Jim Hightower

Get ready to cry. I've got a story for you today that's so heart-wrenching you're likely to sob at the overwhelming sadness of it all.

It's about the WTO the World Trade Organization that seeks to enthrone itself, on behalf of its global corporate backers, as the sovereign ruler of the world's workers, farmers, environment, and even governments. Without consulting the citizens of the world, this secretive, autocratic, and arrogant trade kingdom has been established as the enforcer of Rambo corporatism in every corner of the globe, including in your neighborhood.

But and this is the sad part the WTO has the blues. It seems that We the People are not showing the proper respect and even love that the organization's hierarchy feels it merits. It was especially hurt by the effrontery of having 50,000 people show up uninvited to protest the WTO's anti-democratic policies at its 1999 meeting in Seattle. The New York Times reports that the leaders still feel the personal pain of that public comeuppance, and that morale is low inside the organization's opulent headquarters in Geneva. Even Mike Moore, director general of the WTO, is looking "tired" and complaining about "public abuse," says the Times.

Now, don't you feel terrible? You've made Mike feel bad! Here's a guy who's just doing his job of helping corporations that want to overturn national and state laws they don't like, to privatize the natural resources of entire nations, to shop the globe for even cheaper sweatshop labor, to shove indigenous farmers off their ancestral lands, etc. Yet, poor baby, Mike gets no appreciation from you people. This is especially hard on him now, because he's seeking a 20 percent increase in the WTO's budget for next year money that comes from the pockets of us taxpayers.

This is Jim Hightower saying . . . Instead of giving Mike more money, let's all just join singing in a round of "All You Need is Love." Then let's withdraw from the WTO.