As far as the ILO is concerned, on Henwood's list somebody posted a quote from Robert Litan of Brookings to the effect that it would be nice if the globalization protests could be diverted to the ILO, since that was a nice "sandbox" they could play in without putting sand in the gears of commerce ============== So should "we" just let the ILO wither on the vine along with the UN? Hell, how about the US Gov. it's already a wholly owned subsidiary of the Fortune 500? What evidence is there that putting social clauses in trade agreements will put sand in their gears? Trade agreements are always already full of social clauses. Far better would be to listen to what the "South" wants and piggyback on that. The point of the WTO protests was to put neoliberalism on trial; the WTO simply being the youngest child of Capital's religious doctrine. [mbs]If the WTO is the shell behind which the U.S. (or, if you like, the U.S., EU, and Japan) run the world trading system, then the WTO is a legitimate target and, insofar as transnational capital mobility is important, a necessary one.Targeting the WTO and trade agreements is what constitutes a monkey wrench in the system, not communing with the disenfranchised bodies in the United Nations or the ILO. ======== Far better to attack the hands that create and move the shells. Ian
