Morocco
Thursday, December 29, 1999
Every country we visit has a different keyboard which slows typing down a lot. But every country has an internet café which suggests a new world order. The world wide web now integrates the world more than any other media or ideology so far in history. While in Marrakech I came across the following excerpts in articles about the Seattle protests against globalization. In port, world news was so easily accessible through the Internet.
As the New York Times foreign affairs correspondant Tom Friedman writes about this new world order in reference to the recent Seattle protests:
"Is there anything more ridiculous in the news today than the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle? I doubt it. "These anti-W.T.O. protesters -- who are a Noah's ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions and yuppies looking for their 1960's fix -- are protesting against the wrong target with the wrong tools. Here's why: "What unites the anti-W.T.O. crowd is their realization that we now live in a world without walls. The cold-war system we just emerged from was built around division and walls; the globalization system that we are now in is built around integration and webs. In this new system, jobs, cultures, environmental problems and labor standards can much more easily flow back and forth.
"The ridiculous thing about the protesters is that they find fault with this, and blame the W.T.O. The W.T.O. is not the cause of this world without walls, it's the effect. The more countries trade with one another, the more they need an institution to set the basic rules of trade, and that is all the W.T.O. does. "Rules are a substitute for walls -- when you don't have walls you need more rules," notes the Council on Foreign Relations expert Michael Mandelbaum."
In a separate article a week later, Friedman adds
"What the serious protesters got right: My environmentalist allies say my criticism of the protesters in Seattle was too broad-brush. There were some serious groups there raising serious points, particularly the notion that the W.T.O. has no need or right to be so secretive. If it is deciding that a U.S. law banning tuna caught in nets that also catch dolphins is a trade barrier, the W.T.O. should at least allow environmentalists to file a brief or meet with judges. The W.T.O. can't promote open trade by ruling in the dark. It would enhance its own legitimacy if it opened up.
"What the protesters got wrong: The biggest negative fallout from Seattle is the way it smeared free trade. I fear that politicians all over America will look at Seattle and say, "Wow, if that's what you get when you support free trade, I'm hiding.""
So world culture via the internet is here in the form of the internet and those who can purchase computers and WWW service. Not many of the people I have seen from Viet Nam onward can purchase these machines and it's mostly young men and some young women who are running and using the cafés. But this will change. Much of the world now has TVs or want them. Cafés get from between 2 and 10 dollars per hour which is around the cost of a movie. It adds up. As in many businesses, location is one ingredient to success.
Friedman continues in the first article (12/1/99) about the new role of the internet in this changing world.
"What's crazy is that the protesters want the W.T.O. to become precisely what they accuse it of already being -- a global government. They want it to set more rules -- their rules, which would impose our labor and environmental standards on everyone else. I'm for such higher standards, and over time the W.T.O. may be a vehicle to enforce them, but it's not the main vehicle to achieve them. And they are certainly not going to be achieved by putting up new trade walls.
"Every country and company that has improved its labor, legal and environmental standards has done so because of more global trade, more integration, more Internet -- not less. These are the best tools we have for improving global governance.
"Who is one of the top environmental advisers to DuPont today? Paul Gilding, the former head of Greenpeace! How could that be? A DuPont official told me that in the old days, if DuPont wanted to put a chemical factory in a city, it knew it just had to persuade the local neighbors."Now we have six billion neighbors," said the DuPont official -- meaning that DuPont knows that in a world without walls if it wants to put up a chemical plant in a country, every environmentalist is watching. And if that factory makes even a tiny spill those environmentalists will put it on the World Wide Web and soil DuPont's name from one end of the earth to the other.
"I recently visited a Victoria's Secret garment factory in Sri Lanka that, in terms of conditions, I would let my own daughters work in. Why does it have such a high standard? Because anti-sweatshop activists have started to mobilize enough consumers to impress Victoria's Secret that if it doesn't get its shop standards up, consumers won't buy its goods. Sri Lanka is about to pass new copyright laws, which Sri Lankan software writers have been seeking for years to protect their own innovations. Why the new law now? Because Microsoft told Sri Lanka it wouldn't sell its products in a country with such weak intellectual property laws.
"Hey, I want to save Flipper too. It's a question of how. If the protesters in Seattle stopped yapping, they would realize that they have been duped by knaves like Pat Buchanan -- duped into thinking that power lies with the W.T.O. It doesn't. There's never going to be a global government to impose the rules the protesters want. But there can be better global governance -- on the environment, intellectual property and labor. You achieve that not by adopting 1960's tactics in a Web-based world -- not by blocking trade, choking globalization or getting the W.T.O. to put up more walls. That's a fool's errand.
"You make a difference today by using globalization -- by mobilizing the power of trade, the power of the Internet and the power of consumers to persuade, or embarrass, global corporations and nations to upgrade their standards. You change the world when you get the big players to do the right things for the wrong reasons. But that takes hard work -- coalition-building with companies and consumers, and follow-up. It's not as much fun as a circus in Seattle."
It's interesting to speculate how many Moroccans, or Italians or Dubrovnikers or Turks, Indians, Malays, Viet Namese or Cambodians or Americans, for that matter, are aware of these issues. How will we benefit from this change? For the most part, I think folks enjoy email and a few other aspects of the internet. There's so much more to come.
I've enjoyed seeing Marrakesh. The Marrakesh museum and the Saadien tombs were particularly nice. The tannery was also interesting. Exquisite tile, cedar and plaster work, especially in the ceilings. As in many of the countries we have visited, Moroccans are also poor but the sell is not too hard here. Sellers don't come up too frequently and they leave you alone pretty quickly. Bargaining, if one can see the fun in it, can bring nice treasures. Two different shopkeepers have called me a Berber so far because I strike a hard bargain. But although I think I've done better than many tourists, I don't feel entirely satisfied because I have no dollar reference points here. There aren't any fixed prices.
This is a land with a turbulent and violent history. Spain to the north and the Sahara and much of Africa to the south have created a country which has prospered at times and then been overrun. It has been part of the Muslim world for a long time and its still very Arab in thinking. Waiters, cab drivers, and carpet sellers put a flourish into their actions of putting a dish down, opening a car door, or unfurling a carpet.
The current king is western oriented. Attracting foreign investment capital is a priority but the country lacks a lot of infrastructure which the United States and the rest of the developed world take for granted. Potash is the only major natural resources. France's influence is still seen in the language of the universities. All Moroccans must change from Arabic in high school to French at the University which has the effect of selecting against many students. Of course English and the Internet will be useful tools in the future which adds to the learning curve.
Heart disease and cancer aren't the big killers here. Car accidents are. Stealthy theft is the worry for tourists; tourists don't have to worry about outright or confrontational theft here.
Marrakesh buildings are a beautiful color of red and 14 kilometers of reddish walls surround the city. The city is made up of hidden, maze like alleyways with busy craftsman everywhere. Many people still wear the Jalaba, a robe with a pointed hood, wear beards and look like gnomes. Marrakesh was also a favorite destination of travellers in the 1960s and although, as Tom Friedman points out, times have changed a lot, there's still an element of freedom seeking in the travellers here.
Friday, December 12, 1999
Yesterday after returning to Casablanca from Marrakesh, I stayed on the ship then took the train today to Fez. Faux guides, young people who want to show you the town for a fee, are a big headache and driving me little crazy. The sell is harder than I thought. We leave on Sunday.
Off to the Medina (old city with market) of Fez. Labes (a Moroccan greeting meaning "no evil.")