Political historian and author Kevin Phillips wrote the following column, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times, explaining the importance of turning out tens of thousands of demostrators at next Tuesday's WTO Rally and March in Seattle:

An important prelude to the 2000 elections could take place in Seattle, if organizers can produce their hoped-for "protest of the century" against the Third Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization.

Doubters scoff at this.  While activists urge people to travel to Seattle to protest the WTO, nine of 10 Americans probably can't explain what the organization is.   So they won't be paying attention to complaints that the WTO is about to become an unelected fourth branch of the U.S. government, or that it is a Magna Carta for U.S. multinational corporations to further decrease their dependence on American employees and loyalties.

The World Trade Organization, though officially only 4 years old, represents a huge intrusion on U.S. politics and on national, state and local decision-making, largely in the interest of multinational corporations and trade lobbies.  Scare talk like this has been exaggerated before.  But this is not hyperbole: Legislators in Washington could be on the brink of understanding that they -- and the voters -- are losing control over the evolution of America's role in the global economy in the 21st century.

This is a grave danger.  The historical evidence from the two previous great economic world powers is that whatever financial elites want -- high-profit global priorities -- is bad for ordinary citizens, who are more vulnerable and require that domestic economics come first.

Yet, headlines from Seattle could launch a public debate, especially if the protesters are largely American.  It's this nation whose ordinary citizens have the greatest political and economic stake in limiting the WTO and its anticipated role.

Alienated voters bemoan losing control over U.S. policy-making, but representatives and senators share in the loss.  Where the U.S. government once had three branches -- executive, legislative and judicial -- it now has five.  The newest branches are the unelected Federal Reserve Board, which controls money supply, interest rates and, in many respects, the U.S. economy; and the WTO, which not only controls trade practices but can overrule federal, state and local laws that interfere with trade rights as the organization defines them.  Politicians and voters have little or no control over either the Fed or the WTO.  Power, quite simply, has been shifting to major financial institutions and multinational corporations.

Despite occasional talk by right-wing kooks that the WTO is dangerous because the United States has only one vote and could be outmuscled, the effective control in WTO -- as in the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other such organizations -- lies with the Quad countries -- the United States, Japan, Canada and the European Union -- whose decisions, in turn, are dominated by multinational trade and investment elites.   Their loyalty is to the man in the executive suite, not the man on the street.

In the past decade, the Washington trade-policy establishment has moved to strip U.S. politicians and voters of their influence over trade policy.  For example, in 1994, the key congressional vote in favor of establishing the World Trade Organization was held according to "fast track" rules and during a post-election lame-duck session of Congress, when defeated lawmakers would be pliable and the measure could be slipped through with little discussion.  The fast-track procedure was established so that Congress could not tinker with trade agreements sent to Congress but had to reject or rubber-stamp them, as it did with the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The WTO is exhibit A in the neutering of Congress and the voters.  WTO procedures allow countries to challenge each other's laws and regulations as violations of WTO trade rules.  Cases are decided in secret, with documents, hearings and briefs kept confidential and unreleased, by tribunals of three bureaucrats, usually corporate lawyers.   There are no conflict-of-interest restraints for these people.  In addition, no appeal is possible outside the WTO.

Under this authority, the WTO has already overturned part of the U.S. Clean Air Act and declared illegal a recent U.S. environmental regulation.  Now there is talk of enlarging WTO's jurisdiction to include education and health matters. Congress is being fleeced like lambs at a shearing.

Proponents of this transfer generally argue that either: 1) globalization is the inevitable and we have to guide it, or, 2) globalization may involve some sacrifices but, in the long run, most Americans will profit.

History's example, however, raises major cautions.  Indeed, the two great world economic powers before the United States -- the Dutch in the 17th and early 18th centuries, and the British thereafter -- followed the same internationalization trajectory as their world leadership peaked and then went into decline.

This precedent is as frightening as it is clear.  As the Dutch and British global economies peaked, their future, said the elites, lay in embracing international rather than internal economic opportunities.  As the old industries started to fade - textiles, shipbuilding and fisheries in the Netherlands; coal, textiles and steel in Britain -- the elites said: Never mind.  We now lead the world in services: banking, finance, overseas investments, shipping, insurance, communications.  And that's where the payoff is.

Within each nation -- 1720-40 Holland and Britain in the "Upstairs, Downstairs" era of 1900-1914 -- two things came to pass.  First, common people started losing the old industrial jobs that had made ordinary Dutchmen and Britons the envy of Europe.  The old industrial districts deteriorated.  Second, even as industrial decay worsened, finance and investments soared, inequality mushroomed and the elites buzzed about a new golden age.  But then, something went wrong; finance, investments and services lost their way.  The golden age imploded and the economy became no more than a shell of its old broad-based heyday -- Holland in 1770 or Britain in 1945.

This is the enormous risk that ordinary Americans -- the huge two-thirds in the economic middle -- now take in allowing U.S. democracy and representative government to be undercut and restructured by the U.S. equivalent of the financial and multinational elites that so selfishly misdirected early 20th-century Britain and 18th-century Holland. Recent statistics showing the top 1 percent of Americans soaring on financial wings, even as inflation-adjusted median family incomes are about the same as they were 25 years ago, buttress the parallel.  So do efforts of current U.S. elites to move their investments overseas, as the earlier Dutch and British elites did, and to sell technology to nations like China that could easily become a threat to U.S. interests.

It's easy to see why U.S. corporate CEOs and investment bankers want the new globalism.   Dozens have publicly admitted they don't want their organizations to be American any longer; they want them to be international so they can cut loose from stagnant median family incomes and the future pensions and benefits for those 58-year-old workers in Kansas and Kentucky.

The WTO is many things, some of them reasonable.  To say otherwise would be misleading.  Nonetheless, too many multinational banks and corporations silently applaud the WTO as an enabler of overseas investment that will make it safe for U.S. companies to move more of their employment, profits and loyalties elsewhere.   Ordinary Dutchmen and Britons couldn't stop the earlier trends, and maybe Americans can't stop these.

Even so, tens of thousands of angry people in the streets of Seattle, giving these issues a human face, could do more than attract headlines and evening-news coverage.   They might propel the matter into an arena where such important decisions should be made: the 2000 presidential and congressional elections.

OLYMPIA -- About 2,400 laid off Boeing workers will continue to receive income support payments to help them with retraining under an agreement worked out Tuesday morning between the Locke Administration and the federal Department of Labor, Governor Gary Locke announced Tuesday.

"Getting the funds was critical for these workers," Locke said.   "They made some very difficult decisions to change their career directions and were depending upon this support. I applaud the Department of Labor for stepping in to help"

The agreement followed a meeting between Department of Labor officials and a Washington state delegation that included the Governor's labor policy advisor, Rich Nafziger, and representatives of the Employment Security Department, The Boeing Company and the International Association of Machinists.  Members of the state's Congressional Delegation were also in regular contact with federal officials.

"This deal comes just in time to brighten the holiday week end for these workers," said U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexis M. Herman.  "We are keeping our promise by seeing to it that the workers who lost jobs at Boeing can complete their training and be prepared for rewarding new jobs.  I wish them great success in the future."

Under the agreement, the Department of Labor will provide an additional $9.8 million to help ensure that the 2,400 workers currently enrolled in training programs will continue to receive support payments until April 1.  Support payments begin after regular Unemployment Benefits are exhausted.  New enrollments in the program were ended September 17 after the enrollment limits of the grant were reached.

The agreement buys the state time to attempt to pass legislation to allow for additional unemployment benefits for laid off workers.  Legislation to do so was introduced during the last session, but not passed.  Because of higher than expected demand for program services, the labor-management committee which oversees the grant was recently forced to announce that support payments would be ended in December, raising an outcry from workers who depended upon the money to complete their retraining. Today's action ensures that, at least until April 1, the workers can continue to train for new careers.

"The precarious situation these workers have found themselves in highlights the need for the state to take action to help dislocated workers in their retraining efforts," Locke said.  "I have directed the Employment Security Department to develop legislation and we will work hard to come up with a proposal that can pass."

For more information, contact: Employment Security: 360-902-9317; or the Governor's Communications Office, 360-902-4116.