ROBERT WAYNE: I’m Robert Wayne with the National Lawyers Guild. I’m here in Seattle. I think there’s an increased police presence. I think we’re beginning to live in a police state. This is just an example of the wedge in the crack.

POLICE OFFICER: Keep moving. That’s not far enough. Go. Keep moving. Keep moving. Come on.

PROTESTER: Any particular reason?

POLICE OFFICER: Because I said. Keep moving!

PROTESTER: Wow! That’s a good reason.

POLICE OFFICER: All right, if we’re going to play that, then I’m going to get those nice plain officers over here to move you back! Now move back! Move back. Move back. Keep moving back.

PROTESTER: Wooo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woooo! Woo! Woo! Woo!

ROBERT WAYNE: Well, they got about 11 squad cars that they pulled up the street and tried to intimidate the crowd into backing off, just by pulling the cruiser in over the top of them. Fortunately, the peaceful protesters stayed peaceful, didn’t do violent things to the car. And the police backed off when they found that the crowd wouldn’t give up. But what they’re going to do now is tear-gas us, because we didn’t give up.

AMY GOODMAN: And you are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!, the Battle in Seattle, live from Seattle. I’m Amy Goodman, here with Juan González. Yes, these are the sounds of Seattle. Juan?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Amy, the confrontations between protesters and police went long into the night, past 2 a.m. this morning, in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle, where there were continued standoffs and where everyone eventually was tear-gassed. Local residents were complaining. TV cameramen and reporters were not only caught in tear gas, but directly pepper-sprayed by the police. Virtually all of us who were out there at one point or another were overcome by attacks that became much more aggressive and also largely without warning this time, because already the the city has declared — cordoned off this large area, and this morning, it’s even larger. Now there’s a 24-hour restricted area that covers a huge, an even bigger section of downtown Seattle than yesterday. And even though the protesters are much smaller in number, the size of the area, the perimeter, continues to grow.

The protesters who have been arrested and are out in this naval — in this former naval facility, many of them have been kept in buses overnight, and the lawyers are complaining that they cannot get to their clients. They haven’t been able to talk to their clients for 16 hours. The bails that are being put on people right now for disorderly conduct or trespassing are as high as $2,000 and $10,000, for the ones that have already been processed. So, Seattle has decided to crack down severely on the demonstrators. Even though the charges against them are relatively minor, the embarrassment caused to the nation before the governments of the world is so great that apparently Seattle is cracking down as hard as it can.

AMY GOODMAN: And people should understand, in case they think it is any kind of joy ride for the protesters out on the streets, it is very cold, and it is raining almost constantly. It’s quite a scene, as Juan was just describing. The police will do actions. They’re deliberately meant to disorient. Last night, as we were walking through the streets, a dozen police squad cars came around with their lights flashing, with the sirens blaring, as you heard in the headline, and they were just going in circles. And then there were motorcycles coming from all directions, and they would flash back and forth, and the police cars would go back and forth, so that people everywhere just couldn’t figure out what was going on.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, and the amazing thing is that in quite a few of these attacks — I got caught on one, right near the Westin Hotel, where President Clinton was staying. Once the tear gas was launched, then police would not allow people to escape down side streets to get away. So you were really overcome and caught by the tear gas. And it was a pretty chaotic scene. And unfortunately, I’ve seen some of the national press coverage. After the first day, a lot of the national press coverage has been saying, on CNN and others, and other stations, that things have calmed down. In reality, the situation has gotten worse, because there are smaller groups of protesters, but the police apparently have lost all patience now, and so the situation is actually quite more chaotic than even it was on Tuesday.

AMY GOODMAN: And including, in addition to the squad cars that will blare their sirens through the streets and flash their lights, there are police on horseback. There are National Guard. There are SWAT teams that are marching through in black, with the black ponchos because it’s raining, with the riot gear, either holding the plastic shields, or they have them on their helmets, to say the least, is a very frightening sight. I was talking to some auto mechanics who were standing outside their shop as dozens of police on motorcycles went by in formation. I said, “Is this a typical scene in your city?” And they just looked and rolled their eyes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: One other point, the vandalism and the violence that occurred on Tuesday has received a lot of attention. Well, apparently, a local Northwest United States anarchist group has now claimed responsibility, a small group of about 12 anarchists — I think they’re called Supreme Anarchy — has now publicly claimed responsibility for the window breaking that occurred in the afternoon of Tuesday. So, as we had indicated, it was a small — a very small fringe group that was bent on creating problems that has now actually claimed credit for what happened.

AMY GOODMAN: And we’re talking about tear gas right now. But in addition to the tear gas, as we reported this week, a great deal of rubber bullets have been used, perhaps among the first times in the United States recently. Is that right, Juan?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I can’t recall the time when an urban police department in the United States has used rubber bullets against American citizens, no.

AMY GOODMAN: Yesterday, on local television, they were showing protesters picking up their shirts, and they’ve got the black-and-blue marks, serious welts from two different-size rubber bullets. You have the tiny berry-size rubber bullets — I have a number of these — as well as the larger rubber bullets that have been used against protesters. But, you know, Juan, this is a interesting, really paradigm, a very ominous paradigm, for what is required to enforce the rules of an undemocratic organization. Really, this is what we’re talking about. If you want to enforce the regulations of the World Trade Organization, you need a police state, because as more and more people understand what’s happening — in a few minutes, we’ll hear from Tom Hayden, the California state senator, who wants to make WTO rulings in California illegal, that they cannot supersede regulations and laws passed by democratic bodies. But if you are going to have an organization like this, a top-secret, faceless, international organization that can override laws passed by democratically elected leaders, in order to enforce these rulings, you need to have police. You need the National Guard out on the street. You need to have these police on horseback. Because just in this last few weeks, as more and more people start to understand what the WTO is about, look at what the response on the streets has been.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And one point I’d like to make, I got into the convention center for a time and talked to several of the delegates, including the foreign minister of the small nation of Dominica. And I was surprised that there was considerable sympathy for the protesters by some of these Third World countries. And, of course, Dominica is caught in the big battle over bananas in — that has raged between the United States and the European Union. And as he told me, 60% of all of the exports of Dominica come from banana sales, and the fact that the United States and the European Union are in a battle, where Dominica and Grenada and the Central American countries are not even at the table in the debate over what is going to happen with the European import quotas on bananas. And he says, “And you know what happened? When the European Union lost the dispute resolution in the World Trade Organization, and we appealed” — then Dominica appealed the decision. It was an American judge who was the appellate judge in the World Trade Organization that ruled against the European Union. So, many of the smaller nations feel that the World Trade Organization is stacked against them as it exists. And what we’ve been hearing in the media, that it is the Third World nations that are really holding back democratic reforms, I think, is another bit of misinformation that is being spread.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, President Clinton is in town. A lot of people might not know this, because no one can figure out quite where he is until he is actually there. The police are keeping him and his own, well, administration, his own people, keeping top secret where he’ll show up and what he is about to say. I will say, though, they’ve managed to get out through these last few days that he will be speaking with some of the protesting groups, with the nongovernmental organizations. We haven’t found anyone yet who he has spoken to, but that is the word out, I think, to appease the protesters. He did speak yesterday before trade ministers from more than a hundred member countries of the World Trade Organization, this as hundreds of protesters continue to occupy the streets of Seattle in nonviolent protests against global capitalism.

The WTO limped into its second day of meetings, with stunned delegates meeting behind police lines to decide on a trade agenda aimed at expediting global free trade. As we said, the city continues to be in a state of emergency, under police siege. A virtual martial law has been declared in Seattle, hundreds of local, state and federal law enforcement agents patrolling the streets, shooting tear gas canisters, close to 500 demonstrators arrested yesterday as the police changed their tactics from the day before. They began making mass arrests. Last night’s protests lasted well into the night.

One of the people arrested yesterday was Victor Menotti from the International Forum on Global — International Forum on Globalization. Now, Victor had just met with the U.S. trade representative, Charlene Barshefsky, President Clinton’s principal delegate at the World Trade Organization. And so, Victor, what happened then? How did you end up getting arrested?

VICTOR MENOTTI: Who I met with was the U.S. trade representative’s negotiator for the wood product sector, where the U.S. is about to finalize this week what’s called the Global Free Logging Agreement. And there were about two dozen forest protection groups there, where we learned at this briefing that they were going to push forward everything that we’ve been telling them not to push forward, and which has brought a lot of people out into the streets this week for forest protection.

And really not having many other outlets, a few of us went down to the streets to tell people about what we just learned. We went up to news cameras to tell them the story. They weren’t really interested in the substance of what was going on inside the ministerial. They had orders from above to wait and see for violence to erupt, and that seemed to what they were more interested in covering. So, I went out to a street corner and saw a few colleagues from Food First — Peter Rosset and Anuradha Mittal — and started telling them about what we learned. And other people started gathering, because people are so hungry for what’s going on inside, actually, which is where the real theft and looting and violence is taking place, and that’s not being covered. And that was when people started gathering around, some people with video cameras and recorders, just, you know, trying to get some of the details.

And there were maybe, you know, two, three minutes going, two, three minutes going, when we got bum-rushed by about 19 robocops behind us, and chased us, chased me all over the place, maybe a hundred yards or so, and arrested me. I was, in fact, the only one arrested.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to hear more about this arrest and also about the environmental issues that the World Trade Organization rules on. Victor Menotti from the International Forum on Globalization, when we return here in our live report, live from Seattle.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!, The Exception to the Rulers, as we cover the Battle in Seattle. I’m Amy Goodman, here with Juan González. And in this day, we’re talking about environmental issues and the World Trade Organization. Our guest is Victor Menotti from the International Forum on Globalization, who was arrested yesterday after coming out of a meeting with one of the U.S. top delegates. Is he a delegate? Was it a he?

VICTOR MENOTTI: A she. Her name is Barbara Norton. She is the U.S. negotiator for the wood products agreement, the Global Free Logging Agreement, which we’ve been trying for almost a year now to stop.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you came out of the meeting with her. You were in the streets. As you said, the police bum-rushed you. They picked you up.

VICTOR MENOTTI: Well, they — you know, I can’t even tell you how many of them came from behind. No warning to disperse. They didn’t even listen to what we were doing. It wasn’t as if we were planning an action or directing anything. I was just telling people what was going on inside the proceedings. They didn’t bother listening to that, and they just attacked us from behind. You know, everybody went running, including me, jumped over a car. And about six of them grabbed me and just dragged me in, and that was it. I was gone for — I mean, literally, for just sharing the details of what was going inside the meeting. People are so hungry for these things, and there are very few links between those of us in the inside and people on the outside to actually keep people up to date with what’s happening.

AMY GOODMAN: I understand there was another protest of people that came out of the Methodist Church, and they were told that they would be allowed to stand, well, many feet away from the Westin Hotel, where President Clinton was, if they held no signs and did not speak. And so they each stood as witness to what the rules were by putting tape across their face, hundreds of people in the city.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of some of the issues involved, that so far we’ve been dealing all week with the — we’ve had farmers on. We’ve had labor people on. But in terms of the major battles over environmental questions that are going on at this WTO, or that the WTO eventually will have enormous power over, could you begin to tell us about some of those?

VICTOR MENOTTI: Well, broadly, the WTO is removing government’s ability to be able to control natural resource exploitation, and at the same time diminishing government’s ability to protect the environment. In the forest product sector, we’re seeing an expansion of market access so that wood products companies can sell more products around the world and increase consumption, and thereby stimulate logging. That’s what we’re seeing in one of the deals they want to sign this week, called the Advanced Tariff Liberalization Initiative, what we call the Global Free Logging Agreement. The White House has even said this is going to increase logging in some of the most sensitive forests around the world — in Indonesia, up to 4.4%. And our friends in those countries are very clear that they do not have the regulatory systems in place, the enforcement, to handle that kind of increased logging, and they’re not for this.

In addition to that, there are numerous other things they want to put into the next round. What we were told yesterday is that they plan to put into there all of our environmental protections, the raw log export bans, the protection against invasive species, perhaps even ecolabeling. And then they’re not really willing to defend these things either, once they’re put on the chopping block.

And thirdly, the whole new investment agenda, the MAI, is something that they seem to be more receptive to and are going to allow that to move forward. All of these things have huge implications for protection of the environment. I actually think that this meeting is more important than the 1992 Earth Summit in terms of planetary sustainability.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, one of the things that Michael Moore, the head of the WTO, has tried to say repeatedly in recent days is that there is a lot of transparency in the work of the WTO, that there’s thousands of pages that people can download from their website to get information. And I noticed in the convention center, I picked up a huge folder with a sort of a summary of all of the dispute resolutions that the agency has been involved in over the past five years. But when I started to read the several hundred pages of the summary, I realized that you couldn’t understand from that report what country was taking what position, who had said what at a meeting. The summaries of the discussions of these — of the organization were so obscure that they really were not putting out in public what were the debates that were going on between the different countries, or even what positions they were taking.

VICTOR MENOTTI: Yeah, we’ve come a long way, “we” being citizens and people’s groups around the world, since five years ago, when the WTO was created, to be able to decode these things and put them in a popular language to actually explain to people that this means less protection for you and more protection for corporations. It’s a constant battle, though, to decode those things. But I think we’ve — I mean, proof is in the streets of how we’ve gotten better, and people actually get this stuff now.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Victor Menotti. He is with the International Forum on Globalization. Patti Goldman is also with us. She’s based here in Seattle, Washington, with the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund. Patti Goldman, can you talk about how you’re approaching the WTO meeting this week and the issues that you’re taking on?

PATTI GOLDMAN: Yes. We’ve been involved, since the WTO has been established, trying to defend laws, environmental and health laws, when they’re challenged before the WTO. Now, that’s a hard thing to do, because the WTO is secretive and does not want input from people like us, from the environmental groups, even environmental officials that would like to defend those laws. It’s only trade ministers and trade officials that are the decision-makers. But we have tried to defend the laws once they’ve been challenged, and we’ve lost every time.

AMY GOODMAN: Give us examples.

PATTI GOLDMAN: Sure. One of the challenges that occurred under the WTO is to the United States’ protections for sea turtles. Sea turtles are endangered worldwide. They’re recognize to be endangered under international and U.S. law. The number one threat to the sea turtles is drowning in shrimp nets. We in the United States have required our shrimpers to use what’s called a turtle excluder device. It’s like a little box that the turtles get caught in, and it has an exit door so that they escape the nets. After we required that of our own shrimpers, we applied the same kinds of rules to imports and said that we wouldn’t take shrimp imports unless the countries had comparable protections for the sea turtles. But the WTO said we can’t do that. And the reason is, the WTO does not let countries to treat products differently based on how they’re produced — in this instance, because the sea turtles would drown. But that’s devastating for environmental protections, because so much of environmental protections are based on what happens when you cut the forest, catch the fish or produce the goods in a factory.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, part of what has happened, obviously, this week is that last week, 95% of the American people didn’t even know what the World Trade Organization was. This week, every radio talk show, every television news program is discussing the WTO and, of course, the sea turtles, because so many of the demonstrators that this week were dressed up as sea turtles have probably gotten more attention in this week than they’ve gotten in years. What is your sense of how these protests have had an impact on the continuing public debate and consciousness?

PATTI GOLDMAN: Well, I think the public consciousness is certainly being raised. There was a poll in the United States that showed 74% of the people polled disagreed with the WTO rule against allowing these restrictions on trade based on production, which is what was underlying the sea turtle case. Unfortunately, the Clinton administration has not heard what people are saying, is not responsive at all. It is not acknowledging the need to rethink these rules, to change the WTO so that our environmental laws won’t be at risk. It is absolutely resisting any steps towards reform of these principles that jeopardize our health and environmental standards.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yet, what we’re getting — what we’re getting in the — in a lot of the coverage is that here is President Clinton trying to convince these recalcitrant leaders around the world to have reform in some of these areas. What is — you’re saying that the administration is doing nothing. So, what’s — how are we getting this divide between what is being put out there and what you say is the reality?

PATTI GOLDMAN: Well, there are two types of reforms that the environmental community and others are seeking. One is to change the processes in the WTO so it is not so secretive. And on that score, the Clinton administration is supporting reforms. But on changes to the substantive rules — and the WTO is made up of rules countries agree to follow, and they are the rules that the United States has said it will abide by — the Clinton administration is absolutely resisting any change, and they’re even denying there are problems.

AMY GOODMAN: Patti Goldman of the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, I have to ask you — this is your city. This is Seattle. You live here. You live here. You work here. What do you think about what you’re seeing? I mean, you’ve been working on these issues for a long time. Now you’re working on them in a complete police state. What do you think of the streets? And how does that relate to environmental issues and the WTO?

PATTI GOLDMAN: It has been absolutely shocking to walk through the streets of this city. It feels like I am in some other country rather than my home city. But I agree with what you said. These rules and the system is so anti-democratic, keeps people out, keeps people from knowing what’s going on on the inside, keeps developing countries from having a voice, that that’s why people are upset with this system, and that’s why there’s such a strong response to keep people down.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Victor Menotti, in terms of the president, Clinton, I’d like to get back to him again, because clearly his being here makes these protests even more embarrassing for the United States around the world, because here is the president. I understand many of the local TV stations are reporting that the Secret Service was furious with the — with local Seattle authorities over their failure to control these protests with the president being in town. But what about this image that the White House is trying to project of him as the great reformer of the WTO?

VICTOR MENOTTI: Well, that’s — you know, that’s the picture on the front page of The New York Times, President Clinton chiding the WTO. But, I mean, I’m glad we’re getting this big gap between the rhetoric and the reality. And just to spell out really how wide that the divide is, Patti, together with my organization and five others, recently sued the U.S. trade representative’s office for violating the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Right? The way that our trade representative makes policy, that sets our national negotiating position in this country, is they rely on a series of corporate advisers called ISACs, industry sector advisory committees. They got them for auto parts and chemicals. And the two that I follow are to do with paper products and wood and lumber. When we look at these, though, they’re chaired by International Paper Corporation, vice-chaired by a Weyerhaeuser, Boise Cascade. I mean, you just go down. There’s nobody on there for forest protection, nobody there for wood product workers, nobody there for timber communities. And there are even foreign subsidiaries of foreign wood product companies there. So, you know, this is who sets our national negotiating position.

And at the same time, these companies go abroad into all the countries they have investments in, and they detail what changes they need to their trade ministers. So, when they all get together around the table, they pretty much agree on what the rules are going to be. This is why we call it global corporate government.

So, but now we’ve successfully sued. We’ve gotten a federal court order for them to change the structure of these things, and they failed to do that. We’ve been told that they’re pushing forward all these things that are going to destroy forests further, yet President Clinton says he’s here to save the environment. And, I mean, there’s really a big spin that he’s put on us that we need to counter.

AMY GOODMAN: One of the things President Clinton said yesterday in his luncheon speech is that he was looking at a camera testing a white napkin, you know, just for light, to test the lighting of the room. And so, the cameraman was up at the podium holding the napkin out, and Mike Moore leaned over to him, the head of the World Trade Organization, and said, “That could be the flag now of the World Trade Organization.” Right? The white surrender flag. Do you think that’s true? Do you think that — 

VICTOR MENOTTI: That they want to — 

AMY GOODMAN: — the WTO is going to reform this week?

VICTOR MENOTTI: Oh, absolutely not. No,. I mean, they’re moving forward. I mean, there’s been a lot of delegitimization that’s gone on, which is very important, the public awareness raising, that people now know what the WTO is, and they see that so many people care about it to risk their body and so on. But we actually — we need to get more coverage of what’s going on in the inside and what the implications of some of these agreements and decisions they want to put on this week, because that’s where some of the real battles are. But it’s very different to — difficult to affect the decisions. I mean, but what they’re putting out now is really nothing more than another White House lie.

AMY GOODMAN: On the issue of who decides within the WTO on a ruling, people, I think, don’t understand the mechanism at work. What is the panel? Let me ask you that, Patti Goldman of the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund. Who is making the decisions in the case of the environment?

PATTI GOLDMAN: Well, when the rules are negotiated, it is trade ministers who negotiate the rules. But the WTO allows one country to challenge another country’s laws to enforce those rules. When there’s a challenge, a panel is appointed that consists of three trade officials. That is the requirement. They must be trade experts. If it’s a health protection at risk, they do not have to have expertise in health, public health, or the environment or human rights or whatever other issue is there. They meet behind closed doors. Only governments can participate.

For years we’ve been trying to have other views submitted. Often we don’t agree with what the United States is saying, particularly if it’s the challenger to some other country’s health law. But we’re not allowed to submit views to the panels. We’ve had them thrown in the garbage. We’ve had letters sent back, saying, “You can’t give us this.” And the only time a panel was allowed to receive our submission was because the United States had adopted it in part and that it only read those parts. So there’s no independent voice. And since our government is not often on our side on these issues, it means we are not represented, through our government or otherwise.

AMY GOODMAN: Who chooses?

PATTI GOLDMAN: These individuals have their names on a list in the bureaucracy of the WTO in Geneva, and then they are selected, offered to the panels. But their one and only qualification is they must have trade expertise.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And it seems to me, for instance, in the conversation I had with the foreign minister of Dominica, that they would at least, when they were going through these panels, and especially going into the appellate part of the process, that they would disqualify judges from the particular countries that are involved. But in this case, it was an American judge that decided in favor of the United States in the dispute over bananas. There are no rules in terms of possible conflicts between the people who participate in these panels?

PATTI GOLDMAN: Well, there is supposed to be a rule that the countries that are directly involved aren’t on the panels, although sometimes the disputes have so many countries that express an opinion that then those countries that aren’t the direct challengers might actually be represented on the panel. And that happened in the shrimp case, for example.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for joining us. If people want to get in touch with your organizations, Patti Goldman, Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund here in Seattle, Washington?

PATTI GOLDMAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: How do they call? How do they get in touch with you on the web?

PATTI GOLDMAN: Our website is www.earthjustice.org, and we’re here in Seattle,
206-343-7340.

AMY GOODMAN: One more time, the phone number?

PATTI GOLDMAN: 206-343-7340.

AMY GOODMAN: And Victor Menotti of the International Forum on Globalization,

VICTOR MENOTTI: On the web, it’s just IFG.org. And by telephone, it’s 415-771-3394.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both very much for being with us. When we come back, we’re going to speak with California state Senator Tom Hayden. Also, if you want to find out any of these contacts or links to news that you’re not going to be getting in the mainstream media on what is happening here in Seattle, you can go to our website at www.democracynow.org. That’s www.democracynow.org. You’re listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.