Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 11:42:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: WTO Transparency Services
<[email protected]>
Subject: <nettime>
Participation_in_your_upcoming_Fifth_Ministerial_in_Cancun_Mexico
[This letter was sent last week by postal mail as
well.]
Dear World Trade Organization,
We would very much like to participate in your
upcoming Fifth Ministerial in Cancun, Mexico (10 to 14
September 2003). You have announced that you are open
to the participation of Non-Governmental Organizations
"concerned with matters related to those of the WTO"
(http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min03_e/ngo_acc_e.htm);
as such we are hereby applying to attend, as per the
instructions on your website.
Over the course of the last four years, our
organization has consistently demonstrated a strong
concern with and commitment to matters relating to the
WTO. In fact, our organization's sole mission has been
to bring an honest and fair representation of WTO
policies to as broad a public as possible.
We have done this through impersonation and
subterfuge. Because our website, GATT.org, is often
mistaken for your website, WTO.org (the GATT being, of
course, the more moderate predecessor of the WTO.), we
have on five separate occasions received invitations
to deliver lectures on behalf of your organization to
audiences who were for the most part intimately
involved with WTO policy in their daily professional
lives.
These people were, in order of appearance:
international trade lawyers; business viewers of a
satellite television program devoted to global
markets; textile industry figures including business
leaders, engineers, and academics; university students
of economics and business; and accountants with a
special interest in international trade.
The content of our first three presentations was as
follows. Please note that, in these three lectures,
none of the audiences seemed to feel there was any
fundamental clash between what we presented and the
spirit and aims of the WTO. Each time, we took a
number of elaborate steps to discover anyone harboring
such feelings, but we never succeeded.
I. In 1999, before a meeting of international trade
lawyers in Salzburg, Austria we gave a lecture
promoting, in the WTO's name, (a) the elimination of
cultural differences in the interest of economic
efficiency, and (b) the privatization of voting, for
the same reasons. One lawyer objected to our insults
to Italians, but the corporate buying of citizen votes
encountered no objection at all.
II. On CNBC's July 19, 2001 Marketwatch Europe
program, we argued on behalf of the WTO that might
equaled right and that "justice vouchers" might make a
nice addition to the panoply of tools at the disposal
of economic streamliners. The show's producers thanked
us and sent us a copy of the program for our archives.
III. At the "Textiles of the Future" conference in
Tampere, Finland (August 14-16, 2001) we explained
that the sort of remote-labor arrangements the GATS
agreement facilitates are merely an "improved" version
of slavery–and we applauded that improvement. We then
unveiled a three-foot golden phallus that would enable
managers of the future to more easily control their
distant sweatshop "slaves." (One audience member
objected to the shape, which she felt implied that
women could not be managers.)
It is clear from these audiences' positive or absent
reactions that, in each of these instances, we
represented the WTO faithfully and truthfully enough,
despite the seeming extremeness and actual inhumanity
of our material. We obviously had our finger on the
pulse of WTO policy, since those who live and breathe
it every day recognized our versions as normal.
For this reason, we are not only quite "concerned
with" WTO policy in the sense that you meant it–"busy
with," "engaged by," etc.–but in the sense of
"disturbed by" as well. The reasons should be quite
obvious. (The additional definition of "concerned
with"–"affected by," as in "This problem concerns all
of us"–we assume you did not mean, as that would
encompass everyone on the planet, more and more
disastrously every
year.)
Fortunately for our sense of optimism, however, our
fourth lecture had a quite different outcome.
IV. At a university in Plattsburgh, New York, we
suggested to a student audience that a good market
solution to starvation and hunger in the Third World
would be to have poor people recycle hamburgers. This
lecture, in great contrast with the previous ones, met
with horror and catcalls from the very first
paragraph–giving us hope that perhaps only those who
live WTO policy for years are able to stomach its
logical extensions.
V. Finally, at an accounting conference in Sydney, we
announced that the WTO, having seen the failure of its
policies, was disbanding entirely, to be replaced by a
new organization, solidly founded on humanitarian
principles. As in the first three lectures, the
audience was delighted–but a great deal more so, and
with a deeper elan andengagement.
The improvements to the WTO that the Sydney
accountants suggested were,
in
fact, so terrific and potentially transformative, that
we would very much like to share them with you at
Cancun in person.
We hope very much to hear from you soon, and to meet
you not long after that.
With very best wishes,
Andrew Bichlbaum and Michael Bonanno
WTO Transparency Services
www.gatt.org
www.theyesmen.org
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FWD: WTO Transparency Services letter to WTO
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Type: discussion