Talkin' trash to the garbage around me.

08 February, 2006

Tribunal for the ultra-rich represents "world community"

The WaPo is reporting that the World Trade Organization has ruled that a European ban on genetically modified crops violates free trade rules, which, quite frankly, comes as no surprise to me. The WTO has been infringing upon the sovereignty of democratically elected governments on behalf of corporate profits for the better part of a decade now, and the writing was on the wall as soon as the United States took up the case for the biotech industry in 2003. To quote an expert:
"The decision was never really in doubt, but its global impact could be huge," Gregory Conko, an analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, said in a written statement. "With the voice of the world community now clearly on the record, we hope the Europeans will quickly dismantle their bans and let science-based policy and consumer freedom prevail."
Wait a minute.

Did he refer to the WTO as "the voice of the world community?" The WTO that is composed of unelected trade representatives? The WTO whose whole raison d'etre is to undermine the regulation of Big Business? The one that sparked massive grassroots protests in Seattle in 1999 and in Cancun in 2003.

Mr. Conko - the bureaucratic lackeys of the richest 1% of each nation who meet together to subvert democratic institutions in the name of profit are not "the voice of the world community."