Since its creation
through the Marakesh agreement in 1995, the World Trade Organization has
become one of the mainstays of the neo-liberal offensive. Dominated by
the United States/European Union/Japan triad, the WTO reigns uncontested
over the commodification of everything, with its sole driving principle
being maximum profit for TNCs. Under its aegis, markets are not deregulated
but regulated in exclusive reference to the desires of TNCs. Agreements
such as those on agriculture and trade in services (GATS) or on intellectual
property (TRIPS) are being imposed at the cost of the rights of the world's
peoples and their general interests. The TRIPS agreement, for example,
gives carte blanche to TNCs to arrogate to themselves the resources and
the traditional knowledge of the countries of the South though patents
on life and prohibitive pricing practices for essential medicines.
Another major WTO project, the opening of agricultural markets, risks
transforming the gluttonous search for new markets into a world-wide cataclysm:
not only because of the catastrophic social and economic consequences
it will bring in its wake throughout the rural world (comprising almost
half of the world's population), but also because of the health and environmental
perils it is generating, which the consumers of the North are slowly becoming
aware of much to their great consternation.
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