vinemaple

The New Radical Chic: Anne Applebaum sees signs that anti-globalization activists are wising up.

Yet the shift in fashion also reflects a shifting intellectual consensus. Listen hard to Third World activists these days -- Oxfam, say, or the Jubilee Network -- and it is not anti-globalization rhetoric you hear but anti-trade-barrier rhetoric. In the run-up to Cancun, at least a half-dozen people have told me that the average European cow receives $2.50 in daily agricultural subsidies, more money than at least 3 billion of the world's humans have to live on. These agricultural subsidies are, without question, one of the least-discussed, farthest-reaching of international scandals: Every year, the rich world spends many billions more on subsidies and agricultural tariffs than it does on aid to the countries that these subsidies and agricultural tariffs help impoverish. Despite its traditional help-the-poor rhetoric, even Sweden, Norberg points out, makes sugar from sugar beets instead of importing sugar at a fifth of the price from the sugar cane-producing South.

Although there will be anti-globalizers in Cancun, the cutting edge has shifted -- and not a moment too soon. In a perverse way, the movement has in recent years provided a cushion for those politicians -- European, American, Japanese and developing world alike -- who drag their feet about opening markets.

I hope she's right. Then my friends will think I was ahead of the curve instead of a meany who hated people in poor countries.