If anyone wanted to dress up in a ski mask and smash the windows at a Starbucks coffeehouse or Nordstrom store, he would have a disappointing rampage, because the companies do not exist here. Perhaps he could be convinced to settle for wrecking the new espresso machine at a Soviet-style market selling cakes, pickled fish, instant coffee, and coils of hog's gut stuffed with gristle and fat. Ships rust and sink in the harbor.
Unpaid workers march in the thousands every year.
So it is strange, as an American abroad, to read of the protests that have erupted around the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle, a major trading center in one of the wealthiest nations in history. Friends and family in the Puget Sound area fire off e-mails describing mobs in the streets and the whiff of tear gas in the air. The papers report curfews and paintball-firing policemen. Perhaps after three years in Russia, I have lost touch. But it is hard not to wonder what is going on.