<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>Dear Parminder, see below<br><br><div>-- </div><div>Regards,</div><div> </div><div>Nick </div><div><br></div><div>
Sent from my one of my handheld thingies, please excuse typos. If you want to schedule some time to talk, try this: <a href="http://meetme.so/nashton">http://meetme.so/nashton</a></div></div><div><br>On 13 Mar 2013, at 06:19, parminder <<a href="mailto:parminder@itforchange.net">parminder@itforchange.net</a>> wrote:<br>
<br></div><div>I've snipped the rest to focus on this point, which seems (to me, clearly others may see things differently) the most significant of your post.</div><div><br></div><div>Let's accept for the moment that what you say is a true statement. Why would you see treaty-making as likely to counter these impacts, given the scenario you posit? In fact, a treaty, in this case, would be likely to cast in stone the very inequalities and dangers that you see.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Treaty-making, in my 20+ years of experience, is largely a codification of existing practice, not an evolution to create a new global situation: governments are simply unwilling to do much that changes their existing legal system profoundly excepting very rarely and then only because of a massive external threat or stress - which the negotiation is designed to deal with. </div>
<div><br></div><blockquote type="cite">What is happening at the larger social-structural level, and which I
consider as the greatest threat to democracy, is a clear move from
public governance, based on social contract, to private governance,
based on private, interest-based, contracts. And the shift is rather
systemic. It is obviously strongly supported, in fact instigated, by
global capital which finds the biggest challenge to its domination
of all aspects of our lives in the universal values of equity,
fraternity and solidarity, that underlie public governance systems.</blockquote></body></html>