Re: WTO-conspiracy theories

[Ken Hanly <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well the US insisted that anti-dumping was not on the
agenda. If anything that was a cause for
trashing the meeting for countries such as Japan. So it was
not to be discussed anyway.
The Manitoba Co-operator's article on the failure quotes a
number of delegates as blaming the organisation by the US,
as a prime cause of failure although the one day delay by
protestors was also a factor. Some delegates were very angry
that Barshevsky seemed to be busy with Clinto instead of
chairing meetings.Many claimed it was the worst organised
meeting they had ever attended. To be fair, the whole
meeting started out with no agreement even on what the
agenda should be. That probably didn't help.
   Cheers, Ken Hanly

J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote:

>       Another thing I ran across while surfing Louie's
> archives were some moderately credible stories
> claiming the presence of agents provocateurs in
> Seattle.  A related report argued that the police
> acted in a deliberately provocative and violent
> way themselves (btw, if I had been there I would
> probably have rioted in the streets to protest the
> police actions, if nothing else).
>        The guy posing the conspiracy theory argued
> that it was Clinton trying to save the conference
> by giving the police the provocation to beat up on
> the demonstraters.  I think this is possible except that
> I think the motive may have been just the opposite.
> It is not just Bhagwati in Washington who thinks Clinton
> deliberately sandbagged the conference himself
> to please the AFL-CIO while he proposes China
> joining.  The more I look, the more it seems plausible
> that the agents provocateurs were to make the demo
> "more violent" so as to guarantee its failure (and
> guarantee no attacks on US anti-dumping suits).
> Barkley Rosser