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NGOs are "non-governmental organizations". Think Red Cross, Greenpeace and so forth.

ATTAC is an international NGO fighting against "financial globalization [that] increases economic insecurity and social inequalities". Think protesters at WTO meetings and other like types of international summits of politicians.

Ah, Unsustainable Development, as proned by Bush (who is getting a spanking in the european press right now)...

try attac or johannesburg for some education.

But it could be a good thing that the US is incapable of adapting to the new century.

The absence of the US at Johannesburg is enabling the rest of the world to drive past them, with Europe filling the vacuum they have left.

something is on the move here that is way bigger than the north american short lived ego trip.

First, if you don't know about it already, there's some cool resources like ATTAC which have email lists and go through the economic underpinnings of why globalism as currently practised is not a good idea. They started in France, of course, www.attac.fr.

The main thing is that we, the people, never get to vote for these organizations. Globalism as it is practised is intended to reduce barriers - and those barriers are local laws that protect labor requirements (e.g. kids can't work more than 2 hours per school day) or environmental restrictions (e.g. you can't dump chemicals untreated in creeks).

There is another form - which is that corporations, which are really only asset poolings for investors like you and I that limit our losses, be required to conform to the countries that they operate in.

Where globablism attacks fraud, waste, and bribery - this is good. But it usually doesn't seem to mind this at the multinational corporate level. Where it attacks reasonable labor and environmental laws - this is bad. And multinationals seem to spend most of their energies trying to attack these.

GDP is flawed in that it does not measure social good as a benefit and it does not measure environmental damage as a cost.

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Yes, this is quite true. They are distorting it. One of the problems is that the elite, the fat cats like Bush et al are presenting their opponents as if they were the same as the al-Queda group.

They're not. A lot of people protesting against the WTO are people who have quite a few assets. Like me. We own stocks, we invest. But we see the dangers of the so-called "Free Trade" groups, and the implications of the laws to promulgate them.

Sure, we want fair trade, equivalent transaction costs. But we don't think that we should be promoting lower labor standards or environmental standards on other countries. Because that is what is implied by groups such as the WTO.

One good source for information on the objections to this "Globalization" would be ATTAC, an organization which crunches the numbers and has a number of much more informative publications on this subject. I've read some of their works when I picked them up in the original French on visits to Paris, but they have English and other language publications as well.

We who go to these demonstrations and the organisations which organise them, like Attac, are not against trade. Where did you get that silly notion? We are against corporate power at the expense of democracy and against the neoliberal "free trade" paradigm being imposed on countries, but that's not the same thing.

Try read up a bit more on the movement before opening your mouth. Let me suggest starting with the homepage of Attac.

You've answered your own question. You did well in life because you got a good start: your parents were well-educated and supportive. If they had been illiterate, I doubt that you would have fared as well. Poverty breeds poverty.

There are about one million Americans who work full-time, but are still homeless. Moreover, there 1.2 billion people in the world who live on less than $1 a day. I find this unacceptable. Since I earn far more than most, I think it's right that I should give a large portion of my income to help those who are less well-off.

For more about global poverty, see this.

For the causes of poverty, see this.

Then read this or this or this to find out more about what can be done.
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