The World Trade Organisation has recently held its summit. Their aim was to skulk in Qatar
in the Gulf of Arabia, as far as they could get from the 'teamsters to turtles' coalition
against all that is wrong about capitalism. An important part of their agenda has been the
General Agreement on Trade in Services - GATS, due to come into by the end of 2002. But
what is GATS and why do we need to fight it?
On October 17, between 70,000 and 100,000 marched through Central
London behind a banner with slogans against the imperialist war in
Iraq, racism and privatisation.
In her usual style Naomi Klein provided many interesting facts, but
failed to reach any concrete conclusions of how we can or whether it is
actually necessary to abolish capitalism. In essence she would like
another kind of capitalism, a more humane capitalism, which of course
is utterly utopian.