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G20 Post-Globalisation Initiative G20 counter-summit, 2-6 September |
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Manifesto of Initiative Postglobalisation Counter-Summit for G-20 in St. Petersburg became an opportunity to form a coalition of movements, non-governmental organizations, labour unions and individuals which are brought together not only by the common need to criticize the “Washington consensus” and current global economic order but also by the common will to design new policies and alternative strategies to overcome the current crisis.We term this joint project “Post-globalization Initiative” organizing our efforts on international level without forgetting about all sorts of specific differences that make our search for a viable alternative so complicated but also so exciting.Our international debate will result not only in organizing various meetings, discussions, public events, including the Counter-Summit, publishing books and articles in different languages, but also in developing a long term cooperation aimed at changing international public opinion and dominant trends in expert community, opening a strategic perspective for more democratic, egalitarian and people-centered development in a multi-polar world.
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DECLARATION OF THE G20 COUNTER-SUMMIT St Petersburg 4 September 2013
Social movements and civil society organizations from different parts of the world have met on 3-4 September 2013 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on the eve of the G20 Summit and in a context of the threat by the United States of America (USA) to attack Syria. With the participation of more than 30 international delegates of world social movements, our G20 Counter-Summit, was hosted by the Post-Globalization Initiative.
We voice the vision of peasants and fisherfolks, women and men workers, indigenous communities and people everywhere who say: what we need is system change!
The G20 has not been up to this task, nor even up to the task of durably reforming world capitalism. The G20 is not legitimate, democratic or transparent.
Five years after the financial meltdown, the G20 continues promoting failed neoliberal policies. The cooptation of the so-called emerging economies – such as the BRICS – is obviously not a move away from neoliberal globalization. On the contrary, these countries have also been giving funds to the IMF - $75 billion in 2012 – to continue forcing austerity measures in countries facing deep recession and social crisis.
Therefore, we stand in solidarity to the struggles of the Greek people – and so many others on the European periphery, not to mention the other victims of the IMF – who are suffering the burdens of the incompetent troika recipes. Meanwhile, the banks which created the crisis are profiting from the privatization of public Greek infrastructure.
Nothing much different could be expected from the G20, because it is the expression of the corporate capture of our governments, a process that has been deepened in the last forty years, and especially since the G20 attempted its first band-aids in 2008.
During this period a vast architecture of impunity was built to serve the interests of transnational capital. The global economic architecture includes Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and International Investment Agreements such as Bilateral Investment Treaties, the current international and regional financial regimes, as well as institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and tribunals such as the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
These institutions are responsible for the current crisis and should be deconstructed and rebuilt for the safety of us all. Instead, governments continue to insist on FTAs, such as expressed in the Transpacific Partnership, the Trans-Atlantic Agreement and the WTO Bali Package in the run-up to the Ministerial Summit in December 2013.
This architecture of impunity houses the systematic violations of rights of people and nature by Transnational Corporations, with the complicity of captive states. In the face of these attacks on our rights, affected communities, workers, migrants, women, peasants, indigenous communities and many social movements all over the world are resisting and fighting back. We are mobilizing and building alternatives to the capitalist system. Recent social mobilizations in Turkey, Brazil, Egypt, Colombia, southern Europe and many other places are an expression of the fact that people do not accept the privatization of the public and of the commons.
Government responses to these protests are predictable: widespread repression and criminalization of social movements everywhere. We stand in solidarity with political prisoners and civil society organisations in Russia, as well as the many activists facing repression worldwide.
We want a world where socialization of the vast productive capacity in our world economy is achieved, but through democracy. In contrast, the market as currently constituted privatizes wealth and socializes poverty, repression and ecological destruction. We reaffirm the primacy of human rights and democracy over the rule of the market and finance.
At this moment of extreme danger in the Middle East, we stand united in demanding that outside powers stop adding to the violence in Syria, and we specifically demand that the United States government refrain from its regular tendency to bomb instead of seeking peace. There is no way the threats to escalate violence could possibly improve the situation in Syria. It will only add to the suffering of the Syrian people.
Moreover, bombing Syria will cause further insecurity and violence across the region. We share the world’s opposition to this illegal criminal attack. It is opposition expressed by people and governments all around the world, including the Arab League, UNASUR, several Asian countries, the British Parliament (even), and others. It is a damning indictment of the G20 that these world leaders cannot come together and agree to stop fueling the conflict in Syria.
We equally reject the new world of global surveillance such as PRISM, carried out by the United States National Security Agency and many other powers within the G20. This is a direct violation of the basic human right to privacy and an attempt to create a culture of fear in order to undermine democracy and any expression of opposition to the corporate powers that rule the world today.
The G20 elites will slap each others’ backs as they provide the most trivial reforms to the world financial and monetary system. But this is not a financial crisis; it is a crisis of civilization. The implosion of September 2008 was the expression of an ongoing process. The adverse power balance, in which so many Treasuries and central banks are under the influence of the private banks, meant that governments transferred massive amounts of resources to the speculative oligarchy.
In doing so, financial and macroeconomic indicators artificially improved – but the destruction of fundamental mechanisms of price formation and the expansion of structural insolvency triggered a very acute hegemonic dispute. Even continental Europe has become a new terrain of looting. Unemployment, the dismantling of the welfare state, and widespread privatization are part of the offensive of the neoliberal agenda, in the context of the overwhelming evidence of its doctrinal bankruptcy.
Expressions of these crises include a new wave of unrepayable debt imposed upon consumers and students; more extreme cases of violence again women; volatility of food prices and the endangered food sovereignty of peoples; and the recent strong outflow of capital from poorer to richer economies, leading to enormous currency pressure on Indonesia, Brazil, India and other countries. Vulture funds continue to loot countries in the process of debt write-downs, with their threat to Argentina now requiring our solidarity.
The G20 – a self-selected clique of rich and emerging countries’ regimes that designated themselves as the new steering group for the global economy – wanted us to believe there is no alternative to capitalism. They want us to believe that our broken planet can be saved by more of the same measures. Yet these measures are condemning the world to a vicious and endless cycle of crisis and environmental collapse.
We need a new path for a different and better future. Like nature, our alternatives are diverse and simultaneously happening in various levels: global, national and local. They are directed at various aspects of life to ensure that the majority can live well.
Our governments must instead promote the already existing alternatives that could lead to alternative systems and relations. These alternatives were inspired by the ideals of reclaiming our commons from the control of big business. Activists are building a genuinely green and genuinely sustainable path to development and autonomous management, and especially to the constructive use of the commons. We propose Climate Justice and Food Sovereignty, which require the complete overhaul of systems, of hedonistic lifestyles and of unsustainable ways of production and consumption.
We call people everywhere to join global campaigns, which are building these alternatives, among others:
Global Campaign to Dismantle Corporate Power and Stop Impunity Climate Justice Now!
Mobilizations of social movements for the Bali Week of Action to end the WTO in Indonesia
Global Network for Justice on Global Investment
G20-OWINFS (Our World is Not for Sale) Network
What we need is system change! Signatories:
Global Call to Social Movements and Organizations !
LET'S MOBILIZE TOWARDS THE PEOPLES' COUNTER-SUMMIT ON G20 St-Petersburg, Russia / September 4-5, 2013
SYSTEM CHANGE IS THE ONLY RESPONSE TO THE GLOBAL CRISIS ! Let's build together a Post-Globalization Alternative to NeoLiberalism !
PLEASE CONSIDER SIGNING ON TO THE CALL ! Send your adhesion to serinet.py@gmail.com
IF YOUR ORGANIZATION IS PLANNING TO ATTEND THE COUNTER-SUMMIT Let us know asap at serinet.py@gmail.com
YOUR ORGANIZATION IS MOST WELCOMED TO PARTICIPATE IN THE ORGANIZING PROCESS We're holding periodic International Conference Calls Register at serinet.py@gmail.com
OWINFS G20 Working Group Strategic Priorities are: • Link G20 work in counterweighting B20s global power with the global campaign Dismantle Corporate Power and Stop Impunity • Link G20 work in counterweighting G20s trade and investment policies with the global campaigns for an alternative investment regime • Link G20 work in counterweighting G20s green growth policies with the Global Campaign for Climate Justice • Link G20 work in counterweighting G20s financial policies with the global campaigns for an alternative international financial architecture: IFIs reform and debt cancellation
Visit also the Russian process at www.pglobal.org Don't miss it !
Post-globalization Initiative Call Out Declaration for the G-20 in St. Petersburg The crisis of the neoliberal economic order that began late in 2007 has not been overcome in the years since. It has taken on the form of a shifting catastrophe migrating from one part of the world to another. Controlling the movement of capital, and imposing an economic quarantine in the form of protectionist policies, are the minimal steps needed to struggle against this epidemic. But putting these measures into practice is blocked by the neoliberal ideology, hegemonic on a global level, and by the demands of international institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the G-20.
During the years of crisis the relationship of forces within the world economy has gradually changed, and new foci of resistance have appeared. Asian markets have become more attractive than European ones, and the BRICS countries have come to be seen as a potential locomotive of world growth. The imperial hegemony of the US is increasingly in doubt, as is the ability of the leading Western powers to effectively control the processes occurring in the world. In the old industrial countries, falling wages and reduced social welfare provisions have sharpened class antagonisms. The Arab Spring has shown that the old mechanisms of rule no longer work. Whole regions of the globe are searching for a new model of development, and people are rising in struggle, defending their dignity and their right to independent development.
Paradoxically, the crisis of the system has also revealed the weaknesses of its critics, who during the years since have shown themselves again and again to be unprepared to formulate radical but concrete and practical alternatives, or to set forward a clear and realizable strategy, a plan of action to transform the situation. The crisis requires that we develop specific strategies for escaping from the dead-end of neoliberalism.
Many societies do not simply need changes aimed at improving the lives of the majority of the population, but are also having to deal with the consequences of long-term regression. Before them is the task not just of constructing new relationships and institutions, but also of rebuilding themselves on the ruins of what was destroyed. The results of the globalization of the years since 1990 cannot and should not be annulled, but the contradictions to which this period gave rise can only be done away with through a fundamental change in the social, economic and ecological order. These changes must be on a global scale, but they will be implemented on a national level. The reason for the present lack of radical breakthroughs is not that it is impossible to achieve anything in a specific country on its own. Every process needs someone to initiate it, and the problem is not in the limited nature of the possibilities. It lies in the lack of clear strategies, in the capitulation of the moderate left before neoliberalism and the free market, and also in the unpreparedness of radical movements to think and act in a practical fashion, responding to the specific needs articulated by society.
The issue here is above all that of formulating the principles of a new welfare state, oriented not toward increasing consumption but toward aiding social reproduction, and implementing practical solidarity on the institutional level. We need to pose afresh the question of public property, of the possibilities of expanding it, of the areas where this might be done and of the limits that might apply. We need to explore effective, modern forms of nationalization. Once again we need to consider the rights of workers and trade unions in relation to production, the rights of peasants/farmers in relation of land and agriculture, to ask how we can unleash a new industrialization in the developed countries while taking account of the environmental, social and cultural needs of society, including overcoming gender inequality, racism and oppression of migrant workers. We need to discuss questions of energy policy, reforms to the financial system, controls on the movement of capital and methods for combating offshore operations. We need not just to criticize the WTO or the IMF, but also to suggest an alternative strategy for economic integration and inter-state cooperation, including on a regional level.
As in the past, critical discussion of global questions remains tied to the calendar of events of the world elites, and we are unlikely to succeed in changing this in the near future. Since 2008 leaders of 20 economically most powerful countries regularly meet in different places around the world to discuss overcoming global economic crisis. There have been summits organized in London, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Seoul, Cannes, and Los Cabos, Mexico. And each time these meetings are accompanied by alternative or counter-summits, organized by social movements and civil society groups. The counter-summit in St. Petersburg will be the 7th and we hope that this will be an opportunity to move forward, develop and concretize the agenda of social change.
It is specifically important to stress the importance of democratic self-organization of the counter-summit process and for that reason reject the attempts to manipulate and control its preparation in a top-down way represented by the formation of Civil 20, a group openly declaring its affiliation with the organization of official Summit and promoting Big Business agenda.
We hope to use both the meeting of the G-20 in St Petersburg in September 2013, and also the BRICS process, to develop and put forward our own solutions to the questions which the neoliberal system is unable to resolve. The meetings and actions organized in this context must be combined into a single process which we term the Post-Globalization Initiative. We hope that the 2013 St Petersburg Counter-Summit will figure not simply as the latest forum for criticism of the system, but also a setting for the development of specific programs and strategies aimed at finding a way out of the crisis.
Over the past few years the neoliberal elites have shown their incapacity to come up with a viable anti-crisis strategy. The time has come for other forces supporters of the welfare state, grass-roots and left organizations to present their alternative. If this alternative is concrete and realistic, it will succeed in mobilizing society. The slogan power to the millions, not the millionaires will then be embodied in practical change.
List of initial signatories: Regional / International Networks: Focus on the Global South (Asia: Thailand, Philippines, India) Food & Water Europe /Hemispheric Social Alliance / Alianza Social Continental (Americas) Plataforma Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, Democracia y Desarrollo, PIDHDD (Latin America) Red de educación popular entre mujeres de América latina y el Caribe (REPEM LAC (South America and Caribe) National organizations, networks and movements: Attac France (France), Brazilian Network for Peoples Integration (Brazil) Center for Civil Society (South Africa) FOCO (Argentina) Global Exchange (USA) Navdanya Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology (India) Transnational Institute (Netherlands) Unión Popular Valle Gómez, A.C. (Mexico) Worldview The Gambia, WTG (Gambia)
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