ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.

Here It Comes

Dear ETS!:

I just read Geov Parrish & Maria Tomchick's article about the WTO coming to Seattle. They're absolutely right about this needing to be a watershed in public awareness of what WTO, GATT, MAI, etc. do and will do to our environment, human rights, and labor rights around the globe.

Calling these negotiating conventions "rounds" couldn't be more appropriate. They're rounds of a fight. Our role in that fight is to alert the public at large to how these treaties offend people's notions of what is fair and just and right.

In response to the article, creating a clear and positive vision is easy. Simply pose the antithesis of MAI the WTO. Posit that international trading agreements ought to provide the framework for and enforceable rules to guarantee basic human, labor, and environmental rights worldwide. Such should be their focus, not an afterthought. Trade agreements can exist to protect rights -- the rights of people rather than corporations. And corporations can learn to do business within the rules of such agreements. Our vision can be, as the recently heard political cliche/platitude goes, to put a human face on the global economy. Our goal is to make people believe that it is actually possible, if only they will demand it.

Forging an effective message is necessary, but all will be for naught if a WTO-countervision doesn't draw bodies. In that regard, I'll organize a contingent from my community college. Drawing from my school's "Students for Social Responsibility" and "Environmental Action Club" campus groups, I suspect that I could produce five to ten warm, picket-bearing bodies.

When a credible group of Seattle organizers emerges for this purpose, please hook me up with them.

Yours,

--anonymous, Marin County, CA (just north of San Francisco)

ETS!,

After reading the article on the upcoming WTO meeting it occurred to me that in order to get any significant press coverage we really need to bring in some big names--even if some of them are radical on the right. Perhaps a focused effort to create an Anti-WTO convention would work best as the media will have something solid to focus on. It would need to be very professionally set-up and should have a carefully constructed plan in order to attract big names from the left and the right, with the focus of course being totally on the international trade issues. Having people from both the left and the right will attract more press and will garner much more public interest and that is what must happen before the politicians will take any anti-trade movement seriously.

Have any major meetings been planned yet? I'd like to attend if possible.

Best of Luck, and keep up the great work on the web site!

--Dan Hoppe, COO, Alembic Technologies, Seattle

Ed. comment: There is indeed a large ad hoc group that is taking shape to coordinate (as much as possible!) all of the anti-WTO activities being discussed. The first planning meeting, Feb. 20, was attended by some 80 people. The next will be held Saturday, March 20, 1 PM at the Labor Temple, 2800 1st Ave. And--get this--there's now a toll-free line to check in with your ideas, questions, and offers of help. Call 1-877-STOP-WTO (1-877-786- 7986). ETS!,

Poor Miserable Us

Feb. 16, 1999: CIA + MOSAD get hold of the Kurdish Leader Mr. Ocalan in Nairobi and take him to Turkey in violation of the international law. There he is facing torture and the death penalty. An American official most cynically congratulated Turkey for having put hands on this "terrorist." If you are against your government and are fighting for a change, you are a terrorist. According to that theory, you at ETS! are terrorists. I am a terrorist too, because of the same reasons.

I am sorry for you--very much. I think I could not endure to live in a country so greedy, so cynical, so amoral--so cruel to people all over the world. A world policeman specializing in global killing and plundering. THE EMPIRE OF EVIL!

History is the only light in the tunnel. I gladly think about the Roman Empire--and its fall. And what about Napoleon? Bysanthia? To say nothing about the British Empire, now reduced to a "junior partner"!

I am glad I have nothing to do with the nation of World Masters. I am happy I am from one of the victimized nations and countries!

Do you want to have a look at our resistance newspaper? If so let me know and I will send you some articles I have translated into English.

--Blaga Dim, Hungary

...And Then We'll Bomb Kosovo...

Dear ETS! editor:

I am very depressed about going to war with Yugoslavia, and I hope perhaps you have better sources than I do and can help me figure out why this is.

>From the limited info I have gotten from CAQ and the Consortium it appears that Serbia was targeted due to Milosevic being the last hold-out socialist leader in Eastern Europe--that both Germany and the U.S. (via the CIA and right wing philanthropic foundations--I'm not sure if George Soros backs this kind of thing or not but you should check out his web site) have been giving massive money and arms to various nationalistic, separatist movements (10 years ago it was mainly Croatia but now it's Kosovo).

Then when the bloodbath gets going really good, they pressure the U.N. to agree to some U.S./NATO occupation force.

>From my perspective I see a lot of parallels between this strategy, and the decision by Henry Ford, William Randolph Hearst, and the National Assoc. of Manufacturers to back Adolph Hitler. Before Ford began to pump money into Hitler's movement he was nothing more than a drunken sociopath who was in and out of jail for all the bar fights he got into.

What I've heard is that the Kosovo Liberation Army doesn't really exist either as an organized political force--that it's actually three or four groups of drunken misfits that are involved in constant infighting and were on the verge of disbanding until the U.S. came up with the solution of threatened to bomb Yugoslavia back to the middle ages unless they agreed to armed U.S. occupation (which is what the U.S. wanted in the first place--they tried to do this with the Nicaraguan contras and I think they had fantasies of doing it in Cuba).

I would be really grateful to see your analysis on Yugoslavia in Eat the State!.

--Stuart Bramhall, Seattle

...Don't Forget Saddam...

To the editor:

Bombing Iraq to smithereens now is an unnecessary act that should be stopped before it starts. Iraq is not threatening anyone at this time and its civilian population will be the ones who suffer and die from a devastating air attack by the United States. The effects of our bombing have and will last for years and years. Can't we, at the end of the 20th Century, find a better solution to world affairs than dropping weapons of mass destruction on our fellow humans? Haven't we learned anything from the Gulf War and previous wars that killing thousands and millions of people doesn't solve anything. It especially makes people from the United States NOT welcome abroad. We are not acting like helpful world citizens by using force in this matter, we are acting like the schoolyard bully. Let's keep the dialogue open, use diplomatic channels and keep our military on hold until all avenues have been tried. Let's stop punishing the people of Iraq for our leaders' disagreements with their leaders.

For a better world,

Albert Kaufman, Seattle

More American Cake-Eating

Dear ETS!

Re: the New Carissa. Arthur J. Miller mentions in his article the environmental and safety issues posed by flag of convenience registration. It is significant in this regard that the U.S. does more than just allow flag of convenience ship registration--it encourages it. Conventional wisdom in international legal studies has it that shipowners simply cannot operate profitably while complying with American environmental and labor requirements, and so it is an unfortunate necessity that American shipowners must register in Liberia and other countries which cannot enforce their own regulations.

Thus, although the Barcelona Traction case at the International Court of Justice ostensibly established a binding legal principle that only the nation of incorporation may represent a company in international proceedings, the U.S. has resisted this holding. We maintain that U.S. legal and diplomatic resources should protect American shipowners who use flag of convenience registration to evade domestic regulation.

The system by which American shipowners duck American environmental, labor, and safety regulations is painfully transparent--and tacitly supported by the same government spokesmen who tout the strength of our own regulations. Many foreign shipping registries have primary offices in the U.S.--several in the World Trade Center, appropriately. Given American acceptance and support of flag of convenience registration, there is no reason for a profit-driven ship owner to ever comply with strict U.S. regulation. As a country, we can have our cake and eat it too: we can brag about our responsible regulation while giving ship-owners the nod to ignore that regulation entirely.

--Anonymous, via e-mail

The Seattle PIT (Post-Intelligencer-Times)

ETS!,

Keep up the good work. I used to work at the insane asylum known as the Seattle Times and got a personal look at how the shifty King Blethen and his paranoid regime operates. So it's nice to have a refreshing news source to turn to. From shooting a neighbor's dog to the Imperial Storm trooper security around that place (there are cameras encircling the entire Seattle Times complex, so smile and wave while you walk around Fairview and Denny), Frank B. shows that he is petrified of the general public. I guess if you just inherit something you get scared that someone will take it away. I'll periodically shoot you more tidbits on the Seattle Times experience from an insider's perspective in the future. In the meantime keep on writing and reporting.

Sincerely.

John Brink, via e-mail

ETS!,

About the plan to give us a double-dose of morning newspapers. There has never been much difference between the PI and the Times except maybe sometimes the PI editorials are a little more agreeable than the Times editorials and occasionally the Times columnists are a little less right wing than the PI columnists. Indeed, in the context of "big" issues, the only reason I subscribe to the PI is that I like a morning newspaper and I prefer to do the NY Times crossword puzzle.

Suddenly, the Times announces that it will also be a morning paper. We are, however, immediately assured that it will make no difference and the PI will continue to flourish under the JOA [Joint Operating Agreement].

But, for those of us tuned in to the "little picture," a first insidious shovel full has already been dug in preparation for the burial of the PI. Last Sunday, for the first time, the Sunday NY Times crossword puzzle appeared in the Times, not the PI.

Wonder what the next shovel full will be?

Thalia Syracopoulos, Seattle