> The World Trade Organization (WTO) is among the most powerful, and one
of
> the most secretive international bodies on earth. It is rapidly assuming
the
> role of global government, as 134 nation-states, including the U.S.,
have
> ceded to its vast authority and powers. The WTO represents the
rules-based
> regime of the policy of economic globalization. The central operating
> principal of the WTO is that commercial interests should supersede all
> others. Any obstacles in the path of operations and expansion of global
> business enterprise must be subordinated. In practice these "obstacles"
are
> usually policies or democratic processes that act on behalf of working
> people, labor rights, environmental protection, human rights, consumer
> rights, social justice, local culture, and national sovereignty.
> http://www.ifg.org/wto.html
>
===================
Gag.
While there are a few serious international lawyers that might want to Constitutionalize the WTO rules for the sake of globalizing a libertarian approach to world trade, most of the above is boilerplate. And while the WTO has the potential to make much mischief for democratic governance and can, at times, be a huge friend of the capitalist class and enemy of the world's poor, it's nowhere near as troublesome as the IMF/WB or the White House and the Pentagon. It's because it is not designed to meet the challenges of the 21st century that it must go/become something else entirely, not because it is secretive in the way the NSA is secretive. Why must we confuse immense public inattention/ignorance of what it does with secrecy? That is a huge mistake.
Ian