Used to be, 20 or 30 years ago, that conspiracy theorists (the ones not fixated on the Global Communist Threat) talked a lot about the Trilateral Commission. This shadowy collection of industrialists and government officials--the Kissingers and Rockefellers of the world--was said to be determining the details of our future enslavement.

Now that the Global Capitalist Threat is all that's left, one need not look to the coming together of disparate forces for such conspiracies. Our global decision-making body is quite open and proud. Portions of it met last week in downtown Seattle at the invitation of Bill Gates.

Microsoft's "CEO Summit," closed to the public and mostly closed to the news media (except for a few brief "you may fawn here" moments), was billed as a focus group for Microsoft, a chance for Bill and friends to both promote technology and find out what technological wish lists the CEOs brought. Al Gore, who--having overseen the selling out of America's environmental policies--has moved on to become the Demo shill for technofuturism, also joined the schmoozefest.

Two contrasting news items from the end of the week nicely illustrated the future charted for us all by groups such as this. First, we had Gore travelling to a Boeing photo-op and declaring that the U.S. would wage virtual economic war on Europe if it dared question the merger of McDonnell-Douglas and Boeing. Provisions in the new WTO agreements make the merger questionable not just under U.S. law, where the FTC and Justice Department can be safely bought off, but also under international agreements prohibiting unfair competition. Picture Gore, grim-faced, intoning that America's sovereignty will not be compromised.

The following day, in a less widely reported story, the World Trade Organization overturned Europe's ban on the sale of hormone-fed beef. The ban, appealed by the U.S. government, was struck down by exactly the mechanism anti-WTO activists had long feared: a corporate-friendly government targetting the health, labor, or environmental laws of another country. In this case, the U.S., going to bat for its beef industry, struck down European Union regulations. It was the most visible and far-reaching WTO decision thus far impinging on national sovereignty (or, in this case, the sovereignty of dozens of nations), but it could literally be just the beginning trickle in a flood of such challenges now that transnational corporations can see how the game is played.

Why can the U.S. overturn a European health law, but Europe is not permitted to enforce anti-monopoly laws? Duh. It's about money. And while the U.S. has long allowed money to be a prime factor in how it makes and enforces both civil and criminal law, it has never before allowed it to be the only determinant. That's where we're heading with WTO.

And--as ETS! reported last week--the next step, the fast-moving Multilateral Agreement on Investments, eliminates the nation-state governments from this process altogether. Under the coming regime, corporations themselves will have the binding right to appeal and overturn laws they perceive as hostile to their interests. This will be particularly useful in countries where--unlike the U.S. or other Third World outposts-- the government cannot be purchased outright.

When 100 top corporate leaders meet in Seattle, the public is shut out; activists are nowhere to be seen; and media reports focus on gee-whiz local boosterism. ("Isn't Seattle important? We're really a big city. Wow-wie!") The increasing power of these people to make decisions that rule all of us must be publicized and challenged, and soon, before the 85 brands of paper towels in your local megamart are our only remaining remnant of democracy.