from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Economic Politics Seattle Comes to Washington Socialist solidarity crumbles. Will next week�s protests in the capital say anything revealing about America�s attitude to globalisation? WHAT a difference the possibility of a riot makes. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been holding their spring meetings in Washington since 1975, causing little but polite interest. Yet no sooner had the activists who disrupted the World Trade Organisation in Seattle last winter announced their interest in this spring�s meeting than it became the most fascinating event on the planet. An unprecedented 1,700 journalists have registered for the meetings on April 16th-17th. Protesters plan two big events. The hard-core lot will try to prevent the 750 delegates and their staff members from attending the joint meeting of the IMF and the World Bank, something the police are determined not to allow. People of a less combative disposition will gather on the Ellipse to listen to speeches from assorted celebrities and enthusiasts. These events will mark the culmination of weeks of smaller doings. Campuses across the country have been putting on teach-ins about how to bring Seattle to Washington. Churches have been holding prayer vigils �in solidarity with the victims of the World Bank�. On April 9th thousands of people, braving icy winds, formed a human chain around the Capitol to demand that the rich nations show biblical forgiveness by cancelling billions of dollars in debt owed by poor countries. On April 12th, thousands protested against China�s accession to the WTO (as one watching schoolchild memorably observed: �Where will we get our toys from if they won�t let us trade with China?�). Almost every group with a grievance has its own special event. Steelworkers held a candlelight vigil. Latinos protested about the links between a spate of local evictions in Washington and �their connection to the World Bank/IMF/WTO structural adjustment and global corporate expansion.� The Free Burma Coalition held a dinner. The Green Party held a pot-luck supper. Even more has been going on behind the scenes. The Ruckus Society and the Direct Action Network are teaching civil disobedience. The Midnight Special Law Collective provides 24-hour legal advice. The protesters have also established a communal kitchen to feed thousands, medical clinics to care for anyone who is injured, bicycle couriers to ferry food, supplies and intelligence (�the revolution will not be motorised�), and workshops on giant puppet making and street theatre. For their part, the police have spent $1m on riot gear for the event, and studied how to prevent up to 5,000 people from blocking Pennsylvania Avenue. All this frantic activity raises two immediate questions: who are the protesters, and what are they trying to say? The labour unions remain broadly supportive: some 1,500 trade unionists turned up at the debt-relief protest, and the AFL-CIO has belatedly endorsed the rally on the Ellipse. But the unions will distance themselves from the protesters at the first sign of broken windows. The bulk of the protesters are not blue-collar types but students and what used to be known as activists. The list of sponsoring organisations is a Who�s Who of non-governmental organisations�from the fringe (the National Queer Commission) to the obscure (the Nicaragua Network Peace and Social Justice Centre of South Central Kansas) and the tediously predictable (the Young Communist League). This is all a little odd. Even globalisation�s defenders admit that the process can be a cruel one, and many global institutions are distinctly accident-prone. It is hardly surprising, for instance, that middle-aged South Korean workers took to the streets of Seoul in 1998 wearing bandanas claiming that IMF stood for �I�m Fired� after that institution appeared to force several banks into closure. But the United States, currently in its ninth year of economic expansion, has never been on the receiving end of IMF policies. And Internet-savvy white American college kids are precisely the sort of people who enjoy most of globalisation�s benefits. Trying to work out what the protesters want gets harder the more teach-ins you go to. Some groups want definite, if difficult, things such as debt relief. Some want nebulous things like �global justice�. Some want to shackle capitalism with tougher rules. Others want to get rid of global corporations entirely. The one thing the protesters all seem to agree upon is that the IMF and the World Bank are flawed institutions. A fair point, but an odd one to make at a time when the emerging economies are generally growing rapidly and when both the IMF and particularly the World Bank are making some effort to be more accountable. The Bank now involves non-governmental organisations in many of its decisions and conducts an environmental audit of most of its policies. The protesters seem split on what to do about this. Some would be happy if the World Bank paid a little more attention to environmental concerns. Others think the Bank is evil beyond salvation. Many have jumped upon a somewhat melodramatic j�accuse essay by Joseph Stiglitz in the current issue of the New Republic. (�I was chief economist at the World Bank from 1996 until last November during the gravest global economic crisis in a half-century. I saw how the IMF, in tandem with the Treasury Department, responded. And I was appalled.�) But Mr Stiglitz�s argument runs into trouble with the (for him) inconvenient recovery of the economies concerned; and his remedies are a little complicated. No banners have yet been spotted saying: �Monetary policy in South Korea was too tight.� Interestingly, the woman often cited as the eminence grise behind the anti-global forces in Seattle is playing a more subdued role in Washington. Lori Wallach, the (surprisingly humorous) director of Public Citizen Global Trade Watch, prefers to focus on the normalisation of trade with China, due to be discussed in Congress in May, rather than on the Bretton Woods twins. When people marched against the bomb or the Vietnam war, they could at least claim to have a lot of other people applauding them. An even odder thing about this bunch of demonstrators is that they seem to be out of step with their country�s general sentiment about globalisation. A recent study of polling data by the Programme on International Policy Attitudes found that 61% of Americans favour moving ahead with globalisation, and only 35% want to slow it down or reverse it (see chart 1). Almost 80% of the respondents supported more international co-operation. There were majorities in favour of strengthening the WTO and abiding by its decisions even when these go against the United States. A plurality even favours strengthening the IMF. Does this mean that the protesters are doomed to irrelevance? Not necessarily, for two reasons. The first is that, if you look behind the numbers, it is clear that quite a lot of people have doubts about free trade. Overwhelming majorities of Americans think that their trade negotiators pay �too little� attention to �working Americans� (see chart 2). People generally support attaching labour and environmental conditions to trade agreements. They are particularly hostile to normalising trade with China. Polls taken earlier this year found most Americans expressing some sympathy for the protesters at Seattle. The second reason is that the opponents of globalisation seem to feel more strongly about the phenomenon than its supporters do. No congressman has paid at the ballot box for being �anti-global�, whether it be voting against paying UN dues or voting for subsidies for local producers. But last month Matthew Martinez, a nine-term congressman from suburban Los Angeles, lost his Democratic primary largely because the unions were furious about his support for �fast-track� trade deals. Bill Clinton, who boldly pushed through NAFTA, lost his nerve in Seattle last year. One reason he did so was to buttress union support for Al Gore. That is not auspicious. The current fracas is also yielding results. On April 10th, only three days before a nationwide campaign against it was due to begin, Starbucks announced that it would start selling �Fair Trade Certified Coffee�. Ms Wallach is confident that the to-do in Washington will help to defeat the White House�s attempts to normalise trade relations with China when the topic comes before the House next month. That would scuttle this year�s most important trade negotiation, just as the rumpus in Seattle put paid to a fresh round of global trade talks. The Economist, April 15-21, 2000 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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