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Bradley bores but scores in Boston
Beantown finally gets a visit from a candidate who knows his foreign policy inside and out.
By Michael Joseph Gross
[11/30/99]

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The whole world is watching
Direct action comes to the WTO, and members debate what the meaning of "non-violence" is.
By L.A. Kauffman
[11/30/99]

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Everything you need to know about the WTO
While thousands of protesters gather outside, there's plenty of disagreement inside, too.
By David Moberg
[11/29/99]

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[11/29/99]

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[11/29/99]

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Also Today Everything you need to know about the WTO While thousands of protesters gather outside, there's plenty of disagreement inside, too. By David Moberg The whole world is watching Direct action comes to the WTO, and members debate what the meaning of "nonviolence" is. By L.A. Kauffman Joe Conason Joe Conason's column appears in Salon News every other Tuesday. + Biography + Archives

But what they won't do is turn back the economic and technological forces that are gradually creating a global society. Even if that goal were truly desirable, it is simply far too late to rebuild the old barriers that have been torn down. Humanity's increasing capacity to move people, goods, services, wealth and ideas across old borders cannot be shouted down or argued away.

Yet the questions raised by the Seattle protesters are not only pertinent but utterly fundamental. And no satisfactory answers have been heard so far from the self-satisfied proponents of free trade, whose policies have caused one disaster after another. How can market forces and technological progress be directed to serve humanity, instead of enslaving humanity to markets and technologies? How will democracies function if their most important laws are subject to an unelected international bureaucracy? Why are the rights of investors granted precedence over the rights of workers and the preservation of the natural environment?

Although the Clinton administration has promised more than once to give those issues the prominence they deserve, the results to date have been worse than disappointing. In nearly every round of international trade negotiations, American diplomats have achieved "success" by relegating the interests of workers and the environment to secondary status. So far, the rise of social democratic governments across Europe has made little difference in this discouraging pattern.

Indeed, Western pretensions of concern about the rights of labor have been openly mocked by the autocratic governments of countries such as China and Mexico, which have obstinately refused even to establish a "working group" on that touchy topic. If the United States and its allies in Europe were truly determined to achieve even that minor concession -- as determined as they were to protect copyrights, for example -- it is hard to imagine that they would have failed so completely.

So it is even more difficult to imagine that the World Trade Organization could someday become a tribunal for the rights of the world's workers and the protection of the global environment -- but that is the feat of imagination that the future requires.

Next page | It all depends on what the definition of "fair" is