We can see now what a political mistake it was for Nader, organized labor, and mainstream green orgs to take the focus off WTO (it was the WTO and what it's about that drew so many people to Seattle, not the WB or even IMF), and put it exclusively on WB/IMF, especially on China in a most dismal nationalist (imperialist) display before the main event in Washington DC.
The Financial Post story is dynamite, and if we don't react accordingly, at least in our intellectual work, we're really missing the boat.
What's going on is a transition from capitalist economy to a kind of "full" capitalist society (and from a state in capitalists society to a capitalist state cf. debates of the 1970s in Kapitalistate among other pubs). Never before has anyone been crazy enough to commodify then capitalize what we and other ordinary folk call "social progress." To reduce for example health care is one thing. To permit aspects of the system to deteriorate in quality is another. But for economists to tell us (I'll just speak for myself -- tell me) what the scope and limits of health care will be, or how we must define historic buildings, or whether we can protect underwater reefs from tourism, ad nauseam -- this, concept that exports are more important than hard-won gains on all social and ecological fronts (conditions of production in CNS lingo), is about all the proof anyone should need of the importance of export-led economic development, North and South.
In my opinion the WTO has to be stopped, period. To say that trade liberalization is now unstoppable (one of many similar words I've read lately) is to view the world in a totally reified way. And totally false way, since it is the US, IMF etc., drive to liberalize, deregulate and privatize, that is creating the globalist monster. The "inevitability" thesis is a self-fulfilling prophecy. These WTO meetings on services need to be exposed in any and all ways we can, and opposed as much as we can. Seattle laid a solid foundation for continuing work on this front. Then as noted our nationalists (organized labor, Nader, and company, and half a dozen of the Big Ten eviro orgs) changed the focus from WTO to IMF/WB, the two Presidential nominating conventions, etc. I'm not opposed to this; I am opposed to shifting the focus and rechanneling the political energy.
So absolutely desperate is capital for markets and investing opportunities, especially for export markets, they dare to do this thing ... that common sense everywhere rejects without the need for a minute's thought.
Thanks Sid for the posting. Jim O'Connor