For more than two decades, the inhumane, neocolonial practices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund provoked angry protests in Third World countries, but few in the Western world took notice. Now, the anti-globalization movement is alive and well in the United States and is expected to have a thing or two to say when world business leaders, heads of state and leading economists meet this weekend in New York City. What follows is a six-point manifesto of what many of the demonstrators want. The list is based on the writings and statements of anti-globalists and contains the demands sought by the Mobilization for Global Justice, a coalition that promised to have 100,000 demonstrators outside the IMF meeting in Washington, D.C., last fall; the meeting was canceled in the aftermath of September 11.

In the next few months, spring will return, we will pay our taxes, and the United States will attack Iraq. The seasons have always returned, with perhaps a few exceptions when asteroids and comets slammed into the Earth. Taxes are often listed among those things considered "inevitable." Why do I put the U.S. attack on Iraq on the same list? Because it is also going to happen, and happen soon. My prediction is not based on hearing three jackals howl in the night, or on the fact that Mars and Venus are flirting in the heavens; it's based on what I consider to be a clear vision of some recent political and technological events. After I review the facts, I think you will share this vision with me.