I did extensive radio coverage of the 1999 Seattle WTO meeting. I talked to a Norwegian representative who said much of what Andrew Leonard said. 1999 was the very first time NGOs had any influence. But that was, clearly, a direct response to worldwide protests of the WTO, for one thing, and for another her understanding of what the organized protesters were saying was essentially nil.

The WTO was conceived as part of the Bretton Woods triumvirate for stablizing the global economy, along with the World Bank and International Monetary fund. It so obviously violates sovereignty - it puts corporations not only on a parity with governments, but in fact makes them the overlords of governments at every level - that the US, rightly, refused to ratify it. By the time the Uruguay Round of talks were concluded, the WTO was simply another brick in the corporate governance wall that includes the GATT, NAFTA, the FTAA and the MAI (also failed, but I have no doubt it will return). The WTO is particularly nasty - it turns all progressive laws and national customs into non-tariff trade barriers. It mandates attacking social democracy the way Nixon had to do secretly with Allende's Chile. It explicitly destroys environmental and workers' health protections.

The entire basis of the WTO is reprehensible and anti-human. It's unaccountable government by corporations of states, provinces, cities, counties, whole nations. It should indeed be smashed, and only a market fundamentalist would present such a fraudulent picture of the WTO and the protests against it.

If Andrew Leonard were forced to write about the actual text of what the WTO actually is and what it does, he'd be exposed instantly as a shill for corporatism. Most shockingly, you already had one Fahrad Manjoo, and the world already had one Thomas Friedman, and that's more than enough. And I know very well how the world works. You spit out phony conventional wisdom and you get rewarded. No thanks.

The particular branch of 9/11 investigation hobbyists (a much better term than "deniers", as a real investigation of 9/11 was scuttled by the Bush administration, so there is nothing concrete to be "denying") that goes along with "Loose Change" should thank Salon.

By putting your worst, least credible writer on it, you've probably boosted the credibility of "Loose Change" and its fans tremendously. And that's a pity, because the reputation, in particular, of the "Pentagon was not hit by a plane" theory is not very high right now in the "9/11 truth" community.

And he doesn't disappoint. In true Gerald Posner style, he finds the worst example of 9/11 investigation that's at all well known and tosses all skepticism about the incomplete and in places provably false picture provided by this government (the Bush government he pretends not to like but for which he is one of the most strident, if unconvincing, shills) into the same bucket.

Absolutely nothing Bush does bothers Manjoo. Even putting off all investigation of the White House's actions in 9/11 till after the elections, then never somehow managing to carry out that part. Even the whitewash that Lee Hamilton is famous for that was the "first part" of the investigation.

Yep, it's the second coming of Gerald Posner, this time embodied as Declan McCullagh.

Oh, and the sidewise reference to holocaust deniers is really typical of the absurdly crappy Manjoo style.

Still no apologies for getting his statistics wrong in his ill-conceived diatribe against the Rolling Stone article, I see.

It's how think tanks paid writers for decades to lie and tell the masses the world works. Now you're doing it presumably (but is that a good presumption) for your meager compensation from Salon plus the good feeling that you're asskissing the conventional wisdom of the powerful and well-connected, and that's never a bad thing in the long run.

Andrew Leonard, you have NOTHING to offer the world Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand have not already given it. Except smarminess.

What a spit-in-the-face insult it is to Salon readers to have your right-wingnut economics BS make up the whole of the "Technology" section.

You call this crap "technology" for the same cultic purposes Scientology calls its garbage "technology." Indeed, Salon Tech now fits the phrase "He's a real rocket Scientologist" perfectly.

I am not a regular reader of this at all but this was simply the right response.

Very well put and inspiring.

... in a later criminal trial, that's at least something.

And it wouldn't make a judgement for the Plames unlikely either.

OJ is a marked man after the civil trial, it'd be nice to see Rove and/or Cheney and/or Libby join him - people who "did it" but had too much "pull" to be brought down the way a "little guy" would have been.