The Death Train of the WTO: Fair Trade is War

[Karmadillo]

A few articles I read today made me think I know a lot less about the world than I think I do (and I don't think, with good reason, I know all that much about the world to begin with). Which led me to Google, which led me to "Ten Good Reasons Why WE Need to Abolish the World Trade Organization". The articles that follow "Ten Good Reasons" suggest the same need in more personal terms.

Most of us in the United States and the rest of the First World, even those of us who would consider ourselves outside the system of power ("I ain't no Senator's son" etc), benefit, to some degree, from our nations' economic dominance of the world. This doesn't necessarily mean we know much about that dominance. Discussions of globalization in the media tend to be as tame as they are rare. In the United States, they mostly focus, as far as I can tell, on the question of job loss. And I'm not trying to say that's insignificant, especially if you're one of the people struggling to keep a family together after losing a job because your company moved operations overseas. I'm just saying there's more to the problem.

What I sometimes forget is it's not just what's happening to us, it's what's happening to the people who don't live in the First World. Ideally, globalization is the rising tide that will lift all boats, but if we're suspicious of that justification when applied to Reagan or Bush economic policies, it's probably fair to be suspicious when it's applied elsewhere. What we may see as a gravy train that pays for our houses and our cars and our childrens' education may look like a death train to those occupying a different location on the tracks. When it comes to the WTO, I'm thinking its our vision, not theirs, that's blurred. Surely we can create something better.

Link #1: http://www.organicconsumers.org/Corp/abolishwto.cfm

Ten Good Reasons Why WE Need to Abolish
the World Trade Organization (WTO)
10 Reasons to Dismantle the WTO
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

1. The WTO prioritizes trade and commercial considerations over all
other values.
2. The WTO undermines democracy.
3. The WTO does not just regulate, it actively promotes, global trade.
4. The WTO hurts the Third World.
5. The WTO eviscerates the Precautionary Principle.
6. The WTO squashes diversity.
7. The WTO operates in secrecy
8. The WTO limits governments' ability to use their purchasing dollar
for human rights, environmental, worker rights and other
non-commercial purposes.
9. The WTO disallows bans on imports of goods made with child labor.
10. The WTO legitimizes life patents.

Add a new constituency to the long list of World Trade Organization (WTO) critics which already includes consumers, labor, environmentalists, human rights activists, fair trade groups, AIDS activists, animal protection organizations, those concerned with Third World development, religious communities, women's organizations. The latest set of critics includes WTO backers and even the WTO itself.

As the WTO faces crystallized global opposition -- to be manifested in
massive street demonstrations and colorful protests in Seattle, where the WTO will hold its Third Ministerial meeting from November 30 to December 3 -- the global trade agency and its strongest proponents veer between a shrill defensiveness and the much more effective strategy of admitting shortcomings and trumpeting the need for reform.

WTO critics now face a perilous moment. They must not be distracted by
illusory or cosmetic reform proposals, nor by even more substantive
proposals for changing the WTO -- should they ever emerge from the
institution or its powerful rich country members. Instead, they should
unite around an uncompromising demand to dismantle the WTO and its
corporate-created rules.

Here are 10 reasons why:

1. The WTO prioritizes trade and commercial considerations over all other values. WTO rules generally require domestic laws, rules and regulations designed to further worker, consumer, environmental, health, safety, human rights, animal protection or other non-commercial interests to be undertaken in the "least trade restrictive" fashion possible -- almost never is trade subordinated to these noncommercial concerns.

2. The WTO undermines democracy. Its rules drastically shrink the choices available to democratically controlled governments, with violations potentially punished with harsh penalties. The WTO actually touts this overriding of domestic decisions about how economies should be organized and corporations controlled. "Under WTO rules, once a commitment has been made to liberalize a sector of trade, it is difficult to reverse," the WTO says in a paper on the benefits of the organization which is published on its web site. "Quite often, governments use the WTO as a welcome external
constraint on their policies: 'we can't do this because it would violate the WTO agreements.'"

more...

Link #2: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0912-11.htm

Free Trade Is War
by Naomi Klein

On Monday, seven antiprivatization activists were arrested in Soweto for blocking the installation of prepaid water meters. The meters are a privatized answer to the fact that millions of poor South Africans cannot pay their water bills.

The new gadgets work like pay-as-you-go cell phones, only instead of having a dead phone when you run out of money, you have dead people, sickened by drinking cholera-infested water.

On the same day South Africa's "water warriors" were locked up, Argentina's negotiations with the International Monetary Fund bogged down. The sticking point was rate hikes for privatized utility companies. In a country where 50 percent of the population is living in poverty, the IMF is demanding that multinational water and electricity companies be allowed to increase their rates by a staggering 30 percent.

<edit>

Similarly, when Washington started handing out reconstruction contracts in Iraq, veterans of the globalization debate spotted the underlying agenda in the familiar names of deregulation and privatization pushers Bechtel and Halliburton. If these guys are leading the charge, it means Iraq is being sold off, not rebuilt. Even those who opposed the war exclusively for how it was waged (without UN approval, with insufficient evidence that Iraq posed an imminent threat) now cannot help but see why it was waged: to implement the very same policies being protested in Cancún--mass privatization, unrestricted access for multinationals and drastic public-sector cutbacks. As Robert Fisk recently wrote in The Independent, Paul Bremer's uniform says it all: "a business suit and combat boots."

Occupied Iraq is being turned into a twisted laboratory for freebase free-market economics, much as Chile was for Milton Friedman's "Chicago boys" after the 1973 coup. Friedman called it "shock treatment," though, as in Iraq, it was actually armed robbery of the shellshocked.

more...

http://www.foodfirst.org/media/printformat.php?id=321

The WTO kills Farmers
A report on the death of Lee Kyung Hae
by Laura Carlsen

On September 10, opening day of the Fifth Ministerial of the World Trade Organization, Lee Kyung Hae climbed the fence that separates the excluded from the included and took his life with a knife to the heart.

Lee, leader of the Korean Federation of Advanced Farmers Association, had been excluded for most of his professional life. A farmer working with farmers, he watched as hundreds of his neighbors were driven off their lands and separated from the only livelihood they knew. He spoke eloquently and passionately of the death of hope in the Korean countryside, the sense of impotence and the anger against policies that promoted imports over national production.

So Lee decided to fight that exclusion by going straight to its source. Earlier this year, he staged a one-man hunger strike in front of WTO headquarters in Geneva, in protest of the draft proposals for the Cancun meeting. He was ignored. Seven months later, he joined the march of over 15,000 farmers, indigenous people, and youth in Cancun wearing a sandwich board that read "The WTO Kills Farmers" and holding a firm conviction in his still-beating heart. When the protesters reached the point where they could go no farther, he plunged a knife into his heart and was soon pronounced dead in a Cancun hospital just miles from where WTO Ministers deliberated on how to promote the same agricultural trade that drove Lee, and hundreds more farmers in Korea, India, and other developing countries, to such a drastic end.

But it is a more fitting tribute to let Lee tell his own story, from a statement he distributed in Geneva and later minutes before his death in Cancun:

I am 56 years old, a farmer from South Korea who has strived to solve our problems with the great hope in the ways to organize farmers' unions. But I have mostly failed, as many other farm leaders elsewhere have failed.

more...

Link #3: http://www.counterpunch.org/marcos09122003.html

The Death Train of the WTO
The Slaves of Money...and Our Rebellion
By Subcomandante MARCOS

Brothers and sisters of Mexico and the world, who are gathered in Cancun in a mobilisation against neo- liberalism, greetings from the men, women, children and elderly of the Zapatista National Liberation Army. It is an honour for us that, amid your meetings, agreements and mobilisations, you have found time and place to hear our words.

The world movement against the globalisation of death and destruction is experiencing one of its brightest moments in Cancun today. Not far from where you are meeting, a handful of slaves to money are negotiating the ways and means of continuing the crime of globalisation.

The difference between them and all of us is not in the pockets of one or the other, although their pockets overflow with money while ours overflow with hope.

No, the difference is not in the wallet, but in the heart. You and we have in our hearts a future to build. They only have the past which they want to repeat eternally. We have hope. They have death. We have liberty. They want to enslave us.

This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that the people who think themselves the owners of the planet have had to hide behind high walls and their pathetic security forces in order to put their plans in place.

more...


On Edit: Changed title to give post a chance of getting a few hits.

[Karmadillo]

1. Kick to try out new sexy thread title.

n/t

[Karmadillo]

11. And if I hadn't been asleep when changing the title, it would have

been "Free Trade is War", not "Fair Trade is War". From now on, no posts for me after midnight.

[Maple]

2. This one is simply absurd

but if you want to try and convince the 146 nations involved to give up the WTO, and let trade devolve into a free-for-all, and nasty trade wars be my guest.

That will definitely ensure poverty for EVERYone.

[w4rma]

3. The trend doesn't look good *with* the WTO.

It was looking okay before it though.

[Maple]

4. 'Before' the WTO

you had the Great Depression.

How 'okay' was that?

[w4rma]

7. That was *way* before the WTO and after ~30 years of Republican presidents

With one 8 year break for Woodrow Wilson: 1913-1921

[DemBones DemBones]

5. We at DU are better informed than most, but we are not well-informed

enough on many issues. Globalization and the ins and outs of WTO and NAFTA are not discussed often enough here, IMO, so I'm glad you started this thread. I am no expert on this topic, just trying to learn more, but I can share a couple of resources:

Naomi Klein's articles are often published at multiple sites -- you link to one at Common Dreams and I read her lastest in The Guardian Friday morning -- but her own site is very much worth reading:

http://www.nologo.org

Tom Hayden is covering the current WTO summit In Cancun for Alternet.

http://www.alternet.org

At present, I think all his articles are linked from the front page. Earlier in the week, I read a great Naomi Klein article, "A Deadly Franchise," at Alternet. It's not about globalization per se, but about the globalization, or "franchising," of the "war on terror" (how other countries are using Bush*'s example as a way to fight any group the government dislikes, no matter how peaceful they may be.)

Thanks again, Karmadillo! :hi:

[Karmadillo]

10. Thanks very much for those links, DemBones DemBones. Klein's

site is great. There's enough material there to make my ignorance beg for mercy.

Reading some of what she offers does seem to point out the difficulties opponents of the WTO face when trying to whip up support for its abolition. If the average voter, more than likely swamped by work and child rearing and who knows what else, relies on television for their information, there's no way they can have much of a clue what the WTO does and its adverse (and, as some on this thread would allege, positive) effects. This makes it difficult for the issue of abolition to resonate. I don't know what the answer is, but progressives have to figure out a way to better educate people on the issues they care about.

[G_j]

15. we meet again

on a Naomi Klein thread DemBones!
Thanks again for the links.

The other articles here are good also.

Nice thread, though it's hard to catch 'Globalization/Free trade etc.' threads they get lost so quickly. I could very easily have missed this one.

Thanks Karmadillo.

:toast:

[Adjoran]

6. A lot of this is pretty silly

WTO is just the result of 50 years of American administrations of both parties trying to equalize the playing field in the world. Getting rid of trade barriers has helped the developing world, not harmed it. It has enabled their farmers and producers to sell more exports, and their people to afford more imports.

We want to extend labor rights and environmental protections worldwide, too, and that is a legitimate issue with the WTO, but just because it is not perfect by a long shot doesn't mean it is a bad thing.

[Karmadillo]

12. Since I'm hardly an expert on this sort of thing, could you point out

a few specifics (if you have time) that are silly? I thought the 10 reasons for abolishing the WTO seemed fairly persuasive. In conjunction with the other articles, they suggest the WTO may be a little too far from perfect to be fixed.

[IrateCitizen]

24. US administrations have NEVER been interested in "equalizing the field"

That very assumption is absolutely absurd. The one common thread in US foreign policy is that it has always seeked to expand and consolidate it's "spheres of influence".

That being said, despite the fact that the US (and to a slightly lesser degree, the EU) are not all that interested in "leveling the playing field", a multinational trade organization really IS the only way to resolve the glaring disparities in the way that global trade is managed. There is one set of rules for the rich countries, and another one for developing nations. While the WTO has been party to supporting this system of gross inequality, that does not necessarily mean that it can just be scrapped, and expect everything to improve.

The reason is that when you do away with a multilateral system, you enter back into the realm of bilateral agreements -- an arrangement in which the wealthy nations of the world can REALLY extract unfair concessions from developing nations. Therefore, while it may be necessary to completely overhaul the existing framework, it is still necessary to maintain SOME kind of framework.

As an activist on this issue, I started out calling for the complete dismantlement of the WTO. Now, although my view of it as an institution beholden to the whims of transnational corporations has not changed, I have come to see the system as just a bit more complex. And in doing so, I have come to realize that we need a framework, and that despite its numerous flaws which outweigh its positive aspects, the WTO is the only framework we've got.

[StandWatie]

25. the last talks showed that quite clearly

We were there telling the third world to eliminate their farm subsidy program when we have one the most heavily subsidized farming programs in the world and have no intention of ever changing that (or ever could with the clout of the food lobby).

[eablair3]

8. thanks and a link

looks like there is some reading to do for the weekend. thanks.

Global Exchange has a pretty good site with lots of info up:
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/index.html\

follow the links to quite a bit of info.

anyone know of any other particularly good sites like this?

[scarletlib]

9. "When Corporations Rule the World"

If you want to read a good book on globalization/corporate takeover of the world then read this book by David C. Korten. It is one of the original books on globalization. It is short, easy to read and well written.

This guy is or was a conservative republican who is totally against globalization that WTF/IMF promotes.

He explodes the myths of the "free-marketers" and radical repugs of the last 30 yrs and shows how they have perverted the doctrine of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations"

[buddhamama]

13. the book changed my friend's view

on globalization.

Korten worked with USAID in Asia before realizing what a disaster Free Trade was in developing countries.

[Karmadillo]

17. Here's the link to Amazon. Sounds like a very worthwhile read.

I excerpted one of the better reader reviews.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1887208046/qid=1063572849/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/103-0691610-4120633?v=glance&s=books

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

Excellent Primer on Dangers of Transnational Influences!, March 21, 2003
Reviewer: Barron Laycock (Labradorman) (see more about me) from Temple, New Hampshire United States

It should come as no surprise to well-read students of the late 20th century that the goals, ethos, and practices of transnational business corporations are oblivious and often inimical to the needs of specific cultures and particular nations. But what is even more alarming is the extent to which these corporations persist in behaving as though the consequences of their activities and practices are either accidental or unavoidable. Thus, ?When Corporations Rule the World? helps to inform, enlighten and prepare us as to what mischief these relatively new and potentially revolutionary forms of organizations are doing to societies, cultures, and the environment.

They act in their own best interests, and the way in which they perceive these interests is narrow, self-serving, and quite shortsighted. The fact is that transnational corporations have successfully trumped ordinary citizens in terms of their power, influence, and ability to determine the laws, regulations, and social conditions under which they operate in any particular polity, so that even in the so-called social democracies such organizations seem able to act with near absolute impunity. As a result, their actions are increasingly at odds with those of the society itself, and increasingly ordinary citizens are coming to recognize that the political lobbies created by such organizations have captured the strings of power for their own uses. As H. L Mencken said almost eighty years ago in reference to the U. S Congress, ?We have the best Congress money can buy?. Some things never seem to change.

Author Korten lays out a virtual panorama of ways in which such transnational corporations rule, and shows how the benefits of such practices seem to be progressively narrowing the basis of the so-called ?good-life? to an ever-decreasing portion of the citizens of post-industrial society. In this sense, Korten does a handy job of deftly highlighting the ways in which the world's many environmental and social problems are interconnected and related. Moreover, he contends, the trend of this unhealthy and undemocratic combination of bad habits, narrowly focused corporate values, and profligate ideologies combine to produce the likelihood of a very negative future. Yet, as Korten is quick to point out, it is not all necessarily bleak and unchangeable. He draws out scenarios in which a more sustainable future that would be more palatable to everyone within the modern post-industrial society, including the most conservative business elements among us.

Yet, even as he attempts to paint a more positive possibility for the future, he is left ruminating over the many ways in which transnational corporations continue to run amok, beyond the reach of national laws or meaningful regulation, motivated more by greed and short-term profit orientations than by any meaningful ties to a broader ethos which includes elements of social responsibility or cultural appreciation. Today, as we see the ways in which the post-industrial societies have surrendered to the leitmotif of the transnational corporations, in a world run increasingly for the convenience and interest of large commercial business interests, it is difficult to see how the kinds of happier times he hopes for can come to pass. This is an excellent primer for anyone interested in learning more about the scope of transnational corporations and the many ways in which they have encroached on the rights, prerogatives, and benefits of citizens in particular societies such as our own, and the dangers they pose for our continuing liberties and well being. Enjoy!

[Karmadillo]

14. Excellent site. Thanks.

n/t

[G_j]

16. kick

[Karmadillo]

18. Multiple links from a forum sponsored by

the Cato Institute, the Nation, A World Connected, and the American Prospect. Includes links to numerous articles from the Nation and the American Prospect on globalization.

http://www.cato.org/special/symposium/index.html

[NashVegas]

19. #2, #8, #10 are the ones to hit on

If you want to argue against the WTO and escape the "bleeding heart/racist/reactionary" epithets.

Those who argue best for Free Trade make generous use of the 'free market' argument. It's necessary to show how it's not quite as free as it looks.

[Nikia]

20. The WTO helps large corporations

It limits nation states from making laws to regulate business in a way that would be helpful to its people. The power of large corporations is already out of control in the U.S. Do we relly want corporate dictatorships to sweep across the globe? Doesn't it remind you of Colonalism?

[Feanorcurufinwe]

21. Negative aspects of globalization would best be fought by abolishing

corporate personhood. This is the archstone that holds the whole corrupt structure of our corporate oligarchy in place.

[Nikia]

22. I agree

How will we do that when making such a law becomes a violation of a world wide free trade agreement?

[Karmadillo]

23. Links about corporate personhood

Several links can be found here:

http://www.thomhartmann.com/personhoodlinks.shtml

I excerpted from a couple of the links on Hartmann's page:

http://www.nancho.net/corperson/cpnader.html

CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PERSONS
By Ralph Nader & Carl J. Mayer
New York Times, April 9, 1988

Our constitutional rights were intended for real persons, not artificial creations. The Framers knew about corporations but chose not to mention these contrived entities in the Constitution. For them, the document shielded living beings from arbitrary government and endowed them with the right to speak, assemble, and petition.

Today, however, corporations enjoy virtually the same umbrella of constitutional protections as individuals do. They have become in effect artificial persons with infinitely greater power than humans. This constitutional equivalence must end.

Consider a few noxious developments during the last 10 years. A group of large Boston companies invoked the First Amendment in order to spend lavishly and thus successfully defeat a referendum that would have permitted the legislature to enact a progressive income tax that had no direct effect on the property and business of these companies. An Idaho electrical and plumbing corporation cited the Fourth Amendment and deterred a health and safety investigation. A textile supply company used Fifth Amendment protections and barred retrial in a criminal anti-trust case in Texas.

The idea that the Constitution should apply to corporations as it applies to humans had its dubious origins in 1886. The Supreme Court said it did "not wish to hear argument" on whether corporations were "persons" protected by the 14th Amendment, a civil rights amendment designed to safeguard newly emancipated blacks from unfair government treatment. It simply decreed that corporations were persons.

more...

http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/

Our Hidden History
of Corporations In America

In the early days of our country, we allowed the creation of corporations to fulfill specific needs of society. This shared financial responsibility facilitated projects desired by residents of the state granting the charter. We granted charters for purposes such as construction of roads and bridges.

The corporate charter is an operating license that citizens may give, and likewise, may choose to revoke. Our country's founders had a healthy fear of corporate corruption and limited corporations exclusively to a business role:

A charter was granted for a limited time.

Corporations were explicitly chartered for the purpose of serving the public interest--profit for shareholders was the means to that end.

They could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.

Corporations were terminated if they exceeded their authority or if they caused public harm.

Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts they committed on the job. Corporations could not make any political contributions, nor spend money to influence legislation.

Corporations could not purchase or own stock in other corporations, nor own any property other than that necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.

Most of this vital history is unknown to citizens today, but our past contains many keys to solving current problems.

See our Corporate History Primer on our Primers page or browse the resources on our Corporate Personhood page to learn more.

[Tinoire]

26. Excellent... And may it die a QUICK death

The WTO is nothing more than "an instrument of recolonization and exploitation" (Castro)
----------------------------------------

More about the WTO from the United Steel Workers of America:

In truth, the WTO is the creation of multinational executives, international financiers, and the elected of ficials who have unfailingly done their bidding. Thus, it is not free trade the WTO creates, it is managed trade; and, it is managed solely in the interests of global corporations. Not surprisingly, this elite group alone is profiting—spectacularly —from expanded global trade.

Indeed, the WTO is a "triumph" of speculation and exploitation, engineered at the expense of worker dignity, environmental integrity, and, increasingly, the sovereignty of citizens in nations throughout the world. Unless the global movement toward unregulated trade exemplified by the WTO is fundamentally restructured, workers will continue to be exploited, the Earth's environs will be further degraded, and democracy itself will ultimately be debased.

Unless the WTO is fundamentally changed to include core labor rights and environmental accords, workers must call on their government to take whatever steps are necessary to replace it with a set of global trading rules that work for working families.

Devastating Workers

The WTO is more than a set of rules; it is a business driven movement toward unrestrained corporate trade. It began with GATT, accelerated through NAFTA, and has gained world dominance under the WTO.

Through the WTO, multinational executives, Wall Street financiers, and their government surrogates have created a rules-based global trading regimen. The problem is, the rules they have created are based on freeing these global behemoths to exploit workers and degrade the environment.

<snip>

The rest if really a must read: http://www.fixitornixit.com/uswaposition.htm

--------------------------------
Remember the huge Chiquita Banana scandal and row? Another fine gift from the WTO: http://www.oneworld.org/chogm97/ri_2ban.htm


"Why should it be taking away the livelihood of numerous small Caribbean economies which live off bananas, just to benefit a big U.S. transnational company?" he asked.

http://64.21.33.164/CNews/y99/apr99/19e2.htm