“Manufacturing Dissent”: The Anti-globalization Movement is

“Manufacturing Dissent”: The Anti-globalization Movement is

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“Manufacturing Dissent”: The Anti-globalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites. The People's Movement has been Hijacked
by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, April 12, 2015
Global Research 20 September 2010

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"Manufacturing Dissent": the Anti-globalization Movement is Funded by the Corporate Elites
This article was first published in 2010. The author’s introductory quote was first formulated in 2001 in the context of the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City which was held a few months before 9/11

“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the World safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government (McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (1961-1966), President of the Ford Foundation, (1966-1979))

“By providing the funding and the policy framework to many concerned and dedicated people working within the non-profit sector, the ruling class is able to co-opt leadership from grassroots communities, … and is able to make the funding, accounting, and evaluation components of the work so time consuming and onerous that social justice work is virtually impossible under these conditions” (Paul Kivel, You Call this Democracy, Who Benefits, Who Pays and Who Really Decides, 2004, p. 122 )

“Under the New World Order, the ritual of inviting “civil society” leaders into the inner circles of power –while simultaneously repressing the rank and file– serves several important functions. First, it says to the World that the critics of globalization “must make concessions” to earn the right to mingle. Second, it conveys the illusion that while the global elites should – under what is euphemistically called democracy – be subject to criticism, they nonetheless rule legitimately. And third, it says “there is no alternative” to globalization: fundamental change is not possible and the most we can hope is to engage with these rulers in an ineffective “give and take”.

While the “Globalizers” may adopt a few progressive phrases to demonstrate they have good intentions, their fundamental goals are not challenged. And what this “civil society mingling” does is to reinforce the clutch of the corporate establishment while weakening and dividing the protest movement. An understanding of this process of co-optation is important, because tens of thousands of the most principled young people in Seattle, Prague and Quebec City [1999-2001] are involved in the anti-globalization protests because they reject the notion that money is everything, because they reject the impoverishment of millions and the destruction of fragile Earth so that a few may get richer.

This rank and file and some of their leaders as well, are to be applauded. But we need to go further. We need to challenge the right of the “Globalizers” to rule. This requires that we rethink the strategy of protest. Can we move to a higher plane, by launching mass movements in our respective countries, movements that bring the message of what globalization is doing, to ordinary people? For they are the force that must be mobilized to challenge those who plunder the Globe.” (Michel Chossudovsky, The Quebec Wall, April 2001)


“Manufactured Consent” vs. “Manufactured Dissent”

The term “manufacturing consent” was initially coined by Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky.

“Manufacturing consent” describes a propaganda model used by the corporate media to sway public opinion and “inculcate individuals with values and beliefs…”:

The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda. (Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky)


“Manufacturing consent” implies manipulating and shaping public opinion. It establishes conformity and acceptance to authority and social hierarchy. It seeks compliance to an established social order. “Manufacturing consent” describes the submission of public opinion to the mainstream media narrative, to its lies and fabrications.

In this article, we focus on a related concept, namely the subtle process of “manufacturing dissent” (rather than “consent”), which plays a decisive role in serving the interests of the ruling class.

Under contemporary capitalism, the illusion of democracy must prevail. It is in the interest of the corporate elites to accept dissent and protest as a feature of the system inasmuch as they do not threaten the established social order. The purpose is not to repress dissent, but, on the contrary, to shape and mould the protest movement, to set the outer limits of dissent.

To maintain their legitimacy, the economic elites favor limited and controlled forms of opposition, with a view to preventing the development of radical forms of protest, which might shake the very foundations and institutions of global capitalism. In other words, “manufacturing dissent” acts as a “safety valve”, which protects and sustains the New World Order.

To be effective, however, the process of “manufacturing dissent” must be carefully regulated and monitored by those who are the object of the protest movement.

“Funding Dissent”

How is the process of manufacturing dissent achieved?

Essentially by “funding dissent”, namely by channeling financial resources from those who are the object of the protest movement to those who are involved in organizing the protest movement.

Co-optation is not limited to buying the favors of politicians. The economic elites – which control major foundations – also oversee the funding of numerous NGOs and civil society organizations, which historically have been involved in the protest movement against the established economic and social order. The programs of many NGOs and people’s movements rely heavily on funding from both public as well as private foundations including the Ford, Rockefeller, McCarthy foundations, among others.

The anti-globalization movement is opposed to Wall Street and the Texas oil giants controlled by Rockefeller, et al. Yet the foundations and charities of Rockefeller et al will generously fund progressive anti-capitalist networks as well as environmentalists (opposed to Big Oil) with a view to ultimately overseeing and shaping their various activities.

The mechanisms of “manufacturing dissent” require a manipulative environment, a process of arm-twisting and subtle cooptation of individuals within progressive organizations, including anti-war coalitions, environmentalists and the anti-globalization movement.

Whereas the mainstream media “manufactures consent”, the complex network of NGOs (including segments of the alternative media) are used by the corporate elites to mould and manipulate the protest movement.

Following the deregulation of the global financial system in the 1990s and the rapid enrichment of the financial establishment, funding through foundations and charities has skyrocketed.

In a bitter irony, part of the fraudulent financial gains on Wall Street in recent years have been recycled to the elites’ tax exempt foundations and charities. These windfall financial gains have not only been used to buy out politicians, they have also been channelled to NGOs, research institutes, community centres, church groups, environmentalists, alternative media, human rights groups, etc. “Manufactured dissent” also applies to the “corporate left” and “progressive” media, funded by NGOs or directly by the foundations.

The inner objective is to “manufacture dissent” and establish the boundaries of a “politically correct” opposition. In turn, many NGOs are infiltrated by informants often acting on behalf of western intelligence agencies.
Moreover, an increasingly large segment of the progressive alternative news media on the internet has become dependent on funding from corporate foundations and charities.

Piecemeal Activism

The objective of the corporate elites has been to fragment the people’s movement into a vast “do it yourself” mosaic. War and globalization are no longer in the forefront of civil society activism. Activism tends to be piecemeal. There is no integrated anti-globalization anti-war movement. The economic crisis is not seen as having a relationship to the US led war.

Dissent has been compartmentalized. Separate “issue oriented” protest movements (e.g. environment, anti-globalization, peace, women’s rights, climate change) are encouraged and generously funded as opposed to a cohesive mass movement. This mosaic was already prevalent in the counter G7 summits and People’s Summits of the 1990s.

The Anti-Globalization Movement

The Seattle 1999 counter-summit is invariably upheld as a triumph for the anti-globalization movement: “a historic coalition of activists shut down the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, the spark that ignited a global anti-corporate movement.” (See Naomi Klein, Copenhagen: Seattle Grows Up, The Nation, November 13, 2009).

Seattle was an indeed an important crossroads in the history of the mass movement. Over 50,000 people from diverse backgrounds, civil society organizations, human rights, labor unions, environmentalists had come together in a common pursuit. Their goal was to forcefully dismantle the neoliberal agenda including its institutional base.

But Seattle also marked a major reversal. With mounting dissent from all sectors of society, the official WTO Summit desperately needed the token participation of civil society leaders “on the inside”, to give the appearance of being “democratic” “on the outside”.

While thousands of people had converged on Seattle, what occurred behind the scenes was a de facto victory for neoliberalism. A handful of civil society organizations, formally opposed to the WTO had contributed to legitimizing the WTO’s global trading architecture. Instead of challenging the WTO as an an illegal intergovernmental body, they agreed to a pre-summit dialogue with the WTO and Western governments. “Accredited NGO participants were invited to mingle in a friendly environment with ambassadors, trade ministers and Wall Street tycoons at several of the official events including the numerous cocktail parties and receptions.” (Michel Chossudovsky, Seattle and Beyond: Disarming the New World Order, Covert Action Quarterly, November 1999, See Ten Years Ago: “Manufacturing Dissent” in Seattle).

The hidden agenda was to weaken and divide the protest movement and orient the anti-globalization movement into areas that would not directly threaten the interests of the business establishment.

Funded by private foundations (including Ford, Rockefeller, Rockefeller Brothers, Charles Stewart Mott, The Foundation for Deep Ecology), these “accredited” civil society organizations had positioned themselves as lobby groups, acting formally on behalf of the people’s movement. Led by prominent and committed activists, their hands were tied. They ultimately contributed (unwittingly) to weakening the anti-globalization movement by accepting the legitimacy of what was essentially an illegal organization. (The 1994 Marrakech Summit agreement which led to the creation of the WTO on January 1, 1995). (Ibid)

The NGO leaders were fully aware as to where the money was coming from. Yet within the US and European NGO community, the foundations and charities are considered to be independent philanthropic bodies, separate from the corporations; namely the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, for instance, is considered to be separate and distinct from the Rockefeller family empire of banks and oil companies.

With salaries and operating expenses depending on private foundations, it became an accepted routine: In a twisted logic, the battle against corporate capitalism was to be fought using the funds from the tax exempt foundations owned by corporate capitalism.

The NGOs were caught in a straightjacket; their very existence depended on the foundations. Their activities were closely monitored. In a twisted logic, the very nature of anti-capitalist activism was indirectly controlled by the capitalists through their independent foundations.

“Progressive Watchdogs”

In this evolving saga, the corporate elites – whose interests are duly served by the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO – will readily fund (through their various foundations and charities) organizations which are at the forefront of the protest movement against the WTO and the Washington based international financial institutions.

Supported by foundation money, various “watchdogs” were set up by the NGOs to monitor the implementation of neoliberal policies, without however raising the broader issue of how the Bretton Woods twins and the WTO, through their policies, had contributed to the impoverishment of millions of people.

The Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Network (SAPRIN) was established by Development Gap, a USAID and World Bank funded NGO based in Washington DC.

Amply documented, the imposition of the IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) on developing countries constitutes a blatant form of interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states on behalf of creditor institutions.

Instead of challenging the legitimacy of the IMF-World Bank’s “deadly economic medicine”, SAPRIN’s core organization sought to establish a participatory role for the NGOs, working hand in glove with USAID and the World Bank. The objective was to give a “human face” to the neoliberal policy agenda, rather than reject the IMF-World Bank policy framework outright:

“SAPRIN is the global civil-society network that took its name from the Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative (SAPRI), which it launched with the World Bank and its president, Jim Wolfensohn, in 1997.

SAPRI is designed as a tripartite exercise to bring together organizations of civil society, their governments and the World Bank in a joint review of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and an exploration of new policy options. It is legitimizing an active role for civil society in economic decision-making, as it is designed to indicate areas in which changes in economic policies and in the economic-policymaking process are required. ( http://www.saprin.org/overview.htm SAPRIN website, emphasis added)


Similarly, The Trade Observatory (formerly WTO Watch), operating out of Geneva, is a project of the Minneapolis based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), which is generously funded by Ford, Rockefeller, Charles Stewart Mott among others. (see Table 1 below).

The Trade Observatory has a mandate to monitor the World Trade Organization (WTO), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). (IATP, About Trade Observatory, accessed September 2010).

The Trade Observatory is also to develop data and information as well as foster “governance” and “accountability”. Accountability to the victims of WTO policies or accountability to the protagonists of neoliberal reforms?

The Trade Observatory watchdog functions does not in any way threaten the WTO. Quite the opposite: the legitimacy of the trade organizations and agreements are never questioned.

Table 1 Minneapolis Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) largest donors
(for complete list click here)

Ford Foundation
$2,612,500.00
1994 – 2006

Rockefeller Brothers Fund
$2,320,000.00
1995 – 2005

Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
$1,391,000.00
1994 – 2005

McKnight Foundation
$1,056,600.00
1995 – 2005

Joyce Foundation
$748,000.00
1996 – 2004

Bush Foundation
$610,000.00
2001 – 2006

Bauman Family Foundation
$600,000.00
1994 – 2006

Great Lakes Protection Fund
$580,000.00
1995 – 2000

John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
$554,100.00
1991 – 2003

John Merck Fund
$490,000.00
1992 – 2003

Harold K. Hochschild Foundation
$486,600.00
1997 – 2005

Foundation for Deep Ecology
$417,500.00
1991 – 2001

Jennifer Altman Foundation
$366,500.00
1992 – 2001

Rockefeller Foundation
$344,134.00
2000 – 2004

Soruce: http://activistcash.com/organization_fi ... ade-policy


The World Economic Forum. “All Roads Lead to Davos”

The people’s movement has been hijacked. Selected intellectuals, trade union executives, and the leaders of civil society organizations (including Oxfam, Amnesty International, Greenpeace) are routinely invited to the Davos World Economic Forum, where they mingle with the World’s most powerful economic and political actors. This mingling of the World’s corporate elites with hand-picked “progressives” is part of the ritual underlying the process of “manufacturing dissent”.

The ploy is to selectively handpick civil society leaders “whom we can trust” and integrate them into a “dialogue”, cut them off from their rank and file, make them feel that they are “global citizens” acting on behalf of their fellow workers but make them act in a way which serves the interests of the corporate establishment:


“The participation of NGOs in the Annual Meeting in Davos is evidence of the fact that [we] purposely seek to integrate a broad spectrum of the major stakeholders in society in … defining and advancing the global agenda … We believe the [Davos] World Economic Forum provides the business community with the ideal framework for engaging in collaborative efforts with the other principal stakeholders [NGOs] of the global economy to “improve the state of the world,” which is the Forum’s mission. (World Economic Forum, Press Release 5 January 2001)


The WEF does not represent the broader business community. It is an elitist gathering: Its members are giant global corporations (with a minimum $5 billion annual turnover). The selected non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are viewed as partner “stakeholders” as well as a convenient “mouthpiece for the voiceless who are often left out of decision-making processes.” (World Economic Forum – Non-Governmental Organizations, 2010)

“They [the NGOs] play a variety of roles in partnering with the Forum to improve the state of the world, including serving as a bridge between business, government and civil society, connecting the policy makers to the grassroots, bringing practical solutions to the table…” (Ibid)


Civil society “partnering” with global corporations on behalf of “the voiceless”, who are “left out”?

Trade union executives are also co-opted to the detriment of workers’ rights. The leaders of the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), the AFL-CIO, the European Trade Union Confederation, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), among others, are routinely invited to attend both the annual WEF meetings in Davos, Switzerland as well as to the regional summits. They also participate in the WEF’s Labour Leaders Community which focuses on mutually acceptable patterns of behavior for the labor movement. The WEF “believes that the voice of Labour is important to dynamic dialogue on issues of globalisation, economic justice, transparency and accountability, and ensuring a healthy global financial system.”

“Ensuring a healthy global financial system” wrought by fraud and corruption? The issue of workers’ rights is not mentioned. (World Economic Forum – Labour Leaders, 2010).

The World Social Forum: “Another World Is Possible”

The 1999 Seattle counter-summit in many regards laid the foundations for the development of the World Social Forum.

The first gathering of the World Social Forum took place in January 2001, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This international gathering involved the participation of tens of thousands of activists from grass-roots organizations and NGOs.

The WSF gathering of NGOs and progressive organizations is held simultaneously with the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF). It was intended to voice opposition and dissent to the World Economic Forum of corporate leaders and finance ministers.


The WSF at the outset was an initiative of France’s ATTAC and several Brazilian NGOs’:

“… In February 2000, Bernard Cassen, the head of a French NGO platform ATTAC, Oded Grajew, head of a Brazilian employers’ organisation, and Francisco Whitaker, head of an association of Brazilian NGOs, met to discuss a proposal for a “world civil society event”; by March 2000, they formally secured the support of the municipal government of Porto Alegre and the state government of Rio Grande do Sul, both controlled at the time by the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT)…. A group of French NGOs, including ATTAC, Friends of L’Humanité, and Friends of Le Monde Diplomatique, sponsored an Alternative Social Forum in Paris titled “One Year after Seattle”, in order to prepare an agenda for the protests to be staged at the upcoming European Union summit at Nice. The speakers called for “reorienting certain international institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, WTO… so as to create a globalization from below” and “building an international citizens’ movement, not to destroy the IMF but to reorient its missions.” (Research Unit For Political Economy, The Economics and Politics of the World Social Forum, Global Research, January 20, 2004)


From the outset in 2001, the WSF was supported by core funding from the Ford Foundation, which is known to have ties to the CIA going back to the 1950s: “The CIA uses philanthropic foundations as the most effective conduit to channel large sums of money to Agency projects without alerting the recipients to their source.” (James Petras, The Ford Foundation and the CIA, Global Research, September 18, 2002)

The same procedure of donor funded counter-summits or people’s summits which characterized the 1990s People’s Summits was embodied in the World Social Forum (WSF):

“… other WSF funders (or `partners’, as they are referred to in WSF terminology) included the Ford Foundation, — suffice it to say here that it has always operated in the closest collaboration with the US Central Intelligence Agency and US overall strategic interests; the Heinrich Boll Foundation, which is controlled by the German Greens party, a partner in the present [2003] German government and a supporter of the wars on Yugoslavia and Afghanistan (its leader Joschka Fischer is the [former] German foreign minister); and major funding agencies such as Oxfam (UK), Novib (Netherlands), ActionAid (UK), and so on.

Remarkably, an International Council member of the WSF reports that the “considerable funds” received from these agencies have “not hitherto awakened any significant debates [in the WSF bodies] on the possible relations of dependence it could generate.” Yet he admits that “in order to get funding from the Ford Foundation, the organisers had to convince the foundation that the Workers Party was not involved in the process.” Two points are worth noting here. First, this establishes that the funders were able to twist arms and determine the role of different forces in the WSF — they needed to be `convinced’ of the credentials of those who would be involved. Secondly, if the funders objected to the participation of the thoroughly domesticated Workers Party, they would all the more strenuously object to prominence being given to genuinely anti-imperialist forces. That they did so object will be become clear as we describe who was included and who excluded from the second and third meets of the WSF….

… The question of funding [of the WSF] does not even figure in the charter of principles of the WSF, adopted in June 2001. Marxists, being materialists, would point out that one should look at the material base of the forum to grasp its nature. (One indeed does not have to be a Marxist to understand that “he who pays the piper calls the tune”.) But the WSF does not agree. It can draw funds from imperialist institutions like Ford Foundation while fighting “domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism” (Research Unit For Political Economy, The Economics and Politics of the World Social Forum, Global Research, January 20, 2004)


The Ford Foundation provided core support to the WSF, with indirect contributions to participating “partner organizations” from the McArthur Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the W. Alton Jones Foundation, the European Commission, several European governments (including the Labour government of Tony Blair), the Canadian government, as well as a number of UN bodies (including UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP, ILO and the FAO) .(Ibid).

In addition to initial core support from the Ford Foundation, many of the participating civil society organizations receive funding from major foundations and charities. In turn, the US and European based NGOs often operate as secondary funding agencies channelling Ford and Rockefeller money towards partner organizations in developing countries, including grassroots peasant and human rights movements.

The International Council (IC) of the WSF is made up of representatives from NGOs, trade unions, alternative media organizations, research institutes, many of which are heavily funded by foundations as well as governments. (See Fórum Social Mundial). The same trade unions, which are routinely invited to mingle with Wall Street CEOs at the Davos World Economic Forum (WSF) including the AFL-CIO, the European Trade Union Confederation and the Canadian Labor Congress (CLC) also sit on the WSF’s International Council (IC). Among NGOs funded by major foundations sitting on the WSF’s IC is the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) (see our analysis above) which oversees the Geneva based Trade Observatory.

The Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (FTNG), which has observer status on the WSF International Council plays a key role. While channelling financial support to the WSF, it acts as a clearing house for major foundations. The FTNG describes itself as “an alliance of grant makers committed to building just and sustainable communities around the world”. Members of this alliance are Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers, Heinrich Boell, C. S. Mott, Merck Family Foundation, Open Society Institute, Tides, among others. (For a complete list of FTNG funding agencies see FNTG: Funders). FTNG acts as a fund raising entity on behalf of the WSF.

Western Governments Fund the Counter-Summits and Repress the Protest Movement

In a bitter irony, governments including the European Union grant money to fund progressive groups (including the WSF) involved in organizing protests against the very same governments which finance their activities:

“Governments, too, have been significant financiers of protest groups. The European Commission, for example, funded two groups who mobilised large numbers of people to protest at EU summits at Gothenburg and Nice. Britain’s national lottery, which is overseen by the government, helped fund a group at the heart of the British contingent at both protests.” (James Harding, Counter-capitalism, FT.com, October 15 2001)


We are dealing with a diabolical process: The host government finances the official summit as well as the NGOs actively involved in the Counter-Summit. It also funds the multimillion dollar anti-riot police operation which has a mandate to repress the grassroots participants of the Counter-Summit, including members of NGOs directly funded by the government.

The purpose of these combined operations, including violent actions of vandalism committed by undercover cops (Toronto G20, 2010) dressed up as activists, is to discredit the protest movement and intimidate its participants. The broader objective is to transform the counter-summit into a ritual of dissent, which serves to uphold the interests of the official summit and the host government. This logic has prevailed in numerous counter summits since the 1990s.


At the 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, funding from the Canadian federal government to mainstream NGOs and trade unions was granted under certain conditions. A large segment of the protest movement was de facto excluded from the People’s Summit. This in itself led to the formation of a second parallel People’s venue, which some observers described as a “a counter-People’s Summit. In turn, in an agreement with both the provincial and federal authorities, the organizers directed the protest march towards a remote location some 10 km out of town, rather than towards the historical downtown area were the official FTAA summit was being held behind a heavily guarded “security perimeter”.

“Rather than marching toward the perimeter fence and the Summit of the Americas meetings, march organizers chose a route that marched from the People’s Summit away from the fence, through largely empty residential areas to the parking lot of a stadium in a vacant area several miles away. Henri Masse, the president of the Federation des travailleurs et travailleuses du Quebec (FTQ), explained, “I deplore that we are so far from the center-city…. But it was a question of security.” One thousand marshals from the FTQ kept very tight control over the march. When the march came to the point where some activists planned to split off and go up the hill to the fence, FTQ marshals signalled the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) contingent walking behind CUPE to sit down and stop the march so that FTQ marshals could lock arms and prevent others from leaving the official march route.” (Katherine Dwyer, Lessons of Quebec City, International Socialist Review, June/July 2001)


The Summit of the Americas was held inside a four kilometer “bunker” made of concrete and galvanized steel fencing. The 10 feet high “Quebec Wall” encircled part of the historic city center including the parliamentary compound of the National Assembly, hotels and shopping areas.

NGO Leaders versus their Grassroots

The establishment of the World Social Forum (WSF) in 2001 was unquestionably a historical landmark, bringing together tens of thousands of committed activists. It was an important venue which allowed for the exchange of ideas and the establishment of ties of solidarity.

What is at stake is the ambivalent role of the leaders of progressive organizations. Their cozy and polite relationship to the inner circles of power, to corporate and government funding, aid agencies, the World Bank, etc, undermines their relationship and responsibilities to their rank and file. The objective of manufactured dissent is precisely that: to distance the leaders from their rank and file as a means to effectively silencing and weakening grassroots actions.

Funding dissent is also a means of infiltrating the NGOs as well as acquiring inside information on strategies of protest and resistance of grass-roots movements.

Most of the grassroots participating organizations in the World Social Forum including peasant, workers’ and student organizations, firmly committed to combating neoliberalism were unaware of the WSF International Council’s relationship to corporate funding, negotiated behind their backs by a handful of NGO leaders with ties to both official and private funding agencies.


Funding to progressive organizations is not unconditional. Its purpose is to “pacify” and manipulate the protest movement. Precise conditionalities are set by the funding agencies. If they are not met, the disbursements are discontinued and the recipient NGO is driven into de facto bankruptcy due to lack of funds.

The WSF defines itself as “an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and inter-linking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo-liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a society centred on the human person”. (See Fórum Social Mundial, accessed 2010).

The WSF is a mosaic of individual initiatives which does not directly threaten or challenge the legitimacy of global capitalism and its institutions. It meets annually. It is characterised by a multitude of sessions and workshops. In this regard, one of the features of the WSF was to retain the “do-it-yourself” framework, characteristic of the donor funded counter G7 People’s Summits of the 1990s.

This apparent disorganized structure is deliberate. While favoring debate on a number of individual topics, the WSF framework is not conducive to the articulation of a cohesive common platform and plan of action directed against global capitalism. Moreover, the US led war in the Middle East and Central Asia, which broke out a few months after the inaugural WSF venue in Porto Alegre in January 2001, has not been a central issue in forum discussions.

What prevails is a vast and intricate network of organizations. The recipient grassroots organizations in developing countries are invariably unaware that their partner NGOs in the United States or the European Union, which are providing them with financial support, are themselves funded by major foundations. The money trickles down, setting constraints on grassroots actions. Many of these NGO leaders are committed and well meaning individuals acting within a framework which sets the boundaries of dissent. The leaders of these movements are often co-opted, without even realizing that as a result of corporate funding their hands are tied.

Global capitalism finances anti-capitalism: an absurd and contradictory relationship.

“Another World is Possible”, but it cannot be meaningfully achieved under the present arrangement.

A shake-up of the World Social Forum, of its organizational structure, its funding arrangements and leadership is required.

There can be no meaningful mass movement when dissent is generously funded by those same corporate interests which are the target of the protest movement. In the words of McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation (1966-1979),“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as ‘making the World safe for capitalism’”.

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2015
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Re: “Manufacturing Dissent”: The Anti-globalization Movement

Postby admin » Sun Jul 22, 2018 2:20 am

Ten Years Ago: "Manufacturing Dissent" in Seattle
by Michel Chossudovsky
Seattle and Beyond: Disarming the New World Order
Global Research
November 10, 2009

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Author's Note

This article published under the title Seattle and Beyond: Disarming the New World Order was written ten years ago in relation to the Seattle Millenium Summit, which served to instate the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a global policy watch-dog, derogating the sovereign rights of national governments to decide on their economic and social policies.

In a bitter irony, a handful of civil society organizations, which had formally opposed the WTO, unwittingly contributed to legitimizing the WTO's global trading architecture. Instead of challenging the very existence of the WTO as an an intergovernmental body, they established a dialogue with the WTO and Western governments. Funded by private foundations, these civil society organizations positioned themselves as lobby groups on behalf of the people's movement. They ultimately contributed to weakening the anti-globalization movement by accepting the legitimacy of what was essentially an illegal organisation.

The same procedure of donor funded counter-summits or people's summits was subsequently embodied in the World Social Forum. What we are dealing with is a process of "manufactured dissent".

The people's movement had been hijacked. "In Seattle, the big divide [was] between those who are genuinely opposed to the New World Order and those "partner" civil society organisations which have all the appearances of being "progressive" but which in fact are creatures of the system. Often funded by their respective governments, they form part of a politically correct "Opposition" which acts as "a spokesperson for civil society". But who do they represent? Many of the "partner NGOs" and lobby groups which frequently mingle with bureaucrats and politicians, have few contacts with grass-roots social movements and people's organisations. In the meantime, they serve to deflect the articulation of "real" social movements against the New World Order."


In preparing the Seattle Millennium meetings, Washington in consultation with Brussels and the WTO in Geneva, is set on weakening and dividing social movements and citizens' groups which have converged on Seattle from all over the World. Meanwhile, local organisers are busy --together with the FBI and the Seattle Police Department (SPD)-- in carefully planning "security arrangements" for the official venue. An extensive police apparatus has been set motion. Special Forces from the FBI, the CIA and other federal agencies will be on the scene. "Trouble-makers" are to be held at bay, well equipped riot police are on hand including Gang Squads and SWAT teams of the Tactical Operations Divisions which constitute the "more militarized components" of the police force.

1 Everything has been put in place to keep the Citizens' Summit physically removed from the Ministerial Conference. As in previous counter-summits (Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, Copenhagen, Beijing, etc.), the intent is to ensure that the numerous protest meetings, teach-ins and mass rallies do not obstruct or in any way threaten the legitimacy of the official venue. In Seattle, the holding of parallel sessions by NGOs requires formal "accreditation" with the Seattle Host Committee chaired by Microsoft's Bill Gates and Philip Condit of The Boeing Company.

Several months ahead of time, the WTO and Western governments had called for a "dialogue" with selected civil society organisations in setting the agenda for the Millennium Round. "Partner NGOs", namely those "we can trust" were provided with funds to travel and organize their respective "teach-ins" in Seattle. Already last year, the WTO had announced a plan for "an on-going collaboration with partner NGOs" while emphasising that the WTO "recognizes the role NGOs can play to increase the awareness of the public in respect of WTO activities".

2 Similarly, the European Commission had underscored its "commitment to transparency and openness in trade policy-making".

3 Carefully screened "partner NGOs" were invited to participate in a number of preparatory "issue-specific" events. The European Commission held several rounds of consultations with selected consumer, labour, environmental and development organisations with a view to "to improve the transparency of WTO meetings" including public access to WTO documents and the creation of an WTO "information ombudsman".

4 In the words of (former) European Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan: "A Millennium round of trade talks should not just benefit business. We can and should ensure that Consumers and the environment also gain. The Commission has today opened a dialogue with a wide cross-section of NGOs as it believes transparency and openness are essential if a new round is to reap its full benefits. NGOs are crucial partners in preparing for the negotiations that lie ahead."

5 THE COUNTER SUMMIT

Controlled and financed by official donors and research foundations, the hidden agenda is to install a "politically correct" Citizens' Summit, namely to ensure that the various teach-ins and public rallies in the streets of Seattle conform to the dominant "counter discourse". The latter consists in pressing for the inclusion of token environmental, labour and human rights clauses, "poverty alleviation" schemes as well as "institutional reforms" without defying the central role of trade liberalisation.

The partner non-governmental organisations have, in this regard, already committed themselves not to question "the legality" or legitimacy of the WTO as an institution. Accredited NGO participants have been invited to mingle in a friendly environment with ambassadors, trade ministers and Wall Street tycoons at several of the official events including the numerous cocktail parties and receptions. In turn, an (official) "WTO Sponsored NGO Symposium" is to be held for chosen NGO participants one day before the launching of the Ministerial Conference, with carefully worded opening statements by WTO Director General Mike Moore and US Trade Secretary Charlene Barshevsky.

In other words, the ploy in Seattle (supported by a lavish public relations campaign) is to carefully diffuse an international mass movement directed against the WTO and the powerful business syndicates which lie discretely in the background. "Criticism yes, that's democratic", but the "free market" system must prevail, the legitimacy of the institutions --including their Geneva and Washington based bureaucracies-- must not be challenged... In return, the official conference will accept to embody on behalf of the "accredited" labour and civil society organisations, various token environmental and other concessions in their main resolutions with a view to providing a much needed "human face" to the WTO.

The Millennium Round meetings also purport to replicate the habitual parallel "People's Summit" which now constitutes an integral component of successive World venues. Repeated almost annually since the 1992 Rio Environment Conference, the People's Summit while providing a forum for critical debate, has over the years largely become "a ritual of dissent" which largely leaves the official Summit unscathed.

The parallel P7 ("People's P7 Summit") at the G7 meetings in Cologne in June 1999, for instance, was put together in consultation with the host organisers of the official Summit, generously funded by the Heinrich Boell Foundation which is an arm of the German Green Party controlled by Foreign Minister Joschka Fisher. The structure of the Cologne P7 was geared towards deflecting debate on controversial issues including the "humanitarian bombings" of Yugoslavia... Meanwhile, more than 20,000 people from all parts of Europe had gathered in the streets of Cologne under the umbrella of the Jubilee Campaign. Their petition to unconditionally erase Third World debt had been signed by more than 17 million people. World leaders respectfully paid tribute to the Jubilee initiative, responding with empty rhetorical commitments on debt reduction for the World's poorest countries. The substantive proposal of the Campaign had been casually dismissed.

In Seattle, many of the accredited NGOs representing specific interests (eg. environmental, labour, human rights, women's organisations, etc) will be putting forth separate demands. There is evidence that several of the key NGOs have been infiltrated by Western intelligence agencies. The Counter-Summit is to be fragmented into a "mosaic" of secluded events focussing on separate and distinct policy issues. The hidden agenda is to enable each of these separate venues "to do their own thing" in a semblance of "people's participation": the goal of the Seattle organisers is to mask the truth, prevent the development of a mass movement, suppress real democracy and uphold the authority of the institutions of the New World Order.

In turn, the AFL-CIO joined by trade union bosses from around the World, has called upon the WTO to "enforce minimum labour standards... in the global market". Caving in to Washington's demands, Labour's buzz-word is to "make the global economy work for working families".6 A carefully drafted petition urges the Ministerial Conference to adopt "trade and investment rules [which] protect workers' rights and the environment".7 The overall legitimacy of the WTO and of US trade policy is not in question. In turn, the AFL-CIO has been put in charge of the organisation of a mass rally which usefully serves the purpose of deflecting the international protest movement on the streets of Seattle...

In Seattle, the big divide will be between those who are genuinely opposed to the New World Order and those "partner" civil society organisations which have all the appearances of being "progressive" but which in fact are creatures of the system. Often funded by their respective governments, they form part of a politically correct "Opposition" which acts as "a spokesperson for civil society". But who do they represent? Many of the "partner NGOs" and lobby groups which frequently mingle with bureaucrats and politicians, have few contacts with grass-roots social movements and people's organisations. In the meantime, they serve to deflect the articulation of "real" social movements against the New World Order.

This does not mean that "dialogue" with the WTO and the governments should be ruled out as a means of negotiation. On the contrary, "lobbying" must be applied vigorously in close liaison with constituent social movements. The underlying results and information of these negotiations, however, must be channelled with a view to reinforcing rather than weakening grass roots actions. In other words, we should not allow "lobbying" to be conducted in an isolated and secretive fashion by organisations which are "hand picked" by the governments and the WTO.

A MORATORIUM ON LIBERALISATION NEGOTIATIONS

More than 1200 groups and organisations from more than 85 countries have called for a "Moratorium" on further liberalisation under WTO auspices including the holding of an "Audit" to be undertaken on the impacts of globalisation. Their consensus statement ("Statement From Members of International Civil Society Opposing A Millennium Round"): "oppose[s] any further liberalisation negotiations, especially those which will bring new areas under the WTO regime, such as investment, competition policy and government procurement. We commit ourselves to campaign to reject any such proposals. We also oppose the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. We call for a moratorium on any new issues or further negotiations that expand the scope and power of the WTO. During this moratorium there should be a comprehensive and in-depth review and assessment of the existing agreements. Effective steps should then be taken to change the agreements. Such a review should address the WTO's impact on marginalised communities, development, democracy, environment, health, human rights, labour rights and the rights of women and children. The review must be conducted with civil society's full participation. The Statement constitutes an important step in challenging the official Agenda. It is based on a carefully worded consensus of a large number of individual organisations.

ILLEGALITY OF THE WTO

Yet this important Statement in demanding a "Moratorium" on further liberalisation negotiations, fails to question the legitimacy of the WTO as an institution. And indeed this issue should have been included explicitly in the Statement.

The Marrakesh Agreement of 1994 constitutes a blatant violation of fundamental social, economic and cultural rights. The stakes in Seattle are fundamental and cannot be addressed with a compromise Statement which tacitly accepts the legitimacy of the WTO as an institution. The WTO was put in place following the signing of a "technical agreement" negotiated behind closed doors by bureaucrats. Even the heads of country level delegations to Marrakesh in 1994 were not informed regarding the statutes of the World Trade Organisation which were drafted in separate closed sessions by technocrats.

"The Final Act Embodying the Results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations", was signed by ministers in Marrakesh on 15 April 1994. The Final Act is a "technical agreement" which instates the WTO as a World body. "The WTO framework ensures a "single undertaking approach" to the results of the Uruguay Round - thus, membership in the WTO entails accepting all the results of the Round without exception."

Following the Marrakesh meeting, the 550 page Agreement (plus its numerous appendices) was either rubber-stamped in a hurry or never formally ratified by national parliaments. The articles of agreement of the WTO resulting from this "technical agreement" were casually entrenched in international law. In other words, the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement which instates the WTO as a multilateral body, bypasses the democratic process in each of the member countries. It blatantly derogates national laws and constitutions while providing extensive powers to global banks and multinational corporations. These powers have in fact become entrenched in the articles of agreement of the WTO.

In other words, the process of actual creation of the WTO following the Final Act of Uruguay Round is blatantly "illegal". Namely a "totalitarian" intergovernmental body has been casually installed in Geneva, empowered under international law with the mandate to "police" country level economic and social policies, derogating the sovereign rights of national governments. Similarly, the WTO almost neutralises "with the stroke of the pen" the authority and activities of several agencies of the United Nations including the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Moreover, the articles of WTO are no only in contradiction with pre-existing national and international laws, they are also in at variance with "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights". Acceptance of the WTO as a legitimate organisation is tantamount to an "indefinite moratorium" or repeal of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Moreover, apart from the blatant violation of international law, WTO rules provide legitimacy to trade practices which border on criminality, including "intellectual piracy" by MNCs, the derogation of plant breeders rights, not to mention genetic manipulation by the biotechnology giants, the patenting of life forms including plants, animals, micro-organisms, genetic material and human life forms under the TRIPs agreement.

In the sphere of financial services, the provisions of the GATS provide legitimacy to large scale financial and speculative manipulations directed against developing countries which are often conducive to the demise of country-level monetary policy.

And the WTO Dispute Settlement Procedures upholds the legitimacy of these various manipulative procedures...

THE BALANCE SHEET OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DESTRUCTION

Amply documented, humanity is undergoing in the post-Cold War era an economic and social crisis of unprecedented scale leading to the rapid impoverishment of large sectors of the World population. National economies are collapsing, unemployment is rampant; Wall Street banks are "taking over countries" one after the other; regional wars have erupted along strategic gas-oil pipelines and often behind the various "insurgencies" are powerful corporate interests which coincidentally are also lobbying for trade reform... In most countries the standard of living has collapsed...

This Worldwide crisis of the late twentieth century is more devastating than the Great Depression of the 1930s. It has far-reaching geo-political implications; economic dislocation has also been accompanied by the outbreak of regional conflicts, the fracturing of national societies and in some cases the destruction of entire countries. This crisis is by no means limited to the developing countries. In Europe and North America the Welfare State is being dismantled, schools and hospitals are being closed down creating conditions for the outright privatisation of social services. By far this is the most serious economic crisis in modern history.

In a large number of developing countries, the services economy and banking are already in the hands of foreign capital, peasant economies have been devastated as a result of the dumping of EU and US grain surpluses. Genetically modified seeds produced among others by Cargill and Montsanto (together with carefully engineered farm inputs produced by these same agribusiness conglomerates) have been forced upon farmers throughout the World often leading to mass poverty and the fracture of rural economies, not to mention the contamination of the food chain derogating the rights of consumers Worldwide.

In turn, international agribusiness is intent upon driving the family farm into bankruptcy. This process is by no means limited to developing countries: up to 30 percent of grain farmers in Western Canada are on the verge of bankruptcy specifically as a result of the enforcement of WTO provisions concerning farm subsidies by the Canadian government. And if this is happening in Western Canada which constitutes one of the World's most resourceful "bread baskets", what will be the fate of farmers in other regions of World?

CHINA'S ACCESSION TO THE WTO

The terms of China's accession to the WTO agreed upon in bilateral negotiations with the United States barely a few weeks before the Ministerial Conference in Seattle, spells havoc in a country of more than one billion population. It will devastate China's agriculture; it will trigger a deadly wave of bankruptcies of State enterprises leading to mass unemployment. The provision of "national treatment" to Western banks could potentially precipitate the fracture of the entire structure of Chinese State banking...

The Chinese authorities fully aware of the ramifications, have attempted in a publicity stunt to convince Chinese public opinion that "the benefits from the agreement would justify the job losses and bankruptcies it will cause".8 In the words of China's chief WTO negotiator Mr. Long Yongtu "a nation cannot develop and become strong without a sense of urgency and a sense of crisis."9

ANALYSING AND EVALUATING THE NEW WORLD ORDER

In the face of global economic and social devastation, is an (official) "Audit" really required as put forth in the "Statement From Members of International Civil Society" to ascertain what is happening? Some of the NGO critics --including the trade unions-- involved in the dialogue with the WTO argue that there are both "positive" and "negative" impacts of trade liberalisation. This position is ambiguous: the devastating impacts of "globalisation" are already known and documented, the NGO community has already produced a wealth of critical analysis and research. Moreover, the audit proposal accepts the legitimacy of the WTO, it presupposes that there are mistakes and "lets talk and put this system on hold" for a few years "while we re-evaluate".

Do we need an Audit to ascertain "whether or not" the World is in crisis? And by whom will this Audit be performed and for whom? The key "partner NGOs" have already positioned themselves to undertake the relevant commissioned background studies. Many of the organisations which signed and endorsed the "Statement" were unaware that the Audit with part of the "Dialogue" with the WTO and Western governments. And these research contracts performed "sector by sector" in a "politically correct" fashion according to pre-established guidelines set by the funding agencies will take several years to complete.

The conduct of an Audit has already been accepted by the European Union in its consultations with the NGOs. Former European Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan, on behalf of the European Union had in fact proposed in 1998, "the commissioning of a study on the impact of the new Round on sustainable development" (European Commission, op. cit). In other words, the Audit is also part of the official agenda of the Seattle Round. In the meantime, while the Audit is being conducted, economic, social and environmental destruction will continue unabated.

THE MILLENIUM ROUND IS ALREADY "DE FACTO"

What happens to the World system does not depend solely on the results of the Millenium Round. We must understand that in many developing countries, many of the clauses of the Millenium Round are already a "fait accompli". The are part of the "conditionalities contained in ad hoc loan agreements with the IMF and the World Bank. Under the structural adjustment programme as well as in the context of the IMF sponsored "bailout agreements" (eg. Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Brazil), developing countries have already committed themselves to many of the propositions contained in the Millenium Round.

Moreover, the hands of Third World delegates to Seattle are tied, the vote of most of the trade ministers from developing countries at the Seattle Ministerial Conference is controlled by Western creditors. It is unlikely that much opposition will be voiced from the official delegations from developing countries.

Many developing countries have accepted in the context of agreements signed with the Bretton Woods instititions to liberalise trade, deregulate capital movements, privatise State public utilities, dismantle social programmes and provide "national treatment" to foreign investors in a large number of economic activities including services, banking, procurement, etc. These provisions are often coupled with a "bankruptcy programme" under the supervision of the World Bank with a view to "triggering" the liquidation of competing national enterprises. An "enabling free market environment" is implanted (without recourse to WTO clauses pertaining to "effective access to markets"), national producers are brutally displaced and destroyed, countries are casually recolonised...

Wall Street bankers and the heads of the World's largest business conglomerates are indelibly behind this process. They interface regularly with IMF, World Bank and WTO officials in closed sessions as well as in numerous international venues. Moreover, participating in these meetings and consultations are the representatives of powerful global business lobbies including the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), The Trans Atlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) (which brings together in its annual venues the leaders of the largest Western business conglomerates with politicians and WTO officials), the United States Council for International Business (USCIB), the Davos World Economic Forum, the Institute of International Finance representing the World's largest banks and financial institutions, etc. Other "semi-secret" organisations --which play an important role in shaping the institutions of the New World Order-- include the Trilateral Commission, the Bildebergers and the Council on Foreign Relations.

FINANCIAL DEREGULATION

To top it off, "perfect timing": the deregulation of the US banking system was approved by the US Senate barely six weeks before the Millennium Round meetings in Seattle. The new legislation favours an unprecedented concentration of global financial power. In the wake of lengthy negotiations which concluded in the early hours of October 22nd, all regulatory restraints on Wall Street's powerful banking conglomerates were revoked "with a stroke of the pen". Under the new rules ratified by the US Senate and approved by President Clinton, commercial banks, brokerage firms, hedge funds, institutional investors, pension funds and insurance companies can freely invest in each others businesses as well as fully integrate their financial operations. The legislation has repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, a pillar of President Roosevelt's "New Deal" which was put in place in response to the climate of corruption, financial manipulation and "insider trading" which led to more than 5,000 bank failures in the years following the 1929 Wall Street crash.10

In other words, a handful of financial conglomerates will gain effective control over the entire US financial services industry. Coincidentally these same Wall Street financial giants are also the main beneficiaries of financial services' deregulation under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) which provides "national treatment" to Wall Street's giants in banking, insurance, brokerage services, actuarial services, etc. The GATS is almost "tailor-made" to meet the standards set under the new US financial services legislation. The financial giants oversee the real economy Worldwide, they are creditors and shareholders of high tech manufacturing, the defence industry, major oil and mining consortia, etc. Moreover, as underwriters of the public debt, they also have a stranglehold on national governments and politicians. Ultimately, they also call the shots on trade reform in Seattle.

Moreover, the clauses of the defunct MAI which was to provide "national treatment" to foreign banks and MNCs (leading to the dislocation of municipalities and local governments) is also in the process of becoming a "fait accompli". The financial conglomerates are now fully integrated with the insurance companies. In turn, the latter oversee and control the multinational health care providers which are actively lobbying in Seattle for the deregulation of public health care under the GATS. The institutions of the Welfare State are to be scrapped. The struggles of the entire post-war period are to be erased.

The Worldwide scramble to appropriate wealth through "financial manipulation" is the driving force behind this restructuring of the global financial architecture of which the new US banking legislation and the "Seattle Round" are an integral part. In concert with the WTO, the US legislation favours the elimination of remaining barriers to the free movement of finance capital. In practice it empowers Wall Street's key players including Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, J. P, Morgan, Deutsche Bank-Bankers Trust, etc. to develop a hegemonic position in global banking overshadowing and ultimately destabilising financial systems in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe... and this process is ongoing irrespective of the actual outcome of the Millenium Round.

THE SPECULATIVE ONSLAUGHT

In turn, financial deregulation in the US allows speculative trade to prosper Worldwide in a totally permissive environment. In turn, the Millenium Round by calling for the deregulation of capital movements will provide greater legitimacy to speculative trade thereby empowering Wall Street to extend its global financial domain.

Institutional control over the channels of speculative trade provides the US and EU financial giants with the tools to manipulate currency and stock markets and impair the role of central banks. The ultimate objective is to take control over the reigns of monetary policy and oversee financial markets all over the World. In the 1997 Asian crisis alone, more than 100 billion dollars were confiscated in a matter of months from the vaults of Asia's central banks; similar speculative assaults were carried out in Russia in 1998 and in Brazil in 1999. Derivative and option trade including the "short selling" of national currencies were behind these assaults leading to massive debt default and financial collapse. Well documented, the IMF played a key role in facilitating the speculative onslaught on behalf of Western and Japanese financial institutions.

In a cruel irony, the use of these deadly speculative instruments was formally legitimised in the Fifth Protocol of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in the immediate wake of the Asian crisis. Totally disregarding the impending dangers, the GATS protocol negotiations coincided chronologically (October 1997) with the climactic meltdown of stock markets all over the World.

WAR AND GLOBALISATION

And War is also part of the Millennium Round. What happens to countries which refuse to deregulate trade and foreign investment and provide "national treatment" to Western banks and MNCs? The Western military-intelligence apparatus and its various bureaucracies routinely interface with the financial establishment. The IMF, the World Bank and the WTO --which "police" country level economic reforms-- also collaborate with NATO in its various "peacekeeping" endeavours, not to mention the financing of "post-conflict" reconstruction under the auspices of the Bretton Woods institutions...

At the dawn of the Third Millennium, War and the "Free Market" go hand in hand. War does not require a multilateral investment treaty (ie. an MAI) entrenched in international law: "War is the MAI of last resort." War physically destroys what has not been dismantled through deregulation, privatisation and the imposition of "free market" reforms. Outright colonisation through war and the installation of Western protectorates is tantamount to providing "national treatment" to Western banks and MNCs in all sectors of activity. "Missile diplomacy" replicates and emulates the "gunboat diplomacy" used to enforce "free trade" in the 19th Century. The US Cushing Mission to China in 1844 (in the wake of the Opium Wars) had forewarned the Chinese imperial government "that refusal to grant American demands might be regarded as an invitation to war."11 The "Seattle Round" purports to "peacefully" recolonise countries through the manipulation of market forces, --ie. through the "invisible hand". It nonetheless constitutes a form of warfare.

More generally, the dangers of war must be understood. War and globalisation are not separate issues. The citizens' campaign against the WTO must be integrated with the anti-war movement against the bombing of sovereign countries by the US and its European allies.

DISARMING THE NEW WORLD ORDER

The WTO created from a "technical agreement" (Final Act of the Uruguay Round) provides entrenched "legal" rights to banks and global corporations. In turn the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement sets up procedures --including manipulative Dispute Settlements-- which are now conveniently embodied in international law but which blatantly violate the rights of citizens all over the World.

Under WTO rules, the banks and MNCs can legitimately manipulate market forces to their advantage leading to the outright recolonisation of national economies. In other words, the WTO articles provide legitimacy to global banks and MNCs in their quest to destabilise institutions, drive national producers into bankruptcy and ultimately take control of entire countries.

Moreover, the Agreement formally instates a "triangular division of authority" between the WTO, and its sister organisations the IMF and the World Bank in a system of "global surveillance" of developing countries' economic and social policies. This means that enforcement of IMF-World Bank policy prescriptions will no longer hinge upon ad hoc country-level loan agreements (which are not "legally binding" documents). All the main clauses of the IMF's deadly "economic medicine" will eventually become permanently entrenched under the Seattle Millenium Round. Countries will not only be "bonded" by external debt, they will be permanently "enslaved" by an international body controlled by the World's largest business syndicates. These WTO articles will set the foundations for "policing" countries (and enforcing "conditionalities") according to international law.

In other words, we must act in relation to the original "iniquity" and "illegality" of the Final Act of the Uruguay Round which creates the WTO as a "totalitarian" organisation. There can be no other alternative but to reject the WTO as an international institution, to imprint the WTO as an illegal organisation. In other words, the entire process must be rejected outright.

And this means that citizens' movements around the World must pressure their governments to withdraw without delay and cancel their membership with the WTO. Legal proceedings must also be initiated in national courts against the governments of member countries, underscoring the blatant violation of domestic laws and national constitutions.

In other words, the citizens' platform in Seattle and around the World must be geared towards disarming this economic system and dismantling its institutions. We cannot postpone our struggle and "wait a few years" in the context of an "Audit" and meanwhile the World is consumed and destroyed. We must act now. We must question the legitimacy of a system which ultimately destroys people's lives.

We must challenge politicians and international officials, we must unmask their insidious links to powerful financial interests and eventually we must overhaul and transform State institutions removing them from the clutch of the finacial establishment. In turn, we must "democratise" the economic system and its management structure, challenge the blatant concentration of ownership and private wealth, disarm financial markets, freeze speculative trade, arrest the laundering of dirty money, dismantle the system of offshore banking, redistribute income and wealth, restore the rights of direct producers, rebuild the Welfare State.

Concurrently, we must also build the conditions for a lasting World peace. The military-industrial and security apparatus which sustains these financial interests must eventually be dismantled, which also means that we must abolish NATO and phase out the arms industry.

We must combat the "media lies" and "global falsehoods" which uphold the WTO and the powerful business interests which it supports. We must combat the "false consensus" of Washington and Wall Street which ordains the "free market system " as the only possible choice on the fated road to a "global prosperity". This consensus is now shared by all political parties including Social Democrats.

To achieve these objectives we must restore a meaningful freedom of the press. The global media giants fabricate the news and overtly distorts the course of World events. In turn, we must break the "false consciousness" which pervades our societies, prevents critical debate and masks the truth. Ultimately , it precludes a collective understanding of the workings of an economic system which destroys people's lives. The only promise of the "free market" is a World of landless farmers, shuttered factories, jobless workers and gutted social programmes with "bitter economic medicine" under the WTO and the IMF constituting the only prescription. We must restore the truth, we must reinstate sovereignty to our countries and to the people of our countries.

The struggle must be broad-based and democratic encompassing all sectors of society at all levels, in all countries, uniting in a major thrust workers, farmers, independent producers, small businesses, professionals, artists, civil servants, members of the clergy, students and intellectuals. People must be united across sectors, "single issue" groups must join hands in a common and collective understanding on how this economic system destroys and impoverishes.

The "globalisation" of this struggle is fundamental, requiring a degree of solidarity and internationalism unprecedented in World history. The global economic system feeds on social divisiveness between and within countries.

Beyond Seattle, unity of purpose and Worldwide coordination among diverse groups and social movements is crucial. A major thrust is required which brings together social movements in all major regions of the world in a common pursuit and commitment to the elimination of poverty and a lasting World peace.

_______________

Notes:

1. The latter frequently position snipers at key positions. See Paul Richmond, "An Assessment of the Police, What to expect during the Seattle Ministerial Conference",http://forward.to/walkout, September 1999.

2. WTO Press Release, Ruggiero Announces Enhanced WTO Plan for Cooperation With NGOs, 17 July 1998.

3. European Commission Press Release, "Commission and NGOs hold dialogue on the Millennium Round", Brussels, 17 November 1998.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. See AFL-CIO, Make the Global economy Work for Working familiies, http://www.wslc.org/wto/index.htm October 1999.

7. Ibid.

8. Financial Times, London, 17 November 1999).

9. Quoted in Financial Times, op cit.

10. See Martin McLaughlin, "Clinton Republicans agree to Deregulation of US Banking System", World Socialist website, 1 November 1999.

11. Quoted in Michel Chossudovsky, Towards Capitalist Restoration, Chinese socialism after Mao, Macmillan, London, 1986, p. 134).
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