Many good causes at the Seattle protests, Michael!
I find it ironic that the same people who seems to be terrified of the United Nations because of some "New World Order" garbage, arguing that America the land of the free and the brave needs sovereignty and independence, find that the World Trade Organization is a wonderful deal. Kind of incongruent, don't you think? Could it be because the United Nations is trying to do environmental and human rights good in the world, and the same people who are opposed to that are actually in favor of the WTO because it is trying to STOP the environmental and human rights movements? If that is true, they should simply admit that they support cruelty, greed, waste and ecological damage whoever is espousing it, and lay off their other arguments, which seem disingenuous.
In any event, everyone from labor unions, environmental groups, American farmers (don't you have a soft spot for them?), Pat Buchanan, environmentalists and witches (60 just from San Francisco) have all gone to Seattle to protest.
Some highlights of why the WTO should go:
1) they forced European countries to accept beef pumped full of hormones
2) they forbade nations from putting trade sanctions on countries with brutal military regimes
3) they forbade African countries from developing their own versions of AIDS drugs at prices they could afford (this would save millions of lives)
4) they ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency couldn't enforce a law requiring gasoline refineries to make cleaner gas
5) they ruled against the U.S. Endangered Species Act's requirements that fishermen catch shrimp my methods that don't kill endangered sea turtles
6) they ruled to help giant Chiquita Banana Corp., which exploits farm labor and uses environmentally degrading farming techniques, dominate the European banana market at the expense of small-scale farmers in the Caribbean
I am sure there are more nasty things that WTO has done. They have managed to annoy lots of groups that usually have nothing at all in common!
It is too bad I could not print the article I used as a source for my points, in today's SF Examiner, by John Passacantiando called "Another Tea Party-In Seattle." Unfortunately, there was no url. But the point he makes is that the WTO serves the interests of large, multinational companies, at the expense of laborers everywhere, and the healthy future of the planet. |
