THE PEOPLE'S STAKE IN THE WTO MATTER

WTO's World Plantation for the Rich: The People's Struggle and the WTO

By Lee Roy Rouge

Even though the smoke has cleared from the November-December 1999 World Trade Organization Summit in Seattle, Washington, the nefarious deeds of the World Trade Organization (WTO) beg the close scrutiny of all the oppressed people of the Planet Earth.

In the U.S., where the people are under the constant, genocidal barrage of police/hate group terror and murder, ethnic cleansing in the cities, the scourge of racism run amuck, the massive new prison and foster care slavery and more, it is very difficult to look beyond this mind boggling maze to world-wide events. However, if we grasp things from a global perspective, we stand a greater chance of solving local problems.

This paper will examine the origin of the WTO and its effect on the environment, labor, HIV/AIDS. It will also discuss the "Battle of Seattle" and how the people need to view and act more effectively on the WTO debacle.

WHAT IS THE WTO?

The World Trade Organization is an international organization that was created in 1995 to enforce existing trade rules among its 135 member nations. Most of the rules and regulations of the WTO stem from and remain those of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The development of GATT was led by the U.S. and ratified by 40 nations in 1947. The main reason for the development of the WTO was because of the shortcomings of dispute resolution procedures under GATT.

Some examples of the problems were: delays in the establishment of panels to review disputes, delays in completion of panel reports, uncertain quality and neutrality of panelist and panel reports, blocked panel reports, non-implementation of panel reports. However, one of the main flaws of GATT was that the costs of preparing and prosecuting GATT claims was overwhelming for small injured nations. Another key shortcoming of GATT was that any threat of smaller countries to impose retaliatory measures against larger richer countries, especially the U.S., was laughable.

According to its official declaration and on paper, this is how WTO claims it operates. The structure of the WTO is dominated by its highest

authority, the Ministerial Conference, composed of representatives of all WTO members, which is required to meet at least every two years and which can make decisions on all matters under any of the multilateral trade agreements.

The day-to-day work of the WTO, however, falls to a number of subsidiary bodies; principally the General Council, also composed of all WTO members, which is required to report to the Ministerial Conference. As well as conducting it's regular work on behalf of the Ministerial Conference, the General Council convenes in two particular forms- as the Dispute Settlement Body, to oversee the dispute settlement procedures and as the Trade Policy Review Body to conduct regular reviews of the trade policies of individual WTO members.

The general council delegates responsibility to three other major bodies-namely the Councils for Trade in Goods, Trade in Services and Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property.

Three other bodies are established by the Ministerial Conference and report to the General Council. The Committee on Trade and Development is concerned with issues related to the developing countries and especially, to the "least-developed" among them. "Yea right!" There is a Committee on Balance of Payment and a Committee on Budget.

Each of the four multilateral agreements of the WTO-those on civil aircraft, government procurement, dairy products and bovine meat-establish their own management bodies which are required to report to the General Council.

An important part of the WTO's mandate is to cooperate with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and other multilateral institutions "to achieve greater coherence in global economic policymaking."

All this sounds so good and "democratic" on paper but the truth is that the U.S. dominated GATT. It dominates the IMF and in fact put up one third of the $8 billion to found the IMF in the 1940s. The U.S. with the world's largest economy, still contributes most to the IMF, today, providing 18% of total quotas, about $18 billion. At the founding of the IMF, the U.S. saw to it that those who contribute most to the Fund had the strongest voice in determining it's policies. The U.S. dominates the World bank, and the U.N., even without paying U.N. dues and the U.S. dominates the WTO. Of course, the European Union (E.U.), Canada and Japan have a significant say so. This is precisely how might makes right in a world driven by money and profit rather than one driven by the needs of people.

All the major countries in the world are members of the IMF. The formerly centrally planned economies (socialist economies) of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are at various stages of completing their "transition" to "market economies" (capitalist economies). Cuba is the only country to have left the IMF and never returned.

One of the biggest gripes from the small countries concerning the WTO is that at it's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, all the important talks and decisions, are held behind closed doors among the delegates from the big nations. However, the ultimate word on the WTO is that decisions are made by a secret tribunal of three un-elected, unaccountable trade bureaucrats. This tribunal is like putty in the hands of the U.S. and the other big traders.

Since the WTO was created, the rules also cover domestic issues like food, and consumer product safety laws, environmental standards and other things which previously were entirely the internal business of each member country.

WTO rules allow countries to challenge each other's laws. Suppose scientists, in say, Ghana had decided that certain foods from the U.S. caused cancer. As things stand now, Ghana can pass a law and ban the carcinogenic food but the U.S. can appeal to the WTO's un-elected, secret tribunal of three unaccountable trade bureaucrats, demanding to have Ghana's law declared an illegal trade barrier. The losing country has three choices: Change it's law, pay big money to the winning country or face

sanctions. In most cases the losing country simply changes the law.

Since the beginning of the WTO, every single environmental or public-health law which has been challenged in this way, has been ruled an illegal trade barrier. This has been done, usually, in the interest of the profits of the huge multinational corporations.

The WTO striped of its outer mask, merely functions as a mechanism by which multinational corporations can avoid or abolish laws created by "democratically" elected governments to protect their environments or citizens. The next mask is skillfully crafted from the words "free trade." Trade like everything else in capitalist society is free relative to how much capital or money somebody has. The little companies and countries are powerless and do not have the freedom in "free trade" when faced with the large countries and multinational corporations. A few of the most obvious advantages of the huge multinational corporations are:

· The availability of public roads, airports, power, water and other public utilities.

· Tax advantages, abatements, loopholes and concessions.

· The use of natural resources via government grant or subsidy.

· Export markets opened or expanded through government.

intervention, either diplomatic or military or both.

Governments and the huge corporations, in the major trading countries, interpenetrate like the whiteness on white rice. They work together to maximize profits and are driving thousands upon thousands of small farms and businesses, around the planet earth, out of existence. There is, however, an inter-imperialist rivalry that exists among the large trading blocks.

While the large countries run rough shod over the smaller poorer countries, it must be said that the smaller poorer countries have their own rich, ruling class driven governments, that are in league with businesses (albeit smaller than the multinationals) dedicated to profits to the detriment of their people.

GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS

Seventy percent of the processed foods in the supermarkets of the U.S. contain genetically modified ingredients. Genetically modified crops grow on more than 50 million acres of farmland in the U.S. Genetically modified ingredients show up in everything from pasta to soft drinks to cooking oil to veggie burgers. Even hormones are added to meat for more rapid production. This food is not only the main staple of the people of the U.S. but is pushed onto the people of practically the whole world.

Neither the producers of this food nor the government can or will say what long term effects this genetically altered food will have on people or the environment. Some scientists fear that plants with spliced-on antibiotic marker genes, when passed into the bacteria that live in the human digestive tract, may be building up human resistance to the antibodies that are used for common illnesses.

Some bacteria known by the shorthand Bt are toxic to caterpillars so scientists plucked out the genetic material that gives the bacteria that trait and implanted it in the genetic code of plants. Other genetically engineered crops are immune to certain herbicides. Farmers who use Roundup ready soybeans, for example, can spray their fields with the herbicide, Roundup and wipe out just about every plant except their soybeans.

Research suggests that genetic engineering (GE) of food products could create unexpected new allergens or contaminate products in unanticipated ways. This could result in threats to public health.

Critics of the rapid introduction of GE crops into food supply point to one particularly alarming incident in which dozens of people were killed and 1, 500 others afflicted by an excruciatingly painful disorder scientists suspect is linked to a bacterium engineered to produce the food supplement L-tryptophan. In addition, many scientists fear that bio-engineered crops could spark wide spread ecological damage. This could create insecticide resistant bugs and herbicide-resistant "super weeds" that would make Kudzu and purple loosetrife look like summer dandelions.

Given the potential risks and the warnings from respected scientists, how did genetically engineered food crops find their way onto farms and then into supermarkets, with such ease? A review of the federal policymaking process, supported by testimony and documents from a law suit against the Food and Drug Administration, suggests that the political influence of the biotech industry effectively silenced government regulators charged with safeguarding the public.

The hands-off approach to regulation began during the Bush administration, which was eager to foster a nascent biotech industry with the potential to generate corporate profits and foreign trade. Again, we see the propensity of this system to place profits over people.

As things stand now, neither the people of the U.S. nor countries big or small can withstand this onslaught of genetically altered foods from huge U.S., multinational corporations like Monsanto. Even the powerful European Union (E.U.) could not stop this flood of questionable food. The U.S. had simply to go to the WTO and have the resistance of the E.U. declared an illegal trade barrier. Monsanto is the world's largest purveyor of genetically modified seeds. Monsanto says this food is safe but that's the same thing they said when they made "Agent Orange."

The very air we breathe is subject to the negative work of the WTO. In January 1996, the WTO court found that regulations of the U.S.Clean Air Act (adopted under the 1990 amendments to the Act) violated trade rules, even though air qualified ( under Article XX) as an "exhaustible natural resource," U.S. standards discriminated against foreign gasoline.

Many factories (thousands) have been moved from the inner cities of the U.S., often with government subsidy, to Latin America, Haiti, Indonesia and China. Cheap, wage slavery type labor is the most obvious reason for these moves. However, neck and neck with cheap labor is environmental pollution with impunity.

In many Third World Countries environmental laws are non-existent. These corporations save mega-bucks and in the process, pollute the environments of host, Third World Countries. While the people in these plants are forced to work and live like slaves they have the added injury of living and working under conditions that are environmentally, murderous.

The multinational corporations and their U.S. Government are so slick that they can use a twisted maneuver to have the WTO rule that even long-established, environmental laws within the U.S. are illegal trade barriers. Under this scam, the huge corporations win twice, internationally and locally. This is to the detriment of healthy air and water to even more of the people of the Earth.

FORESTS

At the Seattle WTO Summit, President Bill Clinton was set to join other world leaders in signing the "Free Logging Agreement." This agreement would increase logging in some of the world's most fragile ancient forests to the benefit of giant, timber corporations.

The "Free Logging Agreement" would eliminate tariffs (border taxes) on forest products world-wide. Prices for forest products will drop, so consumption and logging will rise. As the demand for wood grows in the U.S., the world's last great ancient forests are jeopardized. For example, British Colombia, Canada, home to much of the world's last remaining ancient temperate forests now exports half of its timber to the United States. The "Free Trade Agreement" would increase the pace of forest destruction in British Columbia, and around the world, just to supply the U.S. market.

Japan, the U.S. "act-a-like" in Asia, in exchange for signing the `Free Trade Agreement, insists that the U.S. lift it's ban on raw log exports. This will mean more of the forests in the Pacific North West of the U.S. will be cut-down and exported.

WTO rules already compromise the right of local, state and federal governments to consider, when purchasing materials, such factors as whether a piece of wood was cut from a rapidly disappearing rain forest or whether paper contains recycled content. As an example, "green procurement" legislation (legislation designed to protect the environment) in New York was defeated after timber industry representatives charged that the legislation was illegal under WTO rules.

Pressure from those who place the welfare of humanity over profit, has influenced the writing of the ingredients in foods on the labels of foods and the cancer warning on cigarette labels. Similar measures have been taken relative to lumber. It is called "eco-labeling."

"Echo-labeling" allows customers of lumber to determine whether wood products come from well-managed forests. One aspect of well managed forests is the well planned replanting of trees as they are cut down. Under circumstances, now, "echo-labeling" is an important tool for empowering consumers in the fight for global forest protection. "Ecolabeling" encourages consumers to use their purchasing power to protect forests.

At the WTO Seattle Summit, another goal of the Clinton Administration was to adopt new principles of "eco-labeling." Their plan is to allow the WTO to decide what consumers can know about wood products. If you've been following the pattern of the WTO, you can rest assured that it will rule in favor of profits to the detriment of forests. This not only leads to greater "global warming" but in many places around the world, as forests are destroyed the communities of people who live from them are destroyed also.

INVASIVE PESTS

The profit driven, tunnel vision of the WTO neglects precautionary measures which could prevent invasive forest pests from hitching from place to place on raw logs, railroad ties and pallets. lacking natural enemies, these pests can cause tremendous damage. In the past, pest invaders have wiped out trees known as the American chestnut, The American elm and the white pine.

A rising tide of imported insects, such as the Asian long-horned beetle and the Asian gypsy moth, and new fungal diseases threaten to devastate many, many trees. The U.S. Animal and Plant Service, the federal agency in charge of pest control, recently stated that it cannot implement the strong, precautionary safeguards necessary to stop invasive forest pests because doing so would violate WTO rules.

LABOR

Nowhere in the WTO agreement is there any reference to workers' rights. WTO rules undermine the labor laws of every country. They do not allow countries to treat imports differently based on how they are produced..

In the case of the U.S. where the prison industry is the largest growth industry, the production of scores of products in prisons has literally reintroduced slavery. These products are being brokered and sold around the world. Since the WTO is the new, chief arbiter of world-wide trade and operates in the interest of profits over working conditions, whether considered from a direct or indirect standpoint, it sanctions this prison slavery.

This prison slavery means mainly the enslavement of thousands and thousands of Black men women and children in the U.S. Other minorities are affected by this, especially Latinos. The U.S. government supports this through the constant thrust to privatize government functions.

The Prison industry is leading the charge in the privatization of government functions.

WTO rules will allow a profit driven country like the U.S. to skirt around it's own labor laws (prison slavery is legal in some states) and simply have the WTO declare the enforcement of these labor laws an illegal trade barrier.

In a super, racist country like the U.S., there are many things that impact powerfully on the creation and expansion of prison slavery.

* The introduction of crack cocaine by the Government.

* The disparity in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine relative to Blacks and the complicity of the Judicial, Executive and Legislative branches of the Government in this practice. Blacks are also dealt with more severely for the same crimes that whites commit.

· The scourge of massive racial profiling, of Blacks and Latinos by police.

· Broad prosecutorial misconduct, as it relates to Blacks, across the U.S.

· The placement of Blacks in the federal penal system for the same infractions for which whites are put under state and local jurisdictions. Federal treatment is harsher in every way and placement in privatized prisons is more likely.

· The introduction of laws like "three strikes and you're out" and "truth in sentencing."

· The treatment of people and their labor power as the commodity for which the privatized prison industry seeks to incarcerate more people and keep them longer.

· The introduction of "Weed and Seed" or CAPS (so-called community policing) type programs, nationally.

· The revitalization of many rural communities through the construction of prisons.

· The general bonanza in profits made by many from the growing prison

industry. This extends from Wall Street underwriters, to construction companies to prison maintenance companies (who make more than the builders), food

and laundry concessions, computer companies, to the more than $1 billion

made yearly by telephone companies from the poor families of prisoners.

The incarceration rate is rising as crime goes down.

The U.S., while crying foul to other countries that export products made by prison labor, has been carrying on a vigorous and expanding trade in prison products and with the current, negative influence of the WTO, the purveyors of such products can relax, enjoy and expand their conquest.

Another area that we must be aware of, in order to oppose it, is sweatshop and child labor. The U.S. has had laws on the books, for some time, which ban the importation of products made with child labor. Now, such laws violate WTO rules. The result is the deepening and spread of the criminal use of child labor. This is done behind the "legal" guise of WTO rules. Sweatshops, around the world continue to employ child labor at wages that do not sustain life. Many of these children work in conditions that violate humanity.

The Clinton Administration has recently, with great fanfare, signed the International Labor Organization (ILO) Treaty on exploitative child labor. But this treaty is still-born by the simple fact that it is unenforceable under WTO rules.

One of the most glaring examples of sweatshop labor exists in Haiti where people are forced to work for 11 cents per hour in dimly lit, crowded plants with heavy air, dust and lint. They often must work 70 hours per week for 50 days without a day off and are sometimes locked in plants until production is made. According to eye witness reports, these people have sad, tired faces hunched over antiquated machines. Physical threats in the work place are often enforced by ex-members of the death squads that propped-up the former ruler of Haiti, Baby Doc Duvalier.

Mid-level foreign service bureaucrats in Haiti live with their households full of children called rest avecs who are under-paid, underaged domestics, who do their every bidding. This includes sexual abuse and is not limited to Haiti but has been documented in Mexico and probably exists everywhere this horrible system exists.

In some sweatshops workers toil at their sewing machines for up to 60 hours a week in rooms with wires hanging from the ceiling with small fans as the only ventilation and no fire exits. Wages are often arbitrarily cut or delayed if the owner runs short of funds. Employees who miss a day are illegally fined $30 on top of losing a day's pay. Bosses think nothing of hitting workers or pulling their hair. This is in New York City and was reported by the Washington Post.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, more than half of the 22, 000 sewing businesses in the U.S. pay workers below the legal minimum wage and violate overtime wage laws. That means 60 to 80 hour work weeks and wages as low as $1 and $2 an hour. One thing that illustrates the complicity with this utter disregard of workers rights, from the highest quarters, is the fact that the U.S. Labor Department employs only 800 investigators to monitor 6 million American workplaces. If conditions are miserable for American sweatshop workers, the international scene is far worse.

There are many other examples of inhuman forms of wealth extraction, from workers around the U.S. and the World. The WTO simply means greater approval and extension of this behavior.

In Africa, as of January 2000, 13 million people have died from AIDS and left over 10 million orphans. Projections are that over the next ten years 23 million more will die, leaving 40 million orphans. Mind you, the reality has far out-stripped previous projections. On a continent already ravaged by war and poverty, AIDS is wiping out much of a generation. Families are being destroyed and the extended family, formerly a safety net for orphaned children, is also being destroyed.

The scene is one of skeletal men with festering abscesses on their skin, hidden away in shacks only slightly larger than outhouses reeking of sickness. There are spindly grandmothers who have lost their sons and daughters caring for twenty and thirty grandchildren in houses without electricity or running water. Families are lined up outside of cemeteries waiting to bury their dead and morgues operate 24 hours per day. Coffinmaking is the biggest growth business here.

The scene is one in which millions of children have seen their parents die in pain only to leave them, in most cases, roaming the streets hungry, trying to make a living in any way possible, unable to afford even elementary education. Many girls are forced into prostitution and exposed to the likelihood of continuing the HIV/AIDS cycle. A seemingly lesser evil is that some of the orphaned African girls become child brides or the playthings of sugar daddies. They can only hope that the men will not be among the millions who believe that sex with a virgin cures AIDS. Some one million children in Africa are HIV positive and 6,000 men and women die from AIDS, per day.

Many African Americans who visit Africa don't tell us what's really going on there. They are driven to extol its tall buildings and great hotels and such. Many who can afford such a trip, are members of a sort of privileged class which is still struggling with issues of self-validation. These great buildings and enterprises are merely edifices of the usual criminality of capitalism (wealth for the few to the detriment of the many) and mean nothing to the welfare of Africa in general.

Some black elites who grasp the urgency of the AIDS crisis, believe that highlighting the AIDS crisis in Africa re-enforces negative stereotypes. These Blacks desperately need re-education on this issue. They need it as much as those who stigmatize AIDS victims as "bringing it on themselves" and those African leaders who, because of the stigma associated with AIDS, have been accused of a conspiracy of silence. While one major component of AIDS infection and its spread is irresponsible or ignorant sexual behavior, in no way can we use this as an excuse to do nothing. Many of the AIDS victims in Africa have done nothing more than simply be born.

Nothing could more clearly explain the evils of the system of capitalism than how it deals with the millions of people of the world who are sick and dying from AIDS. In the interest of profit, the multinational pharmaceutical corporations, in league with the World Trade Organization, deny aids medications to millions of people who are dying from AIDS.

The pharmaceutical industry has been the most lucrative industry in the U.S. for more than 30 years. People in America spend more than $103 billion on legal drugs annually. Companies who manufacture AIDS medications are among the most profitable and AIDS medications provide 10% of their revenue. Despite the massive profits these companies receive from producing these drugs, the bulk of research and development costs are covered by the U.S. Government. Some companies write off more than 40% of their research costs on AIDS drugs to the federal government.

Meanwhile, 1 in 4 people living in America, (70 million) have no prescription drug coverage. This number rises as drug prices continue to increase. The new AIDS medications are among the most costly, so all the medical breakthroughs in the world are not enough to save many people living in America. Over 38% of those infected with HIV, in the U.S., are Black.

Over 90% of the world's HIV-infected people live in the poorest 10% of countries of the world. Over 23 million Africans, 6.7 million South and Southeast Asians, and 1.4 million Latin Americans are infected with HIV. Medicines and treatment regimens which fight HIV/AIDS, such as combination anti-retroviral therapies and anti-fungal and anti-viral drugs (sometimes called "the cocktail") which fight infections associated with HIV are too expensive for this overwhelming majority of HIV-infected people.

With the exception of AZT, all currently licensed and experimental aids medications are the intellectual property of multinational pharmaceutical corporations based largely in the U.S. The U.S. through patents, gives these corporations a 20 year monopoly on the production and sale of these drugs.

In the early 1990s, pharmaceutical corporations lobbied the U.S. Government to ensure that these patent protections for medicines were unilaterally applied in other countries in order to maximize profits. The top 10 U.S. based pharmaceutical firms spent an average of $4 million lobbying the government in 1998, alone.

As a result, intellectual property rights expanded from just the domain of the U.S. to the entire globe and became one of the focal points of the international trade talks which culminated in the formation of the World Trade Organization. One of the first actions of the WTO was to approve the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). TRIPS mandates that member countries of the WTO must adopt a U.S.-style patent system, ensuring that multinational pharmaceutical corporations reap massive profits on their products while poor people wait 20 years to afford these life-saving drugs.

The authors of the TRIPS agreement included provisions which (if used properly) can increase the availability of medicines and restrict their costs. Under "compulsory licensing" TRIPS permits governments to instruct a company to license the right to use its patent to another company, a government agency or another party provided that country "safeguards" the interests of the company who owns the original patent. "Safeguard" means pays a royalty to the owner of the patent. "compulsory licensing" can lower the prices of medicines by more than 75%.

"Parallel importing" is another provision of TRIPS which could increase availability and lower costs of drugs. As drug prices can vary drastically from market to market, "parallel importing" allows someone other than the authorized distributor to import a product from one country and resell it in another at a lower price than the owner of the patent.

The U.S. Government with the financial support and lobbying of multinational pharmaceutical corporations has opposed countries like Thailand and Israel for engaging in these practices and pressured them to repeal "compulsory licensing" and "parallel importing" laws.

The U.S. has bullied New Zealand for trying to impose price controls on medicines to treat its own residents. It has threatened trade sanctions against South Africa for attempting to pass legislation that would make drugs affordable to its people. The U.S. is behaving as if it is on a "trip." Is there anyone with a brain and a heart that cannot see that the U.S. is engaging in the rankest form of gangsterism? The U.S. is practicing a system of "legalized" criminality gone global. If this is how capitalism or a system based on profit works, given this AIDS crisis, alone, can anyone doubt that capitalism is a bad system?

THE BATTLE OF SEATTLE AND BEYOND

The November-December 1999 WTO summit in Seattle, Washington was hyped as the largest trade conference ever held in U.S. Apart from the delegates, over 50,000 demonstrators from over 700 Non- Government Organizations (NGOs) poured in from across the country and around the world. They literally interrupted the proceedings of the WTO Summit.

Thousands of demonstrators were from Third World farm groups and were protesting the aggressive push and expanded exports of U.S., European, Canadian and Australian farmers as a direct threat to their traditional agrarian societies.

Among the angriest taunts from the demonstrators were those aimed at the World Trade Organization ruling against Europe's ban on hormone fed beef which the protesters see as the first effort to restrict the rights of all countries to ban bio-engineered foods. Their main spokesman was Jose Bove the French farmer who last August tore the roof off a Mc Donalds Restaurant in France with a tractor. Bove stated "our struggle is not against America or American farmers, it is against the WTO and globalization. We don't want the big Corporations telling us what we have to eat."

For five stormy days, demonstrators of every hue invaded downtown Seattle. The streets became a festival of defiance, color, music, theater, and celebration. Longshore workers shut down the Port of Seattle and were joined in work stoppages by longshore workers at all west coast ports. Twenty five thousand union workers rallied against the WTO at the Memorial Center. The area surrounding the Convention Center, site of the WTO meeting was completely occupied by demonstrators. At certain times, you could look up and down every street and see thousands of people in every direction.

These demonstrators came from every corner of Seattle. One group of about 3,000 demonstrators was led by 100 protesters dressed as endangered turtles. They were protesting WTO policies that are bringing about the extinction of certain kinds of sea turtles. Other protesters were dressed as trees and corn (one of the most widely genetically engineered foods).

Some protesters were dressed as bananas. The U.S. imports more bananas than any other country and relies heavily on Costa Rica for its supply. Already, the widespread use of pesticides to maintain this crop accounts for 90% of the destruction of Costa Rica's coral reefs and the sterilization and poisoning of hundreds of banana workers. WTO rules will lead to higher pesticide use in this region.

Others were dressed as monarch butterflies. Some scientists say that monarch butterflies are threatened by genetically engineered corn. some were dressed as clowns Other demonstrators carried signs that read "Make Trade Clean Green and Fair." A drum corps dressed in green and black called the "Infernal Noise Brigade" marched in step with hip hop music blaring from a van. At one corner a giant whale balloon blocked the street and people chanted "Ain't no power like the power of the people cause the power of the people don't stop."

Suddenly, the police pepper-sprayed a group of people who were sitting-down in the street, and from the other side of the intersection cops began tear-gassing the crowd. Eventually, the police and National Guard troops moved in with not only tear gas, and pepper spray but riot sticks, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and general brutality against violent and peaceful demonstrators alike. Over 500 were arrested.

People dispersed, many choking and crying from the gas, then moved right back in. This scene was repeated over and over throughout the day. People resisted clouds of tear gas and contested every key intersection. Some youth threw what ever they could get their hands on at the cops. People threw tear-gas canisters back at police. People threw rocks, bottles, and sticks at the police after being gassed. They threw newspaper boxes and rolled dumpsters into the street like mini-barricades. Bonfires were built a couple of times.

Some anarchist demonstrators wore all black and smashed store windows of multinational corporations and covered the city with spray painted slogans such as "class war." Even youth from Seattle spontaneously joined the demonstrators.

In spite of all this brutality by police, the protesters were not to be denied They blocked hotel entrances and the convention center itself. Many of the delegates to this summit, from around the world, were blocked by protesters from ever reaching the convention center. Even one key-note speaker was blocked, Secretary of State, Madeline Albright.

One protester stated after being released from jail "Free trade in the Third World countries is forced down on them by military regimes and military actions. And that has been reflected this week in Seattle--where the supply. Already, the widespread use of pesticides to maintain this crop accounts for 90% of the destruction of Costa Rica's coral reefs and the sterilization and poisoning of hundreds of banana workers. WTO rules will lead to higher pesticide use in this region.

One protester stated after being released from jail "Free trade in the Third World countries is forced down on them by military regimes and military actions. And that has been reflected this week in Seattle--where the WTO has been forced down our throats by military oppression and military action ... We showed them we're not going to back down, we're not going to give up. They can gas us , they can shoot us with rubber bullets, they can pepper spray us, they can beat us, they can rush us with horses. We're just gonna keep on coming. They can put us in jail, and we're still not gonna lie down."

The "Battle of Seattle" was a significant and massive response to the vagaries of the WTO. Beyond Seattle, many a struggle, around the world, is being waged against the WTO and the horse (U.S. Imperialism) upon which it rode up in here. While protesters disrupted the WTO meeting in Seattle, there were many other actions around the country and around the world. There were demonstrations in the Philippines, London, India, Mexico, Hong Kong, Paris, Prague, Czech Republic, Germany, and Canada.

On December 3, as the WTO meeting in Seattle was coming to an end, electricity to the WTO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland was cut off for 45 minutes when protesters broke into a nearby power station. In the U.S., there were demonstrations in Boston, Austin, Texas, Tucson, Arizona, San Francisco Bay Area.

There was also a demonstration in Chicago in which I participated. It was on historic State Street right in downtown Chicago during the height of the Christmas shopping season. This demonstration blocked the sidewalk and the entrance to Chicagoland's largest Old Navy Store. Issues were addressed like AIDS, Forests, and the general subjects that the demonstrations in Seattle addressed. However, one of the key thrusts of this demonstration was against Donald Fisher, founder of Gap, Inc. Gap Inc. owns Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic. The protest was against the key role played by Donald Fisher in writing the rules for NAFTA, and GATT/WTO.

The key struggle against the WTO, generally, is against the establishment of a world-wide corporate dictatorship. What's at stake is the battle to write the rules that will govern the new global economy. This economy is powered by global markets, global corporations and global communications, all of which have escaped the laws and frontiers of individual nations.

The multinational corporations, in league with their governments are so ravenously, imperialistic that they are determined to take over the world by hook or crook. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a Paris based organization consisting of 29 member nations. It is dominated by the U.S. In 1995, in secrecy, it began negotiating an expansive agreement, the Multilateral Agreement on Trade (MAI). This agreement would give them unprecedented global authority. It is designed to protect corporate property rights worldwide. The MAI agreement would grant corporations equal standing with nations and in effect would guarantee them the right to sue any country that restricted their ability to make money. The drafters have concluded that they may need up to another year to complete this agreement. They can be watched at, MAI no thanks! http://www.islandnet.com/plethora.

NGOs

Many new and vocal forces have mounted the stage of history. They are called Non Government Organizations (NGOs). They are not a part of government or business. Some NGOs have gone as far as to view certain amalgamations of NGOs as "the third sector" of global government and others call the new force "Civil society"

Many NGOs impact on the global policies of the major players in the scheme of things. For example the U.N. has accredited 1500 NGOs and the World bank has a set of NGOs that it recognizes. Some NGOs are consulted on environmental issues and NGOs like Doctors Without Borders are consulted on health issues. The IMF and the WTO remain uncomfortable with all NGOs.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

Only a fire storm of world-wide revolution can stop the WTO and its people-hating purveyors of death through disease, slavery, poison food, air and water. Many will offer other solutions but they will be weak, partial, ineffective and will not conform to the objective reality of our world.

The Clinton Administration has given lip service to and promised to look at some of the demands of the protesters. In fact, the U.S. government is softening its protection of genetically engineered foods because so many countries and huge supermarkets, even in the U.S., are snatching these foods off the shelves and demanding warning labels. Bill Gates has donated $28 million to the AIDS crisis in Africa ( a crisis which will require $ billions). Scientists are feverishly working on a vaccine for AIDS with very limited financial resources. It is only capitalist society (society driven by profit) that could hold back such resources to protect human life. Socialist society puts the needs of people first.

Thousands of people and organizations, world-wide, are working to right the wrongs of the WTO and other culprits that hamper the masses of people of the world from enjoying the healthful and fruitful lives that our planet clearly provides. It is the profits of the few that stand in the way of a better world for all. All the protesters from the "Battle of Seattle" plus those working around the world to correct these ills, will need a different view point and direction of work to achieve the goal of wholesome peace and freedom for all.

Since the first dawn of capitalism, global expansion was inevitable because the first law of capitalism is expand or die. Since the end of the socalled cold war, there has been (especially in recent years) an almost unabated rapid economic globalization. This is because of the increasing power of international corporations backed by powerful public opinion creating abilities and militaries. In this process the internet has been crucial.

All the world is in danger of extinction at the hands of a criminal group of profit mongers. We cannot accept the assault from these criminals, whether they ride under the red white and blue of the U.S. or the flags of its running dogs, in the other powerful countries, or under the IMF, the World Bank, NATO, the U.N., NAFTA the WTO or whatever. Any group of rules, constitutions, courts or laws that permits us to be crushed must themselves be crushed. All of history has shown us that ruling powers never give up their power without a struggle.

Whose planet is this anyway? This planet belongs to all those millions upon millions of toiling, bleeding, downtrodden people around the world, who have, heretofore, created a palatial nest for the few rich exploiters and oppressors of the world. It is these oppressed voices that have not yet been heard. It is the voices of the sad, tired and hunched-over that have the ultimate and final say so about how, when and where the recourses of the planet Earth will be used.

Just as the global expansion of capitalism was inevitable from its beginnings, so was the global struggle to bury capitalism, inevitable. The killing, funeralizing and burial of capitalism is the task that history has bequeathed to us. This can be messy, at first, but we have no other choice. It will be dangerous and bloody at times but it will also be fun. Regardless of the hardships and twisted roads we are sure to encounter the end result of victory will be great beyond measure oppression, no matter what their nationality, will be the enemies of the revolution.

There is the feeling among the most oppressed groups of people that animal rights activists put the rights of animals over the rights of human beings. Many of the most oppressed, understandably, can't see beyond the problems within arms reach to world wide-events and believe that this should be the concern of others. Whose planet is this, anyway?

As we must do now, there have been other attempts to unite all the workers and oppressed of the world to oppose capitalism and imperialism. This type of organization has been historically called a Communist International. At the international congress held in Amsterdam in 1904, a delegate named Von Kol presented a resolution that stated: "The new needs which will make themselves felt after the victory of the working class and its economic emancipation will make the possession of colonies necessary, even under the future socialist system of government. Von Kol asked the congress, "Can we abandon half the globe to the caprice of peoples still in their infancy, who leave the enormous wealth of the subsoil undeveloped and the most fertile parts of our planet uncultivated?"

At the Stuttgart Congress of 1907, during a debate on the colonial question : Von Kol stated: "...Simply consider the colonization of the United States of North America. Without it the native peoples there would be living in the most backward social conditions."

While Von Kol was not alone, there were many others who were for the freedom and welfare of all humankind. In the third volume of Capital Karl Marx himself wrote: "The world does not belong to a single people, but to all humanity. Every people must administer it for the good of humanity."

Even today, there are many among all nationalities and among all the various groups and individuals struggling against the WTO, racism, police brutality, hunger and all the other ills of our world, who are willing to set aside petty(and not so petty) differences for a broad, deep unity in the interest of a better world for all. Through struggle and education, millions of others must be won to this position. We must unite all who can be united around a revolutionary agenda and use the science of revolution which teaches us to wage and win a revolution and successfully transform society afterward.

Since everybody is harping on the old and new millennium, let me get in my two cents worth. Contrary to popular opinion, the two greatest men.

In the world, today, there is one world-wide political process in

effect. Analyzing this is beyond the scope of this paper. Today, there is also one world-wide economic process at work in the world. A thorough analysis of the workings of the WTO, can provide ready insight into the historical and global economic tricks of the economic rulers of the world. For the oppressed and freedom fighters, finding the weak points in this WTO structure can be a great help in bringing this system down to the ground and beneath the ground.

We must see the connections between the assaults on Affirmative Action and on hard-won civil-rights concessions and assaults on hard-won environmental protection concessions and the assaults on hard-won workers rights concessions. We must see them as part and parcel of a common assault, from a common source. That source is the profit driven system of capitalism and imperialism. We must also see that as long as that class is in power, anything that we get from them will be nothing but concessions, subject to reversal at their whim. We deserve better.

It won't do to continue to attack this system with so many scattered single issue NGOs. The fighters against racism and police brutality must become joined with those fighting for clean air with those fighting against the hoarding of AIDS medication. Those fighting against the brutal fostercare system must become united with those fighting to save our forests and them, with the fighters against sweatshop, child and prison slavery.

Divide and conquer, divide and rule are such powerful tools for the rulers that the oppressed and their allies, need to give this practice a maximum of concern. To ultimately win the struggle for freedom and justice for all, we must out do their divide and conquer work with unity work.

There are many historical precedents which drive a wedge between different camps, which comprise the opposition to the system of capitalism and imperialism. For example there is the deep seated belief among Blacks that to unite with whites is to be automatically taken over by those who are better educated, have more resources and come from a culture which is imbued with feelings of superiority over all others.

As the oppressed and freedom-fighters change the world, we must work relentlessly to change feelings of inferiority among the oppressed and feelings of superiority among all others. In this process many will be changed. Many with feelings of superiority and other forms of ill will, will be neutralized. Those who persist in practices of racism, exploitation and of the past 100 years were V.I. Lenin, leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution and Mao Tse Tung, leader of the 1948 Chinese Revolution. This is true because of the work they did to advance the struggle to up-root all forms of exploitation and oppression of humans by humans. One of the reasons they are the greatest is because, in their respective countries, each united over 100 different nationalities, and other people with disparate interests for successful revolution against common exploiters and capitalist. Mao stated early on, that their revolution could go nowhere, at all, until they learned to separate real enemies from real friends.

Many of our most famous and vocal leaders have taken a submissive "if you can't beat them join them" mode. This capitulation has run so deep that now, they are telling us that joining and propping up the stock market is the way out for the oppressed. The stock market is the very underpinning of the system of slavery and the unbelievable abuse under which we live. It won't do to keep walking in lock-step with those who have heaped nothing but slavery, rape, torture, prison, brutality and murder on us for hundreds of years.

While we must not rule out any form of struggle, uniting our resources, human and material, using the socialist model, is preferable to creating individual millionaires from among the oppressed. The best we can hope for is philanthropy as these individual millionaires see fit or capitalist oppression in black face. The reason Kwame Nkrumah wrote "Class Struggle in Africa" is because the minute the white colonialists left Africa, Blacks moved in to take their places.

I began my escape from the world-view of the capitalists many years ago, in this way. After contemplating the macabre horrors that were perpetrated against Africans during the Atlantic Slave Trade and its aftermath, I simply said "Anybody who is against the fools who did this, I am with them and anybody who supports their right to treat other human beings in this way, I am against." Come to find out, those who they hated the most, the Communist, were simply trying to rid the world of exploitation and oppression. Who was more oppressed than us?

When I was a child, I remember the rulers through their public opinion creating tools the radios, TVs, schools and so forth, telling us that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was our friend and we went skipping happily off extolling the virtues of NATO. When I became older and more questioning, it occurred to me that these were the very countries that enslaved us and colonized Africa. Today they are the main ones killing us with TO.

Today, the rich rulers of the world have made a majority of the people of the world believe that their system is the only way. They have reduced even most struggles against it to feeble attempts to reform it. They have convinced the world (in the short run) that capitalism, which places profit as god above all the world and all the people and things in it, is better than socialism. Socialism is a system which places the needs of people first.

The capitalist world sits around and counts privatized wealth that has been created by socialized work and grinds the people and environment of our world, into the turf. There is no way that a socialist world would stand by and watch 10 to 20 million people in Africa die from a disease, in deference to more riches for the rich.

It is true that those who established Socialist governments, on the road to Communism made mistakes, which in part, led to their demise. But a large part of their demise came from the nefarious deeds of those who have exploited us in the past and continue to do so today. The sad part is that they convinced the oppressed to help.

In the "Battle of Seattle," unlike the sixties, there was greater unity between the left and the labor unions. At least they were not antagonistic, toward one another. In this regard, organized labor has taken a giant snails step forward. However, check out their main thrust. The main protest of the AFL-CIO was against the entry of China into the WTO. Their gripe was that cheap labor in China would de-value the salaries of U.S. workers and/or create massive unemployment in the U.S. They have not yet, and may never learn, the value of all the workers and oppressed of the world uniting against the private appropriation of their toil.

In November 1999, after 13 years of diplomatic jockeying, , the U.S. and China signed an agreement that paved the way for China's entry into the WTO. President Clinton proclaimed that this was one of his greatest foreign policy achievements in China and internationally. If it is great for him and his ilk, you can be sure that it is hell for "the people" of the Earth.

The greatest achievement of the Russian and Chinese revolutions, respectively, was taking wealth out of the hands of a few rich blood suckers and using it in the interest of the whole people. A key way of doing this was collectivizing production in some areas and employing state ownership in others. While both these efforts failed for various specific reasons, it was correct then and it is correct now to pursue a course of people's ownership of the major means of production in human society.

No matter what your nationality, geographical location, or philosophy, all human societies must come to grips with how the goods and services needed to sustain human life are produced and distributed. Since the domestication of cattle and the invention of agriculture (the underpinnings of private property) no system has emerged that more accurately shows us how to appropriate nature and human labor in a way that is fair and wholesome for all than socialism.

While initial efforts to establish and maintain socialism have been short lived, this by no means implies that socialism does not hold the map to our freedom. The airplane or the automobile didn't work right on the first attempts. We have to grasp the powerful tools presented by socialism and apply them to our particular situation. We must learn from and not repeat the mistakes of the past. We must get it right!

When we learn to love what our slave master hate and hate what they love, all the world will be ours. In this case, we will be hating their system which features every form of slavery, exploitation, oppression, unfairness and the defiling of all the world with an omnipotent sickness driven by profit.

If we love what they hate we will love freedom and justice for all the peoples of the world. We will love healthy children, food, water, and a healthy world in general.

In the long run, only this collective ownership method can save our world from the onslaught of the people haters, the capitalists and imperialists. All their unbridled attempts to privatize everything must be met by its opposite, our unyielding struggle to collectivize everything. In the short run, only mutual aid societies, buying clubs, cooperatives and collectives can enable us to rise above the day to day struggle to ward-off genocide from every stripe of economic and military invader in our neighborhoods.

There are so many leaders from among the oppressed who preach various and sundry ways of how the oppressed can achieve freedom within the system of the oppressor, that they could line up shoulder around the entire planet. They have mastered the law, economics, politics and even the psychology of the slave masters from the slave masters universities. Many wield this tainted knowledge even better than the slave masters themselves.

Their strategies for the most part, tell us that we don't vote enough, pray enough, support Black business enough, or stay in the slavemasters schools long enough. The most pernicious variety of these leaders put up a facade of militancy against the system while their every final solution leads us right back into the bloody jaws of the oppressor.

Some prominent psychologist have done great work in outlining the pathology of whites and how this has created the resultant pathology of Blacks, yet, they dangerously lump capitalism and Marxism into the same bag. It appears that they have lumped Marxism and capitalism into the same bag, simply because they were both created by white people. The truth is that socialism, albeit created by whites, arose in direct opposition to the system that has enslaved and continues to enslave us, capitalism. We can no more reject socialism, out of hand, because it was created by whites than we can reject automobiles or automatic weapons.

No cursory glance at any of the factors which involve our freedom or the lack thereof will do. It is true that without classification there is no science. Therefore, in order to be free, we must ruthlessly sum-up the achievements and errors of all the social systems in the world, today, those from all of world history and on a global basis. Our work must be specific, as well as, general. We will need to tirelessly extract the useful from the non-useful from all freedom struggles in the world. Only through this method can we find the shinning path forward.

The world is changing rapidly right in front of our faces. We need the scientific tools embodied in socialism that enable us to grasp and understand events no matter how much or rapidly they change. One hundred years ago, there was a tremendous anti-trust outcry as railroads in the U.S. amalgamated and usurped the laws of states. Today this system features unchecked mergers and amalgamations of huge corporations that are global and usurp the laws of nations. They are not only driving small businesses and farms under but are crushing the poor in unprecedented ways.

No amount of studying how to go along to get along with the capitalist system can teach the people what they really need to know. What the people really need is a thorough knowledge of revolutionary science.

Only through pooling our resources can we enjoy healthy food from our own stores, care for our elderly, keep our babies out of foster care and prison, repair and build homes, keep our cars running and develop all the means to support life, in the short run. Poor people can help poor people if

poor people unite their resources and energies, no matter how small. This can grow stronger and more powerful, like the rest of our struggle.

Only collectivizing our efforts and resources, in the short run, can position us to join our struggle with those of people from every corner of the Earth, to uproot not only the WTO but every form of exploitation and oppression in the world.

The people of China and the Soviet Union have made some of the greatest advances in human society since private property emerged. Their former progressive governments have left the world many positive lessons in ownership by the people. In order for China to enter the WTO, It has been bombarded by the U. S. for years to disband state ownership and collective ownership and open the once people's state, to a flood of foreign capitalist miscreants. While China abandoned the revolutionary road way back in 1975, this new, WTO driven union between the U.S. and the reactionary government in China has driven the final nail in the coffin of the 1948 Chinese revolution.

We have learned a great deal about the past errors of these attempts to bury exploitation and oppression but we must learn more, so as not to repeat the errors. The world is crying out to be saved from the enemies of human life and our planet. We must roll up our sleeves and get busy making a better world for all. Contrary to the views of many, revolutionary science has taught us that we can only free ourselves by freeing the whole world.

We must shout it from the mountain top and use any means necessary to bring down the profit driven system of capitalism and imperialism, world-wide, for good. Any other approach will simply allow it to rise up in new detrimental ways.

The other reason Lenin and Mao are so great is because they have charted so very much of the road that we must travel to defeat our global tormentors, today. We don't need to re-invent the wheel to defeat the WTO and the globalization of death, disease, slavery and other unseen horrors from the current masters of greed and inhumanity. We need to apply many of the principles that they have left us to the objective conditions of our world today.

The same communications technology that created global markets and global corporations has empowered the NGO-led backlash. The Internet will also be a useful tool in pulling all these scattered forces together into one fighting fist. These forces must be joined with the millions upon millions of slaves and wage slaves that suffer most from the situation we're in now. Of course, there must be many methods other than the internet for uniting this force because most of the world's poor and oppressed are increasingly left out of the information superhighway.

One of the major tools we will need to defeat the WTO and with it, all forms of exploitation and oppression of humans by humans is a world-wide, centralized political structure. Its key initial work must be: (1) the development of massive means to create public opinion, (2) the most thoroughly scientific assessment of historical and current events (even in their changing nature) and (3) thorough-going organized force and violence.

Resources

1. Mother Jones, February 2000 "Pandora's Pantry" By Jon R. Luoma, Pp. 53.

2. Conscious Choice, The Journal of Ecology & Natural Living, January 2000, "International Trade and the Environment" by Laura Williamson, Pp. 38.

3. Conscious Choice, The Journal of Ecology & Natural Living, January 2000, "Teamsters and Turtles Together At Last!" Pp. 40.

4. Newsweek, January 17, 2000, "The Plague Years", By Jeffrey Bartholet, Pp. 32.

5. Newsweek, January 17, 2000, "Fighting the Disease: What Can Be Done" By Geoffrey Cowley, Pp. 38.

6. Newsweek, January 1, 2000, "10 Million Orphans" By Tom Masland And Rod Nordland, Pp. 42.

7. Newsweek, January 17, 2000, "A Cause That Crosses the Color Line." By Ellis Cose, Pp. 49.

8. Newsweek, December 13, 1999, "The Siege of Seattle." By Kenneth Klee, Pp. 30.

9. Newsweek, December 13, 1999, "The New Radicals." By Michael Elliott, Pp. 36.

10. Newsweek, December 13, 1999 "After the Storm Passes." By Fareed Zakaria, Pp. 40.

11. Chicago Tribune, Friday, December 3, 1999, "Multicultural March Protests genetically Altered Food, WTO Policies." By Merrill Gooz

12. Chicago Tribune, Friday, December 3, 1999, "Usually Well-Behaved Environmentalists Turn Aggressive." By Stevenson Swanson, Pp. 29.

13. Chicago Tribune, Friday, December 3 1999, "Seattle Fights for its Image." By Monica Davey and David Mendell, Pp. 1.

14. USA Today, Tuesday January 4, 2000, "Retailers Dropping Bio-foods." By James Cox, Pp. 1.

15. Chicago Tribune, Monday, January 24, 2000, "Engineered Crops Face Barren Season." By Peter Kendall, Pp. 1.

16. USA Today, Wednesday, December 1, 1999, "Stop the WTO: Protesters Say Goal Achieved." By Patrick McMahon and James Cox, Pp. 19a.

17. USA Today, Wednesday, December 1, 1999, "WTO Delegates Battle Protesters to do Business." By James Cox. Pp. 20a.

18. USA Today, Wednesday, December 1,1999, "Clinton Tries to Stay in Good Graces of Trade Advocates, Foes." By Susan Page, Pp. 20a.

19. Revolutionary Worker, December 12, 1999, "The Battle of Seattle." By Orpheus, Pp. 3.

20. Revolutionary Worker, December 12, 1999, "Globalization of Protest: Anti-WTO Actions Around the World," Pp. 12.

21. Revolutionary Worker, December 12, 1999, "Clinton on the WTO: So Many Lies So Little Time," Pp. 13.

22. Socialist Worker, September 24,1999, "No to This Sweatshop Slavery!" Pp. 5.

23. Chicago Tribune, Thursday December 2, 1999, "Seattle Cops Retake Streets." By Merrill Goozner and Monica Davey.

24. Chicago Tribune, Thursday December 2, 1999, "Anatomy of a Riot." By David Mendell and David Greising.

25. Chicago Tribune, "Activist Groups Gain Influence in Global Body." By R. C. Long worth.

26. Chicago Tribune, (editorial) Monday January 31, 2000 "Fear and Ignorance and Biotech."

27. Sierra Club Leaflet, " The World Trade Organization: Trading Away Our Forests.

28. Chicago Tribune, Tuesday November 30, 1999, "WTO Awash in Protests." By Merrill Goozner.

29. "The Psychopathic Racial Personality, and Other Essays. By Bobby E. Wright, Ph. D.

Internet Sources

1. "The MAI: Making the World Safe for Corporate Criminals." By Shawn Ewald.

2. "World Trade Organization" Mike Moore.

3. "What is the International Monetary Fund? By David D. Driscoll.

4. "West Africa and the Future of relations between the APC Countries and the European Union." By Charles Valy Tuho.

5. "The Scoop Takes on the WTO." By Bob Harris.

6. "About the World Bank Group." By James D. Wollensohn. 7. "About the IMF."

8. "Non-government Organizations and Civil Society."

9. "For Non-government Organizations/Civil Society, Frequently Asked Questions."

10. The Heritage Foundation Lectures and Seminars, "The Real Threat to U.S. Sovereignty." Joe Cobb speaking, August 1st in Van Andel Center, August 1st, 1994.

11. "GATT and the Resolution of International Trade Disputes" International Contract Advisor, Volume II, No. 1 (winter, 1996).

12. "The Structure of the WTO"

13. The IMF. "The Challenge for the Millennium: How to Consign Global Poverty to History." A Commentary by Jack Boorman.

14. World Trade Organization, Director General's Home Page. (Mike Moore).