[stop-imf] Naomi Klein: IN CASE YOU MISSED SEATTLE, HEEERE'S WASHINGTON - The Globe and Mail (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

The Globe and Mail Wednesday, April 12, 2000

IN CASE YOU MISSED SEATTLE, HEEERE'S WASHINGTON

=09By Naomi Klein

My friend Mez is getting on a bus to Washington, D.C., on Saturday. I
asked him why, and he said with all this intensity: "Look, I missed
Seattle. There's no way I'm missing Washington."

I've seen people speak with that kind of unrestrained longing before, but
the object of their affection was usually a muddy music festival where
Beck shares a stage with the Beastie Boys, or a short-run New York
play such as The Vagina Monologues.

I've never heard anyone talk that way about a political protest. Especially
not a protest against groaner bureaucracies such as the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund. And certainly not when they are being
called on the carpet for nothing sexier than a decades-old loan policy
called "structural adjustment."

And yet there they are: university students and artists and wage-free
anarchists and lunch-box steelworkers, piling onto buses from all corners
of the continent. Stuffed in their pockets and shoulder bags are fact
sheets about the ratio of spending on health care to debt repayment in
Mozambique (2=BD times more for debt) and the number of people
worldwide living without electricity (two billion).

All are heading to Washington for the big "A16" protests this Sunday and
Monday. Four buses are going from Toronto alone. On the e-mail
listserves, giddy posts are predicting "Seattle: The Sequel." Kevin
Danaher, one of the protest organizers, has been visiting schools
promising "Woodstock Times Ten."

Four months ago, this same coalition of environmental, labour and
anarchist groups brought a World Trade Organization meeting to a
standstill. In Seattle, an impressive range of single-issue campaigns --
some focused on controversial corporations such as Nike or Shell, some
on dictatorships such as Burma -- broadened their focus to a more
structural critique of the regulatory bodies playing referee in a global ra=
ce
to the bottom.

Caught off guard by the strength and organization of their opposition, the
proponents of accelerated free trade immediately went on the offensive,
attacking the protesters as enemies of the poor. Most memorably, The
Economist put a picture of a starving Indian child on its cover, and WTO
chief Michael Moore got all choked up: "To those who would argue that
we should stop our work, I say: Tell that to the poor, to the marginalized
around the world who are looking to us to help them."

The desperate recasting of the WTO, and of global capitalism itself, as a
tragically misunderstood poverty elimination program is the single most
off-putting legacy of the Battle in Seattle. To hear the line coming out of
Geneva, barrier-free trade is a giant philanthropic plot and multinational
corporations are only using their soaring shareholder returns and
executive salaries to disguise their real intentions: to heal the world's
sick,
to raise the minimum wage and to save the trees.

But, see, they were hoping no one would find out because they are shy.
Nothing does a better job of putting the lie to this specious equation of
humanitarian goals with deregulated trade than the track record of the
World Bank and the IMF. When the Seattle-ites move to Washington
this weekend, they will be making the case that the World Bank and the
IMF have exacerbated world poverty with a zealous and near mystical
faith in trickle-down economics.

The World Bank has loaned money to the poorest and most desperate
nations to build economies based on foreign-owned mega projects,
cash-crop farming, low-wage export-driven manufacturing and
speculative finance. These projects have been a boon to multinational
mining and agribusiness companies around the world, but, in many
countries, they have also lead to environmental devastation, mass
migration to urban centres, currency crashes, and dead-end sweatshop
jobs.

Which is where the World Bank and IMF come in with their infamous
bailouts, always with more conditions attached. In Haiti, it was a frozen
minimum wage, in Thailand the elimination of restrictions on foreign
ownership, in Mexico a hike in university fees was urged. And when
these latest austerity measures fail once again to lead to sustainable
economic growth, these countries are still on the hook for their layers of
debts.

As international attention turns to the World Bank and IMF this
weekend, it will go a long way toward countering the argument that the
protesters in Seattle were greedy North American protectionists,
determined to keep the fruits of the economic boom to themselves.
When Teamsters and Turtles took to the streets to complain about WTO
interference in environmental and labour regulation, they weren't trying to
impose "our" standards on the developing world. They were playing
catch-up with a movement for self-determination that began in the
southern nations of the world, where the words "World Bank" are spat,
not said, and where "IMF" is parodied on protest signs as short for "I M
Fired."

Will the weekend measure up to the hype? I'll tell you when I get back.
Look, I missed Seattle. There's no way I'm missing Washington.=20


Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies.