critical stage. Such a life patenting regime in Europe will further the economic, political and social/cultural control that industy already holds over people and the environment. In particular, the Directive would legitimise corporate raiding of the biodiversity and indigenous knowledge of Southern peoples, promote the genetic manipulation of animals and plants and the ultimate piece in the jigsaw of corporate control over humans around the globe. It would usher in a new world order of bioserfdom. Industry has won a major victory in the European Parliament. The final victory is by no means theirs yet.
Event: Life Patent Directive
Final Vote - European Parliament, Brussels April
Contact: A SEED Europe: aseedeur@antenna.nl
and Genetic Engineering Network: gen@earthling.net

Who owns your genes?

Table of Contents




Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) Activity

Editorial Comment: This annoucement comes from the Alliance for Democracy (the-alliance-announce@igc.org).



NATIONAL WEEK OF ACTION TO STOP THE MAI, FEB. 9-13

There is a chance that the MAI negotiations could be derailed when the OECD negotiators meet in Paris the week of February 16th!

**We understand that the negotiators will assess whether they can meet the April deadline for issuing an agreement.

**If they determine that the OECD member countries have too many unresolved issues, they may even abandon the MAI for now.

For these reasons, the Washington MAI Ad Hoc Working Group, made up of many national organizations including the Alliance, has designated next week as a national week of action to stop the MAI.

We must send a message to the Clinton Administration that the MAI is a bad deal for America and that the U.S. should withdraw from negotiations immediately. National groups are planning actions in Washington for next week, but most important is for citizens around the country to speak up. Here is what you can do.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10th NATIONAL ALL-CALL DAY TO SENATE

On February 10th, call both your Senators' district or DC offices, and ask for their "trade staff." Introduce yourself, express your concerns about the MAI and say something like this:

"I am calling to ask Senator [name] to call for a halt to U.S. participation in negotiations on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment--the MAI. This agreement being negotiated by OECD countries would undermine our democracy. It deserves full public debate before the Clinton Administration participates in any more negotiations.

"I would like Senator [name] to call the White House and the U.S. State Department to urge the Clinton Administration to withdraw immediately from MAI negotiations. The agreement does not serve the best interests of Americans and must be abandoned."

At the State Department, your Senators should contact Secretary of State Madeleine Albright or call Alan Larson, Assistant Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs.

Here are some talking points:

* The MAI undermines state and local sovereignty. Foreign corporations could protect their rights under the MAI by suing our government before an international tribunal. State and local governments would not even be able to represent themselves before the tribunal.

* The MAI would protect foreign corporations but lacks any protection in the core agreement for the environment, workers and human rights.

Note: We are concentrating on the Senate because the Administration is talking about calling this agreement a treaty which means it will only go to the Senate for a vote. They don't want to risk another fast track-style defeat.

* EXTRA CREDIT! *

Contact a US MAI negotiator directly! Call Jeffrey Lang this week before he leaves for Paris. Tell him you want the US to withdraw from MAI negotiations immediately. Jeffrey Lang, Deputy Trade Representative at the USTR phone: (202)395-5114; fax: (202)395-4549; <jlang@ustr.gov>

PASS ON THIS ACTION ALERT TO FELLOW ACTIVISTS IN YOUR AREA

For more information, contact Ruth Caplan <rcaplan@igc.org> or Dave Lewit <dlewit@igc.org>

Editorial Comment: And lest you think that only the USA is organizing around this issue:



In behalf of its co-convenors, the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Peasant Movement of the Philippines or KMP) is pleased to invite your organization to the First Conference of the Peoples' Global Action against "Free" Trade and the World Trade Organization (or PGA) on February 18-26, 1998 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The first conference of the PGA will lay down the basis of the alliance in the form of a manifesto (see enclosed brochure) and discuss specific courses of action, including the coordination of decentralized protest actions all over the world parallel to the Second Ministerial Conference of the WTO scheduled on May 18-20, 1998.

Peoples' Global Action Secretariat
c/o Peasant Movement of the Philippines (KMP)
69 Maayusin corner Malambing Streets, UP Village 1101
Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines
Telephone/fax nos. (632)920-5668; (632)435-3192; (632)434-3836
E-mail: kmp@info.com.ph; pampil@skyinet.net

Then visit the web page of the PGA at http://www.agp.org or send a message to playfair@asta.rwth-aachen.de with the sentence "PGA bulletin #0" in the subject line, and we will send you the whole bulletin.

For full platform, please contact PFE!
Aachen, Turmstr. 3, 52072 Aachen, Germany; tel. +49-241-80.37.92, fax +49-241-88.88.394, e-mail <playfair@asta.rwth-aachen.de>.

Editorial Comment: A comprehensive list of Web references to the Multilateral Agreement on Investments is available at http://www.progress.org/mai.htm

And Ralph Cole, organizer, Justicevision, (213) 747-6345, , has a number of videos on MAI and related issues available for sale cheap.

Table of Contents




Democracy Teach-In

Editorial Comment: I have been watching this event build for the last year or so via the related listserv. Here's their intro info.



Democracy Teach-Ins: March 1-7 - Your Campus! Your Town!
May Day of Action: May 1 - End Corporate Dominance - Your Town!

The Democracy Teach-In Listserv

To get in the loop re: the ongoing organizing for the Democracy Teach-In, all you need to to do is subscribe to our listserv. Currently there are several hundred students, educators, and community activists across North America participating in this listserv, and message load varies from light to heavy, depending on subject matter and time of year. To subscribe, send the following message:

to: listproc@envirolink.org
from:
subject:
-----------------------------------------------
subscribe corporations <>

CONTACT INFORMATION

Amanda Atwood Stanford kinex@leland.standford.edu
Frank Gorke Harvard gorke@fas.harvard.edu
Miranda Worthen Harvard mworthen@fas.harvard.edu
Ben Tucker UNew Mexico btucker@unm.edu
Robert Miranda UW-Milwalkee lalucha@csd.uwm.edu
Robin Sinton Western Conn. Robins1021@aol.com
Kelly Traister Western Conn. ktrai@aol.com
Bill Medaille UTexas medaille@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
Ben Manski UW-Madison brmanski@students.wisc.edu
Erin Clare Quinn UW-Madison ecquinn@students.wisc.edu
Todd Price UW-Madison taprice@students.wisc.edu
Amy S. Mondloch UW-StevensPoint amond932@uwsp.edu
Emmanuel Ortiz UMinnisota pso@gold.tc.umn.edu
Jen Udelhofen UMinnisota Pso@gold.tc.umn.edu
Brady Russell Cornell bdr7@cornell.edu
Marti Garza Center for Campus Org. tepeyotl@hotmail.com
Nikki Morse UMass-Amherst namorse@student.umass.edu
Esak Garcia Yale esak.garcia@yale.edu

http://corporations.org/democracy

Editorial Comment: I know that Harvard is planning something. Contact the email addresses above to find out what it is.

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International Actions

Editorial Comment: A SEED Europe publishes a list of upcoming events around the issues of globalization. Interesting reading.



From January 1 to June 30 Great Britain will hold the presidency of the European Union. Informal and formal meetings of ministers and heads of state are planned throughout the year. Various topics will be discussed, most of which are directly related to ensuring the Single Market, the European Monetary Union and the expansion of the Union towards the East.

Important events:
* Single Market Meeting (EcoFin) - Cambridge February 13-15
* Agenda 2000 Meeting (EU expansion) - London February 25
* Trade Negotiations EU-Mexico start - UK March 1
* Negotiations new EU members start - UK March 31
* EU Heads of State Summit - Cardiff June 14-16
HOT SPRING 98 Action Contact: Reclaim Europe!:
europ@globalnet.co.uk, europ@astra.global.net.uk

In April, IMF and World Bank will have their (regular) Spring meeting in Washington DC. The two institutions are crucial in the globalisation process. Through their Structural Adjustment Programmes, imposed on all countires that seek credit from them, they force countires to liberalise their economies and open the door for foreign investment. The Spring meeting will, among other things, seek further funds for the IMF to deal with crises such as now happening in Southeast Asia.

Event: IMF/Worldbank Spring Meeting - Washington April 17-19
HOT SPRING 98 Action Contact: Roberta Cowan (ifi@foeint.antenna.nl )

Eurosatory is an annnual arms trade fair which promotes and furthers the arms trade and inter-governmental solidarity in political oppression and genocide.

Event: Eurosatory ArmsFair - Paris June 1-3
HOT SPRING 98 Action Contact: ENAAT (European Network Against Arms Trade): contact via eco-action.ef.mala@wanadoo.fr

For general A SEED Europe mail, reply to: aseedeur@antenna.nl
For personal mail, reply to: jfrijns@antenna.nl
Gerbrand Oudenaarden New Media Productions
tel. 030-2933460, fax: 030-2965729, gsm: 06-53151921
http://www.oudenaarden.nl gerbrand@oudenaarden.nl

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A SEED Europe, PO Box 92066, 1090 AB Amsterdam, Netherlands tel: 31-20-668-2236 fax: 31-20-665-0166 email: aseedeur@antenna.nl WWW: http://www.antenna.nl/aseed/

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Global Street Party

Editorial Comment: I saw this once through the Corporations listserv and also from John Andrews (Andrews_John@atc.ll.mit.edu) of the Environmental Roundtable. Now this sounds like a political action that is worth some planning.



GLOBAL STREET PARTY!
Saturday 16th May 1998

Since its first appearance in London in 1995, the street party has been erupting across the world with its collision of love and rage, carnival and revolution, politics and party. From Leeds to Sydney, Amsterdam to Edinburgh, Berlin to Israel, thousands of people have banished the car, danced defiantly, transformed private space and created their own extraordinary local festivals of resistance.

GLOBAL STREET PARTY?
There is now growing energy for the idea of an international day of Street Parties, with different groups across the world holding events simultaneously. Spring is on the way (in the Northern Hemisphere anyway!); 1998 will be a busy year for world leaders and corporate vampires in their ceaseless drive for profit. So let's make it a year they'll never forget: a proposal has come from London and Finland to hold a Global Street Party on Saturday 16th May. How about it?

GLOBAL CAPITALISM?
This date coincides with the 1998 G8 meeting in Birmingham (UK), where world leaders of the 8 largest economies meet to make decisions about the future of the planet and its peoples. They will then all fly to Geneva to celebrate the 50th anniversary of GATT. There they will sign more agreements which enable them to wrench ever more power and control away from local communities and siphon it into the self-appointed dictatorship that is the World Trade Organization.

GLOBAL RESISTANCE?
People everywhere are rebelling against these global forces, and mid-May will see countless world-wide protests. As part of this, a Global Street Party has the potential to be a defining moment of resistance. Imagine the kick of taking back your street in the knowledge that all over the world similar acts of defiance are taking place?imagine a web of resurgence/defiance reaching across the world on May 16th and beyond.

GLOBAL CAPITALISM: GLOBAL RESISTANCE!
Let us know what you think: the more groups that climb on board the greater the momentum will be. Time is short, so please try to get responses back to us by the 5th February if you can. We'll act as a point of reference for the moment and bounce ideas back to those who register their interest.

Thanks a lot? London Reclaim The Streets

Reclaim the Streets PO BOX 9656 London N4 4JY 0171 281 4621
<rts@gn.apc.org> http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/campaigns/rts.html

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The Begging Bowl

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