[devtesla]

> In Seattle, for instance, the last big protests (against the World Trade Organisation, in 1999) looked mindless. If they had a goal, it was selfish—an attempt to impoverish the emerging world through protectionism.

Wow. While a case can be made that the anti-globalization movement would of had that effect, that was not its goal. I really should stop reading the Economist.

[jholman]

Protectionism has always been ONE OF the goals of the anti-globalization movement, especially insofar as that movement has had union support.

This is just one more aspect of the general rule that these protests do not have a unified agenda, because they're composed of diverse individuals with diverse goals. And in my ignorant opinion, a lot of those diverse individuals demonstrably have no clue what they're talking about, except of course in the domain of their personal misery and frustration. I recall, then as now, lots of anti-WTO (and anti-APEC 2 years earlier) protesters who had some pretty blurry ideas about what they were fighting for. There was lots of thinly-veiled "trade will steal our jobs" rhetoric in there - of course along with the environmental concerns, the third-world human rights concerns (Suharto was a big issue in the APEC '97 protests), the concerns about capital flight and race-to-the-bottom, etc.

[cawel]

That's crazy, isn't it. It makes you realize how important it is to diversify one's sources of information (as well as to be open to different points of view), in order to avoid unconscious brainwashing.