{"content":[{"text":"The WTO 20 years after the 'battle of \n Seattle' \n More than two decades after its creation, the WTO's promise of prosperity and job creation has \n not been fulfilled.","bbox":{"left":0.058987,"top":0.06316,"width":0.855304,"height":0.12054499999999999}},{"text":"by Deborah James \n 29 Nov 2019 \n https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/wto-20-years-battle-seattle-191127105414387.html","bbox":{"left":0.058987,"top":0.201376,"width":0.860855,"height":0.04849099999999998}},{"text":"On the 20th anniversary of the protests \n against the World Trade Organization (WTO), \n evidence of its harm to workers, health care, \n farmers, and the environment - and \n particularly to developing countries - has \n proven its critics right.","bbox":{"left":0.058987,"top":0.266022,"width":0.402756,"height":0.09697600000000006}},{"text":"billionaires metastasise like cancer.","bbox":{"left":0.529575,"top":0.266022,"width":0.31840500000000005,"height":0.016168000000000016}},{"text":"This is because corporate elites hijacked \n \"trade\" and rigged the rules to distribute \n income upwards, while reducing protections \n for people who work. Highly paid \n professionals (like doctors) are protected (by \n being able to regulate their own \n licensing) and businesses are given market \n access rights and predictability. Meanwhile \n workers are forced into unfair competition \n without a minimum floor for protections, and \n developing country workers have been kept \n at the lowest levels of the global value \n chains.","bbox":{"left":0.529575,"top":0.298345,"width":0.4043260000000001,"height":0.2101079999999999}},{"text":"On that cold winters' day in Seattle, the \n proponents of the WTO model of corporate \n globalisation were seeking to launch a new \n \"Millennium\" Round of liberalisation.","bbox":{"left":0.058987,"top":0.380669,"width":0.388305,"height":0.06465200000000004}},{"text":"Labour unions and environmentalists, \n development advocates and public interest \n groups voiced their opposition, and faced \n state security forces who doused them with \n tear gas and pepper spray, shot them with \n rubber bullets, and arrested them by the \n hundreds - the vast majority of whom were \n exercising their democratic rights.","bbox":{"left":0.058987,"top":0.461477,"width":0.393714,"height":0.12929899999999994}},{"text":"This is a far cry from the goals of \n multilateralism at its birth, which included \n achieving full employment.","bbox":{"left":0.529575,"top":0.524608,"width":0.37987399999999993,"height":0.04849099999999995}},{"text":"At the time of the protests, the WTO was less \n than five years old. But critics had already \n seen how the largest corporations in the \n world had succeeded in using its founding - \n and the good name of trade in promoting \n prosperity - to achieve a new set of \n agreements covering not just trade in goods \n but also trade-related investment measures, \n trade-related intellectual property (IP) rules, \n agriculture and services.","bbox":{"left":0.058987,"top":0.608446,"width":0.40864799999999996,"height":0.16162299999999996}},{"text":"While labour movements lost in their efforts \n to ensure minimum standards of protections \n for workers, Big Pharma won in its efforts to \n spread maximalist IP protections - a far \n bigger distortion of \"free trade\" than tariffs - \n and one that has cost untold lives as prices \n of medicines skyrocketed.","bbox":{"left":0.529575,"top":0.59077,"width":0.40042199999999994,"height":0.11313699999999993}},{"text":"The environment has suffered as countries \n use environmental exploitation as a \n comparative advantage, and trade is \n responsible for a growing percentage of the \n greenhouse gases that contribute to climate \n change.","bbox":{"left":0.529575,"top":0.721578,"width":0.4000849999999999,"height":0.09697599999999995}},{"text":"These new agreements, far from the original \n goals of multilateralism, gave new rights to \n trade (which are exercised by corporations) \n and constrained government regulation in \n the public interest.","bbox":{"left":0.058987,"top":0.786224,"width":0.40173099999999995,"height":0.08081499999999997}},{"text":"Likewise subsidies for the environmentally \n damaging production of oil and gas remain \n undisciplined, while countries have \n successfully sued each other in the WTO for \n directing subsidies towards greener fuels, \n especially if they try to create jobs at the \n same time.","bbox":{"left":0.529575,"top":0.834709,"width":0.39642900000000003,"height":0.11313799999999996}},{"text":"Predictions of increased jobs and prosperity \n under the WTO system have failed \n abysmally. Inequalities have soared, leaving \n hundreds of millions impoverished while","bbox":{"left":0.058987,"top":0.884709,"width":0.397308,"height":0.06465299999999996}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}