Shanghai Cooperation Organization

[darkbeaver]

full text of declaration on fifth anniversary of SCO
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Members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on Thursday issued a declaration on its fifth anniversary of founding. The following is the full text of the document:

Declaration on the Fifth Anniversary of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

(Shanghai, 15 June 2006)

On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (hereinafter referred to as SCO), the heads of state of SCO members -- President N. Nazarbaev of the Republic of Kazakhstan, President Hu Jintao of the People's Republic of China, President K. Bakiev of the Kyrgyz Republic, President V. Putin of the Russian Federation, President E. Rakhmonov of the Republic of Tajikistan and President I. Karimov of the Republic of Uzbekistan -- met in Shanghai, SCO's birthplace, and stated as follows:

I

SCO was founded in Shanghai five years ago pursuant to a strategic decision made by its member states to meet challenges and threats of the twenty-first century and bring about durable peace and sustainable development of the region. This decision, which ushered in a new historical phase of regional cooperation, is of great importance to the establishment and maintenance of peace and stability and the creation of an inclusive environment for cooperation in the SCO region.

With volatile changes taking place in the international and regional environment, SCO has become an important mechanism for deepening good-neighborly cooperation, friendship and partnership among its members. It is a good example of dialogue among civilizations and an active force for promoting democracy in international relations.

II

Through its endeavor over the past few years, SCO has laid a solid foundation for its stea
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[dekhqonbacha]

It's another "east block". Unfortunatly this time US cannot defeat them this time.

However, the presence of US in Afghanistan is not really good for them: China and Russia. Because US spreading democracy into Centreal Asian states.

Every year in every member State they pass military training. I hope they won't have a common army. Which will be similar to NATO. But they are getting close to do so.

 

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Problems are also inherent in speed and complexity, and these are very diverse and almost surreal. Credit derivatives are precarious enough, but at the end of May the International Swaps and Derivatives Association revealed that one in every five deals, many of them involving billions of dollars, involved major errors. As the volume of trade increased so did errors. They doubled in the period after 2004. Many deals were scribbled on scraps of paper and not properly recorded. "Unconscionable" was outgoing Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan's, description. He was "frankly shocked." Other trading, however, is determined by mathematical algorithm ("volume-weighted average price" it is called) for which PhDs trained in quantitative methods are hired.7 Efforts to remedy this mess only began in June of this year and they are very far from resolving a major and accumulated problem that involves stupendous sums.

Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley's chief economist, on April 24 of this year wrote that a major financial crisis was in the offing and that the ability of global institutions to forestall it -- ranging from the IMF and World Bank to other mechanisms of the international financial architecture ­ are utterly inadequate. Hong Kong's chief secretary in early June deplored the hedge funds' risks and dangers. The IMF's iconoclastic chief economist, Raghuram Rajan, at the same time warned that the hedge funds' compensation structure encouraged those in charge of them to increasingly take risks, thereby endangering the whole financial system.

* * *

The entire global financial structure is becoming uncontrollable in crucial ways its nominal leaders never expected. Instability is increasingly its hallmark. Financial liberalization has produced a monster, and resolving the many problems that have emerged is scarcely possible for those who deplore controls on those who seek to make money, whatever means it takes to do so. Contradictions now wrack the world's financial system, and if we are to believe the institutions and personalities who have been in the forefront of the defense of capitalism, it may very well be on the verge of serious crises.

Gabriel Kolko is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914 and Another Century of War?. He has also written the best history of the Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience. His latest book, The Age of War, was published in March 2006.

He can b
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