Council of Europe Conference Strasbourg, 31 May - 1 June 1999 The Council of Europe is an interesting, not very well-known institution with headquarters in Strasbourg. For decades before the end of the Cold War, it counted both Eastern and Western European countries among its 41 members and thus kept bridges in repair at a dark and difficult time. It often deals with cultural subjects and i... Read more

  Architectural Blueprints, Development Models and Political StrategiesWalden Bello Paper prepared for the Conference on "Economic Sovereignty in a Globalised World"Bangkok, 23-26 March 1999 Today, the world media are awash with talk about reform of the global financial architecture. However, the published reports focus mainly on discussions taking place within the Group of Seven or... Read more

  Towards a World Transnationals' Organisation?Myriam Vander SticheleWTO Booklet Series 3TNI, 30 April 1998 The year 1998 marks 50 years of the global trading system under GATT and World Trade Organisation (WTO). Celebrations take place at the second bi-annual Ministerial Conference from 18th to 20th May 1998 in Geneva. At the same time, renegotiations are being prepared due to star... Read more

When seven years of trade negotiations at last gave birth to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, the US labor movement was one of its leading skeptics. A world trade organization, labor supporters argued, would only accelerate the headlong rush to laissez-faire by dismantling national regulations. It would overwhelm attempts by nations to defend living standards and the ability of unio... Read more

Certains soutiennent qu'il n'y a rien de nouveau dans la mondialisation: celle-ci existerait depuis l'empire romain, Christophe Colomb et les échanges du Moyen-âge et de la Renaissance. Fernand Braudel nous a habitué aussi à penser en termes «d'économies-monde». On peut également prétendre que la mondialisation actuelle plonge ses racines dans l'immédiat après... Read more

  Globalisation, Marginalisation and the WTOMyriam Vander SticheleWTO Booklet Series 2TNI, 29 September 1997 This second TNI booklet on the World Trade Organisation raises some particular concerns about the functioning of the WTO and its impact on poor people and poor countries. It introduces interested NGOs, citizens, officials and politicians to the role the WTO plays in globalis... Read more

Political economist Susan George said natural processes could not be hurried, and that we share a natural sense of speed (such as in speech, or non-cancerous cell growth). Otherwise, there's a danger of positive feedback. The moon slows the earth's rotation from 4 hours/day to 24. But Indo-European tradition rewards the fast castes and hierarchies of speed.Farmers are the slowest caste and le... Read more

    The Ministerial Conference in Singapore and the Developing Countries An Introduction Myriam Vander Stichele WTO Booklet Series 1 TNI, 8 November 1996 This booklet introduces the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to interested NGOs, citizens, officials and politicians who were unable to keep abreast of this Organisation. It contains a se... Read more

The fiftieth birthday of the United Nations spawned over a hundred study groups, colloquia and collective proposals for reform. Predictably, nothing much has happened. This paper was written for one of the more intelligent - in my view anyway - efforts in this direction, a colloquium organised by Maurice Bertrand, a now-retired UN veteran from the Corps Commun d'Inspection [Joint Inspection Bo... Read more