Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Huge International Coalition Calls for a Big Change to WTO Agenda

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Huge International Coalition Calls for a Big Change to WTO Agenda

Click here to access article by Deborah James from Our World Is Not for Sale. (Note: I am posting the article from OWINFS's website (instead of AlterNet) because the author is associated with this organization.)

In Our World Is Not for Sale network, we have been clear: after 20 years of failed policies of the WTO, it is time for a Turnaround! There needs to be an immediate cessation of all talks for further liberalization, and instead governments around the world need to start working in a completely different direction for global trade talks that put jobs, food, and sustainable development issues first.

Civil society needs to send a clear message to turn around the direction of global trade talks. Building on the global letter, work on the national level to ensure that elected officials reflect our goals and values is essential.

For some undisclosed reason the WTO must relax some of its restrictions on "liberalization", that is, trade rules for corporations in order to clear the way for the Empire's new trade/commercial rules of TISA, TTIP, and TPP.

Notice how our ruling capitalist masters even own the language we that is used even by opponents. They have forced us to adopt their words for our enslavement to them--the owners of the economy. They call this "liberalism"--the ideology of capitalism. "Neoliberalism" is the new ideology of capitalism they devised around the turn of the 20/21st century which is seeking to eliminate any nation's ability to interfere with corporate/financial activity. You see, "liberalism" was to earlier times when nationalism was present what "neoliberalism" is now when the Empire is determined to smash national boundaries--for their capitalists, not for us workers. It's what George H. W. Bush meant when he used used the term "new world order" in a speech during his tenure as president:

Until now, the world we've known has been a world divided—a world of barbed wire and concrete block, conflict and cold war. Now, we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order.

Of course, this term has been ridiculed for the unwashed masses as a kind of "conspiracy theory" which, as we all know, is about paranoid fantasies involving elites which get together to plan for their profits and power to our disadvantage. (sarcasm)

However as we have seen in the reality of our daily lives, "neoliberalism" means our "depowerment" which results in our impoverishment. So whenever we read about "neoliberalism", we should translate this term into our further depowerment. (Or maybe another term that would fit would be our increased "impotence".) I use the adjectives "further" and "increased" to make clear that we workers have never enjoyed significant power to determine how our economies were run, but under the hyper-capitalism of "neoliberalism", we will have no power. Think of a slave being put in shackles, or a prisoner put in solitary confinement.