--- Forwarded Message from "Dimitris Desyllas" <shinos@europa.com> ---
>Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 21:43:37 -0700
>Subject: Chossudovsky on WTO, exclusive on Emperors-Clothes
Link to article : http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/chuss/seattle.htm
SEATTLE AND BEYOND:DISARMING THE NEW WORLD ORDER
by Michel Chossudovsky (posted 11-25-99)
Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and author of The
Globalization of Poverty, Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms, Third World
Network, Penang and Zed Books, London, 1997.
[Note from www.emperors-clothes.com : Prof. Chossudovsky grants permission
for this article to be reposted unabridged on free Internet sites or by
email. For commercial or print reproduction please contact him (see note
including copywrite at end) or contact www.emperors-clothes.com at
emperors1000@aol.com . Please reproduce this text in full including this
statement.].
In preparing the Seattle Millennium meetings, Washington in consultation
with Brussels and the WTO in Geneva, is set on weakening and dividing social
movements and citizens' groups which have converged on Seattle from all over
the World. Meanwhile, local organizers are busy -- together with the FBI and
the Seattle Police Department (SPD)-- in carefully planning "security
arrangements" for the official venue. An extensive police apparatus has been
set motion. Special Forces from the FBI, the CIA and other federal agencies
will be on the scene. "Trouble-makers" are to be held at bay, well equipped
riot police are on hand including Gang Squads and SWAT teams of the Tactical
Operations Divisions which constitute the "more militarized components" of
the police force.1
Everything has been put in place to keep the Citizens' Summit physically
removed from the Ministerial Conference. As in previous counter-summits (Rio
de Janeiro, Madrid, Copenhagen, Beijing, etc.), the intent is to ensure that
the numerous protest meetings, teach-ins and mass rallies do not obstruct or
in any way threaten the legitimacy of the official venue. In Seattle, the
holding of parallel sessions by NGOs requires formal "accreditation" with
the Seattle Host Committee chaired by Microsoft's Bill Gates and Philip
Condit of The Boeing Company.
Several months ahead of time, the WTO and Western governments had called for
a "dialogue" with selected civil society organizations in setting the agenda
for the Millennium Round. "Partner NGOs", namely those "we can trust" were
provided with funds to travel and organize their respective "teach-ins" in
Seattle. Already last year, the WTO had announced a plan for "an on-going
collaboration with partner NGOs" while emphasizing that the WTO "recognizes
the role NGOs can play to increase the awareness of the public in respect of
WTO activities".2
Similarly, the European Commission had underscored its "commitment to
transparency and openness in trade policy-making".3
Carefully screened "partner NGOs" were invited to participate in a number of
preparatory "issue-specific" events. The European Commission held several
rounds of consultations with selected consumer, labor, environmental and
development organizations with a view to "to improve the transparency of WTO
meetings" including public access to WTO documents and the creation of an
WTO "information ombudsman".4 In the words of (former) European Trade
Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan:
* "A Millennium round of trade talks should not just benefit business. We
can and should ensure that Consumers and the environment also gain. The
Commission has today opened a dialogue with a wide cross-section of NGOs as
it believes transparency and openness are essential if a new round is to
reap its full benefits. NGOs are crucial partners in preparing for the
negotiations that lie ahead." 5
THE COUNTER SUMMIT
Controlled and financed by official donors and research foundations, the
hidden agenda is to install a "politically correct" Citizens' Summit, namely
to ensure that the various teach-ins and public rallies in the streets of
Seattle conform to the dominant "counter discourse". The latter consists in
pressing for the inclusion of token environmental, labour and human rights
clauses, "poverty alleviation" schemes as well as "institutional reforms"
without defying the central role of trade liberalisation.
The partner non-governmental organisations have, in this regard, already
committed themselves not to question "the legality" or legitimacy of the WTO
as an institution. Accredited NGO participants have been invited to mingle
in a friendly environment with ambassadors, trade ministers and Wall Street
tycoons at several of the official events including the numerous cocktail
parties and receptions. In turn, an (official) "WTO Sponsored NGO Symposium"
is to be held for chosen NGO participants one day before the launching of
the Ministerial Conference, with carefully worded opening statements by WTO
Director General Mike Moore and US Trade Secretary Charlene Barshevsky.
In other words, the ploy in Seattle (supported by a lavish public relations
campaign) is to carefully diffuse an international mass movement directed
against the WTO and the powerful business syndicates which lie discretely in
the background. "Criticism yes, that's democratic", but the "free market"
system must prevail, the legitimacy of the institutions --including their
Geneva and Washington based bureaucracies-- must not be challenged... In
return, the official conference will accept to embody on behalf of the
"accredited" labour and civil society organisations, various token
environmental and other concessions in their main resolutions with a view to
providing a much needed "human face" to the WTO.
The Millennium Round meetings also purport to replicate the habitual
parallel "People's Summit" which now constitutes an integral component of
successive World venues. Repeated almost annually since the 1992 Rio
Environment Conference, the People's Summit while providing a forum for
critical debate, has over the years largely become "a ritual of dissent"
which largely leaves the official Summit unscathed.
The parallel P7 ("People's P7 Summit") at the G7 meetings in Cologne in June
1999, for instance, was put together in consultation with the host
organisers of the official Summit, generously funded by the Heinrich Boell
Foundation which is an arm of the German Green Party controlled by Foreign
Minister Joschka Fisher. The structure of the Cologne P7 was geared towards
deflecting debate on controversial issues including the "humanitarian
bombings" of Yugoslavia... Meanwhile, more than 20,000 people from all parts
of Europe had gathered in the streets of Cologne under the umbrella of the
Jubilee Campaign. Their petition to unconditionally erase Third World debt
had been signed by more than 17 million people. World leaders respectfully
paid tribute to the Jubilee initiative, responding with empty rhetorical
commitments on debt reduction for the World's poorest countries. The
substantive proposal of the campaign had been casually dismissed.
In Seattle, many of the accredited NGOs representing specific interests (eg.
environmental, labour, human rights, women's organisations, etc) will be
putting forth separate demands. There is evidence that several of the key
NGOs have been infiltrated by Western intelligence agencies. The
Counter-Summit is to be fragmented into a "mosaic" of secluded events
focussing on separate and distinct policy issues. The hidden agenda is to
enable each of these separate venues "to do their own thing" in a semblance
of "people's participation": the goal of the Seattle organisers is to mask
the truth, prevent the development of a mass movement, suppress real
democracy and uphold the authority of the institutions of the New World
Order.
In turn, the AFL-CIO joined by trade union bosses from around the World, has
called upon the WTO to "enforce minimum labour standards... in the global
market". Caving in to Washington's demands, Labour's buzz-word is to "make
the global economy work for working families".6 A carefully drafted petition
urges the Ministerial Conference to adopt "trade and investment rules
[which] protect workers' rights and the environment".7 The overall
legitimacy of the WTO and of US trade policy is not in question. In turn,
the AFL-CIO has been put in charge of the organisation of a mass rally which
usefully serves the purpose of deflecting the international protest movement
on the streets of Seattle...
In Seattle, the big divide will be between those who are genuinely opposed
to the New World Order and those "partner" civil society organisations which
have all the appearances of being "progressive" but which in fact are
creatures of the system. Often funded by their respective governments, they
form part of a politically correct "Opposition" which acts as "a
spokesperson for civil society". But who do they represent? Many of the
"partner NGOs" and lobby groups which frequently mingle with bureaucrats and
politicians, have few contacts with grass-roots social movements and
people's organisations. In the meantime, they serve to deflect the
articulation of "real" social movements against the New World Order.
This does not mean that "dialogue" with the WTO and the governments should
be ruled out as a means of negotiation. On the contrary, "lobbying" must be
applied vigorously in close liaison with constituent social movements. The
underlying results and information of these negotiations, however, must be
channelled with a view to reinforcing rather than weakening grass roots
actions. In other words, we should not allow "lobbying" to be conducted in
an isolated and secretive fashion by organisations which are "hand picked"
by the governments and the WTO.
A MORATORIUM ON LIBERALISATION NEGOTIATIONS
More than 1200 groups and organisations from more than 85 countries have
called for a "Moratorium" on further liberalisation under WTO auspices
including the holding of an "Audit" to be undertaken on the impacts of
globalisation. Their consensus statement ("Statement From Members of
International Civil Society Opposing A Millennium Round"):
* "oppose[s] any further liberalisation negotiations, especially those which
will bring new areas under the WTO regime, such as investment, competition
policy and government procurement. We commit ourselves to campaign to reject
any such proposals. We also oppose the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. We call for a moratorium on any new
issues or further negotiations that expand the scope and power of the WTO.
During this moratorium there should be a comprehensive and in-depth review
and assessment of the existing agreements. Effective steps should then be
taken to change the agreements. Such a review should address the WTO's
impact on marginalised communities, development, democracy, environment,
health, human rights, labour rights and the rights of women and children.
The review must be conducted with civil society's full participation.
The Statement constitutes an important step in challenging the official
Agenda. It is based on a carefully worded consensus of a large number of
individual organisations.
ILLEGALITY OF THE WTO
Yet this important Statement in demanding a "Moratorium" on further
liberalisation negotiations, fails to question the legitimacy of the WTO as
an institution. And indeed this issue should have been included explicitly
in the Statement.
The Marrakesh Agreement of 1994 constitutes a blatant violation of
fundamental social, economic and cultural rights. The stakes in Seattle are
fundamental and cannot be addressed with a compromise Statement which
tacitly accepts the legitimacy of the WTO as an institution. The WTO was put
in place following the signing of a "technical agreement" negotiated behind
closed doors by bureaucrats. Even the heads of ountry level delegations to
Marrakesh in 1994 were not informed regarding the statutes of the World
Trade Organisation which were drafted in separate closed sessions by
technocrats.
"The Final Act Embodying the Results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral
Trade Negotiations", was signed by ministers in Marrakesh on 15 April 1994.
The Final Act is a "technical agreement" which instates the WTO as a World
body. "The WTO framework ensures a "single undertaking approach" to the
results of the Uruguay Round - thus, membership in the WTO entails accepting
all the results of the Round without exception."
Following the Marrakesh meeting, the 550 page Agreement (plus its numerous
appendices) was either rubber-stamped in a hurry or never formally ratified
by national parliaments. The articles of agreement of the WTO resulting from
this "technical agreement" were casually entrenched in international law. In
other words, the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement which instates the WTO as a
multilateral body, bypasses the democratic process in each of the member
countries. It blatantly derogates national laws and constitutions while
providing extensive powers to global banks and multinational corporations.
These powers have in fact become entrenched in the articles of agreement of
the WTO.
In other words, the process of actual creation of the WTO following the
Final Act of Uruguay Round is blatantly "illegal". Namely a "totalitarian"
intergovernmental body has been casually installed in Geneva, empowered
under international law with the mandate to "police" country level economic
and social policies, derogating the sovereign rights of national
governments.
Similarly, the WTO almost neutralises "with the stroke of the pen" the
authority and activities of several agencies of the United Nations including
the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the
International Labour Organisation (ILO).
Moreover, the articles of WTO are no only in contradiction with pre-existing
national and international laws, they are also in at variance with "The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights". Acceptance of the WTO as a
legitimate organisation is tantamount to an "indefinite moratorium" or
repeal of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Moreover, apart from the blatant violation of international law, WTO rules
provide legitimacy to trade practices which border on criminality, including
"intellectual piracy" by MNCs, the derogation of plant breeders rights, not
to mention genetic manipulation by the biotechnology giants, the patenting
of life forms including plants, animals, micro-organisms, genetic material
and human life forms under the TRIPs agreement.
In the sphere of financial services, the provisions of the GATS provide
legitimacy to large scale financial and speculative manipulations directed
against developing countries which are often conducive to the demise of
country-level monetary policy.
And the WTO Dispute Settlement Procedures upholds the legitimacy of these
various manipulative procedures...
THE BALANCE SHEET OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DESTRUCTION
Amply documented, humanity is undergoing in the post-Cold War era an
economic and social crisis of unprecedented scale leading to the rapid
impoverishment of large sectors of the World population. National economies
are collapsing, unemployment is rampant; Wall Street banks are "taking over
countries" one after the other; regional wars have erupted along strategic
gas-oil pipelines and often behind the various "insurgencies" are powerful
corporate interests which coincidentally are also lobbying for trade
reform... In most countries the standard of living has collapsed...
This Worldwide crisis of the late twentieth century is more devastating than
the Great Depression of the 1930s. It has far-reaching geo-political
implications; economic dislocation has also been accompanied by the outbreak
of regional conflicts, the fracturing of national societies and in some
cases the destruction of entire countries. This crisis is by no means
limited to the developing countries. In Europe and North America the Welfare
State is being dismantled, schools and hospitals are being closed down
creating conditions for the outright privatisation of social services. By
far this is the most serious economic crisis in modern history.
In a large number of developing countries, the services economy and banking
are already in the hands of foreign capital, peasant economies have been
devastated as a result of the dumping of EU and US grain surpluses.
Genetically modified seeds produced among others by Cargill and Montsanto
(together with carefully engineered farm inputs produced by these same
agribusiness conglomerates) have been forced upon farmers throughout the
World often leading to mass poverty and the fracture of rural economies, not
to mention the contamination of the food chain derogating the rights of
consumers Worldwide.
In turn, international agribusiness is intent upon driving the family farm
into bankruptcy. This process is by no means limited to developing
countries: up to 30 percent of grain farmers in Western Canada are on the
verge of bankruptcy specifically as a result of the enforcement of WTO
provisions concerning farm subsidies by the Canadian government. And if this
is happening in Western Canada which constitutes one of the World's most
resourceful "bread baskets", what will be the fate of farmers in other
regions of World?
CHINA'S ACCESSION TO THE WTO
The terms of China's accession to the WTO agreed upon in bilateral
negotiations with the United States barely a few weeks before the
Ministerial Conference in Seattle, spells havoc in a country of more than
one billion population. It will devastate China's agriculture; it will
trigger a deadly wave of bankruptcies of State enterprises leading to mass
unemployment. The provision of "national treatment" to Western banks could
potentially precipitate the fracture of the entire structure of Chinese
State banking...
The Chinese authorities, fully aware of the ramifications, have attempted in
a publicity stunt to convince Chinese public opinion that "the benefits from
the agreement would justify the job losses and bankruptcies it will cause".8
In the words of China's chief WTO negotiator Mr. Long Yongtu "a nation
cannot develop and become strong without a sense of urgency and a sense of
crisis."9
ANALYSING & EVALUATING THE NEW WORLD ORDER
In the face of global economic and social devastation, is an (official)
"Audit" really required as put forth in the "Statement From Members of
International Civil Society" to ascertain what is happening? Some of the NGO
critics --including the trade unions-- involved in the dialogue with the WTO
argue that there are both "positive" and "negative" impacts of trade
liberalisation. This position is ambiguous: the devastating impacts of
"globalisation" are already known and documented, the NGO community has
already produced a wealth of critical analysis and research. Moreover, the
audit proposal accepts the legitimacy of the WTO, it presupposes that there
are mistakes and "lets talk and put this system on hold" for a few years
"while we re-evaluate".
Do we need an Audit to ascertain "whether or not" the World is in crisis?
And by whom will this Audit be performed and for whom? The key "partner
NGOs" have already positioned themselves to undertake the relevant
commissioned background studies. Many of the organisations which signed and
endorsed the "Statement" were unaware that the Audit was part of the
"Dialogue" with the WTO and Western governments. And these research
contracts performed "sector by sector" in a "politically correct" fashion
according to pre-established guidelines set by the funding agencies will
take several years to complete.
The conduct of an Audit has already been accepted by the European Union in
its consultations with the NGOs. Former European Commissioner Sir Leon
Brittan, on behalf of the European Union had in fact proposed in 1998, "the
commissioning of a study on the impact of the new Round on sustainable
development" (European Commission, op. cit). In other words, the Audit is
also part of the official agenda of the Seattle Round. In the meantime,
while the Audit is being conducted, economic, social and environmental
destruction will continue unabated.
THE MILLENIUM ROUND IS ALREADY "DE FACTO"
What happens to the World system does not depend solely on the results of
the Millenium Round. We must understand that in many developing countries,
many of the clauses of the Millenium Round are already a "fait accompli".
The are part of the "conditionalities" contained in ad hoc loan agreements
with the IMF and the World Bank. Under the structural adjustment programme
as well as in the context of the IMF sponsored "bailout agreements" (eg.
Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Brazil), developing countries have already
committed themselves to many of the propositions contained in the Millenium
Round.
Moreover, the hands of Third World delegates to Seattle are tied, the vote
of most of the trade ministers from developing countries at the Seattle
Ministerial Conference is controlled by Western creditors. It is unlikely
that much opposition will be voiced from the official delegations from
developing countries.
Many developing countries have accepted in the context of agreements signed
with the Bretton Woods instititions to liberalise trade, deregulate capital
movements, privatise State public utilities, dismantle social programmes and
provide "national treatment" to foreign investors in a large number of
economic activities including services, banking, procurement, etc. These
provisions are often coupled with a "bankruptcy programme" under the
supervision of the World Bank with a view to "triggering" the liquidation of
competing national enterprises. An "enabling free market environment" is
implanted (without recourse to WTO clauses pertaining to "effective access
to markets"), national producers are brutally displaced and destroyed,
countries are casually recolonised...
Wall Street bankers and the heads of the World's largest business
conglomerates are indelibly behind this process. They interface regularly
with IMF, World Bank and WTO officials in closed sessions as well as in
numerous international venues. Moreover, participating in these meetings and
consultations are the representatives of powerful global business lobbies
including the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), The Trans Atlantic
Business Dialogue (TABD) (which brings together in its annual venues the
leaders of the largest Western business conglomerates with politicians and
WTO officials), the United States Council for International Business
(USCIB), the Davos World Economic Forum, the Institute of International
Finance representing the World's largest banks and financial institutions,
etc. Other "semi-secret" organisations --which play an important role in
shaping the institutions of the New World Order-- include the Trilateral
Commission, the Bildebergers and the Council on Foreign Relations.
FINANCIAL DEREGULATION
To top it off, "perfect timing": the deregulation of the US banking system
was approved by the US Senate barely six weeks before the Millennium Round
meetings in Seattle. The new legislation favours an unprecedented
concentration of global financial power. In the wake of lengthy negotiations
which concluded in the early hours of October 22nd, all regulatory
restraints on Wall Street's powerful banking conglomerates were revoked
"with a stroke of the pen". Under the new rules ratified by the US Senate
and approved by President Clinton, commercial banks, brokerage firms, hedge
funds, institutional investors, pension funds and insurance companies can
freely invest in each others businesses as well as fully integrate their
financial operations. The legislation has repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of
1933, a pillar of President Roosevelt's "New Deal" which was put in place in
response to the climate of corruption, financial manipulation and "insider
trading" which led to more than 5,000 bank failures in the years following
the 1929 Wall Street crash.10
In other words, a handful of financial conglomerates will gain effective
control over the entire US financial services industry. Coincidentally these
same Wall Street financial giants are also the main beneficiaries of
financial services' deregulation under the General Agreement on Trade in
Services (GATS) which provides "national treatment" to Wall Street's giants
in banking, insurance, brokerage services, actuarial services, etc. The GATS
is almost "tailor-made" to meet the standards set under the new US financial
services legislation. The financial giants oversee the real economy
Worldwide, they are creditors and shareholders of high tech manufacturing,
the defence industry, major oil and mining consortia, etc. Moreover, as
underwriters of the public debt, they also have a stranglehold on national
governments and politicians. Ultimately, they also call the shots on trade
reform in Seattle.
Moreover, the clauses of the defunct MAI which was to provide "national
treatment" to foreign banks and MNCs (leading to the dislocation of
municipalities and local governments) is also in the process of becoming a
"fait accompli". The financial conglomerates are now fully integrated with
the insurance companies. In turn, the latter oversee and control the
multinational health care providers which are actively lobbying in Seattle
for the deregulation of public health care under the GATS. The institutions
of the Welfare State are to be scrapped. The struggles of the entire
post-war period are to be erased.
The Worldwide scramble to appropriate wealth through "financial
manipulation" is the driving force behind this restructuring of the global
financial architecture of which the new US banking legislation and the
"Seattle Round" are an integral part. In concert with the WTO, the US
legislation favours the elimination of remaining barriers to the free
movement of finance capital. In practice it empowers Wall Street's key
players including Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, J. P, Morgan, Deutsche
Bank-Bankers Trust, etc. to develop a hegemonic position in global banking
overshadowing and ultimately destabilising financial systems in Asia, Latin
America and Eastern Europe...and this process is ongoing irrespective of the
actual outcome of the Millenium Round.
THE SPECULATIVE ONSLAUGHT
In turn, financial deregulation in the US allows speculative trade to
prosper Worldwide in a totally permissive environment. In turn, the
Millenium Round by calling for the deregulation of capital movements will
provide greater legitimacy to speculative trade thereby empowering Wall
Street to extend its global financial domain.
Institutional control over the channels of speculative trade provides the US
and EU financial giants with the tools to manipulate currency and stock
markets and impair the role of central banks. The ultimate objective is to
take control over the reigns of monetary policy and oversee financial
markets all over the World. In the 1997 Asian crisis alone, more than 100
billion dollars were confiscated in a matter of months from the vaults of
Asia's central banks; similar speculative assaults were carried out in
Russia in 1998 and in Brazil in 1999. Derivative and option trade including
the "short selling" of national currencies were behind these assaults
leading to massive debt default and financial collapse. Well documented, the
IMF played a key role in facilitating the speculative onslaught on behalf of
Western and Japanese financial institutions.
In a cruel irony, the use of these deadly speculative instruments was
formally legitimised in the Fifth Protocol of the General Agreement on Trade
in Services (GATS) in the immediate wake of the Asian crisis. Totally
disregarding the impending dangers, the GATS protocol negotiations coincided
chronologically (October 1997) with the climactic meltdown of stock markets
all over the World.
WAR AND GLOBALISATION
And War is also part of the Millennium Round. What happens to countries
which refuse to deregulate trade and foreign investment and provide
"national treatment" to Western banks and MNCs? The Western
military-intelligence apparatus and its various bureaucracies routinely
interface with the financial establishment. The IMF, the World Bank and the
WTO --which "police" country level economic reforms-- also collaborate with
NATO in its various "peacekeeping" endeavours, not to mention the financing
of "post-conflict" reconstruction under the auspices of the Bretton Woods
institutions...
At the dawn of the Third Millennium, War and the "Free Market" go hand in
hand. War does not require a multilateral investment treaty (ie. an MAI)
entrenched in international law: "War is the MAI of last resort." War
physically destroys what has not been dismantled through deregulation,
privatisation and the imposition of "free market" reforms. Outright
colonisation through war and the installation of Western protectorates is
tantamount to providing "national treatment" to Western banks and MNCs in
all sectors of activity. "Missile diplomacy" replicates and emulates the
"gunboat diplomacy" used to enforce "free trade" in the 19th Century. The US
Cushing Mission to China in 1844 (in the wake of the Opium Wars) had
forewarned the Chinese imperial government "that refusal to grant American
demands might be regarded as an invitation to war."11
The "Seattle Round" purports to "peacefully" recolonise countries through
the manipulation of market forces, --ie. through the "invisible hand". It
nonetheless constitutes a form of warfare. More generally, the dangers of
war must be understood. War and globalisation are not separate issues. The
citizens' campaign against the WTO must be integrated with the anti-war
movement against the bombing of sovereign countries by the US and its
European allies.
DISARMING THE NEW WORLD ORDER
The WTO, created from a "technical agreement" (Final Act of the Uruguay
Round), provides entrenched "legal" rights to banks and global corporations.
In turn the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement sets up procedures --including
manipulative Dispute Settlements-- which are now conveniently embodied in
international law but which blatantly violate the rights of citizens all
over the World.
Under WTO rules, the banks and MNCs can legitimately manipulate market
forces to their advantage leading to the outright recolonisation of national
economies. In other words, the WTO articles provide legitimacy to global
banks and MNCs in their quest to destabilise institutions, drive national
producers into bankruptcy and ultimately take control of entire countries.
Moreover, the Agreement formally instates a "triangular division of
authority" between the WTO, and its sister organisations the IMF and the
World Bank in a system of "global surveillance" of developing countries'
economic and social policies. This means that enforcement of IMF-World Bank
policy prescriptions will no longer hinge upon ad hoc country-level loan
agreements (which are not "legally binding" documents). All the main clauses
of the IMF's deadly "economic medicine" will eventually become permanently
entrenched under the Seattle Millenium Round. Countries will not only be
"bonded" by external debt, they will be permanently "enslaved" by an
international body controlled by the World's largest business syndicates.
These WTO articles will set the foundations for "policing" countries (and
enforcing "conditionalities") according to international law.
In other words, we must act in relation to the original "iniquity" and
"illegality" of the Final Act of the Uruguay Round which creates the WTO as
a "totalitarian" organisation. There can be no other alternative but to
reject the WTO as an international institution, to imprint the WTO as an
illegal organisation. In other words, the entire process must be rejected
outright. And this means that citizens' movements around the World must
pressure their governments to withdraw without delay and cancel their
membership with the WTO. Legal proceedings must also be initiated in
national courts against the governments of member countries, underscoring
the blatant violation of dome
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