For governments both large and small, Seattle became a shorthand for failure to move toward more open world markets, the World Trade Organization's mission . . . Inside the organization's imposing headquarters building, morale is still low. Coalitions of human rights and social justice groups in cities and on university campuses across the country are organizing additional boycott resolutions. The WTO is the only international organization that stands any chance of evolving into an institution of global governance . . . Globalization will not be reversed.
All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances.
No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary. Among those held and brutalized by the Czech police were a South Korean associate professor of economics at Prague's Charles University on his way home from work and the president of the Students Union at Trinity College, Dublin. Byeongju Jeong, who lived in the USA before coming to Prague three years ago to teach at the university, was arrested near Wenceslas Square on Sept. 26 as he was returning home. While I was in jail, I heard other officers shouting at prisoners, slapping them about the head and kicking their legs. The police became the lawbreakers they were supposed to fight against.