Montreal, 25 July 2003 – Today in Montreal, the Popular Mobilisation Against the WTO is officially launching 5 days of action, resistance and popular education to disrupt and shutdown the World Trade Organisation’s Mini-Ministerial meeting scheduled for July 28, 29 and 30 at Montreal’s Sheraton Centre.

The Popular Mobilisation considers the WTO, its regulations and its negotiations fundamentally anti-democratic. The WTO mini-ministerial is nothing more than another capitalist masquerade that will further aggravate already unacceptable and disastrous consequences of extreme poverty, war, misery, famine and injustice that affect people the world over.

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Montreal, 25 July 2003 – Today in Montreal, the Popular Mobilisation Against the WTO is officially launching 5 days of action, resistance and popular education to disrupt and shutdown the World Trade Organisation’s Mini-Ministerial meeting scheduled for July 28, 29 and 30 at Montreal’s Sheraton Centre.

The Popular Mobilisation considers the WTO, its regulations and its negotiations fundamentally anti-democratic. The WTO mini-ministerial is nothing more than another capitalist masquerade that will further aggravate already unacceptable and disastrous consequences of extreme poverty, war, misery, famine and injustice that affect people the world over.

The Popular Mobilisation is radically opposed the destructive politics enshrined in the paradigm of capitalism and world domination.

The meeting called by International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew is yet another pathetic episode in an unending series of spectacular summits, each more undemocratic than the last, imposed upon us by the world’s major political and financial decision makers. Although it could play a crucial role in determining what will be discussed at the upcoming WTO ministerial in Cancun, the mini-ministerial will serve only to make other countries accept a ‘pseudo-consensus’ agreed upon in advance by a small number of powerful countries.

These agreements will once more legitimize the pillaging of natural resources and the exploitation of people in both the North and the South in order to satisfy the voracious elite. At the same time, the people themselves have no say in the matter.

The WTO is best described as a machine of calculated and foreseeable disaster. The WTO’s regulations affecting trade in services (GATS), for example, aim to relegate all social programs and public services to the ranks of the open markets available to rich foreign investors. These rules are clearly pushing for the privatisation of healthcare, education, water and other public services. Seeds, genes, and other bases for life are also included on the list of ‘consumer goods’ the WTO aspires to regulate under the auspices of Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property rights (TRIPS). The adoption of TRIPS at Cancun would ensure exclusive proprietary rights for the multinational companies holding patents for blueprints of life. Because exchanging seeds undermines the mechanisms of control imposed by patent-holders in rich countries, the food security of the poorest people of the world are at risk.

By extending the patent controls of multinational pharmaceutical corporations, the TRIPS agreement places the use of generic drugs in the fight against AIDS at risk. These rules are systematically applied in the sole interest of rich countries and multinationals, at the cost of the poorest countries and communities of the world.

Unsatisfied with the privileged position they already hold in the heart of the WTO, at the Cancun meeting, the Quad – the United States, the European Union, Japan and Canada – hopes to impose upon all other countries a new round of negotiations on “new issues,