(published 11/5/99, almost a month before the mainstream media realized
the WTO talks would be big)

Free Trade vs. Freedom
by Mischa Gelman

  Our democracy is in its gravest danger since the Civil War.  It also has
its greatest chance of salvation.  Here's why.
  The World Trade Organization (WTO) is meeting at the end of this month
and the beginning of next in Seattle.  The WTO has been presented in the
mainstream media as a "free trade" proponent, which is a fair, but highly
limited, description.  Free trade, though, need not mean freedom, and in
this case often does not.  The local sovereignty that ensures freedom and
is the end result of it has been undermined by the WTO on numerous
occasions, as the WTO has the ability to overrule the democratic decisions
of any of its member nations (one of which is the United States). 
  Some case studies show us what's been going on.  The European Union
passed a ban on the sale of beef injected with growth hormone by a vote of
366-0, a unanimous decision by representatives of the people to protect
the health of the citizens of those nations.  When American cattle
interests protested to the WTO, the organization ruled against the EU,
which either will lose monetarily as a result or be forced to rescind the
public health law. 
  While the US has been on the winning side of some of these debates
(assuming the defeat of democracy can be called 'winning'), our own laws
have been attacked and weakened.  Great praise was visited upon the US
government when it passed the Clean Air Act.  Unfortunately, this law only
took into account the desires of the American citizenship and did not
consider the interests of Venezuelan oil refiners.  Venezuela appealed,
seeing the law as a barrier to free trade (as they couldn't sell dirtier
oil here) and the WTO of course shot down the US law, forcing the EPA to
adjust its laws and thus making our air more polluted.
  Other cases speak to the same truth, that corporations are now getting
to dictate policy.  This should come as no surprise, as the WTO is the
brainchild of multinationals such as GM, Caterpillar, ADM, GE, Boeing,
Exxon, Monsanto, Goldman Sachs and other companies.  These corporations
have a habit of evading the law and regulations (over 250 million dollars
of fines in the US in the 90s for just the 9 named), which is why they
seek a way to undermine environmental protections and other things they
see as problematic. 
  While the left has been more vocal, this scheme is the exact antithesis
of the laissez-faire system capitalists claim to defend and that
politicians say they support when praising the WTO.  Adam Smith and David
Ricardo, in praising free trade, assumed neither labor nor capital crossed
national borders, hardly the rule nowadays.  Milton Friedman, the major
modern defender of capitalism, once commented that "The combination of
economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for
tyranny."  This is precisely what is happening with the World Trade
Organization.  
  Many citizens' groups are of course fighting to win our freedom back
from the free trade folks.  Environmental groups, labor groups, religious
groups and others are planning to go to Seattle at the time of the WTO
meetings for a huge protest.  Already, this is worrying the pro-WTO folks.
Bill Clinton helped try to prevent the entry into the country of
protestors from abroad.  Sen. Pat Murray of Washington has complained to
the president about these citizens' groups - she wrote him that "The WTO
is the indispensable rule making, enforcement body...for all countries."
Excuse me?  What happened to local sovereignty?  Isn't the US Congress
supposed to make our laws, a power designated to it by the Constitution?
  Others have spoken up about the loss of our freedom to govern ourselves. 
Progressive Review editor Sam Smith wrote, "[T]he greatest surrender of
sovereignty in US history...is chalked up as an inevitable result of
globalism. This abandonment is not controversial, nor even readily
apparent, because Americans simply have not been told that it has
occurred. They do not know that their country -- which defeated in turn
the British, the Mexicans, the Confederacy, the Spanish, the Germans
(twice), the Japanese and outlasted the Soviet Union, has surrenderer
without a whimper to a junta of trade technocrats armed with nothing more
menacing than cell phones."  On the opposite side of the political
spectrum, conservative Republican Brian Derdowski has said, "To give away
your fundamental liberties for the sake of trade dollars is a very poor
choice."
  Do you readers think Clinton is making the right choice when he picks
the trade dollars?

  Mischa Gelman is a sucker for democracy.