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GATT: Rich Men Attempt to Officially Take Control of Everything

The law officially requiring all tuna sold in the United States to be dolphin-safe was only in effect one week before those wonderful rich men associated with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) declared it illegal. They claim the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which has reduced the dolphin kill from 500,000 annually to 4,000 in 1993, is an illegal, non-tariff barrier to trade.

This announcement is but the latest example of how GATT and the upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) talks are attempting to thwart our hard-won environmental laws. These laws were made into reality, by ordinary citizens, through a combination of grassroots organizing and public pressure placed upon elected officials. GATT and WTO are not beholden to any government (ie: laws). The people involved with the proceedings are hand picked by the heads of multinational corporations and the discussions take place with no mechanism for public input. Elected officials from the nations affected by GATT/WTO participate in the talks as ambassadors, meaning they have no power or influence here, they are simply spectators.
Excuse me but, Ambassador to GATT ? We send ambassadors to the United Nations and to other countries, but to talks between corporations? I hardly consider GM, Sony or the World Bank as important as the United Nations. Maybe this is why GATT/WTO have no public input vehicle: Citizens would use it to remind CEOs how unimportant the corporations truly are and certain corporate heads' fragile egos could be devastated. These guys don't want your opinion for it just might destroy the little fantasy world they're attempting to create for themselves.
Nations have been trading with each other for many centuries. The real reason GATT/WTO are banding together is simple. Multinational corporations fear the people of planet Earth. They are appealing to a self-appointed higher authority, namely themselves, to circumvent any laws aimed at protecting humans, animals, or the environment. In their greed-soaked minds, the rights and protections that exist today are viewed as "unfair barriers to trade."
If we, the people, do not stop the proceedings of GATT/WTO, or at least reform them back down to earth, we will all know how the indigenous peoples of the world have felt for centuries. When the self-appointed higher beings came West thumping their bibles during the colonial period, the existing laws of the Native People were deemed savage and arrogantly overturned, if not ignored entirely. It has taken hundreds of years for grassroots efforts to put protections of humans and animals back into place. Now those who claim to know better than the rest of us are calling these efforts unfair, a corporate euphemism, I'm sure, for 'savage.'
Well, I don't feel savage or unfair when I declare that all living things have a right to exist here in peace. One protection I do not support is the protection of greed that GATT, the WTO, and their little brother NAFTA, would ensure. Once these 'laws' are permanently in place, nothing short of a very long, drawn out and bloody revolution will be able to stop them. A wide spread violation of our rights will inevitably take place in a world where citizens speak their minds democratically and the corporations overturn public laws unanimously.
Thankfully, there is still time for you and I to stop this madness. Write your representatives in Congress. They will be voting on a new version of GATT and on the proposed WTO very soon.

-Matt Robesch


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Contents on this page were published in the June/July, 1994 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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