News Story:
George Monbiot has written an editorial for the Guardian (Tuesday 24th June) in which he endorses the continued existence of the World Trade Organization under the mild provision that they reform. For complete details see
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,7369,983684,00.html

News Analysis:
3 simple points

1.Abolish the WTO
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the tip of the global elite iceberg. They are actively involved in commodifying our lives, stealing the world, and very often killing people who get in their way. They cannot be reformed. If Monbiot told you to let your children be babysat by a murderer or a rapist would you allow that? Certainly not. But now it would be ok if he (or she) were reformed? In our interpersonal conflicts we work to criticise the behaviour and not the person; but in this global conflict we need to remove the people in order to stop the behaviour.

2.Fuck off George Monbiot
This guy is the left wing of capitalism (attempting to position himself to be in control of the power generated by resistance to corporate takeover). We are going to have to learn to be more effective at dealing with these let's-build-a-hierarchy-&-put-me-at-the-top types. We're going to see more and more of them as things heat up. (The WTO wants all the General Agreement on Trade in Service (GATS) negotiated and ready to start by end of next year!)

3.WTO-Replacement will be the same.
We should be very sceptical about placing another government agency between big corporations and the people who are being f*cked over by them. Often times this simply serves as a layer of protection for trans-national corporations from direct democracy. The WTO (and any likely replacement for it) is about regulating the protests against big corporations and yet it pretends to be about regulating the corporations and their trade. Putting ourselves- people who are being violated by the corporate oligarchy- into direct contact with that oligarchy (without giving them any layers of bureaucratic protection) will be the quickest ways to topple these very dangerous (but not always clever) M-Fs.
Solidarity & Oxygen
Michael Sceptic ;)

P.S. Below is text of one Green Party response. It is a bit wishy-washy but at least they are now coming to recognize what George Monbiot is about!

Subject: FW: [GP-MediaNet] Monbiot's attack on localisation

This is a response by the Green Party Press officer to George Monbiot.

Dear George,

I'm writing this as someone who has always had tremendous respect for you
and your work.

I feel your latest Guardian article severely misrepresents the Green Party
and its views on localisation. In effect, the article gives a fundamentally

flawed description of the localisation concept, which portrays it as
obviously stupid, and on that unreasonable basis criticises it.

This seems completely against the grain of just about everything I thought
you'd ever stood for.

Your article starts to be misleading from the subheading onwards. You say:
"Our aim should not be to abolish the World Trade Organisation, but to
transform it". In the process of arguing this you condemn the concept of
localisation, attack Colin Hines and single out the Green Party - yet the
Green Party's report Time To Replace Globalisation - co-authored by Colin
Hines - "challenges head on the idea that the choice before us is between
WTO rules on one hand, or the chaos of no rules on the other".

Effectively, you've taken the idea that WE'VE been promoting for years, and

used that idea to attack us.

I just searched our website for "WTO + reform" and it threw up 35
references. The first it found was this:

"24 October 2001

"REFORM OF WTO IS PRECONDITION FOR NEW ROUND, PARLIAMENT TOLD

"At a debate in the European Parliament in Strasbourg today (Weds) Green MEP

Caroline Lucas will insist that fundamental reform of the World Trade
Organisation's processes and rules must be a precondition for any new round

of trade negotiations that will demanded by the EU and US in November at
Doha, Qatar."

And the policy the Green Party took into the 2001 general election included

this:

"S12 In the long term, the WTO should be replaced with a more accountable,
decentralised body, which aims to protect and enhance social and
environmental conditions, and to develop strong self-reliant regions where
individual communities meet more of their own needs.

"S13 In the medium term, WTO rules must take more account of social and
ecological requirements, giving them precedence over the dubious benefits of

free trade." (Global Justice, Not Globalisation,
 http://www.greenparty.org.uk/reports/2001/globalisation/global.html )

So you are not arguing for something new, but you are making false
criticisms of people who said it before you did, as though they hadn't said

it but had said something else.

In other words, having had a road to Damascus conversion, and eager to
recant your sins, you're accusing others of things they haven't done.

Part of your confession is that "Our problem arises from the fact that,
being a diverse movement, we have hesitated to describe precisely what we
want." But in fact the Green Party has been describing what it wants, and
offering people the chance to vote for it. Indeed the very first words of
Time To Replace Globalisation (November 2001) are:

"For too long the debate surrounding economic globalisation has been
dominated by its fervent apologists and by its equally fervent detractors.
It is now time to move from opposition to proposition by setting out a
detailed alternative to globalisation."

You say "We have called for fair trade" as though that's all we've called
for. In fact the Green Party has been calling for far more than fair trade -

for a holistic concept of Green economics based on social justice and
ecological sustainability. Fair trade alone couldn't hope to bring either of

those. As a briefing we published last year says:

"Localisation is about moving economies onto a sustainable footing, and the

first step is to re-localise the production of staples, both North and
South. That way, the South will not have to be exploited by the North when
we want carrots, and exploited again when buying corn with the money that
they got from selling us the carrots! When we localise a globalised food
distribution system and assist the poor to achieve their own independence,
then they will no longer need to try and flog us their food, because they'll

be able to afford to keep it to eat themselves." (Matthew Wootton,
Internationalism and Localisation - Not Globalisation,
 http://www.greenparty.org.uk/reports/2002/not_globalisation.htm .)

We simply do NOT argue for "a global cessation of most kinds of trade". We
do envisage a kind of world economy in which there is less trade, simply
because there is less pressure to trade. As our economics spokesperson Dr
Molly Scott Cato says, "the real problem with trade is the loss of control
over product. The further the distance between producer and consumer the
more profits can be made - this is the explanation for globalisation. If you

reunite producer and consumer through cooperatives organised at the local
level you increase the value of the product going to the producer by cutting

out the middle man. This is the real benefit of localisation."

To say that Green economics is comparable to the sanctions against Iraq is
both highly inaccurate and, frankly, outrageous. Inaccurate because in a
world of localised economies those sanctions could not have wreaked such
havoc, because most of the things which were subject to the sanctions could

have been produced locally (assuming a localised, sustainable economy to
start with). Outrageous because you've just compared people who are strongly

motivated by internationalism and social justice with the perpetrators of a

more or less genocidal form of siege warfare which is merely euphemised
"economic sanctions".

You describe the policy of economic localisation as "coercive, destructive
and unjust".

How can it be "coercive" when it's based on the idea of empowering nations
to be economically self-reliant in a fundamentally cooperative world? What
on earth could be wrong with that?

Consider "destructive" in the context of climate change. You more or less
acknowledge in your article that trade has massive external costs, not least

the cost of climate change. But you go on to say that under localisation,
poorer countries would have to export even more. Now this really is
inexplicable. We are advocating a world of relatively balanced, relatively
self-reliant economies. That ultimately means the poorer country
manufacturing its own frying pans and computers and pencils, not selling
corn to earn money to buy them from the rich countries. In other words, it
means precisely the opposite of what you describe.

Perhaps you overlook the fact that in a Green economy there would be far
less demand for raw materials anyway.

The other major factor here is economies of scale. Whether one considers
these just or unjust or merely a normal factor of capitalist economics,
surely it's beyond dispute that production tends to centralise, and capital

tends to flow to wherever costs are lowest. Hence globalisation's "race to
the bottom". Even allowing for fair trade rules covering everything,
companies will still want to move production to wherever it's cheapest - and

this will still mean that goods tend to travel unnecessarily long distances

(with all the resulting environmental impacts and external costs), and
factories will keep shutting down in one place and reopening somewhere else

(which means perpetual economic instability and, in practice, a requirement

on at least a significant proportion of the workforce to be prepared to move

anywhere to accept any job on offer, regardless of any ethical or
environmental considerations - this is NOT freedom).

I'm amazed at your approach to "choosing their own path to development".
Surely now we recognise that we all have responsibilities and that these
must influence our choices? Surely it's not a good thing that people or
nations could "choose" to make climate change worse? Yet the localisation
concept would impose rules only to the extent that these were founded on
solid arguments regarding minimising harm - which is surely the very basis
of libertarian concepts of rules.

You've accused Colin of self-contradiction, but your own article contradicts

itself too. You say that developing nations must be allowed "to follow the
routes to development taken by the rich" - yet you would impose rules on
them to ensure their "contractors were not employing slaves, using banned
pesticides or exposing their workers to asbestos". That is, NOT following
the way the rich countries made their money.

This leads me to think that (entirely uncharasterically) you haven't thought

this one through. But you weren't merely airing doubts and challenging your

own or other people's preconceptions here - on the basis that you've seen
the light, you've attacked a lot of people who are on your side, not only
implying that they're stupid but likening them to Bush in advocating
"coercive, destructive and unjust" policies.

I think that you have probably damaged the anti-globalisation movement
considerably. Because you have greater access to the national media than we

do, your argument has been heard and our counter-argument hasn't. Therefore

you may well have knocked people's confidence in the Green Party. In fact
you've given ammunition to the neoliberal spindoctors who talk about "making

globalisation work for the poor" when their mission is really to make it
work for the rich. I can just imagine their line: "Even the highly respected

radical George Monbiot now admits the Green Party's policies are 'coercive,

destructive and unjust'."

I think we deserve better treatment than that.

Best wishes
Spencer

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p.p.s.
4.What is the green party talking about?
I hope someone from the green party is reading this. Your reply sounds very wishy washy to me. Are u simply saying "hey we wanted to sell out first but you stole our idea"? Probably not but the message being given is not very clear.


Green Party's report Time To Replace Globalisation - co-authored by Colin
Hines - "challenges head on the idea that the choice before us is between
WTO rules on one hand, or the chaos of no rules on the other".

Effectively, you've taken the idea that WE'VE been promoting for years, and

used that idea to attack us.


Grassroots level green people should get in touch with your leaders and tell them that you won't be walking voting precincts for them if they don't get this wishy washyness fixed. These WTO people are really quite dangerous.