Tom Turner, Earthjustice

Tom Turner is senior editor at Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm based in Oakland, Calif. He edited daily newspapers at the WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999 and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. He is the author of many books and articles on environmental subjects, most recently Justice on Earth: Earthjustice and the People It Has Served.

Agriculture remains the big story here, though there are scores of sidebars.

The new coalition of 21 developing countries (recently swollen to 26, according to reports late yesterday afternoon) continues to be the center of attention. It has attracted much attention, as well as support from many nongovernmental organizations from the U.S. and elsewhere, with its challenge to the formula proposed by the U.S. and the European Union for reducing tariffs and subsidies.

At a briefing yesterday morning, the deputy U.S. trade representative, Peter Allgeier, was asked what he thought about the new coalition and whether the U.S. would bring pressure to "fracture" (a Wall Street Journal reporter's word) it. A follow-up questioner asked whether the U.S. might threaten to withdraw or reduce foreign aid to persuade certain countries to leave the coalition.

Allgeier began by saying that the U.S. is perplexed about the coalition since it is quite diverse and includes countries whose traditional positions on various agricultural trade issues are anything but compatible. He said they can't figure out what the theme is that unifies the coalition. (Hint: Try near universal disgust with U.S. unilateralism over Iraq, Kyoto, and a dozen other matters.) He said they'd continue to try to find common ground, but didn't say that back-door pressure wouldn't be tried. (At a late afternoon forum, Eileen Kwa of Forum on the Global South reported that President Bush himself had telephoned the leaders of South Africa, Thailand, and India to pressure those countries to abandon the coalition.) On foreign aid, all Allgeier would say was that the trade representative's office doesn't disburse foreign aid. Ministers are reportedly meeting 'round the clock to try to sort it all out.

One school of thought has it that if the attempt to agree on a "framework" for further agriculture negotiations fails, the U.S. might put its weight behind pushing the four new so-called "Singapore issues," which entail a dramatic new set of agreements to further remake the world in the WTO's image and grease the skids for transnational corporations. But at another briefing yesterday afternoon, a group of developing-country spokespeople vowed that the Singapore issues will go nowhere at this meeting, so we may well wind up with a total stalemate.

There were more demonstrations inside the convention center yesterday, a raucous one that disrupted a briefing by Allgeier and another quite moving and dignified memorial for the Korean farmer who took his life Wednesday. For that ceremony, as many as 50 people wearing the green scarves of Mexican campesinos, black and white arm bands, and carrying white flowers filed into the big press briefing room and made quiet statements in tribute to the man who had suffered so much.

We spent much of yesterday at the Hotel Sierra, where observer groups -- most of them highly critical of the WTO and the U.S. role in these proceedings -- hold seminars, panel talks, and strategy sessions all day long. The amount of information offered is staggering and its quality is astonishing. There are scores of people there who have studied these issues for years, whose command of hard facts and political nuances is extraordinary. In aggregate, their critique of the WTO is compelling and devastating. We'll try to get into some of the finer points in the days ahead, but lest anyone think that the protesters here are simply a bunch of malcontents and troublemakers, be assured that this is a brilliant and serious-minded group of people who have only good intentions. In a fair and open debate between pro- and anti-WTO forces, the antis would win hands down.