Activists have been protesting the trend toward trans-national globalisation since before the rest of us knew what was coming. The WTO is an unelected governing body with the authority to overrule any locally chosen laws or covenants.
Citizens can elect rulers, and rulers can make laws, but the World Trade Organization can undo those laws if they are deemed to restrict free trade. Environmental regulations, labor protections, health safeguards, all can mess up some corporation’s right to unlimited profits, and the WTO will strike those laws down.
When the WTO wants something, such as uniform labor codes, a nation’s ruler sometimes has to hold a referendum to ask its citizens for their approval.
When you’ve heard the press report that such and such referendum was a success or embarrassing failure for that ruler, did you wonder to whom that ruler had to deliver his success? Did you wonder with whom that ruler need feel embarrassed?
