watched some. i'll read up a little more, and come back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Alimentarius

she certainly appears to know what she's talking about.
and i already don't care for the WTO.

There is a severe misconception when it comes to discussing the World Trade Organization. Very briefly I will try to clear some things about what the WTO does...

The WTO negotiates trade agreements on the global level between governments for trade standards, it succeeded the General Agreement on Trades and Tarrifs (GATT).

Trade is one of the most important factors of economic development, if one country is good at producing one specific item it would trade with another nation that is good at producing something else, both parties benefit in a fruitful trade environment. This is important because trade creates what is called comparative advantages, e.g. Germany is good at producing beer, Russia is good at producing vodka, the both trade to gain benefits. Basically some countries are better at producing goods A and others at goods B, both trade and both expand and benefit as such.

Before the great depression and both World Wars, trade between nations was fairly open, nations would freely allow the movement of goods from one point to another. However post these economic shocks protectionism entered, countries started to close borders and introducing tariffs, import restrictions, quotas and variable import restrictions. This is problematic, some countries would not say have the infrastructure for heavy industry so cannot efficiently produce cars, other countries don't have the labor for cost efficient agricultural development. So there is a economic opportunity cost when investment takes place in industries that the benefit has no basis or advantage in, for example in my country they opened a computer factory during soviet times even though we were so far behind in development and software. There is a waste of scare economic resources then.

With GATT and WTO afterwards it, many of the trade restrictions have fallen the world over, leading to the cases we see of economic development in areas like South East Asia (China, India and the Asian Tiger economies).

However there are problems.

- Both WTO and IMF represent private corporate interests, siding with larger economies over smaller ones, so private interests in Western Nations can dictate the terms to smaller ones.

- Larger players possess the legalese and knowledge to push charges against smaller players, e.g. in the form of dumping charges (country A is dumping goods at below cost of production to penetrate the market to country B). For example the South East Asian economies are commonly accused of dumping their goods to the western world, when in fact its simply comparative advantages such as larger labor poll and such.

- Since trade barriers were existent already, large areas were already protected via political interests, the biggest being agriculture between 1st world and the 3rd world or smaller ones like timber trade between US and Canada.

An organization like the WTO is needed in that its a common form for discussing trade on a global scale, but it does not represent the interests of all fairly or provide a platform for such, one glance of their website will show you how many nations the US accuses of unfair trade advantages because its protections local interests.

However this is illogical, no nation can possess all production assets, due to scarcity, and the global economy is tightening year on year and becoming interdependent, which is a good thing, its very hard to bomb someone if your and theirs economies are connected through trade, this is happening between the US and China.

Its also presentative of the different rearrangement of economies over the long term, take the case of the UK a country that has went from primary industry, secondary and now is almost purely a services economy. China is now the worlds producer of simple secondary goods, the US is now a bigger R&D developer. The third world if it was allowed could feed the whole world and so on and so forth.

The economies are now interdependent as well, take your average laptop, the technology was probably developed in the US and Japan, the semiconductors were made in Malaysia and South Korea, and it was all put together in China.

Its not a perfect system by a long shot, however looking over the ages, economics is far better at leveling the playing field and brining together nations then idealistic statements and or anarchy which is common seen at WTO/IMF/G8 meets.

Of course there is a million other issues to consider... but I said this was a *cough* very brief description.

Fahad,

I understand the benefits of reciprocal anti-tariff agreements. If that was all the WTO did it would be fine. But the WTO goes far beyond that in imposing regulations on member countries, and these, for example, both usurp the role of the FDA and make countries adopt draconian copyright law.

It uses the threat of economic loss from tariffs as leverage to coerce countries into joining and adopting all sorts of unrelated measures (analogous to the IMF's loan "conditionalities" that require privatization of everything regardless of the will of the people)

It's not clear to me how national sovereignty and free trade can co-exist. Perhaps the nation state is on its way out, but I haven't heard any good proposals on a system that could take its place.

*long

The speaker uses silly word games and a pandering tone that is all too typical of activists, but the subject is important enough to get my vote.

The anecdotal remarks about the use of flouride to pacify prisoners in gulags was profoundly unscientific. If it had any validity surely she would have cited a source?

This video has been flagged as being at least 10 minutes in length - declared long by fissionchips.

Moving this video to jwray's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 3 days.

The source may not be reliable, but I found a source for the gulag claim:

1957 Controversial statement from Oliver Kenneth Goff, June 22, 1957, a member of the Communist Party and the Young Communist League from May 2, 1936 to October 9, 1939, reveals he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1939, as to the implementation of the fluoridation of American public water supplies in the same way they used it as a brain tranquillizer at Soviet prison camps. Goff reflected that the Party leaders felt that it would bring about lethargy in the U.S, and keep the public docile during a steady encroachment of Communism. Also discussed, says Goff, was keeping a store of deadly fluoride near the water supplies where during a time of revolt it could be dumped wholesale into the water supply and either kill off the populace, or threaten them with liquidation, so that they would surrender to obtain fresh water. (See Ref#64,65). Sworn statement in Arapahoe Country, Colorado, notarized. (Ref: Fluoridation, by Isabel Jansen, R.N, 1990, ISBN 0-932298-73-7, page 128, Tri-State Press, Antigo, Wisconsin 54409)

*kill

Permanently discarding this video - kill requested by submitter jwray.