Report
on the International Forum on
Globalization
Conference
in Seattle
by
Bob Banner
The Conference organized by the IFG from San Francisco was the major reason I went to Seattle (besides joining in the demonstrations). The conference with its brilliant critics of globalization from around the globe were to preface the gathering in Seattle of WTO delegates. The report is basically a summary of many of the speakers during Friday night and all day Saturday (from 9am to 11pm).
Friday evening was stupendous. A packed auditorium of 2500 people eagerly listened for 4 and a half hours to some of the most vocal critics of the global economy: Vandana Shiva, John Cavanaugh (from IPS), Jerry Mander (the main impetus of gathering these people together), Maude Barlow (considered to be the "Ralph Nader of Canada"), Susan George (European scholar about international debt), Martin Khor (president of the Third World Network) and Lori Wallach (author of numerous books about the global economy and an associate of Ralph Nader). The basic gist this evening is that the WTO is dangerous and very powerful and that "ordinary people are saying enough" (from the Zapatistas)... and that there’s a strong movement to thwart these corporations who are making their own rules to dominate the entire global resources. Fast Track was stopped for two years in a row, the MAI [Multilateral Agreement on Investments] was defeated to the shock of both sides, Monsanto is being stopped... and there’s grumbling within their own ranks at the WTO that something "stinks". One story that John Cavanaugh relayed was that because of the WTO, Roquefort cheese prices went up in France. To retaliate against such an unfair price hike a mayor of a small French village decided to double the price of US export of Coca Cola... 2500 folks laughed silly.... I have to say it gives me much pleasure to be with so many like-minded folks who are concerned about trade, labor, social justice and the environment. As Susan George said we need to keep on focusing on aligning ourselves with other groups since if we try do it alone they will simply pick off each one of us and destroy our movement.
Before Jerry Mander even said one word the packed audience of 2500 people rose and gave the panel a standing ovation for five minutes.
JERRY MANDER introduced the 2500 people with: why are so many people upset at the WTO... farmers in India (because of continual onslaught of the western model of development that hurts indigenous ways... in India seed saving is sacred, whereas the WTO along with Monsanto would prefer to have farmers buy seeds from multinational corporations), people in Canada are upset about the disintegration of their cultural integrity (since the WTO eliminated the tariffs for US magazines going into Canada), Europeans are upset because their refusal to eat hormone injected beef has been denied by WTO rulings. AIDS workers are upset because the price of drugs have gone up due to WTO rulings.. and of course the environmentalists are upset because laws that they have worked so hard to fight for (i.e., Clean Air, Endangered Species Act...) are being whittled away... as well as national sovereignty policies that have protected the rights of workers, citizens, and the environment are being threatened... ("what is so wrong with protecting?" asks Susan George. We protect our loved ones, family, community... why do the pro-WTO folks always criticize our need for protectionism?)
Global e-commerce pays no taxes.. who benefits from this? the corporations. Mander pointed out that this is being called the "Gates Law." "Don’t buy from amazon.com!" he shouted to the audience who eagerly applauded.
We are witnessing an increase of the transfer of economic and political power of local economies to the corporations and the WTO is the way this can happen... "a conscious destruction of our local economies."
The WTO is not an evolutionary process; it is not inevitable (as Clinton so glibly remarks, "Globalization is not a policy choice, it is a fact." And Tony Blair (as presenter Colin Hines referred to Blair as a "Clinton clone") also remarked, "Globalization is irreversible and irresistible."
*********FLASH!! Monsanto is "being split up and sold off" — said Mae Won Ho. The audience went ballistic. Mae Won Ho is the author of Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightmare? Monsanto has been on the market for about a month and a company called Novatis is interested in purchasing it; however, according to the Financial Times, the biotech division of Monsanto is "virtually useless." *****
Manders spoke about how much of this started in 1944 at Bretton Woods Conference... to centralize and expand productivity, to insure no more wars... "do-gooders gone bad"... The World Bank, the IMF all grew out of this "draconian power play." The underlying paradigm of this is the attempt to unify and codify all systems into one... a "monocultural and homogenized power;" and he quoted a former WTO chairman, Renato Ruggiero, "we wish to bring about a new global constitution."
MAUDE BELLOW spoke about the importance of water. There is only 1/2 of 1% fresh water of the total amount of water on the planet. Of this we are polluting it very fast with contaminated aquifers as well as the simple matter of depleting aquifers (75% of water in Russia is polluted). By 2025, she estimates 2/3 of the world’s population will be in water scarcity. Wars in the next century will be wars over water... and because of this the process is now in place where water will become more and more privatized... meaning corporations will be buying up water rights. In fact, the United Nations is encouraging the private sector to buy up water rights. With WTO in place governments will be forced to open their water resources to "free trade". Alaska has already started to sell its water.
Maude passionately expressed her concern: "Water must be exempted from the WTO and NAFTA... We need to adopt a Water Ethic.... we demand to be heard in the corridors of power... we will not stop until our goals are achieved." Maude Barlow is the author of Blue Gold, a report on the global water crisis, published by IFG. (go to www.ifg.org for details about her report as well as other very important data about globalization). She has been called the "Ralph Nader of Canada" Her website is www.canadians.org.
SUSAN GEORGE, born in the US, moved to France to become one of the most outspoken critics of North-South power relations (the author of A Fate Worse Than Debt). She spoke about war battles and this WTO event in Seattle can be viewed as a historical battle. "We are at war and the WTO is the enemy." The objective of the WTO is to do what it wants. Its objective is purely financial. The rules are: 1) freedom of capital movement (using the IMF for these purposes); 2) wants freedom of investments [they were to use the MAI for this global purpose but were stunned that they couldn’t get their way... however, "they will be back," she said.] 3) the free movement of goods and services... including everything (forget about certain obstacles like environmental laws, national borders, protectionism, child labor, dictatorships). She also spoke about how the word trading is actually a misnomer. IBM trading with IBM is not trading... This is a utopia for corporations and a dystopia for the rest of us.
The WTO’s war propaganda is simple. They talk about free trade ("free" always sounds good) and that the market knows best. There is "no evidence that trade equals better growth." The North-South gap is a chasm and "we’ve got to stop and turn this around." We should not hide from the difficulty and we need to create a movement that aligns ethnics, classes, gender, age. "This is an enormous opportunity for educational democracy." We need to unite our efforts to bring about change or they will pick us off one by one.
MARTIN KHOR, president of the Third World Network and managing editor of The Third World Resurgence magazine (check out their web site at www.twnside.org.sg) [you can also check out a splice of his words of wisdom that is available on the video called "The Myth of Progress" available at the Insomniac video store, 545-8866]
He informed us that we are at a crossroads. Never could we have imagined such a secret plot. Yet, there are forces for change. He spoke about the man who was one of the architects of the MAI. This man told him that the MAI was thwarted because of "public outcry." When asked why, he answered that whenever he travelled throughout the globe there were demonstrations and protests whereupon governments finally told him to cancel the idea. Martin Khor also said that using the internet was very instrumental in countering the MAI shenanigans.
With eagerness he told the audience that there are grumblings within the WTO. One such officer within the WTO said, "It is time for us to review and reform the WTO."
Also, the developing nations have become strengthened to fight back against globalization. They have become organized. They have come to the realization that these economic policies of the west have not been helpful, the Uruguay Round has actually created damages, all life forms should NOT be patented (as the WTO desires).
There is no voting within the WTO. The US doesn’t want it because they might not get what they want. Democracy is dangerous to the sustainability of the WTO. 11 of the 134 members have criticized the WTO’s non-democratic posture. All members of the WTO are not even invited to the secret negotiations within the WTO.
JOHN CAVANAUGH, co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies [www.ips-dc.org), called for "proposing rather than opposing." Yes, thank you. 22 members of the IFG put together a paper called Beyond the WTO: Alternatives to Economic Globalization (available now and in booklet form in June 2000... go to www.ifg.org to order a copy). He also reiterated that more and more surveys are showing that the American people are against the WTO and globalization in general. Majority of Americans are against free trade and for fair trade. 81% agreed that governments should put up barriers against genetically engineered foods (or sometimes referred to as GMO’s [genetically modified organisms] or bio-tech foods).
VANDANA SHIVA received a standing ovation BEFORE she spoke. The author of numerous pamphlets and books [Monoculture of the Mind, Biopiracy... www.indiaserver.com/betas/vshiva/ (see her article in the Diversity issue of HopeDance)].
The WTO is about FORCED trade and the rules are written by an antiquated paradigm and with vengeful arrogance. The costs to the South have been huge. Numerous Indian peasants have been pushed to suicide because of globalization pressures. She told us the story (many of you are probably familiar with it) of Monsanto’s letter to farmers in America telling them to snitch on their neighbors if they see them saving their own seeds. In fact they should call 1-800-roundup. (Vandana told us that saving seeds is considered a very sacred act among the Indians.) All this nastiness is "ontological schizophrenia" and we will see much more of it this week, she told the audience. If there are hazards from their genetic engineering, they will simply say "it’s just like the way nature made it." We will be hearing much about how the WTO supports to end protectionism... YET they themselves are protectionists! They are protecting the bio-tech industry, protecting the monopolist’s rights, protecting corporations from any accountability. We need to understand the double speak they employ to dupe people.
A positive sign: "This village is a GE free zone", says a sign outside an Indian village.
Biopiracy is rape. WTO is protecting the rapist. This is worse than slavery because this time its enslaving all of life. They want to control genes, cells, water, seeds. THEY ARE NOT THE CREATORS.
LORI WALLACH, author of Whose Trade Organization?, ardent activist working for Public Citizen (Ralph Nader’s organization... www.tradewatch.org) and often dubbed "the trade debate’s guerilla warrior." The WTO cannot work if it understood. We need to expose the slime. We will win on our merit and the WTO’s record is our best ammunition. She went on to list 5 important fallacies: 1) global free trade is the dreaded managed trade... it is corporate managed trade to do whatever they want and to bypass state laws; 2) it is inevitable; 3) Trade rules ban discrimination... Not. It enforces value judgments; 4) The pie gets bigger... Since the 5 years they have been operating the volume of trade is up, but the third world has gotten a smaller share; 5) Prices go down for consumers... food prices have gone up 8%.
JOSÉ BOVÉ, a French farmer who took on MacDonalds in France.
Because the WTO denied Europe the right to deny hormone injected beef a number of products had higher tariffs attached to them. One of which was Roquefort cheese. José, a sheep farmer, was outraged. He went to the French government and they said they couldn’t do anything because the WTO said so. José felt the need to show his people that they weren’t going to take this lying down. He had to do something to show how ordinary lives were being affected by the WTO rulings. When a MacDonald was going to go up in his nearby town, he decided to protest MacDonald’s as a symbol of globalization. He went on and spoke about how one Macburger tastes the same anywhere in the world to the laughter of the audience. "I’m not really sure that that is eating... I’m not sure if it’s really meat." This protest is not against the American people but against the growing globalization.
On Jan 7, 1998, he and others demonstrated against GMO [Genetically Modified Organisms] seeds by destroying all the seeds. When the GMO operation started they were using 35,000 hectares for GMO plants.... Now because of repeated demonstrations by protestors, they have reduced their hectares to 200 for GMO plants.
José has become a symbol for the small farmer throughout the world. At the IFG conference he presented the chair with a large box of Roquefort cheese with French television cameramen and photographers snapping shots of that event along with the standing ovation that we gave him. In the Seattle Times we learned that he actually brought over 464 pounds of Roquefort cheese in protest of WTO policies... and as he was traveling the city of Seattle, the same cameramen and reporters were following him everywhere he went. We need anti-WTO heroes and here we have one! His last words to us were that workers, farmers and consumers need to work together for change. They will not win alone. AND destroying the GMO seeds is like destroying the tea in Boston. People shouted with glee... the standing room only audience of 2500 people were clapping uproariously.
KEVIN DANAHER is director of public education at Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org) and author of numerous books including CORPORATIONS ARE GONNA GET YOUR MAMA: Globalization and the Downsizing of the American Dream...
He started by telling us that we are travelling on a bus and the bus driver is very drunk. So, what are we to do? Stay in our little corners while holding to our dearest secure little careers? Or get up, take the bus driver out of his seat, tie him up (so he can sober up) and replace him with another driver.
Rather than speak about top-down globalization, we should be encouraging "bottom-up grassroots internationalism"... expressing solidarity and connections with people from all over the world that have the same concerns as we have.
He, like other presenters, reiterated that "they are losing."
If it’s normal for us to consume all the stuff we do, then why is it that we need 1,000 commercials a day to remind us? One commercial would be enough. The crowd was in stitches.
He spoke about our need to have a long-term vision. He compared our movement to the masons who built the churches in Europe (i.e., Chartes Cathedral). They (the builders) knew that they were not going to be able to finish the buildings within their life time. "We need to have that same type of commitment, patience and vision."
There are two different movements happening in the world. One is that there is a transfer of nature into money while the other one is interested in social justice and living in harmony (sustainably) with Mother Nature.
He mentioned and praised the many youth organizations that are at the forefront of the Seattle protest. The young people in the audience all rose and cheered wildly.
He quoted the famous Ethiopian proverb: "When spiders unite, they can take down a lion."
After his talk people cheered and applauded madly, the longest cheer of all the presenters. He reminded me of a George Carlin of the anti-globalization movement. And someone behind me said it better, "He’s like a combination of Rocky and Gandhi."
I underlined this sentence from a report in the Seattle Times. "When Leonia Hensen arrived at the peaceful demonstration Sunday from Massachusetts, she was asked what she thought of her 27 year old daughter who got arrested from climbing a building to post a large anti-WTO banner (along with other climbers). ‘We are not an activist family. But I’m so proud of her. She’s catapulted us into awareness’."
IFG collaborates with 60 of the best radical scholar activists throughout the world; reporting and publishing papers and books about what’s really happening throughout the globe. (www.ifg.org).
Bob Banner is publisher of HopeDance Magazine and went to Seattle for 5 days to protest the WTO and to share his reports and insights with HopeDance readers. He can be reached at 544-9663 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
