Click here for Vnunet.com

   updated 2:10 p.m. 8.Dec.1999 PST

SECTIONS
Top Stories
Business
Culture
Technology
Politics
WIRE SERVICE NEWS
Top Headlines
Sports
Finance
FREE DELIVERY
 
STOCKS
Get Quote:
 
Financial Services

Datek Wired Index Fund internet.com Index Fund GetSmart's MortgageFinder
Today's Summary
Wired Index | All Indexes
Portfolios
FIND A BOOK

Powered by barnesandnoble.com

WIRED MAGAZINE

Wired Magazine
Issue 7.12
Subscribe to Wired.
Special offer!
HOTWIRED
Frontdoor
Webmonkey
Webmonkey Guides
RGB Gallery
Animation Express
Suck.com
HOTBOT
Search
Shopping

Wired News staff

Contact us

Wired News delivered
to handheld devices
by AvantGo,
Outlook Express,
In-Box Direct,
or PointCast




WTO: 'We're Talking Online'
by Leander Kahney

3:00 a.m. 3.Dec.1999 PST
While the WTO protesters in Seattle made international headlines this week for being pepper-sprayed, activists are complaining that their message has not been clearly communicated to the news-consuming public.

But now that the Seattle streets have been cleared and the protests moved to the Web, any shortcomings of media coverage are being addressed by dozens of sites and email lists trying to explain why tens of thousands of people took to the streets in the first place.


See also: What's Behind the WTO Ruckus?
Check back with Wired News for continuing coverage
Read more Politics -- from Wired News
Read more about Culture -- from Wired News
Read more Business -- from Wired News

"In focusing on the violence of vandals and police, the major media outlets are missing the real story," complained the Ruckus Society, an environmental and human rights group based in Berkeley, California, which has collected dozens of links to mainstream coverage of the week's events.

The real story, according to the Ruckus Society, is that "40,000 people representing more than 100 groups organized a nonviolent, peaceful protest."

One of the puzzles is why the protests attracted such a wide range of different groups, from organized labor to environmental and human rights activists, supporters of the Free Tibet movement and Mexico's Zapatista rebels, even the Young Republicans.

As an analysis piece on the BBC's World Service site puts it: "They might not have much in common, but the groups taking their protest onto the streets of Seattle are united by a common dislike for a process and institution they believe is inherently unfair.... All of them agree that the World Trade Organization is a body that puts profit and the good of the world's mega-corporations before the interests of people and the planet."

According to a widely publicized look-alike of the official WTO site by anti-corporate pranksters RTMark, the WTO is a secretive, cabalistic organization that is rapidly evolving into a de facto world government that panders purely to corporate interests.

"The WTO's purpose is to broaden and enforce global free trade," RTMark says. "Global free trade already gives multinational corporations vast powers to enforce their will against democratic governments. Expanding these corporate powers -- as the WTO intends to do in Seattle and beyond -- will further cripple governments and make them even less able to protect their citizens from the ravages of those entities whose only aim is to grow richer and richer and richer."

RTMark charges the WTO's relentless pursuit of free trade has been to the detriment of all kinds of environmental, labor, and human rights laws enacted by democratically elected governments around the world -- hence the range of different groups that took to the streets.

1 of 2  Next  >>

Have a comment on this article? Send it
Email this to a friend.
Fax this from your computer for free



Printing? Use this version.
Email this to a friend.
Fax this from your computer for free.



- - - - - - - -
Tend to business
atCoach.com

New Coach
Express City
Brief $398
MORE INFO!

- - - - - - - -
Get the Ultimate MP3 Kit
at EMusic.com
Spend $50,
get Free RaveMP
+RealJukebox Plus
BUY IT!
- - - - - - - -
Editorial policy

  POLITICS
Today's Headlines
 
All About Aussie Online Laws

Whassup, Mr. President?

Finally, a Palestinian Homeland

Smut Goes to Court

High-Tech: the Mideast Elixir

Big GOPpers Woo Little Boppers

What's Behind the WTO Ruckus?

Defending Privacy Snooping

Kiwis Brace for Political Change

Judge Urged to Penalize MS

Cell Phone Crypto Penetrated

Orwellian Nightmare Down Under?

WTO: 'We're Talking Online'






Send us feedback  |  Work at Wired Digital  |  Advertise with us
About Wired Digital  |  Our Privacy Policy

Copyright © 1994-99 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.


0 0 0 0 0 0