The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is a treaty of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that entered into force in January 1995 as a result of the Uruguay Round negotiations. The treaty was created to extend the multilateral trading system to service sector, in the same way the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) provides such a system for merchandise trade.

All members of the WTO are signatories to the GATS. The basic WTO principle of most favoured nation (MFN) applies to GATS as well. However, upon accession, Members may introduce temporary exemptions to this rule.

Historical background[link]

Before the WTO's Uruguay Round negotiations began in 1986, public services such as health care, postal services, education, etc. were not included in international trade agreements. Most such services have traditionally been classed as domestic activities and difficult to trade across borders, notwithstanding the fact that educational services for example have been "exported" for as long as universities have been open to international students. Foreign participation in domestic services existed in many countries prior to GATS.

Indeed, many service sectors — in particular, international finance and maritime transport—have been largely open for centuries as necessary components of merchandise trade. Other large sectors have undergone fundamental technical and regulatory changes in recent decades, opening them to private commercial participation and reducing barriers to entry. The development of information technologies and the Internet have expanded the range of internationally tradeable service products to include a range of commercial activities such as medicine, distance learning, engineering, architecture, advertising and freight forwarding.

While the overall goal of GATS is to remove barriers to trade, members are free to choose which sectors are to be progressively "liberalised", i.e. marketised and privatised, which mode of supply would apply to a particular sector, and to what extent liberalisation will occur over a given period of time. Members' commitments are governed by a "ratchet effect", meaning that commitments are one-way and are not to be wound back once entered into. This reason for this rule is to create a stable trading climate. However, Article XXI does allow Members to withdraw commitments, and so far two members have exercised this option (USA and EU). In November 2008, Bolivia notified that it will withdraw its health services commitments.

Some activist groups consider that GATS risks undermining the ability and authority of governments to regulate commercial activities within their own boundaries, with the effect of ceding power to business interests ahead of the interests of citizens. The concerns of these groups would seem to be borne out by the facts: witness the example of the UK and the now-rapid privatisation of all public services — health care, police, education — following the earlier privatisation of telecoms, railways, air traffic control, and so on In 2003 the GATSwatch network published a critical statement which was supported by over 500 organisations in 60 countries.^[1]

Four Modes of Supply[link]

The GATS agreement covers four modes of supply for the delivery of services in cross-border trade:

Sectors addressed[link]

Services Sector Classifications addressed in the GATS are defined in the so-called "W/120 list",^[2] which provides a list of all sectors which can be negotiated under the GATS. The title refers to the name of the official WTO document, MTN.GNS/W/120.

Criticisms[link]

The GATS agreement has been criticized for tending to substitute the authority of national legislation and judiciary with that of a GATS Disputes Panel conducting closed hearings. WTO member-government spokespersons are obliged to dismiss such criticism because of prior commitment to perceived benefits of prevailing commercial principles of competition and 'liberalisation'.

While national governments have the option to exclude any specific service from liberalisation under GATS, they are also under pressure from international business interests to refrain from excluding any service "provided on a commercial basis". Important public utilities such as water and electricity most commonly involve purchase by consumers and are thus demonstrably "provided on a commercial basis". The same may be said of many health and education services which are sought to be 'exported' by some countries as profitable industries.^[3]

This definition defines virtually any public service as being "provided on a commercial basis" and is already extending into such areas as police, the military, prisons, the justice system, public administration, and government. Over a fairly short time perspective, this could open up for the privatisation or marketisation of large parts, and possibly all, of what today are considered public services currently available for the whole population of a country as a social entitlement, to be restructured, marketised, contracted out to for-profit providers, and eventually fully privatised and available only to those who can pay for them. This process is currently far advanced in most countries, usually (and intentionally) without properly informing or consulting the public as to whether or not this is what they desire.

See also[link]

• European Services Forum
• Foreign Affiliate Trade Statistics
• Trade in Services
• Trade in Services Statistics
• World Development Movement
• World Trade Organization

References[link]

1. ^ GATSwatch, 2003
2. ^ Takuzinis.lv
3. ^ For example, in 2003 the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia urged the government of Canada to specify exclusion of post-secondary education, saying in a submission

   If GATS were applied to the Canadian education sector, the effects would be profound. Education would no longer be considered a public service; instead it would be categorized as merely another commercial enterprise.

   Source: Background Paper on GATS and Post-secondary Education

Further reading[link]

• Text of the General Agreement on Trade in Services wto.org
• Clift, R. Background Paper on the General Agreement on Trade in Services and Post-Secondary Education in Canada, cufa.bc.ca
• GATS, Privatisation, and Health
• World Development Movement
• Union Network International

Trade in Services refers to the sale and delivery of an intangible product, called a service, between a producer and consumer. Trade in services takes place between a producer and consumer that are, in legal terms, based in different countries, or economies, this is called International Trade in Services.

International trade in services is defined by the Four Modes of Supply of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

• (Mode 1) Cross border trade, which is defined as delivery of a service from the territory of one country into the territory of other country;
• (Mode 2) Consumption abroad - this mode covers supply of a service of one country to the service consumer of any other country;
• (Mode 3) Commercial presence - which covers services provided by a service supplier of one country in the territory of any other country, and
• (Mode 4) Presence of natural persons - which covers services provided by a service supplier of one country through the presence of natural persons in the territory of any other country.

A "Natural person" is a human being, as distinct from legal persons such as companies or organisations. Countries can freely decide where to liberalize on a sector-by-sector basis, including which specific mode of supply they want to cover for a given sector.

The tourism sector, the financial services sector and the telecommunications services sector are examples of services sectors.

During the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the General Agreement on Trade in Services was drafted, and became enshrined as one of the four pillars of the international treaty comprising the World Trade Organization Agreement in 1995.

Regional trade in services agreements are also negotiated and signed between regional economic groupings such as CARICOM, North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and ASEAN.

Some examples of trade in service would be: banking, check-ups done by a doctor and IT (information technology).

References[link]

• Department for International Development, Background Briefing - Service and Developing Countries, March 2003. http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/tradebrief-services.pdf
• The World Trade Organisation, The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS): objectives, coverage and disciplines, http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/gatsqa_e.htm Last accessed 13 February 2005.
• WTO Secretariat, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE GATS, http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/gsintr_e.doc 13 February 2005.

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The Crisis

First Issue of The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races, November 1910. New York: NAACP, 1910
Editor	W.E.B. Du Bois
Staff writers	Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, W.S. Braithwaite, M. D. Maclean
Monthly[1]
Publisher	NAACP
First issue	November 1910 (1910-November)
Company	The Crisis Publishing Company
Country	United States
Based in	New York, NY
Language	English
Website	www.thecrisismagazine.com
ISSN	1559-1573

The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois (editor), Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, W.S. Braithwaite, M. D. Maclean.^[2]

The original title of the journal was The Crisis: A Record of The Darker Races. From 1997 to 2003, it appeared as The New Crisis: The Magazine of Opportunities and Ideas, but the title has since reverted to The Crisis. The title derives from the poem "The Present Crisis" by James Russell Lowell.^[1] Published monthly, by 1920 its circulation had reached 100,000 copies. Du Bois proclaimed his intentions in his first editorial:

The object of this publication is to set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people. It takes its name from the fact that the editors believe that this is a critical time in the history of the advancement of men. …Finally, its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy, and for reasonable but earnest and persistent attempts to gain these rights and realize these ideals.^[3]

Predominantly a current-affairs journal, The Crisis also included poems, reviews, and essays on culture and history. Du Bois' initial position as editor was in line with the NAACP's liberal programme of social reform and racial equality, but by the 1930s Du Bois was advocating a form of black separatism. This led to disputes between Du Bois and the NAACP resulting in his resignation as editor in 1934. He was replaced by Roy Wilkins.

Although The Crisis was officially an organ of the NAACP, Du Bois had a large degree of control over the periodicals expressed opinion. Du Bois wrote in Dusk of Dawn that he intended for The Crisis to represent his personal opinions:

I determine to make the opinion of the Crisis a personal opinion; because, as I argued, no organization can express definite and clear cut opinions… the Crisis would state openly the opinion of its editor, so long, of course, as that opinion was in general agreement with that of the organization.

Du Bois contends that the periodical suffered during the Great Depression as the "circulation dropped steadily until by 1933 it was scarcely more than ten thousand paid subscriptions." Du Bois left the magazine for both financial and ideological reasons.

Throughout the Du Bois years The Crisis published the work of many young African American writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Its greatest era as a literary journal was between 1919 and 1926, when Jessie Redmon Fauset was literary editor. Fauset encouraged such writers as Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Jean Toomer.

Following the departure of Fauset and Du Bois, the influence of The Crisis declined. The magazine was unable to sustain the high literary standards it had achieved under Fauset, but it continued to have a powerful political voice.

References[link]

A 1911 copy of The Crisis depicting "Ra-Maat-Neb, one of the black kings of the Upper Nile", a copy of the relief of Nebmaatre I on Meroe pyramid 17.

Du Bois, WEB (1940), Dusk of Dawn, Library of America, ISBN [[Special:BookSources/97809400450332|97809400450332]] .

Partington, Paul, The Moon Illustrated Weekly: Black America's First Weekly Magazine, ISBN 978-0-9602538-2-1 .

External links[link]

• The Crisis, http://www.thecrisismagazine.com/ .
• History, NAACP, http://www.naacp.org/about/history/ .
• The Crisis, Footnote, January 1918, http://www.footnote.com/browsemore/179488128_Boom%20and%20Bust:%201920-1935/ .
• The Crisis, Books, Google, http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks%3A1&tbo=1&q=The+Crisis+Magazine&btnG=Search+Books#q=The+Crisis+Magazine&hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks:1,bkt:m&source=lnt&sa=X&ei=TrrMTILMLJG4sQPMn9CPDg&ved=0CBMQpwU&fp=fd2e97bdff999388 .
• The Crisis, 1, 10–23, The Modernist Journals Project, Nov. 1910 – Apr. 1911, May 1915 – Apr. 1922, http://www.modjourn.org/render.php?view=mjp_object&id=crisiscollection .

William Norman Grigg (born February 4, 1963) is the author of several books from a Constitutionalist perspective. He was formerly a senior editor of The New American magazine, the official publication of the John Birch Society..

Biography[link]

Born in Burley, Idaho on February 4, 1963, Grigg graduated from Utah State University, majoring in political science.^[2] He served as Provo Daily Herald columnist and Washington journalist before "seeing the light"^[3] and starting work in 1993 as a correspondent, researcher, and senior editor for The New American, the official biweekly magazine of the John Birch Society (JBS). Based at the JBS's Appleton, Wisconsin, office, Grigg covered United Nations summits and conferences from 1994 to 2001, and wrote Freedom on the Altar (1995), a study of UN family policy.^[2]

Associate Kevin Bearly, a minister and former police officer, conducted JBS summer youth camps in the 1990s at which Grigg and others promoted conservative causes.^[1] Grigg has also spoken frequently on conspiracies and Clinton impeachment in Las Vegas,^[4][5] Colorado Springs, and Salt Lake City. Grigg was associate director for Activate Congress To Improve Our Nation (ACTION), a committee incorporated by JBS to promote the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, with chapters in 50 states.^[6][7]

Split with the John Birch Society[link]

In 2005, Grigg called for the resignation of the JBS president and CEO, G. Vance Smith, who had promoted two sons to leadership positions; Smith was narrowly deposed in a September 2005 Board of Incorporators vote. The new CEO, Arthur R. Thompson, and other leaders initiated a staff blog to which Grigg contributed heavily.

Grigg's writing reflects views heavily influenced by Constitutionalism, libertarianism, and anti-communism; Ward Churchill favorably quoted Grigg's observation that totalitarianism is defined by abundance and unintelligibility of laws.^[8]

The new JBS leadership launched the U.S. immigration issue as a major campaign in 2005. Grigg, of Mexican and Irish descent,^[1] had often in JBS publications called for controls on immigration. His New American article "Revolution in America", a study of immigration problems and issues, was reprinted for its "current and incisive" rhetorical qualities by a McGraw-Hill college text.^[2] Grigg has promoted the concept that "white Leninists" desired to send "millions of Mexicans across the border with the idea of having each kill 10 Americans".^[1]

But by 2006 Grigg had decided that the immigration issue had been overplayed by the Republican Party as a driving cause to keep big-government, pro-war Republicans in control of the U.S. Congress. He argued that an attack on personal liberties by the George W. Bush administration and the Republican Party was a more serious impediment to personal liberty, charging the administration with committing torture, detention without trial, warrantless surveillance, and wars of empire. Grigg considered a "wave" of media attention on immigration to be "nothing more than the swirl in the bowl after the chain has been pulled" on the Republican Party.^{[citation needed]}

Grigg formed a personal blog, "Pro Libertate", in August 2006, saying that JBS leadership had deleted some of his posts from their blog, such as a June comparison of immigration debate to professional wrestling.^[9] He stated that he was fired by JBS on October 3, 2006, officially for unstated reasons.^[10]

Welch Foundation[link]

The Robert W. Welch Foundation (Right Source Online), founded in 1997 by former California JBS members, adopted Grigg's Pro Libertate blog and made him a weekly cohost (December 30, 2005 – May 4, 2007) on the nationally syndicated afternoon radio show "The Right Source" with Kevin Shannon (Bearly's pseudonym). It also launched the Pro Libertate e-zine, where Grigg brought in writers such as James Bovard and fellow LewRockwell.com columnist Scott Horton. It commissioned Grigg's 2007 book alleging Bush and Clinton attacks on liberty, Liberty In Eclipse.

Other activities[link]

Grigg has recorded the radio spot "A Liberty Minute" weekdays since February 19, 2007, which, since July 2, has used the tagline, "Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free" (Galatians 5:1).

Grigg is also a studio musician^[1] who served as lead guitarist in the Wisconsin band "Slick Willie and the Calzones" until his 2005 move to Idaho. The band's 2001 CD, Green and Gold, featured rock, country, and jazz homages to the Green Bay Packers, such as the novelty song "Tailgate Polka".

Grigg and his wife Korrin have six children.

Books[link]

• The Gospel of Revolt: Feminism Vs. the Family. Northwest Publishing. 1992. ISBN 1-880416-75-1. 
• Freedom on the Altar: The UN's Crusade Against God and Family. American Opinion Publishers. 1995. ISBN 0-9645679-0-3. 
• Global Gun Grab. John Birch Society. 2001. ISBN 1-881919-05-6. 
• America's Engineered Decline. John Birch Society. 2004. ISBN 1-881919-10-2. 
• Liberty In Eclipse: The Rise of the Homeland Security State. Welch Foundation. December 2007. 

References[link]

External links[link]

• Will Grigg's Liberty Minutes
• Pro Libertate blog
• Pro Libertate e-zine
• Archives on LewRockwell.com
• Notes on the Jerry Seinfeld Society
• Bio at The John Birch Society
• William Grigg at The American View Forum

William Norman
Depiction of the Siege of Sebastopol
Born	1832 Warrington, Lancashire
Died	13 March 1896 (aged 63-64) Salford, Lancashire
Buried at	Weaste Cemetery, Salford
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	British Army
Rank	Corporal
Unit	7th Regiment of Foot
Battles/wars	Crimean War Umbeyla Campaign
Awards	Victoria Cross

William Norman VC (1832 – 13 March 1896) was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

Details[link]

Norman was about 22 years old, and a private in the 7th Regiment (later The Royal Fusiliers), British Army during the Crimean War when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC.

On 19 December 1854 at Sebastopol, in the Crimea, Private Norman was placed on single sentry duty some distance in front of the advanced sentries of an outlying picquet in the White Horse Ravine, a post of much danger and requiring great vigilance. The Russian picquet was posted about 300 yards in front of him, and three Russians came reconnoitring under cover of the brushwood. Private Norman single-handed, took two of them prisoner without alarming the Russian picquet.

Further information[link]

He later served in the Umbeyla Campaign and achieved the rank of corporal.^[1] His Victoria Cross is displayed at the Royal Fusiliers Museum in the Tower of London, England.

References[link]

• "Elegant Extracts" - The Royal Fusiliers Recipients of the VC (J.P. Kelleher, 2001)
• Monuments to Courage (David Harvey, 1999)
• The Register of the Victoria Cross (This England, 1997)

External links[link]

• Location of grave and VC medal (Manchester)
• William Norman at Find a Grave