wto to disband and get ethical...

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday July 12, 2002 03:45 by Ollie - katalyzer

wto to disband and base itself on UN's declairation of Human Rights

a spoof wto is going around telling the business community that its going to disbsand, and reform using the UN's universal declaration of human rights as its modus operandi. Its actually getting away with it.

www.gatt.org exists as a spoof on the WTO, and they are, essentially, fooling accountants and managing directors from major corporations! They are very good at doing the spoof thing; their website is very realistic, with PDF docs, 3 languages, but its a Truman show of self-contained farce and front. Subtle clues exist - things that appear to exist on the site don't actually exist because of your own security measures, people get called generals instead of MD's, and it really looks the part. They've been called to meetings, given speeches, and exposed the absurditiy of neoliberalism stunningly.

Topics for discussion included:
Relocating HQ to the 3rd world, for the cheap labour...
Recycling hamburgers to end world hunger...
That disbanding idea!

Rounds of appaluse ensue, brainstorming sessions follow, MD's rabbit on about needing to help poor people and wouldn't you just love to be at one of those meetings when the penny finally drops...

Below is quote from website -

Disbanding schedule announced
On Monday, May 20, the WTO Secretariat approved a schedule by which the WTO in its current form will be disbanded and transformed into the Trade Regulation Organization (TRO), whose charter will be based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The New Internationalist magazine brought my attention to the site. Great mag,(global south perspective on everything from Corporations to Islam to ecology to fair trade to gender...music...) subscription only, but available from Connolly Books.
Their site is V. good too - www.newint.org

Now that's what I call subvertizing!