Negative impressions mask positive developments in Seattle

The protests and other civil society actions in Seattle brought together a large number of groups who, notwithstanding their different and sometimes c onflicting agendas, shared a common demand to be heard by the WTO policy-ma kers, called for greater transparency and accountability on the part of the WTO and expressed a deep distrust of the kind of doctrinaire neo-liberalis m reflected in the so-called 'Washington Consensus'.