the tyranny of distance

update: 11.15.06
Pretty much all day today I've been getting these angry Myspace bulletins from my friends in San Francisco about this WTO press release and its proposal to introduce a form of what it calls "compassionate slavery" into Africa. The release is based on a conference held by WTO representative Hanniford Schmidt at the Wharton Business School in Philadelphia, and its contents range from the outlandishly insulting to the absolutely ridiculous. Among the notable quotes:

"Full, untrammelled stewardry is the best available solution to African poverty, and the inevitable result of free-market theory," Schmidt told more than 150 attendees. Schmidt acknowledged that the stewardry program was similar in many ways to slavery, but explained that just as "compassionate conservatism" has polished the rough edges on labor relations in industrialized countries, full stewardry, or "compassionate slavery," could be a similar boon to developing ones.

"Today, in African factories, the only concern a company has for the worker is for his or her productive hours, and within his or her productive years," he [Schmidt] said. "As soon as AIDS or pregnancy hits—out the door. Get sick, get fired. If you extend the employer's obligation to a 24/7, lifelong concern, you have an entirely different situation: get sick, get care. With each life valuable from start to finish, the AIDS scourge will be quickly contained via accords with drug manufacturers as a profitable investment in human stewardees. And educating a child for later might make more sense than working it to the bone right now."

Each time, he [Schmidt] noted, the trade has brought tremendous wealth to the West but catastrophe to Africa, with poverty steadily deepening and ever more millions of dead. "So far there's a pattern: Good for business, bad for people. Good for business, bad for people. Good for business, bad for people. That's why we're so happy to announce this fourth phase for business between Africa and the West: good for business—GOOD for people."

"This is what free trade's all about," said Schmidt. "It's about the freedom to buy and sell anything—even people."

After reading the article I could see how quick the left would be to jump on this. Of all the evil organizations to rail against, the current Republican administration, pharmaceutical companies, the automobile industry, and the WTO are in the top five. And with WTO reps making comments like the last one above ("It's about the freedom to buy and sell anything—even people."), it becomes an even easier target, a figurative untapped oil well to fuel the hatred of corporations for left-wing reactionaries, peace punks and anarchists. But one quote is key here:

One conference attendee asked what incentive employers had to remain as stewards once their employees are too old to work or reproduce. Schmidt responded that a large new biotech market would answer that worry. He then reminded the audience that this was the only possible solution under free-market theory.

There were no other questions from the audience that took issue with Schmidt's proposal.

The quote, while pretty mild in terms and relations of the other outrageous proposals in the press release, should be significant as a red flag. On the one hand, it shows that the WTO's prominence and authority over trade and its ambition over control of the world's industries cannot be questioned. Intelligent people in the audience didn't seem to find any problem with a proposal of formal slavery in Africa, the idea of helping third-world countries by, in a sense, giving people (i.e. corporations) in first-ones an ability to feel "empowered" by doing so.

To some people, it should have raised another red flag—one more akin to a corporate wink and nod. There's a group called the Yes Men who have, in the past, impersonated representatives of the WTO at various high-level conferences in Europe, proposing equally ridiculous ideas and garnering similar response (one proposal in Geneva was to outfit corporate managers in a gold lycra suit, with vibration sensors on the ass to monitor employee morale, as well as this big phallic projection that extended from the crotch of the suit with a monitor at the end facing the wearer of said suit, presumably to watch employees over closed-circuit surveillance) from the audience. That is, very little. Some murmurs, some concealed giggling (at the revelation of the suit [underneath a tear-away business suit]), some note taking, but no questions. It's possible that the audience was so baffled they didn't know where to start, but part of the Yes Men's M.O. is to show just how far organizations can go without being questioned as an authority. The other part of their M.O. is this: "Identity Correction: Honest people impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else." (Quote taken from their site.)

[Aside, the Yes Men have a movie: The Yes Men Movie. And here is a pic I stole of the suit:

End aside.]

On the other side of that are the fooled, in this case, the left wing. On the one hand they were so quick to pounce on the WTO and its ridiculous propositions that lines like, "Those who don't like whaling can purchase rights to specific whales or groups of whales in order to stop those particular whales from getting whaled as much," failed to register as satire. The same way that very-intelligent backers of free trade were exposed by the Yes Men's antics as WTO representatives as passive and unquestioningly supportive of the WTO, no matter how fucking retarded their claims were, the November 15 press release showed a lot of otherwise intelligent lefties as visceral, and sometimes naive, reactionaries. They read the outrageous proposals and their hearts raced and blood pressure jumped. They also took what the WTO says at face value. I'm no fan of the right or corporations, but this time, the joke is on the left.


you've been had guys. sayonara.

random notes: check out the similarities of the pages

real WTO page

Yes Men page

also: i just realized i've entered the real world of blogging. which sucks. blogging has ruined the writing market. everyone who has one of these thinks they're a writer. i just helped put myself out of a job. there's no money in writing anyway. top picture: image i made for a mix-tape. photo from a cross-country airplane shot on chrome with yashica t-5.