http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/friedman/120199frie.html

FOREIGN AFFAIRS / By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Is there anything more ridiculous in the news today then 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.

Because some countries try to use their own rules to erect new walls against trade, the W.T.O. adjudicates such cases. For instance, there was the famous "Flipper vs. GATTzilla" dispute. (The W.T.O. used to be known as GATT.) America has rules against catching tuna in nets that might also snare dolphins; other countries don't, and those other countries took the U.S. before a GATT tribunal and charged that our insistence on Flipper-free tuna was a trade barrier. The anti-W.T.O. protesters extrapolate from such narrow cases that the W.T.O. is going to become a Big Brother and tell us how to live generally. Nonsense.

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.


-- You Know... (notme@nothere.junk), December 01, 1999

Answers

My, that's awfully verbose for an OT post. I declare thee...


-- Colin MacDonald (roborogerborg@yahoo.com), December 01, 1999.

This isn't a dispute over "to trade or not to trade"...it is "fair trade vs. free trade"...

-- Texas Terri (DeepintheHeart@Texas.com), December 01, 1999.

Thomas Friedman is as clueless as to what is going on as the Czar in 1917 or King Louis in 1789. Fortunately, the WTO is on its last legs and is collapsing, even as the statist globalized economy begins its decline. The WTO will end up on the ash heap of history.

-- robert waldrop (rmwj@soonernet.com), December 01, 1999.

You Know,

Getting rich off those Nike stocks are ya?

Money money money. Out of sight, out of mind. Profits profits profits. Doesn't matter how many sweat shops it takes. Gimme MORE PROFITS!!!!!!!!!!! MONEY MONEY MONEY!!!!!!!I WANT I WANT I WANT!!!!!

(puke)

-- GoldReal (GoldReal@aol.com), December 01, 1999.

Actually, GoldReal, I have nothing in the stock market, since I think it's a bubble. However, I have to ask you what people who are making those stupid sneakers are supposed to do for a living when you make it illegal (or unprofitable for Nike) for them to make sneakers?

If by some miracle you made it impossible for third world workers to undercut rich world workers by accepting longer hours, lower pay, or worse working conditions, then I expect the response of Nike and it's friends would be automation. Then you can go protest unemployment.

-- You Know... (notme@nothere.junk), December 01, 1999.

You Know, your post reflects very shallow thinking, and is slanted heavily in favor of the Globalist agenda as espoused by the Trilateral commission, the Bildebergers, and the council on foriegn relations. I posted this response on another thread but it succinctly refutes the idiocy of Mr. Friedmans article. I have no doubt that Clinton will find a way to further his globalist agenda out of the current chaos, but I really believe the protestors by and large are sincere. There is a huge smoldering fire of anger in the country over the governments cowtowing to big business over the last two generations and the feelings of impotence and worthlessness it has generated in the working public as a whole. what we are seeing in Seattle is just the tip of an iceberg which has the potential to rip this country, indeed the entire world to shreds. You can put your finger on a specific point in time which has led to the current global situation. That time was 1913 and the specific event was the institution of the Federal Reserve Banks. The institution of fiat money and easy credit created a new class of superparasite which feeds off of the working man. The moneychangers.

Lured by easy credit the American populace became a hoarde of "keeping up with the Jonses" consumers. We built an industrial giant of a nation in the process of meeting those consumption demands, ever more streamlined and technologically advanced, totally ignoring the huge debts that we were incurring as a nation and as individuals.

Cracks were beginning to show in the overall scheme as early as the sixties, and by the seventies the handwriting was on the wall. The advent of the computer, combined with robotics pushed productivity to levels undreamed of only twenty years before, but it also began to disenfranchise the very workers who were the consumer base the entire pyramid was built on.

By the eighties it had become apparent that the American population could no longer support the behemoth manufacturing system it had created, and the bloated government installed to manage it. Corporate raiders financed by junk bond dealers began to systematically dismantle the manufacturing infrastructure of the nation while investors pounded the table demanding higher profit margins from their stocks. A new breed of CEO was born, I call them terminators.

Huge amounts of money flowed into our political system as these special interest sought to shape a government which would be totally compliant to their desires. Nafta and Gatt drove the final nails in the coffin, heralding the onset of corporate flight to third world countries and developing nations.

Through the nineties we were introduced to the concept of temporary workers. Companies ruthlessly exploited the shortage of secure jobs and low payscales to institute an ever smaller employment base based on the revolving door principle. Skilled workers disenfranchised by corporate flight began the cycle of replacing tenured employeees, but only until the corporation could merge with someone else and further disenfranchise it's existing employment base. This cycle cannot continue unabated.

The American population as a whole has incurred tremendous debt, largely through credit cards and second mortgages. Bankruptcy is at an all time high during what the government touts as the most prolonged period of prosperity in the history of this nation. We are not prospering, we are eating ourselves alive. The morphine of easy credit can no longer conceal the pain of our self inflicted wounds, and the protestors in Seattle are the first pangs of what is more than likely going to be a world of screaming agony when the effects of Y2K combine with the effects of our collective greed.

I guess I should have expanded a little further for clarification. there are two basic futures facing us as a people and a nation if Y2k is left out of the equation. We can continue down the road of globalization and we will see the average American standard of living drop to the level of perhaps Brazil or Venezueala and lose our national soverignity in the process. This course will eventually lead to the destruction of the planet.

We can island our country with Canada and go isolationist, focusing our rescources on developing alternate energy sources to cut our dependence on foreign oil and developing strategies to recycle our depleted rescources. Only after these technologies have been developed and implemented should we once again begin trying to develop foreign nations.

The people mounting the protest realize this on either a conscious or subconscious level, and that is the explanation for the strange coalition of labor unions and environmentalist. There is not going to be any painless exit from the currrent situation.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), December 01, 1999.

Colin, Laugh "Riot"! Sticky keys-too much sugar in the tea.

-- maid upname (noid@ihope.com), December 01, 1999.

Sometimes, life is complicated. Friedman is the top media cheerleader for NWO but this doesn't mean there aren't some good points made. In one sense, globalism is unstoppable and is not under explicit human control anyway (cf the Internet for a case in point). Colin's posts (could you drop the troll graphic, btw?) are "globalism" abetted by the "Internet".

However, globalism as defined by the elites is age-old oligarchy. It is as old as Babel and Rome. Oligarchy dreads "barbarians" (retrograde "fundamentalists", whether religious, environmental, consitutional, technical, etc) because barbarians do not find a life lived under external control a life worth living.

The way around this has always been to "hide" the controls as much as possible. Secrecy is key (cf WTO for starters). What Friedman ignores is that the globalists don't really LIKE the "embarrassment" that, FOR A BRIEF PERIOD OF TIME, the Internet has enabled the "Drudges" of the world (all members of this forum are "drudge-ites" in principle) to inflict. Bluntly, they hate it and are humiliated by it.

The battle of the first decade of the 21st century will be over the "freedoms" of the Internet.

We have the temporary good fortune that most globalists have, so far, been willing to trade-off the free speech aspects of the Net with the goldmine of profits that "Net-style" information flow have afforded to the markets. This includes "no tax" on e-commerce. For now.

The point is, anyone who assumes that globalism doesn't thrive on secrecy is kidding themselves. Lots of powerful people are meditating the way to keep the profit-nature of the Internet exploding while constricting "unwanted" information flows.

If we're very, very, undeservedly lucky, the Net has let loose a structural dynamic that will enable real people to stay one step ahead of the controllers. But don't count on it.

.... And don't forget that the main sources of control are the ones you internalize.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), December 01, 1999.

Nikoli,

Thanks for a great well thought out post.

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), December 01, 1999.

Thanks Nikoli, Big Dog and (You Know for bringing over) Friedman. There's nothing better on this forum, ON topic or OFF, to read intelligent people's ideas, people who also have excellent writing skills. I live in Seattle, but until I read this OT post this morning, I didn't understand the big picture stakes of WTO. The local media, print, radio and TV are mostly concerned with the anarchist punks breaking store windows.

Now, if we can just convince Colin to stop posting that silly doll we might get somewhere!

Thanks again, please keep up the intelligent debate on whatever topics you choose to comment on, its always good reading and thought provoking

-- Zen Angel (seattle@home.com), December 01, 1999.

"the stock market [is] a bubble"?

Now *there's* the Mother of All Broad Sweeping Statements!

I have a modest position in a small biotech that's going to explode, not because of any "bubble" effect, but because of the *science* behind its drug. It's in line for fast track FDA approval for HIV treatment, the Navy is working with it on Malaria treatment, they're going to disclose its efficacy for Hepatitis C treatment probably later this month, and the company has been *quietly* hiring cancer treatment specialists too. Oh, and a variant of the Wonder Drug also has amazing potential for organ rejection treatment too. And, they've been -- over the past six months -- (and also *quietly*) hiring some of the biggest brains in the field away from some very prestigious institutions, and (again, quietly) putting together contracts for large scale manufacturing. Oh, and trials to date have resulted in absolutely staggering, mind-boggling results, where all other treatment regimes have failed. And did I mention that there are no significant side effects, and that due to its unique mechanism of action, disease resistance is not an issue?

What's the name of the company? I ain't saying, because I'm not foolish enough to open myself up for accusations of shilling or pumping. Let's just say that I have 100% confidence in it, as well as its ability to survive y2k nicely.

So let's be careful with the grand sweeping declarations about "the stock market", OK?

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), December 01, 1999.

"That silly doll"

Yeah, exactly *what* does Don King have to do with any of this?

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), December 01, 1999.

Friodman is a cold dude indeed. A shill for the monied powers. His nest fairly feathered I'm sure.

-- ..- (dit@dot.dash), December 01, 1999.

BigDog, the Internet is more likely to break down the large organizations that lobby for handouts and negotiate with unions. We could have a fine-grain producer/consumer network using the Internet to agree on prices/distribution via auctions. If we could drop the tarrifs and customs controls, then third world farmers might actually be able to sell in France and Japan, for example. And Indonesia might be able to produce their own off-brand of Nike's and sell them for half as much (or get a good ad agency and sell them for more.)

I understand the pain of losing your job. What I also understand is that Americans feel entitled to high wages for manual labor. The more friction-free the economy gets, the harder it will be to maintain that perk of living in a rich country. Cheap transportation and communications will put an end to it. The work will continue to move overseas where it is cheaper. Since that is a completely voluntary arrangement between workers and consumers, I see nothing wrong with it.

Nike's workers may have a crappy deal, but they are not slaves. If there were better paying, more comfortable jobs to do down the street, they would go there. Cutting off markets in the rich countries just means they have to take an even crappier job.

If you want to help poor people, get the U.S. to push debt forgiveness. That debt, a legacy of corrupt governments, is costing them more than trade ever could.

As for environmental concerns, no one wants to poison themselves or their land. If we did an emissions trading scheme like was proposed as part of the Kyoto accords, rich companies in the U.S. would be spending money to build clean plants in the third world.

I obviously don't buy the world view of Nikoli and others. If you want long-term trend BS, I offer my own: There's an oversupply of uneducated labor in the world. The response should be more effective education in the U.S.. We can maintain rich world salaries by cultivating high levels of skill. We can't have low skills and high salaries forever. Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, and his company is totally knowledge based. It's amazing to me that the price of computer programmers keeps going up. Parents should have been pushing their kids into engineering instead of business schools (let alone English) for twenty years now. It's still not happening.

As for de-industrialization, unions killed some industries with their work-rule inflexibility, high costs and strikes. A lot of the rest was just cultural complacency. During the 50's and 60', GM thought it just didn't have to compete with anyone other than the other big 3. Japan taught them otherwise. But this is not unprecedented. Any country that gets rich has to fight the twin problems of rentiers who think that they can make all their money via foreign investment, and workers who'd rather enjoy life than do dull jobs.

Trade is a virtual. Isolation is a hermits solution to the world. And as for self-sufficiency, an auto worker in Detroit can lose his job to someone in Tennessee just as easily as Tokyo.

-- You Know... (notme@nothere.junk), December 01, 1999.

You Know,

I have no problem with Nike paying "people who are making those stupid sneakers" a living wage with benefits, no matter which country Nike chooses to manufacture their products in. But then Nike wouldn't be AS profitable as they are now, resulting in their corporate executive's multi-million dollar annual bonuses being "downsized".

Yeah, I think it should be against the law to exploit workers and the environment in order to make the filthy rich more filthy, no matter which workers or which country these exploitations are taking place in.

Nice thought, pay ALL workers a living wage with benefits, worldwide. Then FREE MARKET competition could REALLY begin. Ingenuity would be worth it's weight in gold if we all played by the same rules i.e., if corporations were required to pay a living wage with benefits to all workers along with being required to protect the environment, irreguardless of country.

It doesn't take a corporate genius to figure out that all you have to do is manufacture your products in a country where there are no labor laws or environmental laws. You produce at the least cost, then ship those products to the nations living off credit, where you sell them at local market price resulting in MEGA PROFITS which you distribuite to stock holders after taking a most generous cut for yourself...your reward for being so "creative"? LOL...creativity just isn't what it use to be.

You Know, WTO policies are geared towards allowing multi-national corporations to get "something for nothing" or as close to nothing as you can get away with. Thing is, nothing is ever free. Sure, you can fool some of us sometime, but not all the time. The "Sleeping Giant" (labor) is starting to wake up. Mr. & Mrs. Multi-national Corporate Ececutive, be afraid, be very afraid.

-- GoldReal (GoldReal@aol.com), December 01, 1999.

Like I said, the world is complicated.

Ron -- The credit and liquidity confidence game has certainly built a massive bubble. No debate can be launched there. Within that bubble, extraordinary things are happening within the "leading edge" of the 21st century economy, which, sure, is tech- and info-driven. Your bio- company fits right into that and is building "real values". If you're lucky and can cash in on those values before the bubble bursts, very cool. Even IF the bubble bursts, the long-term 21st-century outlook for bizzes like the one you mention is awesome.

You Know -- good post, though I'll look forward to Nik's response. I see the "fine-grain" oppys as completely consistent with the liberty- loving spirit that the Net, at least for now, "structurally" facilitiates (that is, it falls out from the way that "the medium is the message", not because anyone is making it happen). In their own way, organized labor is coming from the same "control-power- manipulation" place as big corporations. IOW, they're both playing the same "game", which is a zero-sum power game.

GoldReal -- it is unspeakably difficult for human beings to set "fair wages" (ie, institute economic justice) without doing it in a fashion where the cure is worse than the disease. It's the classic "who is wise enough to make the rules in the first place?" I'm not saying that "nothing" is the answer, just that any cry for those rules to be set will have them set by orgs LIKE THE WTO or their compadres at the United Nations. That's the last thing we need. Frankly, as you yourself make clear, those rules will be rigged anyway.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), December 01, 1999.

THIS PREVIEW BY HISTORIAN KEVIN PHILLIPS PUBLISHED ON LA TIMES CLARIFIES FOR THE FEW AMERICANS WHO STILL VALUE FREEDOM OVER MONEY. WHY OUR REPUBLIC IS ABOUT TO DIE. OUR FREEDOM ABOUT TO BE LOST. THIS IS OUR TIME TO ACT OR PREPARE TO LIVE IN SHAME AND SLAVERY STIR UP AMERICA'S VOTERS IN ELECTION 2000 IF THERE WILL BE AN ELECTION OR TRY TO BRING DOWN THE BANKING SYSTEM AND HOPE FOR THE BEST.

Kevin Phillips is a Political Historian, Author of "The Politics of Rich and Poor" and "The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics and the Triumph of Anglo-america."

LA Times Sunday, November 21, 1999

The Stealth Coup: US Democracy Fades As WTO Seizes Control For Multinational Corporations...

The Stealth Coup

The WTO and the Fed have essentially become two new branches of government, in many ways more powerful than Congress and the president. Who elected them anyway?

By KEVIN PHILLIPS

>WASHINGTON--An important prelude to the 2000 elections >could take place in Seattle, if organizers can produce their hoped-for >"protest of the century" against the Third Ministerial Conference of >the World Trade Organization that begins Nov. 30. > >Doubters scoff at this. While activists urge people to travel to >Seattle to protest the WTO, nine of 10 Americans probably can't >explain what the organization is. So they won't be paying attention to >complaints that the WTO is about to become an unelected fourth >branch of the U.S. government, or that it is a magna carta for U.S. >multinational corporations to further decrease their dependence on >American employees and loyalties. > >The World Trade Organization, though officially only 4 years old, >represents a huge intrusion on U.S. politics and on national, state and >local decision-making, largely in the interest of multinational >corporations and trade lobbies. Scare talk like this has been >exaggerated before. But this is not hyperbole: Legislators in >Washington could be on the brink of understanding that they--and the >voters--are losing control over the evolution of America's role in the >global economy in the 21st century. > >This is a grave danger. The historical evidence from the two >previous great economic world powers is that whatever financial >elites want--high-profit global priorities--is bad for ordinary citizens, >who are more vulnerable and require that domestic economics come >first. > >Yet, headlines from Seattle could launch a public debate, >especially if the protesters are largely American. It's this nation >whose ordinary citizens have the greatest political and economic >stake in limiting the WTO and its anticipated role. > >Alienated voters bemoan losing control over U.S. policymaking, >but representatives and senators share in the loss. Where the U.S. >government once had three branches--executive, legislative and >judicial--it now has five. The newest branches are the unelected >Federal Reserve Board, which controls money supply, interest rates >and, in many respects, the U.S. economy; and the WTO, which not >only controls trade practices but can overrule federal, state and local >laws that interfere with trade rights as the organization defines them. >Politicians and voters have little or no control over either the Fed or >the WTO. > >Power, quite simply, has been shifting to major financial >institutions and multinational corporations. In the Federal Reserve >system, which operates behind closed doors, controls its own funds >and is independent of Congress, the presidents and boards of the >individual regional Federal Reserve banks are selected by the >business and financial communities. Yet, some of the regional Fed >presidents sit on the Open Market Committee, which makes Federal >Reserve interest-rate and monetary policy. This lack of democracy >didn't used to matter much. But in the last decade, the world's central >banks have been gaining influence over national and international >economies and becoming increasingly independent of politicians and >elected officials. > >Trade policy has similarly been moving from elected hands to >unelected private interests and global bureaucrats who better >represent the multinational trade and investment communities. This >includes international agencies, trade lawyers and lobbyists, banks >and multinational corporations of all national stripes, though U.S. >firms have the most clout. > >Despite occasional talk by right-wing kooks that the WTO is >dangerous because the United States has only one vote and could be >outmuscled, the effective control in WTO--as in the International >Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other such organizations--lies >with the Quad countries--the United States, Japan, Canada and the >European Union--whose decisions, in turn, are dominated by >multinational trade and investment elites. The real problem is that >their loyalty is to the man in the executive suite, not the man on the >street. > >In the last decade, the Washington trade-policy establishment has >moved to strip U.S. politicians and voters of their influence over >trade policy by a number of devices. For example, in 1994, the key >congressional vote in favor of establishing the World Trade >Organization was held according to "fast track" rules and during a >post-election lame-duck session of Congress, when defeated >lawmakers would be pliable and the measure could be slipped >through with little discussion. The fast-track procedure was >established so that Congress could not tinker with trade agreements >sent to Congress but had to reject or rubber-stamp them, as it did >with the North American Free Trade Agreement. > >The WTO is exhibit A in the neutering of Congress and the >voters. WTO procedures allow countries to challenge each other's >laws and regulations as violations of WTO trade rules. Cases are >decided in secret, with documents, hearings and briefs kept >confidential and unreleased, by tribunals of three bureaucrats, usually >corporate lawyers. There are no conflict-of-interest restraints for >these people. In addition, no appeal is possible outside the WTO. > >Under this authority, barely debated in the legislative fast shuffle >of 1994, the WTO has already overturned part of the U.S. Clean Air >Act and declared illegal a recent U.S. environmental regulation. Now >there is talk of enlarging WTO's jurisdiction to include education and >health matters. Congress is being fleeced like lambs at a shearing. > >Proponents of this transfer generally argue that either >1) globalization is the inevitable and we have to guide it or >2) globalization may involve some sacrifices but, in the long >run, most Americans will profit. > >History's example, however, raises major cautions. Indeed, the >two great world economic powers before the United States--the >Dutch in the 17th and early 18th centuries, and the British >thereafter--followed the same internationalization trajectory as their >world leadership peaked and then went into decline. > >This precedent is as frightening as it is clear. As the Dutch and >British global economies peaked, their future, said the elites, lay in >embracing international rather than internal economic opportunities. >As the old industries started to fade--textiles, shipbuilding and >fisheries in the Netherlands; coal, textiles and steel in Britain--the >elites said: Never mind. We now lead the world in services: banking, >finance, overseas investments, shipping, insurance, communications. >And that's where the payoff is. > >Within each nation--1720-40 Holland and Britain in the "Upstairs, >Downstairs" era of 1900-1914--two things came to pass. First, >common people started losing the old industrial jobs that had made >ordinary Dutchmen and Britons the envy of Europe. The old >industrial districts deteriorated. Second, even as industrial decay >worsened, finance and investments soared, inequality mushroomed >and the elites buzzed about a new golden age. But then, something >went wrong; finance, investments and services lost their way. The >golden age imploded and the economy became no more than a shell >of its old broad-based heyday--Holland in 1770 or Britain in 1945. > >This is the enormous risk that ordinary Americans--the huge >two-thirds in the economic middle--now take in allowing U.S. >democracy and representative government to be undercut and >restructured by the U.S. equivalent of the financial and multinational >elites that so selfishly misdirected early 20th-century Britain and >18th-century Holland. Recent statistics showing the top 1% of >Americans soaring on financial wings, even as inflation-adjusted >median family incomes are about the same as they were 25 years >ago, buttress the parallel. So do efforts of current U.S. elites to move >their investments overseas, as the earlier Dutch and British elites did, >and to sell technology to nations like China that could easily become >a threat to U.S. interests. > >It's easy to see why U.S. corporate CEOs and investment >bankers want the new globalism. Dozens have publicly admitted they >don't want their organizations to be American any longer; they want >them to be international so they can cut loose from stagnant median >family incomes and the future pensions and benefits for those >58-year-old workers in Kansas and Kentucky. > >The WTO is many things, some of them reasonable. To say >otherwise would be misleading. Nonetheless, too many multinational >banks and corporations silently applaud the WTO as an enabler of >overseas investment that will make it safe for U.S. companies to >move more of their employment, profits and loyalties elsewhere. >Ordinary Dutchmen and Britons couldn't stop the earlier trends, and >maybe Americans can't stop these. > >Even so, tens of thousands of angry people in the streets of >Seattle, giving these issues a human face, could do more than attract >headlines and evening-news coverage. They might propel the matter >into an arena where such important decisions should be made: the >2000 presidential and congressional elections. *

-- AmericanCitizen (save@our.constitution), December 01, 1999.

BigDog,

Those WTO "rigged" rules are rigged in one direction only; for the benefit of the corporations at the expense of the workers and the environment.

All the peaceful protesters are asking for is an equal seat at the negotiating table where the rules are made (rigged). In what way is that unfair? Seems like a no-brainer to me, unless of course, you're a dictator corporation and not interested in being "fair" to the people who actually produce the products, as well as buys those same products, your corporation sells.

BigDog, never underestimate the power of corporate greed. What seems complicated is in reality, very simple. Pay your employees a living wage with benefits. Everything else, through competition, will take care of itself in the FREE and OPEN World Markets.

Corporations don't want an equal playing field, they want their cake and eat it too. It SO MUCH EASIER for corporations to produce their products where labor laws and environmental laws are non-existent. They don't have to be creative, they don't have to actually EARN their bloated pay checks and obsene bonuses by out-thinking the competition. No, they just MOVE the COMPANY to a Thire World Country and expolit workers and environments there. Corporate executives are LAZY. They are the problem yet they attempt to shift the blame, stereotyping their own workers as the "bad guys" for insisting on being paid a living wage with benefits.

Time we forced these one-dimentional fat and lazy corporate executives into "downsizing" themselves instead of workers saleries and benefits around the world, no matter which country the choose to produce their products in.

-- GoldReal (GoldReal@aol.com), December 01, 1999.

If there are to be seats at THAT table, fine. My point is, there shouldn't be a WTO and there doesn't need to be. It is quite realistic to have national inter-change and agreements on trade and labor practices that don't require a globally centralized institution.

However awful national competition, power-grabbing, wars, etc., are, the existence of national boundaries is one of the most merciful aspects of life on this planet. Even most regional arrangements, if they are enforceable over national sovereignty, overstep this wise arrangement.

The earliest wisdom of the United "States" were that "states" were the soverign equivalent of nations, except where an extremely limited set of THEIR OWN rights were contributed to the good of all the states taken together (hence, United).

Today's United NATIONS is NOT analogous, never was. And the WTO is far worse in its actual ambitions.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), December 01, 1999.

From the above LA Times article, "Now there is talk of enlarging WTO's jurisdiction to include education and health matters." Does anyone have more details about this? What is this "talk", who is doing the talking and what, precisely, are they talking about?

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), December 01, 1999.

Big Dog, I think the article posted by concerned citizen pretty well covers both the economic and soverign threats posed by the WTO. As you correctly point out Free trade cannot be fair, and fair trade would require some supranational agency such as the WTO to enforce labor rates and working conditions. The powers behind the WTO are dyametrically opposed to fair trade, as their vested interest is in opening low wage labor forces to maximize profits. This shell game has been going on since the Marshall plan rebuilt the axis powers, and has moved to the next level of emerging nations now. Just as in the next decade the labor would be exploited from Africa. The working population of the United States would have long since succumbed to chronic poverty in the meantime, as is perfectly evident all around us today. The WTO is the death knell of America, of Germany, of England, of France, of Japan. And at what cost to the long term condition of the human race on this planet? Our legacy to our descendents would be a life of big brotherism, misery, poverty, starvation, disease, facism, and a planet gutted of all natural rescources equipped with a climate composed in hell. Welcome to the New World Order.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), December 01, 1999.

BigDog,

The WTO is a direct result of the influence corporations have over the laws of the United States. I agree with you, it was NOT the intention of our founding fathers for the U.S. to be part of, much less the catalyst of, a global organization such as the WTO. We have royally "screwed up". The question now is, how do we fix it.

1) Remove corporate influence from all facets of our government.

2) Outlaw (or severly punish) U.S. based corporations from moving their production facilities to other nations for the sole purposes of "cheap labor" and lax environmental laws. If they want to move their facilities to third world countries, fine. But make it INTERNATIONAL LAW that they also take with them our standard of living and environmental laws. This would immediately cause higher standards of living and expand markets in every country these corporations choose to moved into.

As it is, they expand no U.S. overseas markets by utilizing existing "sweatshop labor" just to "turn a greater profit", not to mention destroying our world environment. It's "Corporate Rape" at its ugliest, and the U.S. Government (OWNED and UNDERWRITTEN by wealthy corporate executives) sanctions it.

Can we do these TWO things? Yes.

Will we do these two things? Only if we elect people who are not beholden to wealthy corporate campaign contributors.

-- GoldReal (GoldReal@aol.com), December 01, 1999.