Re: [Patents] WTO to disband ?

[Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org>]

Nick Fleming wrote:
> 
> Has anyone else seen this?
> 
> http://www.gatt.org/irelease.html

LOL!

No, this is an insanely funny stunt by the Yes Men!  The Yes
Men manage to get invited to conferences as representatives
of the WTO, but then they make outlandish presentations,
which the conference participants often just blankly
accept.  Several links on this below, including a news
article about this duping a member of the Canadian
Parliament, and the hilarious actual text of the
presentation in Australia which marked the origin of this
hoax.  I was myself duped, and forwarded this to the C-FIT
lists, though with similar querulousness:

http://tbtf.com/blog/2002-05-19.html#1

Plus:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Announcement of WTO closure goes to Canadian
Parliament
Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 02:30:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: RTMark Press <ann44@rtmark.com>


May 28, 2002
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: mailto:representatives@theyesmen.org

ANNOUNCEMENT OF WTO CLOSURE GOES FROM SYDNEY TO CANADA'S
PARLIAMENT
Latest in series of WTO pesterings by The Yes Men

On Tuesday, May 21, a representative of the World Trade
Organization announced the dissolution of his organization
to a shocked but supportive Sydney audience
(http://theyesmen.org/tro/disband.rtf,
http://theyesmen.org/tro/cpa.html). He stated the WTO would
reconstitute as a new organization dedicated to assisting
the world's poor instead of the rich
(http://gatt.org/trastat_e.html).

The bombshell announcement has had worldwide repercussions,
sparking debate on the floor of the Canadian Parliament,
where MP John Duncan took the floor to ask "what impact this
will have on our appeals on lumber, agriculture and other
ongoing trade disputes"
> http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20020525/338502.html

At that point, WTO headquarters in Geneva denounced the
"representative" as an impostor. "While we can appreciate
[the impostors'] sense of humour, we would not wish for
reputable news organizations like yours to be counted among
those duped."

"It isn't humor this time," said Andy Bichlbaum, who
"represented" the WTO in Sydney. "We really do want to
dissolve the WTO and rewrite its charter so that the poor
benefit rather than suffer from trade policy." The group he
belongs to, The Yes Men, have previously represented the WTO
at two international conferences (http://theyesmen.org/wto/,
http://theyesmen.org/finland/)
and on mainstream TV (http://theyesmen.org/tv.html). Each
time, they have been invited by people who mistook a Yes Men
parody website (http://gatt.org/) for the official WTO site
(http://www.wto.org/). The WTO reacted to previous
appearances with outrage and attempts to shut GATT.org down.

After overcoming their initial shock, the audience of
Australian accountants expressed enthusiasm for the change,
and offered many thoughtful suggestions for how world trade
could benefit the poor--moving the headquarters from
Switzerland to a Third World country, for example.

"I'm as right-wing as the next fellow," said one of the
accountants, "but it's time we gave something back to the
countries we've been doing so well from."

In past appearances, the Yes Men hoped to horrify audiences
by taking free-trade ideas to their logical conclusions. 
They argued for selling votes to the highest corporate
bidder (http://theyesmen.org/wto/ppt/), making the poor
"recycle" hamburgers to cure endemic hunger
(http://theyesmen.org/hamburger/), allowing countries to
commit human rights abuses with a system of "justice
vouchers" modelled after pollution vouchers, and even
enabling managers to administer electric shocks to sweatshop
workers from afar by using a futuristic telepresence
technology embedded in a three-foot-long golden phallus
> http://theyesmen.org/finland/photos.html

The joke was on the Yes Men, however, when these proposals
failed to shock audiences, who repeatedly found it credible
that such ideas would come from the WTO.

Finally, the Yes Men decided to say "no."

"We've already demonstrated that audiences of experts will
accept anything whatsoever so long as it comes from the
mouth of the WTO," said Mike Bonanno, a Yes Man who helped
to prepare the lecture in Sydney. "This time, we decided to
use the WTO's authority to lead people on a useful exercise
that could actually produce something positive."

"It really is possible to dissolve and remake the WTO," said
Bichlbaum. "The WTO, after all, was put together from a
bunch of wishful thinking and previous agreements one day in
1994. It can just as quickly and easily be replaced by
something much better, based on other agreements -- the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example."

After the events in Sydney, the Yes Men are even more
optimistic. "The accountants offered us all kinds of useful
suggestions on how to make sure the new version of the WTO
benefits the poor," said Bonanno. "We feel kind of bad for
misleading them, but they came up with much better plans for
the future than we could. We hope they'll accept our
apologies and keep working with us."


CONTACTS: 
The Yes Men: mailto:representatives@theyesmen.org
CPA Australia: mailto:barbara.magee@cpaaustralia.com.au, ;
    mailto:rhonda.traversi@cpaaustralia.com.au
    http://www.cpaonline.com.au/
WTO Public Relations (current): mailto:enquiries@wto.org
WTO Public Relations (previous):
mailto:jean-guy.carrier@wto.org

The WTO representative's speech in Sydney: 
   http://theyesmen.org/tro/disband.rtf
CPA Australia: http://cpaonline.com.au/
The CPA's press release: http://theyesmen.org/tro/cpa.html
WTO dissolution announcement: http://gatt.org/irelease.html
Statistics about trade liberalization's effects on the poor: 
   http://www.gatt.org/trastat_e/
World Development Movement: http://www.wdm.org.uk/
United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 
   http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html


The primary goal of RTMark (http://rtmark.com/) is to
publicize corporate subversion of the democratic process. It
has helped to sponsor three of the Yes Men's appearances.

# 30 #

---

http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20020525/338502.html

Internet hoax convincing enough to fool Alliance MP

WTO imposter

James Baxter
Southam News

OTTAWA - A Canadian Alliance MP fell victim to an
international hoax yesterday that announced the World Trade
Organization was closing down and returning as a new
organization more sensitive to the needs of developing
countries.

The official-looking press release, posted on a Web site run
by an anti-globalization group called the Yes Men, appeared
so authentic to Alliance trade critic John Duncan that he
raised the matter in Question Period.

"Mr. Speaker ... the World Trade Organization has decided to
effect a cessation of all operations to be accomplished over
the next four months, culminating by the end of September,"
Mr. Duncan said. "The World Trade Organization will
reintegrate as a new trade body, the Trade Regulation
Organization. Will the government inform Canadians what
impact this will have on our appeals on lumber, agriculture
and other ongoing trade disputes?"

Pat O'Brien, parliamentary secretary to Pierre Pettigrew,
Minister for International Trade, was understandably
confused by the question and offered only a generic response
that the government would continue to press its cases before
the WTO.

Once made aware of the hoax, Mr. Duncan retracted his
comments in the House.

"It was a brilliant master stroke," the somewhat red-faced
Alliance MP said later with a chuckle. He complimented the
group on its innovative approach and said he only began to
suspect the announcement was a hoax as he read the portion
that said the organization's head offices would be moved
from Geneva to the capital of a less-developed country.
Unfortunately, he said, he had only read about half the
release when his turn came to ask a question.

"I've certainly learned to be a little more careful when it
comes to these sorts of announcements," Mr. Duncan said.

While clearly annoyed, the WTO admitted yesterday that the
Yes Men had won the day.

"Some of you may have received a press release from those
clever folks at Yes Men, which purports to be a press
release from the World Trade Organization public relations,"
Keith Rockwell, the WTO's director of information and media
relations, said in a release of his own. "Needless to say,
the communiqué is a hoax.

"While we can appreciate their sense of humour, we would not
wish for reputable news organizations like yours to be
counted among those duped."

---

http://theyesmen.org/tro/disband.rtf

Friends:

First of all, I'd like to thank all of you for coming here
today, and I'd like to apologize for a rather sudden change
in the program, consequent upon a rather dramatic
development in Geneva yesterday.

I originally intended to transmit today an upbeat report on
some new technologies that affect agribusiness in a global
sense, transforming the landscape for those of us with
special interests in the Third World market; instead, I find
myself the messenger of some rather discomfiting news that
affects every one of us in a very profound way, and that
augurs a veritable sea-change in our relations with our
trading partners, our political influence groups, our
human-resource constituencies, and within our own
organizations. For some of us, this change may be painful.

The news I have just received from Geneva, and that I will
be communicating with you today, is not really news to those
of us who have been working at the WTO during the past
several months. 

As long ago as September, shortly after the events in New
York, a rather unprepossessing proposal emerged from a
meeting at Lausanne Street, a proposal to reevaluate some of
the foundations of the WTO-much as an increasingly vocal
number of critics had been suggesting over the last several
years. 

While all of us present initially felt that such a
reexamination of principles could only be salutary for the
organization's vitality, the developments since then have
surprised all of us. 

The organization quickly divided into two camps: those who
felt that the charter definitions of the WTO, and those of
GATT, were essentially sound and needed only minor "touching
up"; and, on the other side, those who felt that these
principles in themselves were unsound, and that the
organization in its current form was essentially
unsalvageable.

I myself sided with the former camp, those who believed
reform was desirable and sufficient. When I first came to
the World Trade Organization in 1996, I did so out of a
profound belief that the surest path to world peace lay in
prosperity, and that the surest path to prosperity lay in
the liberation of trade. Was it not true that an entire
century nearly free of major wars had been characterized by
a freedom of global trade that has never been equalled? The
19th century's peace, I felt, could live once again.

I had always felt very strongly-ever since high school, in
fact--that a marketplace of free endeavour, liberated from
the repressive forces of government regulation, was the way
to a happy society. In my high school economics class, I
remember watching over the course of the year the ten-part
series in which Milton Friedman expounded the principles of
"laissez-faire" economics. Around the second week of this
class I can remember telling my parents they shouldn't lend
sugar to the neighbors, since doing so interfered with the
market: everyone for themselves! 

My competence at this kind of argument increased greatly at
university, where I studied exactly how a marketplace of
goods and ideas, maintained through the free play of natural
human forces, could bring stability to human society. I
became ever more adept at the arguments showing that when
entrepreneurs compete on level playing fields, striving
after profit and only after profit, the public realm
benefits, as do the poor.

I was at times aware of cracks in this picture, but like the
economists I studied with, I felt them to be due to
insufficiently applied principles of free trade. Sure,
inequality was momentarily growing-but this was a phase
through which the world would transition to more equitable
distribution through the help of a well-oiled marketplace.
Growing poverty, similarly, was a temporary symptom that
would vanish in time. And the entrepreneurial playing field,
while favoring megamergers and an ever more restrained
economy that favored the already powerful, would eventually
loosen up in accordance with theory.

It was therefore a very considerable distance I had to
travel in order to accept that these problems were not just
going to go away-and that the errors might not be so much
temporary glitches in the theory of laissez-faire, as
fundamental mistakes in that theory. But as more and more of
my colleagues crossed over into the camp of those who felt
this way, and who felt that the WTO was therefore
unsalvageable, I too became overpowered by doubt.

Unfortunately, the events of the months following the first
meeting helped the naysayers buttress their arguments. The
demise of Enron, for example, happened to coincide with
discussions about whether the entire system upon which we
rested was a mere house built of cards. And as we studied
more and more deeply the reality that we had helped shape,
the most dismal conclusions became all but unavoidable to
the majority.

I myself was one of the last to join this majority. I still
believe that the WTO was founded with the poor of the earth
in mind, upon the principle that a free marketplace benefits
all, leading to prosperity for everyone including the poor.
Concern for the interests of the poor are what led me to
pursue this line of work in the first place.

But this concern has always dominated for me over my
devotion to any particular interpretation of free trade
methodologies-which is why today, I am at peace when I
announce to you what I learned yesterday. The WTO will be
issuing a public statement by the end of the week, but the
die has been cast. As of September 2002, having seen the
effects of policies whose only intent was to bring greater
prosperity and peace, the World Trade Organization in its
present form will cease to exist.

Over the next two years, we of the WTO will endeavour to
refound our organization along different lines, based in a
different understanding of the purposes of world trade. 

The new organization will have as its foundation and basis
the United Nations Charter of Human Rights, which we feel
will be a good start to insuring that the organization will
have human rather than business interests as its bottom
line.

As of September, agreements reached under the WTO will be
suspended pending ratification by the new incarnation of
this organization, which we are tentatively calling the
Trade Regulation Organization. 

Many agreements will, we are confident, be re-ratified
within the new framework, but there are of course no
assurances. The TRO agreements presumably will be examined
not only individually-for ethical qualities, etc.-but also
within a global picture. Even some seemingly benign
agreements may not be appropriate under certain conditions,
for example for those countries at the very start of a long
process of emergence from poverty. 

I advise all of you who depend upon such agreements to
examine them over the next three months with human rights
and public prosperity issues in mind, as a way not so much
of second-guessing the new structure, as of preparing for
the worst while expecting the best.


Now I know this news will profoundly shock many of you. I
know that it still shocks me, even though I have had many
months to prepare. These were months in which I learned many
things that I did not know, or did not fully
understand-things that have profoundly altered my vision of
the work that we have done, and that have led me to accept
that our policies have, overall, had exactly the opposite
effect as that which we originally intended. Understanding
the extent of our error has brought me peace with this
difficult decision.

I have come to understand the implications of things I knew,
but did not fully absorb, before.... For example, that the
number of people in the world living on less than $2 per day
has increased by 50% since 1980-during the very period most
heavily liberalized....

[read from facts sheet]

I'm sorry that I cannot provide a great deal of detail on
the outlines of the new Trade Regulation Organization. This
is where the real work begins, of course. In a way, we at
the WTO have been experts in the problem; becoming experts
in the solution will require a difficult transition. 

We do know that that the TRO will be founded along the lines
of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. We know that the
the bottom-line goal of the TRO will be to harness world
trade so that it benefits human beings-unlike the WTO, whose
bottom-line goal has been to allow corporate commerce free
reign regardless of immediate consequence; with the TRO,
immediate consequence will be, in a word, consequent: since
we have seen what overheavy reliance on theory can result
in, we must orient ourselves in the future to rely primarily
on the facts as the facts appear to us.

There are countless signs in the world today showing us the
problems with our approach to trade. We at the WTO are
reacting to these signs by refounding our work upon new
principles-human rather than corporate ones. 

All of us must find the heart and the courage to find his or
her own way of doing something powerful on behalf of the
powerless, and if necessary to change our directions,
despite the long accumulation of momentum and merit that
makes it a difficult move for all of us with a stake in the
world as it is today. I ask all of you, come join us in this
long road of struggle, in this effort to transform world
trade into an asset for all human beings, rather than a
liability for many or most of them.

As we eat/finish our meals here today, let us not forget the
starving, nor ignore the devastating impact many of our
policies have had on the ability of poor populations to eat
anything at all.

But as we eat, let us likewise not find a frog in our
throat; let us maintain an appetite through the secure
knowledge that we have the desire, the ability, and the
public support to improve living standards for the poor of
the world and for everyone-through decisions we make today,
tomorrow, and far into the future.

Thank you.