Moana Nui Speakers Say APEC is 'Colonization Today in Real Time' By Jon Letman 11/02/2011 Next week, as Honolulu

is engulfed in a veritable sea of APEC delegates, corporate executives, CEOs, finance ministers, international media and the heads of state of the 21 member economies, a different international gathering called Moana Nui will take place (Nov 9-11) in which experts, activists, academics and thinkers from around the Asia Pacific will gather to discuss an alternative to the APEC model. In this first of three articles examining just a few of the more than 30 participating Moana Nui speakers, two leading voices explain why they are highly critical about APEC and associated free trade agreements (FTAs). Victor Menotti is executive director of the International Forum of Globalization (IFG), a San Francisco-based North-South research and educational institution that provides analysis and critiques of economic globalization. He is critical of the policies and practices of APEC, arguing that they are damaging to indigenous and traditional communities, fragile ecosystems and the resources within, and the environment as a whole. 'Corporate Rape and Pillage' He pulls no punches: APEC is a corporate agenda. Its about the industrial economy with policies that read as if theyre straight out of the WTO rule book. This is trade liberalization and getting governments, which are supposed to express the peoples will, out of the way of economic freedom which is code for corporate rule. This is corporate rape and pillage, Menotti says. He calls APEC primarily a business forum and its economic collaboration with a particular role for government, adding, Its what weve seen since the Washington Consensus onwards. Menotti is not singling out APEC. He says the IMF (International Monetary Fund), the WTO (World Trade Organization) and similar bodies claim to pursue economic integration but the results are a disintegration of cultures, ecosystems, societies and social safety nets. In more blunt terms, he calls APEC colonization today in real time. APEC may claim it pursues the goals of peace and prosperity but, according to Menotti, it has the opposite effect. Can APEC Do Anything Right? Menotti concedes that an international exchange of ideas and best practices in critical areas like climate change adaptation and global empowerment of women are a positive aspect of APEC. Certainly the things APEC is doing with policy makers, practitioners and exchanging ideas on best practices for climate change and adaptation and coastal planning is great. Democratic movements need their governments to cooperate and we need international exchanges in fora. Asked if APEC can do any good, Menotti says, Yes. The more it allows a democratic space to happen and the peoples priorities to come forward... But what we see happen is a corporate agenda. Ultimately, however, he says APECs goals place the industrial economy, buoyed by global free trade, increased consumption and materialism as a top priority at the expense of all non-corporate controlled bodies. Such goals, Menotti argues, are destructive and unsustainable. Joining Menotti at Moana Nui to discuss APEC and associated free trade legislation is professor Jane Kelsey, an associate dean at New Zealands University of Auckland school of law. Specializing in international trade negotiations and their impacts on social justice, she edited and co-authored No Ordinary Deal: Unmasking the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement. Writing by email from New Zealand, Kelsey says it is important to expose and resist what is being done under free trade and investment negotiations, in particular the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement currently being negotiated between the United States and eight other APEC members. Last week Japanese prime minister Yoshihiko Noda announced Japan will declare its intention to join TPP despite strong opposition from farmers. The ultimate objective for TPP, Kelsey says, is to form a free trade area across all APEC countries and potentially beyond APEC, most notably India. The motivation for this, she says, is to counter Chinas growing influence in the region and ensure the adoption of the Anglo-American style, market-driven model.

Kelsey says completion of the TPP agreement could potentially impose constraints on regulatory freedoms over non-commodity sectors like public health, consumer rights, state-owned public services, finance and agriculture. Kelsey, who has been following APEC since 1994, describes it as advancing the failed model of global free markets. One important distinction, often overlooked, she says, is that APEC member countries are described as economies. This is in part to accommodate the political sensitivities of an association that includes China, Hong Kong and Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) as three separate entities but Kelsey argues that viewing APEC members as economies excludes non-economic considerations like social well-being, indigenous rights, culture, the environment, workers and gender rights, except as they fit into the neo-liberal free market model. Aging Politicians Enjoying Cocktails APEC has just one voice, Kelsey says, the voice of big business. APECs relevance today, she says, is to serve as an incubator for policies and a legal framework that are imported to free trade agreements like the TPP and recently passed agreements between the U.S. and Colombia, Panama and South Korea. Its other relevance, she says, is as a place for trade ministers and political leaders to seek political deals, jump-start stalled negotiations, sign agreements and partake in a telegenic photo ops dressed in matching ponchos, bomber jackets, batik or (could this year be anything else?) aloha shirts. As early as the 1990s, Kelsey says, APEC was discredited to the point that it was jokingly referred to as Aging Politicians Enjoying Cocktails.

Moana Nui Speaker Challenges People to Examine APEC More Closely By Jon Letman 11/03/2011 Ask Christine Ahn, executive director of the Korea Policy Institute, and shell tell you: APEC is bad for workers, bad for economies, bad for the environment. If that wasnt enough, Ahn says APEC supports a military structure which increases tension and the likelihood of confrontation, causing instability and insecurity in the Asia-Pacific region. Referring to a 2008 report on global trends by the office of the Director of National Intelligence and National Intelligence Council, Ahn notes the U.S. governments own recognition that increasing global resource scarcity will continue to fuel conflicts. Its ironic, Ahn says, that the government doesnt recognize that by promoting what she calls the destabilizing, deregulating and destructive economic policies from institutions like APEC and the WTO (World Trade Organization), that it is actually causing greater scarcity. According to Ahn, the Korea-U.S. FTA recently approved by Congress and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) FTA, which is currently being negotiated by the U.S. and eight other APEC economies, are prime examples of APEC agendas that support corporations at the expense of workers, indigenous people, the environment and local economies. Ahn urges people to examine the history of free trade agreements like NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and the recently approved Korea-U.S. free trade agreement. She points to South Korean farmers as examples of people who have been squeezed out of their livelihoods" by WTO [policies]. APEC meetings, attended by 21 heads of state representing some of the worlds largest economies and top corporate heads, are exclusionary and unrepresentative of the true interests of the people of the Asia-Pacific region, Ahn says. I was listening to Hillary Clintons speech [recently] and there was this whole thing about women and the economy. I was mesmerized by what she was saying because she calls the 21st century the age of participation where everybody, irrespective of gender, age and ability can participate. Theres something very enticing about that but at the same time I thought, who is present at these [APEC] meetings? How come members of civil society are not really present? What about workers at the factories that produce profits for all these multi-national corporations that move their industry and capital all around the region? How come those laborers are not present? Free Trade for Who? Contrary to what many are calling a once in a lifetime opportunity and an economic boon for Hawaii, Ahn challenges people to examine APEC more closely and ask themselves how ordinary people are faring today under APEC. Ahn, an expert in Korea policy matters, will be speaking on November 10 at an international forum in Honolulu called Moana Nui that challenges the APEC agenda on many fronts: the environment, indigenous rights, local economies, resource depletion and the military. She says Moana Nui offers the opportunity for the parallel anti-globalization and demilitarization movements to converge, exchange ideas and experiences, and sharpen their analysis and reaction to APEC. If we can bridge these two movements, well have a much sharper analysis of how capitalism and militarism depend and feed upon one another, Ahn says.

She and other academics and activists argue that heavily militarized places like Okinawa, Guam, the Korean Peninsula and Hawaii, all in the APEC sphere, represent a system of governance and control that comes at the expense of the people in those places, without providing real human security. Whose Security? I think this is where we have to ask, whose security? We are allowing security to be defined by retired generals and the military. We dont ask people in the communities in Hawaii who are suffering from Superfund toxic sites caused by the Pacific Fleet, Ahn says. We dont hear from communities in Guam still suffering from bases for decades and we obviously have not been hearing from South Korean communities living around U.S. military bases whether its contamination from Agent Orange or sexual violence. Much of Ahns work at the Korea Policy Institute today focuses on the struggle against a planned naval base on South Koreas Jeju island where she sees strong parallels with Hawaii, Okinawa, and Guam. Jeju is small volcanic island at the southern tip of the Korean peninsula and home to nine UNESCO World Heritage sites. It has a rich natural and cultural history, unrivaled biodiversity and botanical endemism, yet it has been chosen as the future home of a 120-acre naval base (land and sea area). The Korean governments official line is that the base is for the Korean navy to protect sea lanes and defend against the possibility of a North Korean missile attack, but Ahn says she and others have been told point blank by Korean officials that the base is being built under strong pressure by the United States. Despite overwhelming local opposition, the base is planned to port Korean and American war ships with Aegis Missile Defense technology, the same missiles tested at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) on Kauai. The Aegis system can link Aegis home ports in Hawaii, Okinawa, Guam and Australia and eventually Jeju. By speaking at Moana Nui during APEC, Ahn hopes to raise awareness and inspire people to carefully reconsider the impact of APEC, free trade agreements and the ongoing presence of U.S. military bases throughout the region. At a time when we are facing not just economic, but ecological crises, Hawaiians and the people of Hawaii, just as the people of Okinawa, and Guam and Jeju value and treasure their own paradise. Ahn asks, Are these assets going to be preserved for future generations or are they just going to be destroyed?

Moana Nui Speaker Says Hawaii Should Take Its Cue From New Zealand By Jon Letman 11/04/2011 For most people living in Hawaii, Richard Heinbergs message will come as no surprise. In an age of increasingly scarce resources and ever-mounting pressure from a world population which, having just reached 7 billion, is forecast to hit 8 billion by 2025, monumental change is coming our way. Were going to see the collapse of institutions that looked invulnerable for decades. Institutions like major banks, perhaps whole national economies [will fail]. We need something in place as that happens. We need local infrastructure food and transport infrastructure. Heinberg, a senior fellow-in-residence at the Post Carbon Institute, and the author of 10 books with titles like "The End of Growth," "Peak Everything" and "The Partys Over," is one of the best known and respected minds addressing peak oil the understanding that the days of relatively easy to get, inexpensive fossil fuels that have allowed us to build the world we live in today, are over. Heinberg argues that our current economic systems are unsustainable. The notion that we must constantly pursue economic growth and expansion, the very concepts advocated by the WTO (World Trade Organization) and APEC, and associated free trade agreements, are ultimately bad for the earth, Heinberg says. Speaking from his home in northern California, just four days before the first Occupy Wall Street protests began, Heinberg said that the reliance on uninterrupted, inexpensive oil supplies and our dependency on systems of credit for exchange make the globalization of trade highly vulnerable. The take-away from all this is we need to develop more local resilience, more self-sufficiency and a greater ability to provision ourselves within our local ecosystems, Heinberg said.

Human beings have been trading for thousands of years and trade is never going to go away entirely. But the scale and scope of trade we have developed over the past few decades is largely dependent on cheap fossil fuels, satellite communications, container ships and a few key technologies that are highly vulnerable and [will be] increasingly so as time goes on, he says. Heinbergs delivery is blunt, but calm. He speaks in even tones with the reassuring voice of a trusted friend delivering grim news. To base our vision of the future on following the trends of the last few decades, Heinberg insists, is irresponsible and unrealistic. Were playing musical chairs with world resources as we deplete them. The music is stopping and a lot of people are going to find themselves chairless. Is APEC Evil? So if endless economic growth is destructive and international trade is a risky gamble, are the people who navigate the APEC agenda misguided? Are they delusional, or perhaps even evil? Evil is a very loaded word, Heinberg says. Everybody is good in their own eyes and I am sure thats true of these [APEC] folks too. They probably genuinely believe that by increasing global trade they are spreading benefits to everyone. Thats been the idea of economic growth for the past few decades the rising tide lifts all boats eventually. But thats assuming growth can go on forever which is absurd. We need international cooperation, Heinberg says. But the cooperation we need is in different areas from the ones APEC is focusing on. We need international cooperation to protect our ecosystems, protect indigenous cultures and we need international cooperation to share renewable energy technologies. The APEC approach, he says, is not the right one. What we are doing with organizations like APEC is mostly the opposite. We are undermining indigenous cultures through increasing global trade, undermining local ecosystems through resource extraction and preventing access to renewable energy technology through enforcement of intellectual property rights. We need a counter-APEC to do almost exactly the opposite of what is happening now, he says. Could APEC Be a Force For Good? If APEC were to rethink itself and take a different approach, Heinberg says it could be a positive force for international cooperation. But he admits thats very unlikely. They see increasing trade and economic growth as their reason for existence. It would be much better to fold up shop and start over, Heinberg says. To prepare for the coming changes, the soft-spoken Heinberg says people need to talk to one another about their needs, their visions and their abilities. As the entire world faces enormous challenges in the decades ahead, Heinberg says he can imagine Hawaii forging its own path. If Hawaii had a much lower population, it might have an easier transition, but thats not an option. How do you maintain the current population without large scale imports of energy, raw materials and manufactured goods? Thats a tough one. Its going to require a lot of cooperation and ingenuity. Looking at Hawaiis economy, Heinberg says two of the states biggest economic drivers tourism and the military are both dubious pursuits which, regardless of any perceived economic stability they may have provided in the past, are likely to be short-lived from here on out. There might be some short-term benefit [from tourism] but its very fossil fuel dependent... its not the basis for a long-term economy, Heinberg says. Likewise, the huge military presence in Hawaii, Heinberg says, is detrimental to Hawaii. This is not money that is being generated on the basis of any kind of sustainable local development. Its just cash that is being parachuted in from outside. Rather than serve as a military garrison in the middle of the Pacific, Heinberg suggests Hawaii take its cue from New Zealand, which largely stays out of international military posturing. A successful transition in a post-peak oil world, Heinberg says, will require a break from the deep economic disparities of today. The only way a society can make this kind of transition without collapse is to reduce its levels of inequality. That basically means sharing everybodys got to share more.