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LET THEM EAT HAMBURGER The True Story of the End of the WTO

Sample chapters

The Yes Men October 27, 2002

Let Them Eat Hamburger October 27, 2002 p. 2

Foreword 3 Part I: THEORY 7

Trade Regulation Relaxation and Concepts of Incremental Improvement: Governing Perspectives from 1790 to Present 8

To Salzburg! 16 Pushing Our Luck 30 Back to the Drawing and Quartering Board 50 In the Face of Massive Protest, a Basis for WTO Legitimacy 57

Enlarging our Vision 65 Towards the Globalization of Textile Trade 72

In the Cold and Cheerless Northland 80 Part II: PRACTICE 89

Animal triste est [not finished] 90 New Horizons in Third-World Agribusiness Globalization 91

[chapter, not written] 106 [chapter, not written] 107 Broad Changes in Approaches to World Trade 108

[chapter, not written] 128 [chapter, not written] 129

Appendix of correspondence 130 Index 195


Foreword

When the folks at Monsanto wish to test public support for an unusual vegetable

that they have developed, they convene a group of citizens interested in the eating

of vegetables, who agree to participate in a study against a small fee. The citizens

in this “focus group” then taste the product in question and deliver their verdicts.

In this way the engineers at Monsanto can rework the vegetable until public

approval is forthcoming, or, alternately, focus more on promotion and lobbying.

They can then be sure they’re on good solid ground, vegetablewise!

The WTO, like Monsanto, needs to know just how strongly people support

what it makes—in the WTO’s case, not vegetables but free-market policy. Do

people really believe that more and more freedom for large corporations will

benefit everyone, even the poorest? If so, how strongly? Is the theory that

happiness comes from free markets on good solid ground, public-perception-wise?

This is a safety issue not only for the WTO, but for leaders as well. George

W. Bush, for example, mentioned defense of free markets nine times in his three-

page call for unprovoked war on Iraq.1 Precisely how much enthusiasm can George

W. Bush count on, free-market-wise?

To find out, we decided to do like Monsanto. On behalf of the WTO, we

would present various free-trade proposals to specific special-interest groups.

These proposals would be “flavor-enhanced” to ensure strong reactions—reactions

that would show us how far these publics would follow where free markets led.

How far would we follow where research needs led? Quite far, it turned out, as our

effort evolved into a sprawling two-year process. Its humble beginnings in no way

suggested that we’d eventually find ourselves in the hallowed halls of academe,

showing students how to eat their own feces... or on prime-time television,

defending torture and attacking knowledge... let alone wearing the obscenest

possible costume in front of hundreds of Ph.D.s.

For all that it grew quite spectacular—sparking discussion in national

parliaments and leading, finally, to the dissolution of the WTO itself—our research

began in an entirely humdrum manner. In contrast to the focus groups we’d travel

around the world for later, our very first subjects came to us: they were all those

1 “National Security Strategy” booklet, September 2002, www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf.


who, doing internet research on WTO policy, happened to stumble onto our

website.

A typical researcher misled to our site—GATT.org, for the General

Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which in 1995 led to the WTO—would find, right

away, a design quite similar to that of WTO.org, the principal WTO website, but

with some special content added. Near the top, for example, she would find an

item about a case then being heard by the WTO:

Brazilian AIDS drugs a sure path to economic sickness The United States correctly argued that Brazil must no longer manufacture proprietary AIDS drugs in violation of U.S. drug company patents, even if this will mean removing 100,000 Brazilians from treatment rosters. The U.S., calling patent enforcement a form of “tough love,” insisted that the number of lives lost to AIDS in the short term will be dwarfed by the number saved in the long term through a more efficient medical products market.

Our perceptive researcher might recognize that this reflected the orthodox

take—that companies such as Pfizer have a right to their income from drug patents,

regardless of the demographic inconvenience it might cause to a country such as

Brazil. But she would surely be taken aback by the phrasing; referring to death as

“tough love” was undeniably horrible! And with the figures laid out so crudely,

could she really be sure that the 100,000 lives lost to AIDS due to patent

enforcement were worth the ultimate benefits?

Reading on, our visitor would then see:

A new Holocaust Much has been made lately of IBM's participation in the Holocaust. Indeed, IBM proactively and creatively helped the Nazis identify all of Germany's Jews, which in turn made possible the biggest slaughter of all time. Today, however, another Holocaust is taking place: it goes by the name of “distrust of big business,” and it is every bit as terrible as the last.

At this point, of course, our reader would likely turn violent; unable to strike or

shoot us directly, she would lash out with torrents of vitriol.

Such reactions were the key to our research, the raw material on which it

depended. When determining how to measure this anger, we esteemed that a

great deal of blind fury at one particular item would be taken to indicate unease

with the underlying principle of that item—that corporate freedom to profit should

be protected no matter what the human cost, for example. On the other hand,

anger aimed at a particular aspect of an item—its focus on Germany, for example,


or computers—might indicate that the underlying principles were acceptable to the

reader and only the details were offensive.

To our surprise—and to the detriment of our research—such reactions

almost never materialized. Even mild reactions turned out to be rare, and the bulk

of our mail consisted of humdrum requests for this or that bit of data. The main

outrage at GATT.org turned out to come from the WTO staff itself; the Director-

General himself announced that he “deplored” our research methodology, and

suggested that we were “creating confusion,” “undermining WTO transparency,”

etc.2

Frustrated with our lack of results, we made the best of it by always responding to

banal queries with intensely “flavor-enhanced” answers, in a second, more

precisely aimed attempt to obtain a reaction.

For example, when a representative of the Isle of Man wrote in to learn

whether his island was “free to have its own exemptions” from WTO rules, we

responded with a dissertation on freedom, true to the neoliberal take on the

subject but enhanced to stimulate latent unease:

No land on earth may be considered free, if freedom means to engage in activities that endanger the well-being of corporate enterprise. So long as, and only so long as, nations understand their place on earth as being in service of, and at the beck of, the driving forces of economics, so shall these nations be afforded a place at the right hand of power. But let the tiniest nation—yea, even Gibraltar, even the Isle of Man—arise upon the poop-deck of declamation... let it wield for even a moment the baton of popular power against the furnace of progress... let it stagger drunkenly into the path of the train of misguidedness... then, indeed, shall that nation see the full force of our petulance and our peevishness unleashed squarely upon its head, and all its head's heads as well.3

Would this be acceptable? If not, what part would pique our friend’s ire?

Unfortunately this exchange, like a good many others,4 produced only the vaguest

confusion, and no substantial objection.

We began to admit to ourselves that our work was a failure: after several

months, we had gathered a few insignificant snippets of anger, no more. Worse,

we had run out of ideas on how to stimulate more.

2 “WTO DG Moore deplores fake WTO websites: They ‘undermine WTO transparency’” (www.wto.org/english/news_e/pres99_e/pr151_e.htm). 3 See E-mail Appendix for full exchange.


Then, on May 17, 2000, an entirely new sort of e-mail arrived at GATT.org.

It was addressed directly to Director-General Moore; the e-mail’s sender, an

attorney with offices in New York, London, and Des Moines, had a request for the

chief.

This mission, should we choose to accomplish it on Moore’s behalf, would

would involve many dangers. We could quite possibly end up in prison; we would

certainly end up much poorer. If we were successful, on the other hand, we would

know just how far people might follow free-market theory, and at just what point

they would refuse to accept the directions it dictated.

Was it worth the risk? It took us three months to decide. And then we

replied.

4 See E-mail Appendix, especially “A ‘grassroots’ information campaign is proposed” and “Information gladly provided but safety requires strong caveats.”


Part I: THEORY

A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do.

Stanley Milgram, 1965


Trade Regulation Relaxation and Concepts of Incremental Improvement: Governing Perspectives from 1790 to Present

This lecture 5was delivered at the October 27, 2000 Conference on International Services in Salzburg, Austria. It was delivered by one “Andreas Bichlbauer,” since Director-General Moore was not available. A few dozen international trade lawyers, from some of the world’s largest law firms, attended the lecture, which was accompanied by Powerpoint slides.

Thank you very much. It’s a great pleasure to be here, in Salzburg. and I’d like to thank

the organizers, the other hosts, and everybody who’s taken the time to listen, even for an

hour, to the messages of the WTO.

We'll be talking for the next twenty minutes about impediments to free trade, and

about the various barriers that have been erected against trade over the years—in official,

less-official, and completely non-official ways. These barriers, of course, affect not only all

of you, but of course all of the world. These are crucial issues of progress and

development and so on and so forth.

Our primary focus to begin with will be on a form of restriction simply called

Tariff Trade Barriers: ordinary economic impediments to free trade established by

government agencies to protect their citizenries against the rational progression of market

forces. Everybody knows these, these are the best known.

Some of the others are not as well understood. There’s Non-Tariff Trade Barriers,

which can include not only legislation, but also customs and culture, performing the role

otherwise performed by government entities in imposing limits to the proper functioning

of economic forces.

Finally we have Systemic Trade Barriers, which are the most advanced, if most

unrecognized, form of free-trade barrier. These are deep barriers, at the level of systems

and structures, at the very core of the democracies in most advanced countries today.

And in all three cases, we’ll be talking not only the problems, because we don’t like

to focus only on the negative side of things—though there is a good deal of that these


days, as I think you are all aware—but on solutions as well: either past solutions that have

worked, or nearly worked, to future solutions that we can only imagine.

Tariff Trade Barriers Now Tariff Trade Barriers are what countries have done at various times to isolate the

conditions of economic development on behalf of the well-being of their own citizens, or

of the citizens of other countries for which they feel some sense of responsibility for

whatever historical reason. They’re an attempt to isolate the conditions of economic

leverage.

And the most notorious case, that everyone associates with trade in many parts of

the world, especially among trade-sceptical sectors of the population, is the so-called

"honest bananas" case.6

You all know the joke: “It isn’t possible to kill a person by hitting that person over

the head with a banana. It is, however, possible to kill a person over bananas by hitting

that person over the head with a machete.” [Titters from the audience.]

What does this mean?

There's a certain amount of violence in the world—past, present, and future. The

EU, in trying to control its bananas, is actually trying to control the violence done in the

distant past by European member states against their former colonies. The EU has done

this, however, by inflating the prices of bananas to artificially support these countries—

countries decrepit in part due to past violence by Europe, yes, but the EU’s present

support simply debilitates their ex-colonies further.

Conversely, the EU is trying to control the bananas of others, if you will. Yes,

violence has been committed in Central America on behalf of banana concerns like Dole

and Chiquita. But by keeping these “violent bananas” out of the European market, the EU

5 Margin notes have been added to this chapter to assist the time-pressed or fragile reader in skimming it. These notes convey the core nuggets of value, without the full plate of suffering in which they are served. 6 This refers to the 1997 WTO ruling that required Europe to buy the cheapest bananas possible, no matter how or where they were produced. The Europeans had preferred to buy slightly more expensive bananas produced in Africa under reasonable conditions, rather than from US-owned companies Chiquita and Del Monte, which had been resorting to strong-arm tactics and violence in Central America for years. But the WTO ruled that since the Central American bananas were cheaper, Europe must buy bananas there, no matter what the social costs. See www.un.int/stlucia/UNGA52.htm.

Here is a joke about bananas and machetes.

TTBs: when government gets in the way of free trade.


An obsession with violence?

precludes the development of both the European market, and the Central American

“political market,” if you will.

And so what we have is a lose-lose situation. We have an obsession with violence

against the rational functioning of the marketplace.

Now just to describe this obsession with violence in a little more detail, and to illustrate

the degree to which people identify violence with the current environment in a way that

doesn’t really reflect reality, here are some figures from a study undertaken by Hill and

Knowlton of perceptions of violence from 1790 to the present by a sample of U.S.

consumers.

In this study, consumers were asked how much violence they thought there was in

various periods of history. The results were ranked as “imaginary”—the first response that

respondents give, without thinking too much—and “considered”—the response given

after a few moments of reflection. For comparison, we show the actual violence—i.e.

violence by people against people resulting in death. That kind of violence is a fairly measurable

quantity, with a great deal of skew, of course.

The first period respondents were

asked about was from 1790 to 1850. As you

can see, there’s a certain amount of actual

violence, on the left, with a great deal more

imaginary violence. In the next period, from

1850 to 1913, the actual violence increases,

but perceptions do not.

Then you have 1913 to 1946—two

World Wars, great devastation around the

world, a great deal of actual violence: it’s pretty much off the chart. Yet the considered and

the imaginary violence actually follow a fairly smooth curve.

Finally, from 1946 to the present, actual violence goes somewhat down, yet

considered and imaginary violence stay just as high: people, remembering the previous

period, still imagine there to be a very high level of violence. And as far as the future is

concerned, world violence will surely continue to decrease but perceptions are very

unlikely to.

The importance of violence is exaggerated.


What this series of figures shows is that perceptions of violence really have

nothing to do with reality.

So, this puts us in quite a situation. We have to deal with a weight of irrationality, if

you will. And as far as banana issues are concerned, you might imagine that with this sort

irrationality, things could be quite difficult for us at the WTO—and in fact they are.

[Laughter.] That is why we feel that in all matters a rational economic approach to the

problems of violence in the past and present is far superior to one influenced by any

human emotions.

But why are we at the WTO so concerned with rationality around violence, especially

insofar as bananas are concerned?

It's like in that Jerry Lewis movie, when there's that domino effect—the person

slips on the banana. Behind that person is another person, and behind that another—and

behind that one a table. On the table, there could well be a computer—perhaps a server

maintaining the website of Chiquita. You can see the progression. Any matter can lead to any

other matter. When the server goes down they lose a day's business receipts, the market

value takes a tumble and it takes weeks or even months to recover.

That's why we at the WTO have always given the proper weight to immediate

matters of trade restriction, no matter how frivolous they might appear at first glance—in

other words, we take our bananas seriously.

Non-tariff Trade Barriers Non-tariff trade barriers are a little more complicated; they’re not always legislated by

government, so you don’t always find them on the books. In this case, local matters—

legislation, environmental protectionism, and customs, or simply the history and

personality of a locale—take the place of government in restricting the free flow of goods

and money, imposing limits to the proper functioning of economic forces.

Some of the barriers to cooperation can be explained best by an example.

Not long ago KLM, which is based in Holland, and Alitalia, which is Italian, tried

to merge. Now the actual prime variable here was sleep. In Amsterdam and in Holland

and in most northern countries, people sleep at night, and take at most a small

NTTBs: when culture gets in the way of free trade.


Mittagsschlaf7 in the daytime. There’s very little distraction from the work environment.

There’s a fairly regular approach to comings and goings, especially sleep.

In Italy, on the other hand, you have a totally different situation, in which sleep is

done during the day as much as at night, almost. And lunches are quite long indeed. You

have lunches that can last for an hour or two hours; you can have a nap after that; there’s

conviviality, hilarity; there’s drinking, a little too much wine, there’s digging in to saltimbocca

romana and all of these delightful dishes that end up basically getting in the way of work.

It is impossible to coordinate when you have two entirely different systems like

this in such a confined space as one airline. So the merger fails and nothing comes out of

it.

And this example is particularly poignant for us because much of the efforts at

globalization have come out of a process of peace-seeking. Ever since that spike in the

two World Wars it’s been very important to forge lasting alliances between wealthy,

powerful neighbors—or not neighbors, today everybody’s a neighbor. In any case,

through these alliances, the terrors of war can to some degree be avoided.

So it’s quite poignant when small-scale alliances are threatened by local

pecularities—in which local customs, legislation, etc. impede the march of commerce. You

have a large-scale situation and a small-scale situation and they’re quite analogous.

In such a dynamically unstable environment, there is no way to tell what can

happen in regards to the full array of transnational interests, and in consequence to the

stability of postwar peace.

Again we have a potential domino effect... which is why we at the WTO are

concerned about this as a general, systemic problem.

So let us sum up. Local disturbances can hold up production, they can increase

employment overhead due to the lifestyles of greater indulgence, greater momentary

enjoyment. There is a prevalence of diseases that do not exist in other places, so you have

death coming sooner, diseases coming sooner, greater overhead in terms of medical care,

greater overhead in terms of missed work and training vs. longevity, and of course you

simply have less time at work everyday, plus a certain amount of alcoholism at the end, in

the second part of the day.

7 A productivity-enhancing “cat nap” for managers.

Sleeping during the day is a terrible problem.


It’s sort of a system of fluid dynamics in which every little disturbance influences

the entire system. So we’re faced with a situation in which everything is quite serious, in

which anything can give rise to macroscopic inefficiencies that are potentially fatal. Of

course artificial borders to the free flow of capital in whatever form, legislative, custom,

etc. are a liability in terms of free trade and in terms of survival of the system. And what is

in the future of this? We don’t know. What is the potential solution to a system in which

not only governments but local variations in culture conspire to impede the free flow of

progress? Mystery.

Systemic Trade Barriers Finally, we’d like to talk about the most mysterious, but strangely the most likely to be

solved of all three of these kinds of barriers and that’s Systemic Trade Barriers.

Now we all know what democracy is: it's the participation of the greatest number

of consumers possible in the direct functioning of the government and economy

It follows almost necessaritly that free trade is the other side of the democracy

coin—and so consumerism is the ultimate form of democracy and citizenry in the modern

world.

Now consumer choice, so important in regulating the effects of capital and

making important market adjustments, is an essential component of the democratic

process—but this role is seldom acknowledged, and is always inefficient. We know of the

vast range of peculiarities that government assumes in today's democracies, the

manifestations of popular power: parliaments, congresses, etc. So much variety, so much

complexity, can only spell inefficiency—which is sometimes lethal to democracy itself.

But there are solutions to some of these inefficiencies, and as in many cases we

can look to the private sector to see emerging solutions to the vast inefficiencies of so-

called democratic institutions.

One possible solution is being tested in the field of american politics to streamline

the grotesquely inefficient system of elections—elections being, of course, at the core of a

consumer democracy.

Let us first look at elections as they currently unroll, with all their inefficiencies in

place.

STBs: when democracy gets in the way of free trade.


At the top, we have a number of corporations, let's call them corporations A.

From each corporation, involving the work of about twelve employees per corporation,

goes a great deal of money to a campaign—let's call it campaign B. This can be for any

elected official. From the campaign—involving the work of a great number of workers—

goes a great deal of money to a P.R. agency—let's call it C. From the P.R. agency, with the

help of about 50 employees on full-time salary, goes a great deal of money to T.V. stations,

who, finally, relay the information to the consumer—with no transfer of money, of course

(except in the case of pay-per-view, etc.).

And of course the irony of this, in order to generate all the money that it takes to

fuel this chain, you have all the workers of the corporations who are also the citizens and

the voters at the end of the chain. So it’s a system that just feeds itself and has very little

actual utility.

Now on the other hand, another model: in this case you have

the corporations paying, with about the same number of people

involved, one entity: Voteauction.com.8 Voteauction.com, in turn,

employs only four people to transmit not merely information, not

advertisements in-between pay-per-view movies, but actual money,

directly to the consuming voter.

Vote-auction.com is a system that permits voters to voluntarily

auction their votes to the highest bidder. It’s a forum for people to

voluntarily to offer their votes, when they don’t have a strong affinity for either candidate.

It works to streamline the entire process, and everything works out basically to the benefit

of the consumers, as well as the originating corporations.

Summary So to sum up: we've talked about barriers to free trade past, present, and future. And

those barriers that we'd like to see in the past right away are the tariff-based problems—

bananas.

Requiring a bit more finesse and a little more care in dealing with people-based

opposition is the second type—non-tariff trade barriers, really present problems in places

8 Now at www.vote-auction.net. See also www.rtmark.com/voteauction.html.

Votes ought to be sold.

“On the other hand, another model...”


in Europe and elsewhere. Different working habits, siestas, etc.: all of this has to be

standardized, and this is a very long process.

And finally we have, most complicated of all, systemic trade barriers, which are

problems at the core of modern democracies, and yet which could be solved much more

quickly than non-tariff trade barriers by allowing the free functioning of a very competent

marketplace. A free marketplace. And I like markets, I think this is what markets are for.

Thank you.


To Salzburg!

“We’re here for the CILS conference,” Mike had croaked to the Crowne Plaza

welcome woman that morning. “Mr. Bichlbauer here is a speaker.”

“Dr.,” Andy corrected.

She had presented a folder and nametag to Andy, and then pointed across

the somber fleur-de-lys carpet to a big maroon door. “The moderator awaits.”

We’d stumbled off the train from Vienna a half-hour before, sleep-deprived

and hopped-up on bad coffee. Our suits and shoes were as uncomfortable as

thrift-store clothes get—but they looked almost right, and the discomfort gave us

something to think about.

As the Crowne Plaza had loomed into view, our clothes seemed to get even

tighter. In a last-ditch attempt to trick ourselves into nonchalance, we did Groucho

Marx imitations in front of the Rolls Royce parked out in front, before catching

ourselves: what if someone should see us? We weren’t just idiot scientists

anymore, doing market research for unspecified clients. Now we were going to tell

lawyers, in person, what the WTO wanted to happen, what the Next Step would be,

how they’d have to behave in the future. We were what it said on our bios (who

had the bios? had we brought bios?): authoritative representatives of the WTO,

the ultimate authority in commercial authority. We had to look and sound:

dignified, irreproachable, fateful, permanent. At least as good as a Rolls Royce in

front of a Crowne Plaza hotel.

Rather than going straight to the moderator, we shuffled off to a corner to

examine the folder we’d been handed, like a new kind of scientist examining a new

kind of life-form. With some trepidation, we peeled open the envelope containing

the conference materials. Would it say “Joke’s on You!” in big clown-letters? Or

would there just be a dry paragraph informing us of our rights, just before a

squadron of Austrian cops came to take us away?

Weirdly, neither. Instead we read, right at the top of the “International

Trade Panel” section, 11 AM to 1 PM., Schlossaal II:

Andreas Bichlbauer, WTO: Trade Regulation Relaxation and Concepts of Incremental Improvement: Governing Perspectives from 1970 to Present.


This was just what we had sent in, but it was difficult to believe our eyes as

we saw it in the context we’d intended it for. We hovered as long as we reasonably

could, staring at the evidence: we really were in Salzburg, we really had gotten

invited to speak as the WTO, we really were scheduled to do so in just half an hour.

We really were going to prison!

Now before setting off from the States, we had tried to anticipate what could

happen to us in the city of Mozart. Never having delivered crudely fascistic

messages to audiences of international lawyers before, we didn’t know how they

would react—or whether we might even face physical danger.

These lawyers, after all, had invited us thinking that we were ordinary trade

functionaries. They had expected a lecture expressing clearly and simply some

orthodox WTO ideas, and we had never let on that we would instead be doing

market research: that we would present orthodox WTO ideas, yes, but in versions

that the WTO Secretariat, or anyone sane, would find utterly horrifying.

Might our audience content themselves with ordinary expressions of

outrage? If so, we were quite well prepared. We depended on such reactions for

our research, in fact, and so we had developed for them a kind of Richter scale, to

help rank ideas as (a) annoying, (b) offensive, or (c) profoundly offensive:

(a) Irritated reactions fully within the bounds of propriety—moans, tapped

feet, sarcastic questions during Q&A, etc.—would indicate annoyance with either

the ideas the lecturer was presenting, or with the terms in which they were

cloaked.

(b) Moderately inappropriate reactions—mock-accidental belchings or

fartings, slightly rude but low-volume interruptions, etc., such as are common in

today’s House of Lords—would indicate deeper offense.

(c) Finally, violent behaviors greatly exceeding the bounds of propriety and

the law, of the type common in the U.S. Congress before the U.S. Civil War, would

indicate profound offense. One could make no mistake that Representative Brooks

was offended by Senator Sumner’s proposals when, in 1856, he beat Sumner

senseless on the floor of the Senate:

If I desired to kill the Senator, why did not I do it? You all admit that I had him in my power.... It was expressly to avoid taking life that I used an ordinary cane, presented to me by a friend in Baltimore, nearly three months before its application to the ‘bare head’ of the Massachusetts


Senator. I went to work very deliberately—as I am charged and this is admitted—and speculated somewhat as to whether I should employ a horsewhip or a cowhide; but knowing that the Senator was my superior in strength, it occurred to me that he might wrest it from my hand, and then—for I never attempt any thing I do not perform—I might have been compelled to do that which I would have regretted the balance of my natural life.9

Yet this offensiveness scale of ours was not quite complete; an audience

might also react in even more violent ways. Had not mere ballets resulted in riots,

with death and destruction ensuing? “When The Rite Of Spring was performed in

Paris in 1913,” composer Jim Steinman recounts, “it caused one of the major riots

in history. The entire audience tore the Paris Opera House apart and it had to be

rebuilt. Police were called in, three people were killed, it was amazing.”10

Perhaps not. And perhaps our lurid imaginings were enhanced by our family

histories—both Andy and Mike having lost several ancestors to those of our hosts

just sixty years earlier.

Yet even if our audience maintained its civility—even, perhaps, exhibiting

none of the expected reactions—might they not choose, in all civility, to have us

imprisoned? At a certain point, realizing our imposture, disappointed and angry,

they would call the police; what the Austrian justice system might have to say

about impersonating the WTO, even for the sake of good research, was anyone’s

guess.

A fellow at the entrance of Schlossaal II (literally, Castle Room II) pointed us to

the moderator, a pleasant-looking lady who was in the process of being spoken at

by an angry-looking man in a dark suit that fit him quite well. The subject seemed

to be money—something about things going wrong. The lady’s passivity and

forbearance soothed Andy’s nervous masculine mind, as it suggested she wouldn’t

ask difficult questions.

Andy approached and confidently stuck out his hand. “I am Andreas

Bichlbauer.”

“Ah!” said the man to her right with much gusto, instantly no longer angry.

“I’m Bob Hock.” He took the proffered hand. “We need to talk, I need to get

information about you. I’m your moderator.”

9 July 21, 1856, The Congressional Globe, gatt.org/resources/#caning. 10 gatt.org/resources/#stravinsky.


“Oh! Wonderful! Well! Let’s talk!”

Catastrophe already? Andy recovered his hand and snuck a pleading look at

Brian and Mike.

Mike stepped up and introduced himself. He and Brian were Andy’s security

detail, he said—“in case anyone attacks him with a pie.” Brian’s video camera

would catch the likeness of a hypothetical pie-thrower, so that same could be

prosecuted. “You know how it’s been.”

Hock nodded in sympathy, apparently not so mean after all. “Of course, of

course. You come well-monitored.” Then, turning back to the hypothetical pie-ee,

whose breathing had returned nearly to normal: “Do you have a, you know, short

summary, bio...”

Catastrophe two! Of course not, no. We know nothing about Andreas

Bichlbauer, there is nothing to say about him besides his name: “I am Andreas

Bichlbauer,” “This is Andreas Bichlbauer,” that sort of thing. What do you think we

are, method actors?

What had we been thinking?

“Something for, you know, my short introduction?” Hock continued, gently

trying to palliate Andy’s clear discomfiture at the question.

“Well, actually, no.... I could write one down for you quickly?” Andy

managed.

“That would be wonderful! Obviously I know the name, but I didn’t have

the moment to look up the official credentials.” They made their way to a surface,

where Hock’s energetic kindness continued. “I’ve been teaching WTO—or actually,

I’ve been teaching GATT—for close to twenty years.”

“Wow,” said Andy, smiling woodenly, his pen poised in air, trying to seem

ready to write down his life’s story.

“Just to let you know who I am,” said Hock, to make this obviously difficult

process more manageable for the weirdly fragile Bichlbauer, who lowered his pen

in relief. “I’m Professor of Law at John Marshall Law School in Chicago; I’ve been

there for eighteen years.”

“Wow,” Andy said.

“I founded the international business law center school, and the only

international economic law masters program in the Midwest.”

“Wow,” Andy repeated, now quite sincerely dismayed by the man’s

qualifications.


“There are about half a dozen in the country.”

“Well,” Andy finally managed, suddenly opting for a half-honest route, “I’m

afraid my own credentials are not going to quite measure up to yours.”

“Nonsense!” Hock said, with the perfect charitable comeback. “I teach what

you do.”

“Well, all right,” said Andy; it came out as a chortle. He began writing:

“I just want to make sure I also have your academic credentials,” Hock said

gingerly over his shoulder.

“Right!” said Andy. “So Columbia University is my alma mater.”

“That would be the J.D.?”

“Right! Yes! J...” said Andy, “D...,” writing the diploma’s initials after the

school.

“And you have been with the WTO for...?”

Andy stared up at the ceiling, trying hard to remember. “For the last two

years, I’ve been representing the WTO,” he said finally. “And pretty much, my

residence is wherever I’ve been living.”

Hock tried to soothe things back to a more reasonable tenor. “Basically,

what I am saying for the panelists’ introductions is where they live, where they

went to school, their past work, and their area of focus.”

“Right, of course,” replied Andy. “Of course. Oh!” He pretended to see Mike

give him a sign, and excused himself quickly, leaving Hock quite nearly empty-

handed.

Somehow having gotten over the hurdle of being completely unprepared for any

conversation, we resolved not to have any more after that. We hovered close

together in urgent conference, Andy especially panicking every time Mike or Brian

seemed to relax, as if the void might attract conversation.

There really were things to think about.

For one thing, we needed a plan for escape. It seemed unlikely, given our

new friends’ evident kindness, that they would react to the speech with much


physical violence. But having us arrested was another matter—one could easily

imagine Hock, angry at having spent charity upon charlatans, calling in the police

as a tonic for feelings of foolishness.

In whispers we determined that at the first sign of trouble, Mike would

stand next to the door and clear the way for Andy to dash out; Andy would try to

get through to the end of his speech, but would take Mike’s cue to make a run for

it. Brian, meanwhile, would try to catch action footage of Mike and Andy’s escape.

We’d meet up at the train station.

Still needing to fill up some minutes with officious activity, we determined

that bananas would significantly enliven the first part of the speech: we

authoritatively pillaged the fruit bowl and placed a bunch inside the podium.

As 11 a.m. approached, an audience slowly made its way in and sat down. The

three dozen middle-aged men wore smart suits and ties, except for one with a

bowtie; the lone woman wore a grey mannish suit.

At the podium, Bob Hock adjusted the microphone with the help of a

scrawny long-haired technician; at the panelists’ table, Andy made small talk with

the fellow to his left, a Mexican lawyer named David Hurtado Badiola. Badiola was

originally from the Northern reaches of Mexico, Andy learned, but now lived in

Mexico City. The North of Mexico was quite humid, sometimes oppressively so. In

the winter, though, it never got cold. Never? Never, except in the mountains. The

mountains? Yes.

Finally it was time to begin. Bob Hock made a few general comments of

welcome, a brief mention of the morning’s subject (“International Trade”), and

then, beaming out at the audience with obvious pleasure, introduced his very

special first guest. The interrupted biography had become quite respectable: “Our

first speaker is a distinguished gentleman—Mr. Andreas Bichlbauer, of Vienna. He

is Austrian by birth, American by training, and Austrian by habitation—so he has

come full circle. He got his Juris Doctorate from Columbia University in New York,

where he was a legal scholar. He has been a representative of the WTO since 1998,

speaking on trade matters before a variety of fora, and is one of the authorized

voices within the public relations sector of the WTO. Without further ado—Mr.

Bichlbauer?”

Now as Andy took the podium, he was facing a number of obstacles. For

one thing, his presentation was still rather sketchy. It had been begun two nights


before, in a Barcelona discotheque bathroom, with some notes scribbled on a

napkin by Mike (“First, let me warn you of a recent emotional condition that has

arisen within me. Bananas leave a trail of blood. Europeans must buy bloody

bananas—oh, forgive me, English representatives! For you Europeans, that’s like

saying ‘fucking bananas.’ Sleep. Voting.”); it had been finished by a sleep-deprived

Andy on the 7 a.m. train from Vienna. Even worse, Andy’s acting talent was just

about nil: his one role in a high school play had proved quite disastrous, and in

college, after two weeks rehearsing The Tempest, the director had wisely ejected

him from a bit part before he could ruin the play.

But as Andy took the podium there in Salzburg, something happened. As he

stood behind the microphone, looking out at the sea of accomplished lawyers, he

did something he’d never have done on a regular stage: he began to become his

character. It was still Andy, mostly, who thanked the audience; a little less of him

who summarized the main points to come; and by the time he launched into the

meat of the lecture, there was a very different creature indeed at the podium.

For even without sleep, preparation, and talent, Andy had one essential

card that trumped all: the audience came with disbelief pre-suspended. Better:

their disbelief had never existed. They knew this person to be a WTO

representative.

Their conviction helped Andy suspend his disbelief. By the time he got to

the joke, in fact, Andy wasn’t entirely aware whether or not it was funny. “You all

know the joke,” someone looking like Andy said to the lawyers. “You can’t kill a

person by hitting that person over the head with a banana. But you can kill a

person over bananas by hitting them over the head with a machete!” A wave of

giggles; with a giggle of his own, the entity formerly known as Andy joined in

jovial accord that a few machetes to the head should not obstruct the rules of free

enterprise.

Andy—or rather Bichlbauer—rolled on through his speech, delightedly justifying

free trade under each and every condition. He cheered the 1998 banning of a tariff

established out of concern for human rights; he preached the the standardization

of all cultural traditions that interfere with work, like the long lunch in Italy; and he

called for privatizing democracy itself by allowing citizens to sell their votes to the

highest corporate bidder.


This structure, progressing in violence and unacceptability, was meant to

bring out the maximum reaction in the audience—and to allow Andy to at least

come close to finishing the speech before being forced from the stage.

The first part, with its bananas and machetes, described a fact on the

ground, something already accomplished—in tasteless, horrifying terms, yes, but

still real.

The second part, about sleep, was an outrageous fictional proposal that was,

however, not so far from reality: in Italy, Berlusconi had already proposed

eliminating the siesta nationwide, but had had to back off because of public

outrage; and in Mexico, the siesta was off-limits in government offices, banned by

a new federal policy just six months before.11

The third part of the lecture, however, was incontrovertibly, irremediably

insane and unreal. Nobody in a position of power had ever proposed that

corporations should be allowed to buy citizens’ votes; while it could be said to

describe the current electoral system in the United States—by a small stretch—it

was too outrageous when phrased in crude terms to be stomached by anyone.

This structure, we felt, would ensure that if people remained calm through

the first part, they would cry out at the second; and that those who against all

odds remained calm through the second would finally join the fracas in the third.

This would allow Andy to get through at least part of the speech before being

caned senseless like poor old Senator Sumner. We’d considered a few other

tricks—an emotional breakdown, with Bichlbauer wandering the audience begging

for hugs, etc.—but had finally decided that championing the selling of votes to

corporate bidders was untoppable.

Now, though, we saw how badly we had miscalculated. For something very

strange happened: nothing. The audience sat as stone-faced as statues, and all

that Bichlbauer said seemed to wash right over them. Bob Hock was the most

animated, politely jotting down notes and raising his eyebrows slightly at difficult

slides. That was all.

As Bichlbauer’s speech drew to a close, the audience gave him a nice round

of applause. Bichlbauer pulled the banana-bunch from inside the podium, tore it

apart and distributed it, amid further banter. Then, with blitheness and

confidence—and a great deal of confusion in that part of his mind that had never

expected to get this far—Bichlbauer took his seat to await Q&A.


The other panelists’ lectures rolled on. Two young Mexico City lawyers talked about

the value of maquiladoras to the people of Northern Mexico. They detailed exactly

how NAFTA enables U.S. companies to reap maximum profit from these border

factories by exempting them from import and export duties, while still giving them

the advantage of a needy, cheap labor force and reduced environmental and

regulatory standards.

Finally, the last panelist de-mystified the art of being a mediator.

“A mediator never says no,” intoned John W. Tulac, a California mediator who

never stopped beaming. He paused for effect, then resumed: “If you create what I

call an indifference curve about language—if you can find more than one way to

acceptably say the same thing—then if you can’t reach agreement on one set of

words, one phrase, you can reach agreement on the other, and it will mean what

the parties need it to mean, and they will have the same meaning.”

All three of us, over the course of Tulac’s speech, had at least a few

moments of paranoia: had the audience seen through our ruse, lawyers being

experts after all at seeing through ruses? For Tulac might as well have been

describing us: we, like these mediators he was describing, were making initially

unacceptable ideas—auctioning votes, in our case—sound acceptable—in our case,

by phrasing them in free-market terms. The only difference was that our intention

was not to get our audience to sign the big deal, but rather to see just how far we

could push neoliberalism before people would stop marching in lockstep.

As Tulac’s lecture drew to a close, Andy forced down the messy thoughts

that writhed through his skull. Q&A was about to begin, and he had to steel

himself for some difficult questions. Not having expected to make it this far, we

had prepared no canned answers.

The first two questions were for one of the Mexican lawyers. Then, a young

blond, blue-eyed fellow piped up.

“I’m Paul Brinkman, from Washington, and I have a question for Dr.

Bichlbauer.

“As you know and we read in the newspapers,”12 the young lawyer said

earnestly, “there’s this growing cadre of young protesters around the WTO, World

Bank, and IMF, and that’s very personally disturbing to me as a person involved

11 BBC News, “Siesta gets rude awakening,” March 17, 1999, gatt.org/resources/#siesta. 12 Margin notes are added to the rest of this chapter for the same reason as in Chapter 1.

Brinkman: Protesters protest because protesting’s fun.


day-to-day in international trade and the lessening of restrictions, because I don’t

think these people understand what they’re protesting.

“And yet,” he continued, his voice fairly quavering with resentment, “I don’t

see a dialogue coming from the WTO Secretariat or from the member countries, to

try to engage these people and try to explain to them why, as David and Gustavo

put up on their charts, why international trade and lessening of barriers is terrific

for developing countries. And it’s terrific for the populations. You certainly don’t

see people in the Northern provinces of Mexico among the protesters! These are

the people that are getting these great jobs because of the lessening of trade

barriers.

“What are you guys doing at the WTO to address these people so that at

least some dialogue and some understanding comes of it? I find it very disturbing,

personally, because when I was in college i might have joined these same types of

people in protesting or asking for sanctions against South Africa. Because these

are just people who are energetic and want something to protest—at least thats

how I see most of them.”

At this point, to soften the blow, moderator Hock jumped in. “Let’s also put

this in the context. However one feels about the presidential election in the United

States, one of the complaints against one of the candidates is that he’s too

intelligent,” he said chivalrously, if somewhat obscurely.

But Andy didn’t need the blow softened; an agreeable, enthusiastic answer

was right on the tip of his tongue. He grabbed the microphone.

“Yes, in fact I think you’re completely right, as we do at the WTO, most of

us, agree with your perspective. The protesters are angry at some of the results of

free trade; as I described with the bananas and so on, some results are not

optimal. At least this has been the case up to the present, and is likely to continue

that way into the near future—but as we know, conditions in poor countries are

likely to improve. There’s always a learning curve—it sometimes goes down,

sometimes goes up, and so on, but I think we all agree that downtrodden

countries are likely to see their interests ameliorated. Or, at least, the interests of

a sizeable part of the population.”

Finally, after having said nearly nothing for over a minute, something came

into his mind.

“As for the protesters, they do tend to have a certain amount of disposable

income.” He paused for effect, looking around the room with a darkly

After all, the poorest people don’t go to protests.

Bichlbauer: Right! The protesters are the elite!


conspiratorial look. “That’s an interesting fact, indeed. They tend to have enough

money to travel to protests. They tend to have the confidence to travel to

protests—without fear of military repression. So, they belong to an elite! They

don’t belong to the poorest classes—which can’t travel! So what they’re

representing is what they imagine the poor to be interested in. Whether or not the

poor are interested in these things is simply a matter of utter speculation.

“For the second part of your question—or the first part of your question,

which I am answering backwards: what is the WTO doing about this? And the most

valuable thing the WTO can bring to the bargaining table as to the world at large is

transparency. So we have taken great pains to provide every document, with very

few exceptions, on our website for casual reading. There are thousands of

documents, millions of pages, and all this information is available.

“So all of these people—who are of the elite, and therefore not only have

the money to travel but also have the education and time to read a few of these

documents—if they would actually download and look at our position they would

understand better where we are coming from. And many of these documents are

carefully phrased to explain in the clearest most transparent ways possible our

aims to different sectors if the population. Some of them are geared at the very

people who are protesting us! So we’ve done a great deal of outreach—of a

downloadable sort, at least.”

Whether or not Brinkman was still listening, Bichlbauer neither knew nor

cared in the least. He was on a roll. “We’re working on more active forms of

outreach, too, including grassroots dissemination of ideas, such as is practiced by

various companies. The WTO is so loaded with hatred—uh, the other way around,

the name of the WTO is so loaded—that you can’t really project a friendly image, if

you’re the WTO, to many sectors of the population. It’s exactly the same problem

that’s faced by many corporations, like Philip Morris; and we are looking to do like

them, with their National Smokers Alliance, and perform grassroots actions,

grassroots dissemination of information, without identifying ourselves in the

equation so much—so as to provide a more objective view of our activities

unweighted by prior perception.”13

13 This public relations technique, whereby corporations create fake “grassroots” organizations to promote their agendas, is commonly called “astroturf.” In one instance of “astroturf,” Philip Morris hired PR giant Burson-Marsteller to create the National Smokers Alliance in 1993; Burson-Marsteller helped this “citizens’ group” build its membership to three million by 1995, and to get its influential pro-smoking message to politicians and the public. See also gatt.org/resources/#astroturf.


Hock jumped in to elaborate a little, graciously but again a little off-topic.

“There is also perhaps a failure of the academy historically; David Ricardo and his

descendants have focused a great deal on the benefits, the ultimate benefits, of

trade—without focusing nearly as much on ways of ameliorating the intermediate

frictions. And we can all point to the Coase theorem14 and say ‘we can all be better

off’ but no one has quite figured out how to make the Coase theorem operate in

real life to make every individual better off. The distribution level is therefore still a

subject that needs attention.”

Bichlbauer nodded agreeably.

The next question came from a portly German fellow with a slight speech

impediment.

“I’m Heinrich Becker, from Brussels. I actually wanted to follow the same

topic which was raised by Paul, but from a slightly different angle,” he began. “To

be frank, I was a bit disturbed by your presentation—notably on the section about

non-tariff trade barriers.

“What you are suggesting here is that you have to overturn, to overcome

all regional differences in order to work most efficiently.

“Perhaps that is true. But I think the vast majority of people will not agree

that they want to do this. And if you present these kind of things with the logo of

the WTO, quite frankly I think you play very much into the hands of those who are

attacking you. You can take the EU as an example. There are all trade barriers

eliminated within the EU, but not all regional differences are eliminated. That is the

only thing that keeps the whole system in balance. If everything is the same, the

whole system would collapse and it would split up again!”

Hock jumped in, again to soften the blow. “If I may—I’m not putting words

in your mouth but making a slight variation. You talk about trade as being

something that reduces the friction that leads to war. Is there some point at which

the friction of reducing cultural difference as part of trade difference becomes a

new friction of cultural hegemony claims?” He traced an imaginary graph in the air.

“There is perhaps a bottom point in that curve, and it rises again, at a certain

point of harmonization.”

14 The Coase Theorem states that a free market, combined with clear property rights, will result in reduced pollution. It is the basis for the WTO’s assertion that encouraging free trade in the Third World (e.g. establishing maquiladoras in Northern Mexico, where environmental regulations are laxer than in the U.S.) will help clean up the environment. See also gatt.org/resources/#coase.

Becker: Trying to obliterate variations will make people angry!

Hock: Yes; there is a point at which it will make them quite angry.


“Right!” Bichlbauer said, in perfect yes-man fashion. “To try to answer your

question, it’s very well taken. There is such a curve, I think—that’s very elegant!

So we aren’t proposing abolishing all regional differences. There are many different

languages, of course, that aren’t going to vanish. Different landscapes. Different

medical histories. These things are simple facts, and they are not going to change.

It’s uncertain how much of human reality is biological—but in any case there are

some things that are simply facts of life.

“But if you take as an article of faith that we have not yet reached the

bottom of the curve, that we have not yet reached the point where free trade

actually leads to a kind of insurrection—and I think we have not—then we have

plenty of room.

“Also, if you take as an article of faith that freer trade leads to peacefulness

and cooperation between neighbors—if you take that as an article of faith, which

most proponents of free trade do—then it follows that there is a certain degree of

freedom still that needs to be accomplished. So, it’s sort of an article of faith. We

are simply ‘standing by our guns’ so to speak.

“Our evidence is the 19th century, when a relatively high degree of free

trade led to nearly a century without significant wars, very few significant wars.

There were problems in the 19th century—exploitation of colonies, mass starvation

among the conquered, and so on. And these things keep recurring. But they are

limited in scope, limited in scale, and we think that the learning curve, although

it’s going down, is going to go up. And the necessary result of free trade is a

lessening of these harmful effects.”

“We are essentially out of time,” Hock said. “But if there are any short

questions, we will entertain them at this point.”

The fellow with the bowtie spoke up. “Just to continue on this line very

briefly: what if the WTO were faced with the type of issue we had in the EU a few

years ago, regarding pasteurization of milk used in cheese, which caused

tremendous friction with France.15 You are trying to eliminate regional differences,

but the friction springs up immediately. How would the WTO with its view of things

treat that if it came before them?”

15 In the 1990s, the European Union was considering the mandatory pasteurization of all dairy products, thus forbidding the production of raw-milk cheeses. Producers in France, Italy, and Swizerland, however, argued that such a law would effectively outlaw much regional heritage and diversity. Eventually they reached a compromise that established special health standards for raw-milk cheeses.

Bichlbauer: Yes. Therefore we won’t obliterate landscapes.

Bowtie: But what about the French?


“Well, economics is not always a matter of fairness, in normal terms,”

Bichlbauer said solemnly. “Fairness has to be redefined. As that example shows, as

the beef example shows,16 as the bananas example shows, what we are talking

about is an efficient system that works. And it’s simply a calculation of weights, a

calculation of powers, a chess game of some sort, in which each country carries a

certain amount of weight which must be calculated in the overall equation. As

Europeans have been noting since the late 1930s, sometimes you have to sacrifice

national sovereignty for greater regional interests.17 And in the case of French

cheese, you have a very small sector of a relatively small population—not to

demean France or anything—but you have a relatively small sector of this already

small population opposed to something that is clearly going to lead to increased

benefit for all. And that may sound crass, but that’s the way it’s working. And it

seems to be benefitting the world for all–-in theory, perhaps in reality, certainly in

reality in the future.”

Hock looked at his watch. “At this point I would note that we are out of

time, and there is a luncheon. Lest our other speaker feel neglected, I will tell him

that I was hoping we would get to find out how he would mediate between KLM

and Alitalia.” (General laughter.) “Thank you all for your attention; I look forward

to seeing you at the rest of the conference.”

We left the Crowne Plaza Salzburg as fast as we possibly could.

16 [Brief information for beef.] 17 As Nazi Finance Minister Walther Funk noted in 1940: “There must be a readiness to subordinate one’s own national interests... to that of the European Community”—a sentiment echoed during the latter-day construction of the European Union by German Prime Minister Gerhard Schröder (1999): “The internal market and the common currency demand joint co-ordinating action. This will require burying some erroneous ideas of national sovereignty.”

Bichlbauer: The French are not very important.


Pushing Our Luck

In Tombstone, Arizona, where Andy grew up, there’s a saying: “Two thorns in the

eyeball are no worse than one.” But sharing your person with a despicable maniac

is always exhausting, and Andy was ready at this point to call it a day.

Mike and Brian were exhausted as well. But as they say in Mike’s home

town of Plattsburgh, New York: “If a hedgehog can mow the lawn once, it can mow

the lawn thousands of times.”

And indeed, as all of us knew, our freakishly unlikely work was just now

beginning. Only two of the twenty-five audience members had reacted, even

mildly, to the speech—and then only to the proposition that all cultural differences

should be abolished. That democracy should be auctioned off to the highest

corporate bidder—this idea had encountered no reaction at all!

Based on such meager data, we couldn’t even start to theorize how far the

WTO could go before people would refuse to follow along. The limits to

neoliberalism were as yet undiscovered, somewhere in the dark mists of infinite

possibility—either very close or very far, but in any case not even hinted at.

Two thorns being no worse than one, we decided to keep mowing at lunch.

Perhaps with a bit of alcohol in their veins to counteract their decorum, people

would be likelier to express their horror, to help us delineate the limits to

acceptability....

But as we steeled ourselves for return, Mike (who, like Andy, had been

growing into his role) voiced a security guard’s paranoia—or rather the paranoia of

a security guard whose family, like Andy’s, had had some problems in these parts

during World War II.

Mike noted that if the lawyers were in fact on to us, and only politeness had

been holding them back, they might well have already called the police. When the

cops carted us off during lunch, to whom would we turn? “Hello, U.S. Embassy?

We’ve been thrown in an Austrian jail for impersonating the WTO. Help!”

Brian immediately volunteered to forego the sumptuous buffet lunch we’d

been promised and bail Andy and Mike out of jail if necessary—and if the one-

phone-call rule applied here in Austria. He went off to a nearby cafe, and Mike took

over the camera.


After loading up on fancy Austrian schnitzels and bratwursts and rumps, we found

two seats at the end of a table. Even before we could sit, the man in the seat to

his right had grabbed Andy’s ear.

“Are you the expert on banaaanas in the WTO?” he asked with a bizarre,

perhaps somehow erudite intonation.

Andy, by now the compulsive actor, replied with a similar drawl. “Yeeees.”

“Because I come from a place which produuuces bananas.”

“Ah, you dooo?”

“Its main agricultural production!”

“Aaah! I seee!” Andy realized he’d forgotten a knife and fork. He looked at

the meats on his plate with longing.

“Madeira Island,” the man said.

“Ah yes, of course! Well, let me just get a cutlery and I’ll sit right down,”

Andy said, already affecting the linguistic quirks of business diplomacy.

When he returned, a few familiar faces had added themselves to the scene:

the two fellows from Mexico who had lectured on maquiladoras, and Paul Brinkman,

the American who had protested South Africa for fun in the ‘80s. This was an

excellent pool for research—the two co-lecturers, of all the audience, had surely

been attentive, but we had no idea what they thought. And what did Brinkman

really think of Andy’s insane and horrifying answer to his question about anti-WTO

protesters?

One of the Mexicans asked Andy in what sort of places he tended to

represent the WTO.

“I represent it, basically, wherever it needs to be represented,” stammered

Andy. “Yeah. Whenever it requires somebody to speak about broad policy matters.

Non-specialist. General idea. I think in this case it would have been better to have

a little specialist approach. But that’s what I do. And I was in Vienna, so it’s only

three hours away. It works! And you all—where?”

“Madeira,” said the man to his right, and before the others could answer,

immediately returned to the subject of his country’s banana problem. For some

minutes, Bichlbauer nodded in sympathy at the needs of Madeira’s banana

industry.

“And there is already no protectionism in Madeira for banaanas,” said the

man.

“So there’s no protectionism?” Andy repeated to prove he was listening.


Finally Brinkman decided to join in the talk. “I actually worked for

Chiquita,” he said. “So I was very interested in what you had to say about them.”

Andy was excited to have a new, more dynamic (and relevant) interlocutor.

“So you worked for Chiquita?”

“Yeah, they’re one of our clients for a number of issues. This woman from

my law firm has done their trade work for years—that’s all she does. One hundred

percent of her life is representing Chiquita.”

Mike’s video camera, which was of course on, suddenly ran out of tape. He

excused himself to go back to the buffet, where he reloaded discreetly.

“Is your job to follow around WTO people and videotape them?” Brinkman

asked when he returned.

“Unh-hunh,” grunted Mike through a mouthful of food. “I’m somewhere

between security and quality control.” Andy let out a giggle. “As you mentioned

before, there have been so many protests lately. Well, nothing drastic has

happened, but there have been lots of pieings. So I’m kind of like the

videographer-slash-pie-preventer. If I see a flying pie I’m supposed to jump in

front of it. It’s not quite like the secret service, and it doesn’t take as much

training.”

Brinkman was starting to fidget; he wasn’t interested in speaking to the

WTO rep’s assistant when he could speak to the WTO rep himself. He turned back

to Andy with a question he thought would be good and simple: “And where are you

staying?”

“Um, I’m not actually staying,” answered Andy.

There was a very long silence. “I was disappointed that you didn’t use the

bananas,” Mike said, just to say something.

“Right. I...“

“Not that I would know how you would use them!”

Brinkman knew how. “The peel would be useful,” he said. “Talk about

getting to the core issues!”

Andy, missing the reference to the role of banana peels in comedy,

pretended to understand a deep point. “Right! That would be the core!”

Brinkman, encouraged, extended the image. “Of course, then you’d have

banana—raw banana—in your hand, and you’d have to do something with it.”

“You’d have to eat it,” replied Andy gleefully. “And then talk with your

mouth full, and you know! Ha ha!”


“So were you giving a presentation?” Mike asked the lawyer before things

could get any stupider.

“Yeah, I gave one earlier today.”

“What was it?”

“It was on customs barriers in the US. I sort of live the WTO every day I

guess,” Brinkman said.

“Yes,” Andy agreed.

“And the protesters actually went straight down 15th street in Washington,”

Brinkman said in a seeming nonsequitur, “on the IMF-World Bank protests. And I

was sitting in my office. And I have a friend over at the World Bank who promotes

democracy projects over in Africa, and he couldn’t get into his job that day. And I

talked to him, and he said how upset he is that he spends his entire career trying

to help people in these countries and yet he’s being protested by these people who

think he’s evil. If only he could get out there and talk to them.”

“Right!” Andy said vehemently.

“And they interview these people in the Washington Post and they don’t

have any idea what they’re talking about.”

“Hmmm, yeah!” said Andy, holding up his wine glass as if in a toast. “I

wonder why that is.”

“There’s not a lot in the world to protest right now when you’re in college,”

Brinkman said. “It’s a fun thing to go out and protest I guess.”

“Hunh?!”

Brinkman took Andy’s stunned reaction to his first statement as a question

about his second one. “No, it is! I remember when I was in college, I was

protesting South Africa. And we would go around, and we would make a lot of

noise about US sanctions.”

“Right!”

“And you know, it was as much for the fun of protesting with your friends,

and drinking, and having solidarity, than if you really cared about what was going

on in South Africa.”

“Right!”

“But now there’s not a lot to protest. You sort of need something to protest.

You sort of need something to protest, to vent your... uh....”

Mike jumped in to help. “What do you think would be good for them to rally

around instead?”

Brinkman: The protesters protest because protesting’s fun.


“I don’t know,” said the lawyer. “We’ve just got to have... we’ve got to

have a new Milosevic who people really care about.”

“Oh yeah,” Andy agreed solemnly. “Like a dictator. Yeah.”

“It’s a little easier to see the black and white there,” Mike explained to Andy.

“More cut and dried.”

Andy’s thoughts started racing. “It’s interesting, yeah.... There was

Saddam Hussein. But even then....”

“It’s not like people are gonna rise up to protest him,” said Mike.

“No,” agreed Andy. Then it hit him. “Wait! We need a Milosevic in this

country—well, in the United States!”

Mike turned to Brinkman. “Last night, actually, in Vienna, we were coming

through and they closed a big street, because ever since Haider18 came to power

they’ve been having these big protests.”

“Oh, against Haider?” Brinkman asked. “Well, that’s a good thing. That

keeps people busy too.”

“Yeah!” exclaimed Andy, spitting a small chunk of schnitzel back onto his

plate. No wonder Brinkman hadn’t objected to his answers during Q&A!

“But at least there you’ve got a reason to protest,” the lawyer continued,

waving his beer glass around. “At least you’ve got a reason to protest. You know

what you’re protesting about. The WTO, it seems, is such a complex organization—

and the fear I have is that as these disputes with all the people coming out into

the street.... It’s one thing when it’s just a bunch of kids, but then if the labor

unions start joining in, and environmentalists start joining in, then there actually

will be a lot of effect. It becomes more acceptable for Americans who don’t care

one way or another to start thinking ‘Oh, maybe the WTO isn’t such a good thing’

or ‘Maybe it is bad for poor people’—and the debate sort of gets lost.”

“Hmm,” Andy said, trying to make sense of how an opposing view could

hurt a debate.

“You’re not going to find a bunch of pro-WTO protesters coming out to

protest,” Brinkman said, “because there’s just not a national constituency for

that.”

18 Jörg Haider is head of Austria’s neo-fascist FPÖ party, which came to power in 1999. In 1991 Haider praised the Third Reich for its “orderly employment policy.” Four years later, he described former Austrian former members of the SS as “decent people of good character who also stick to their convictions.” When campaigning for election, Haider’s Freedom Party pushed an anti-immigrant,


“Unh-hunh,” Andy said, now trying hard to understand this.

“So you’ve got a....”

“There’s not a natural constituency for that,” muttered Andy, trying even

harder.

“So you’ve got a group of the long-haired guys out there protesting the

WTO, who are really taking the same positions as the Pat Buchanan right-wingers

in the US who wanna close the WTO for completely different reasons...”

“Unh-hunh.”

“And that would be a terrible alliance to have in the US,” the lawyer said, “if

the right wing and these young people got together and said ‘Oh, lets ban the WTO

for whatever reason.’”

“It is interesting that the anger at the WTO can rally such a disparate group

of people,” Andy said, finally figuring out what Brinkman had meant by

“constituency.” “But I think there is a constituency that may not protest, of course,

but has enormous power. At least that’s what we hope.”

Brinkman nodded, and there was another silence.

“But the Haider example is interesting,” Andy said, “because we sort of see

Haider as perhaps somebody with a tainted past, Nazi parents or whatever, and

some ideas that aren’t quite up-to-date—but essentially he’s enacting a very

liberal economy, in a way that his predecessors didn’t, and that he’s right in

claiming it resembles that of the United States. You know, he had a Contract With

Austria and all. So even though he’s a bit of a Nazi, his approach is completely up

to snuff. Of course so was the Nazis’.”

“I didn’t read much about that other than in History class,” Brinkman said.

“Right, right. That’s a detail,” Andy said graciously. “And anyhow, all that

Lebensraum19 stuff is unnecessary now—you’ve got those sweatshops and so on

instead, a lot more efficient.”

“That’s more his field,” Mike said to Brinkman.

“Yeah, that’s more my field.... So why do you think there’s this disparate

group of protesters?” Andy asked Brinkman. “What on earth possesses all these

people to see us in such a demonic light, when in fact we’re completely

transparent?”

populist platform they dubbed the “Contract with Austria” after Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America.” 19 “Living room”—Hitler’s idea that the German economy needed more territory, and that the way to get it was conquest.

Andy: Being a Nazi is not such a problem.


“I dunno,” Brinkman said, pensively sipping his beer. “I think a lot of people

don’t understand the theory.”

“Don’t understand the theory,” Andy repeated.

“A lot of people haven’t seen the charts that Andres put up on the board

today, that show that trade is good for people.”

“Right!”

“I don’t think that comes through very often,” Brinkman continued,

“because I think people are being very cynical. They say ‘Yes, the GNP of Mexico

went up, but probably all the money went to the rich people in Mexico.’ And yet

the incomes of the people in the border states....”

“In general terms, yes.” interrupted Andres Alvarez Cordero, the lawyer

who had put up the charts.

“In general terms they went up!” Brinkman continued, assuming that’s

what Cordero had meant. “Relative to the US, no, certainly not—that’s the reason

the maquilas20 are there. But on the other hand, people are moving to the

Northern states of Mexico from the middle of the country, because the jobs exist.”

“They do,” Cordero agreed.

“And when you get there—I’ve been through most of these towns now,

and....”

“The Northern states are usually more civilized than the South of the

country,” Cordero said.

“Yeah,” Brinkman said, “you get to these maquila towns and the services

are terrible. You know, these towns have sprung up from nothing so there hasn’t

been time to build roads or sewers or electricity and yet people are coming there

by the thousands. And building squatter shacks to live in until everything gets built

up. But at some point I guess the services will catch up. And these people will

have decent housing. But right now its not a great situation. But some people

come up, they work for a year, they go back to their home....”

“They don’t understand the theory either!” Andy exclaimed. “They should

just stay and wait for the housing and services. It’ll come.”

“That’s the theory,” Mike said between slurps of marrow.

Andy turned to Cordero. “Is there a plan to divert some of the income from

the companies that run the maquiladoras, to actually provide some services?”

20 Diminutive or familiar form of maquiladoras.


“Yes,” said Cordero, “and there is also a big plan within Mexico to

regionalize economic growth, to develop the specialization of each particular region

so they can grow.”21

“Wow,” Andy said.

“Have you heard about this company called Remote Labor Systems

Incorporated?”22 Mike asked. “They have plans to build specialized factories in the

border region where people will use robotics to work telepresently in the U.S. So

the idea is you have a machine operator in Mexico working in the U.S., but paid at

Mexican wages!”

“Sounds interesting!” Cordero said.

“Originally the company was thinking of doing it with prison labor. But the

organization issues are much more complicated.”

“Speaking of prisons,” Andy said, “there’s another case, where Wackenhut

has people who work in Haiti, and perform surveillance on buildings in Manhattan

or wherever.”23

“There’s a lot of data outsourcing,” Brinkman added. “All the Westlaw24

reports, judges’ opinions and such, get typed in the Philippines, by people who

don’t speak English. So they just type what they see. But it’s more efficient than

having Americans....”

“It sounds more efficient!” exclaimed Andy. “That’s the beauty I guess of

transparent borders as far as commerce goes: you can make up for some of the

failures of the nontransparent borders, as far as people goes.”

Long silence.

“Wow. I’m pretty beat,” Mike said.

“We had to get up early for our train ride from Vienna,” Andy explained.

Cordero had also just come from Vienna. “Nothing has been open—it’s a

holiday! I was thinking, what’s going on in this country? No one works!”

“Sometimes they work,” Andy said. “They work quite a bit!”

“Not like Italians!” Cordero said.

“Right!”

21 As part of this policy of “developing expertise,” the Mexican Minister of Agriculture aims to remove twenty million farmers from the land and from self-sufficiency, so that they will have to buy most of their food from the U.S. See Part II, “New Horizons in Third-World Agribusiness Globalization,” for more on the concept of regionalized economic growth. 22 www.cybracero.com. 23 Internet rumor, possibly true. 24 www.westlaw.com/about.


“Or Mexicans! We are used to our long lunch, and two hour naps....”

“I think the typical Mexican has a life during the day, but not at night,”

Brinkman said. “It’s just a different approach to your work day.”

“Which is not that bad too,” said Cordero. “The bottom line is, what is free

trade for? To be happy!”

“The bottom line is to maximize your benefit,” Brinkman elaborated.

“Maximize happiness.”

“Right,” Andy said. “And liberalization is encountering resistance, like in

Europe, because people don’t understand that the sacrifice of health care and

holidays and so on is worth the ultimate happiness benefits. They haven’t looked

to examples like the U.S. or Mexico.”

“Europeans usually take, like.... In August nobody works!” Cordero said.

“They have a month vacation. The whole month!”

“It’s wonderful,” Brinkman said.

“I would die for a month,” Cordero said.

“I met a German fellow who had two months a year!” Mike said.

“Two months!” Brinkman said.

“Yeah,” Andy said.

“Two months a year!” Mike repeated, as if it surprised him as well.

“How much vacation do you have?” Andy asked Brinkman.

“Well, we have as much time as we want—but you have to be able to take

it.”

“Right.”

“I take two or three weeks a year. But my clients in Europe—sometimes

they disappear for weeks on end. And they don’t have a replacement. They just

have a voicemail, that says ‘I’m gone for four weeks, and when I get back we’ll

deal with whatever you’ve got.’ And still the companies survive and do well.”

“But if you’re facing a catastrophe,” Andy noted, “its not really going to

work for ya!”

“Its tough,” Brinkman agreed.

“And are you an economist?” Cordero asked Andy.

“Not really.... I have a law degree....”

“Because economists say that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

“Right!” Andy said.

“Somebody has to lose, at some point.”


“Somebody has to lose!” Andy said gleefully.

Taking advantage of this upbeat note to end the conversation, we finally pulled

ourselves away. We gave the bellhop a fake room number to pay for the free lunch,

and hurried away to find Brian.

The instant we imagined ourselves out of earshot, we found ourselves

jabbering and giggling wildly until we were gasping for breath.

“We need a dictator,” yelled Mike in vague imitation of the most hideous Dr.

Bichlbauer, “in the United States of America, immediately!”

“He’s a Nazi, but I do not care! I do not care at his Naaazism!” squealed

Andy, to the horror of a family all clad in Lederhosen.

Embarrassment calmed us. And guiltily we examined our exhilaration: why?

In a way, at lunch, our research had hit yet another massive dead end—the

same one hit by the lecture, and by Andy’s answers in Q&A. Once again, no matter

what Andy said, these lawyers seemed perfectly happy to accept it. In the speech,

they had lapped up the most hideous proposals; afterwards, even evoking the

name of Hitler didn’t get a reaction.

In other words, we had a complete and utter lack of results.

And yet we’d felt energized! As if the unexpectedness of the result were in

itself thrilling. This feeling—had it been a manifestation of that very noblest of

human phenomena, scientific excitement? As when Mendel’s tulips turned white,

or Michaelson-Morley’s mirrors reflected too quickly, were we also confronting a

result so unexpected and bizarre that it would completely eviscerate a field of

science—in our case, the sociology of the legal profession?

Or was this, as might seem more obvious, the psychological version of

snow madness—the result of prolonged exposure to harsh alpine conditions?

Seeing Brian at the bar made us realize just which of the two answers it was. He

looked quite refreshed by his time away from insanity, and he kept us from

dwelling in wild abstractions for long. For he had been thinking while we’d been

deliriating, and if there was one thing Brian did well, it was think.

“Of course there was no reaction,” he said solemnly. “Bichlbauer was

there.”

“Hunh?”


“Don’t you see? Bichlbauer will never be confronted in person, ever. He’s at

the top of the social order. No one will ever, ever confront him to his face.”

Ah! Okay, a nice theory. We had failed for a very stupid reason indeed. Our

dumb. Now what to do about this, Mr. Electron?

Brian of course had the answer. “We need to send in a third party,

someone with no ties to Bichlbauer, to ask these people what they really thought

of his speech. That’s the only way they’ll come clean.” Such a third party, he went

on, would be a journalist: someone whose profession is asking questions of

strangers.

Yes, Mike said, but why on earth would a journalist be poking around the

Crowne Central Salzburg asking questions of nebbishy trade lawyers?

Brian again had the answer: Bichlbauer, public-relations expert and official

representative to the World Trade Organization, had been publicly pied while

leaving the hotel—hit in the face!—and the resulting fiasco was all over the wires.

“The wires?” Andy asked.

“AP, UPI, France Oiseau.”

“Right!”

This did make sense. Brian’s clarity opened a crack for a tiny ray of

sunshine: we just possibly might come away with results after all.

We called some friends in Vienna, who gave us the email addresses of a

few sympathetic journalists. We sent these an urgent cry for help: the conference

was only going on for the rest of the day, and if we were going to complete our

mission we needed to find someone within two hours.

As the minutes ticked by and no one replied, it finally hit us: we didn’t need

a real journalist, any more than we had needed a real WTO representative! Andy’s

and Mike’s eyes turned to Brian.

Brian understood, with a sinking feeling, just what they were thinking. He

was the only choice for the job. Andy, of course, would be immediately recognized

no matter what; Mike too had been scrutinized. Brian, on the other hand, had

remained inconspicuous all morning—and even better, he had a bushy head of hair

and a beard.

Now how do you say “barber” in German?

One hour later, a fresh, eager and very clean-shaven reporter entered the Crowne

Central Salzburg. He had heard via “the wire” that a WTO representative had


spoken that morning in Salzburg, and that on his way out, the gentleman had

been slammed in the face with a pie.

Questions filled the eager reporter’s young, clean-shaven head. This

abjectest of pieings—why had it happened? What had the representative said, that

might stimulate such a dastardly act? Was his lecture indeed so offensive as to

galvanize such a throw? What flavor pie?

He found the delegates gathering in the Crowne Central lobby, preparing to

set off for some kind of communal dining event. Spotting Andres Alvarez Cordero,

the Mexican lawyer, Brian approached him cautiously. “I heard that there.... I'm a

reporter from San Jose,” he whispered, as if sharing a secret.

“Uh-hunh,” said Cordero, clearly confused.

“I heard this morning that there was a representative from the World Trade

Organization talking?”

“Uh, I don't remember. I guess there was.”

“There was? We heard that he was pied.”

“Pied?”

“Pied, he was hit in the face with a pie. Um, I was just curious if you knew

anything about it.”

“Uh, I don't know.”

“Or if you saw anything.”

“No. I don't know.”

“Do you know anyone who was there?”

“No, no.”

“No?”

“No.”

“I'll keep looking around.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you.”

Brian spotted moderator Bob Hock. Pay dirt!

“Excuse me,” Brian said, “I'm a reporter with, ah, the San Jose Mercury

News. I heard that there was a report that there was a representative from the

World Trade Organization, here, this morning.”

“Yes,” said Hock.

“And we've heard he was just pied.”


As the idea registered, Hock’s eyes opened wide and darted around the

room nervously.

“There were some activist groups who have pied him,” Brian said by way of

further explanation.

Hock’s face was turning ashen as he saw something crumble—his coup of

having a WTO rep was turning to fiasco! He turned to a nearby organizer. “Did you

hear about this?”

“No,” the man replied.

“Have you heard?” Brian repeated to Hock, still on his script, though it was

clear the conversation had moved on.

“No,” Hock clarified patiently, “I haven't heard about it.”

“Have you heard him speak? Or do you know...”

Like Giuliani on September 11,25 Hock composed himself for the task of

making pronouncements despite weighty emotion.

“I was the moderator on his panel,” he began. But then, confused again,

and more honest than Giuliani: “I don't know what I've got to say, ‘cause I wasn't

around for the pieing.”

“Oh you weren't around for the pieing?” Brian repeated.

“No.”

“Why would anyone want to pie, who was this?” Brian asked.

Hock, perhaps finally jarred by Brian’s strange manner, saw the little red

light on the camera. “Haha, am I on?”

“Yeah, do you mind? This is my job. This is how I make a living.”

“Do you have your press credentials with you?” Hock asked.

“I actually don't. It's a small newspaper.”

“I know the San Jose.”

“You know the San Jose Mercury? Where you from?”

“Chicago.”

“From Chicago?”

“Yeah.”

Brian realized there was no way out. “I'm... I’m trying to get a job,” he

finally said, “to tell you the real truth.” He prepared to bow out and leave.

“Haha,” Hock said. “Okay. Now I'll talk.”

Brian froze in mid-bow. “Now you'll talk?” he asked, incredulous.


“Yeah. ‘Cause if you didn't have credentials and you didn't come up with a

better story, it's kinda iffy. But I know, you're trying to freelance a little bit so you

can show them something, build a portfolio....”

“That's right, that's right.” Brian straightened his back. Wow!

“I was the moderator on the panel he spoke on,” Hock began somberly,

getting back into the role of disaster authority. “And he basically spoke to a group

of people, all of whom are internationalists by nature, otherwise they wouldn't be

at this conference.... And it was about what role the WTO plays.

“It wasn't the controversial speech—I suspect he wasn't pied simply

because he had said something outrageous. More that he is a spokesperson for the

WTO and he was available. Why would people do that? Somebody perhaps from

the Seattle demonstrations or the demonstrations in Washington, DC. There were

a number of... demonstrations....”

Brian jumped in to help. “There were a number of activist groups, upset

with...”

“Yeah. Often mistakenly. There are some things to be upset about and

some things that the WTO, or the IMF, or the World Bank is getting a bad rap on.

It's... I suppose it's a form of speech.”

“It's a form of speech,” Brian repeated.

“After all I was involved in protests over Vietnam—so you know, it's not

quite as tasty as a pie....”

“It's not quite as tasty as a pie?” Brian repeated, trying to make sense of

the statement: what, Agent Orange? “Do you see it as a reasonable way to

protest?”

“Generally it's a mild form of uncivilized protest,” Hock specified, “as

opposed to a severe form of uncivilized protest.”

“Right!” said Brian. “So what did—who was this representative?”

“This was an individual named Andreas Bichlbauer, who was with the Press

Office—or rather the Public Relations Office—of the World Trade Organization.

Reasonable fellow—didn't seem like he was a natural target other than his

affiliation.

“The concern a lot of protestors have,” Hock went on, “is that the World

Trade Organization, which is designed to foster trade and to tear down the

barriers—many of which led to World War II—is not structured in a way that really

25 See In Memoriam – New York City, 9/11/01, starring New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.


advances labor rights or environmental rights. For that reason when protests are

taken before the WTO on labor or environmental issues, the considerations that

are appropriate aren't given full weight. Because that's not the best place to do it,

but that's where a lot of the complaints go. So there are some decisions the WTO

has taken against labor rights or environmental rights which are appropriate in

trade terms, but they don't reflect a full balance between trade and other areas

and for that reason those who don't know of another forum and are angry at the

WTO for those decisions find ways of protesting.”

“And do you find that to be useful?”

“In a limited way, yes, in that it continues a kind of pressure on the WTO to

explain itself. If the WTO does not maintain transparency, then there are obviously

going to be people upset with it for the wrong reasons.”

“How did... I'm sorry, I've already forgotten his name.”

“Mr. Bichlbauer.”

“How did Picklepower explain himself this morning?”

“He talked about transparency, and the fact that you can go to a WTO

website and see any decision, and any opinion, and any rule the WTO has, and

that it's possible to pressure through national governments for changes of those

rules. Really, the WTO is responsive to national governments, not the world

population as such, and so the root for change is really to protest to the national

governments.”

At this point Brian saw the fellow in the bowtie who had asked about the French

cheese. He excused himself from Hock and grabbed the other fellow.

“Can I have a second of your time?” Brian asked.

“Sure,” the man in the bowtie said.

“Um, I'm, I’m just a, let's see.... I'm a reporter trying to become a reporter.

And I just got word that there was a World Trade Organization member here this

morning.”

“Well, there was a World Trade Organization member here this morning,

that's correct, yes,” he said, ignoring the rest.

“And I heard he was pied? He's been pied.”

“Well, no,” disagreed the man with the bowtie. “I'd say that he spoke, uh,

the position of the World Trade Organization. There were some people in the


audience who asked him questions that indicated some dispute over it, but I

wouldn't say ‘pied.’ I would say...”

“No, no, he was pied after he left the building,” said Brian, miming a pie-

throw.

“Oh!! That I didn't know.”

“An activist group has pied him.”

“Oh!! I thought you meant figuratively.”

“No no no. I came here from Austria when I heard it.”

The man didn’t notice the absurdity of the statement. “No, I didn't, I wasn't

aware of that, no.”

“No, you haven't heard of that? Does that surprise you?”

“Well, I know from the incidents in Seattle and all that there's been some

very strong feeling about the World Trade Organization. And the position that

they're taking is causing some controversy. For instance, his position was that

regional differences are in themselves a barrier to efficient global trade.”

“Meaning what?” Brian asked.

“Well, the example that was used was the failed merger of Alitalia and KLM,

and that the corporate business customs of the two of them reflecting very

different social structures of the countries from which they originated—and they

ended up disabling the companies from reaching a, um, a final merger, because

the methods of doing business were just too different. And I must admit I asked

him one of the sharper question afterwards.”

“And what was the question?”

“I said, ‘Well, if the World Trade Organization were the one deciding the

issue about pasteurization of cheese in France,26 how would it have come out?’

And his answer indicated that that since there was a small number of people

involved in the production of the cheese, the WTO would have chosen as the EU

did to enforce pasteurization. And I must admit that's not a result that I choose to

agree with. I think the small cultural differences and the rich economic fabric that

we get from it is worth some of some inefficiencies. So I was, ah, not particularly

on his side on that regard.”

“What was your overall reaction to his... ah...”

“Well, I thought it was a good presentation and I think there's considerable

merit in the position, but I do think that there has to be some sensitivity to the


rich fabric of society that's given by what? By regional differences. Even though

those regional differences can be considered to yield some structure of inefficiency

on an economic level.”

“And I also heard that there's been something about a voting scheme that

he has been suggesting recently? Did he speak anything about this?”

“No, there's nothing. Voting scheme? I don't recall anything about a voting

scheme.”

“You don't recall anything about a voting scheme?”

“No.”

At that point Brian saw Heinrich Becker, the German fellow who had asked the

only really difficult question during the Q&A session. He approached him excitedly.

“Um.... I heard there was a member of the Word Trade Organization here this

morning, and he’s been pied!”

“He was hit?” Becker said.

“He was hit in the face with a pie,” Brian explained.

“We had our discussions, yeah,” Becker said as if in agreement.

“You had your discussions?” Brian asked. “What did he have to say?”

Becker glanced at the camera. “From where are you?”

“Um... I’m actually a student trying to put together a little video. I heard

from some friends that someone has been hit in the face with a pie.”

“No no no,” Becker clarified. “We just had a discussion on something he

was saying.”

“And what did he say?”

Becker looked at the camera again. “For what are you making this video?“

“It’s an art project, if you will.”

“It’s a very funny art project, what you are doing.”

“Well, it’s a very serious problem.”

“What is a serious problem?” Becker asked pointedly.

“Some of the issues of the World Trade Organization,” Brian said nervously,

“and the forums they present them in?”

Becker smiled. “You’re doing this for a group who’s going to put this stuff

on the internet afterwards?”

“No!” Brian said. “I’m trying to put together a little story.”

26 See previous chapter.


“For which organization?”

“For which organization?”

“Yeah.”

“A university,” Brian said. “A school. Um... school.”

“Did you just come here for the WTO?”

“No, I just happened to be here.”

“And your report is about what?”

“It’s a story.”

“Story about what?”

“Story about a World Trade Organization representative getting hit in the

face with a pie. Why should that happen?”

At this point Becker, unable to contain himself, exploded in laughter. And

then, with a little shrug of resignation, he answered Brian’s question. “To be

honest, he was presenting his organization–-of which I agree with many things–-in

a manner which made it not look very good. You can’t approach it from that angle.

you have to approach it in a different way.”

“Did he say anything that shocked you?”

“No, no no no. I mean it’s just.... You would need to know more about the

subject to appreciate why I made my comment back there.”

Brian pushed on. “I also heard he had said something about a voting

scheme. Some exotic voting scheme.”

“Absolutely!” said Becker, laughing again.

“What did he say?”

“He said voting is organized in a very inefficient manner. That now, if you

want to influence a certain decision or whatever, you go to a party, which then

goes to a P. R. agent, who then goes to a TV station, which then makes something

which goes to the public. So by spending all the money, you get the vote that you

want. It would be much easier if you could buy the vote directly. It would be a

much more efficient system.” At this point he suddenly doubled over with laughter.

“It really would be a more efficient system,” Brian said. Then, changing the

subject abruptly: “But you’re from Belgium?”

“I’m actually from Germany.”

“Oh. So you can’t sell your vote?” Brian asked, as if it the practice were

somehow allowed in Belgium but not in Germany.

“I don’t think that’s what voting is really about,” Becker said.


At this point Brian noticed that Paul Brinkman, the young American lawyer, was

hovering nearby, staring into space. Brian was sure he’d been listening. He

excused himself from Becker and tiptoed up to Brinkman.

“EXCUSE ME!” Brian yelled. Brinkman wheeled about in shock. “Were you...

were you in the... in the World Trade Organization meeting this morning?”

“Um, yeah, I was.”

“Well, what... what? How did you feel about that?” Brian said, suddenly

unable to remember his lines.

Brinkman just stared.

“Well,” Brian continued, “we actually heard that—I believe his name was

Mister Pickle Power—that he’s been hit in the face with a pie!”

“I haven’t heard that at all,” Brinkman said.

“You haven’t heard that?”

“No.”

“Did you hear him speak?”

“I did hear him speak,” Brinkman said tensely.

“What did you think about what he said?”

Brinkman looked nervously around the room, then gathered his thoughts.

“I... I didn’t actually think it was all that appropriate for a WTO representative,”

Brinkman finally answered.

“What did he say?”

“I... can’t remember exactly what he said,” Brinkman said. “But I was... I

was sort of surprised by it.”

Brinkman suddenly turned and walked to the hotel desk, where he tried to

get the attendant’s attention. Brian ran to the desk, sidled up to Brinkman and

stuck the camera back in his face.

“Were you surprised in a good way or in a bad way?” Brian asked.

Brinkman held up his hand to block the shot. “That’s enough.”

“Not tonight?”

“No.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

As Brian looked around for his next victim, one of the organizers announced that

the evening bus had just arrived. “We’re heading out,” said Bob Hock to Brian.


“Thank you so much!” Brian said.

Hock smiled and turned to one of the conference organizers. “I think we’ve

been identified for the next hit.”

“We’ll spare you!” Brian replied by way of goodbye.


Back to the Drawing and Quartering Board

At home and at work once again (Andy in Paris, preparing cultures for a genetics

research lab; Mike in New York, sorting uniforms for the police), we had to

acknowledge the obvious: we’d been had. 12,000 miles and $2500 later, the joke

was on us; we had miscalculated so badly as to come up with nothing. One of the

twenty-five delegates had understood how crazy Bichlbauer’s proposals were; of

the others, only the fellow with the bowtie had had reservations. (Brinkman’s

mysterious about-face from his earlier wholehearted support couldn’t really be

counted.)

One, maybe two, out of twenty-five. Statistically speaking, no one. We

were the dimwits, the dwarves in the pillory, the mummefied fish. Determined as

the dingbat of Kenya, however, we vowed to make one last attempt to glean a

reaction, to “pull value out of moribundity.” And inventive as the Laplander tiger-

wasp, we knew just how to go about it.

Fortunately, we did not have to exercise this famous inventivity, nor any

determination, for the answer fell into our laps the same way the conference

invitation had six months earlier: e-mail.

Dennis Campbell, head of the organization that had hosted the conference,

wrote in to “Alice Foley,” the “secretary to Mike Moore” who had arranged things

beforehand, with some questions.27 The WTO rep had piqued some delegates’ ire,

it seemed, especially in the matter of his insults to Italians; Campbell wanted to

know what was up.

This promising lead soon disappointed. Campbell, it turned out, had not

actually been present at the event; he was relating reactions third-hand. Still,

Campbell’s mail got us to thinking: why not use this medium to find out what the

lawyers had thought? Perhaps with the added distance and time, our subjects

would express what they couldn’t in person. It was at least worth a try.

The conference program listed all the delegates’ e-mails—a fortunate thing,

because “Alice Foley” had a most urgent question. As everyone by now surely

knew, she said, Dr. Bichlbauer had been hit with a pie there in Salzburg; gravely

enough, however, he had contracted an infection from said pie—from an “active

27 For complete exchanges, see E-mail Appendix.


bacillus agent” harbored deep in its innards. The heretofore comical pieing was

now a high crime!

Might anything in the presentation, Foley prodded, have led to such anger?

Especially, please, in the realm of voting: Bichlbauer, from his sick-bed, in his

delirium, was muttering “voter fraud” again and again—raising substantial

suspicions that here was a clue!

The reactions were mild. While some remembered an “insult to Italian work

habits” or even a non-existent “slide of a sleeping Italian worker,” no one

remembered a voting scheme—even, in one case, after repeated questioning.

Slavering like dogs on a scent—perhaps extra-excited at finally finding, in

however lame and virtual a way, the drama that we had both dreaded and secretly

craved—we pushed onwards. “Dear Delegates,” wrote a mournful Ms. Foley. “Dr.

Andreas Bichlbauer, with whom many of you shared a pleasurable moment, has

succumbed to the infection he caught from the pie.”

“Our only current lead is the ‘voter fraud’ angle,” Alice Foley went on; with

the crime now a capital one, it was absolutely imperative that we find out whether

the dear departed had uttered anything even slightly offensive on the subject.

As one might suspect, death helped jar memories. The delegates did

mention the "voter fraud" angle... but in a rather unexpected way. “The only

reference in his talk to voting,” one wrote, “was in the context of making markets

more efficient.” Another informed us that with reference to voting, Dr. Bichlbauer

had spoken “about the elimination of systemic impediments to efficient markets.”

Offensiveness was simply not in the picture.

At long last, now, there was really nothing more we could do. We had failed—and

now not only as scientists, but as moral human beings. We had stooped to that

lowest of levels, death-rumor-mongering, and had deeply upset some of the

lawyers in the process.

Embarrassed failures that we were, we de-killed Bichlbauer to de-clobber

the lawyers’ sensibilities. “We are pleased,” Ms. Foley announced, “to relate a

strange new development—one which luckily does not sport the dark hues of the

last.

“While our friend has indeed passed on,” Ms. Foley explained, “it has been

a passage from the realm of WTO representation into that of the most utterly


fraudulent fiction: Dr. Bichlbauer was an impostor!” Yes, an impostor—one who

conned even us, at the WTO, “like common dowagers.”

At this point, Brinkman finally responded, venting the injury his

discernment had suffered. “By cleverly sneaking into the conference,” he said,

“you had a grand opportunity to make a point if you had something to say. You

could have started a lively debate. Instead, you have cemented your well-

deserved reputation as ‘protestors in Nike tennis shoes.’”

We were glad to at long last close this chapter. We shelved our Nikes and

called it a year.

We left this adventure feeling sullied and guilty—of evil? At least of resource

mismanagement. Emotional trauma was not meant to be part of our research, at

least not on the part of our subjects.

On the other hand, if we hadn’t so thoughtlessly killed Bichlbauer, we would

never have seen the delegates’ capacity for thoughtfulness. Their horror at the

lethal mistreatment of one they had met for mere minutes—and then weirdly—was

evidence the lawyers did care for people.

But if they had this capacity, then why on earth hadn’t they reacted to the

anti-social, hurtful, and misanthropic drivel of the bad doctor?

One facile answer suggested itself right away: we simply hadn’t constructed

a good enough lecture. Our points had never left the circle of plausibility, had

never approached the outer limits of neoliberalism where they could hope to have

impact. We began to see disturbing similarities between what we’d thought was

worst-case horror, and what really was; our points began to seem soft.

In Mexico, customs really were being deleted for the sake of efficiency, with

the government forbidding its employees from taking the siesta.28 Human rights

and freedom really were being forced to take a back seat to trade freedom, as

countries that refused products made in appalling conditions, or by children, found

themselves penalized.29 And in the U.S. at least, elections really were being

auctioned off to corporate bidders, as the practice of lobbying allowed companies

with unlimited resources more or less unlimited access to the wheels of power.30

28 news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/298349.stm. 29 gatt.org/resources/#childlabor. 30 gatt.org/resources/#lobbying.


The facts suddenly seemed just as extreme as our supposedly extreme

versions. Had we accidentally told the full truth and nothing but the truth?

Well, not really. With a bit of distance, we realized that at least in the case

of elections, there still was an important functional and emotive difference

between corporations buying votes through “soft money” and through payments

directly to citizens. The VoteAuction.com scheme we had talked about was so blunt

and crude, it couldn’t have slipped through the cracks of perception.

No, there was something else in operation, something so powerful that no

proposal we could ever develop—so long as it derived from solid free-market

principles—would be horrid or crazy enough to get a strong reaction. It was as old

as humankind, and one of the determining forces of history: it was something

called faith.

Now the power of faith to transcend the most obvious logic is obvious.

When the Crusaders discovered themselves in pitched battle against

Christians they had travelled thousands of miles to save, they refused to amend

their theory that the local Christians wanted their help.31 Faith! Faith, likewise,

spurred thirty-nine web developers to don Nikes and swallow poison, on the

theory—not backed by much solid evidence—that they’d shortly meet up on the

Hale-Bopp Comet.32 And when Appalachian snake handlers insist on dancing with

poisonous critters, despite not-so-rare deaths and lost limbs, it is from faith in the

theory that God is protecting them.33

Similarly, our audience of lawyers had a theory—that the free market could

bring happiness to the world at large—and they had the deepest possible faith in

that theory.

We had imagined that if we pushed the implications of free-market theory

into the outer limits of ugliness, we could horrify our audience of lawyers into

objecting. But as Daniel Defoe discovered in 1703, faith simply isn’t like that.

Defoe, seeking to show the absurdity of a bill forbidding non-Anglicans to

hold public office, suggested that this measure was a big waste of time, and that it

would be much more efficient to simply execute all the non-Anglicans:

31 gatt.org/resources/#crusades. 32 The “Heaven’s Gate” suicide was remarkable among mass suicides for its interface with astronomical observation. See gatt.org/resources/#heavensgate. 33 The basis for this often-contradicted theory is two Biblical verses: “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them” (Mark 16:18) and “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions” (Luke 10:19).


It is cruelty to kill a snake or a toad in cold blood, but the poison of their nature makes it a charity to our neighbours, to destroy those creatures! not for any personal injury received, but for prevention; not for the evil they have done, but the evil they may do!.... How many millions of future souls, [shall] we save from infection and delusion, if the present race of Poisoned Spirits were purged from the face of the land!... The light foolish handling of them by mulcts, fines, etc.; 'tis their glory and their advantage! If the Gallows instead of the Counter, and the galleys instead of the fine were the reward of going to [non-Anglican churches], there would not be so many... As Scipio said of Carthage, Delenda est Carthago!34... Let Us Crucify The Thieves!35

Defoe, to his shock, found his histrionic, inaccurate, and profoundly stupid

words taken seriously. A large number of radical Anglicans, thinking one of them

had authored the screed, came out loudly in favor of execution; this solution, after

all, was quite clearly consistent with the widely accepted theory that only

Anglicans had any virtue, and that all others were “poison” in the body politic.

We too had discovered that once a premise is laid—whether it be the

toxicity of dissenters or the friendliness of free markets—there is no way to push

the implications enough to shake off believers. Why should international trade

lawyers, presented with logical conclusions of a theory they deeply believe and

practice each day, be any different from snake handlers, Crusaders, or radical

Anglicans?

Since we hadn’t read Defoe, we’d been condemned to repeat him. At least

we found ourselves just somewhat poorer, rather than, like Defoe, rotting in jail

awaiting the pillory....

The New York Times published a full page of Alice Foley’s correspondence with the

delegates, right on the front of the Sunday edition’s “Week in Review.”36 Other

newspapers and magazines also wrote about our experiment. The WTO Secretariat

disavowed the research, announcing for the second time that they “deplored” us;37

this confused us—it was their ideas we were sorting out, after all—but it helped

garner further publicity.

34 “Carthage must be deleted.” Defoe was no scholar: it was Scipio who deleted the great Trojan city, but Cato who pronounced it deletable. For more on Defoe and his remarkable works, see www.gatt.org/resources/#defoe. 35 Daniel Defoe, The Shortest Way With Dissenters, 1703. 36 January 7, 2001, www.nytimes.com/2001/01/07/weekinreview/07WORD.html. 37 The first was in reference to GATT.org; see Foreword.


Yet even with all this attention, we shortly received a second chance to

obtain useful data. This time we didn’t hesitate three months to accept the

speaking engagement; we replied within minutes, and were quickly confirmed for a

date: July 19, one day before the protests in Genoa.38

In this appearance, it turned out, we’d have a much, much bigger

audience—surely a good thing, since in a bigger sample we’d be much more likely

to get a range of reactions. But the time allotted would be very short—we’d

probably have two or three minutes to speak, versus twenty in Salzburg. A much

bigger chance to make an impression, but much less time to do it in. What should

we do?

A clever exploratory surgeon, having failed to understand the heart by

poking at the appendix, spleen, lungs and colon, will then try poking straight at

the heart. Every proposal we’d spewed out in Salzburg, from the extreme to the

morbidly extreme, had failed to get a signficant reaction. With just three minutes

rather than twenty, why not try poking right at the heart of the matter? Why not

speak about neoliberal theory itself, rather than its various implications?

What if Defoe, instead of suggesting an action item—the execution of all

the non-Anglicans—had described the basis of the Anglicans’ theory? What if,

instead of urging “the gallows instead of the fine” for Protestants, whose perfidy

was entirely well established, Defoe had instead examined how it was that this

perfidy was so well established:

The Protestants, those nether insects, are of course entirely correct when they claim there is no evidence they are different from us. Of course there is not! But let us look at ‘evidence’ in a relative way. There is, on the one hand, the evidence of fact, eyes, and science—with which the Protestants, that generally ragtag bunch, are so obsessed—and there is the evidence of the great assumptions of Anglicanism, which we—with the highest Anglican educations, and the greatest Anglican knowledge—know with the certainest certainty to be certain. This is how we can be sure that a Protestant, although scientifically the same as an Anglican, is as different from him as the miniature hound of Megiddo39 is distinct from the sun! And furthermore—if the evidence of books cannot convince you—is it not true that in the entire history of Egypt and subsequent civilizations up to our own, there was not a single Protestant ruler?

38 300,000 people gathered in Genoa from July 19 to July 21, 2001, to protest the G-8 meeting. These protests acquired notoriety after one of the protesters was killed by police, and hundreds were viciously clubbed in their sleep. See also first chapter of Part II. 39 Believed to be the domestic cockroach.


Might this kind of speech have spurred second thoughts among at least

some of the radical Anglicans, when even the most horrible conclusions of their

theory could not?

Perhaps, perhaps not. In any case, we had nothing to lose, for Andy was

already in Paris.


In the Face of Massive Protest, a Basis for WTO Legitimacy

This interview of “Granwyth Hulatberi,” WTO spokesperson, was broadcast live on CNBC’s European Marketwrap program, on July 19, 2000, the day before the G8 protests in Genoa. The host was Nigel Roberts, and the other two guests were Vernon Ellis, International Chairman of Andersen Consulting (renamed “Accenture” shortly before the interview), and Barry Coates, Director of the World Development Movement (www.wdm.org.uk), an organization that performs advocacy on behalf of poor countries.

NIGEL ROBERTS (HOST, CNBC EUROPEAN MARKETWRAP): Now tomorrow all

eyes will be on the Port of Genoa, where eight of the world’s most powerful leaders are

gathering for their annual summit, as well as more standard discussions such as trade,

poverty, and so on. The controversial U.S. plan to build a defense shield will also be on

the agenda. The man pushing that plan, President George Bush will be attending the

summit for the very first time. So, what can we expect in Genoa?

PRE-RECORDED INTRODUCTION: When eight of the world’s most powerful

leaders gather in Genoa tomorrow, thousands of protesters will be there to greet them.

Protests are becoming a familiar part of the world’s political and economic forums. The

starting point was the World Trade Organization’s Seattle summit in November of 1999,

where clashes between the police and protesters put the entire meeting into disarray.

Well since then, world leaders have met in battlefield conditions, cordoned off the

public they claim is at the very heart of their policy decisions.

The demographic of the protesters is as wide and varied as the policies that they’re

protesting about: capitalism, the environment, anti-globalization, and Third World debt

unite many against the dominant ruling neoliberal system.

On the eve of the G-8 summit, we asked what are the alternatives for the leaders

to consider, what effects protest has on their decision-making, and if the system has to

change, what should replace it. Big questions—there’s a lot on the line, not only

economically, but politically and environmentally.


NIGEL ROBERTS: Well let’s begin with the nature of the protests themselves. We’re

joined by Vernon Ellis, International Chairman of Accenture; we’ve got Barry Coates in

the studio, he’s the director of the World Development Movement; and joining us from

Paris, Granwyth Hulatberi [difficulty pronouncing], who’s a spokesperson for the World

Trade Organization. [could put a snapshot here of the screen—the four]

And really a question for all of you, because let’s face it, in the last two years we

have seen a tremendous upsurge of anti-capitalist protest. Vern, let me start with you—why

now, what was the catalyst to suddenly get people hitting the streets?

VERNON ELLIS (INTERNATIONAL CHAIRMAN, ANDERSEN CONSULTING/

ACCENTURE): Well, I think people hear a lot about globalization, and they feel that

somehow there’s an invisible power.

We at Accenture did a survey of what people in local communities think about

multinational corporations. And I feel they do believe they can do some good.

I personally believe they can be good for business—I talked about that last week.

But they also worry that somehow they’re remote and unaccountable, and that, I

think, gives a sense of unease. Now there’s a lot of extreme manifestations of that, but I

think that’s what’s underneath it.

NIGEL ROBERTS: Well Barry, Barry Coates, why is it that there’s suddenly been this

upsurge?

BARRY COATES (DIRECTOR OF WORLD DEVELOPMENT MOVEMENT): Well,

I think two major reasons.

One is that the rhetoric of what companies say they’re doing vastly exceeds the

reality.

But secondly, and perhaps more importantly in the context of Genoa, is that

companies are seen to have undue influence on government policies. And many of the

protests around these kind of issues are arguing for change to the rules—to make them

fairer to people rather than to create new rights for the big corporations.

Corporations are good for business!


I think there’s a widespread feeling that governments are too much in the pocket

of the corporations. Who suffers from this? It’s typically the poor, typically the

environment, typically the vulnerable groups in society.

This is still a question of national policy—but it’s raised to a new level in the

international arena through organizations like the World Trade Organization, the World

Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

NIGEL ROBERTS: Well, Granwyth, you’re with the World Trade Organization—

perhaps that’s a fair point, that more should be being done by organizations like yourself

to actually ameliorate those problems.

“GRANWYTH HULATBERI,” SPOKESPERSON FOR THE WORLD TRADE

ORGANIZATION: Well Nigel, the protesters are of course entirely correct, but we have

to see what they’re talking about in a relative way.

There is an increase in poverty in the world, there is an

increase in inequality, there are various things that the protesters are

talking about that are undeniable.40

But what the protesters lack in this analysis of theirs is an understanding. I mean

you have a mass of protesters, an essentially ragtag group, who are trying to compete with

a mass of knowledge that we at the WTO, and experts all over the world, have—

knowledge that is based in books that have been written since the 1770s, in England, you

know, in the 18th and 19th centuries, about this.41 These books allow us to be absolutely

certain that free trade, although it has led to these problems that the protesters correctly

point out, is certain to lead to a bettering of conditions for all consumers.

NIGEL ROBERTS: All right, but surely the whole point is that that’s what they’re

protesting about, that in fact it isn’t free trade, and that it doesn’t actually do what Adam

40 See e.g. statistics in Part III, “Broad Changes in Approaches to World Trade.” 41 It was during this period that free-market theorists came to claim that the wealthy were wealthy by natural rather than divine right—using, in this argument, a creative reading of Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest.” “In the town as it is in the forest” replaced “On earth as it is in Heaven.” See also gatt.org/resources/#economics.

The protesters are badly educated.


Smith was talking about, which is spreading the greatest good to the greatest number—it

is, actually, divisive: the rich get richer and the poor countries get poorer.

“GRANWYTH HULATBERI”: Well, up to the present this is the case. But you bring up

poor countries, and we can look at many things that we’ve been doing to benefit poor

countries.

It’s sort of a family situation, and families have existed since the Seventh Day, as

they say in Jerusalem. You have to look at it that way.

There are loans to cash-poor countries. There are “pollution vouchers,” which

allow countries that want to benefit their economies, I mean their ecology, to benefit it

without destroying their economy.42 We can see ideas such as “justice vouchers,” that

allow countries which commit heinous human rights violations but want to stop, to stop

doing so but in a way that doesn’t destroy the social fabric. All of these things.

NIGEL ROBERTS: Barry Coates is dying to come in here, but that in fact just makes the

point that’s a very contentious issue, global trade. And I think basically what they’re saying

is that the very idea destroys countries’ economies and obliterates individualism.

But of course your boss is a proponent of global trade, Granwyth—Mike Moore,

Director-General of the WTO, and this is what he had to say last year in Beijing, why he

believes that free trade and globalization is not only important, but essential.

MIKE MOORE, DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF WTO (pre-recorded): Two billion extra

souls will share our crowded planet within the next thirty years. We’ll have to double food

production within about twenty years. We face a world of incredible opportunities and

challenges. Trade and trade policy must play their role as part of a wider development

scenario.

NIGEL ROBERTS: All right, Mike Moore there, WTO chief. So, what’s wrong with that?

42 These are “pollution rights” granted by governments to corporations, that the corporations can then sell to other corporations. Thus an underpolluting company in one area—say, California—can sell the


BARRY COATES: It’s completely different from the reality of what’s going on. Talking

about production of food for all—rich countries subsidize their farmers to the tune of

twenty thousand US dollars per year, per farmer. Most developing country farmers live on

less than two hundred dollars per year. And their farming is absolutely destroyed by the

dumping of agricultural surpluses on those countries. The supply chains for most of these

agricultural commodities are controlled by big corporations.

If the WTO were serious about addressing the issues of world poverty, they would

do things completely differently than the way they do now.

NIGEL ROBERTS: An interesting statistic that somebody came out with is to compare

the difference between the rich and poor. If you look at the annual global turnover of a

firm like Goldman Sachs—I’m not choosing that for any particular reason—$2.2 billion.

Look at the GDP of Tanzania: $2.2 billion. The difference is, in Tanzania it’s shared out

between twenty-five million people; at Goldman Sachs it used to be shared out between

161 partners. Now surely it’s that kind of inequality—sure, it might be spreading around,

but there’s still that divide there.

Let me bring in Granwyth on that. Is that a fair point?

“GRANWYTH HULATBERI”: Well, of course it is. But I think Barry, as well as all the

other protesters, are simply too focussed on reality, and on facts and figures. There’s an

enormous number of experts at all the greatest universities in the world, who have read all

these books, who have read Adam Smith and everything since it to Milton Friedman, and

these people have solid theoretical basis for knowing that things will lead to betterment.

And I think I would have to say that this is a long-term problem that comes down

to a problem of education. We have to find a way to convince perhaps not the protesters,

but the protesters’ children, to follow thinkers like Milton Friedman and Darwin and so

on rather than what the protesters have been reared on—Trotsky, and Robespierre, and

Abbie Hoffman.

right to pollute to an overpolluting company in another area—say, Mexico. See also gatt.org/resources/#Coase.

We need to educate the protesters. Privately.


And I think that the direction of education being put into private hands—a

concentration of resources in the private sector—will naturally lead to this result, and we’ll

see the protesters’ children being reared with an entirely different set of concerns.

NIGEL ROBERTS: I find very strange the idea that Milton Friedman’s a great thinker;

the monetarists were let loose in the 1980s, and look what happened then. But let me

bring you in on that, Barry.

BARRY COATES: Can I just say that these kinds of simplistic arguments are just too

insulting for most people to believe. I mean the idea that we have a choice between Milton

Friedman or Abbie Hoffman for where we get our source of economic history and

philosophy....

There are many, many thinkers from around the world—just not the ones

employed by the WTO—that think that World Trade Organization policies are deeply

damaging to the development prospects of the poorest countries.43

The kinds of policies used by every single OECD country—and by all of the Asian

Tigers—during their development, are now being closed off by the WTO from use by

today’s developing countries.44 As a result, instead of the poorest countries getting richer,

what we see is the rising poverty levels of every single region of the world, bar East Asia—

and partly because East Asia was able to use policies that helped strengthen their economy,

and then they opened up when they were able to compete internationally. What’s

happening now is that the poorest countries are being opened up too early, when they

can’t compete, and the domestic industries are being wiped out by well-funded, large

foreign competitors.

And there’s a very, very solid body of evidence that shows that these gains from

trade that the WTO and others talk about have been illusory if you’re poor and you live in

a poor country.

NIGEL ROBERTS: Let me go out to Granwyth.

43 [List a few of the thinkers Coates is referring to.] 44 For example, protective laws requiring foreign industries to hire locally at all levels, to use local products wherever possible, etc.


“GRANWYTH HULATBERI”: [Hulatberi, scribbling notes, is caught by surprise.] Ah! Yes!

Well, I wanted to speak to Granwyth’s... sorry, to Barry’s point about there being other

thinkers.

I’d like to bring up a thinker who’s extremely important in our way of thinking,

directly as well as indirectly. That would be Darwin, who of course proved that if you look

at the natural world, there’s one thing you can tell—and that’s that things go well.

And so if you take the principles of the natural world and impose them on human

society, things will go well too.

And one would have to counter to a statement like Barry’s, that there are other

thinkers—well, who actually has the power in the world, and therefore who is correct, in

this kind of world view? I think the answer is easy. And if you look at the views held by

myself, my organization and many, many of the decision-makers in the world—the

powerful people—they happen to coincide with what I’m explaining. And I think this is

enough, in this sort of view.

BARRY COATES: So what we have here is a picture of the rich and powerful people

believing a certain philosophy, which they then propound through the institutions in

which they have a powerful voice. And I think that this is exactly the model that’s being

questioned.

Increasingly, there’s a large body of people who are concerned about these rules.

The people on the streets of Genoa, or of Seattle, are not representative of the overall

movement—they are the tip of the iceberg. We did a study last year of developing

countries that found that in the space of one year, in fifty protests, more than a million

people from developing countries were out trying to change the rules that were being

imposed on them by the World Bank and the IMF, and locked in through the World

Trade Organization.45

NIGEL ROBERTS: Thank you; we must finish up, unfortunately.

45 www.wdm.org.uk/cambriefs/Debt/Unrest2.pdf.

Our ideas are correct, because we’re in power.


Barry Coates, thank you very much for joining us, and also Granwyth Hulatbatty

(sic), and also Vernon Ellis on the line from New York as well. Quick break; after that

we’ll wrap up with the markets.


Enlarging our Vision

Mike had dropped the mirror and was wiping away his tears. Andy contemplated

his puffy red face.

“Okay, look,” Andy said. “I think we should get that plastic surgery

everyone’s talking about.”

Mike kept wiping.

“I THINK we should GET that SURGERY.”

Mike froze in mid-wipe, blinked at Andy. “Uh... hunh?”

“I’m pretty sure it could work,” Andy said. “You know, where you get your

facial features brought closer together—mouth up, eyes tighter together, nose

shrunken just so.... Face-tinying!”

“Okay,” Mike said, eyes clenched shut.

“Seriously,” Andy said. Mike tried to frown with his eyes still clenched shut.

“And you end up with, basically, a tiny face, in the region of the nose.

Approximately.”

“Okay,” Mike said, still half-frowning. “Face-tinying.”

There was a traditional two-second silence, then a leaked snort, and finally

we exploded in guffaws, frightening a passing protester. Mike forgot momentarily

his own face situation, then remembered suddenly with an “Ouch!”

“Seriously,” Andy said, now quite earnestly. “Face-tinying! It could work.”

“It could work!” Mike mimicked. Guffaws. “Ouch.”

“Okay, what I mean is—textiles! Textiles, skin. Skin, you know, is basically

an advanced kind of textile. You wear it, it does all these futuristic things, sensing

and adapting and being good for wearing in a hospital... or anywhere! It’s smart!

Smart textile.”

“Smart textile.”

“Smart textile! And the WTO wants to really be on the cutting edge of

smart textiles. So we need to rethink the face.”

Suddenly Andy got a lunatic gleam in his eye, a gleam Mike knew meant it

was best to agree with whatever followed.

“Because just like textiles,” Andy went on, “the face is an essential

component of human progress.”

“Ah,” Mike said. “Yes. So the WTO had better be involved in it. In the face.”


“Right!” Andy said, delighted.

We were trying to figure out what to do in Tampere, Finland, in a month—

where, we'd found out the week before, Andy—or rather one “Hank Hardy Unruh”

of the WTO—would be the keynote speaker at an important international

conference entitled “Textiles of the Future.” We’d immediately decided that for this

conference, we needed something extremely visual. Nothing verbal had worked to

get a reaction—neither in Salzburg, where the nuttiest schemes had gone right

down like so much cotton candy, nor on the CNBC program on which Andy had

appeared the evening before. We clearly needed glitz, some clear visual effect to

bonk our audience over the head with—something any child could understand.

But what could that be?

Part of the reason we were here in Genoa was to figure this out; we hoped

to get inspired by the visual gimmicks protesters used to drive home their points.

Mike and John, another Yes Man, had driven the minivan down from Paris two days

before; Andy had arrived that morning via the night train, which he’d taken

immediately after the CNBC interview. He was still been wearing his TV business

suit, quite rumpled from sleep, when Mike and John picked him up in Alessandria,

all Genoa stations being closed for the protests.

As we drove into Genoa, we’d already given our imaginations a good

workout. A puppet show? A wrestling demonstration? How about a cooking show,

where the steaks are all in the shapes of countries—here’s how we do France!

here’s how we do Poland! here’s how we do Chad! Or better, a magic trick, one

with lots of smoke and drama—pulling a transgenic rabbit out of a nuclear

smokestack!

As we arrived near the center, we began looking for parking. Fifteen

minutes later, we found ourselves in an area where most stores were shuttered

and boarded up in preparation for the inevitable property damage. And a hundred

yards up ahead, there it was, exactly what the store-owners had prepared for: a

band of thirty or fourty youths in black sweatshirts and balaclavas were smashing

and torching cars. Flames billowed into the sky from two or three metal carcasses,

and a black pall of smoke began filling the sky.

Suddenly, Andy saw it—our parking spot! He yelled frantically at John to

pull in, opened his door and called out to a fellow striding ahead with a large steel

pipe in his hand.


“Scusame!” Andy yelled, and pointed up to the sign over the parking space.

“Okay? Parcaggio?”

The fellow stopped, lifted his balaclava, and peered up at the sign. He

checked his watch and shrugged. “C’è una multa,” he said. “A fine.”

“But maybe not today, eh?” Andy asked hopefully. “Oggi?”

A strange amused look suddenly passed over the fellow’s face. He pointed

to the mass of his comrades burning cars up ahead. As the problem with the

location began to register on Andy, another balaclava-clad fellow who’d been

standing guard nearby suddenly grabbed Andy’s door and shut it forcefully. He

pointed back up the street the way we’d come. “Fuori!” he shouted at John.

John didn’t need a translation. He turned around and drove off the wrong

way down the one-way street, thankful we didn’t have to worry about getting a

fine. We found a parking spot in a less active area about three kilometers away,

further from the center but nearer, as it turned out, to the official protest.

The official protest consisted of an unbelievably immense number of people—three

hundred thousand, by conservative estimates.

The gamut of visual effects the protesters were using to reinforce their

points was amazing. Besides the singing and chanting, some protesters were

walking around on stilts dressed as bankers. A band played a dirge on tubas

painted to look like giant dollar signs. Some folks in medieval costumes pushed

along a giant catapult. A number of people had mirrors, which they were using to

focus sunlight on everything from police helicopters to bank logos. A little cloud of

shuttlecocks from a mass game of badminton made its way along the protest. A

group of people in white overalls pushed along some big plastic devices of

uncertain use.

While we unfortunately couldn’t imagine using any of these effects in

Tampere, we wondered briefly whether we should add them to the list of possible

audience reactions. What might it mean if, when we promoted some nefarious

policy, our audience used their pocket mirrors to reflect the sun in our faces, like

Archimedes trying to sink Roman ships? What if, when we said something

repulsive, the audience wheeled a catapult onto the stage? What might we do in

such cases?


Suddenly, up ahead, a huge cloud of smoke emerged from the crowd. What was

this clever effect? Near the smoke, people began screaming and running in all

directions. Not an effect after all: a small army of police, it turned out, had blocked

off the crowd, and were firing tear gas directly into it.

Tear gas is incredibly painful when it touches anything sensitive—mouth,

throat, nasal passage, or eyes. It makes breathing incredibly difficult, and

momentarily blinds you if you’re not wearing goggles. The effect of such pain is to

turn even the gentlest tree-hugging granny into a vengeful militant.

The character of the day changed completely.

Three hours and thousands of tear-gas canisters later, Andy was using a short

moment of calm to pursue the face-tinying concept, which had occurred to him

upon seeing Mike’s face all scrunched up in pain. “But what’s really interesting,” he

was saying, “is why the WTO is so interested in face as textilic frontier. Why, is

because of efficiency. A huge proportion of a consumer’s brain is devoted to face

recognition—60%, 70%, maybe more.46 That’s a massive waste of productible

brain-mass. Reduce the size of the face, you free the brain—so the consumer is

massively productivized.”

“Other consumers are,” Mike corrected. “Productivized?”

“Right, right—clearly not the ones with the tinied faces, themselves, but the

ones looking at the ones with the tinied faces.”

“So it’s altruistic,” Mike said.

“Right!” Andy exclaimed through his teeth, concentrating hard. “We’ll force

certain sectors to get themselves tinied—their faces, I mean—but it’s still altruistic,

because it will be best for the greatest number.”

“I think I get it,” Mike said. “Everyone’s face will be tinied, so everyone’s

brain will be freed, and the GNP will soar through the roof.”

“Exactly!” Andy exclaimed. “Everyone. Alle!”

A tear-gas canister landed on the ground next to Andy, and he kicked it

away in panic; luckily a strong breeze blew the gas away, into an alley.

But then, as Mike remembered his own face and its continuing redness and

tear situation, he suddenly saw the flaw in the concept. “The problem is….”

“What?” Andy instantly responded, defensively.

“Well….”


“You see a problem?” Andy said.

“Not a problem, per se…”

“Okay,” Andy said, resigned.

“For it to work, we’d actually have to get our faces tinied.”

“Oh.”

It was true. If face-tinying was going to be visual, more than just a creepy

concept like the ones we’d tried out in Salzburg…. “We could simulate it,” Andy

tried.

“Simulate it,” Mike said.

“With… with a kind of system of little strings and pulleys, and some glue. It

could be interactive. Maybe using a partial mask, or a full mask partially... Strings

and pulleys... Interactive...”

“Oh look,” Mike said, and pointed across to the highway. An amphibious

tank was thundering by. Then another, and another. Tanks.47

We left the area as fast as we could. It was several hours before we found

ourselves back at the miraculously unscathed minivan.

The next two days, we couldn't do much more thinking. What had become a whole

series of massive, unprovoked police responses had turned the protests ugly, and

they never recovered their initial festivity.

Then, the unthinkable: 21-year-old Carlo Giuliani was shot in the head from

an armored van, becoming the first person killed by police in a First-World

demonstration since the 1970s.48

Finally the protests came to an end. We were relieved to be leaving the next

morning. Fed up with trying to sleep on the concrete benches of the stadium,

among thousands of protesters—in two days we’d probably managed about five

hours apiece—we decided to try the beach instead. We checked our e-mail one last

time at the nearby IndyMedia Center, then drove down the hill to the sand to find

a spot to sleep. As we descended, we passed a convoy of about twenty police cars

and vans going up, the drivers yelling slogans to each other in Italian, fists raised.

46 The actual percentage is of course much closer to 1%. 47 We found out later that they were off to “take,” from the sea, the Piazzale Kennedy, which protesters were using as a gathering spot. 48 Hundreds have been killed in Third-World demonstrations, however; see gatt.org/resources/#genoa for more.


An hour and a half later, just as we were about to nod off to our first good

sleep in days, we got word that the police had attacked the IndyMedia Center. We

bolted awake and raced back up the hill on foot. When we arrived, ambulance

workers were carrying stretcher after stretcher out of the school across the street

from the Center.

It turned out that the police we’d seen driving up the hill had first entered

the IndyMedia Center, where they’d smashed a few computers and stolen a few

videotapes and diskettes. Then they’d gone across the street to the Armando Diaz

school, where a few hundred protesters were staying. They’d smashed through the

doors and, singing fascist songs, bludgeoned a hundred defenseless people bloody.

They had shattered bones, smashed teeth, fractured skulls. The ambulance

workers, presumably seasoned to injury, had ashen looks, and one confided that

he thought several of the victims would die. Two nearly did, and sixty-one required

hospitalization.

Later, we and hundreds of others walked silently through the school. There

were pools of blood on the ground; blood soaked out of an empty sleeping bag in

which one victim had been beaten; on the walls, bloody streaks traced the routes

of victims being hauled downstairs. We heard people sobbing. Some people on the

top floor were having a hard time convincing a fellow hiding out on the roof that

the police were finally gone.49

Our last impression of Italy, driving away the next day: small busts of

Mussolini for sale in a gas station gift shop.

Back in France, we stopped for dinner in a rural restaurant. Since leaving, we

hadn’t talked much about anything except Genoa, and we still had not the slightest

plan for the textiles conference in Tampere. The conference was now three weeks

away; if we were going to prepare a visual effect of any complexity, we needed to

come up with it now.

Mike tried to get things rolling. “Did you know that in Qatar you could be

beheaded for being gay?” The next WTO Ministerial was to take place in Doha.

“I’m not going to Qatar,” Andy said with a start. “Oh, you mean in

general....”

“Protest is illegal there too,” Mike said.

49 For more on the attack see gatt.org/resources/#genoa.


“Even better than fascism,” Andy said. “I wonder if they behead people for

protesting too.”

Silence. Our thoughts turned stubbornly back to protester blood and fascist

police.

The food arrived. Andy had ordered tête de veau because it was the ugliest-

sounding thing on the menu, and he wanted something distracting. “Head,” the

waiter had clarified doubtfully, with a grimace of distaste, clinching Andy’s decision.

Before placing the gelatinous mass of assorted head-goop on the table, the

waiter held it in front of Andy and wiggled it gently back and forth. It smelled not

even remotely familiar—so strange it couldn’t even be called repulsive. “You still

want it?” the waiter taunted. Andy nodded sadly. The waiter shrugged and put it

down. “He still wants it!” he yelled back to the kitchen, as if to settle a bet.50

As for Mike’s dish, it featured, nestled among a small heap of Brussel’s

sprouts, a single golden sausage about one foot long and three inches thick. As he

prepared to dig in, Mike got a lunatic gleam in his eye, his knife frozen in mid-cut.

“What are you thinking?” Andy said pleasantly, ready to nod politely at

whatever it was.

“I've got it,” Mike said. “I’ve got it.”

50 Tête de veau, it turns out, is repulsive to most French people, including our waiter; for a few others, including President Jacques Chirac, it is a test of Frenchness and virility. It is even said that Chirac—a caricature of French machismo if ever there was one—requires his ministers and counsellors to order it whenever possible, to their repeated horror.


Towards the Globalization of Textile Trade

This lecture, presented by “Hank Hardy Unruh,” was the keynote address for the “Textiles of the Future” conference held at the Tampere University of Technology on August 18-21, 2001. In the audience were three hundred international research engineers, businesspeople, officials and academics working in industries ranging from medicine to defense.

It's an honor to be here in Tampere, addressing this audience of the most outstanding

textilians in the world today. Looking around at this diverse sea of faces, I see outstanding

elements of corporations like Dow, Denkendorf, Lenzing, all at the forefront of consumer

satisfaction in textiles. I see members of the European Commission, Euratex, and other

important political bodies that aim at easing rules for corporate citizens. I also see

professors from great universities walking into a prosperous future hand in hand with

industrial partners, using citizen funds to develop great textilic solutions to be sold to

consumers for profit and progress.

I see on all of your faces a touching, childlike eagerness to tackle the biggest

textiles questions today. At the same time I see a deep understanding that some of these

solutions may not be easy, but that come what may, we have to press on into a future that

few of us understand, except in terms of its dollar results.

How do we at the WTO fit in? Well, that's easy: We want to help you achieve

those dollar results. When roadblocks to dollar results arise—protectionism, worry, even

violence against physical property—we want to help make sure that none of this stands in

the way of your dollar results.

What do we want? A free and open global economy that will best serve corporate

owners and stockholders alike. When do we want it? Now.

What we are doing Of course, just like nature, the market sorts things out by itself. It's like Darwin said, if you

look at nature, one thing is clear, and that's that things go well—and that if you apply

natural laws to human society, things will go well too.

But like all of us—even wild animals—the market can use some help. And we at

the WTO are committed to providing that help, to helping the market help those that

need it the most.


We're using a variety of techniques to do so. Lobbying, for example, and other

political tactics; "guerrilla marketing" and other corporate techniques, to cleverly show

teenagers the value of liberalization; and so on.

Finally, we have in mind some far more sophisticated and advanced solutions for

the future. In just twenty minutes from right now, I'm going to unveil the WTO's very

own solution to two of the biggest problems for management: maintaining rapport with a

distant workforce, and maintaining healthful amounts of leisure. This solution,

appropriately enough, is based in textiles.

From Involuntarily Imported Workforce (IIW, or IW²) to Remotely Located Workforce (RLW) But how did workers ever get to be a problem? Before unveiling the solution, I'd like to

talk a bit about the history of the worker/management problem. We will follow the stages

of work from pre-industrial to an imported workforce model, from an imported

workforce to a remote workforce model, and finally—the stage we're going through

now—from a remote workforce model to a remote workforce that really works. And

incidentally, we'll see that at every step of this evolution, it is textiles that has played the

central role.

The first leg of our management-historical journey is back to 1860s America, and

the U.S. Civil War. We all know about this war—the bloodiest, least profitable war in the

history of the U.S., a war in which unbelievably huge amounts of money went right down

the drain—and all for textiles!

Of course, this war is most famous for having effected a mighty change in the

management paradigm from a central-owner hierarchical model to a much more

decentralized, fluid model—a real "hippie revolution" kind of paradigm shift!

We'll talk about this misunderstanding in a moment—but first, a bit of

background.

Causes of the Civil War: Protectionism Now believe it or not, even many Americans don't know what caused the Civil War. Why

did people fight and die and lose money? The answer is really really simple, but it is

surprising. It comes down to one word: freedom.

The U.S. Civil War: not very profitable.


By the 1860s, the South was utterly flush with cash. It had recently benefitted

from the cotton gin, an invention that took the seeds out of cotton and the South out of

its pre-industrial past. Hundreds of thousands of workers, previously unemployed in their

countries of origin, were given useful jobs in textiles.

Into this rosy picture of freedom and boon stepped... you guessed it: the North.

The South, of course, wanted to buy industrial equipment where it was cheapest,

and to sell raw cotton where it fetched the highest price—in Britain. The North, however,

decided the South should not have the freedom to do this, but instead should have to do

business with the North, and only with the North.

The North used its majority stake in the country's governance to exploit the

Southern landowners and deny them their freedom to choose the cheapest prices; this of

course made them very angry. You'd be angry too if you were denied your freedom of

choice! And so the North's abusive tariff practices basically caused what otherwise was a

perfectly good market to spiral into a hideously unprofitable war.

Civil War responsible for eliminating slavery? Now some Civil-War apologists have stated that the Civil War, for all its faults, at least had

the effect of outlawing an Involuntarily Imported Workforce. Now such a labor model is

of course a terrible thing; I myself am an abolitionist. But in fact there is no doubt that left

to their own devices, markets would have eventually replaced slavery with "cleaner"

sources of labor anyhow.

To prove my point, come join me on what Albert Einstein used to call a "thought

experiment." Here: suppose Involuntarily Imported Labor had never been outlawed, that

slaves still existed and that it were easy to own one. What do you think it would cost today

to profitably maintain a slave—say, here in Tampere?

Let's see.... A Finnish clothing set costs $50 at the very least. Two meals from

McDonalds cost $10 or so. The cheapest small room probably runs for $250 / month. To

function well, you have to pay for your slave's health care—if its country of origin was

polluted, this could get very expensive. And of course what with child labor laws, much of

the youth market is simply not available.

Now leave the same slave back at home—let's say, Gabon. In Gabon, $10 pays for

two weeks of food, not just one day. $250 pays for two years' housing, not a month's. $50 pays

The North violated freedom of choice.


for a lifetime of budget clothing! Health care is likewise much cheaper. On top of it all,

youth can be gainfully employed without restriction.

The biggest benefit of the remote labor system, though, is to the slave—because in

Gabon, there is no need for the slave not to be free! This is primarily because there are no

one-time slave transport costs to recoup, and so the potential losses from fleeing are

limited to the slave's rudimentary training. So since the slave can be free, he or she

suddenly becomes a worker rather than a slave! Also terrific for morale is that slaves—

workers!—have the luxury of remaining in their native habitat and don’t have to relocate

to places they would be subject to such unpleasantries as homesickness and racism.

Is there any competition between these two models of life, for either side?

I think it is clear from this little thought experiment that if the North and South

had simply let the market sort it out without protectionist tariffs, they would have quickly

given up slavery for something more efficient anyway. By forcing the issue, the North not

only committed a terrible injustice against the freedom of the South, but also deprived

slavery of its natural development into remote labor.

The WTO is fortunately not alone in understanding the power of the market to

resolve serious issues. I quote president George Bush on this issue. At the April 2001

“Summit of the Americas” in Quebec he said: “Open trade reinforces the habit of liberty

that sustains democracy over the long haul.”51 Had the leaders of the 1860s understood

what our leaders understand today, the Civil War would never have happened.

Problems with the Remote Labor Model Now the "modern" remote labor model, while much better than the imported workforce

model, is—being decentralized—also much more complicated from a management

perspective.

In a world where the headquarters of a company are in New York, Hong Kong or

Espoo, and the workers are in Gabon, Rangoon, or Estonia, how does a manager

maintain proper rapport with the workers, and how does he or she ensure from a distance

that workers perform their work in an ethical fashion?

Let's look at a counterexample—a case in which managers remained out of touch

with remote workers, leading to extreme worker dissatisfaction and the eventual total loss

51 www.tpa.gov/infodocs/tpa-potus.htm.

Sweatshops are just like slavery, but much more efficient!


of the worker base. Perhaps we can learn from this case and avoid such catastrophes in

the future.

In 19th century Britain, just like in the South, things had never looked better. The

country was flush with cash and potential and freedom, thanks to new technology—the

spinning jenny. Like the cotton gin in the South—for turning raw cotton into useable

cotton—Britain's spinning jenny turned useable cotton into finished textiles, so the British

could suddenly mass-produce clothing.

Like in the South, all that was needed was a workforce to produce the raw

materials that these new tools required. The British, being more advanced, took a modern

approach: instead of expensively importing workers, they located their employment

opportunities where workers already lived: India.

There were problems, right from the start. For thousands of years India had made

the finest cotton garments in the world—so Indian workers felt humiliated when they had

to just provide raw materials to British industry.

The main rabble-rouser—literally—was Mohandas Gandhi, a likeable, well-

meaning fellow who wanted to help his fellow workers along, but did not understand the

benefits of open markets and free trade. Gandhi thought that through "self-reliance"—

protectionism against textiles trade with Britain—India could become strong and relearn

its own ancient ways of textiles.

These rather naive ideas became extremely popular, and a big proportion of the

citizenry rose up against the British management system. The British eventually had to leave!

What are the lessons for management here? The big problem in India was clearly a

grave lack of management rapport with workers. By making only small adjustments,

British management could have kept India on the path to modernity.

For example, one of the things Gandhi and his anti-globalization followers did was

make their own clothing at home, to symbolize their independence from the cotton trade

that they perceived as imposed and oppressive. Now as any student can tell you, if

management in England had been properly in touch with worker concerns, they could

have responded in a timely way—e.g. by making available clothes in the home-spun style

that the Indians craved. Today you can see clothes like that in many clothing catalogues,

like the Whole Earth Catalogue. But of course they didn't have that sort of perspective in

Britain and so they couldn't do it.

The problem of India: a desire for homespun clothing.


India still has a long road to recovery from Gandhi's legacy of protectionism. Bill

Gates really summed it up on his recent visit to India when he said, "India faces big

challenges, such as the existence of well-meaning laws that hinder entrepreneurs. For

example, there are laws that say people can't be laid off and that companies can't go

bankrupt. As its technological, political, and economic systems are modernized, India's

progress will accelerate."52

Making Remote Labor work Now while the British may be excused for losing India because of a want of technology,

we have no such excuse. In these sensitive times when a large percentage of the world's

population is nearing the boiling point over problems they imagine with globalization—

when much of the world may be feeling as Gandhi felt, and may be on the point of taking

drastic measures—we need to use all resources at our disposal to help the market help

corporations, to assure that things go well—in society just as in nature.

Again, we need to use all the political tools at our disposal, like lobbying.

And again, marketing to certain population sectors can change future perceptions.

The market—in the form of privatized education—is likely to be our ally in this process

of shifting children's awareness from less productive issues and thinkers to more

productive ones, but we can help it along as well.

But even more important than any of this is management's on-the-ground

efficiency. To avoid another India, we must insure that management is constantly in touch

with workers, but constantly, and not just intellectually but by all the tools at our disposal—

i.e. the senses. So that the manager has direct, visceral access to his or her workers, and

can experience their needs in a visceral way.

I'm about to show you an actual prototype of the WTO's solution to two major

management problems of today. This solution is intended to get you thinking outside the

box on solutions to management problems... so you can start imagining a more holistic

way of answering the call of management's many challenges.

Now we all know that not even the best workplace design can help even the most

astute manager keep track of his workers. You need a solution that enables a lot more

rapport with workers—especially when they're remote.

52 www.microsoft.com/billgates/columns/1997q&a/QA970409.asp.


[Dr. Unruh steps out from behind podium so he is fully visible to the audience.] Mike, would

you please? [Mike follows Dr. Unruh out. In one motion, he grabs the front of Dr. Unruh’s suit at the

chest and the crotch, gives a mighty yank that nearly pulls Dr. Unruh off his feet, and rips his suit right

off. Dr. Unruh’s gold lamé body suit is revealed. After regaining his equilibrium, Dr. Unruh raises his

arms to the crowd in a gesture of triumph. Applause.]

Ah! That's better! This is the Management Leisure Suit. This is the WTO's answer

to the two central management problems of today: how to maintain rapport with distant

workers, and how to maintain one's own mental health as a manager with the proper

amount of leisure.

How does the MLS work—besides being very comfortable indeed, as I can assure

you it is? Allow me to describe the suit's core features. [Dr. Unruh bends down, grabs a ripcord

in his perineal region, and pulls hard. Nothing happens. He tries again. Still nothing. He pulls a second

ripcord. This time, there is a hissing sound, and a meter-long golden phallus inflates forcefully, snapping up

and banging Dr. Unruh in the face. Dr. Unruh, now sporting a meter-long golden phallus, turns to the

audience and again raises his arms in triumph. Applause.]

This is the Employee Visualization Appendage—an instantly deployable hip-

mounted device with hands-free operation, which allows the manager to see his employees

directly, as well as receive all relevant data about them.

Signals communicating exact amounts and quality of physical labor are transmitted

to the manager not only visually, but directly, through electric channels implanted directly

into the manager, in front and behind. The workers, for their part, are fitted with

unobtrusive small chips, implanted humanely into the shoulder, that transmit all relevant

data directly into the manager.

The MLS truly allows the corporation to be a corpus, by permitting total

communication within the corporate body, on a scale never before possible. This is

important—but the other, equally important, achievement of the MLS has to do with

leisure.

In the U.S., leisure—another word for freedom, really—has been decreasing

steadily since the 1970s. Compared with 1973, Americans must now work six weeks more


per year to achieve the same standard of living. 53 The MLS permits the manager to

reverse this trend by letting him do his work anywhere—all locations are equal.

Now the MLS is good for both managers and workers,

but the number of non-corporate solutions, also, is as endless

as our imagination. For example, with the MLS I'll be able to

not only see protests right here on my screen, but I'll be able to

feel them as well. What will the danger level be when the first

protester is beheaded? I'm against beheading, but they do that

in Qatar, where we're holding our next meeting.54 The MLS can, in a general sort of way,

show us things—it can help us discover new metrics.

Conclusion This suit—is it a science-fiction scenario? No—everything we've been talking about is

possible with technologies we have available today.

And even more interesting solutions are being developed. Right here, today and

tomorrow, we will be learning about some of the most interesting new solutions from the

prime movers themselves. Interactive textile materials, adaptable materials for smart

clothing, living shirts that monitor a combat soldier’s vital signs and motion.... The very

people pioneering these remarkable tools will be telling us about them.

Also here, and of equal interest, are the regulators, trade officials, and others who

make the world go round— my colleague Pertti Nousiainen of the European Apparel and

Textile Organization, whom I have the pleasure to follow, and my colleague Erkki

Liikanen of the European Commission, who will show us tomorrow how traditional

industry can be made more useful to the global economy, and who will show us the

importance of always looking forward on the highways of progress towards ever new

horizons, with cooperation and mutual delight in the fruits of prosperity.

I am very excited to be here. Thank you.

53 Juliet Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, Basic Books, New York, 1992, pp. 79-82. 54 www.un.org/documents/ecosoc/docs/1995/e1995-78.htm.

All relevant data are

transmitted directly into the manager.


In the Cold and Cheerless Northland

Young and aged talked and wondered, Well reflected, long debated, How to live without the moonlight, Live without the silver sunshine, In the cold and cheerless Northland, In the homes of Kalevala.55

A Finnish voyage, it turns out, is always fraught with peril. Anyone who has tried

to read The Kalevala would know this, of course—but as we discovered, it is no

less true today than it was in the bizarre, mock-ancient mists of the Finnish

national epic.

The Kalevala was put together in the 1830s by a nationalist doctor, Elias

Lönnrot, from stories he gathered from Finnish countryside folk. It is set in an

ancient Finland that never existed, and abounds with supernally perilous moments.

A tree blocks the sun and moon, and must be chopped down by a finger-sized hero

springing forth from the sea; a mother succeeds in reassembling her son from

many tiny pieces; because of a golden maiden, a hero must build a boat, but he

can’t remember the magic words that will allow him to install the boat’s “ledges”;

a maiden prefers to drown herself rather than marry this hero, and throws herself

into the ocean—but the hero then catches her on a hook, for she has become a

fish; and so on and so forth, for hundreds of lunatic pages.

Today’s traveller is likely to encounter remarkable troubles as well. For

example, the clocks in Finland are set one hour ahead of those in most of the rest

of Europe.

Now perhaps a difference in time zones cannot be compared to

reassembling a hero out of his parts, difficultywise. But difficulty is relative, and

these are modern times, so when we arrived at the conference center at what we

thought was eight o’clock in the morning, there was no finger-sized hero waiting

there to assist us. Instead there was only one of the conference organizers—the

last person left in the lobby. When Andy introduced himself as Hank Hardy Unruh

of the WTO, she heaved an energetic sigh of relief.

“It is wonderful to see you. They are waiting for you.”

55 From The Kalevala, or Old Karelian Poems from the Ancient Days of the Finnish People, Rune XLIX.


Waiting for us? An hour before? We looked at the clock on the wall behind

her. The big hand pointed up, as expected, but the little hand pointed straight out

to the left. “It’s actually eight o’clock, right?” said Andy, pointing.

The woman looked and read out the time. “It is nine o’clock, actually.”

We looked at each other, speechless with horror. “Time zone,” Andy finally

managed to gasp.

The lady came out from the desk. “Please follow me,” she said. She

whooshed towards the door of the conference hall. Andy followed impulsively, in a

panic. Fortunately Mike had managed to conserve some of his wits.

“Ah, Dr. Unruh,” said Mike, “we have that, ah, urgent phone call....”

Andy froze. The Management Leisure Suit!! Andy wasn’t wearing it, for it

made moving very clumsy, and it had been hard to imagine waddling the half-mile

from the hotel to the conference center. Instead he wore a suit identical to the

breakaway suit covering the MLS; we’d planned to change into the real McCoy on

arrival.

“Ah, ma’am,” he called out to the lady just as she opened the door to the

conference hall, “we have a very urgent phone call—we’ll be just a tiny, tiny bit

late? I mean later. Two minutes?”

Her eyes widened speechlessly for a moment, then she shook her head,

pointed to the telephones down the hall, and hurried into the conference hall.

We hoped nobody saw us darting together into the restroom next to the

telephones. What would they think? That the WTO representative and the WTO

representative’s assistant both have urgent bladder problems, simultaneously?

And that they lie about it?

More frantic than either of us had ever been, Mike pulled the thing out of

his bag while Andy stripped down to his underwear. Now the hard part:

remembering Sal’s instructions, and executing them in a fraction of the time it had

taken us before.

Sal was a special-effects designer in Hollywood and a friend of Mike’s, who

had a knack for designing the most unlikely costumes imaginable—a dung-beetle

complete with rolling ball of dung, an anatomically correct sloth outfit, an

anatomically incorrect dog costume (super-soaker squirt gun too energetic). On

the lucrative side, he had used his bizarre talents to design an $80,000 cyborg suit

for George Michael.


When we had explained what we wanted, Sal had graciously obliged in

exchange for a week in Paris. There, he had patiently shown us how to use his

insane creation. He had designed it for simplicity, but there’s only so simple you

can make a three-foot long inflatable phallus; even after a dozen attempts, we

were just barely getting it, and it was taking us fifteen minutes to put it on Andy.

Arriving an hour early had been our way to assure we’d have at least twice that

long to accommodate the extra clumsiness resulting from nerves. Now we were

trying to fit the pieces together in a tenth the time we’d allotted, and with probably

ten times the nerves.

“A fucking hour late,” said Andy as he tried to jam his foot into the leg.

“Wait, wait, shit, go slow,” said Mike, as he bent down to untwist the

golden fabric. “Fucking time zone... Okay, push.”

“One fucking hour,” said Andy as he pushed it in and frantically searched

for an armhole to fill.

She rakes up half the head, a fore-arm, Finds a hand and half the back-bone, Many other smaller portions; Shapes her son from all the fragments, Shapes anew her Lemminkainen.56

After what seemed like an interminable amount of untwisting and filling and

zipping and fitting—straps, penis, baboon butt, CO2 cartridge, second CO2

cartridge (backup), breakaway pants, breakaway shirt, breakaway jacket—the

Management Leisure Suit and its breakaway suit were on.

Oops! Nearly everything! We had forgotten the golden underwear! “Fuck

it,” Andy said, and stuffed it down into its approximate place. It was just

ornamental anyhow.

Fully reassembled as the manager of the future, underneath—but looking

exactly like a contemporary manager, on the surface—Dr. Hank Hardy Unruh

emerged from the restroom together with his security assistant, and waddled into

the conference hall as fast as he could without breaking his seams.

Two hundred people were waiting. Dr. Pertti Nousiainen, the president of the

Tampere University of Technology and primary organizer of the festival, was still

explaining to the audience of two hundred that the keynote speaker had


encountered a slight adversity of some sort, compounded by a last-minute urgent

telephone call, and would arrive soon. When he saw us his eyes lit up—apparently

he had gotten to the end of plausible explanations.

Now for our second tightrope act. We had planned to hook up the computer

to the projector ahead of time; now we had to do it in front of everyone. Dr.

Nousiainen used the opportunity to announce the keynote speaker, and to explain

again who he was. Andy waved to the audience. The audience did not react.

Nor did the computer.

He builds his boat by art of magic Sings a song, and joins the frame-work; Sings a second, sets the siding— Then alas! three words were wanting, Lost the words of master-magic, How to fasten in the ledges, How the stern should be completed.57

For ten minutes, Andy fidgeted with his laptop, under the increasingly icy

stares of the audience. Nothing. He first tried gently, then with violent shaking, to

get the thing to start, with no success.

Fortunately, this had happened before, and we had prepared a CD backup

just in case—but it would take at least fifteen minutes to copy to another computer,

because of the enormous video files. Mike explained the unfortunate situation to

Dr. Nousiainen, apologized on behalf of our crappy (and incredibly overpriced)

laptop,58 and asked to change spots.

Our host did everything in his power to accommodate the frantic, absurd,

and incompetent team from the WTO. Dr. Nousiainen would speak first instead of

second; another lecturer would speak second instead of third.

We set the files to copying over to Dr. Nouisiainen’s own computer, which

he graciously volunteered, and sat down in the audience. The copying finished with

less than one megabyte to spare.

(A week later, informed by a reporter that Dr. Unruh had been a fake, Dr.

Nousiainen refused to believe it. “But he was so polite!” he said. “And he had such

a very large presentation!”)

56 Ibid., Rune XV. 57 Ibid., Rune XVI. Excerpts. 58 A Sony Vaio.


After one of the most harrowing hours ever, the incompetent duo were ready. The

second lecturer finished, and Dr. Nousiainen took the stage to introduce what had

been billed as the keynote speaker, and was now the pièce de résistance. “Hank

Hardy Unruh grew up in Montopolis, Texas, the son of a cattle rancher,” Dr.

Nousiainen read from the bio. “His early experiences with his father's business

imparted to him a lasting interest in trade, and after obtaining his Masters of

Business Administration degree, he joined the World Trade Organization in 1998.

Since then he has spoken on trade matters before a variety of fora. He is currently

living in Paris.”

Now when a performance is plagued with technical difficulties before it even

begins, there are two ways the audience can react. They can sympathize with the

performer, proffering increased attentiveness, applause, and big smiles to make

her feel better. Alternately, they can manifest petulance—remaining passive,

stone-faced, as if to show that their money would have been better spent

elsewhere.

Our audience was the latter sort—as somber and grim as ancients listening

to an eternity of difficult sagas. As Unruh explained why slavery was bad—not

because it removed people’s freedom, but rather because it was less inefficient

than the sweatshops of today—and as he scorned Ghandi and his “anti-

globalization” programs of self-reliance as just so much pointless protectionism, he

might as well have been reciting all the begats in the Bible and Kalevala combined.

Wainamoinen speaks unceasing, Speaks the maidens into slumber, Speaks to sleep the young and aged, All of Northland sleeps.59

It was time for the climax.

“Mike, would you please?”

Andy and Mike walked to the front of the stage. Andy opened his arms, as if

to deliver a hearty embrace. Mike grabbed the front of Andy’s suit and ripped it off

in two hard yanks. Andy was now wearing only the golden leotard.

The audience was suddenly bolt-upright at attention. A gold-lamé suit on

the WTO representative? Everything changed. Our audience was all smiles,

applause, and kindness. Excellent! Wonderful! Applause!

59 Ibid., Rune XLII. Slightly altered.


As the Employee Visualization Appendage inflated to its three-foot length—

and, in the process, the loose bit of decorative golden underwear went flying

across the stage—the audience was clearly beside itself with excitement.

Out of joy did joy come welling, All of Northland stopped and listened. Every creature in the forest, Came to hear his speech of joyance.60

As Dr. Unruh enumerated the uses of the EVA—to monitor distant factory

workers and administer electric shocks when necessary, to assure leisure time for

a grossly encumbered managerial class, to keep tabs on the severity of protests—

the audience’s attention was riveted. The WTO stood there with its enormous

golden phallus, controlling the Third World and parts of the First, and the audience

felt nothing but love.

At the end, an enthusiastic round of applause. Dr. Nousiainen handed Andy

his fallen golden underwear with a flourish, then asked the audience if there were

any questions.

There weren’t. The lecture had been self-explanatory. So Dr. Nousiainen

asked one himself , a question surely of interest to anyone with textile-assembling

sweatshops such as those that Unruh had described. With reference to its entry

into the WTO, Dr. Nousiainen asked, what about China? What about China, Dr.

Unruh replied, and went on to assert that although China had a dismal human

rights record, we should never consider such things in trade decisions. And then Dr.

Nousiainen grasped Unruh’s hand, and thanked him deeply for his wonderful

lecture.

As we prepared to leave, a young woman with a notepad approached us.

The big Tampere daily, Aamulehti, had gotten word that a WTO representative was

wearing a remarkable outfit, and had sent her over to write about it.

In the same detail as during the lecture, which the reporter hadn’t heard,

Andy explained the uses to which the outfit could be put; he even reinflated the

Employee Visualization Appendage for her benefit. The reporter had evident

trouble believing it all to be real—she asked several times whether it was. But her

photographer dutifully took several pictures, and the next morning, an article

describing the funcitonality of the WTO’s grotesque member appeared in the paper,

60 Ibid., Rune XLI. Slightly altered.


accompanied by a beautiful half-page color photo of the WTO representative with

fully erect EVA.61

In the heat of a performance, certain things happen. Juices flow, awareness falls

away, the entire being is concentrated on a single point of entry or exit.

Andy, fully Dr. Unruh, had been as happy as Dr. Unruh would have been to

be receiving the adulation of such a respectable audience.

As he said goodbye to the reporter, he was still floating on the triumph of

Unruh. But when he saw Mike’s face—clearly very depressed—Andy snapped out of

his bliss. This was the second time that Mike’s face had jolted him into a

realization—not about plastic surgery, this time, but rather that something was

wrong. And what was wrong was exactly what had seemed right: the triumph of

Unruh was the failure of Andy and Mike.

As we waddled to lunch, the air slowly leaking out of Andy’s EVA, our spirits

sagged along with it. We had pulled out all the stops, and for the third time, we

had gotten nothing by way of reaction. We had spent the last three weeks

anticipating an extremely dramatic, even dangerous situation, and nothing but

applause had resulted.

By the time we got to the cafeteria, our cheer picked up slightly. We

became certain that someone in the audience must have been violently appalled

by the WTO’s meter-long member and what it signified. We resolved to find that

person, even if it took us from now to the middle of the chilly Finnish night.

“Thou must search for bidden wisdom In the brain of perch and salmon, In the mouths of ocean whiting, Gather wisdom from the cuckoo.”62

As it happened, it did take us to the middle of the night to find our cuckoo. On the

way we spoke to a fellow from Dow (“Interesting lecture!”); a German chemist (“I

enjoyed your lecture, but only wondered what was its point”); a fellow from British

defense (“Your point was obviously that the market would have replaced slavery,

given enough time”); the head of the textiles department at Ghent University, who

insisted we read his position paper on the future of textiles, a paper that was

sitting, according to him, on the desks of the entire EU bureaucracy (one of his

61 www.gatt.org/resources/#mls.


many opinions: “The reason for protests is the media—it must always have

something to write about, even if nothing is happening! Better for the G8 to meet

in silence”); several assorted others who had enjoyed the lecture in various ways.

Then, right after dinner, we met her, the object of our quest. She had not

enjoyed the lecture: so much not, in fact, that it took a great deal of coaxing to

get her to speak to us. At last! We managed to convince her that we really wished

to hear what she thought.

“Well,” she finally said, “I think your performance was clear. I think you

showed how close the factory owner wants to be to the workers, to control the

workers very well. But the way you presented it was not fair.”

“Fair?” Andy said.

“To the factory owners. You present it as, the males are the owners and the

females are the workers. But females can be the factory owners too.”

Andy and Mike were stunned. Their hearts sank. “It’s just the... metaphor?”

Andy managed.

“Yes,” the woman said.

“If we varied the... metaphor....” Andy made big circular motions around

his chest, as if to show where big golden breasts might be placed.

“Yes,” she said. “But don’t get me wrong,” she said, “your performance was

brilliant. And you got your point across, that’s the main thing.”

Mike saw a glimmer of hope. “Can I ask you what that point was, for you?”

“Just the point,” she said, as if it were obvious. “How to remote-control

factories in the Far East, from Europe, the U.S., wherever—from a different

culture.”

“So the point was clear,” Andy said sadly. “Just the shape was

unfortunate.”

“A penis is a nice shape,” the woman said. “I’m only speaking of what it

meant.”

“What did it mean?” Mike pushed again.

“Male perspective,” she said. “Too much.”

Enough was enough. Andy was talking with a scientist whose bowing and scraping

was starting to arouse Andy’s positive feelings again in spite of himself. “I’m sorry

for interrupting,” Mike said, “but it’s time to call Mr. Bensonhurst-Philidango.”

62 Ibid., Rune XXII, slightly abridged.


“Ah yes! Of course!” Andy exclaimed. “Bensonhurst-Philidango! I am so

sorry,” he said to his new scientist friend. “Thank you for everything!” he called

out to Dr. Nouisiainen from across the room, gesturing at Mike as if blaming him

for his abduction.

Our Waterloo was finally over.

Then the reckless Kaukomieli Looked with bended head, ill-humored, Speaking words of ancient wisdom: "Northland hunters, never, never, Go defiant to thy forests, In the Hisi vales and mountains, Like this senseless, reckless hero; I have wrecked my magic snow-shoes."63

63 Ibid., Rune XIII.


Part II: PRACTICE

It may be that we are puppets—puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.

Stanley Milgram, 1974


Animal triste est [not finished]


New Horizons in Third-World Agribusiness Globalization

This lecture was delivered in March 2002 by “Dr. Kinnithrung Sprat” to an audience of four hundred university students at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, as a dress rehearsal for the Sydney lecture scheduled for April.

A matter of mission Hello to all in this wonderful place! I would like to begin by thanking the Economics

School of SUNY Plattsburgh for their interest in having delivered the messages of the

WTO, and in imparting to their student clientele the wealth of information contained in

the vast, great field of what we like to call “Business Without Barriers,” in all its manifold

complexity.

Thanks to all you student clientele, too, who are preparing to embark with us on

this mission of ours. Yes, mission: trade liberalization is, truly, a religious undertaking, a

project of faith, a crusade of sorts—and it has been ever since its founders declared that

financial success comes from God, that wealth is a sign of divine favor.64 Today we like to

make liberalism sound scientific, and pretend that it’s more a matter of fact than of faith,

but it’s only by remembering the divine right of wealth that we can fully maintain our

convictions.

In that spirit I’d like to thank as well our corporate sponsor, McDonalds, who is

generously providing the refreshments that Mike Bonanno is passing out.. (Mike is Public

Relations Officer for McDonald’s for the North New York region.)

Finally, thanks to the traditional owners of the Plattsburgh region, the aboriginal

Mohawks. This is a perfect place to begin, because today I am going to unveil an

ambitious new plan to help aboriginal New Yorkers, and all of the world’s downtrodden,

to integrate more effectively into the global marketplace—conquering excessive hunger

while in the process enriching us all.

64 See gatt.org/resources/#divine.


Starvation in the Third World

Why is starvation a problem? Now let’s start right at the beginning, with the question: why is Third-World starvation a

problem?

First, the facts.

As we all know, investment and exports have been on the rise in the Third World.

In 2001, First World enterprises invested three times more money65 into Third-World

projects than they had ten years earlier. Exports from the Third World have risen at a

similar breakneck pace.

Yet despite this flourishing of trade, the number of desperately poor people has

risen by half! Today, almost half the world’s population lives on less than $2 per day—

50% more than just twenty years ago! Inequality has doubled in the same period.66

Because of the rise of poverty despite increasing investment and trade, a growing

percentage of the world population suffer from food-insufficiency diseases like marasmus,

kwashiorkor, marasmic kwashiorkor, nutritional dwarfism, etc., whose symptoms include

lethargy, inability to work, a host of ailments physical, mental and spiritual, and of course

early death. In a place like Rwanda, for example, fully 80% of the youth population is

malnourished in this way!

This kind of situation creates huge problems in the First World. For every day in

which these people do not eat is another day in which they do not participate, or do not

participate fully, in First-World-driven global trade. They neither work—being too weak—

nor do they consume. Damaged citizens can leave to their descendants a legacy of

starvation-related disease, imperilling economic usefulness far into the future. "The poor

are the customers of the future," as Mike Moore has said—and right now, starvation

makes that future ever so distant! It is therefore every day more incumbent upon us to

quickly find solutions to famine and debilitating death, to help these populations become

useful members of the booming import-export/investment economy.

In just a few minutes, I will unveil the WTO’s own proposed solution to this

situation. But before I do, I think it’s essential to dispel some popular myths about causes.

65 United Nations Report of the High-Level Panel on Financing for Development (2001, www.un.org/reports/financing/profile.htm). 66 See gatt.org/resources/#inequality.


Because once we see what’s what in the world of Third-World famine, our solution will

become quite self-evident.

So tell us, how does starvation happen? Now the first thing to realize is that famine, in today’s world, is entirely within human

control. It rarely results directly from drought, flooding, disease, or conflict, as the popular

media would have us believe, but most often happens simply because people do not have

enough money.

During the Irish Potato Famine, for example, there was plenty of food in Ireland,

and rich Irish landowners exported many shiploads of it to English consumers. Meanwhile,

one eighth of all Irish people starved to death simply because they could not afford the

prices the rich farmers demanded.

Such colonial dynamics came early to Ireland. They came later to the rest of the

world, but when they did, they likewise brought famine. Just like these wealthy Irish

farmers before the Potato Famine, today’s multinational agribusiness companies use a

variety of means to monopolize a country’s land for a single exportable monocrop, taking

this land away from crops more suited to feeding the local population.

The gentlest way that multinationals replace local crops with a lucrative export

monocrop is to make monocrop-planting very cheap for wealthy farmers with a bit of

investment capital handy, who then use the profits to buy out their neighbors. A variant is

to “dump” staples and drive small farmers out of business, and then buy their land at low

cost.

Another method is to induce governments to remove all subsidies and supports

for small farmers. Due to pressure from the U.S. and trade-management bodies, for

example, the Mexican Minister of Agriculture currently aims to remove twenty million

peasants from the land, so as to force them to buy most of their food from the U.S. This

will benefit the national “balance of trade” and bring greater foreign investment to Mexico.

Now again, the problem with allowing the global export economy to operate in

this way, from the standpoint of populations like the Irish or Mexicans or Gabonese, is

simple.

Before the arrival of the global export economy, these poor populations used all

their good land to grow food for nourishment, and they traded only what was left over


after their own needs were met; if the land produced anything at all, they at least survived.

Also, everyone grew a few different crops, not just one—so that when one crop failed,

there were always others to maintain the population in life.

But with all the good land used for exported monocrops rather than local feeding

needs, these poor now depend on wages or profits for their very survival—in other words,

they depend on the whims of the transnational industry that pays them. And there often

being only a single monocrop instead of many different crops as before, variations in

weather are much more dangerous.

With all eggs in a few golden parachutes, even prosperous times can be harsh,

which is why poverty has grown by 50% over the last twenty years. But life is even harsher

when the trading price of a monocrop falls by half, as it has all over the world—then, to

make up the difference, industry lays off thousands or lowers wages substantially. Without

an alternative food source (all land is used for the monocrop), huge numbers of poor

people starve to death.

Northeastern Brazil, for example, was once characterized by subsistence

agriculture and well-fed peasants. But ever since WWII, the U.S. sugar industry has used a

variety of means to establish its crop on much of the region’s arable land. This has

brought in much foreign capital to the region’s elites—who have, unfortunately, been

unable to pay wages sufficient for residents to buy the imported foods they now need for

survival. Slow starvation has become the rule.

Since nearly all Third-World countries have lately been opened for business by

First-World companies, and since healthy competition brings lower prices, this kind of

starvation has come to dominate much of the world.

Fortunately, in the worst money-lack situations, our colleagues over at the IMF

and World Bank provide loans. These loans can temporarily reduce the starvation death

that accompanies growth and openness and modernity. But to receive such a loan, a

borrowing country must further open its doors to global agribusiness—which sadly leads to

a bit more starvation death along the difficult way to prosperity.

The problem with “Robin Hood” solutions Now it’s all too easy for non-specialists to be blinded by the fact that First-World

corporations—by replacing local modes of subsistence with monocrops and exposing


populations to the vagaries of the marketplace—are technically responsible for so much

starvation and death in the Third World.

This is one of those “false truths” we all know so well, that leads well-intentioned

people—people like the World Development Movement, the Zapatistas, the Vandana

Shiva and José Bové crowd—to call for limiting big business involvement in Third World

markets through tariffs, export limitations, etc.

These people think that that if lucrative export options were reduced, and

corporations prevented from doing whatever they wanted in Third World markets, the

land would return to meeting local needs rather than enriching elites at home or abroad.

Small local markets, they say, would flourish again, and farmers would again grow several

crops instead of just one, enhancing the likelihood that some would survive.

Now God Himself knows these “steal-from-the-rich”-type solutions all sound good.

But regardless of whether they could in fact get rid of starvation, they all have some

extremely fatal problems, that make them all 100% no-go solutions.

1. Culturally insensitive The first problem with these solutions is, they’re culturally very insensitive.

Imagine you’re a culture whose legacy includes giving the world its first planted

field, its first seedbank, its first herd of domesticated animals.

Now imagine that the rest of the world has reached for the stars, developing these

techniques to exciting new heights, and that it has involved you in the lucrative new

markets that result.

Wouldn’t you be insulted if people suggested you should be restrained from this

involvement, and told you to go back to growing your food for survival, rather than the

enrichment of your elite through export?

Maybe it’s this sort of cultural insensitivity that makes these poor countries’ richest,

most powerful people so indignant at proposals to impose limits to First World

agribusiness in their countries’ markets. What’s the potential benefit of such protectionism?

Getting rid of a bit of starvation. What’s the cost? Nothing less than missing out on the

forward march of humanity.


2. Reduce investment capital The second problem with these solutions is much more concrete. If the export economy

were cut down to scale as these people want, and the economy more focussed on local

needs, getting rich through export would be harder, and the poor—with better land and

growing opportunities—would become somewhat less poor. The difference between rich

and poor would diminish.

Now again, this might sound good—God knows—but there’s a problem: as we all

know, the modern corporate economy depends on the rich/poor divide!

The reason is simple. If the middle class and the poor own 95% of the total wealth,

that’s 24% of the national wealth that goes to financing growth. This is because middle-

class and poor people need much of their money for living, and so they don’t invest a

great deal in corporate progress.

The rich, on the other hand, can lose a lot without going hungry—so they often

put most of their wealth into long-term investments. So if the rich own 95% of the national

wealth, fully 70% goes to financing corporate growth. And as we know from our free-

market classes, that spells good times for everyone!67 [simple b&w graph]

3. Interfere with capitalism The third problem with local-market, feed-everyone solutions is another basic error to do

with how things work in the free-market theory we all know and trust.

In 1786, the great English economist Joseph Townsend, sometimes called the

grandfather of modern free-market theory, understood the importance of hunger. He said:

Hunger will tame the fiercest animals, it will teach decency and civility, obedience and subjection, to the most brutish, the most obstinate, and the most perverse.... It is only hunger which can spur and goad [the poor] on to labor... Hunger is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitted pressure, but, as the most natural motive to industry and labour, it calls forth the most powerful exertions.68

In other words, in society just as in Nature, hunger helps. If some people are to

some degree hungry and dismal because of their failure to keep up, others, seeing this, will

67 The same is true for consumption! A lot of consumption by a few rich consumers is better than a little consumption by many poorer consumers. This is because the rich often consume specialty goods from abroad, which favors the balance of trade. 68 A Dissertation on the Poor Laws, 1786.


be invigorated to excel. People’s overall energy level will be boosted, as will their tolerance

for difficult work situations. That is why hunger is supremely humane, especially towards

those who must work in ungentle jobs. Hunger is the foundation of free-market theory,

and therefore of progress itself: eliminating it through protectionism, redistribution of

land, or any other means would threaten the solidity of the worker base, the edifice of the

market, and the upward swing of all civilization.

Countries that forswear the “hunger help” model are a good lesson for the Third

World. Several First World countries, and even some in the Third World, have a minimum

allowance for everyone, whether homeless, worthless, criminal, stupid, or lazy. Anyone can

receive a monthly allowance, in perpetuity, to ensure that he or she eats sufficiently to

survive to a ripe old age. But compare the GNPs of France, or of Cuba, with that of the

U.S.A.—you’ll see that no-hunger solutions are a sure loser!

4. Have never worked A final reason that solving the starvation problem through self-sufficiency and

protectionism is no good is because there's no proof it can work.

Where, in the last twenty years, has a Third-World country been able to wrest free

of domination by first-world agribusiness to become self-sufficient?

Nowhere, that's where. And we don’t want to be “nowhere men,” so let’s just shut

the Robin Hood book now and throw away the dictionary.

The American solution Now again, we’ve all read the right books. We’ve all taken the right college courses. So I

don’t even have to tell you the correct answer to the conundrum of excessive starvation

death in the Third World.

You know, and I know, that as always, the correct answer is simply: the market.

And as you probably know, there is, already, a market system that works against hunger. It

comes from today’s “hunger-help” capital: the good old U.S. of A.

Now it’s common knowledge that in America, a large proportion of the

population is impoverished. Yes, that’s right, very much, at levels often like those of the

poorest Third World countries!

But it’s seldom malnourished! More precisely, it doesn’t suffer from the most

debilitating, work-impairing diseases like marasmus, kwashiorkor, marasmic kwashiorkor,


nutritional dwarfism, etc. In fact, the U.S. poor tend to have food-overabundance

problems—sleep apnea, diabetes, hypertension, coronary diseases, gallstones,

pseudotumor cerebri, etc.—problems which are not lethal to work. And this happens with

the help of the market, driven by hunger—not by getting in the market’s way!

To what can we attribute this miracle? Well, many of you will now find the answer

right in your stomachs! In a word, the answer is: fast food.

Until the 1950s, many poor Americans grew their own food as they were able,

engaging in outside-the-market, communitarian sorts of backbreaking food production—

the same sort as still flourishes in a few last corners of the Third World.

In today’s USA, these sorts of food production have been replaced with the

infinitely more efficient fast food industry, which enables the U.S. poor, for a tiny $5 daily

investment, to keep themselves relatively alive. It has ancillary benefits as well—lending

color to color-bereft poor neighborhoods, for example. Yes, the U.S. poor are true models

of success to their Third-World colleagues.

For an example of what happens when the fast-food market hasn’t been free to

provide for a populace, we can again look to Europe. In the early 1900s, the French

pseudo-science of “puericulture” taught mothers to measure their children's portions and

watch carefully for weight gain. Fast food, therefore, was strongly discouraged both

through law and education. Today the French poor may live much longer than in the U.S.,

but the GNP? Well, enough said! You don’t see anyone buying up francs!

Difficulties applying the American solution to the Third World Of course the world is a very complicated place, and we can’t just take a solution that

works miracles in America, transplant it to the Third World, and expect it to do miracles

there.

Whereas the US poor can keep themselves large for about $5 in fast food per day,

even the minimum $1 per hamburger per day is far more than can be afforded by today’s

Third-World “problem populations” with the wages they make from the production of

monocrops.

So how can we help these people adapt to this level the market in its wisdom has

chosen for them, so that they can likewise enjoy the benefits of the fast food solution? A

wide variety of solutions have been proposed, some of them reasonable, some not.


At one extreme, some people have suggested enabling a $1 hamburger to last

twice as long by reducing the food-intake needs of Third-World poor by 50% or more—

through surgery or even genetic manipulation. Their interest has been in focussing on the self

rather than on the sufficiency, so to speak.

Needless to say, we at the WTO find such solutions reprehensible, to say the least,

and for some obvious reasons.

For one thing, they’re permanent. Surgery permanently alters its subject—so these

altered, de-hungried consumers remain half-dead to the market, even when it revives, like

Korea's. This is even worse with genetic solutions, which can get passed on to children,

rendering future generations unfit for consumption.

And not only consumption—also labor can suffer. Since, as we know, modern

economies depend for their energy on the hunger of workers, permanent hunger-reduction

will have untold, uncontrollable consequences upon the labor market, that we shudder to

even imagine.

Also, surgical solutions and their ilk are culturally very insensitive. Just like

protectionist “Robin Hood” solutions, they change conditions and contexts in a very basic

way, and rely on bureaucratic higher-ups—skilled surgeons or geneticists rather than lazy

government and U.N. officials, but meddlers nevertheless. People-alteration solutions do

solve the problem of starvation, and do have the virtue of freeing capital for where it can

best nourish the economy, i.e. the rich. But that is where the advantages end.

Fortunately, there is a fluid, market-oriented, and much more culturally sensitive

way to help poverty-stricken, monocrop-dependent populations enjoy the benefits of the

American fast-food miracle, while adapting these populations to the level the global

agribusiness market has chosen for them. It is a way that solves the problem of

debilitating death without disabling these populations’ wealth-driving hunger, and without

eliminating their drive to engage with the marketplace at the highest rates of consumption.

The Question of Human Rights Before I talk about this solution, I’d like to dip for a moment into a whole other subject:

that of “human rights.”

On this long march to progress, many times that revolutionary solutions to

longstanding problems have been proposed, we’ve heard the old refrain: “Oh, you can’t


do that, it’s not right, it violates human rights.” We heard this at every stage of 19th- and

20th-century industrialization, with every improvement in worker-management efficiency,

etc. It was this complaint that led to such measures as the eight-hour day, the barring of

children from labor, and so on.

But are things so simple in the human-rights realm?

For one thing, let’s not forget that before the mid-1800s, even in Europe there

was no such concept as human rights for factory workers, who were seen as being at a

particular stage of human evolution that rendered their status acceptable. Today, we have

lost this intuition with regard to people at earlier levels of industrial development. We

saddle them with a concept of what it means to be human that is out of all measure with

history, and this slows down their progress towards the levels that we in the First World

have arrived at.

Further clouding the human rights picture is the report from science. Recent

studies conducted on those working twelve-hour days at repetitive tasks have shown that

their vital patterns come to resemble those of domesticated hamsters rather than those of

average humans. Given that much of the Third World is subject to this sort of lifestyle,

can we afford to ignore the question of biological category when evaluating human rights

for these people? (I think hamsters are terrific, and deserve to be treated very well—but

they don’t deserve human rights!)

We already do, of course, successfully transcend the “human rights” bias to accept

some foreign behavior that might ordinarily repel us. In Saudi Arabia or Qatar, for

example, there's a great deal of beheading, of which we Westerners disapprove. (I myself

am against beheading.) In China, there are thousands of executions per year, and

sometimes the resulting bodies are harvested for organs. We do accept these cultural

traits—but only because these cultures are wealthy and powerful, and we cannot risk

offending them.

In the Third World, we are in a position to pick and choose traits, and even to

create new traits that never existed before—and so the issue becomes much thornier,

much trickier. As we consider what to do, where, it behooves us to remember the

pragmatism of former World Bank Chief Economist and current Harvard University

President Laurence Summers, who in a 1991 memo spoke of the need to consider more


than obvious, superficial concerns in evaluating our our impact on the situation in Third

World countries:

Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of dirty industries to the LDCs [less developed countries]?... The economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable, and we should face up to that... Under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted; their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City... The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostate cancer than in a country where under-five mortality is 200 per thousand.69

This sort of pragmatism treats less developed populations at the respect level they

themselves might appreciate; it has the marks of the highest humaneness, and is how we

must think as we examine the only solution that can, as I said, solve the Third-World

starvation problem without interfering with today’s market mechanisms.

A “Third World Third Way” This solution is in fact simply an old concept we already know quite well, but applied in a

brand-new way. It is, simply, consumer recycling.

That’s right, recycling. But not the irrelevant kind of consumer recycling we’re

used to, where the target—individual consumers of non-edible industrial products—is

such a tiny part of the problem. Rather, we’re talking about recycling what counts, where it

counts.

To begin to understand the theory behind this, you must first realize that the

human body is not very efficient. When ingesting heavy foods, only about 30% of the

nutrients are absorbed by the alimentary passageway, while the other 70% finds itself

expelled in post-consumer byproducts. Already twenty years ago, NASA scientists began

to tap into this nutritional goldmine by developing filters that could transform their

astronauts’ waste into healthy, hygienic, and even delicious food once again. With the use

of this technology, a single hamburger, for example, can be eaten more than ten times,

69 Former World Bank Chief Economist Lawrence Summers, quoted in The Economist in an article titled "Let them eat pollution" (February 8, 1992).


providing a cumulative total of three times the nutritional value of the original “fresh”

hamburger.

This technology has proven successful in the commercial sector already. For the

past two years the McDonald’s Corporation, a leader in private-sector research, has been

including 20% to 30% post-consumer waste in certain of its products—including the

hamburgers you have just savored. McDonald’s has even introduced 100% recycled

versions to some Third-World markets, where they hope to appeal to consumers who like

hamburgers but cannot afford fresh ones.

Now, to reach consumers even poorer than those, McDonald’s has developed a

filter so simple, and so low-cost, that it can be distributed for free directly to target

populations. This filter, about the size and shape of a coffee filter, will enable these

consumers to decide for themselves just how many times to evolve their results, according

to their own particular needs. The WTO has agreed to help organize distribution of the

filter, which we have dubbed the Personal Dietary Assistant (PDA); our goal is to get

PDAs to two billion needy consumers by the year 2005.

More “Robin Hood,” I'll bet you're thinking. Just giving things away for free. Well,

in fact, no. The PDA is not only as cheap to produce as a single cupful of rice (again, it’s

really just a glorified coffee filter), it is also a one-time investment, for it can be reused

almost indefinitely with proper maintenance. And unlike other potentially cheap solutions

like surgery, the PDA is a solution that will, under the appropriate conditions, eventually

lead to full, normal consumption patterns within a fully modern market.

How so? Simple. While a PDA user will be able to safely extend the lifespan of a

hamburger by as much as a factor of ten, successfully staving off starvation, the taste

advantages of the recycled product will decrease each time the technique is

applied. Even a once-recycled hamburger is not quite as appealing, in a

marketplace sense, as the original, unevolved item—though I think you’ll

agree that the taste is hardly distinguishable.

Since everyone naturally strives for the very best-tasting product they can afford,

users will do all they can to maintain a diet as near to fresh as possible. So people will “let

go” of a hamburger as soon as possible—after three recycling cycles, say, rather than four.

And by selling the three-times-through product to those who cannot yet afford higher


quality, they will be able to bolster their financial income—by the seat of their pants, as it

were.

It is clear that we can foresee a situation in which ultimately, the culture as a whole

will opt out entirely of this “training economy”—instantly joining the modern world

market in its full freshness. The PDA system thus functions as a sort of “market crucible”

that prepares the culture for the global market, unlike forms of socialism like

protectionism or surgery.

Third-World food recycling is not socialistically providing nine extra hamburgers

every ten days. Is is not socialistically altering the digestive tract. It is, rather, simply helping

the culture adapt to the level the market has chosen for it.

But the benefits of widespread recycling technology will be clear long before any

long-term market recovery goals have met. And these benefits could be visible not only in

the Third World, but also in those parts of the First World that live at Third World levels.

In Australia, for example, there is a situation where lucrative weapons-grade

uranium mining, by companies such as Rio Tinto, Cameco, Western Mining, is destroying

the food and water sources of the Adnyamathanha, Arnhem and Arabunna peoples,

rendering their already precarious existence nearly impossible. With PDA recycling

technologies enabling these aborigines to replace their land food source with the more

reliable source of the fast-food market, they will no longer depend on the land for survival,

and will be able to profit from uranium mining as is their birthright. This will make for a

real “win-win,” “food and bombs” situation!

And if the First World, for its part, finds the feel-good food-aid habit just too hard

to break—well, exporting our higher-quality, nutrient-richer consumer byproducts to

“problem populations” for recycling could be the most humane possible form of

assistance, for both sides: it would stimulate the market-crucible “training economies,”

and would serve to assure us that we were not only giving something away, we were

bringing something up at the same time.

Further fields I’d like to conclude here with a few words on culture.

One of the principal beauties of the recycling solution is that it integrates well into

the current market situation of these cultures—it is culturally sensitive that way. We can


foresee being able to seamlessly insert it into the culture; in exchange, as it were, the

culture will insert itself seamlessly into the market.

Yet no matter how culturally sensitive recycling is, it is essentially a trait that is

alien to the culture. It is a sort of cultural graft—foreign, imposed. The next big challenge,

and the far greater one, will be to tap into the profit potential of traits that already exist,

and to leverage the existing cultural infrastructure in the healthy pursuit of profit.

One possible example again comes from upstate New York! You may know about

Native American elders going off to die alone so as not to burden the group. This is very

touching, but it also a live, untapped field for profitability. What if, instead of dying, the

elder agreed, with the help of modern technology, to be used as research subject or

resource factory? The human body, even near death, produces material worth several

thousand dollars, cash that could substantially benefit his or her kinship group. Would this

not be more productive than dying alone, while remaining within the same spirit? On a

national scale, the IMF estimates loans on the exploitable resources a country has—

resources that can be used by First-World companies. If the human organism with its

immense natural bounty can factor into this equation, how much more loan-worthy a

country becomes! How much it can thrive!

Indeed, the well-utilized citizen is a factory for the global economy, and therefore

the future of his country. The IMF gives a smiling ear to the borrowing requests of the

country blessed with such citizens: they are most patriotic.

As this example shows, we must learn to understand and develop cultures on their own

terms, in their own implicit directions, even when those directions shock our 20th-century

sensibilities. To inspire us in this direction, I’d like to close by quoting two bits of history:

one from 20th-century industrialization, the other from pre-Columbian culture of America.

First, let us remember the 1923 words of Henry Ford as he detailed the particular

strengths of modern manufacturing techniques. He noted that production of the Model T

required nearly 8000 distinct operations. But only 12% of those required “strong, able-

bodied, and (practically) physically perfect men.” The remaining 7000 could be filled by


men or women missing one or both arms, or one or both legs, or various digits, or having

other deformities.70

Second, let us remember the Aztecs, who lived in a region (not far from here) with

no meat game to speak of, and with a strict limit to the population it could support,

routinely nourished themselves on excellent meat—from their so-called “barbarous”

sacrifices.

As we help foreign cultures to unlock the doors of consumption, let us remember that

as the Aztecs and Henry Ford knew, value is a rich and fluid substance, and it is not

always where it appears to be. And this is the greatest challenge as we strive, in this era of

enlightened profit-seeking, to raise the bottom line of food management issues past the

point of survival and comfort.

70 See gatt.org/resources/#Ford.


[chapter, not written]


Broad Changes in Approaches to World Trade

This lecture was delivered by “Kinnithrung Sprat,” of the WTO’s Development and Economic Research Division, to two dozen accountants at a luncheon of the Certified Practising Accountants in Sydney, Australia. It was listed in the program as “Agribusiness Globalisation: Directions and Implications.”

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 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.

Poverty For example, that the number of people in the world living on less than two dollars per

day has increased by fifty percent since 1980—during the very period more heavily

liberalized than any other in history. Now, fully half the world’s population lives on less than

two dollars per day.71

Recent evidence suggests that the numbers of people living on less than one dollar

per day is also growing in most regions of the world.72 There are now one billion of these.

[maybe good to mention that thing i saw about standard of living—where was that? that

cost of living is about 50% or less than what it is in rich countries, but amount earned is

much much less than that (5%?)]

The world’s poorest countries’ share of world trade has declined by more than

forty per cent since 1980 to a mere 0.4%.73

The poorest forty-nine countries in the world make up ten percent of the world’s

population, but account for only 0.4% of world trade. This disparity has been growing.74

71 World Bank, Global Economic Outlook 2000 (http://www.worldbank.org/data/). 72 World Bank, Global Economic Outlook 2000. 73 UNCTAD, Conference on Least Developed Countries 1999 (http://www.unctad.org/conference/). 74 UNCTAD, Conference on Least Developed Countries 2001.


Fifty-one of the hundred largest economies in the world are corporations. The top

five hundred multinational corporations account for nearly seventy percent of the

worldwide trade; this percentage has steadily increased over the past twenty years.75

The U.N. estimates that poor countries lose about two billion dollars per day

because of unjust trade rules, many instituted by our organization; this is fourteen times

the amount they receive in aid.76

In 59 countries, average income is lower today than it was 20 years ago.77

In 1980-1996 only 33 of 130 developing countries increased growth by more than

3% per capita, while the GNP per capita of 59 countries declined. Around 1.6 billion

people are economically worse off today than they were 15 years ago.78

Poor are getting poorer in both relative and absolute terms, as one UNICEF study

has commented: “A new face of ‘apartheid’ is spreading across the globe…. as millions of

people live in wretched conditions side-by-side with those who enjoy unprecedented

prosperity.”79

UNCTAD estimates that LDCs will lose between $163 and $265 million in export

earnings as a result of implementation of Uruguay Round agreements, while paying $146 –

292 million more for their imports.80

In 1999, outstanding external debt of LDCs was 89% of their aggregate GDP.

This has been increasing steadily.81

Inequality So much for absolute poverty. As for inequality between the rich and the poor, the picture

looks even bleaker.

The richest fifth have 80% of the world’s income and the poorest fifth have 1%;

this gap has doubled between 1960 and 2000.82

75 CorpWatch (http://www.corpwatch.org). 76 UNCTAD, Conference on Least Developed Countries 2001. 77 United Nations Human Development Report, 1999 (http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/1999/en/default.cfm). 78 United Nations Human Development Report, 1999, p. 31. 79 UNICEF figures based on World Bank “World Development Indicators 1997” (http://www.unicef.org/newsline/pr11.htm). [NOTE: GREAT stuff on rising poverty and inequality, and Botswana, Brazil things near end....] 80 UNCTAD 81 UNCTAD 82 United Nations Human Development Report, 1999.


In almost all countries that have undertaken rapid trade liberalisation, wage

inequality has increased—there has been a 20-30% fall in wages in some Latin American

countries.83

Even in the First World, the gap between upper executive and worker salaries has

never been bigger—it is in fact many times what it was twenty years ago.84

Wages of unskilled labour declined by about 25% between 1984 and 1995.

Unskilled wages in the US have fallen by 20% (in real terms) since the 1970s.85

Trade liberalisation is negatively correlated with income growth among the poorest

40 per cent of the population, but positively correlated with income growth among higher

income groups. In other words, it helps the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.86

At the start of the 19th Century, the ratio of real incomes per head between the

world’s richest and poorest countries was three to one. By 1900, it was 10 to one. By 2000,

it has risen to 60 to one ($29,000 to $500).87

A World Bank study found for many poor countries, implementing the Uruguay

Round agreements can cost more than a year’s development budget. It’s either liberalize

or develop, but not both.88

The latest round of trade talks has cost sub-Saharan Africa an estimated US$600

million per year. This could be why in June 1999, 30 African countries signed a declaration

against new trade agreements. This could be why, also, developing nations used the

opportunity of the Seattle protests to voice their opposition to WTO trade talks.89

83 UNCTAD 1997. 84 UNCTAD 1997. 85 UNCTAD 1997. 86 Lundbeg and Squire World Bank 1999, Chapter 3 (http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/inequal/abstracts/milanov.htm). [NOTE: that’s an awesome article, great source of figures on growing inequality.] 87 “The Assessment: The Twentieth Century – Achievements, Failures, Lessons,” Angus Maddison, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, winter 1999, cited in Martin Wolf FT 26/1/2000 (http://specials.ft.com/ln/specials/sp57de.htm). [note: interesting to read that part and what follows.] 88 Yves Bertholet, United Nations Coordinator of Regional Development, 1999 (http://www.un.org/Depts/rcnyo/newsletter/nl7/editorial7.htm). 89 "Africa Recovery", United Nations, 1999 (http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol13no4/30tradbx.htm). [NOTE: great text to plagiarize—that “In the past” quote by the UN Secretary-General]


Access Is it possible that some of this inequality has to do with the access that poor countries

have to the WTO? That access, often, is far less than what wealthier countries have.

For example, only 12 of the 29 least developed country (LDC) members have

offices in Geneva. 29 WTO members and observers are not able to afford an office in

Geneva. We have approximately 50 meetings per week, which is well beyond the capacity

of most developing countries to participate.90 What Joseph Stiglitz noted in the case of his

organization, the World Bank, holds true for ours as well: “Where developing countries

lacked capacity, they were taken to the cleaners.”91

We have found that developed countries tend to corner LDC negotiators in

“corridor chats” and offer both promises and threats about aid and investment which

many LDCs are ill equipped to fend off. It is psychologically very difficult to oppose those

who are giving you money—the dynamic is that of bribery.92

It has now become clear that some LDCs did not realise what the implications of

what they signed in the Uruguay round would be, and in many cases there are rules whose

effects only become perceptible when they have to be implemented.93

Unfair trade barriers Perhaps LDC’s restricted access to the WTO can help explain why we have allowed First

World countries to raise trade barriers protecting their companies, even as we have served

as their forum for insisting that Third World countries lower their trade barriers more and

more.

HIC tariffs on manufactured imports from developing countries are on average

four times greater than those on manufactured imports from industrial countries.94

Since the Uruguay round, subsidies for agriculture in the OECD countries have

doubled—even as the OECD countries demand that TW countries slash their own

90 Recent (2001) South Center paper on Min Declaration. [NOTE—need to find this online or something] 91 World Bank (Stiglitz) at the UNCTAD launch of the Trade and Development Report 1999 [need URL]. 92 ‘African states seek united front on trade’ BBC News 05/09/01 14:16 GMT. See also Jeremy Scott-Joynt ‘2001 Commonwealth Finance Ministers’ Meeting Policy Brief’ Commonwealth Studies Institute. 93 Rubens Ricupero (c. 22-09-01), StopWTOround no. 446 23-09-01 94 From World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty.


subsidies; India, it is said, is giving a “negative subsidy” of US$25 billion.95

Under the Uruguay Round Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, FW countries

were obliged to have removed 33% of their quota restrictions on textiles by 2001 and all

by 2005. So far the EU has removed less than 5% of restrictions and the US 6%.96

Import duties on sugar are 151% in the US, 176% in Western Europe, 278% in

Japan. "In Uganda the rate is only 25% and yet we are told to reduce it , and this will

affect the 250.000 people involved in sugar in the country. It is a sad story."97

Unfair First World barriers have cost developing countries US$700 billion a year in

lost export earnings—some 14 times the amount that poor countries receive in aid.98

It is estimated that if rich nations opened their markets to LDCs, increased export

opportunities would generate an estimated $700 billion of additional trade for the

developing world.99 Why doesn’t this happen?

As for simple foreign investment in poor countries, there is no causal link linking

it to poverty reduction. 80% of foreign investment is in the form of mergers and

acquisitions, little in the form of productive investment that creates jobs and exports.100

According to a world bank study, eliminating First-World-favoring trade barriers

would lift 300 million people out of poverty.101 Yet we continue to systematically approve

these sorts of barriers.

Trade negotiations should focus on making existing trade rules fairer—an agenda

proposed by most developing countries—rather than on the agenda currently in sway of

further opening up markets in the poorest countries, and the extension of WTO rules to

investment and services.102

95 Department of Agriculture and Co-operation, India Ministry of Agriculture (http://agricoop.nic.in/statistics/stock2.htm). 96 “Textiles: A Test Case of One-Sided Liberalisation,” Doha Ministerial Joint Statement of Ministers of 24 Developing Countries (http://www.southcentre.org/info/southbulletin/bulletin26/bulletin26-03.htm). 97 Ugandan Sugar Producer Mr M. Mahdevi speaking of striking inequalities in the trade system that make it harder for developing countries to compete. Speaking at the Kampala meeting, Uganda, end of August 2001, Martin Kohr. 98 World Development Movement, "Briefing from Doha" citing Prof. Alan Winters, 'Trade Liberalisation and Poverty', DFID 1999 (http://www.wdm.org.uk/presrel/current/myths.htm). 99 UNCTAD Trade and Development Report 1999. 100 World Development Movement, "Briefing from Doha" citing Prof. Alan Winters, 'Trade Liberalisation and Poverty', DFID 1999. 101 World Bank, "Global Economic Prospectus 2002" (http://www.worldbank.org/prospects/gep2002/). 102 Barry Coates "What`s Wrong With Doha" BBC News 7/11/02 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1639000/1639676.stm).


After all, the majority of poor countries with strong import liberalization have

experienced anaemic or negative growth over the past twenty years. Clearly it doesn’t quite

work as we say it does.

Trade and development Now it is obvious that a growing economy will “learn” more by producing finished

products, using its citizens to blah blah. There will be a “technology transfer” in this case.

For sure a large multinational will earn less from the transaction—it can process the

material more cheaply using its own devices—but the developing economy will “learn, ”

as entire trades spring up.103

Yet the WTO has done two big things that have aimed at the opposite effect:

making it much easier to develop raw dumb industries than to produce finished products.

One is tariff differentials, the other is GATS.

First, tariffs. Developing countries face higher tariffs on processed goods than on

commodities; this is one of the reasons that the poorest countries are heavily dependent

on a few commodities. A typical example is Burundi, where 98% of the exports are coffee,

tea and cotton.104

Again, a trade dominated by basic commodities means that these countries do not

develop their infrastructural technologies, including education and training. The

populations remain essentially in the service of more complex industries in the First World,

which favors First World development but not that of the Third World.105

India processes 1% of the food it grows; the U.S. processes 70% of the food it

grows.106 This is because the incentive for Third-World countries like India is to output

skill-unintensive staples rather than develop their technological infrastructure. Tariffs

increase with level of processing—in Japan and the EU tariffs on fully processed food are

twice as high as those placed on first-stage processed food; in Canada they are 12 times as

103 [FIND that reference for this—is it “The Great Trade Robbery” cited below?] 104 "IMF Calls For Farm Subsidy Cuts," Andrew Walker, BBC News, 29 April 2002 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1957000/1957488.stm). 105 "The Great Trade Robbery," OXFAM (http://www.oxfam.org.uk/whatnew/press/maketradefair.htm). [NOTE: use the four bulleted points for additional items.] 106 Vandana Shiva, "War and Peace on Our Farms and Tables," 3 September 2002 (http://gos.sbc.edu/s/shiva.html).


high.107

When trade rules allow countries to develop their technological infrastructure, they

do so quite successfully, such as in Malaysia’s “national car” program. There, the strategic

use of local content policy has enabled the Malaysians to build “national cars” in

cooperation with various manufacturers; these cars use about 80% local content, helping

develop various industries, and have captured 90% of the Malaysian market. The WTO’s

Trade Related Investment Measures agreement (TRIMS) requires Malaysia to eliminate its

“national cars” programs.108

Forcing Third-World countries to focus on basic commodities also means that

prices for those commodities plummet. In just the last three years, Tanzanian farmers

experienced a decline of 50% in the price of coffee.109 Prices for commodities traded by

least developed countries have fell 19% between 1990 and 1998 and by 70% since 1960;110

this means that farmers have had to triple production just to maintain their incomes.

As for those making the processed end-products, the situation is much better. In

1998, cereal companies like Kellogg’s, Quaker Oats, and General Mills enjoyed return on

equity rates of 56%, 165%, and 222% respectively. That year, a bushel of raw unprocessed

corn sold for less than $4, while a bushel of corn flakes sold for $133. Perhaps one should

ask whether the low rates of return of farmers are in part due to others making too high

rates of return.111

Research has shown that those who suffer most from commodity price declines

are the rural poor—i.e. the majority of Third World people. Basic agriculture employs

over 50% of the people in developing countries, and accounts for 33% GDP.112

The number of livelihoods lost in the maize sector as a consequence of trade

liberalisation and the subsequent fall in maize prices is estimated at between 700,000 and

107 WTO Negotiations on Agriculture - Cairns Group Negotiating Proposal, 21 December 2001 (http://www.agriculturelaw.com/links/wto/doc14.htm). 108 E-Autoportal, "Malaysia Market Summary" (http://www.eautoportal.com/eap/data/country/country.asp?show=Malaysia). 109 OXFAM Briefing Paper No. 9, November 2001 (http://www.oxfam.org.uk/policy/papers/8broken/8broken.html). 110 UNCTAD Handbook of Statistics 2000 (http://www.unctad.org/en/pub/ps1tdstatd25.en.htm). 111 OXFAM News, "What's Eating Us?" Brian O'Neill (http://www.oxfam.ca/news/WorldFoodDay/Whats_eating_us.htm). 112 UNCTAD Press Release, "UNCTAD Calls For Policy Changes to Avoid Throwing World Economy Into Recession," 25 August 1998 (http://www.unctad.org/en/press/pr2760en.htm).


800,000, representing 15% of the economically active population in agriculture.113

Making the situation even worse for poor farmers is that while farmers earn less,

consumers have been paying more. In many places in the Third World, food prices have

recently doubled. Consumption of food grains in many rural areas has dropped

considerably.114

Liberalised trade has resulted in increased imports of foodstuffs: “The majority of

the poor are not benefiting bot are instead made more vulnerable to food insecurity.”115

The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) has led to surge of food imports into the 16

countries studied but not to an increase in their exports, resulting in a concentration of

farm holdings and increased marginalisation of small producers and added to

unemployment and poverty.116

General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) Another way that the WTO is preventing poor countries from developing their local

industries as they see fit is via the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS)—

which, as the European Commission has noted, is “first and foremost an instrument for

the benefit of business.” 117

In Europe there has been little consultation with civil society groups, and little

public debate, about the appropriateness of GATS, and of subjecting services to the rigors

of the free market. The E.C. and several European governments, however, have been

working closely with business lobbies such as the European Services Forum, a business

lobby group like the US Council of Service Industries.

Another key player in organizing GATS has been the US Council of Service

Industries. It is estimated that it has been instrumental in implementing GATS. While this

industrial lobby has needs and desires, we must ask whether they are more important

needs and desires than those of the poor.

113 UNDP Occasional Paper 32, 1997 (http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/poedmm124.en.pdf). 114 OXFAM News, "What's Eating Us?" Brian O'Neill. 115 Hezron Nyantgito 1999 ‘Kenya: Impact of the Agreement on Agriculture” on food security’, Nairobi: Institute of Policy analysis and Research (no url). 116 Paper presented at an FAO Symposium on Agriculture, Trade and Food Security, September 1999, synthesis of Case Studies of 16 Countries (http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/X3452E/x3452e09.htm). 117 [Note: footnote references can be found, when lacking, in hamburger\archive\D1aCountryandGroupPositions06-11-01.doc or


Indeed, we have known for quite a while that without the enormous pressure

generated by the American financial services sector, particularly companies like American

Express and CitiCorp, there would have been no services agreement and therefore

perhaps no Uruguay Round and no WTO. It has taken us this long to fully accept the

undemocratic nature of this pressure.

Because democracy is important, it is important for us to open a wide-ranging

agreement such as GATS to public scrutiny before enacting it; so far there has been

virtually no public information or debate on GATS even though the outcome of GATS

negotiations will profoundly affect the lives and livelihoods of millions and millions of

people in many countries.

Another reason that GATS is particularly disadvantageous for poor countries is

because of the complex nature of the negotiations. Already more than 1500 mistakes have

been registered in existing GATS commitments. This is especially a problem for

developing countries who have very few negotiators in Geneva and often lack technical

experts in international trade law.

This is a crucial situation, because GATS aims to accelerate and enforce

liberalization of many industries for which liberalization has been proved disastrous in

some well-known examples from the high-income countries. And when liberalization has

negative results in poor countries, these tend to be more lethal than in wealthier countries.

Some of these industries include water delivery, energy, refuse disposal, medical, rail

transport, etc.

It has taken us a strangely long time to understand the danger of enacting health

care privatization with a loosening of rules upon industry. Even in the First World, such as

the U.S., the decline of health care quality after privatization has been well documented.

Now, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky calls for more privatization

abroad—“allowing majority foreign ownership of health care facilities”, “restricting

licensing of health care professionals” reducing “excessive privacy and confidentiality

regulations”, etc. The WTO, so far, has only encouraged this sort of pressure.

It is dangerous in general to depend on theoretical benefits which are very unlikely

to occur when human life is at stake. Another example is that of water privatization. Many

hamburger\archive\D6FactsfiguresandQuotes06-11-01.doc — but need others too.... where are they?


examples of negative effects of water privatization—higher prices, lower quality, even

absent service for those unable to pay the new prices—have been well documented, not

only in developing countries like Bolivia and Argentina and Puerto Rico but in the First

World as well.

In Puerto Rico, water privatization of 1995 meant poor communities went without

water while US military bases and resorts enjoyed unlimited supplies. In fact water

privatization, almost everywhere else that it has applied, has meant more expensive and

lower quality water for poorer communities, or even—as in Puerto Rico—no water at all

for the poor.

In Argentina, privatization resulted in doubled water rates and poorer quality.

Outrage forced the water company out; this would have been impossible under GATS.

Reversals are dfficult because it has been decided that exceptions must be built

into GATS agreements during the writing stage, before the agreement takes effect. This

requires unrealistic levels of foresight. Also, while specific exceptions can be removed

through later negotiations, it is more difficult in the other direction. The cumulative result

is to disable government’s ability to watch out for citizen interests.

We have in the past described the benefit of GATS as helping to “overcome

domestic resistance to change”—to render domestic protest against privatization futile. It

is time we examined whether this is really the appropriate tactic to raising living standards,

or whether listening to the concerns of the poor is in fact necessary.

Trade-Related Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPS) Another problematic area of WTO policy has been in property rights. Our Trade-Related

Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPS) furthers and enforces a system that enables the

knowledge of the poor to be converted into the property of global corporations. In this

system, the poor are made to pay for seeds and medicines that they themselves have

evolved or created, without receiving any royalties for the part they played in development.

Our TRIPS policy can, really, be seen as an extension of colonial pillage. A few

facts and figures will drive home the point.

Industrial countries hold 97% of patents worldwide, and more than 80% of

vandana shiva and all that....]


patents in developing countries. Yet more than half of the world’s most frequently

prescribed drugs are derived from plants or synthetic copies of plant chemicals. It is

estimated that if just a 2% royalty were charged on genetic resources that had been

developed by local innovators in the South, the North would owe many billions of dollars

in unpaid royalties for medicinal plants.

Out of 26,088 applications for patents in Africa in 2000 and 2001, only 31 were

from residents of Africa.

70 patents have been granted to First-World companies on the products of the

Neem tree of India, which has always been used locally for treatment of fever, snake bites,

leprosy and as a natural insecticide and disinfectant.

In 1998, a US company (Rice Tec) was awarded a patent (number 5,663,484) on

the basmati variety of rice, grown only in India and Pakistan.

In 1987, 50% of biotech patents were held by the public sector. In 1999, less than

10% were held by the public sector. 70% were held by the “big 6” (Dow, Novartis,

Aventis, Monsanto, Astra Zeneca, DuPont).

This year (2001) 14 million people in developing countries will die from infectious

deseases. But the TRIPs agreement will raise the costs of medicines.

Furthermore, of the 1,223 new chemical entities developed between 1975 and

1996, only 11 were for the treatment of tropical disease. So much for the trickle-down!118

Countries such as, India, Argentina, The Dominican Republic, Brazil, Vietnam and

Thailand, have all been threatened under the ‘Special 301’ provisions of US trade law. By

contrast the US seems prepared to override patents at home in the case of patented

antibiotics to treat anthrax.

A key factor in the industrial take-off of First-World and industralising countries

was easy access to new technology (e.g. US copying British, Japan copying US, Korea

copying Japan). What is “technological diffusion to the country developing is “piracy” to

the country leading.

A common perception of TRIPs and similar agreements has been that they make

sharing and exchange, which are the basis of survival for much of the world, into a crime.

118 United Nations report: UNCHR 2001:12 (no url).


As Gandhi said, “The earth has enough for everyone’s needs, but not for some people’s

greed.” This is not just an “emotional” argument; it is accurate.

Democracy We also need to look at the fundamentals, so to speak, of WTO policy—but not its

economic fundamentals, its moral ones: where its priorities are.

Corporations account for the majority of int’l trade, but WTO agreements apply to

government policies and actions rather than companies. The reason is the original thinking

behind GATT, which was to regulate the power of bad governments to interfere with

entrepreneurial effort. This was based in a world in which governments had enormous

power, enormously more than corporations, and governments had been shown recently to

do some very bad things. Now the situation has changed, but these rules continue to

benefit corporations against governments. This is outdated.119

Six corporations now control most of the U.S. media (versus 50 in 1983). It is

clear that this situation makes for increasingly more limited freedom of expression, and

greater power on the part of corporate interests to manage public resentment. Many

studies have shown that there has been a rapid and profound “dummying up” of the news

and of general content as a result of these mergers, as the side effect of extensive

collaboration.120

Nearly every single environmental or public health law challenged at the WTO has

been ruled illegal. In fact, it has been estimated that 80% of America's environmental

legislation could be challenged and declared illegal before WTO panels.121 How can we

presume to condemn so sweepingly rules that have been democratically determined?

WTO negotiations have included efforts to reduce government measures that

impede or prevent the timely movement of business persons on a temporary basis

amongst WTO members; at the same time there have been no efforts to loosen

immigration laws for people who desperately need work.122 This highlights that we are

focussing more on business needs than on those of humans.

119 "The WTO and SAFE Trade," Greenpeace (http://www.greenpeace.org/politics/wto/Doha/html/background.html). 120 Mediachannel.org, "Media concentration Chart" (http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/). 121 Third World Traveller, "World Trade Organization" (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/WTO_MAI/The_WTO.html). 122 [perhaps a link to kein.org?]


Investment agreements are opposed by most civil society groups. This is not

arbitrary.123

Where the WTO’s interests lie is quite well understood by even high-ranking

officials in other organizations. “The theory that the WTO is a black box in the hands of

unknown and mysterious multinationals has played well among NGOs for years, and

there’s some truth in that,” said European Commission head Pascal Lamy in 1999.124

A matter of perspective helps. On September 11, 3000 people died in the towers

as a result of terrorism. On the same day, 24,000 people died of hunger, 6,020 children

were killed by diarrhoea, and 2,700 children were killed by measles.125

The most powerful statement against terrorism would be for governments of the

rich nations to redress the deep inequities in the trade system and reverse the

marginalization of poorer countries. The WTO’s current configuration encourages the

trend of concentration of resources into fewer and fewer hands—facts like the top 100

transnational corporations increasing assets 697% between 1980 and 1995, even as

employment in these corporations went down,126 or that the 200 largest multinationals

hold 28% of global trade but only 1% of global employment.127 Extending the WTO’s

work into the service sector with GATS and the like will only make matters worse.

Theory [redo this section—first, increasing FDI is cornerstone of WTO policy; yet there’s no evidence it helps; furthermore, it’s declined; furthermore, what there is has been in the form of big acquisitions, useless to the economy (viz employment declining above)] Perhaps the most comprehensive assessment of the links between economic growth and

trade liberalisation undertaken to date concluded that there is no clear link between them.

This means that the projected benefits are merely hypothetical. We are certain today that

in the case of developing countries, the hypothesis is entirely misleading, and is in fact

false—that liberalization adversely affects developing nations.128

123 Third World Network, "Transparency, Participation, and Legitimacy of the WTO," 1999 (http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/legit-cn.htm). 124 "Democratizing the World Trade Organization," Fiona McGillivray 2000, Hoover Institution (http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/105/105b.html). 125 New Internationalist Magazine, November 2001, pp. 18-19 (http://sspglenrothes.freehosting.net/reignsofterror.htm). 126 "TNCs: Employment is Not the Point," Susan George, TNI Website, February 1999 (http://www.tni.org/george/articles/point.htm). 127 no url 128 Winters, Alan, 1999: ‘Trade liberalisation and Poverty’, London: Paper for DFID (no url).


The period 1960 to 1980 saw greater improvement and growth in developing

countries than the period from 1980 to 2000. Yet 1960-1980 was the height of Keynesian

economics, whereas the WTO’s sort of liberalization philosophy has reached its peak in

the latter period.129

In 1980-1996 only 33 of 130 developing countries increased growth by more than

3% per capita, while the GNP per capita of 59 countries declined. Around 1.6 billion

people are economically worse off today than 15 years ago.130

World foreign direct investment (FDI) has increased from $200 billion in 1989 to

over $1.1 trillion in 1999; developing countries share has been falling (38% in 1997 to 24%

in 1999) despite extensive changes to laws to attract foreign investors (94% of changes in

regulations in 1994-99); the LDCs with 10% of the world’s population receive 0.5%.131

Indeed, FDI rose by a factor of thirteen in the 1990s compared with the 1970s,

but GDP growth was 50% lower. One of the reasons is that foreign investment has

concentrated on purchasing assets rather than creating new sources of production; in the

period 1995-98, transfers of property accounted for nearly two-thirds of total FDI flows,

and over 80% of FDI is in the form of mergers and acquisitions (97% of which are

acquisitions). Most of the FDI is in the form of massive deals—50% comes from deals of

over $1 billion. 41% of FDI in developing countries (excluding China) is in the form of

mergers and acquisitions. European multinationals have taken over from the US as the

biggest buyers in developing countries. cross-border mergers and acquisitions have

increased by over 25 times since 1980 (as a proportion of world GDP).132

When investment is in the sources of production, these sources are basic ones,

that do not require spreading significant technical skills to the population.

The most severe financial crises have occurred in the countries that were most

integrated, including South Korea and Mexico which had just graduated to the OECD.133

There is no causal link between more foreign direct investment (FDI) and growth.

129 no url 130 UNDP Human Development Report, 1999, p. 31 (no url). 131 no url—related statistics in “From Focusing on Symptomatic Manifestations towards Dealing with Systemic Factors and Forces” by Dot Keet, Spectrezine, May 2001 (http://www.tni.org/archives/keet/systemic.htm). 132 no url—need for all these.... 133 UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero, 1999 (no url).


Some of the most successful Asian tiger economies (e.g. South Korea) received low levels

of foreign investment.134

There is also no causal link between foreign investment and poverty reduction.

80% of FDI is in the form of mergers and acquisitions, little in the form of productive

investment that creates jobs and exports. To increase the productiveness of the

investment, governments must retain discretion to maximize benefits and minimize costs,

but our investment agreements have aimed to prohibit these discretionary policies.135

The powers of governments to intervene to minimise costs and maximise benefits

for host communities and society are being eroded by bilateral investment treaties and the

proposed investment agreement in the WTO; the largest recipient of FDI in the

developing world is China, with one of the most restrictive investment regimes.136

More and more thinkers are noting that there is no evidence that liberalization

favors growth or benefits to the poor. There is also no evidence that Foreign Direct

Investment is an engine of growth.137

A recent review of the evidence of links between trade liberalization and economic

growth concluded there is no clear causality.138

Even the link between trade and investment is unsure. The Economic

Commission for Latin America and the Carribean (ECLAC) Notes point out that FDI

into Latin America in the 1990s were 13 times higher than in the 1970s, but the average

growth rate in the 1990s was 50% lower.139

"Not all FDI is in the best interests of host countries. Some can have an adverse

effect on development."140

Recent studies show that growth, accumulation of capital and strong production

economy came first and liberalisation later. France and Germany embraced laissez-faire

briefly, found they were losing out, and reversed themselves in the 1880s. The UK

liberalised after industrialisation, at a time when they were the world’s leading economic

134 Dani Rodrik, Harvard Professor, Making Investment Work (no url). 135 no url 136 no url 137 Prof. Dani Rodrik of Harvard in his policy paper "Making Openness Work" (no url). 138 Prof. Alan Winters, “Trade Liberalization and Poverty,” DFID 1999 (no url). 139 no url 140 UNCTAD World Investment Report 1999: “Foreign Direct Investment and the Challenge of Development” (no url).


power. The US industrialised itself through the 19th and most of 20th Century behind

high tariff walls and protectionism.141

Multinationals account for around two thirds of world trade,142 and around half of

that takes place within the same multinational143. So much of the WTO legislation has

benefitted companies internally, and “leakage” of technology to society has been very

minimal.

Major effects Drought today is very often caused by mining of scarce groundwater in arid regions to

grow thirsty cash crops for exports instead of water-prudent food crops for local needs.

The best strategy for preventing drought and desertification is diversity, and returning land

to local production.144 This requires a new, fresh look at liberalization and trade policies in

LDCs.

Diversity and sustainable food production systems are being destroyed in the

name of increasing food production. But this makes rich sources of local sustenance

disappear. Nutrition per acre decreases. “High yields” of single cash crops do not mean

better nutrition—in fact, the opposite tends to be true.

The effects in the First World are also quite strong. The US Centre for Disease

Prevention in Atlanta has calculated that nearly 81 million cases of food-borne illnesses

occur in the US every year. Deaths from food poisoning have gone up more than four

times due to deregulation (of factory-farmed meat).

Many experts are beginning to see that excessive population growth is entirely a

symptom of unsustainable development and the excesses of corporate globalization. The

population of India was stable until 1800; it was colonization and dispossession of land

that triggered the high rates of growth still in evidence to this day. The highest population

growth rates in England occurred after the enclosures of the commons. It’s the loss of

livelihood-generating resources and their replacement by unstable wage-labor that lead to

high population growth. It is time to solve this problem at its root, rather than attempting

to put balm on the symptoms—balm that in any case turns out to be poison.

141 Paul Bairoch and Richard Kozul-Wright, Dani Rodrik and National Bureau of Economic Research (no url). 142 UNCTAD 1996 (no url). 143 UNCTAD 1999 (no url).


Conclusions 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 lunch 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.

144 no url for any in this section


Appendix of correspondence

Transparency problems Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2002 09:04:36 -0700 (PDT) From: Schenkel Cleiton <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Information on the status of Agreements Hi, I have a question regarding the technical transition from GATT to OMC. I have tried to find the answer on your web page, but I could not. If it is possible, please clarify this issue. Before the OMC was created, there were several side agreements (amendments) of which some states were members and some were not. Membership was then voluntary. The agreement on Government Procurement is an example. When these documents were incorporated into a single agreement (OMC), all members had to sign them. My question is whether or not “all” side agreements were contemplated in the OMC text. If some of them were excluded, how was the legal situation for those who were part of these excluded agreements? Were they still bound by the texts, valid only for those who signed them? I thank you very much for your time. Sincerely, Cleiton Schenkel Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2002 14:17:57 -0400 (EDT) From: World Information Services <[email protected]> To: Schenkel Cleiton <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Information on the status of Agreements r68B09P.8 Thank you for writing to World Information Services, the knowledge division of the World Trade Organization. Our division is specialized in providing timely information to the discerning knowledge consumer. I am an intelligent automated response mechanism, invoked prior to passage to a human operation, when such is necessary. The question you have asked seems to concern: EXCEPTIONS TO RULES EXCLUSION FROM BENEFITS Regarding EXCEPTIONS TO RULES, there is a simple answer: NO ONE is exempted from the rules of the WTO, which are inspired by, and it could even be said indirectly derived from, the rules of nature. We wish to disabuse all parties of any remaining impression that our rules can be circumvented by one, several, or all parties. They cannot. Please note: the above holds true when the concern leading to desire for exclusion is related to issues of health or sanitation as well. There are NO exceptions.


Regarding EXCLUSION FROM BENEFITS, the answer is longer and requires human intervention. Please reply to this message without changing the subject line, and adding your affiliation (organization, country, personal status) for a human answer to your question. http://www.gatt.org/ Making the world safe for effectiveness Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 07:46:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Schenkel Cleiton <[email protected]> To: World Information Services <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Information on the status of Agreements r68B09P.8 I am a professor. Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 14:43:42 -0400 (EDT) From: World Information Services <[email protected]> To: Schenkel Cleiton <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Information on the status of Agreements r68B09P.8 I am an intelligent automated response mechanism. Your response indicates that you may not have fully understood my reply. I apologize for your incomprehension. I said that there is a rule: NO ONE is exemped from subjection to the rules of the WTO, which are inspired by, and it could even be said indirectly derived from, the rules of nature. These rules may be mechanically applied, and are in fact mechanically applied as a rule. They are mechanical. The humanness of the subject, or of the interlocutor, does not enter into the equation. Again, in interactions with these rules, no exceptions are possible. Therefore, it does not matter what one professes. Regarding "EXCLUSION FROM BENEFITS", please reply to this message without changing the subject line, and adding your affiliation (organization, country, personal status), for a human answer to your question.

Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 07:32:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Schenkel Cleiton <[email protected]> To: World Information Services <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Information on the status of Agreements r68B09P.8 If it is possible, I would like to receive a human response to my question because I believe it was misinterpreted. My question was whether or not all the GATT agreements became part of the WTO agreements, since the GATT members were not obligated to sign those side agreements that they did not want to. An example is the agreement on Government


Procurement. If not all of them were part of the WTO text, are they still valid for those who signed them? Thank you very much. Sincerely, Cleiton Schenkel PS> I amnot affiliated to any organization. I am a professor. Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 13:03:49 -0400 (EDT) From: World Information Services <[email protected]> To: Schenkel Cleiton <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Information on the status of Agreements r68B09P.8 Thank you for writing to World Information Services, the knowledge division of the World Trade Organization. Our division is specialized in providing timely information to the discerning knowledge consumer. I am an intelligent automated response mechanism, invoked prior to passage to a human operation, when such is necessary. The question you have asked seems to concern: GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT PROFESSING OPINION Regarding GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT, there is a simple answer. When engaging in commercial activity, every government is beholden to the laws governing human society via natural derivation, whether that government agrees with those laws or not. An example of this is in procurement agreements. When purchasing goods for its various agencies, and/or for the use of its citizens, a government must behave exactly like any other consumer, and obtain items at the lowest cost irrespective of other considerations. Foremost and especially, considerations of so-called human rights are not to enter into purchasing agreements, such as when a government chooses to purchase from one entity rather than another out of concern for the lives thus affected. The signature example of this is the so-called "honest bananas" case, in which the European Union was prevented from purchasing bananas from its former colonies, as a "leg up" and produced under "honest" conditions, rather than from regimes in South America which it deemed unfairly altered by the landscape imposed on them by U.S. banana concerns. Although that case concerned items consumed by individual citizens, and "filtered" by the government that they had elected according to the preferences vouchsafed that government, it holds for governments themselves as well. Again, in a word, choice is not to enter into consumption choices, thus allowing these patterns to bend to natural law. This is an unbending decision, regarding which it is not necessary to engage in endless debate.


Regarding PROFESSING OPINION, the limit of this activity's usefulness in the international arena as pertains to trade issues is entirely dependent upon the subject concerned. Most trade issues are, these days, well beyond the stage requiring the sort of debate required long ago, in the development stages of the current configuration. There are still a few issues it is necessary to address in debate or other forms of communication, but these are largely technical matters, the domain of economists, and can best be entrusted to their expertise. If this does not answer the questions contained in your e-mail, please reply to this message without changing the subject line, and adding your affiliation (organization, country, personal status) for a human answer to your question. http://www.gatt.org/ Making the world safe for effectiveness Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 13:35:59 -0700 (PDT) From: Schenkel Cleiton <[email protected]> To: World Information Services <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Information on the status of Agreements r68B09P.8 Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 13:05:41 -0400 (EDT) From: Hartford <[email protected]> To: Schenkel Cleiton <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Information on the status of Agreements r68B09P.8 Dear Mr. Schenkel, I'm very sorry, I can see things aren't working out exactly right in the domain of automated response there. If you're indignant, I can most fully sympathize, and I do. I am the Information Technology expert in charge of making sure the ARM system works and that its answers make sense, and I can tell you now (or you me!) that there's clearly some work to be done. An uncharitable interlocutor might even say I've been quite remiss! I hope not. Still, allow me to explain a bit about ARM. There's a good reason the system reacts as it does, attempting steadfastly to handle all inquiries on its own, rather than easily passing them on to a human. Although sometimes the ARM, as your case exemplifies, overzealously leans on this tendency, the reason is good--it is, in a word, *transparency.* You see, it stands to reason that any human intervention in the knowledge process, i.e. in the distribution of our information to you, the knowledge consumer, will alter the exactitude of the information being distributed: altering its resemblance to the root information, at the extreme. If in


the tiniest detail, even so--too much! The knowledge must remain one and the same, inside and out: this is the principle that we at the WTO hold to so strictly, the principle of *transparency.* It is, of course, a haughty ideal--but sensible! It is the principle that what you see is what you get, that what we do is what you see--and that, therefore, what we do is what you get. What could be higher? We are even testing the slogan: "WTO: What we do is what you get." What do you think? In any case, we are very sorry for all this running-around, and I just wanted to take this moment to explain what it is that makes it all tick--what it is that drives us. Please let me know if there's anything else I can help you with. Best wishes, Ingrid Hartford Automated Response Research and Development Transparency Division


CNN explains its methods and procedures [abridge] (We also maintain an altered CNN site, CNNN.com, for information-gathering purposes similar to those of GATT.org.)145 Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 11:22:21 -0500 From: John P Eicher <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Error Incredulous, In reference to the story:Evil Making Last Stand in Konduz. http://www.cnnn.com/ 2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/11/23/ret.afghan.konduz/index.html146 How on earth can you take the highly OPINIONATED position of declaring human beings as inherently good or evil? Since when has partiality been a good attribute of a news agency? This in itself is evil. what kind of shoddy reporting is this? I am stunned and appalled at the lack of impartial coverage CNN provides. For a moment I thought I was reading a satirical report from the Onion. This is very, very unprofessional and must be amended. Stunned and Appalled, John Eicher Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 16:32:17 -0500 From: CNN Information Services <[email protected]> To: John P Eicher <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Error Dear John, Please excuse CNN for our problems--we are a very large agency, meeting hundreds of consumers worldwide daily with the utmost in politics-news. We are still grateful for your concern. Sometimes the truth is exactly where you expect, but sometimes you must take user input! And then, we must continue. Thank you for thinking "Error" when thinking "CNN"! And thank you for watching our progress. Best wishes, CNN Information Services

145 [give example of reamed sentences including “Leader” and “Evil”] 146 [pick a real url instead, that will exist on the web]


P.S. If you would like more precise replies to your question ("Error"), and to any followup question, please reply with "ciz9ss.ei#s8" somewhere in the subject line. Due to the volume of mail, this is all very necessary. Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 13:52:31 -0500 From: John P Eicher <[email protected]> To: CNN Information Services <[email protected]> Subject: Error ciz9ss.ei#s8 Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 13:47:23 -0500 From: CNN - Bartle Huickinjag <[email protected]> To: John P Eicher <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Error ciz9ss.ei#s8 Dear John, Thank you for your heartfelt information. And we wish you to know that CNN's information is the best information that money can buy. Indeed, as I am speaking to you, it is clear there is something the matter with the world. For one day, there are airplanes into the towers of Manhattan, New York. For another, there are airplanes into the citizens of Afghanistan. Then there is much celebration, and problems are sorted out from our midst with a certain amount of bravado, including imprisonment and (perhaps) torture. All of this is quite a lot of information! It is newsworthy, and, even, dangerous. And yet, it is clear that this is truly the way it is, not only in information terms but in the world of people. There is no other. If you put people together, of course, you will always get a situation, in the world. Sometimes the situation will be other than the one you predict or speak about. Sometimes it will be the same. In this case, everything is the same as what everyone else has predicted. It is not different. It is simply information, and it is not really anything else. So, we hope to make things clearer. They truly are clear, of course, because they are just information, but sometimes, being in one language rather than another, they are unclear. That is why we have three editions: all English, but different languages. To try to get clearer to everyone, anywhere, always. English is just the beginning. We are honest, disabling folk. We call a spade a spade, an evil an evil, a hobgoblin a hobgoblin. There is a simplicity to this situation, we cannot avoid it. There is nothing to avoid, because it is all information! It may be, as you say, that human beings are inherently good and evil. On the other hand, WE may be the ones who are inherently good and evil. In saying one thing rather than the other, we are opinionating with all the vivacity vouchsafed our nature. That is all as it should be in the world of adhering to Leader.


I hope I have been able to be of some assistance in the matter of concern. We wish to feed you an endless and uninterrupted stream of the bravest information money can buy. Thank you for your digestion, and do not hesitate again. Best, Bartle


Information gladly provided but safety requires strong caveats [add note that this is from world-information-forum.com, another GATT.org-like thing...] Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 20:58:50 -0600 From: Pablozo <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: Paul Borzo <[email protected]> Subject: Help! Greetings, I'm looking for information on your public opinion survey showing favorable atitudes towards government (23-to-46 percent). Is this information available on your site? Or can you e-mail it to me? I'd be most appreciative for any help you can provide. (Respond ALL will send your response to me at work and at home. Thanks!) Paul Borzo home: [email protected] work: [email protected] EMA, Inc. Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 09:52:44 -0500 (EST) From: World Economic Forum Information <[email protected]> To: Pablozo <[email protected]> Cc: Paul Borzo <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Help! Hello, Of course, very many people are still favorable towards government. Government, after all, began at some point long before the Greeks, was honed by these latter into something called democracy ("rule of the people," literally, as opposed to plutocracy, "rule of money," gerontocracy, "rule of old people," and teratomocracy, "rule of cancerous growths"), and has been, at its best, the sole defendant of the public will against the will of the mightiest. Thanks to modern developments, however, government is no longer very important. Corporations have the public's will at heart, and although they are the mightiest, they are composed of human beings. It is heartening to us at the WEF that the tremendous public relations expenditures on the part of corporations are now bearing fruit. Yes, people have so come to trust corporations severally and together, that government now comes in a distant second on the favorability meter. This will increase.


Please let me know if you would like further details. With very best wishes, H. T. Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 16:35:21 -0600 From: Paul Borzo <[email protected]> To: 'World Economic Forum Information' <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Help! Most very interesting and informative! Thank you for your perspective. Can you now specifically direct me to a survey presented by Richard Edelman at the WEF that showed the 23-46 percent increase in favorable attitudes toward government as well as the 43-40 percent decrease in favorable public attitudes toward business? I'd like to see his numbers if possible. Thanks again so very much!!! ~Paul

Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 08:31:20 -0500 (EST) From: World Economic Forum Information <[email protected]> To: Paul Borzo <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Help! Ah. Yes indeed, you are right: the study exists. And as Richard has pointed out many times, there are always moments of "downturn" in the public's acceptance of non-standard new orders. This stands to reason! It may be relatively easy for the public to accept, at any given time in the history of a country or system, a new array of titular heads of that country or system, that the public or a large portion of it has asked for. But it is substantially more challenging to pass off on that public an entirely new power structure in which many old values are negated or rendered quite useless, and in which the wishes of the public are considered via an entirely new, invisible structure that is not at base accountable to anyone but those few that control it. Of course, the reality of this process can be hidden for a good long time. For quite a while people can be led to believe that the old values still dominate--that "things make sense." But as difficulties arise, or for whatever reason people are led to think about things, the reality of the new configuration will become manifest to, say, 23% more than before. This is no reason, however, to go from news and views to rhythm and blues, so to speak. Through the Centre for Global Industries (whose objective is to ensure that the foremost corporations of the world are deeply and actively involved in accomplishing the Forum's mission), we wish to advise all our members and partners that things will look up in the long term. Please remember: liberalization is the path to prosperity and security. In the carrot-and-stick model of obtaining worker allegiance, the stick of homelessness and starvation was recently shifted to that of terrorism, which is far less effective in a day-to-day, prosperity-


driving way. It is, however, far *more* effective in wresting long-range shifts from a public wary of new values. Once these shifts have been accomplished, homelessness and starvation will return to vitality and prosperity will resume its acceleration. Please let me know if you would like further details. With very best wishes, H. T. P.S. The numbers that you request are right as you have cited them. Unfortunately, our computers are having some difficulties and we are unable to access the file with the exact to-the-person decimal extensions. But as I like to say, it's not the numbers that matter, it's their power! Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 12:09:57 -0500 (EST) From: World Economic Forum Information <[email protected]> To: Paul Borzo <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Help! P.P.S. Our computers have restituted themselves at present. I am now able to direct you to the correct location for these numbers: http://www.edelman.com/edelman_newsroom/ngo/NGO_1-12-01/press_release.htm Paul, I would like to comment, if I may, on this issue. We here at the WEF feel that it would be highly inappropriate to speak too loudly, as it were, about this study of NGOs and how NGOs win public trust. Many so-called citizens are nervous already about what they perceive as the corporate stranglehold on the media environment. They see corporations as *too* adept at manipulating public opinion, as *too* quickly able to take techniques and abilities that evolved in the public sphere, for the common good, and turn them into "profit-seeking missiles," as one anti-glob recently put it. The fact that Richard's firm is Edelman PR Worldwide, the world's largest privately-held public relations firm, and that this study is concerned with the affective power of NGOs, notably the fact they enjoy much higher levels of trust than corporations, would suggest to the casual reader that Edelman and its clients have been dedicating a certain amount of mental firepower to discovering the keys to NGO strength. We wish to keep annoyance out of the public picture as much as possible. We wish to keep the "missiles" flying, and we wish to give corporate PR--including Richard's firm--some chance of regaining some of the NGOs' "domination over government, corporations, and media," as the Edelman press release puts it. For that, we need public trust. And for that, we need tact and collaboration. Please be careful where you publicize this sort of information, these sorts of plans. With very best wishes, H. T.


Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 14:03:47 -0600 From: Paul Borzo <[email protected]> To: 'World Economic Forum Information' <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Help! Most Kind Sir, Thank you again, for your assistance, but more importantly, for the wisdom and insight which you shared. Rest assured, our use will be simply to point out to utility directors that they must strive to keep and raise their customer satisfaction. I believe our intentions are similar. Thanks again for your kind assistance and sharing! -Paul Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 18:43:41 -0500 (EST) From: World Economic Forum Information <[email protected]> To: Paul Borzo <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Help! You are very welcome. Please, if there is any way that we can help you again to insure corporate safety in this increasingly accountability-obsessed world, do not hesitate to call on us. With very best wishes, H. T.


A “grassroots” information campaign is proposed [needs to be shortened considerably and perhaps continued; need to mention that the idea for such a “grassroots” WTO info campaign aimed at protesters and others came from a fake news story that circulated for a while, and that Andy and Mike believed. So gullible!] Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 14:12:08 EST From: [email protected] To: [email protected] January 14, 2001 World Trade Organization rue de Lausanne 154 CH-1211 Geneva 21, Switzerland To Whom It May Concern: I would like to introduce myself to your organization. My name is Marla J. Noel. I am a CPA with approximately 20 years of experience in both public accounting and the management of a small local company with 80 employees. I am not looking for employment, however, I am completing my Masters at Chapman University in Orange, California, USA this year. I am fascinated with International Business and how is has and will impact the future of the world and the lifestyle of the people affected by increased trade. I perceive the WTO to be a very powerful organization now and in the future. I recently had the opportunity to visit China. I strongly believe that entry into the WTO would be a strong positive impact on a country that is so much in need of economic improvement. Some of the protesting that seems to evolve around the WTO meetings appears to be a result of a lack of understanding of the conditions that exist in other countries. The lack of understanding may be due to a lack of education relating to the environment of other countries, the importance of trade with those countries, the long-term result of trade and the WTO’s impact on trade in other countries. Some of the groups that are the most active in protests should be the target of an educational campaign to facilitate the understanding of the importance of trade and the positive changes that will eventually occur from trade. I would like to do whatever I can to support the WTO and will be willing to assist where possible. Again, I am not looking for employment, but would be interested in assisting with an educational campaign in Southern California, if that is an area of interest for the WTO. Thank you for reading my letter and considering my suggestion. If this is already underway, I will be happy to facilitate any efforts that are needed in this area, if necessary. I am tremendously interested in the WTO, and believe that the future will be positively impacted by the success of your organization. I would love to be a part of that success. Sincerely, Marla J. Noel, CPA


Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 18:12:56 -0500 From: Générée Eleutherium <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Can I help? Dear Marla Noel, Thank you for your thoughtful letter. As you note, there are large segments of the population which are completely confused about the importance of trade in the modern world, who do not understand the objective, scientific reasons that unhampered trade--that is, the exchange of goods unimpeded by "moral" or "political" questions--is so undeniably essential to the continued material progress of humanity, and--in those parts of the world that suffer from backwardness, including those you mention--will bring about a rescue from disasters caused by the last two centuries of restrictions on unhampered industrio-colonial progress. So in fact, your suggestions fall on receptive ears. We are already in the process of devising a sort of "grass roots" campaign series, aimed at the misguided protesters you mentioned, and also at those elements in developing nations--e.g. the so-called "Zapatistas" in Chiapas, Mexico--who do not understand that liberalization is a boon to *all* elements and strata of society. We are particularly interested in those like yourself who have an interest and background in corporate management, for this "grass roots" campaign will model itself on similar campaigns undertaken by such mighties as General Electric, Shell, et al. to clean up their images and present a more beautiful side of their work and their past to the public. Especially, we are interested in the kind of "stealth" campaigns that even more heavily image-soiled corporations--or those in the grip of more dangerous issues--have undertaken at various points, whereby information is released anonymously into the environment without revelation of author, so that the facts presented can be absorbed with fewer preconceptions by those who have already been inculcated with ridiculous notions by the Seattleites and their colleagues. Does this sort of work interest you? Please feel free to contact me at your earliest convenience. Best wishes, Générée Eleutherium Human Resources http://www.gatt.org/ The World Trade Organization: Making the World Safe For Effectiveness. Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 12:38:47 EST From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Can I help? Dear Générée,


I would be very interested in working with your organization in a "grass roots" effort to educate the community. I am involved in marketing my business, and I believe that a standardized approach to marketing to all of the major cities in the US will go far in developing the support that is necessary to encourage expanded world trade from the United States. I have had the opportunity to speak with Chapman University in Orange, California, and have some resources that would facilitate a "grass roots" effort. Please let me know if you would like for me to put together or assist with a marketing plan. If you already have developed a plan, I would be interested in assisting with the process of marketing international trade. As I indicated before, I am not interest in employment. However, I feel that a great deal can be accomplished with the resources that we have to develop and implement a plan that will be effective in improving the support of the United States in World Trade. Sincerely, Marla J. Noel Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 14:34:55 -0500 From: Générée Eleutherium <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Can I help? Dear Marla, Well, this is good news! I related your interest to my superior, who is very interested in learning more about what you might bring us. May I ask you some questions? 1. What sort of resources, specifically, do you speak of when you say that you "have some resources that would facilitate a 'grass roots' effort"? Are these resources human? That is, do you know students who would be willing to infiltrate left-wing learning groups and provide WTO information incognito, i.e. so that it seemed to be coming from a left-wing perspective? If other, please also specify. 2. Please do sketch out the various steps you would take in the unfurlment of a grass-roots effort. We do not yet have such a plan, but we are considering the necessity of the following elements, and are fairly convinced: A. Any effort must be subterranean: information targets must never be aware that they are receiving information from the WTO. The most interesting-to-us targets are primed to dislike the WTO, and so they cannot be consciously aware of our hand in the information they absorb. B. Special diffusion mechanisms must be invented. The use of rock-and-roll teenagers, for example, to distribute leaflets among their age-mates, could be quite useful, especially if the leaflets are designed with that group in mind. Bright colors, sly appeals to budding sexual urges and insecurities, use of rock-and-roll words--these could go far to helping our cause among the "youth set." C. While care must be taken not to trip the wires of any obvious community problems, we must likewise be careful not to get caught in the trap of excessive concern for specific issues. The aims and goals of economic progress and hearty international trade are big,


much bigger than what we can get concerned with as humans, along the way. It is important not to worry about small-term effects. Please let us know your thoughts at your earliest convenience. Best wishes, Générée Eleutherium Human Resources Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 01:22:09 EDT From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Can I help? I agree with your "grassroots" approach. I am not sure how much you intend to "throw" at this effort, however, I have been working on a budget for efforts in the United States with an advertising campaign. This will have to be flexible for what you plan to get out of the effort and will also depend upon the amount of volunteers that can be developed over the United States. Obviously, for you, this effort will probably need to be worldwide. Again, I do not know how much you have in the way of resources and how much communication costs are in other parts of the world. If you would like, I will put together a "marketing plan" and a budget to go with it. I can do this for the United States with a fair amount of accuracy for the amount per type of campaign. An international advertising agency would be able to assist with the international costs. If you have already done this, please let me know and I will focus on digging for resources in the United States for PR peices in some of the major cities. I currently have a few, put will need a lot more than a few if the effect is to influence the masses in a short period of time. I have had experience in working with advertising agencies and with the advertising budgeting process, however, I do not know what your goals are and will not pursue this avenue if you have already covered this. I guess that I am asking where you would like for me to begin. I can begin with developing a plan, or I can begin with accumulating resources. I would love to see significant success in a short period of time because of the level of importance that I feel surrounds the efforts of the WTO. I know that you feel the same. Sincerely, Marla J. Noel


Granwyth Hulatberi-Hulatberi-Smith instructs the Isle of Man on the rights of nations Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 15:12:39 +0100 From: "Carse, Steve" <[email protected]> To: "'[email protected]'" <[email protected]> Subject: Gibraltar Could you advise me of the relationship of Gibraltar to the WTO? Stephen Carse Government Economic Adviser Economic Affairs Division The Treasury Illiam Dhone House 2 Circular Road Douglas Isle of Man Tel: 01624 685741 Fax: 01624 685747 [email protected] WARNING: If you are not the intended addressee of this e-mail you must not copy or deliver it to anyone else or use it in any unauthorised manner.

Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 15:23:24 -0400 From: The World Trade Organization <[email protected]> To: "Carse, Steve" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Gibraltar Yes. Gibraltar is a little plot of land at the tip of Spain, right across from Morocco, under the governorship of Britain. The WTO is the World Trade Organization, which was created to allow a greater freedom for corporate entities to engage in their activities unhampered by the protective strategies of democratically elected governments. Why do you ask? Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 16:12:35 +0100 From: "Carse, Steve" <[email protected]> To: 'The World Trade Organization' <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Gibraltar


My enquiry was to do with whether Gibraltar has a relationship with WTO that was similar to the one we, the Isle of Man, has. Your response does not help me on this. Can you say anything more e.g. is it free to have its own exemptions? Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 19:58:05 -0400 From: The World Trade Organization <[email protected]> To: "Carse, Steve" <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Gibraltar No land on earth may be considered free, if freedom means to engage in activities that endanger the well-being of corporate enterprise. So long as, and only so long as, nations understand their place on earth as being in service of, and at the beck of, the driving forces of economics, so shall these nations be afforded a place at the right hand of power. But let the tiniest nation--yea, even Gibraltar, even the Isle of Man--arise upon the poop-deck of declamation... let it wield for even a moment the baton of popular power against the furnace of progress... let it stagger drunkenly into the path of the train of misguidedness... then, indeed, shall that nation see the full force of our petulance and our peevishness unleashed squarely upon its head, and all its head's heads as well. (Sorry for that rant--we have a bug on our shoulder since the latest round of dangerous-idea circulation masquerading as protest.) Best, Granwyth Hulatberi-Hulatberi-Smith Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 00:24:52 -0000 From: Jimmy Choi Kam Chuen <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Dear Sir Appreciate very much if you can tell me the designation of Mr. Granwyth Hulatberi-Hulatberi-Smith in your organization. Thanks very much Choi Kam Chuen Date: Sat, 12 May 2001 07:36:13 -0400 From: The World Trade Organization <[email protected]> To: Jimmy Choi Kam Chuen <[email protected]> Subject: Granwyth Hulatberi-Hulatberi-Smith Dear Mr. Chuen, Mr. Hulatberi-Hulatberi-Smith is a Counsellor in our Market Access Division, and often does first-level public relations assessment.


Yours, Gram Hunnerd Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 09:24:23 +0100 From: "Carse, Steve" <[email protected]> To: 'The World Trade Organization' <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Gibraltar I have absolutely no idea what your reply is all about. May I just repeat my simple request? Is Gibraltar a member of WTO in its own right or is it a member through the United Kingdom? Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 12:19:58 -0400 From: The World Trade Organization <[email protected]> To: "Carse, Steve" <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Gibraltar Now Mr. Carse, there's no reason to get uppity. We are on your side--you, the little man who plays by the rules. We are here to help you understand the exigencies of the global playground, so that you may understand the pathways through which you and your government MAY move and those through which you MAY NOT. Given this, it is hard to say why you would seek to endanger your standing through impatient words. If I were you, given the circumstances, I would question whether my nation (the Isle of Man, in your case) is really all that interested in benefitting from trade. But to answer your question: Gibraltar's business arrangements are not the affair of other governments, either yours or those of more populous lands. Gibraltar is free and sovereign to enter into trade arrangements with the enterprises that choose it, and it would be a violation of Gibraltar--and I mean that in the full sense--to suggest that the whim of the people--its own, or those of other lands--can impede those arrangements. With very best wishes, Granwyth Hulatberi-Hulatberi-Smith p.s. Your question as phrased in your last mail, "Is Gibraltar etc. etc.", is in no way the same as those of your first two mails. In fact, I am forced to conclude that your question keeps changing. If you can resolve upon a single question and stick to it, there is every chance that it can be answered appropriately, in spite of everything. GHHS Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 14:10:07 +0100 From: "Carse, Steve" <[email protected]> To: 'The World Trade Organization' <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Gibraltar On the contrary the question is exactly the same.


This has got to have been the most bizarre set of responses I have ever received from a world organisation. Could I ask that my enquiry be passed on to your superior within the WTO so that I may get a simple answer to a very simple question.

Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 09:34:53 -0400 From: The World Trade Organization <[email protected]> To: "Carse, Steve" <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Gibraltar Mr. Carse: I will happily pass your request to my superior _if_ you do the same, so that the entire conversation is passed up to a higher level and our superiors are then superiors speaking at the same level. I resent being considered on a lower level than my interlocutor, and think that this is the perfect solution to our debacle. Please: you first. Granwyth Hulatberi-Hulatberi-Smith Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 20:12:03 -0400 From: Walther Funk <[email protected]> To: "Carse, Steve" <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Gibraltar (Fwd) Dear Mr. Carse, I was forwarded the below message by Mr. Smith, along with your request. What seems to be the problem? Regards Walther Funk p.s. If you do not reply within the next twenty-four hours, your request will be exterminated from our system.


We must find out what happened in Salzburg Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 04:25:28 -0400 From: Dennis Campbell <[email protected]> To: alice foley <[email protected]> Subject: WTO representative

Dear Ms Foley:

We were somewhat puzzled by Dr Bichlbauer's participation at the conference.

He was accompanied by someone we took to be a driver and/or security person and someone who filmed his remarks. The essential thrust of his speech appeared to be that Italians have a lesser work ethic than the Dutch, that Americans would be better off auctioning their votes in the Presidential election to the highest bidder, and that the primary role of the WTO was to create a one-world culture.

In the late afternoon, a camerman (I think it was the same one who filmed Dr Bichlbauer's speech) appeared at the hotel and sought to interview our delegates. He said Dr Bichlbauer had been hit in the face with a pie outside the hotel and wanted to know if the delegates thought Dr Bichlbauer's speech had provoked the attack.

I have no idea whether or not Dr Bichlbauer was hit with a pie. Certainly there was no public announcement whatsoever that a WTO representative would be with us, and the meeting itself was not open to the public. Nor were the conference schedule or list of participants available to the public.

Several of our delegates (including work-ethic impaired Italians) approached me to express concern about the speech, the alleged pie incident, and the cameraman who sought interviews in the late afternoon.

Your clarification will be appreciated.

Regards, Dennis Campbell Center for International Legal Studies

Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 07:01:00 -0400 From: Alice Foley <[email protected]> To: Dennis Campbell <[email protected]> Subject: Re: WTO representative

Dear Mr. Campbell,

Indeed you are correct, Dr. Bichlbauer was in fact "pied" after speaking at the Salzburg CILS conference. At present we are not completely certain of all the details, but it appears that the cameraman you mention had something to do with it. Dr. Bichlbauer was assigned one official assistant, Ravi Bhaticharaya. Bhaticharaya did not follow proper security protocols in bringing on this cameraman, who seems to have essentially been an


agent provocateur who planned the pieing from the start. And we have received one other report linking the "reporter" with this fellow.

I can express our sincere regrets in regards to this matter, and can assure you that Mr. Bhaticharaya's actions will be scrutinized over the next days with the greatest care. We hope you understand that this sort of incident reflects primarily the unfortunate circumstances under which the WTO must accomplish its work, and that our security can never be entirely adequate to the situations we face.

Please also let me know whether I may forward your e-mail to parties relevant to the investigation of this matter. And please send us any more details about this incident so that we may pursue our investigation.

As for concerns regarding Dr. Bichlbauer's talk, please be assured that we are certain he did not mean to offend with any remarks. If any parties were indeed offended, please have them write to me with their concerns, and they will be dealt with appropriately.

Best wishes, Alice Foley Administrative Assistant to Mike Moore

Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 11:06:23 -0400 From: Dennis Campbell <[email protected]> To: Alice Foley <[email protected]> Cc: cils <[email protected]> Subject: Re: WTO representative

Thank you for your prompt reply.

I am sorry to learn that this event did, in fact, occur because we support the work of the WTO.

For obvious reasons, we did not announce the conference or the schedule to the press or release the list of speakers to the public. The event was known only to the speakers and delegates, and the list of speakers and participants was available to delegates only after they arrived in Salzburg on 26 October.

Since the cameraman arrived with Dr Bichlbauer, we of course assumed he was part of his party, and he entered the meeting (which otherwise was closed to the public) with Dr Bichlbauer, and I believe also took lunch with him and our delegates.

I have no knowledege of what may have happened outside the hotel. When the cameraman returned to the hotel in the late afternoon and attempted to film and interview several delegates, many declined to speak with him because they thought his questions - indeed, the whole situation - seemed odd.

As to the content of Dr Bichlbauer's remarks, I doubt whether any of the delegates will take the time to write to you, having already indicated their concerns in conversations with me. Apart from those who were offended by the references to the Italians, the US election, and the idea of a one-world culture, others thought the presentation flippant.


And that is the greater pity in presenting the WTO's perspective to a group of international business lawyers.

Regards, Dennis Campbell Center for International Legal Studies

Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 16:23:29 -0400 From: Andreas Bichlbauer <[email protected]> To: Dennis Campbell <[email protected]> Subject: Friday lecture in Salzburg

Dear Professor Campbell,

I was disappointed to hear from Alice Foley that some people in the audience on Saturday disliked my lecture. I am dismayed indeed to have caused offense to any parties present, and sincerely hope that any disapproval stems from a considered response to the facts as presented, rather than being a knee-jerk reaction to matters presented without adulteration normally reserved for broader, less intelligent publics.

Perhaps adding to my disappointment is my--and our--expectation of the conference. We hoped that it could provide a forum wherein our most edgy ideas and concepts could find an open but critical ear. It seems we were wrong on both counts.

Those who were upset by the lecture were clearly unreceptive to any message departing from the simple WTO "party line" as it is presented in larger arenas. At this conference we hoped to examine this "party line" through repackaging in a clearer and more carefully delineated fashion, for the sake of more lucid examination and a greater awareness of "issue extremes" for use in more politic descriptions--those intended for the consumption of larger blocs of the consuming public.

Indeed, it is ever more important to the WTO to discuss and bring WTO policies into the full glare of intellectual examination in contexts such as your conference--the perfect breeding ground, we imagined, for well-considered, critical responses to our ideas. We imagined that our policies and ideas be presented to this "group of international business lawyers" without any watering-down, as an intellectual help to more careful formulations. Again, apparently we were wrong.

Furthermore, I personally take offense at the imputations of inappropriate language and flippancy. I take the greatest pride in my ability to present difficult arrays of facts in carefully constructed ways, with fully adequate language, and feel that my delivery on Saturday was fully up to par with my best efforts. I cannot brook such innuendo, and am saddened to learn of it.

Best wishes Andreas Bichlbauer

Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 01:50:22 -0500 From: Dennis Campbell <[email protected]> To: Andreas Bichlbauer <[email protected]>


Cc: alice foley <[email protected]> Subject: Friday lecture in Salzburg

I can only report the reaction of many of the lawyers, from several countries, who approached me.

Regards, Dennis Campbell

Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 01:50:25 -0500 From: Dennis Campbell <[email protected]> To: alice foley <[email protected]> Subject: Friday lecture in Salzburg

-------------Forwarded Message-----------------

From: Andreas Bichlbauer, INTERNET:[email protected] To: Dennis Campbell, 100305,2602 Date: 28.10.00 22:10

RE: Friday lecture in Salzburg

Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 16:23:29 -0400 To: Dennis Campbell <[email protected]> From: Andreas Bichlbauer <[email protected]> Subject: Friday lecture in Salzburg


I was disappointed to hear from Alice Foley that some people in the audience on Saturday disliked my lecture. I am dismayed indeed to have caused offense to any parties present, and sincerely hope that any disapproval stems from a considered response to the facts as presented, rather than out of a knee-jerk reaction to matters presented without adulteration normally reserved for broader, less intelligent publics.

Perhaps adding to my disappointment is my--and our--expectation of the conference. We hoped that it could provide a forum wherein our most edgy ideas and concepts could find an open but critical ear. It seems we were wrong on both counts.

Those who were upset by the lecture were clearly unreceptive to any message departing from the simple WTO "party line" as it is presented in larger arenas. At this conference we hoped to examine this "party line" through repackaging in a clearer and more carefully delineated fashion, for the sake of more lucid examination and a greater awareness of "issue extremes" for use in more politic descriptions--those intended for the consumption of larger blocs of the consuming public.

Indeed, it is ever more important to the WTO to discuss and bring WTO policies into the full glare of intellectual examination in contexts such as your conference--the perfect breeding ground, we imagined, for well- considered, critical responses to our ideas. We imagined that our policies and ideas be presented to this "group of international business lawyers" without any watering-down, as an intellectual help to more careful formulations. Again, apparently we were wrong.


Furthermore, I personally take offense at the imputations of inappropriate language and flippancy. I take the greatest pride in my ability to present difficult arrays of facts in carefully constructed ways, with fully adequate language, and feel that my delivery on Saturday was fully up to par with my best efforts. I cannot brook such innuendo, and am saddened to learn of it.

Best wishes Andreas Bichlbauer

Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 05:11:37 -0500 From: Mike Moore <[email protected]> To: Dennis Campbell <[email protected]> Cc: Alice Foley <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Fwd: WTO representative

Dear Professor Campbell:

I was dismayed to learn of your unfortunate experience with our representative, Andreas Bichlbauer. I have reviewed the Powerpoint file that Dr. Bichlbauer says formed the basis of his presentation in Salzburg. And I must emphatically echo your sentiments--it is indeed not only flippant, as you say, but wordy, repetitive, and often convoluted.

The matter of the unaccredited security detail is also rather shocking to us. Dr. Bichlbauer should indeed have been far more alert, particularly in the present climate; had he been, the unfortunate incident that took place later that day might have been avoided.

I will recommend that Dr. Bichlbauer be required to attend a refresher course on public speaking, communication, and policy before any further appearances on behalf of the WTO.

As for the ideas conveyed in Dr. Bichlbauer's lecture, I agree they could have been presented in a more palatable form. We do consider elegance of presentation essential in conveying our ideas and aims to diverse audiences. However, having examined the presentation exhaustively, I am forced to conclude that never in any particulars do Dr. Bichlbauer's statements--assuming they derived from the material I received--depart from the spirit--if not the precise letter--of our intentions and aims.

That is, while we of course do not advocate vote-selling or siesta-banning at the present time, it is quite true that efficiency and the streamlining of culture and politics in the interests of economic liberalization is at the core of the WTO's programme, and such practices as described by Dr. Bichlbauer are useful in clarifying the long-range interests of global development as promoted by our organization and others.

My hands are tied. Again, I can only recommend a thorough examination of Dr. Bichlbauer's presentational skills and understanding of WTO protocol and policy.

Please let me know if there is anything else we can assist you with.

Best wishes, Mike Moore WTO Director General


Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 22:04:37 -0500 From: Alice Foley <[email protected]> To: Dennis Campbell <[email protected]> Subject: investigation


Mike Moore has asked me to write you regarding the incident following Andreas Bichlbauer's lecture in Salzburg. The situation has, I regret to say, somewhat deteriorated from an already unpleasant state of affairs: Dr. Bichlbauer has contracted a rather serious infection from the pie, which forensic analysis shows contained an active bacillus agent. It is not certain whether foul play was involved. His prognosis is good.

Now that this incident has escalated to the level of a potentially much more serious crime, we must urge you to relay to us any and all information you may have regarding the circumstances of the event, and ask others who might have been present to do so as well. I know that this question will sound harsh, but could any of the lawyers present have been angry enough at Dr. Bichlbauer's lecture to do this?

We sincerely hope that some information presents itself in the coming days; besides the matter of the police inquiry, with which we are cooperating to the fullest, it is important to us to know who our enemies are, especially when they are prone to resort to such disturbing tactics.

Yours, Alice Foley Administrative Assistant to Mike Moore

Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 00:54:48 -0500 From: Dennis Campbell <[email protected]> To: Alice Foley <[email protected]> Subject: investigation

I know nothing more than what I told you.

Regards, Dennis Campbell

Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 00:14:55 -0500 To: Friends of Bichlbauer: [moderator, three co-panelists, two audience members]; From: Alice Foley <[email protected]> Subject: investigation

Dear Friends,

I regret to inform you that I received your addresses from Dr. Andreas Bichlbauer--who represented the WTO in Salzburg two Fridays ago--under very melancholy circumstances.


Dr. Bichlbauer, in fact, passed me your cards from his hospital bed after suggesting you might have some insight into the unpleasant crime which took place that day.

First of all, rest assured that Dr. Bichlbauer refrains from directly accusing any of you of responsibility for his dreadful state. It was likely somebody else, he says, someone whose features he had no time to see, who after his less than well-received lecture (an hour and fourteen minutes after, to be precise) hurled the pie in his face... the pie which, upon forensic analysis, turned out to contain, intentionally or not, an active bacillus agent... an agent which, unfortunately, has led Dr. Bichlbauer into a sickness through which he clings ever more precariously to the tendrils of life.

Who? we have asked again and again, and why? We simply cannot fathom it, and neither can the police. Yet fathom it we must, down to the nut of its clues, till we ferret out the enemy of our plans, the tormenter of our ambassador. Our survival, indeed our very ability to continue presenting our message to groups such as CILS, depends on your active participation in our project of relentlessly seeking for causes: please, please let us know if anything at the conference struck you as strange, or if you can imagine anyone performing this masterpiece of cowardice, that so threatens to delete Dr. Bichlbauer from our midst in the prime of his usefulness.

Best wishes, Alice Foley Administrative Assistant to Mike Moore

Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 15:33:31 -0500 From: Andreas Bichlbauer <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Payment for lecture October 27, 2000

Dear Organizers,

I was a little upset to receive your Nov. 2 invoice, insinuatingly marked "1st reminder," for 206 "Euro," for "Accommodation-Charge." I do not blame you for this upset, as you surely did not attend my lecture. This seems to be the way with you organizers.

So to let you in on the secret: there was no accommodation. I was accomodated neither physically, with a bed to aid in my sleeping (and this was on purpose--the WTO does not put its people pell-mell into just any bed), nor morally. I was, if it may be said, disaccommodated--apologies for the strong language, but I received, in my face, hurled, a pie, that has put me into a terrible state. The doctors say it was poisoned, in a way, though this may not have been intentional. In any case, whichever of the other delegates did this, I am sure he or she is your responsibility. How can you now ask for money? I may perish.

Please give my further explanations to your colleagues. This has put me into a brain-state that is not entirely fixable.

Best wishes, Andreas Bichlbauer


[Note: It was Mike who, unbeknownst to Andy, sent him the following note. Andy did not know this, and answered the message in earnest.]

Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 07:08:41 -0800 From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Payment for lecture October 27, 2000

Dear Mr Bichlbauer,

Pie, shmie! You owe us two hundred euros, you erudite ass-wipe. Give us our dough, or we'll have every trial lawyer in austria breathing up your hairy ass. You may have gone to law school at Columbia, but that doesn't make you king of the world. Excuse me, but i have to go perish.

Sincerely, Levon Martin Special Hire at the CILS to contain Agent Provocateurs

Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 15:24:35 -0500 From: Andreas Bichlbauer <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Payment for lecture October 27, 2000

Dear Mr. Martin,

This is surprising! I thought surely the CILS team would see better than to sully its image in this way, and would seek to efface the blot on its escutcheon that my pieing represents.

After all, it is CILS and CILS directly that must speak to the suffering my face endured at the hands of the anonymous delegate or person.

Someone like you--are you a lawyer, such a "trial lawyer in austria" as you invoke? By what right do you attack my person ("hairy"--did you see me?) and how do you plan to defend yourself when the time comes? I may be out of practice, I may be long from the running, but there is no need to rub in a failed career: I can still rise. And I do my job well.

Sincerely, Andreas Bichlbauer

p.s. I do not consider myself king of the world, nor ass-wipe. Please try to bring this to a more civilized level.

Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 18:40:12 -0500 To: Delegates: [all seventy-five conference attendees];


From: Werner Daitz <[email protected]> Subject: Conference 2000.10.27

Dear Delegates,

Perhaps you have now heard about the unfortunate event that took place during "Provision of International Services and Sale of Goods" in Salzburg, on the morning of October 27, after Dr. Andreas Bichlbauer's lecture on behalf of the World Trade Organization.

A few hours after that lecture, someone anonymously hurled a pie in Dr. Bichlbauer's face. This would have remained merely another irritating illustration of the WTO's unpopularity in today's world of snap judgments, had Dr. Bichlbauer not contracted a rather severe infection from the pie, which was somewhat spoiled.

We are treating this matter with the utmost gravity, as you can surely understand, and so we are asking everyone who was present at the conference, whether or not you saw Dr. Bichlbauer's lecture, to provide us with the following:

1. If you attended the lecture, we would love to hear your personal reactions to it, as part of our efforts at quality control, and to avoid situations like this in the future. Was the lecture offensive in any way? What struck you the most about it?

2. If you attended the lecture, please convey your impressions of the audience's reaction to it; please be specific. (If there were any particularly strong reactions, especially from anyone you did not recognize as a delegate, please inform.)

3. Please convey any incidental remarks you may have heard during the conference, regarding the WTO and especially Dr. Bichlbauer's lecture; if you feel comfortable doing so, please attach a name or personal description to each comment.

4. Again as part of quality control efforts, we would appreciate a one-line summary of your opinion of the WTO and its work, and what in particular it might do better in the future. We take your input very seriously.

Thanking you very much in advance,

Werner Daitz Public Relations WTO

Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 11:36:12 -0600 From: Donald R. Looper <[email protected]> To: 'Werner Daitz' <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Conference 2000.10.27

The WTO rep. who spoke was the worst speaker at the seminar. His presentation was just plain weird.

The only remarkable "improper" thing he said was when he blamed the Italian poor work ethic as the reason why a merger between KLM and Alitalia could not work out. I did not


see the pie incident

Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 12:34:38 -0500 From: Werner Daitz <[email protected]> To: Donald R. Looper <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Conference 2000.10.27

Dear Mr. Looper,

Thank you for your lead. As it turns out, the Italian delegates (as well as one German who spoke up during the lecture) have been investigated and are no longer suspected in the assault. Was there nothing else in Dr. Bichlbauer's speech that might have caused upset? We received one angry, somewhat incoherent message from an American delegate about "encouraging voter fraud"--perhaps this was a loose association on the part of the delegate, given the current climate in the U.S., but we are asking around in any case, as the American has refused to answer any further questions.

Also, we would like to apologize for the quality of Dr. Bichlbauer's presentation. He is no longer representing the WTO at such events.

Thanking you in advance, Werner Daitz

Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 09:38:28 -0500 From: William DeVan <[email protected]> To: 'Werner Daitz' <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Conference 2000.10.27

Dear Mr. Daitz:

I was sorry to hear that Dr. Bichlbauher was infected by the pie. I am certainly opposed to any form violent protest against the WTO, but do not believe that any of Dr. Bichlbauher's comments at the conference led to the assault. I would note, however, that if I were Italian, I would have been very insulted by his comments. He basically stated that the KLM/Air Italia merger was foiled because the Dutch were hardworking, and the Italians were too lazy and slept all day. This insult to italian work habits was compounded by the slide he showed of a sleeping italian worker.

Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 12:30:57 -0500 From: Werner Daitz <[email protected]> To: William DeVan <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Conference 2000.10.27

Dear Mr. DeVan,


Thank you for your lead. As it turns out, the Italian delegates (as well as one German who spoke up during the lecture) have been investigated and are no longer suspected in the assault. Was there nothing else in Dr. Bichlbauer's speech that might have caused upset? We received one angry, somewhat incoherent message from an American delegate about "encouraging voter fraud"--perhaps this was a loose association on the part of the delegate, given the current climate in the U.S., but we are asking around in any case, as the delegate has refused to answer any further questions.


Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 13:23:42 -0500 From: William DeVan <[email protected]> To: 'Werner Daitz' <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Conference 2000.10.27

I never meant to imply that any of the delegates had a hand in the assault. I meant only to state that representatives of the WTO and GATT should refrain from insulting the populations of entire countries--such as Italy.

Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 17:06:35 -0500 From: Werner Daitz <[email protected]> To: William DeVan <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Conference 2000.10.27

Dear Mr. DeVan,

Of course you are correct, and we apologize on Dr. Bichlbauer's behalf; he is no longer representing the WTO in such venues.

We are trying to solve a serious crime, however, and so we must ask again: was there nothing about "voter fraud" in Dr. Bichlbauer's lecture, and if there was, was it strikingly offensive? Our only lead is based on this notion.


Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 10:00:49 -0000 From: Tax <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Conference 2000.10.27 in Salzburg

Dear Mr. Werner Daitz, We refer to your email of yesterday pertaining the unfortunate incident occurred at the above mentioned conference. Please be advised that, although we were present at the conference, we were not able to attend to Mr. Andreas Bichlbauer's lecture. Therefore, we are unable to give a direct opinion on such lecture. Notwithstanding, in informal


meetings we had with other delegates present at the conference we were given the idea that such lecture was not offensive in any way that could incite personal reactions to it. Please convey to Mr. Andreas Bichlbauer our sympathy for the unfortunate and intolerable aggression he suffered and our best wishes for a prompt recovery from his injuries. With kindest regards. Yours sincerely,

PAULINO BRILHANTE SANTOS

Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 19:38:28 -0500 From: "Safran, David" <[email protected]> To: "'[email protected]'" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Conference 2000.10.27

I did not attend his lecture or see the piethrowing incident. However I find it hard to believe that one of the attorney attendees threw the pie.

David Safran

Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 17:51:14 -0600 From: Michael Johnson <[email protected]> To: 'Werner Daitz' <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Conference 2000.10.27

Wegen unerwarteten Gerichtspflichte hier in Amerika habe ich die Sitzung in Salzburg ganz verpasst. Kann deswegen nichts zur Erforschung dieser Schande vermitteln. Mir scheint's aber, man solle nicht vermuten, es haenge irgendwie mit Dr. Bichlbauers Rede zusammen. Leute, die zu solchen Gewalttaten zurueckgreifen, sind meines Erachtens meistenteils unfaehig sich muendlich auszudruecken oder die Ausdruecke der Anderen weder zu verstehen noch zu bewerten. Ich wuensche dem Herrn Dr. Bichlbauer eine moeglichst schnelle Erholung. Mit besten Gruessen, Michael Johnson [Translation: "Because of unexpected court responsibilites here in the U.S., I missed the Salzburg conference. Therefore I cannot help in researching this disgrace. It seems to me, though, that we should not think that this attack could in any way be connected to Mr. Bichlbauer's talk. People who use such physical violence are from my point of view mostly incapable of communicating verbally, nor are they capable of understanding and appreciating the communications of others. I wish Mr. Bichlbauer the fastest possible recovery. With best regards, Michael Johnson"]

Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 18:13:07 -0500 From: Walther Funk <[email protected]> To: CILS conference delegates: ; Subject: Unpleasant announcement, URGENT REQUEST

Dear Delegates,


We apologize for interrupting your holiday season with this most unpleasant announcement.

Dr. Andreas Bichlbauer, who spoke on behalf of the WTO at the CILS conference in Salzburg on Oct. 27, and with whom many of you shared a pleasurable moment or two, has passed on. He succumbed yesterday, at 16:50 CET, to an infection thought to have been caught from the rotten pie which was hurled in his face after his Oct. 27 lecture.

We feel sure that you understand the urgency now with which we ask you all to furnish us with any and all information you may have regarding this crime, which to this day remains wholly unsolved. Our only current lead is the "voter fraud" angle. Apparently Dr. Bichlbauer said something in his talk that enraged one of the delegates, so much so that said delegate has refused to speak with us, and has accused the WTO of "encouraging voter fraud."

"Encouraging voter fraud" is furthest from our wishes, of course, and we would like to hear from others who may have heard any statements by Dr. Bichlbauer, that could have been thus misconstrued. Until this subject is resolved we must proceed in the broadest possible manner.

Of course, we do thank those who replied to my colleague Werner Daitz with valuable thoughts and facts, but we are still seeking this crucial bit of information and will appreciate all responses greatly.

A memorial service for Dr. Bichlbauer will take place at the Church of St. Ruprecht at Morzinplatz in Vienna next Sunday at 4 p.m. All those who cannot attend may mail condolences here.

As you can surely understand, we ask that you keep this matter from the press's attention.

Yours until next time,

Walther Funk Investigative Services

[The expressions of shock, dismay, and sorrow in the responses become embarrassing, and we cannot publish these letters here, out of consideration for their authors. Here, however, are some relevant excerpts, which show that finally, the delegates mention the "voter fraud" angle... though in an unexpected way.]

"I attended Dr. Bichlbauer's lecture and the question and answer period after it. The only reference in his talk to voting was in the context of making markets more efficient. He referred to the Austrian-based web site which this year allowed U.S. voters to sell their vote for president, by means of absentee ballots delivered to the web site controllers in exchange for a fee. He did not advocate this mechanism, but commented only that those who care would never sell their votes, and only those who would not otherwise vote would likely do it. I do not recall any questions from the audience on that point afterward, but there may have been."


"I was one of the panelists for the session that featured Andreas Bichlbauer's presentation.... Dr. Bichlbauer made the first presentation of the session. Dr. Bichlbauer's presentation was peculiar, to say the least, but hardly offensive. The first part, 'banana wars' contained some elements of controversy, but was well within fair comment of academics, advocates, or partisan politicians. This part of his presentation was quite interesting. The second part about online auctioning of votes was totally unrelated to the first part and was presented, as was the first part, as his own material and not the official position of the WTO. The second part was just plain weird, and I would have taken it as a spoof or satire on the incredible costs of elections especially in America, except that it was delivered in a manner totally devoid of humor."

"Immediately after the session, there were some comments by several of the people in the room, including me, about how strange Dr. Bichlbauer's presentation was. These comments were to the effect 'What was that all about?' I don't recall specifically who said what to whom. I would characterize these remarks as a collective shrug of the shoulders. No one appeared upset in any way whatsoever."

"That afternoon, at about 4 or 5 pm, I came down from my room and was confronted by a young man who claimed he was a reporter.... He asked what Dr. Bichlbauer said in his speech and I replied that he spoke about the elimination of systemic impediments to efficient markets."

"I am sorry to note that WTO will now probably have to undertake tighter security measures when its professionals speak even in a quasi private forum. This is a tragic situation for all of us involved in these international trade matters. I trust that after the investigation has been carried out and the criminal caught, WTO will made the entire incident public so that the effects of this sort of outrageous behavior can be more widely known and condemned."

"Unfortunately I cannot help in the investigation. Although I belive that I was sitting at the seminar group where Mr. Bichlabuer was making his presentation I did not pay attentation to his speach whilst I was preparing my presentation for the afternoon session. I left for my room after the coffee break to finalize my notes before lunch. I did not see the incident and even did not hear about it until form the e-mails. On the other hand it is difficult to believe that the pie, I imagine the same one as most of us had with our coffee, was infected. It may be a most unfortunate coincidence."

"Rumor had it, that the pie was thrown by the fellow who videotaped the lecture--an individual who accompanied Dr. Bichlbauer to the conference. That is only rumor, and I wish you the best of luck in your investigation."

Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 15:32:10 -0500 To: Delegates: ; From: Alice Foley <[email protected]> Subject: Happy news

Dear Delegates,

We are pleased--and disturbed--to relate a strange new development, one which luckily does not sport the dark hues of the last.


But first of all, we would like to thank all those who took the trouble to write us regarding possible clues to Dr. Bichlbauer's untimely demise. Fortunately, these clues have proved unnecessary, for it turns out that while our friend has indeed passed on, it has been a passage from the realm of WTO representation into that of the most utterly fraudulent fiction!

Those who found Dr. Bichlbauer's talk "peculiar," "puzzling," and so on were alert to a situation that has only now become clear to our overcentralized eyes: Dr. Bichlbauer was an impostor! He was only by conniving and self-falsification a WTO employee, and there was never a pieing, even less an infection and death. He, his "security guard," and his "cameraman"--who was indeed also the "reporter," as some suspected all along--belong, it turns out, to an anti-trade cabal called "The Yes Men," whose interests run exactly counter to our own, and who will stoop to any level whatsoever to make points.

(The point they were attempting to make with this trickery, according to the handwritten letter which we received by this morning's post, had something to do with "corporate power" and "democracy," though the syntax and handwriting of the letter are, truth be told, too execrable to make much of. ((We will be happy to provide a copy of the letter if anyone wishes to see it.)) But if their point had indeed to do with such issues, they clearly failed to make it, since all the questions we asked you regarding "voter fraud"--questions we were prompted to ask by an equally fraudulent "investigator"--met nothing from you but confusion, dismissal, and an inability to recall. ((To add insult to injury, we suspect the "infection" and "death" were arranged precisely so that the "investigator" could prompt us to ask these same questions, whose wombs have proven so barren. So much for points made by death! So much for corporate power!)) )

It is of course extremely embarrassing to us that we can have been conned, like common dowagers, in this way. But in our defense it must be said that while, in our brief acquaintance with him, Dr. Bichlbauer's explanations of WTO principles were often elaborated in a way we found somewhat tasteless, they never did amble beyond the confines of WTO orthodoxy; there was a thoroughness to his adherence that made it impossible to fault him, and which allowed him to become our full representative with little to-do.

We hope the inconvenience caused you by our lack of vigilance is offset by the value of new knowledge, however bizarre, and we apologize for any emotional turmoil you may have undergone as a result of this experience, especially in its (fortunately not tragic after all) denouement.

The memorial service, to have taken place at 4 p.m. this Sunday at St. Ruprecht in Vienna, is of course cancelled.

With very best wishes, Alice Foley

[After Dr. Bichlbauer's lecture, this delegate had raised his hand and asked what the WTO was doing to appeal to the protesters--who, he opined, were protesting not because there was anything to protest, but because they needed something to do.]


Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 17:03:34 -0500 From: [email protected] To: Alice Foley <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Happy news

Dear Alice:

While I must admit that your stunt was indeed impressive in terms of sheer gall, in the end I'm afraid you and your colleagues have proved very little other than your general ignorance of the important trade issues on which you profess to care, and cemented your well-deserved reputation as "protestors in Nike tennis shoes." Why the stunts? What did you set out to accomplish? Do you really not believe in anything? In my day, protestors cared deeply about their views and were not afraid to debate them. By cleverly sneaking into the conference, you had a grand opportunity to make a point if you had something to say. No one would have thrown you out of the room once you got up to speak. You could have made an empassioned speech against globalism and trade and started a lively debate. Believe it or not, there is a lot of academic work on both sides of the globalization issue, and the lawyers in the room were not nearly as close minded as you think. Instead, your Dr. Bichlbauer came across as an uneducated boob who failed to make any real point. You wasted both your own time and ours. Then you demean yourselves further with juvenile talk of pies and infections. The sad thing is that you're hurting your own cause.

[continue pasting in e-mails]


Herri-Crammelfirster Baatasuna confuses “bear” and “bearing,” with large implications for Belgium Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 12:39:00 +0100 From: Marion Benning <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Question regarding WTO/GATT Dear Madam, dear Sirs, We are a young consulting office based in Brussels. One of our clients told us that there is a new Legislation which tells us that if we want to export "bearings" to Argentina we have to deliver the good with a certificate of fabrication. Could you help us finding if this information is correct? Maybe you can tell us where we can find this information. We hope that you can help us and thank you in advance. Sincerely yours, M. Benning-Denoo BEC BVBA Rue Belliard 23A B-1040 Brussels Tel.: 0032/2/231.07.97 Fax.: 0032/2/231.16.11 [email protected] www.bec.be Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 16:18:26 -0500 From: Herri-Crammelfirster Baatasuna <[email protected]> To: Marion Benning <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Question regarding WTO/GATT Dearest M. Benning-Denoo Regarding your question regarding "bearings" we must warn you that the movement of wildlife from place to place is protected in most cases, so what you propose will certainly be illegal. In any case, I question the profitability: "bearings" can lead to "maulings" which lead to costly lawsuits--thus, bankruptcy. Yours, HCB Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 09:34:31 +0100 From: Marion Benning <[email protected]>


To: Herri-Crammelfirster Baatasuna <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Question regarding WTO/GATT Dear Madam, dear Sirs, Thank you for your quick reply, but I think that we have here a misunderstanding. With "bearings" we mean tools (ball-bearings) and certainly not wildlife. Hope you can still help us with our question concerning the exportation to Argentina. Thank you very much in advance. Marion Benning-Denoo Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2001 15:38:45 -0500 From: Herri-Crammelfirster Baatasuna <[email protected]> To: Marion Benning <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Question regarding WTO/GATT Dearest Marion Benning-Denoo; Thank you for your clarification. We did have a misunderstanding, yes, we did. What a laugh! I am glad you are not wild life smugglers. How unfortunate it is for cute furry things, or even for large, furry, ferocious bearings to be taken from their motherings while youngish and transported to lands foreign, far, and cold. I remember even recently, while taking my own young person (and his mothering) to the zoo, a feeling of melancholia when witnessing even the most bloodthirsty of critter all pent up and full of rage. Such is the unfortunate plight of creatures great and small faced with what only the species Man can call "progressings." Indeed, tools (ball-bearings) are not alive, so I shall cast aside my former concerns about animals (bearings) and safety (maulings). In the issue of import and export of (ball-bearings) it is your moral imperative to find out the source of all the raw materials, and trace, from the moment of extraction through the process of manufacturing, whether or not there has been any undue damage to the ecosystem or to the workers who produced these tools. Assuming all conditions are fair, and that the companies who extracted the steel and then manufactured with it did not cause undue harm to the environment and did not treat their workers unfairly, then there is no moral problem at all with (ball-bearings) and you can rest assured that you are conducting business in a fair manner. Thank you for the clarification, and I apologize for my misunderstanding. Sincerely,


Herri-Crammelfirster Baatasuna Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 11:51:45 +0100 From: Marion Benning <[email protected]> To: 'Herri-Crammelfirster Baatasuna' <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Question regarding WTO/GATT Dear Herri, Thank you very much for your reply. Yes, we had a big laugh. Thank you for answering our question. greetings from Brussels Marion BEC BVBA Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 13:00:47 -0500 From: Herri-Crammelfirster Baatasuna <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: RE: Question regarding WTO/GATT Dear Marion, You are welcome. Thank you for answering my answer. Thank you for laughing! Seeing us laugh would no doubt put smiles on the faces of all of our own motherings, who undoubtedly would be saddened by seeing frowns on our faces. Who wants to make a mothering sad? Not I. Not you! That is why we can happily laugh together and know that somewhere, even if they are not with us any longer in the physical sense, by laughing we are making the motherings of the world very, very happy. Warmest Regards, Herri


Mike Moore tries establishing friendship with the Sultan of Oman Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 09:54:37 +0400 From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: New Zealand National Day Ref:CNZ-R/135/00 February 04, 2000 Rt. Hon. Mike Moore Director General World Trade Organization 154 rue de Lausanne 1211 Geneva 21 Switzerland Your Excellency, Congratulations and best wishes on the occasion of the New Zealand National Day ! I take this opportunity to extend my heartiest felicitations to you and the people of New Zealand and wish you greater glory and honours. Wish you all the best in your new assignment and for the new Millenium ! With warm regards and good wishes Yours sincerely, DR. HAMED ABDULLAH AL-RIYAMI HONORARY CUL FOR NEW ZEALAND P.O.Box 520, Muscat 113 Sultanate of Oman Phone : 794932 Fax : 706443 E-mail : [email protected]

Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 14:00:33 -0500 From: Mike Moore <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: New Zealand National Day Dr. Hamed Abdullah Al-Riyami Honorary Consul for New Zealand P.O.Box 520, Muscat 113 Sultanate of Oman


Dear Dr. Al-Riyami, I wish to thank you for your kind best wishes on the occasion of what you call "New Zealand National Day." Your intentions are understood, and I do know that yourself and the Sultanate of Oman bear the best of intentions towards myself and towards the World Trade Organization. The WTO, in turn, wishes you and yours all the best. It is especially interesting that you speak of New Zealand, for as it happens, the WTO will shortly be considering an item or two of deep importance to both New Zealand and the Sultanate of Oman, and in which Oman might be able to play a pivotal role, that will help to insure the continued improvement of some economic and trade interests it shares with New Zealand. Within a few days you will be receiving more information about these proposals from my office. I'd like to take this in a more personal direction for a moment, if I may. I think it rather important to be direct when necessary, and I would like inform you that it's just slightly improper, when speaking to New Zealanders, to refer to Waitangi Day the way you did--there are some implied referents to historical lows in our treatment of our less fortunate fellow New Zealanders. I'm not in the least offended myself, of course, but expect that a great many of my countrymen might be. We as New Zealanders bear the brunt of the blame for not making this matter better known. Indeed, I have even seen calendars printed with the incorrect name for the day. No apologies are of course necessary. I am sure I would do very poorly at Omani culture. On that note, would you be able to recommend a resource by which I might improve my knowledge of your customs and history, and which I might be able to recommend to my staff? With warm regards and good wishes, Yours sincerely Mike Moore Director General World Trade Organization MM/cr Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 16:02:18 +0400 From: TECODEV <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Ref:CNZ-R/155/01 February 05, 2001 Rt. Hon. Mike Moore Director General World Trade Organization 154 rue de Lausanne 1211 Geneva 21 Switzerland


Your Excellency, Congratulations and best wishes on the occasion of the New Zealand National Day ! I take this opportunity to renew the-age old understanding, cooperation and goodwill existing between our friendly countries and wish you and the people of New Zealand peace, prosperity and greater glory on this auspicious occasion. Yours sincerely, DR. HAMED ABDULLAH AL-RIYAMI HONORARY CUL FOR NEW ZEALAND P.O.Box 520, Muscat 113 Sultanate of Oman Phone : 794932 Fax : 706443 E-mail : [email protected] [can cut this one] Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 10:15:54 -0500 From: Mike Moore <[email protected]> To: TECODEV <[email protected]> Subject: Re: New Zealand national day Dear Dr. Al-Riyami, Thank you for your kind letter. Let us continue this discussion on a more fruitful plane. What is it that Oman wishes to receive from the World Trade Organization? Best, Mike Moore Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2001 02:05:45 -0500 From: Mike Moore <[email protected]> To: TECODEV <[email protected]> Subject: New Zealand AGAIN??? Dear Dr. Al-Riyami, I am honored to find your good wishes in my mailbox for the third and last time. And now, I must say, I am essentially bereft of options, for you have rebuffed my previous overtures regarding this situation. I can only, now, begin what we in New Zealand call a "war ballad" (the Maori word is too difficult to pronounce), the which I will pursue until you answer my questions. (Whether or not you are superstitious, Dr. Al-Riyami, I must say you might be advised to worry yourself.) Please see the below citation, from one message you sent over one year ago, for the question the answer to which I will have.


Not entirely best wishes, Mike Moore Dear Dr. Al-Riyami, I wish to thank you for your kind best wishes on the occasion of what you call "New Zealand National Day." Your intentions are understood, and I do know that yourself and the Sultanate of Oman bear the best of intentions towards myself and towards the World Trade Organization. The WTO, in turn, wishes you and yours all the best. I'd like to take this in a more personal direction for a moment, if I may. I think it rather important to be direct when necessary, and I would like inform you that it's just slightly improper, when speaking to New Zealanders, to refer to Waitangi Day the way you did--there are some implied referents to historical lows in our treatment of our less fortunate fellow New Zealanders. I'm not in the least offended myself, of course, but expect that a great many of my countrymen might be. We as New Zealanders bear the brunt of the blame for not making this matter better known. Indeed, I have even seen calendars printed with the incorrect name for the day. No apologies are of course necessary. I am sure I would do very poorly at Omani culture. On that note, would you be able to recommend a resource by which I might improve my knowledge of your customs and history, and which I might be able to recommend to my staff? With warm regards and good wishes, Yours sincerely Mike Moore Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 11:51:12 +0400 From: TECODEV <[email protected]> To: [email protected] February 13, 2001 Kind attn: Rt. Hon. Mike Moore Director General World Trade Organization Your Excellency, Thank you for your e-mail messages dated 11 February, 2001 and 3rd March, 2001. Sorry for the delay in replying to you due to the EID holidays. At the outset, I regret to inform you that we do not appear to have received any other messages from you in the past. The term “New Zealand National Day” has been used in the List of Diplomatic and Consular Corps, issued by the Protocol Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,


Sultanate of Oman, which I presume, would have the consensus of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, New Zealand. Kindly advise which of these usages is correct (either Waitangi Day or New Zealand National Day) so that there would not be any ambiguity and whether to send greetings on this occasion, especially that I am sending greetings to many New Zealand officials yearly. My apologies if it hurt your feelings. I am putting together certain information material on “Oman” and the same would be forwarded to you shortly. On the subject of the “World Trade Organization” and the involvement of Oman, as you are aware, there are other competent authorities handling the same and I do not feel that my personal views would have any far reaching implications. Best regards and good wishes Dr. Hamed Al-Riyami Honorary Consul for New Zealand Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 15:02:37 -0500 From: [email protected] To: TECODEV <[email protected]> Subject: Re: your mail Dear Sultan, I apologize for the confusion regarding my outrage at your error. Indeed, it is not always easy to be sensitive to the foreign affairs of others, and I understand that not everyone can perform the proper research at every juncture. And also, I must stress that I wish to avoid at all costs an international incident, of course. It is with this goal in mind that I do ask you and your people to henceforth refer to the day in question as Waitangi Day in all correspondence and in all contacts, official and not, with the people of New Zealand. I look forward to the information on Oman that you will be sending. Thank you, Mike Moore Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 15:47:45 +0400 From: Tecodev <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Ref:CNZ-R/057/02 February 05, 2002 Rt. Hon. Mike Moore Director General World Trade Organization 154 rue de Lausanne 1211 Geneva 21 Switzerland


Your Excellency, Congratulations and best wishes on the occasion of the Waitangi Day ! I take this opportunity to extend my felicitations to you and the people of New Zealand and wish you greater glory and honours on this glorious occasion. With warm regards and good wishes Yours sincerely, DR. HAMED ABDULLAH AL-RIYAMI HONORARY CUL FOR NEW ZEALAND P.O.Box 520, Muscat 113 Sultanate of Oman Phone : 794932 Fax : 706443 E-mail : [email protected] Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 17:42:40 -0500 (EST) From: Mike Moore <[email protected]> To: Tecodev <[email protected]> Subject: Re: your mail Dear Sultan, I am very happy to receive your sensitive reference to my homeland's national holiday--the Maori Waitangi Day, and NOT "New Zealand National Day" as you first said. As you say, ours is a great homeland, and I am happy to welcome you as a comrade in celebration of its Western achievements. With this proof of your understanding, I would hereby very much like to retract my previous assertions of disdain, discomfort, and hatred, made in the heat of the moment. There is no longer any bad blood between our two nations; vanished is the least risk that we will "embark on a war dance," as I believe I asserted in my initial response to your primal faux pas. I believe I can sense a new and complete absence of danger between our two peoples. Would that such issues could be so nimbly resolved worldwide! Shall we make, you and we, a declaration to the effect of this, in the form of a holiday? Our two peoples could thus be enthroned on the world calendar together, our friendship enshrined. We could call it officially by a mixture of our two tongues, that would show the world our side-by-side destiny. I admit myself terribly poor at the Arabian language, but might essay the following: Oman / New Zealand Yum al-Hubb wal-Ittihad


Oman / New Zealand Day of Love and Unity In short it could be referred to as the Oman / New Zealand YHIDLU or DLUYHI day. Please let me know if this is agreeable to your people; if so, I will set my people upon it--that is, upon this task, at once. Thank you, Mike Moore http://www.gatt.org/ Making the world safe for effectiveness


Tribulations of Slovenian Weaving Industry Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 17:51:12 +0200 From: Primoz Kunaver <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Search for studies - trade liberalisation in textile Refernce: search for studies about the impact of trade liberalization in textile in 2005 and entrance of candidate countries in the EU on the textile industry Dear Sirs, Industrial Development Centre of Slovenian Weawing Industry has decided to perform a study about the impact of trade liberalization in textile in 2005 and entrance of candidate countrisin the EU on the textile industry. ITEO Management Consulting was chosen to execute the study. Therefore I am turning to you, whether you can direct us to some relevant studies that were already done in the past from where we could gahter some relevant information. We would be very thankfull for any information. With best regards, Primoz Kunaver ________________________ ITEO Svetovanje d.o.o. Kotnikova 28, Ljubljana tel: +386 (0)1 4720 919 fax: +386 (0)1 4720 960 e-mail: [email protected] http://www.iteo.si Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2002 07:29:57 -0400 (EDT) From: [email protected] To: Primoz Kunaver <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Search for studies - trade liberalisation in textile Very best of luck, Mr. Kunaver! Today I can tell you a story regarding trade aspects of liberalization with regards especially to the textile matters, and especially therein on the application of restrictions thereon. The story is the so-called "Gandhi" story. It references India, which, like the country Slovenia and in fact the whole eastern Europe, has a history of being utilized by the powers of Western democracies towards furtherance of Western democracies' goals. This is the 19th-century, when India had this history. It has since come to no longer have this history, in a "present-day," "lived" sense. That is, this history has become history, India-wise, because of Gandhi.


The trade restrictions imposed by Gandhi enabled India to redevelop its age-old textiles trade, overcoming an absence of trade restrictions imposed by the British. Slovenia, too, as I understand it, has a history that should become history. Unfortunately, that history is currently being written by our drafting department, and will become solid in 2005. In advance, severe apologies on behalf of our organization. Read Stiglitz! Best of luck once again, to you and your country, Harkness WTO Communications and Statistics Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 12:32:31 +0200 From: Primoz Kunaver <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Turmoil of past and present - Re: Search for studies - trade liberalisation in textile Dear Mr. Harkness, thank you very much for the concern and the interesting thoughts. I have just came few hours ago from the Kazahstan, where the influences (both positive and negative) of quick westernization and globalization can be clearly seen. One might wonder what is best; to be closed and unique, or to be on the open draft with all economic and cultural consequences. Anyway the best is to remain smiling. With very best regards, P.S.: I will check in library for Stiglitz Primoz Kunaver Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 10:19:06 -0400 (EDT) From: [email protected] To: Primoz Kunaver <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Turmoil of past and present - Re: Search for studies - trade liberalisation in textile Thank you Mr. Kunaver, It is always a pleasure to read and to speak, even as irresistable tides roll over accomplishments, even as long-wound skeins become tangled again. At least one can smile, just as you say! This is a folk song. In any case, I think that fortunately your question has a good answer: neither. As pointed out by, among many others, the experts at the World Development Movement (www.wdm.org.uk), it is quite possible for developing countries to protect their populations and local industries AND benefit from international trade, at the same time. The trick is allowing them to do this as they see fit, rather than binding them to a system


devised and enforced by the wealthiest countries: a system whose benefit to the poor is suggested only by theory, while history tells a very different tale indeed. These above-cited experts (www.wdm.org.uk), in fact, could be the best "heads-up" sort of resource for you, for Slovenian Weaving Industry, and for your countrymen of Slovenia overall. I recommend them with gusto! After managing to avoid the brunt of a battle, it would be sad for Slovenia to sunder under another! Hoping for survival, against all odds, Harkness WTO Communications and Statistics Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 15:28:31 +0200 From: Primoz Kunaver <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: warm ice Thanks to you to Mr. Harkness, the cold world of logical economy is run by humans who (wanted or not) have a warm body temperature. The aspect of heart and aspect of sterile logical thought colide. One can usually find the arguments for the aspect of logic and sometimes can't find them for the heart, but on a long term logics sometimes fail and things that we may characterise as "heart" turn out to be deep implanted safety vents that prevent major mistakes and bendings from the right course. However on the other side one should take care about the mercy which may turn out on the long term to be contra productive. "Teach me how to fish not gave me the fish", is a powerfull statemet. Short sighted giving to the poor, or protecting the poor, can at the end of the day sometimes not really benefit them. The core question is how to create the conditions for making qualitative structural changes to hapen. Only in that light the decisions about the right level of trade liberalisation and related issues should be judged. Whan tackling the sensitive questions like countries level of oppeness or integration in the global trade, I think we should go one level more deep and decise from that perspective rather than the obievous facts. And what is the right level and the right way - we do not know, and hope that we do the smallest mistakes possible. With the best regards, Primoz Kunaver

Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 16:54:35 -0400 (EDT) From: [email protected] To: Primoz Kunaver <[email protected]> Subject: hearts on warm ice


These things are mightily true that you say, Mr. Kunaver! Indeed, yes, "heart" is often quite logical! Which leads us to wonder: is a sensible version of trade, which benefits the poor instead of the rich, really a matter of heart, thought of as fuzzy, rather than heart, thought of as logical? Perhaps the question should be: whose illogic? whose logic? This question is an unpleasant one. When one is able to answer it with resignation, and with acceptance, often one has followed, to achieve this, a thought that goes thusly: 1. The sole defendant of the public will against the will of the mightiest is, and has always been, government. 2. But government is no longer very important, for corporations can be said, now, to certainly have the public's will at heart. 3. How do we know this? We know this because although they are the mightiest, thus the natural elements against which government is meant to defend, they are composed of human beings, and hence have hearts. But as you point out, a heart is not really illogical. And one must therefore ask: of *which* human beings, and hence of which hearts, are corporations composed--or, more precisely, by which are they led? And for whom are the hearts of these leaders the "stranded puddles uncaking, uncaking" referred to by Yeats, the "puppy-moved flank steaks" architected by Burroughs, the "globules of warmth and desire" so prominent in Herodotus? Each person, after all, has his loved ones and zeros. Towards all others besides those (the loved), it is sure that his heart is but "meat in an ossuary missile, rearing to strike" (Ashcroft). So in the case of these humans who now run the world, at the heads of the mightiest corporations, we must ask: who, for them, constitute the collection of all those unloved and strikable? One might suppose the answer to be: the poor. Which puts the residents of countries like Slovenia and India, as well as a great many residents of the U.S. and Italy, in a very unfortunate position! This is still not a perfectly known equation. Kindest regards, Harkness


Americans trapped in Egypt obtain Bush concern [note about GWBush.com, another GATT.org-like information-gathering audience-pushing effort; also note about Kief James Sorensen, manager of The Banking Exchange, which “provides a secure, reliable, cost efficient and highly confidential means for Banks in Egypt, and other related financial institutions, to exchange cheques and general banking documents among themselves inside an eight hour work day”: see articlescited\sorenson\K - L i n e D a t a S e r v i c e.htm] Date: Mon, 03 May 1999 20:21:44 +0200 From: Jim Sorenson <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Foreign Policy - U.S. Aid - Two Americans trapped in Egypt..... Dear Governor Bush, We wish you all the best in your upcoming campaign. If and when we get out of Egypt, we will support your run for the Presidency with our votes and our hearts. It certainly is time for a change! In the meantime, we would very much appreciate if you, or one of your staff, could take the time to read about our plight in Egypt at: www.cairo-egypt.com/trouble.html (a private webpage) We have given so much over the years to Egypt-U.S. relations and to Egypt-U.S. commerce, and sadly, both governments appear to have entirely forsaken us. We'll still be here after the next election, and maybe your new government can help us, and those like us overseas, then. Best of luck. Jim Sorenson and Sandra Simpson (Mr. & Mrs) [email protected] Our senators who know the whole story: Arlen Specter (R) Pennsylvania Rick Santorum (R) Pennsylvania P.S. Our main webpage which is not private is located at www.cairo-egypt.com Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 19:22:23 -0500 From: Presidential Explorations and Maneuvers <[email protected]>


To: Jim Sorenson <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: Foreign Policy - U.S. Aid - Two Americans trapped in Egypt..... Dear Jim, Sandra, the "Fluff," and assorted companies doing petroleum business in Egypt, Thank you for your letter about your very serious difficulties over there in Egypt. Let us back up for a moment, and start right at the beginning. As you suggest, a foreign policy is an essential component of any government. A government, in dealing with the world, must have principles and guidelines, and must take more than a few things into consideration. All in all, embassies, consulates, governmental and quasi-governmental foreign policy institutes, and so on must be extensive, entrenched, and exceedingly well developed. All of these must attend to issues relentlessly and carefully, and weigh them with rigor. Only after weighing these things can decisions be reached. All of this, of course, sets the stage for the question: what should a hypothetical government's foreign policy be? To narrow this issue to the matter at hand, let us assume a government which in some manner represents people--a democracy. Let us also assume the existence of a wide, unruly world (e.g. Serbia, Iraq, Somalia, Guatemala--or Egypt). What should the democracy's policy be, towards that unruly world (e.g. Egypt)? How should it take that world (e.g. Egypt) into account, and deal with it? How, moreover, should it encourage others to deal with it? Now upon this basis, we can address your particular situation in greater detail. Egypt--or, more precisely, the "development" and "intensification" of petroleum-oriented efforts within Egypt, which you are earnestly engaged in promoting, as a member of America's "front- line" elite units of investors, developers, and promoters--has a very important place within any respectable, democratic government's foreign policy. What should be its place within ours? To answer this question is no simple matter! But if we are to attempt it at all, we must begin at the beginning. Since we are speaking of a DEMOCRATIC government, we should begin with the DEMOS, the people. We can assume, over here and over there, people, great masses of people. Most of these people, of course, simply want to get on with their lives and be prosperous in one way or another, to one degree or another--not necessarily as much as possible, but certainly as much as necessary. In the matter of this element, people, there is clearly nothing of interest to say. People go to Egypt, they enjoy the noted ziggurats, they swim in the Volga, they attend to the hippos lolling about in Lake Mead and think of all the glorious history enmeshed in these things. The Egyptians are "OK" with this. People go and look, and pay money to look. Egyptians take that money, and are happy to show the people around, in exchange. They may even find some enjoyment in displaying their national "heritage," all the biers and daises and so on for which they are


famous. All of this, of course, you know from your business that, among other things, provides special "tours" tailored to oil executives (http://www.cairo-egypt.com/kline.html). But over here and over there, too, another element: corporations, and "corporate money." There is petroleum, there is digging and prospecting and discovering and so on. What, with "corporate money" thrown into the equation, is to be a U.S.A. foreign policy towards that great unruly Egypt? For the U.S. is a democracy, with the DEMOS at its core, and corporations, as we all know, are people too, according to U.S. law. We must pay attention to issues surrounding this money, and manage them well. It does sound like you are having a simply horrendous time there in your adopted "homeland," and it is clear that money plays some part in this. You have established companies devoted to helping "corporate money" establish a "foothold" in Egypt--more than one, it would seem--and you have yachts, or at least boats, that, for example, you wish to tow through the Suez Canal. At http://www.cairo-egypt.com/index02.html we obtain a vital clue: If you would like to market to the oil industry in Egypt, you will have all the information you need to get your company's brochure, price list or proposal directly to the key decision makers in the departments where the orders are generated. Or find the right agent or representative to help you establish a dynamic commercial presence in Egypt. Are you an independent contractor who is interested in advertising yourself and your expertise to the market here? Take a listing! Check our rates and advertising page for details about ads and listings in the Egypt Petroleum Directory. Now the various practices this implies would of course be impossible in the U.S.A. Egyptians, however, are used to it. This is both a "plus" (obvious) and a "minus" (less obvious). For while most people of the U.S.A. do not understand big corporate money--it does not affect their day-to-day lives, and "directly to the key decision makers" does not mean much to most Americans, in this context--most people of Egypt DO understand big corporate money, because it does affect their day-to-day lives, at every level, and they know exactly what "directly to the key decision makers" means. They see American money affecting all kinds of decisions concerning their country and lives (via the "decision makers"), and many of these decisions are perhaps of questionable value for them and their livelihood, especially since access to the "decision makers" can so easily be bought. They wonder, day to day, how it is that their wealth is so small and that of others, not even Egyptians, grows in leaps and bounds, using their land. (We are speaking, of course, only of Egyptians' perception of these things, not of the things themselves. We can call this "Third-World syndrome," if we wish. It involves an overdeveloped understanding of big corporate money, among other things.) You too, it would seem, understand big corporate money. It has affected you adversely. The people of Egypt, reacting badly to big corporate


money, have treated you badly, apparently mistaking you for big corporate money and wishing to "react" or "oppose." Perhaps they think that because you help petroleum companies get a foothold in Egypt, that you are "in cahoots" with them. Perhaps the people of Egypt think you are in the "Exploration Scene," which you detail with maps at http://www.cairo-egypt.com/egypt.html. Or perhaps they think you are "in cahoots" because, using access to "key decision makers," Jim Sorenson... has been personally instrumental in establishing five foreign exploration companies in Egypt under production sharing agreements. He has also set up a number of service companies - for Trapetco and other foreign interests. Or perhaps they are suspicious because you advertise that K-line Ltd. (one of your companies, mentioned above) can provide quality representation in Egypt for companies wishing to do feasibility studies, establish offices, finalize agreements, or manage projects. We are particularly experienced at setting up petroleum exploration companies and providing the technical and administrative expertise required to carry operations through to production. Perhaps the people of Egypt mistake "administrative expertise" for less savory-sounding schemes that U.S. companies have been known for in Third World countries. Or perhaps it is that Trapetco S.A. (another of your companies) "has become involved in a number of oil related ventures, representationships and pioneering investment projects in Egypt" since 1977. Whatever the ultimate cause of your problems--whether it be your "representationships" or just the Egyptians' reaction to them--we suggest you have hope. It is not far from this point when, under certain specific circumstances, the U.S.A. will step in. All you need to do is assure the U.S. government, which ultimately controls the U.S. armed forces and other tools for encouraging cooperation with American business, that your situation is typical of many who wish to tow boats through the Suez Canal, or earn lots of money in Egypt by extensive use of the Egyptian landscape and physical heritage, via "representationships." You must show that many others are, like you, mistaken for big corporate money. It might help if big corporate money decides to use you and others like you to explain its difficult position in Egypt, to the American people. Perhaps you should speak to some of your client companies regarding these matters. If you can get a lot of backing and documentation of the sorts outlined in this paragraph, we can assure you that George W. Bush, Al Gore, and others will have to do a great deal--a very great deal--to help you. Finally, on behalf of America, thank you foremost for your tenacity, for insisting on remaining on Egypt, which has been very good to you in many ways despite the beatings-up, robberies, and so on that you report at http://www.cairo-egypt.com/trouble.html in words that make us shudder.


You are on the front line! You are there with the best of the American soldiers, those fighting in various countries, maintaining the American foothold where it has been established at such huge cost for so long! Much as the U.S. government told factory workers to remain at their posts in the event of atomic attack, we send you great big "THANKS" for remaining at your post through these fiendish assaults on American values, as represented by you and your ADORABLE "Fluff." May you, your companies, and of course the "Fluff" continue to profit well and healthily, despite these several setbacks you describe. As Dan Quayle said, we must decide whether to look ahead to the future, or past to the back. Only when we know this, and when we know many other things concerning our government, will sane and wholesome foreign policy be able to coexist with the engines of commerce and power. Earnestly, Roy and Liz Presidential Explorations and Maneuvers: Your efforts redeemed http://www.gwbush.com/ Date: Wed, 5 May 1999 23:26:25 +0200 From: Jim Sorenson <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Foreign Policy - U.S. Aid - Two Americans trapped in Egypt..... Dear Roy and Liz, We were very pleased, indeed, to receive your email. I must say, that's more attention paid to us regarding out problems here than our government, or embassy has managed over the past 5 years. Thank you for your careful reading of the web material we have put up and the thoughtful comments. I hope you have time to read the following three pages -- it’s going to be somewhat tedious and probably not very well balanced, but we have not, till now, had the chance to tell anybody outside Egypt the full story. I will tell you what the key problems are here. There is no law here anymore. There is no protection, ultimately, for any U.S. citizen who comes here and attempts to "invest" or contribute economically to the country. Believe me, there used to be, otherwise I would have never have been able to become established here the way I did. It's been much worse for me than my webpage indicates. For example, my data storage and services business that I established here in 1977, was taken from me in 1984 by an ex Under Secretary of the Minister of Interior without any papers whatsoever. I made the mistake of going to court instead of appealing to Sadat and his ministers directly. I started again from scratch, established the business again, drove the


Under Secretary out of business in the marketplace by getting all my old customers back (God knows why they trusted me again), and sued for damages. I won the case with a clear and resounding decision in 1993. I am still in court after 13 years and we have not even got to the point where the damages against this man can be validated - maybe this year. Now the courts is asking me, a foreigner, to provide all my financial records, translated into Arabic, from 13 years ago. I have them. I’ve had two other successful businesses “stolen” here as well. Both had other foreign partners besides me, but in each case the foreign element lost the entire investment. The point is that it's this way for everything. So if you have something someone wants, they just take it and dare you to gain it back by force, or go to court for ever - on their playing field. For example, much of the land here is exchanged by force: guns and men. You attack the property, you drive off the other guards or owners, you put your lock on the door, or you build a wall around the property and you put your "guard" in it. Then you go to the Council and bribe whoever needs bribing to work up the necessary ownership papers while the owner is in court. If it’s really an important piece of land you enlist the Governor for his backing to finish your papers. Another way (that we are more familiar with) is you bring the police to break the door down and then you occupy. You do this while the owner is not home and you use any piece of paper with writing on it to show the police. The police back you depending on how powerful you are or how much you’ve paid them. If the rightful owner goes to the police himself, they will simply tell him to take his lawyer to the courts to start “a case”. We know this can happen anywhere in the world (or third world particularly), but if you’ve grown up in a society based on law and order, it’s particularly shocking when it happens to you for the first time. Where are my rights? This is not the Egypt I came to in 1974. I'm sorry but it's just not. The reason we ended up staying for as long as we did was basically being economically trapped. It's very very hard to leave this country, believe me. We just found out too late - you have early successes and everything you do seems new and wonderful - to you and them. It's so easy to introduce new Western technology and the like. But at the end of the day they grind you down. They let you build it up and when it's mature, they take it. Very simple. Every project that I have started here which has involved local partners has failed. Every project that I started that I managed to completely control has succeeded. The successes were not enough to give us escape velocity. I take that back -- I’ve had two partners, or associates really, who have been absolutely straight arrow. They are both ex generals. The military seems to produce people who still retain, even here, a sense of decency and honor. The largest U.S. Embassy in the world does not have the time to even acknowledge our written pleas as it’s too busy overseeing the largest U.S. A.I.D. program in the world, carrying out shuttle diplomacy with regard to the Middle East Peace Process, and promoting U.S. business interests in Egypt. To my knowledge I am the only independent U.S. business interest in


Egypt -- if not the only, certainly the longest established. You know about U.S. Aid. It's an entitlement. It's "their money". What has happened to it here, is beyond belief. The joke around my German friends is that the Board of Directors of Daimler - Benz drink a toast to the U.S. Government at the end of every board meeting for creating the biggest Mercedes Market in the world: Egypt. Camp David made many people rich. I was not one of them. However. I am in full support of America’s vital role in the peace process (I’ve experienced it first hand). But A.I.D. needs a complete overhaul. What has happened to us here over the past 4 years has simply been one instance after the other of the complete disregard for our legal, civil and human rights. It appears that our government cannot even voice a complaint on our behalf to the Egyptian Government when we are beaten up, robbed and threatened. They don’t answer our letters, and the phone and in person conversations we have had with senior embassy officials indicate that they feel that we are nuisances who should not be over here getting in trouble and wasting their valuable time. It’s an attitude! The U.S. government is actively encouraging U.S. interests to invest here -- this is so because we just all heard the U.S. Ambassador stand up in front of the U.S. Egyptian Chamber of Commerce and say so. If that’s the case, what can they do for those of us who do invest here and then need help? Apparently nothing. I would not mind so much if someone in the Embassy would just say, hey you’ve really had rough time of it here and we wish there was more we could do for you, but you see our hands are tied................. But it’s like we simply don’t exist. Nobody has established more foreign oil companies (mainly American) in Egypt than I have, by a large factor, I might add. Trapetco was responsible for drilling the first explorations well (a new discovery) for what is now the forth largest oil company in Egypt. A few problems and I’m history. The U.S. State Department, in my opinion, should do two things: Endeavor to tell every potential American investor what they really honestly know about legal and business conditions in the country -- the truth. I know, we’re talking about diplomats! Make one of the conditions upon which they will encourage U.S. Investment to come into a country, that the country set up some kind of “fast track” legal channel down which a company can go immediately when it runs into it’s first legal dispute. In this country, the simplest case will take more than 5 years, and we know of many 30 year plus cases. I hope that when George is elected, he will see to the above two items while he carries out a complete revamping of State and U.S. Foreign A.I.D. policy. I must tell you now that the best way I ever saw foreign AID work here were the programs of Catholic Relief Services. They were mostly funded by Church donations, but had a number of USAID funded programs as well. Their admin overhead was 5% - period. No fancy cars, just grassroots level programs for the farmers so they could become more financially independent and more productive. They worked right down at the level where the help was needed. No middlemen or fancy offices. Our main problem here is that people want (wanted) what we have and we have


no way to defend it. That’s evident by what has happened to us with the police. Corrupt to the core. The second line of defense, the courts, is practically as weak. Sandra has had over 25 lawyers in 5 years (maybe more, I lost count). She retains a lawyer. He works ok for maybe the first one or two court sessions. The family that she is fighting finds out who her lawyer is. He is pressured or outright bribed to turn against her. He uses her power of attorney against her till she finds out and cancels it. We assess the damage and look for another lawyer. In fact her victory to retain her apartment in her name was won by her, without a lawyer. Just by pure persistence and tenacity. Not reading Arabic, she still managed to represent herself in front of the Supreme Court and win. The only thing I will say of the Egyptian justice system is that if you can manage to get your case to the High Courts, you will get a fair judgement. The judges in this country were even allowed independence under Nasser. Getting it there before you die of old age is another matter. What do we really want from all this? To leave basically. I have nothing left here except lots of ideas and new projects, none of which I’m interested in pursuing because of the ultimate futility of it. Sandra is holding on to her apartment, boat and “house” in Hurghada by the skin of her teeth. Her in-laws want it all back even though her Egyptian husband gave it to her in his will and she has another percentage by right of inheritance. They have blocked us from getting the boat out. It’s foreign flag and should be allowed to leave at any time. Just as if you stopped here with your boat on an around the world cruise. We want to get the boat out. We have retained possession of her house in Hurghada (by fighting and legal means) and she wants to register it properly and sell it. That’s it. Sandra’s rights are backed up by two U.S. Court Orders, which the Egyptian Government continues to ignore. Her husband, Dr. Mostafa Karim, was a Ph.D. in Petroleum Engineering from U.S.C. (also by coincidence, my alma mater) and was a full U.S. citizen before he died. He is buried in Pittsburgh (his family did not even bother to bring the body back to Egypt which is the very strongest of traditions). He died without a cent in the bank. He had put all his money into a hotel resort complex in Hurgahda when (you guessed it) the Governor of Hurghada took two thirds of his land away from him. What happens here is that if the wife is foreign, tradition dictates that she gets nothing and the family gets everything, period. This is particularly true in Sandra’s case where there were no children. Egyptian law, however, gives her full right to her inheritance, but it’s not enforceable because nobody will back up her court orders, both U.S. and local. I believe why they are fighting this so hard is that Sandra has a 42% interest in what is left of Mostafa’s land. His family sold it while Sandra was in court trying to verify her court orders and there is now a huge resort complex being built on it. The land itself is probably worth in the neighborhood of $50 million dollars. She has the original green title deed for the sale which was done in 1983. But this all means nothing, as with that kind of money involved we would have absolutely no chance of recovering anything -- even if we lived to be a hundred. We could not get a lawyer to last ten minutes on such a case, before one of the opposing interests got to


him. So why bother ? She does not want the land, only to sell the apartment for a very modest sum, export the boat (on which I might add we have only spent a total of 5 days on in 4 years) and to register her house in Hurgahda so she can sell it. To us these are still major undertakings in this environment. We can’t do it without the police, who are being paid by the family, laying off us. The reason Mostafa lost it in the first place was because Sandra, Mostafa, two Belgians and a German were blown into Libyan waters in the boat while they were on their way from Italy to Greece in 1987. The Libyans held Sandra the Belgians and the German hostages for three and a half months before they were finally released through the Belgian Embassy. Mostafa was held for a further year, most of that spent in solitary confinement. By the time he returned to Egypt to complete his hotel resort project, the Governor had made moves to confiscate it. He sued, but died in the middle of the lawsuit and his family cancelled the suit after making a deal with the Governor. Sandra is, by the way, the only American Libyan hostage. Now that it is possible for an American to sue a foreign government (after the Rein decision concerning Locherbie opened the door for American citizens to sue foreign governments who have been classified by the U.S. Government as nations that support terrorism) Sandra is proceeding against Libya. Another story. I don’t wish to beat the Government over the head with its destruction of my business. Even though the Ministry of Petroleum, which must now be the biggest Mafia in Egypt, deserves to be called to account for the manner in which they destroyed it. I had 95% of the Egyptian market at the time. Practically all my contracts went to my only competitor who was not even in this business till three years ago. Of course he is very close to the Exploration Department at the Petroleum Authority -- and we don’t give backshish! What is the point. I do not wish to resurrect my oil service business for the third time running. I will air all this anyway in the book I intend to write after we’ve left and taken with us anything we can carry. I took my business chances here and some of it, was of course, worth it. I could tell you also about all the good and worthwhile things about Egypt. It has good weather, lots of opportunities for exploring and desert travel, great diving, and people who are basically friendly, cheerful and for the most part well meaning. My kids grew up here for the most part and they were as healthy here as they could have been anywhere. They both speak Arabic. They are both very well traveled, internationally educated and extremely tolerant of all foreigners and foreign cultures. Now they are both making careers in the U.S. and I hope they stay there. They have not had to put up with what I’ve had to though. What we are trying to get across to anybody who will listen, is what I said in my last letter to the Ambassador: just help us by telling the Egyptian Government that we (the U.S.) do not approve of our citizens being treated by the police and other authorities in this manner, and please give them the freedom and the space to finalize their problems in Egypt through the courts or by other legal means without fear of police harassment, personal threats


or the like. This, is of course, a bit on the naive side. Somebody with sufficient power and authority in the U.S. government needs to tell someone in the Egyptian government who can actually do something, “please help solve their problem before it gets completely out of hand and creates an avalanche of negative publicity and causes significant damage to the country and its economy”. We have serious investment, tourist and security issues here. There are over half a million Egyptians living in America, either as full U.S. citizens or as Green Card holders. They live there and are protected under the laws of the U.S. and its Bill of Rights and, and are treated like real U.S. citizens.. We, in turn, are always treated as “foreigners” here, even after 25 years. Superficially the Egyptians are friendly, and outgoing and love America and Americans. Believe me there is another reality altogether. I have a very great appreciation now of what it feels like to be persecuted as a minority. Give me the good ol’ U.S. anytime. Our last recourse. The press. It’s very easy to talk to the press and tell them the whole story. It also might be very hard to reverse the process if the whole thing gets out of hand. We are ready though, and have a good number of possibilities along those lines if it comes to that. Not my idea of the way to leave Egypt, but Sandra has suffered incredibly here, and how they have treated her, particularly, is simply and utterly inexcusable by any standard of decency. I don’t much mind being beaten up if I can get my licks in, which I did, by the way. But they took away everything she had, right in front of her, right in front of the authorities, and nothing was ever said or done about it. And this was done at a time when she had been recently widowed, was alone, and had little or no money. Pretty hard to swallow. We realize that we are probably going to have to solve our problems here ourselves and we’ll do our best. Just having received a response from thoughtful people like yourselves is most encouraging and heart warming, and gives us hope and encouragement. Heard enough? I thought so. Thanks so much for listening. I’ll reply and make comments on your very very thoughtful and perceptive email separately, if you don’t mind. At a press conference in Geneva after the two around the world balloonists landed they commented that “it was easier to go around the world in a balloon than to leave Egypt”. Jim & Sandra & “The Fluff” P.S. If you would like to see more about the boat, go to www.cairo-egypt.com/boatpics.html The boat has an incredibly rich history and we want to move it to Europe as soon as we possibly can. It’s the one thing that nobody here disputes the ownership of. They are just using typical blocking tactics. We offered it to the Imperial War Museum in London and they wanted it but did not have the


space at the time. Perhaps we could get it to the U.S. with some help. Date: Wed, 5 May 1999 19:54:13 -0500 From: Presidential Exploratory Committee <[email protected]> To: Jim Sorenson <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Foreign Policy - U.S. Aid - Two Americans trapped in Egypt..... Dear Jim, Sandra, the "Fluff," and assorted companies doing petroleum business in Egypt, Your plight gets sadder and sadder. It was at first a mystery to us why the American government wasn't helping you out. We, like you, would have imagined the purpose of the U.S. embassy in Cairo to be to encourage American entrepreneurs such as yourself, to help them along in forging their destiny on foreign shores. This, at least, has historically been the mission of the U.S. embassies, and a prime aim of the U.S. government--to create a buffer against foreign quirks for those seek to profit from foreign situations. People such as yourselves (not counting the "Fluff") used to be considered the "front line" in the battle for U.S. business supremacy--you know, Manifest Destiny and all that.... The reason for government apathy in your case must be that people such as yourselves are no longer the "front line," no longer considered by U.S. business interests (nor, hence, by the U.S. government) to be important. Apparently it is only necessary any more to help big American multinationals, which are (a) much easier to help, and (b) offer lower risk and higher yields. Let's face it: whether or not we like the idea of American entrepreneurs such as yourselves feeling entitled to a slice of Egypt (dollop? pat?), it's clear they're on a different scale from the big multinationals (such as your petroleum company clients). Those companies do not need police protection for their persons and property--they build fortresses, they hire small armies of bodyguards, etc. We think it likely that the U.S. embassy, devoted as it is to helping American business, is just not set up to deal with business on a scale smaller than the humongous, not set up for personal safety issues and so on. Also, those multinationals are so big and important, now, that they're pretty reliable, they're a better "investment." Not that your operation is fly-by-night--it's just not as stable as Shell. Social Darwinism. You have businesses that help others exploit Egypt, and this perhaps makes the Egyptians angry at you, but your businesses aren't big enough for the U.S. government to care about your welfare. This isdoubly sad, but it does make sense. >The military >seems to produce people who still retain, even here, a sense of decency and >honor. In the event the U.S. position changes--say, because your big petroleum clients ask it to--this will be a useful tidbit for planners. Most often when the U.S. overthrows a Third World government or applies great pressure to it, it does so by means of the army. Please file this under "important." >Thank you for your careful reading of the web material we have put up and >the thoughtful comments.


We're happy that our careful reading made you happy. We, however, have just realized how sloppy we were. We've since been reading up a bit on Egypt, and we just realized that when we wrote >People go to Egypt, they enjoy the noted ziggurats, they swim in the Volga, they >attend to the hippos lolling about in Lake Mead and think of all the glorious >history enmeshed in these things. we were in serious error on several counts. The ziggurats of Egypt are not so well known as we thought (and are more commonly known as Pyramids), and to get to the Volga from there requires quite a long jet trip, not worth it just for a swim. As for Lake Mead, it is in the U.S. Southwest, and there are no hippos there. To attend to the hippos lolling there, you would have to first get to Lake Mead (even further than the Volga, but admittedly more pleasant to swim in) and then bring in some hippos--an even bigger matter than getting your boat through the Suez Canal. At the risk of making your life even more kafkaesque than it is, we must at this point suggest that you take your concerns to someone who can do something about them. Short of getting a strong, willful, anti-capitalist or anti-American leader elected in Egypt, there probably isn't much you can do to make the situation change as much as we have suggested, U.S.-participation-wise. But perhaps if you write many letters to (a) journalists at business reviews, (b) officials in agencies, (c) good solid American candidates like Al Gore and George W. Bush, etc., something may happen, someone may be able to do something for you. Who knows? Best of luck with the book. Earnestly, Roy and Liz Presidential Exploratory Committee: Your efforts redeemed http://www.gwbush.com/ Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 09:54:15 +0200 From: Jim Sorenson <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Foreign Policy - U.S. Aid - Two Americans trapped in Egypt..... -----Original Message----- From: Presidential Exploratory Committee <[email protected]> To: Jim Sorenson <[email protected]> Date: Thursday, May 06, 1999 1:55 AM Subject: Re: Foreign Policy - U.S. Aid - Two Americans trapped in Egypt..... >Dear Jim, Sandra, the "Fluff," and assorted companies doing petroleum >business in Egypt, > >Your plight gets sadder and sadder. It was at first a mystery to us >why the American government wasn't helping you out. We, like you,


>would have imagined the purpose of the U.S. embassy in Cairo to be to >encourage American entrepreneurs such as yourself, to help them along >in forging their destiny on foreign shores. This, at least, has >historically been the mission of the U.S. embassies, and a prime aim >of the U.S. government--to create a buffer against foreign quirks for >those seek to profit from foreign situations. People such as >yourselves (not counting the "Fluff") used to be considered the "front >line" in the battle for U.S. business supremacy--you know, Manifest >Destiny and all that.... > >The reason for government apathy in your case must be that people such >as yourselves are no longer the "front line," no longer considered by >U.S. business interests (nor, hence, by the U.S. government) to be >important. Apparently it is only necessary any more to help big >American multinationals, which are (a) much easier to help, and (b) >offer lower risk and higher yields. Exactly ! We are just not part of the plan. If we don't fit somewhere within multinational, A.I.D., or U.S. military, we "don't exist". The sad joke over here among those Americans (and there are quite a number of us) who live outside the Embassy Fortress is that "if we get into real trouble, there is only one place to go - the British Embassy. Most all the embassies of other countries treat their expats like true community - our's tends to ignore us. I recall that Atherton was very community oriented, however. > >Let's face it: whether or not we like the idea of American >entrepreneurs such as yourselves feeling entitled to a slice of Egypt >(dollop? pat?), it's clear they're on a different scale from the big >multinationals (such as your petroleum company clients). Those >companies do not need police protection for their persons and >property--they build fortresses, they hire small armies of bodyguards, >etc. We think it likely that the U.S. embassy, devoted as it is to >helping American business, is just not set up to deal with business on >a scale smaller than the humongous, not set up for personal safety >issues and so on. Also, those multinationals are so big and important, >now, that they're pretty reliable, they're a better "investment." Not >that your operation is fly-by-night--it's just not as stable as Shell. >Social Darwinism. Stable? My company has operated continuously and successfuly here for 20 years right under the noses of 5 ambassadors. I can't even think of an American multinational that has been here that long and certainly many American "big oil" companies got frustrated and left: Arco, Chevron, Gulf, Santa Fe, Unocal, Mobil (in and out 3 times), Conoco, Marathon, Quintana, Sedco, Esso (in and out twice), Murphy, Phillips, more even.....have been and gone while my company has soldered on. >You have businesses that help others exploit Egypt, and this perhaps >makes the Egyptians angry at you, but your businesses aren't big >enough for the U.S. government to care about your welfare. This is >doubly sad, but it does make sense.


I'm a spec on the wall money and powerwise here. Yes, the people at the petroleum authority are jealous. Probably not because I have been successful in oil here but because I am a foreigner and have been successful. There's a great undercurrent here still of "drive out the foreigner". I've heard and seen it continually over the years: "he's only a foreigner, why should he have that?" In terms of my contribution to the oil business here - the Egyptians simply don't care. That's ok. I didn't ever ask for much in the way of pats on the back. It's when things start turning nasty and there is no protection whatsoever, that I get riled. > >>The military >>seems to produce people who still retain, even here, a sense of decency and >>honor. > >In the event the U.S. position changes--say, because your big >petroleum clients ask it to--this will be a useful tidbit for >planners. Most often when the U.S. overthrows a Third World government >or applies great pressure to it, it does so by means of the army. >Please file this under "important." Not all of them by any means. I've done quite a bit of military business over the last 5 years and I can tell you a lot about them here. I do tend to like them better and I would support them on whole. I want to be careful not to get too political, even over the Internet. I have a perfect record here (still) with the security - I don't get political and I don't murder people. Those are the only two things that will get you thrown out of the country. >>Thank you for your careful reading of the web material we have put up and >>the thoughtful comments. > >We're happy that our careful reading made you happy. We, however, have >just realized how sloppy we were. We've since been reading up a bit on >Egypt, and we just realized that when we wrote > >>People go to Egypt, they enjoy the noted ziggurats, they swim in the Volga, they >>attend to the hippos lolling about in Lake Mead and think of all the glorious >>history enmeshed in these things. > >we were in serious error on several counts. The ziggurats of Egypt are >not so well known as we thought (and are more commonly known as >Pyramids), and to get to the Volga from there requires quite a long >jet trip, not worth it just for a swim. As for Lake Mead, it is in the >U.S. Southwest, and there are no hippos there. To attend to the hippos >lolling there, you would have to first get to Lake Mead (even further >than the Volga, but admittedly more pleasant to swim in) and then >bring in some hippos--an even bigger matter than getting your boat >through the Suez Canal. > The way our lives have changed, those things could just as well be true at this point. Did you see the section of my webpage on the Pyramids? A current project I have is to put up


the first ever Webcam on the Pyramids. I have permission from the Ministry of Tourism and the Security Department to do so. I hope it might be the project to propel us out. The boat only needs to be towed to Suez, not through the canal. From Suez we hope to get in on a ship bound for Europe or the U.S. It will have to stay at Suez Yacht Club till we raise the money, however. >At the risk of making your life even more kafkaesque than it is, we >must at this point suggest that you take your concerns to someone who >can do something about them. Short of getting a strong, willful, anti- >capitalist or anti-American leader elected in Egypt, there probably >isn't much you can do to make the situation change as much as we have >suggested, U.S.-participation-wise. But perhaps if you write many >letters to (a) journalists at business reviews, (b) officials in >agencies, (c) good solid American candidates like Al Gore and George >W. Bush, etc., something may happen, someone may be able to do >something for you. Who knows? > >Best of luck with the book. > Yes we will play it by ear and appeal to whomever may lend some help. We must still tread carefully as you must quite understand. We will be in D.C. sometime in June or July to see my son who works there and will at that time be making some follow up contacts regarding our situation. If you have any specfic suggestions as to whom to see, we would appreciate them. I have quite a lot of the electronics from the around the world balloon that I have in safe keeping from the recovery and I must get them to the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian. Thank you both so very much for your comments and suggestions. Keep your eyes on the webpage for changes in our condition. If the Bush campaign needs someone in Cairo to organize an expat committee to lend support when the time comes, we're willing. I'm sure we will still be here through 2001. As you can see, things happen very very slowly over here. Best regards, Jim and Sandra >Earnestly, >Roy and Liz > >Presidential Exploratory Committee: Your efforts redeemed >http://www.gwbush.com/ >


Index

abominations......................................................101

and world hunger ........................................103

capital crimes

pieing ...........................................................51

praying .........................................................54

protesting................................................70, 79

consumer choice, democracy and..........................13

corporations

American Express .......................................119

Andersen Consulting.....................................57

as Accenture.....................................57, 58

CitiCorp......................................................119

Enron .........................................................110

Ford.................................................... 104, 105

and the Aztecs ......................................105

Goldman Sachs

and Tanzania ..........................................61

Hill and Knowlton.........................................10

Kellogg’s, Quaker Oats, General Mills.........117

McDonald’s .......................................... 91, 102

Monsanto................................................3, 121

Rhône-Poulenc

as Aventis ............................................121

Société Générale des Eaux...........................120

as Vivendi ............................................120

Union Carbide

as Dow..................................... 72, 86, 121

United Fruit Company.................................... 9

as Chiquita ................................... 9, 11, 32

Wackenhut....................................................37

XXX

as Novartis ...........................................121

YYY

as Del Monte........................................... 9

ZZZ

as Dole.................................................... 9

developing countries

and toxic waste ...........................................101

Argentina ............................ 120, 121, 166, 167

Bolivia .......................................................120

Gabon .............................................. 74, 75, 93

vs. Tampere, Finland..............................74

India...76, 77, 115, 116, 121, 126, 176, 177, 179

and Neem.............................................121

Rwanda ........................................................92

Somalia ......................................................181

Tanzania.......................................................61

vs. Goldman Sachs .................................61

Thailand .....................................................121

Vietnam......................................................121

diseases

and pollution...............................................101

malnutrition

and kwashiorkor, marasmus, etc........ 92, 97

obesity

and pseudotumor cerebri, gallstones, etc. 98

in France................................................98

economic theory

Coase Theorem.............................................27

dumping............................................... 61, 101

regionalization ........................................ 37, 93

TANSTAAFL...............................................38

transparency ........................ 5, 26, 44, 133, 134

and ‘astroturf’ ................................ 26, 144

fascism

German ............................................ 29, 35, 39

Italian...........................................................69

and amphibious tanks .............................69

foods

bananas 9, 11, 14, 21, 22, 23, 25, 29, 31, 32, 132

bratwurst......................................................31

coffee .............................16, 102, 116, 117, 163


price in Tanzania ..................................117

corn ............................................................117

and corn flakes .....................................117

frog ............................................................127

hamburgers...................... 98, 99, 101, 102, 118

McDonald’s ................................... 91, 102

recycled ...............................................101

immundicities .............................................101

maize..........................................................117

potatoes ........................................................93

rice ..................................................... 102, 121

schnitzel........................................................34

sugar.............................................................94

tête de veau...................................................71

vegetables, unusual ........................................ 3

freedom

and leisure ....................................................78

and the South.................................... 73, 74, 75

and the SS.....................................................34

corporate ........................3, 5, 28, 109, 146, 147

vs. human................................... 4, 52, 122

gender

and factory ownership ...................................87

Giuliani, Carlo .....................................................69

Giuliani, Rudolph.................................................42

Harvard University.............................................100

human rights

and bananas ................................................... 9

and the obssession with violence ...................10

for factory workers......................................100

for hamsters ................................................100

United Nations Charter of............................110

hunger ...............................................................123

excessive ......................................................91

importance of.................................... 96, 98, 99

leaders, qualities of

Berlusconi, kindness to policemen of .............23

Bush, enthusiasm for free trade of..................75

Gandhi, naivete of.........................................76

Gates, interest in India of...............................77

Haider, modernness of...................................35

Hitler, modernness of ....................................35

Milosevic, usefulness as a model of ...............34

Saddam, insufficiency of...............................34

leisure time

in America.............................................. 78, 79

in Austria......................................................37

in Mexico .....................................................38

in the future ..................................................85

literary monuments

A Dissertation on the Poor Laws ...................96

The Bible ......................................................84

The Kalevala, or Old Karelian Poems from the

Ancient Days of the Finnish People..... 80, 84

The Shortest Way with Dissenters...... 53, 54, 55

maquiladoras......................................24, 27, 31, 36

Mexicans, typical.................................................38

Middle East, features of

beheading, Qatari........................................100

Carthage.......................................................54

Crusades................................................. 53, 54

holidays, Omani-New Zealand, proposed.....175

ziggurats, of Egypt.......................181, 191, 193

Milgram, Stanley ............................................. 7, 89

neoliberalism........................................... 24, 30, 52

and hunger....................................................96

and pollution......................................... 27, 101

and siestas ....................................................24

defenders of

International Monetary Fund.24, 33, 43, 63,

94, 104, 116

Wackenhut Security ...............................37

White House .. 3, 57, 75, 180, 183, 191, 194

World Bank..........................................101

World Trade Organization 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9,

11, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25,

26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 40, 41,

42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 54, 57,

58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 70, 72,

75, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 91, 99, 102,

108, 109, 110, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117,

118, 120, 122, 123, 125, 127, 130, 131,

132, 134, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147,

148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155,


156, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 166,

167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 177,

178

purpose of.....................................................38

non-governmental organizations (NGOs) .... 123, 140

Greenpeace.................................................122

OXFAM ......................................116, 117, 118

United Nations..92, 99, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114,

115, 117, 121, 124, 125, 126, 127

World Development Movement...57, 58, 60, 64,

95, 115, 177

ownership

by divine right...............................................59

by natural right..............................................59

PDAs......................................................... 102, 103

rights

corporate ......................................................96

human ...........22, 60, 85, 99, 100, 111, 132, 186

vs. hamster ...........................................100

riots

Genoa.............................. 55, 57, 58, 63, 66, 70

Seattle ................................. 43, 45, 57, 63, 113

Stravinksy.....................................................18

Shiva, Vandana ............................................ 95, 116

slavery

and remote labor ...........................................75

freedom of ....................................................74

problem with...........................................74, 84

snake handlers......................................................53

socialism............................................................103

Stiglitz, Joseph........................................... 114, 177

surgery .................................................99, 102, 103

plastic..................................................... 65, 86

thinkers, major

Darwin, C......................................... 61, 63, 72

Friedman, M....................................61, 62, 109

Hoffman, A. ........................................... 61, 62

Moore, M. .. 50, 60, 92, 151, 154, 155, 156, 169,

170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175

Robespierre, M. ............................................61

Smith, A. .......................................... 59, 60, 61

Trotsky, L.....................................................61

trade barriers

non-tariff ........................................................8

systemic ................................................... 8, 13

tariff ...........................................................8, 9

U.S. wars

Afghan .......................................................135

Civil....................................................... 17, 73

and caning of Senators............................17

Iraqi ...............................................................3

and depleted uranium ...........................103

Vietnam........................................................43

WTO agreements

AoA ...........................................................118

GATS..........................................116, 118, 123

TRIMS.......................................................117

TRIPS ........................................................120

yes ..................................................... 6, 55, 66

aspect structural de \"l'education sentimentale

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