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Demonstrations with a byte

When the World Trade Organization attempted to begin its negotiating sessions in Seattle late last year, it was considerably hampered by street demonstrations. Apparently the internet was the key to the massiveness of this gathering of anti-free trade factions.

By going on-line, persons with a certain point of view are put in touch with thousands, maybe millions, of like thinkers. The call went out for people to demonstrate against the WTO and all it stood for. And so masses converged for what became known as the Battle of Seattle.

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Just think what this will mean in the future. Need a noisy demonstration in Washington, Ottawa or London? Take out a website and summon the faithful. Conceivably there will be an echelon of people who are prepared to show up at the drop of a computer byte, ready to raise a ruckus on any subject.

Some of them might have to be shushed so you can tell them they are shouting the wrong slogans, but being pros, it won’t take them long to adjust.

This is not to belittle what most of the demonstrators at Seattle believed and were enunciating. Freer trade does have an effect on jobs in industrially developed countries. Industries do move plants to the Third World where labor costs are low.

Undoubtedly the majority of Seattle demonstrators were sincere in their beliefs.

However, that form of protest does tend to attract others who like to confront authority and are not above shattering some glass to do it.

It does say something about the responsiveness of government and industry if this is the only way they can be induced to re-examine the shibboleths of trade policy.