> In Seattle, for instance, the last big protests (against the World Trade Organisation, in 1999) looked mindless. If they had a goal, it was selfish—an attempt to impoverish the emerging world through protectionism.
Wow. While a case can be made that the anti-globalization movement would of had that effect, that was not its goal. I really should stop reading the Economist.
Protectionism has always been ONE OF the goals of the anti-globalization movement, especially insofar as that movement has had union support.
This is just one more aspect of the general rule that these protests do not have a unified agenda, because they're composed of diverse individuals with diverse goals. And in my ignorant opinion, a lot of those diverse individuals demonstrably have no clue what they're talking about, except of course in the domain of their personal misery and frustration. I recall, then as now, lots of anti-WTO (and anti-APEC 2 years earlier) protesters who had some pretty blurry ideas about what they were fighting for. There was lots of thinly-veiled "trade will steal our jobs" rhetoric in there - of course along with the environmental concerns, the third-world human rights concerns (Suharto was a big issue in the APEC '97 protests), the concerns about capital flight and race-to-the-bottom, etc.
That's crazy, isn't it. It makes you realize how important it is to diversify one's sources of information (as well as to be open to different points of view), in order to avoid unconscious brainwashing.
Wow. While a case can be made that the anti-globalization movement would of had that effect, that was not its goal. I really should stop reading the Economist.