The World Trade Organization Demonstrations
Introduction
The emerging trend of liberalizing international trade regulations, also known as globalization, has lead to vast changes in distribution of wealth and power throughout the world. As a result, many groups and population segments feel pressured or disadvantaged by the evolving structure of world markets and their effects on labor standards, job availability, environmental standards, etc.
Many of these groups, both in the United States and abroad, are leftist-centered groups seeking to peacefully influence or altogether stop the rush to trade liberalization and privatization that is occurring worldwide. Naomi Klein writes:
In fact, remarkably few of globalization's fenced-out people turn to violence. Most simply move: from countryside to city, from country to country. And that's when they come face to face with distinctly unvirtual fences, ones made of chain link and razor wire, reinforced with concrete and guarded with machine guns (xxi-xxii).
In the United States, such confrontations are usually between a wide variety of anti-globalization activists and agents of social control on the streets of major cities.
Perhaps the largest and most important of such clashes occurred between protestors and riot police in downtown Seattle between November 30 and December 3, 1999. At the time, the city was playing host to a major summit of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a corporate-controlled intergovernmental organization "formed in 1995 as a means of developing a worldwide free-market economy" (Verhovek and Kahn 1).
In an effort to prevent what they saw as destructive and potentially dangerous developments from taking place, thousands of activists in Seattle succ...
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... We Really Shut Down the WTO?" Voices from the WTO. Olympia, WA: E
Freidberg, Jill, and Rick Rowley. This is What Democracy Looks Like. Ed. Independent Media Center. Video vols. Seattle, WA: Big Noise Films, 2000.
Klein, Naomi. Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate. New York: Picador USA, 2002.
Nichols, John. "Raising a Ruckus." The Nation. Vol. 269, no. 19 (6 Dec. 1999): 18-19.
Sunde, Scott. "Second Straight Night of Confrontations Rocks Capitol Hill." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 2 Dec. 1999, sec A:1.
Thomas, Janet. The Battle in Seattle. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing, 2000.
Verhovek, Sam Howe and Joseph Kahn. "The Battle in Seattle." New York Times Upfront. Vol. 132 no. 9 (3 Jan. 2000): 7.
Weissman, Robert. "Democracy is in the Streets." Multinational Monitor Vol. 20, Issue 12 (Dec. 1999): 24-30.
In the year 1825 in Maryland a true hero was born. This hero did the impossible. This hero dared to do what no one else would do. This hero devoted her life to making America better. This hero overcame something that no one at the time thought would ever be overcame. This hero is Harriet Tubman. No one since Harriet has devoted their whole life to one thing and overcoming it and making a huge difference, which was slavery. From being a toddler to the day of her death she devoted all of it to making a difference in slavery, and she sure did make quite a difference. From being a slave herself to freeing over one thousand slaves Harriet Tubman is a true hero. Imagining America without having Harriet Tubman in it is a hard thing to do. Harriet changed America into a better place and was one of the main reasons that slavery came to an end. Harriet Tubman overcame slavery by escaping persecution, risking her life, and refusing to give up.
Hudson, William E. American Democracy in Peril: Eight Challenges to America's Future. Washington, DC: CQ, 2010. Print.
...ark. It is her life that should be remembered, the women that had the courage to escape from a life she did not want and the selflessness to return to bequeath the same gift on others that were not as fortunate as her. Tubman knew that although she could achieve freedom in a legal sense, she herself would not feel free unless she had someone to share it with. After escaping from the South, Tubman stated "I was free, but there was no one to welcome me to freedom.... I was a stranger in a strange land." Many slaves had the courage to journey north on the Underground Railroad, however, few slaves had the courage to free themselves, and then plummet themselves back into danger. It is not the action of freeing slaves that Harriet Tubman should be remember for, but rather her fighting spirit and unwillingness to give up until she felt that what was wrong was set right.
Naomi Klein’s No Logo states that corporations have been championing globalization using the reasons that globalization allows U.S. consumers to benefit from cheaper products produced abroad, while developing nations benefit from the economic growth stimulated by foreign investments. The generally accepted belief is that governmental policies should be established in favor of the corporations to facilitate the trickling down of corporate profits to the end consumers and workers abroad. Klein, however, contends that globalization rarely benefit the workers in the developing countries.
Hudson, William E. American Democracy in Peril: Eight Challenges to America’s Future – Fourth Edition. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2004.
In America, protest has been used throughout history as a vehicle to change. Protests bring attention to issues that would or could be overlooked or ignored. A current protest receiving national attention in our media is the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest. The Occupy Wall Street protest, along with other Occupy branch protests are essentially ineffective protests. When compared to successful protests in the past, they are not having as much success gaining public support. There are many reasons this could be the case. There is no clearly defined goal or a specified outcome resulting from the protests. They are managing their funds inefficiently and in many cities they are creating more problems than they are solving.
Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduce life expectancy and/or increased health problems. Obesity has been a health problem ever since infectious disease had began in the first half of the 20th Century. The person with obesity is not the only person who is affected by their disease. In the case of childhood obesity, It can affect the parents because they might be the cause of the child’s issues. It can also lead to many different health problems such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and respiratory problems, and it can also even lead to death. Obesity has affected the world in many ways: task forces have been formed to address the issue, people are suffering from health problems due to obesity, and others suffer psychological and social issues.
Harriet Tubman's life is one for the records with so much history and importance behind it. In 1849 she escaped from slavery and settled in Philadelphia. There, she found work as a scrubwoman. Over the next ten years she became very involved in the Abolition movement, forming friendships with one of the black leaders of the Underground Railroad, William Still, and white abolitionist Thomas Garrett. She became an inspiring conductor of the Underground Railroad putting her own life ahead of her people. Her drudgery did not stop there. During the Civil War Harriet Tubman served as a scout, a spy, and a nurse. Because of her influential involvement in the abolitionist act she came into contact with many dominant social leaders in the North. While all of her accomplishments were notable, her involvement in the Underground Railroad is one most infamous to the United States.
Barry, Brian. "Is Democracy Special?" in Philosophy, Politics, & Society, 5th Series, ed. Peter Laslett & James Fishkin. Hew Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
Romeo and Juliet is a tragic story about a pair of star-crossed lovers whose demises were unexpected to most. However, their deaths were a result of their impulsiveness. It caused their problematic marriage, Romeo’s preventable death, as well as Juliet’s preventable death.
One of the contemporary definitions of democracy today is as follows: “Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives; Rule by the majority” (“Democracy” Def.1,4). Democracy, as a form of government, was a radical idea when it manifested; many governments in the early history of the world were totalitarian or tyrannical in nature, due to overarching beliefs that the strong ruled over the weak.
Democracy is robust, widely accepted and highly anticipated around the world. It is the triumphant form of government; dominantly used in Europe, North and South and America and becoming reformed and taking new roots in Africa and Asia. Although the term democracy is based on its Greek origin, demos kratos, meaning people rule, the term cannot be simply understood as such. Due to vast coverage, the adaptation of democracy has varied greatly, whether regionally, nationally, by state or through different branches of government. Perhaps this can be advantageous when the different categorizations listed above can use democracy to rule and suit themselves best, but other factors, such as globalization and neoliberalism, has caused the need for
Case, W.. (2001). Malaysia’s general elections in 1999: A consolidated and high quality semi-democracy. Asian Studies Review. Vol. 25. Number 1.
There have been enormous efforts to spread democracy as a political system throughout the world by the developed democratic countries and the international development organizations including the World Bank. By the late 1990s the United States alone spent over a half billion dollars to promote democratic expansion throughout the world (Diamond, 2003). These were done considering that the democratic system leads towards development. As a result in the late 20th century we saw a huge political transformation towards democracy. During the last few decades a huge number of countries adopted democracy as their political system. However, it retain a big question how far democracy is successful in bringing development of a country? At this stage, some people also criticizes the effort of democratization arguing that it is done without considering the context of a country, sometimes democracy is not ideal for all countries and it is an effort to extinct diversity of political system. In studying the literature regarding the debate, we found a paradoxical relationship between democracy and development. Some argue that democracy has failed to ensure expected outcomes in terms of development. While others confronted that democracy has a considerable impact on development. Another group of people argue that form of political system actually does not have any impact on development process. On the verge of these debates, some development institutions and academics throw light on why democracy is not working properly, and what measure should be taken to make it more successful in bringing effective development of developing countries. Consequently, this writing is an effort of revisiting the different views about impact of democra...
Democracy has come to mean a principle under whose flag has most of the developed countries aced in their race for Imperialism. It has gone beyond all previous governing systems and has made room for progress and development. By offering free and fair elections, democracy has redefined human dignity and patriotism. It has also helped to improve decision-making among the citizens, and brought down the crime level. Democracy is for sure the most fitting among the other types of government, and needs to be implemented fully for effective functioning of a state.