Two years after the "Battle of Seattle", the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will hold their next big meeting in Qatar on 9-13 November. By holding the trade talks in an isolated Persian Gulf dictatorship, the WTO hopes to shut out public participation and scrutiny, and hide from the massive global opposition to its neo-liberal agenda.

In Seattle massive blockades and street protests contributed to the failure of the last WTO conference in November '99. Since then, public resistance to economic globalisation has grown stronger, forcing other conferences such as the FTAA in Quebec and the G8 in Genova, to take place behind high fences, "protected" from the public by massive security operations. Locating a conference in the small desert state of Qatar has been the most consistent attempt yet of shutting out public concerns.

Despite the retreat to Qatar, protests are planned against the WTO and the global economic system in cities and countries around the world. A series of local and regional actions will span the globe, showing that the goals of global justice are inseparable from the whole range of local community efforts, from the fight against environmental degradation, to anti-racism actions and campaigns against social cuts and privatisation

The Qatar conference represents a new attempt of governments and corporate elites to extend the liberalisation of trade to all areas of the global economy. The agenda includes

- the AOA agreement on agriculture, which would extend the grip of a few corporations on agriculture.

- the GATS agreement, which leads to the privatisation of public services such as education, communication, transport, but also of public goods such as water, land and air.

- the TRIPS agreement on intellectual property rights, which prevents countries from manufacturing buying urgently-needed medicines at affordable prices.

- an agreement on investment, which could become a new version of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). The original MAI proposals were dropped in '98 after worldwide protests, but if they included the right of multinational companies to sue governments for lost profits resulting from national regulations.

Thursday 8 November: Actions against the WTO in Frankfurt [link:  http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id685&group=webcast]xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

New anti-WTO Squat in Newcastle [link:  http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id697&group=webcast]

Friday 9 November: Picket the Qatar Embassy, 1 South Audley Street, London W1, 11.30am to 1pm. [link  http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id454&group=webcast]

Saturday 10 November: Public Meeting 2pm to 6pm at 'World Trade =
International Finance Fraud, Terrorism and Genocide. University of London Union,
Malet Street, London WC1. [link  http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id454&group=webcast]

Read Peoples Global Actions call to action against the WTO summit [link:  http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id272)

Indymedia Radio will broadcast live from Qatar, starting 3pm Friday 9 November [link:  http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id623&group=webcast]