The Storm Over Globalization.

Dispatches from the global trade wars, in the days before and after the WTO, World Bank, and IMF protests

More than 700 organizations and between 40,000 and 60,000 people took part in the protests against the Third Ministerial of the World Trade Organization on November 30. These groups and citizens sense a cascading loss of human, labor, and environmental rights in the world. Seattle was not the beginning but simply the most striking expression of citizens struggling against a worldwide corporate oligarchy--in effect, a plutocracy. Oligarchy and plutocracy are not polite terms. They often are used to describe "other" countries where a small group of wealthy people rule, but not the "first world"--the United States, Japan, Germany, or Canada. But already, the world's top 200 companies have twice the assets of 80 percent of the world's people. Global corporations represent a new empire whether they admit it or not. With massive amounts of capital at their disposal, any of which can be used to influence politicians and the public as and when deemed necessary, they threaten and diminish all democratic institutions.

Corporations are using the World Trade Organization, however, to cement into place their plutocracy. When the "Final Act Embodying the Results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations" was enacted on April 15, 1994, in Marrakech, it was recorded as a 550-page document that was then sent to Congress for approval. Ralph Nader offered to donate $10,000 to any charity of a congressman's choice if any of them signed an affidavit saying they had read it and could answer several questions about it. Only one--Senator Hank Brown, a Colorado Republican--took him up on it. After reading the document, Brown changed his opinion and voted against the agreement. There were no public hearings, dialogue, or education. What was approved was an agreement that gives the WTO the ability to overrule or undermine international conventions, acts, treaties, and agreements when it arbitrates trade conflicts between nations. The WTO directly violates "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights" adopted by member nations of the United Nations, not to mention Agenda 21 of the 1992 Earth Summit.

Paul Hawken in The Amicus Journal, written shortly after he woke up lying on his back on the pavement in Seattle, after being pepper-sprayed by the Seattle police.

But where globalization is really an asset is in the fact that it is creating "Super-empowered environmentalists," who, acting on...