Chesstories

Templars, Chess, Seattle and the WTO
December 3, 1999

by Don McLean

While in Hamburg I was frequently tuned into CNN News. Developments in Northern Ireland were at the top of the European agenda whereas, in Seattle a meeting of WTO members seemed to be the real headline story of the day - and of the week as things turned out. Of course, the WTO has not helped its case very much by remaining as secretive, elitist and closed to public scrutiny as the early Templars. The historical parallels between these two organizations are often striking. Perhaps this is why we are hearing more about the Templars lately and not enough about the WTO.

In a none-too metaphorical sense, the WTO is attempting to reconstruct the planetary chessboard by introducing new terms and conditions as set out through elite agendas and a corporatized means of adjudication - terms which could serve to either punish or reward all trading nations variously standing inside or outside their ring. Ostensibly, "Free Trade" is the primary issue among WTO nations. However, as pro-unionists were quick to point out, there are hidden issues of control and a demonstrable pattern of IMF and NGO handshaking that does not necessarily make for "Fair Trade".

As most know by now, economic ideals governing Free Trade extend in many directions and appear to carry with them an imperialistic dictum founded upon an "efficiency model" of centralized, global control over sovereign wealth, human labour and natural resources. All aspects must be made to comply to some overarching system of command if there is to be any de facto WTO, or "New World Order". Thus, it is interesting to note how a relatively secretive group of negotiators appear to have progressed rapidly during the past ten years and how, on so many levels, multinationals themselves have successfully subverted the independent legal structures and social programs of member nations. There is a sense of high stakes "winner takes all" mobilzation hanging in the air.

Progress in the overall WTO agenda is rampantly "real", with the recent and rapid collapse of a once effective socialized system of Health Care and Education in Canada and the British Isles a case in point that has been totally underplayed by the mass media. And yet, we know from the erosive sequence of diplomatic and bureaucratic events which led to this calamity, governments of both nations initially took the bait during the Reagan-Thatcher-Mulroney years. Seditiously, and without consulting the public through any public or democratic forum, politicians fell into collusion with the multinational pharmaceutical corporations and the American model of profitability, especially in the health care sector. This has spurred the introduction of sub-rosa systems of M.D. supported pharma-business kickbacks, hospital surcharges and other forms of economic blackmail.

An ongoing crisis of infrastructure transition speak of gerrymandering abuses few politicians seem inclined to remedy, even though it is well within their power to do so. This has resulted in hospital overcrowding and staff fatigue. Literally hundreds of patients crowd the emergency rooms and waiting lists in Montreal and Toronto. While nurses and other health care specialists face impossible workloads resulting in burnout though staff cutbacks and other administratively sanctioned forms of attrition, it seems obvious that the WTO has succeeded in kicking the pillars out from under a humanitarian edifice that, at one time, did not weigh the right to immediate treatment in accord with the size of a person's bank account or insurance policy.

The health care situation in many countries is worsening by the minute. However, this is just one tiny wrinkle in the fabric of opportunism and exploitation that make the WTO such a nefarious and colourful study in corporate greed. Like the Templars, whose independent power and prestige became a threat not only to the Church of Rome but also to the sovereignty of European nations, there is really nothing to state but the obvious. Greed begets greed, power begets insecurity, insecurity begets corruption, corruption begets secrecy and secrecy begets public suspicion. Too much suspicion and alram bells begin to sound in "low places", of which, the streets of Seattle are a classic example.

To quell the rotten odour, official media responses decrying public sensitivity have multiplied like dandelions on a freshly watered lawn. As faceless and pedestrian as dandelions, in fact, the dead pan visage of WTO spokesman Johnson, who addressed the questions of a CNN anchor woman, reflected just the kind of soulless bean counter the WTO would summon to staunch the flow of ill will so evident in the streets of Seattle. Bland evasion underlined his presentation of the "facts". It was a totally gut wrenching travesty to watch him make a shell game of the attempted embezzlement that seemed to be staring everyone but Mr. Johnson square in the eye.

Imagine a colourless world governed by Swiss bankers and it is easy to see how the priorities of financiers become disengaged from the currency of humane compassion. With the advent of Seattle, Adam Smith, whose "Theory of Moral Sentiments" was intended as a prescriptive guide for ethical play in the competitive free market must have been turning in his grave. Despite whatever smokescreens Mr. Johnson maintained and regardless of the ballyhoo issuing from the lips of WTO officials themselves, during those few hectic days in Seattle, evidence substantiating their claims of grassroots support for WTO initiatives was as rare as orchids in Antarctica.

Perhaps this and other associated initiatives will prove to be the "big lie" of the coming millennium, for, in fact, there were no pawns demonstrating on behalf of WTO policies. Just as it appears unlikely that feudal serfs and lesser nobles had much influence on the Templar apparatus once it began to snowball, despite claims to the contrary, the only evidence of WTO support came in the guise of a tear gassing, pepper spraying militia - the blue and black knights whose mercenary welfare ultimately hinges upon a hierarchy of civil servants who all too clearly heed the call of undertaxed corporate Czars, rather than the overtaxed wage earner.

The WTO vision of "Free Trade" is not one of "Fair Trade", which is why those dirty little secrets that haunt such companies as Gap and Nike are conveniently overlooked whenever a mere handful of businessmen and politicians gather to determine the fates of many. Despite the closed meetings, the patrician attitude is brazenly "out front" these days. According to one spokesman, if labour issues became factored into the hammering out of a global trade accord there would be no accord possible. Determinations such as this pose a shoddy excuse for the inequalities which persist even among member nations of the G7.

Exclusion of labour from trade settlement issues is tantamount to the cavalier sacrifice of pawns in a suicidal game of speed chess. In effect, the WTO is attempting to catch unionists and liberal democrats of both the right and left wings off guard with their blitzkrieg campaign. The process has moved along with breathtaking rapidity, even as the thrust towards the consolidation of corporate wealth through the plethora of new mergers looms larger with every clang of the closing bell on Wall Street. As the initiative widens and deepens and WTO influence gains tacit support from governments and media moguls alike, we trace the shadow rather than the substance of a controlling body of elite profiteers who are ideally positioned to subjugate future generations in a world that will have even lesser regard for the common man than the one from which we have just emerged. Given the WTO aptitude for disinformation, half truths and outright secrecy, our sons and daughters may never learn to appreciate the existence of any viable alternative. Even now, the apparatus for popular control is just too well consolidated in the hands of a relative few whose goals incline towards illusory ideas of infinite sustainabilty of natural resources, endless years of GNP growth and an ever ascending NYSE index, to make much literal sense when it comes to addressing issues of inequality, ecology, or individual human rights and freedoms.

In the wrong hands an under less favourable conditions than are currently in vogue in both the Dow Jones and the Nikea indexes, it is possible to see how the financial carrot can easily transform into a cat of nine tails. The WTO already has a near-strangle hold on the planet's resources - both material and intellectual. As I mentioned, the pharmaceutical industry is one big player capable of overturning beneficial policies that previous incarnations of governments and social institutions worked long and hard to introduce and maintain. The same undermining of national policies can also be seen at the root of variances between private and public education, the thrust of Monsanto style agribusiness versus the common farmer, the hegemony over petroleum and the insistence of using fossil fuels to run our cars and heat our houses. A bio-med boom in eugenics that could make the bulk of humanity expendible some day and the media round house where it is good business not to see, nor hear, nor speak too loudly or often of the obvious evils high ranking sponsors might perpetuate for perpetual profit rounds out the fundamental picture, although many other specifics could be cited with reference to artificially inflated market prices for corporate shares, (the carrot) IT technologies, Internet censorship, newspeak, Wall Street and the rights of citizens to travel and exchange ideas freely from point to point around the world.

Travel is not only becoming a great luxury, it is also becoming a total nightmare from a common logistical standpoint. For instance, an attempt to modify my travel plans in order to reroute to Amsterdam instead of Hamburg for my return trip to Canada demonstrated what extreme difficulties individuals face both administratively and financially for impromptu changes of plan. Cancellation fees plus additional travel expenses go a long way in curtailing improvisation. It is therefore easy to see that travel is as much the domain of the wealthy as it is a closely watched train. No wonder Europe felt like a cheap spy movie all the time I was in Hamburg. Between the hidden cams and the prohibitive barriers, even in the West it is hard to shake the impression that we are being guided through a rat's maze which, at some convenient juncture, could just as easily transform from a simple reward-generating Skinner Box to a sloping pitch - a lemming run - from which there may be no recovery. A skein of ethnic cleansing, gulag junkets and other atrocities is a movie that, given a few minor adjustments, could easily play out in a theater near you.

As geometrically escalating population growth and stresses posed against the sustainable wealth of corporate nations enters into a period of chemical imbalance, the Orwellian scenario - one in which the fate of humanity is sacrificed to suit the ideological and material needs of a specific few - has reemerged as the quintessential question to be addressed by future generations. Financial dictators may point to the inevitability of a world government by numbers, however, as any self-respecting pawn can point out, numbers do not always tell the whole story. Pending future debates and decisions, perhaps we shall live to see another revolutionary period in the history of the Western World. In a society where numbers favour only the rich, it would take only a mild replay of 1929 to unleash a chain reaction of tsunami proportions. Furthermore, it would be naive to contend that under such conditions, those with the means at their disposal should stand no better chance of survival than the average man. In the event of heightened conflict, some fortunes may be lost, although we may be assured that upper crust wealth can and will sustain its owners far longer than the 401K pension plan will sustain theirs.

Just as occurred during the history of Templar distopia and its massacre at the hands of Philip the Fair of France, in some future reincarnation, corporate dukes, knights and earls will no doubt reemerge, safe and sound, under other banners and bankers, poised and ready to lay claim to any ideologically valid aspects of globalization that serve their aims. The Templars perished in France in part because of the excesses of partisan powerbrokerage that eventually perverted the goals of the original Order. These excesses were not simply perceived as such by the Papal establishment or the cash strapped monarchy of Philip I, but also had a trickle down effect among the common people.

Exclusionary habits and self-serving agendas are a proven road to civil disobedience. When the common man feels as though his choices are being taken from him, that no forum exists in which to debate matters which effect him directly, or that arrogant absolutism has reduced him to serfdom - he rises from the ashes again and again to reclaim his sacred right to freedom. Morally, spiritually and intellectually we may be witnessing the early stages of a new watershed that pits Caesar's hollow proclivity for bean-counting against mankind's equally enduring need to understand himself within a global context. As we already know, such holistic ambitions belie a process that is not typically undertaken from within a political Skinner Box or any so-called "world order" - past, present, new, or old. While certain ontological aims chafe against their political container, it must be remembered that the darker the night, the greater capacity for even the smallest light to make itself apparent in unlit corners.

Just as the checkerboard of have and have not nations polarizes and intensifies under the stealth initiatives of a relatively small minority, these divisions not only have the capacity to polarize the human spirit, but, given the overbearing militaristic forces that might jump into the fray at any time, the same resources as could stand in the defense of peace and prosperity through Fair Trade can also be mismanaged to produce conditions for disparity, hopelessness, oppression and global holocaust..

Given recent negative political, military and diplomatic developments in the Soviet Union and the unwillingness of China to submit to international policies in the areas of human rights and arms proliferation, increasingly, the gathering forces of multinationalism appear to be a Western Wild Card - one which can be applied to trump a major conflict or raise a crusading battlecry. It is perhaps for this reason that we find Picasso's Guernica laced with the Harlequin's image. There is a certain caprice in the joker's facade that speaks of joyous as well as abysmally morbid outcomes. While it seems certain we are headed for some major surprises, we may also assure ourselves they will generally fit within a traditional mold pitting aggressive forces of greed against the fundamental needs of humanity. Although there is no telling exactly how the WTO's One World gambit will play out in future, with so many significant signs appearing on the wall at once, worst case scenarios tend to override all hope for any polite settling of accounts at this juncture in world history.