This article published under the title Seattle and Beyond: Disarming the New World Order was written ten years ago in relation to the Seattle Millenium Summit, which served to instate the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a global policy watch-dog, derogating the sovereign rights of national governments to decide on their economic and social policies.
In a bitter irony, a handful of civil society organizations, which had formally opposed the WTO, unwittingly contributed to legitimizing the WTO's global trading architecture. Instead of challenging the very existence of the WTO as an an intergovernmental body, they established a dialogue with the WTO and Western governments. Funded by private foundations, these civil society organizations positioned themselves as lobby groups on behalf of the people's movement. They ultimately contributed to weakening the anti-globalization movement by accepting the legitimacy of what was essentially an illegal organisation.
The same procedure of donor funded counter-summits or people's summits was subsequently embodied in the World Social Forum. What we are dealing with is a process of "manufactured dissent".
