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The World Trade Organisation was created ... by the same institutions, the same powerful central banks that created the United Nations and empowered it in the 1940s. They seek to destroy national sovereignty not just in America but worldwide and rein it in under the control of a huge dictatorial machine. And their track record is clear: they are nothing more than servants of the corrupt global establishment serving their every whim, dividing up the property on the global plantation. Alex Jones, Police State II: The Takeover, 2000
The Justice Department and the elite Delta Force pushed for Seattle crackdown against WTO protesters. Seattle News online article Rick Anderson 23rd December 1999
Trade and industry are forging new connections around the world. Mankind: The Story of All of Us I, History Channel 2012
A long time ago, there was no such thing as school, and children spent their days learning a trade, a phrase which here means ‘standing around doing tedious tasks under the instruction of a bossy adult’. In time, however, people realized that the children could be allowed to sit, and the first school was invented. Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid
1947: Shortly after the close of World War II 23 nations signed a general agreement on tariffs and trade: GATT. Battle in Seattle 2007 starring Woody Harrelson & Andre Benjamin & Jennifer Carpenter & Martin Henderson & Ray Liotta & Connie Nielsen & Michelle Rodriguez & Channing Tatum & Charlize Theron et al, director Stuart Townsend
It has very little to do with trade and it is certainly not free. ibid. protester
Of course we’re going to get hurt. What do you think this is? Protests get me excited and depressed at the same time. ibid. her to him
I am watching a completely unprovoked attack by police here in downtown Seattle. ibid. Jean
The Battle in Seattle turns into a war. ibid.
How do they keep putting themselves on the line like that, for a cause they can’t win? ibid. Jean
Isn’t it time that people mattered more than profit? ibid. Medicine sans Frontiers dude
People are protesting with us in thirty cities across the world. ibid. protester
Thanks WTO It’s Been A Riot. ibid. cinema sign
2003: As the WTO floods local markets with imports, 40,000 Indian farmers commit suicide to escape their debt. ibid. caption
They had pioneered the age of steam. They made more than half the world’s industrial goods, and three-quarters of the world’s trade was carried in British ships. But despite this success Victoria’s cities were pits of poverty and deprivation. Empires: Queen Victoria’s Empire III: The Moral Crusade, PBS 2001
Two Victorian obsessions: religion and free trade. Jeremy Paxman, Empire V: Doing Good, BBC 2012
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations 1776
Every man lives by exchanging. ibid.
‘Money doesn’t facilitate; it inhibits transactions and trading.’ The Money Fix, male interviewee, 2009
The Syrians introduced the monastic life to the West. They were the great traders of the ancient world. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Sex and the Church I: From Pleasure to Sin, BBC 2015
Bigotry does not consort easily with free trade. Peter Ackroyd, Venice: Pure City, 2010
The Thames has always been a river of trade. Its tidal reaches from the estuary to London have always been hard at work. Peter Ackroyd’s Thames 3/4, 2010
It was said in the sixteenth century that, ‘From a distance the river looked like a forest of masts.’ ibid.
The Thames handled the trade of the world. ibid.
Is that to say we are against Free Trade? No, we are for Free Trade, because by Free Trade all economical laws, with their most astounding contradictions, will act upon a larger scale, upon the territory of the whole earth; and because from the uniting of all these contradictions in a single group, where they will stand face to face, will result the struggle which will itself eventuate in the emancipation of the proletariat. Karl Marx, 1847
Leaving things alone to do their thing became known as laissez-faire – free trade we call it. James Burke, Connections s2e16: Routes, BBC 1994
Hair. It always needs doing. You’ve got to have a trade, boy. Fantabulosa! dad to boy Kenneth Williams, BBC 2004
Great trade will always be attended with considerable abuses. Edmund Burke
Thousands of protesters peacefully gathered in Seattle, Washington, to protest the World Trade Organisation, which was meeting in the city.
The police violently engaged the crowds using chemical and conventional weapons.
Hundreds were arrested and injured for peacefully exercising their rights to assembly and free speech. PSTV.tv – United We Fall, caption
They have a dream to dominate the world. ibid.
Real freedoms are eaten up a little at a time. While government controls are slipped on. While the real power is collected into a few hands. ibid.
They create order out of the chaos. ibid.
My idea is that when things are not going so well, the State should come in, but when things are going well, the State should keep out. In other words, it is a policy determined by the state of trade in the country. Major Gwilym Lloyd George, 1946
Two-way trade with the continental mainland had flourished. Operation Stonehenge: What Lies Beneath? II, BBC 2014
As technology accumulates and people in more parts of the planet become interdependent, the hatred between them tends to decrease, for the simple reason that you can’t kill someone and trade with him too. Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Every man lives by exchanging. Adam Smith
The history of capitalism has been so totally re-written that many people in the rich world do not perceive the historical double standards involved in recommending free trade and free market to developing countries. (Trade & Capitalism & Market & Economics) Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans, Prologue xxiii 2008
Britain and the US are not the homes of free trade; in fact, for a long time they were the most protectionist countries in the world. Not all countries have succeeded through protection and subsidies, but few have done so without them. For developing countries, free trade has a rarely been a matter of choice; it was often an imposition from outside, sometimes even through military power. Most of them did very poorly under free trade; they did much better when they used protection and subsidies. The best-performing economies have been those that opened up their economies selectively and gradually. Neo-liberal free-trade free-market policy claims to sacrifice equity for growth, but in fact it achieves neither; growth has slowed down in the past two and a half decades when markets were freed and borders opened. ibid. Prologue xxiv
The importance of international trade for economic development cannot be overemphasized. But free trade is not the best path to economic development. Trade helps economic development only when the country employs a mixture of protection and open trade, constantly adjusting it according to its changing needs and capabilities. Trade is simply too important for economic development to be left to free trade economists. ibid. ch3
Free trade may have wide support among economists, but its support among the public at large is considerably less. Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics