I would not like to see the WTO scuttled or backed off into a small corner,
though I do recognize that it is flawed as it currently exists. How might
it be fixed? In column in the Globe and Mail recently, Sylvia Ostry
suggested that we need a WEO to handle global environmental issues and a
revived or empowered ILO to handle global labour issues. And on the matter
of negotiation and dispute resolution between rich countries and poor, a
special fund might be established which ensures a more level playing field.
But I'm probably dreaming in technicolour here.
Ed Weick
>
>Jan Matthieu of Flemish Greens wrote:
>
>> The tragic of the whole thing is that the protestors who managed to
>> disrupt the talks at Seattle played straight into the cards of those
>> interests they are so much against. The US big companies prefer no new
>> talks to any real changes the way third world and some European
>> countries wanted.
>
>Well, I'm not sure about that. In the WTO, the smaller countries do
>have some clout, if only because of their numbers. I believe that the
>late and unlamented MAI was pursued in the more exclusive OECD because
>a similar initiative, the MIA, was facing opposition from small
>countries in the WTO. But I'm also led to believe that the WTO is, as
>I think Clinton mentioned, that the WTO is a "concensus" organization
>because the powerful nations in which the TNCs are based know that
>under a one-nation one-vote regime, the small nations would gang up on
>them.
>
>That said, isn't it the case that if the WTO goes ahead, the US and
>TNCs will wheedle, bribe and threaten the smaller and less developed
>countries into submission? So long as the structure of the WTO
>remains, individual concessions can be used as negotiating fodder
>(bribes of a sort) and then be gradually whittled away by challenges
>from TNCs in the WTO tribunals. The arcane legal details by which,
>say, shipping a load of X implies a right to trade in megatons of Y on
>the same terms or that absolute "proof" of harm must be evinced in
>order to ban Z on health risk grounds -- those details offer a host of
>cracks into which the TNCs will drive flying wedges of lawyers
>whenever they choose. I doubt that India, let alone Botswana, can
>front as much legal and technical expertise to tackle the Frankenseeds
>invasion as Monsanto alone can to pursue it. Even Canada, under
>existing NAFTA rules, was unable to defend itself against the
>determination of Ethyl Corp. (the folks that brought us tetra-ethyl
>lead) to flog methyl-cyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl as a gas
>additive. That couldn't have happened if NAFTA had been scuttled in a
>timely fashion.
>
>If the WTO hits a wall, that does leave the way open for the US to
>continue its program to keep the world safe for TNC markets and
>resource exploitation. But at least the small countries haven't
>publically and officially signed over their sovereignty to tribunals
>dominated by US/TNC revolving-door econocrats.
>
>So I dunno, Jan. I think the TNCs want their Declaration of
>Independence and their Constitution, signed and sealed by putatively
>democratic governments, establishing them as the only true citizens
>and officially reducing the rest of us to the status of biomass.
>Until they get that we can go on annoying them, however mixed our
>collective motives and devious or corrupt our governments.
>
>- Mike
>
>--
>Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>URL: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mspencer/home.html
>---
>
>
>
