Anti-Globalisation Extremists
paragraph 15:
The radical, extremist participants represented at the demonstrations…believe it is necessary to undertake 'direct action' by inflicting damage on those corporations that extend the reach of global trade and technology…Some of the more aggressive frequently resort to climbing and rapelling techniques to scale buildings and other lofty sites to conduct sit-ins or hang banners for publicity purposes.
CSIS does fix the blame for the worst offenses: "Extremists - often anarchists, animal-rights supporters, or environmentalists - indulge in such violent actions as smashing windows, setting fires, or trashing shops and fast-food outlets." On this basis, we are expected to accept that, "concerns on the part of law enforcement and security agencies are very real." Our secret agents obviously have never been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Times Square on New Year's Eve, Carnaval in Rio, or any other of the many large scale events that typically involve what we usually term "vandalism."
Attempting to identify specific violent extremists, militants, and anarchists, CSIS has difficulty finding any genuine threats to national security from within the broad anti-globalisation coalition. The paper's unidentified author is so pressed to associate anti-globalisation advocates with extremist organisations that she references groups like the UK Third Position, which is well beyond the mainstream of critics of the multilateral trade and finance system. In fact, Third Position has issued no publications or made any statements that could be associated with the operation of the international trade and finance regime, its institutions, or its personalities.
The best CSIS could do was name what they ominously termed the "Black Bloc." Consisting, we are told, of anarchists and factions of militant animal-rights and environmental activists, the Black Bloc is identified as the principal perpetrator of violence in Seattle. Whether this Eugene, Oregon based group will mount a campaign in Quebec City is unclear, but they alone hardly justify the CSIS report.
CSIS also warns that, "The philosophy of capitalism also is under attack, facing charges that it is ignoring the social welfare of individuals, and destroying cultures and the ecology in the quest for growth and profit." In taking this approach of course CSIS is willing to look quite stupid, capturing in its definition such anti-capitalist extremist organisations as the Canadian Labour Congress, the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (ICHRDD was created in 1988 by the Canadian Parliament), the Département des sciences politiques Université du Québec à Montréal, the Council of Canadians, the North-South Institute, the Canadian Federation of Students, the Windsor and District Labour Council, the Sierra Youth Club, the New Democratic Party of Canada, and a host of other government supported research institutions, and non-governmental bodies.
The tensions that exist between multilateral institutions and liberal populism revolve around a central premise: that these institutions are the chief mechanism for imposing a global management regime based on corporate values which themselves are inimical to a range of social and humanistic values. Whether or not one agrees with anti-globalisation advocates, their views have had an impact on thinking at the international level. Mr. Pascal Lamy, EC Trade Commissioner, argues for "harnessing globalisation" thereby informing the trade regime of core human values beyond the generation of wealth. Keynote speakers at the World Economic Forum in Davos since at least 1993 have routinely identified unbridled capitalism as unsustainable, warning capitalism without a heart is doomed to collapse. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has spoken often and eloquently in the last two years on the socio-economic contradictions within the international system, and the urgent need to address them. These people, and the institutions they represent are not civil society players, but neither are they anti-globalisation demons. It is interesting that in the shadowy world of missing laptops, the CSIS threat assessment would include them all.
CSIS could have saved themselves the trouble of developing a list of "anti-globalisation" entities by calling the Washington, D.C. public relations company Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey, a division of Burson Marsteller. Immediately after the Seattle Ministerial, Burson Marsteller prepared an annotated compendium of organisations that had protested in Seattle. The compendium, written by in-house consultant Gardner Peckham, gives a complete list of WTO activist groups, their leaders, their agenda, and the contact information of each. The document was distributed to the firm's corporate clients on January 14, 2000.
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ISSN 1492-7187, TRADE POLICY MONITOR, September 2000,
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