[Fwd: Fw: [StopWTORound] THE ECONOMIST: THE NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORDER]

> >
> >Inter-governmental institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF, the UN
> >agencies or the WTO have an enormous weakness in an age of NGOs: they
> >lack political leverage. No parliamentarian is going to face direct
> >pressure from the IMF or the WTO; but every policymaker faces pressure
> >from citizens' groups with special interests. Add to this the poor
> >public image that these technocratic, faceless bureaucracies have
> >developed, and it is hardly surprising that they are popular targets
> >for NGO "swarms". The WTO is only the latest to suffer.
> >

Perhaps I am reading more into this than necessary but...
This is about the most preposterous statement I've read in some time.  The 
World Bank, IMF, and WTO are weak, Policy makers face no direct pressure 
from representative of the World Bank, IMF and WTO, there is no dominant 
code operating that provides indirect and often covert support of IMF/US 
hegemonic interests ?  I suppose, in addition to facing the racism 
of  sociobiological approaches we need as well, perhaps more importantly, 
to face the bigotry concealed in economic concepts of universal rationality 
and the primacy of the economic over the social.  These economic concepts 
and those of sociobiology seem to me to be cut from the same Eurocentric 
cloth.
Charlie STevens