Ето едно мнение от египетски вестник: In most of the Third Worlds defining globalisation, since the term was first coined, has been the preserve of a handful of intellectuals and specialists. A big fuss was made about how the term should be translated, and the implications of the different alternatives were discussed. Meanwhile, the laws of globalisation, as interpreted by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for the purpose of deregulating international trade, were being promulgated. These laws do not merely apply to the exchange of goods and services, intellectual property rights or investments. They could affect human rights and communications -- especially the technology that now shapes the tastes, priorities and interests of millions. We must confess that no one in the government, the business community or among the intelligentsia has attempted to explain to ordinary citizens how globalisation is going to affect them. No one has admitted that the obligations taken on by the governments that signed the Uruguay agreement and entered the WTO will turn the lives of ordinary people and the societies in which they live upside down. They have yet to learn that the grace period granted the countries of the Third World in accordance with the trade deregulation agreements may well turn out to be a sword of Damocles, if it is not already so. Fate, however, intervened tragically to offset the negligence of those who should have enlightened the public. A few weeks before the WTO ministerial summit in Seattle, EgyptAir flight 990 crashed shortly after taking off from JFK Airport, killing all passengers and crew. The all-powerful, universally influential, American media was instrumental in casting the blame for the crash on a supposedly suicidal Egyptian pilot, thereby clearing other potentially liable parties, notably Boeing and US air traffic control authorities. The massive media campaign that accompanied the investigations into the crash gave the average Egyptian citizen a lesson in the meaning of globalisation. It drove home the enormous impact electronics and mass communications -- overwhelmingly dominated by the US -- have in determining the events that constitute a particular international reality, and in shaping global opinion with regard to these events. The Egyptian people's sense of the injustice perpetrated by a superpower's mighty media machine made them painfully aware of the fact that globalisation is not just a means of lifting trade barriers so that the countries possessing wealth and technology can spread happiness and prosperity throughout the world. Rather, globalisation has begun to reveal itself as little more than a smoke screen behind which the major industrialised nations inexorably continue to advance their interests. It appears that developing nations will find themselves forced to accept conditions that will do great damage, implement them in accordance with deadlines that do not suit them at all, and apply them to various fields in ways that jeopardise their cultural identity and national sovereignty. Just as the media campaign surrounding the EgyptAir crash brought home the capacity that wealthy and powerful nations have to twist the facts under the prevailing laws of globalisation, the Seattle conference demonstrated that globalisation, as epitomised by the Internet, can also be people power. It was the vast forum offered by this mode of communications technology, and the speed at which it makes it possible to transmit information, that enabled anti-WTO activists of all hues to rally their forces, organise demonstrations and protest what they perceive to be the WTO's attempt to transform the world into a commodity for the rich to trade in at everyone else's expense. The events in Seattle did not settle the battle for or against globalisation, the WTO and the rich. The globalisation of communications networks, however, has added a new dimension to the debate. On one hand, it furnishes a potentially powerful means of defending the rights of developing nations and other economic forces against various forms of arm-twisting, the lack of transparency and the major economic powers' bid to define, alone, the rules of the game in the global economic order. On the other hand, it can be just as effective in stripping developing nations of any power -- even that of understanding.