For best IPTV provider, please visit: WWW.IPTV.CAT For best IPTV provider, please visit: WWW.IPTV.CAT.BZ
MIKE BONANNO: Jeez, this is terrible.
It's the stupidest... I can't...
There's... It's an hour's difference.
The time zone is different here.
Fuck. It's unbelievable.
How the fuck can that happen?
Okay. Here.
Okay, there. That's done. Now what?
Okay. Got it. Okay, next?
BONANNO: Pull it up. Okay.
A few years ago, we wanted to
try to help out with some activist anti-corporate activities.
And we heard about this website called rtmark.com.
And, um, we went there, and they, they...
They handed us a domain name, GWBush.com,
and asked us if we might like to make a website
that was critical of George Bush.
Um, because George Bush's real domain name was georgewbush.com.
And this was 1999, so it was just during the campaign
when he was beginning to run for president.
And we didn't really know quite what to do,
so we went to Bush's website and looked at it.
And it turned out to be full of strange hypocrisies, like,
for example, he called himself
"The environmental governor of Texas,"
but we looked a little closer at his record
and found out that he had actually created
the most polluted state in the country
because he dismantled the Clean Air laws while he was there.
And, actually, that's, I guess, what he's doing now nationally.
So we thought, "Well, this kind of hypocrisy
"we can easily poke fun at
"by making a satire website."
And we made this satire website
that looked exactly like Bush's
except for a few key differences.
Like there was a photo on the banner,
instead of him and his wife in front of the Capitol building in Texas,
we showed him pointing the finger at black people.
And this seemed to get him a little bit angry.
So the Bush campaign tried to shut us down
by sending us a cease and desist letter
and by complaining to the Federal Election Commission.
But we were able to just take those threats
and send them to the media.
And immediately The New York Times wrote an article,
and there were a whole bunch of other articles.
BICHLBAUM: And in fact, one reporter read these articles,
and at a press conference, asked Bush,
"So, what about this website, GWBush.com,
"what do you think of that?"
(JOURNALIST SPEAKING)
(BUSH SPEAKING)
(JOURNALIST SPEAKING)
(BUSH SPEAKING)
So it was all over the place. Yeah.
A lot of people read about it, including a guy
who had another domain name called gatt.org.
And, of course, GATT is the
Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade,
and it's the predecessor agreement to the World Trade Organization.
And he said, "If you could do this for Bush,
"then maybe you can also do this for the WTO."
MICHAEL MOORE: The WTO is supposed to be
sort of a United Nations of commerce,
a conglomeration of all these countries in the world
uh, that get together every now and then
to discuss trade policies,
and how exactly goods will be bought
and sold throughout the world.
Well, I'm sure, originally,
the stated purpose of the WTO, uh,
was to help these countries who are developing
so that, you know, the world community
can help raise them out of poverty.
In fact, what it's done is,
it's allowed large corporations, uh,
to go in and exploit these people even further
uh, so that Americans become even wealthier
and the people in these countries
continue to struggle to get by.
And I think that's...
At this point it's upset quite a few people.
Okay, so I gotta try and remember where Sal lives.
Um, it's a little bit complicated.
There's, like, this snaking road up over the hills.
BONANNO: And who is Sal?
Sal is a friend who I met in San Diego,
and, um, he moved to L.A.
to work in the movie industry,
and that's why... Now he does,
actually, costuming professionally.
He builds, like, weird suits
out of, you know, pretty much any material you can imagine.
And so, when we needed a costume, I knew who to call.
Yeah, this is it. Yeah.
I'll maybe bring him his mail, actually,
as long as we're at it here.
Yeah, I don't like it. Okay.
It looks too much like sex stuff
instead of... It's not very modern-looking.
Okay. It's gotta look...
Remember, this is the future.
This isn't about, like, straps and stuff.
That's like dungeons and torture in the past.
The costume is a manager's leisure suit.
And the idea is that Hank Hardy Unruh,
the representative from the World Trade Organization,
is going to go and wear this breakaway business suit
that's gonna be pulled off of him
during the middle of the keynote address at the conference.
And then, a big inflatable phallus
is going to emerge from this golden suit,
and on the end of it is a TV screen
that he uses to manage sweatshops remotely.
The reason we got invited to these things
is we have a website called gatt.org.
The gatt.org website looks a lot like the WTO website,
but it is critical of the WTO.
Most people, though, who find gatt.org
by searching for the World Trade Organization,
will go without reading it and will send us e-mail directly.
So a lot of people ask us weird questions about tariffs and trade,
and we try to answer as accurately as we can.
And occasionally invitations come in
from official or, you know, quasi-official organizations
asking for opinions or asking us to attend a conference.
And so, when they ask, they really think they're talking to the WTO,
and we respond by giving them what we think they want,
which is the opinions of the WTO
as accurately as we can represent them.
You know what I'm thinking, actually, looking at this,
is that maybe this is a zipper.
Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Then he just unzips it and pulls the thing at the same time.
Oh, that could be really good. Because...
To have it burst out of the Velcro,
it might not be strong enough to... BOTH: Burst out.
And then he'd have to pull it.
Part of the thing that gives us the courage to go to Tampere
with this really absurd suit
is that we already went to Salzburg, Austria,
to represent the World Trade Organization
at a conference on tariffs and trade.
And so, there, our representative,
the same guy who is Hank Hardy Unruh here
was Dr. Andreas Bichlbauer there.
And he gave a lecture, uh, that focused
on, basically, doing away with all customs in the name of free trade,
like getting rid of the siesta in Spain and Italy,
um, so that business hours could be the same.
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 allowing people to sell their votes over the Internet
to the highest bidder so that the barriers to, sort of, free trade
and things like votes were out of the way.
BICHLBAUER: One possible solution
is being tested in the field of American politics
to streamline the grotesquely inefficient system of elections.
And Vote-auction.com, in turn, employs only four people
to transmit not merely information,
but actual money directly to the consuming voter.
It's a forum for people voluntarily
to offer their vote to the highest bidder.
And despite giving what we thought
was a lecture that would immediately get us booed off stage
or, you know, get Bichlbauer maybe even thrown in jail
because people would figure out he was an impostor,
the exact opposite happened.
Everybody was super polite. Nobody...
It didn't seem like everybody even noticed
that what he said was so absurd.
Well, so far...
We thought Bichlbauer would be very extreme
and people would react to it and we'd get shut down,
and nothing of the sort happened.
So...
This time, we just have to really push it
and make it totally extreme.
I mean, we keep trying to push things further
to try to really clarify the positions of the WTO
to make them very legible.
It's one back, but this is good.
MAN: Yeah. So...
Andy.
It has a terrible siren.
(SIREN WAILING)
BICHLBAUM: I have to check the web when we get upstairs.
Oh, my God. What are we gonna do about this...
We gotta watch the Patrick video.
Um...
It's weird stuff, isn't it?
(BOTH CHUCKLING)
That's one way of putting it.
It's really a problem.
BICHLBAUM: It seems about the weirdest
I've seen from him ever, I think.
It looks pretty good on this.
Yeah, it's all right.
PATRICK LICHTY: What we have here is that we have our cyber Andy here
who's going to be wearing the suit.
And I'm going to be showing all the different ways
in which the Management Leisure Suit
can be useful in industry today
and maximize leisure potential.
(LAUGHS)
Sometimes I don't think they know what the hell to expect out of me.
What I'll come up with
is frequently not exactly what they had in mind,
but it's, you know,
it fits in perfectly with what they're,
what they're going to do.
Well, I mean, I came out of a corporate environment
and a company that I really gave, you know,
a good bit of my soul to
over a long period of time progressively.
And there were a lot of downsizings and, of course,
you know, the company I was with
I thought was gonna take care of me, you know.
And I realized that the bottom line is the bottom line,
and there really isn't any humanity in corporate structures,
so therefore I hope that maybe being part of the Yes Men
might, in some way, help raise issues about global work issues
and social issues that are being brought about
by globalization, etcetera.
I grew up in the suburbs here,
and then I moved to Troy, uh,
six years ago for a job at the university there, so...
A place there called Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,
and I teach there.
I was moving back home, really, because I'd been away,
I'd been on the West Coast for about 12 years.
WOMAN: Wait, what is this?
BONANNO: This is, um, it's this...
SimCopter hack. Here it is.
I wanted to watch this tape 'cause I...
This is the tape... I've been cleaning out the archives,
you know, and I found this tape in there.
I met Andy through a friend, actually. A mutual friend.
Actually, two people, that we both knew,
suggested that me and Andy
get in contact with one another
because we'd both done similar projects.
One of the jobs that I had
was at this games company called Maxis
that makes SimCity.
One of the games they were making at the time
was SimCopter.
I was in charge of the little people
that run around in the game.
And I made them wearing nothing but swim trunks.
They'd all be boys, and they'd be running around
kissing each other.
So all the people who ordered this very popular video game
suddenly were treated to a completely different spectacle.
And so he got a lot of press attention for it,
and it was seen as a kind of,
an activist, you know, kind of statement
about video games
and the sort of macho nature of them.
It all involves the unexpected appearance
of some gay, kissing muscle men every Friday the 13th.
He's becoming a celebrity of sorts in the computer world.
Especially the gay computer world.
And then I had done a project using Barbie dolls,
where we switched the voice boxes of Barbie dolls and G.I. Joes.
(RECORDED MALE VOICE) Troops, attack that Cobra jet
with heavy firepower!
(GUNFIRE)
And that ended up in G.I. Joes
that said things like, "I love to shop with you,"
and Barbie dolls that said things like, um, "Dead men tell no lies."
And we got them back on store shelves,
um, all over the country in what we called our "Shop Giving Program."
We're like Santa Claus, only less radical,
because Santa Claus breaks into people's houses. We don't do that.
BONANNO: So that when kids got them at Christmas,
they were surprised to find their doll
saying something other than what they expected.
And the kids thought it was hilarious.
You know, they loved having these crazy dolls.
Uh, we sent out press releases,
so it was in the news on Christmas Day
and for the week following.
It just went through every kind of media channel imaginable.
The BLO.
The mission of the BLO.
The Barbie Liberation Organization, the BLO.
It was real funny 'cause (MAN TRANSLATING IN FRENCH)
it was like "Come on, fight me. Fight me!"
Except it says. (RECORDED FEMALE VOICE) I love school. Don't you?
Let's sing with the band tonight!
Now we're, with the Yes Men,
we're calling that sort of basic idea "Identity Correction,"
like saying, okay, these things...
These things that are not really presenting themselves honestly
or that hide something about their nature that's really scary,
we want to, we want to bring that out.
We want to show that. We want to demonstrate that.
And so, like for the WTO,
you know, we think that the WTO
is doing all these terrible things that are hurting people
and they're saying the exact opposite.
And so we're interested in correcting their identity,
in the same way that an identity thief
steals somebody's identity to...
In order to, basically, just engage in criminal practices,
we target people we see as criminals,
and we steal their identity to try to make them honest
or to try to present a more honest face.
And so, you know, I guess this whole thing
has its roots for both me and Andy
in stuff that we've been doing for a long time,
which is trying to create public spectacles
that, in some kind of poetic way,
reveal something about our culture that's profoundly a problem.
That must be Sal.
Oh, dude.
Are you okay?
SAL: I got fuckin' lost on that...
Oh, no.
(LAUGHING)
It's been a long day.
Holy shit!
Oh!
Well, I probably started it in June or July.
So, on and off for a good two to three months.
Just a couple more pieces of Velcro, and that'll really be it.
And, yeah, we're...
We're at the end of the line.
(BLOWING RASPBERRY)
Oh.
Okay, look. So here we're making a list here.
Wednesday we leave for Finland early,
so, Sunday...
Make lecture.
BICHLBAUM: Bigger? Oh, no. That's a big one.
PowerPoint.
And then speech.
Finish.
(KEYS CLACKING)
It's 4:03 a.m.,
and I guess I'll just keep working until morning.
I feel somewhat awake.
And then Andy can take over again.
We can do around-the-clock shift, I guess.
I'm just trying to add a few slides into the PowerPoint here.
Because, actually, a lot of the things
that, sort of, business leaders of the world
say in relation to these issues
are actually sort of very similar
to what Unruh Hank Hardy says,
even though, maybe, Unruh Hank Hardy
is a little bit more frank about it.
And, in fact, when he talked to CNBC,
when he was debating, an activist, Barry Coates,
just sort of agreed with what he said
when he said that this is what the WTO does,
and this is our position.
And Barry Coates said,
"Well, that's funny. That's exactly right."
After Salzburg, we got an e-mail
asking a representative of the WTO
to appear on CNBC MarketWrap Europe.
And the producer apparently didn't notice
that gatt.org was not the WTO site.
And Granwyth Hulatberi,
which is another name that Andy just came up with,
responded and, of course, said,
"Well, I'd be happy to go on CNBC MarketWrap."
And that producer wanted him to debate
an anti-globalization protester.
If the WTO is serious about addressing
the issues of world poverty,
it would do things completely differently than it is now.
Let me bring in Granwyth on that.
Is that a fair point?
Well, of course it is,
but, you know, I think Barry,
as well as all the other protesters,
are simply, in a word,
focused too much on reality and on facts and figures.
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, uh, and so on,
rather than what the protesters have been reared on...
Trotsky and Robespierre and Abbie Hoffman.
And I think that putting 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.
Let me bring you in on that, Barry.
I mean, can I just say
that these kind of simplistic arguments
are really, I mean, too insulting
to most people to believe.
You know, the fact 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 those one's employed by the WTO.
...that think the World Trade Organization policies
are deeply damaging for the development prospects of the poorest countries.
Let me go out, uh, to Granwyth.
Yes, um, well, I wanted to speak to Granwyth...
Sorry, to Barry's point that there are other thinkers.
Well, who... Who actually has the power in the world
and so who is correct in this kind of world view?
I mean, I think the answer is easy
and if you look at the views held by myself, my oganization
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.
So... I mean, what we have here is a picture of
the rich and powerful people believe a certain philosophy
which they then propound through the institutions
in which they have a powerful voice.
And I think this is exactly the model
that is being questioned and increasingly what there is,
is a very large body of people who are concerned about these rules.
The people on the streets of Janeiro or in Seattle
are not representative of the overall movement.
They are at the tip of the iceberg. We did the study last year
that looked across developing countries
and found that in the space of one year in 50 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 down through the World Trade Organization.
All right. Thank you. We must finish unfortunately.
Barry Coates thank you actually for joining us. Thank you.
And also Granwyth Hulatberi.
And also Vern and Alice on the line from New York.
(SPEAKING FRENCH)
Um, section three.
Well...
This isn't exactly a garbage bag but it's, uh...
It'll work.
Yeah? You think, this is very business-like?
It's like, it's very official...
(WOMAN TALKING INDISTINCTLY) Very big money.
Okay, good. That's what I need.
I need a big money watch.
SALMONE: So, are you as nervous as you were for, uh, Salzburg?
The thing is like, even with the Salzburg thing we went into it like...
Sort of, I mean we went there really nervous but the whole time kind of...
It doesn't... It doesn't really sink in till you're actually there.
Right.
SALMONE: Well, I think it's good you guys, like,
from what I've seen of the speech
it kind of starts out the most normal that is. BONANNO: Yeah.
So it'll help... He can get comfortable when people...
He can sort of like slowly work his way up into it.
You son of a fucking bitch.
(CLICKS TONGUE) Shit.
Do you have a rag?
BONANNO: Uh... Fuck.
Fuck, uh, shit, um...
I have one with that has shoe polish on it but that's not right, right?
The screen get a little paint on it?
Yeah.
Hmm.
(WHIRRING)
It sounds like a lawn mower.
It's a little loud, yeah.
Mmm. That's not good. Forget it.
(WHIRRING CONTINUES)
Uh-oh. Look, it made a new noise.
Good, good, good. Great.
Is that great? Try it.
And it doesn't work now.
Oh, listen. Yes.
Okay. (LAUGHS)
(LAUGHS)
(SPEAKING FRENCH)
Okay, 10 minutes. They're both here.
Phew.
Hey, Sal.
Thanks.
(LAUGHS)
We'll see how it goes. Thanks for everything.
Yeah. Sleep good and have a good time here.
Yeah. Enjoy.
See you soon.
Move into my room. Have enjoyment.
Okay. (LAUGHS)
Is this everything?
Wow. Look how efficient.
Okay.
(GRUNTS)
Efficient. A model of efficiency right here.
You have some crap on your face right here.
No, no, over here.
Looks better.
(TALKING INDISTINCTLY)
(MUSIC PLAYING ON STEREO)
BONANNO: We arrived last night,
you had to take a nap. You had to get some sleep.
BICHLBAUM: Oh, I just crashed, yeah.
And, uh, I went
and basically scoped out the lecture site.
There was a sign on the door that said,
"Textiles of the future,
"Unruh Hank Hardy was the first speaker. Hank Hardy Unruh."
And, um, you know, it all looked sort of official.
The coffee cups were out for the morning.
So, I thought, this is great. I'm all ready,
I know exactly where it is.
We can go there. I had a time...
Like set up a little time table and I got them, you know,
maps of the thing, and all the updated conference information.
Um, came back here,
then we went to sleep early,
but Hank was snoring immediately.
But I wasn't able to sleep at all, really.
I just like stayed there awake in bed
and occasionally going to bathroom and turn on the light and read brochures,
because I was like, just unable to sleep.
And eventually, I think I fell asleep just before waking up.
Great.
So, I'm leaving my wallet here.
Okay, let's go.
It's 8:00.
I think I really will leave it here.
Aren't you coming?
Hank, it was a little early to get up.
It's all right.
I mean, I thought this was vacation.
(SNIFFS) Like, what?
Vacation. I know.
They take me to Finland...
Let me take care of this egg for you. I'll just peel it.
That would be nice, thank you.
Mmm-hmm.
Well, you know, we're a bit behind schedule.
Are we? Well, little bit. It's after 8:00.
And I really wanted to be at the venue at 8:00.
Okay. But we're doing fine anyway.
Is it after 8:00?
It is after 8:00. Yeah.
You know, pretend like...
Huh. Great.
We're early. Ah. Good.
Hello.
I'm Hank Hardy Unruh. I'm from the...
Oh, great.
Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.
We were expecting you.
Oh, good. (LAUGHS)
It's not 9:30, no? It's 8:30, right?
Um. Uh, but you will have a...
It's 8:30 now. 8:30.
Is it? It...
It is... It's 9:30.
Now? Yes.
No. Yeah.
The time is 9:30?
Yes. Yeah. Almost.
I'm on at... Well, it's 9:27 at the moment.
Oh, my God. We're an hour off.
Oh, my God. Thank you.
Okay.
Well, we have to... Anyhow.
We're starting...
Do they know that he's going on now?
Uh, yeah. Well, perhaps he knows that and was expecting.
Oh, geez. Okay.
Okay, we...
Are you coming too? Have you registered?
Um, I'm his... I'm his assistant.
And this also. We're both working with him.
We have to go take care of a few things now.
BOTH: Okay.
Would you like to join the dinner?
Uh, yes, please.
Uh, or is there a fee or...
Uh, no, it's included.
Okay, yes. We'll... We'll join the dinner. That looks great.
Um... Uh...
Wow. Well, we must hurry, I guess.
So, please yes.
Um, actually no, you can't go in right now,
'cause you have to first take care of that business.
See we're an hour...
We did... We'll be five...
We had an hour off so...
I have to do something, um... Yes.
He has to make a very important phone call right now.
It'll take five minutes.
Five minutes? Yes.
But, uh... But you will have your presentation
starting off in two minutes.
Yes, please tell him that I'll be three minutes late.
There is a detail.
Jesus. Fuck.
How come we didn't know that?
That's really incredible.
Come on.
Okay. Now.
UNRUH: Jesus. This is terrible.
This is the stupidest. I can't...
It's an hour's difference. The time zone is different here.
(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)
Unbelievable.
How the fuck can that happen?
BONANNO: Okay. Here. That's done. Now, you tape them in.
Okay. Now quick. The shirt. The underwear.
Gold underwear.
Okay.
BONANNO: Does that... Do I have to put something through this?
No. Okay, uh...
Mmm-hmm.
Your testicles hanging out?
Uh, yeah.
Okay.
Okay, great.
Oh, God.
Okay. Great.
Let's go. Now air in it.
Okay, now the pants.
Oh, hi. Nice to meet you. I'm so sorry.
(SPEAKING ENGLISH)
Thank you. (LAUGHS)
I'm terribly... What?
Yes. I have a presentation.
I'm terribly sorry.
Uh, I think the World Trade Organization is supposed to know about time zones but...
Somebody said, "Isn't there a time difference?"
And I said, "No. All of Europe, same time zone."
(LAUGHS) So, that convinced us all.
And we were convinced, that it was Me too.
the right time when we woke up this morning.
And we were running... We were running five or 10 minutes late.
And then figured out that, you know, the laptop wasn't working.
UNRUH: No, maybe we could switch the order.
Can we have somebody else go and then I go later?
And they said, "Okay, I think we can do that."
And then they called the coffee people
and they talked to the coffee people to see if the coffee was possible.
BICHLBAUM: That was it.
Thank you very much.
It's this one.
Um, it's quite an honor to be here in Tampere addressing this audience
of the most outstanding textile workers in the world today.
I see on all the faces here today,
a touching childlike eagerness
to tackle the biggest textiles questions in the world.
How do we at the WTO fit in?
What we want to do at the WTO
is help you achieve your dollar results.
And in just 20 minutes from now,
I'm going to show you, the WTO's very own solution
to two of the very biggest problems in management.
One, maintaining rapport with distant workforce
and two, maintaining helpful amounts of leisure.
This solution appropriately enough is based in textiles.
Uh, but how did workers ever get to be a problem?
Before unveiling our solution, I'd like to talk about a bit of history
of the worker management problem.
Uh, we all know about the American Civil War at least in the US.
Uh, it was the bloodiest, least profitable war in the history of our country.
A war in which unbelievably huge amounts of money went right down the drain
and all for textiles.
By the 1860s the South was utterly flush with cash.
It'd recently benefited from the cotton gin.
An invention that took the seeds out of cotton
and the South out of its preindustrial 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."
Now some Civil War apologists have said that the Civil War for all its faults
at least had the effect of outlawing
an involuntarily imported workforce model of work.
Now, this model is, of course a terrible thing.
I myself am an abolitionist.
But, uh, in fact, there is no doubt, that left to their own devices,
markets would have eventually replaced slavery with cleaner sources of labor.
To prove my point,
please join me on what Albert Einstein used to call a thought experiment.
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 finished clothing set costs $50 at the very least.
Uh, two meals from McDonalds, uh, costs about $10.
The cheapest small room probably runs for about $250 a month.
To function well, you have to pay for your slaves health care.
If its country of origin was polluted for example
that might run very expensively.
And of course, with child labor laws here in Finland,
uh, much of the youth market is simply not available.
Now leave the, uh, same slave back at home, let's say, Gabon.
In Gabon $10 pays for two weeks of food.
Two hundred and fifty dollars pays for two years of housing not a month at best.
Uh, $50 pays for a lifetime of budget clothing
and health care is, of course, cheaper and 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 him or herself.
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 where they would be subject to
such unpleasantries as home sickness and racism.
I think it's clear from our little thought experiment
that if the North and South had let the market sort it out
without protectionist tariffs
they would have quickly given up slavery
for something more efficient anyhow.
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.
Had the leaders of the 1860s United States understood
what our leaders understand today,
the Civil War would have never happened.
In a world where the headquarters of a company
might be in New York, Honk Kong, or Espoo Finland
and the workers are in Gabon, Rangoon, or Estonia.
How does the 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?
I'm about to show you an actual prototype
of the WTO's solution to two major management problems of today.
Now, we all know that, not even the best workplace design can help
even the most astute manager keep track of workers.
What you need is a solution that enables complete rapport with workers
especially when they are located far away.
Mike, would you help me a moment?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
Thank you.
This is much better. Much more comfortable.
This is the WTO's answer to two of the major management problems
and we're calling it "The Management Leisure Suit."
It's a... The two problems again,
how to maintain close rapport with distant workers
and how to remain comfortable and increase leisure activities.
How does the, uh, Management Leisure Suit work?
Besides being extremely comfortable, as I can guarantee you.
Well, allow me to describe the Suit's core features.
(AIR HISSING)
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(AIR HISSING)
This... This...
Is the EVA.
The Employee Visualization Appendage.
It's an instantly deployable hip-mounted device with totally handsfree operation
that allows the manager to see his employees directly right here.
Signals communicating the exact amount and quality of physical work
are transmitted not only visually right here
but directly through electric channels
implanted directly into the manager.
Uh, the workers, for their part, are fitted with
corresponding transmitting chips
that are implanted humanely directly into the shoulder.
But the other equally important achievement of the MLS
has to do with leisure.
In the United States
leisure, another word for freedom really,
has, uh, been decreasing steadily since the 1970s.
The "Management Leisure Suit"
permits the manager to reverse this trend
by letting him do his work anywhere
while remaining in complete touch with the workers.
Physically sensing what's going on in the workforce on the floor
through channels implanted directly into the manager.
Again the manager sees the employees
but also feels what they're feeling and can select
where to focus in the workplace environment.
So, in conclusion
I'd like to ask "Is this a science fiction scenario?"
(CHUCKLING)
The answer is "no."
Everything we've seen here,
everything we've been talking about is entirely possible today.
We can always look forward on the highways of progress,
towards ever new horizons with cooperation
and mutual delight in the fruits of prosperity.
I'm very excited to be here.
Thank you very much.
(AUDIENCE CLAPPING)
Something we're trying to do more and more as... Yeah.
I wasn't depressed by people not reacting.
I wasn't depressed by people just swallowing it and not asking questions.
Because I thought, "Well, that shows
"that you need some sort of control."
Because here you can, you know,
the WTO, me,
can come in and say these amazingly hideous things
to this group of the most educated people,
like the top .1%, education-wise, people in the entire world
in a developed country like Finland...
These people all have PhDs or advanced degrees
and you can say the most atrocious things
and nobody will really react
and nobody will really care.
It's like, you know, what can...
What can't corporations get away with?
(BELL DINGING)
(WOMAN ANNOUNCING IN SWEDISH)
Mmm.
MAN: So, where are we?
Well, we're arriving in Helsinki right now.
Um, we left the conference this morning.
It was just, um...
It had just driven us completely mad.
(CHUCKLING) After dinner last night we...
I think we had had our fill at dinner.
I had to actually leave a little bit early.
I went over to the table where Unruh...
Where Hanky Hardy had to sit with the big man and eat.
And I told them that we needed to leave
because we had a telephone meeting
with Mobutu Oblongatu immediately.
(ALL LAUGHING)
Great. Hi!
Sorry, but in a minute
we're supposed to meet Manduka Javango.
Oh, God! At 10:00.
And then we both started laughing
which is really not convenient for the context.
So, we left and then we just decided that basically like...
We couldn't figure out what else we could possibly do at this conference.
So, we just thought, "Well, let's go to Helsinki instead."
So, this is the paper. On the front page, uh...
Just discovered it.
It says "There's a seminar at the university
"and, um, that somebody talked about controlling remote workers
"with electrical impulsions."
Impulse, yeah.
And then you turn to the page.
And that's what you get.
BONANNO: And this, right here represents
the World Trade Organization.
This...
This is This is
the World Trade Organization. the World Trade Organization.
MOORE: I went down to this Mexican border towns in the mid '80s.
They were called maquiladoras.
And when they first had, you know, this sort of
the first trade agreements between Mexico and the United States.
And everyone was saying "Oh, this is gonna raise Mexico out of poverty
"and things are gonna be so great
"and within 10 years they'd all be driving shiny new cars in Mexico."
And I went down there and saw this... The incredible poverty
in these Mexican border towns.
15 years later I went back.
Not a damn thing had changed.
Here's all these workers working for all these American corporations.
And you just go across the street
and you found people living in the same horrid conditions.
The same poverty existing.
And you have to ask "Well, who is benefiting from this?"
Well, who benefited were these American corporations.
During the 1990s they became even more wealthy.
They posted a record profit, larger record profits.
And the people of Mexico just continue to suffer.
It's all a big scam.
(RADIO PLAYING)
BONANNO: This is the one?
No. (EXHALING)
You got the wrong one.
Shit!
Will WTO stand up? BICHLBAUM: Oh, yeah.
Oh, my God! It's got pictures. They're nice.
You see... Yeah, they actually look okay.
at that size. Bichlbaum isn't an employee...
Wow, but he plays one on TV.
BONANNO: Yeah, this is basically the core of what we do.
All of these newspapers and magazines have articles
on the Yes Men.
And this is why we are doing these things.
This is why we go and do these conferences.
This is not for the 200 people or the 100 people
that might see us give the lecture.
Although we like them
to come away with an interesting experience from the lecture.
The reason we do it
is so that people who read Bizzarre magazine
or the New York Times or Fortune or Harper's can read about it
in the mainstream press.
I mean this is how millions of people
can read about it and potentially
get turned on to some of the ideas of anti-globalization.
One of the problems with the Fortune thing is that
it's in this, this, uh...
Well, Fortune, it's like read by business people
and accountants and that kind of thing.
And that's exactly who we're um,
supposed to be talking to in Australia in May.
It's an accounting conference.
It's a little, little worrisome.
You need a new shirt.
And one that's not wrinkled. Yeah.
Will that be good with your, um, thing? Oh, yeah.
Do you think it'll work with your suit? Yeah.
This one's extra-large. Yeah, they'll all work with my suit.
It's terrible.
It's striped though. Is that okay? Yeah.
I'm sure it's okay. I mean, why don't you go get a shirt then?
I'll just get this. Wait. Yeah.
It's co... Oh, it's not very much cotton.
How much is that? I hate that.
35. It's 35%. It's like...
No, it's fine... It doesn't wrinkle much then.
That's nice about that.
I'll just wear it. Okay. You can pack it...
All right.
BONANNO: I mean, the thing is like...
There's a question of whether he is...
Like at what point he recognizes you doesn't really matter.
What we want is that... (CLEARING THROAT)
That moment. That moment when he does recognize you.
So, if he recognizes you here
and sees that you're in the room,
then he'll be, he'll be looking back and forth at you, at the screen...
At that point if he recognizes you, we better say something.
BONANNO: Guess, no. I think it's down here but I don't know.
Thank you.
Barry, hi. How are you doing? Hi! Nice to meet you.
Good to meet you. Good. Great. Yeah.
We're in London and we were just at the
offices of the World Development Movement
where we talked to Barry Coates
who's the director of the World Development Movement.
And who showed up on CNBC MarketWrap Europe
debating, um, our friend here Granwyth Hulatberi
about, uh, the prospects of WTO and globalization.
Um, we kind of expected him
maybe to have a glimmer of recognition immediately.
And he didn't. Okay. Then we put on the tape.
And he laughed at how horribly stupid it was.
But he never realized that this wasn't
really a representative of WTO.
Even when he saw me like this right next to him.
And then we switched seats and he still didn't notice.
And then I had to put my face next to the thing and like...
BONANNO: Yeah. Let's just pause it here.
Okay. Hit stop. Um, is there a pause?
Stop button. There's no pause.
I don't know what I could have said after that.
After that clip.
I mean, really...
(BOTH LAUGHING)
Where did they get this guy from?
Afterwards. Might have been my first comment.
So, did you ever figure out where they got the guy from?
I understood that he was
part of the external relations department of the WTO.
Right. That's what they thought.
That's what they thought as well too.
BOTH: But, as it happens...
BONANNO: He wasn't.
BICHLBAUM: Yeah. In fact...
BICHLBAUM: Just take one more close look.
Oh, wait! Can we... Is this reverse?
No! (BOTH LAUGHING)
I wasn't going to mention that. The likeness.
Are you serious? BONANNO: You were being very polite, weren't you?
Yeah. You did it as a spoof.
Yeah. Yeah, basically.
Good. We weren't sure how you'd...
We were really hoping you wouldn't be too offended, really. Oh no!
Oh, hell no! That's great!
(LAUGHING) That's really...
I was wondering.
Cause I hadn't seen that guy before
and I did know some of the WTO external relations
people and I was thinking,
"My God! They really put up a ripe one this time."
We wanted to talk to Barry Coates as well
because he has a lot of statistics and information about
globalization that we thought would be useful
for the lecture in Australia.
All of the WTO agreements, bar one,
are all about restricting what governments can do.
And so essentially the whole trading system is built on the premise
that the companies trading internationally, investing internationally
are going to be preyed upon
by nasty governments.
And really,
I mean, what we have is an international system
that is entirely the reverse.
What's got squeezed out of the system
is democracy, is development, is environment,
is the kind of human values
which really ought to be the center of what we're trying to do.
We don't kind of live to trade. Yeah.
You know, we live to have decent lives.
And that ought to be the goal of our trade policy,
not maximizing trade or getting rid of any impediments to it.
(ELEVATOR DINGING)
Oh!
Okay.
That's good. Got that.
Need to get the video.
And we'll be off.
Let's see.
Uh, one of the big reasons why I'm up here is
that we have the Australia gig,
uh, for the Yes Men.
I did a animation
about, uh, you know the recycling of post-consumer waste
into, uh, hamburgers and fast food.
So, um...
BICHLBAUM: Here we go.
LICHTY: "The answer to the world's sustainable food future
"is in recycling.
"And since over half our nutrients taken in are eliminated
"valuable resources are at risk.
"By using post-consumer waste
"reBurger allows essential nutrients
"to be offered to developing countries
"for greatly reduced cost."
Uh-huh. Oh! Okay.
(ALL LAUGHING)
Oh. It gets, it gets better.
Oh! Okay!
Wait! What was that!
Is that in outer space?
Yeah, I'm sorry!
(STAMMERING) I think it does the job. I think it does the job.
BICHLBAUM: We're here in New York because
Herb Alpert,
um, of Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass,
um, is, gave us this award.
Um, bunch of money
to do what, you know, the kind of stuff that we do.
Um, so we had to come here and have dinner with him.
And, and, you know, get the money
and, and thank everybody and it was very nice.
And it's very surprising.
But we're very pleased.
I think we can say that we're very pleased.
Yeah, it was a big chunk of money.
It's gonna bank roll a lot of future activities
like going to Australia.
Oh, yeah. Um...
Yeah, so we got this chunk of money
but of course now we're also using this opportunity
and this hotel room here in New York
to meet up with Matt,
who's been working on the PowerPoint
presentation for Australia.
And to meet up with Patrick who's been working on
animations for Australia as well.
Fortunately we were lucky too because, uh,
Snafu was in town.
And he's sort of, uh, a European Yes Man.
Who's been sort of circulating in the European scene
doing Yes Man type activities.
But, uh, it's a good thing he's here, here in the States
so he can go to Plattsburg with us.
"Yes, trade liberalization
"is 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 and that wealth is a sign
"of divine favor.
"Now, why is starvation a problem?
"First, the facts. As we all know,
"investment and exports has been on the rise..."
There's some bad news.
There's some really bad news that came down in the last two days.
Um, the conference in Australia...
The people from the conference in Australia
wrote an e-mail saying that the conference has been canceled
because of low enrollment.
In some ways it's really kind of...
I guess, uh, a nice thing
that there was under-enrollment
because it was really a hideous conference.
And it seemed like a really dire thing that
people would actually want to go to that thing.
And so, it's really encouraging for humanity
that the conference actually has been canceled.
But at the same time it's really, um,
made things difficult for us.
And so I wrote back to them as Hildegard West and I asked them
if they would please set up another venue
because Kinnithrung Sprat is already on route to Australia.
So, right now, I'm waiting to see if they come back to us
with a suggestion that they'll actually have a public presentation.
But since the conference has been canceled
now the event in Plattsburg is kind of like...
It might be the only venue we have for this lecture.
And so, it's really important now
that we get the lecture done and sort of together.
So, it's no longer a dress rehearsal.
It's actually like
the final, you know, production.
It's about time.
What? I was so worried about your shoes.
About what... This guy brought shoes.
He brought real shoes for you. Look.
Do we have the hamburgers yet?
Uh, we have to pick them up.
But, you, you mentioned... They're ordered.
Yeah, Richard ordered them.
BICHLBAUM: That's fantastic.
Basically there's this guy named Richard Robbins
who I met at a conference about a month ago.
And he has written several books on sort of global... Globalization.
BICHLBAUM: He was interested in having the WTO
come speak at the Economics department.
And only he really knows that this isn't, um, really the WTO.
Everybody else will think that it's the WTO.
But another good thing is that it will be a hungry audience.
So there's a good chance they are going to eat those hamburgers.
Which we weren't sure was actually gonna happen
with the accountants in Australia.
You know, I think for a,
for look, I should probably carry these in.
Okay. Can you do it?
Yeah, I'm thinking that, uh
that you probably shouldn't be associated
with the hamburgers. Okay.
BICHLBAUM: I'd like to thank everybody for coming.
Um, you have many education choices.
And, uh, we're all grateful at the WTO
that you have chosen to listen to us for an hour.
And to our messages about things that will impact everyone.
I'd like to, to say that
by joining us here you're essentially embarking
with us on a mission.
I'd like to start right at the beginning.
As I was saying
trade liberalization is a project of faith.
It's a crusade.
And in any crusade there are problems.
There are invading armies, there are big blockades.
And one of the, the problems that we run into
in this crusade is starvation in the Third World.
You may recognize that symbol from those green bins you see.
You know, where cans, bottles, blah-blah...
The kind of recycling I'm talking about
that we have developed at the WTO
is not, not really this, this irrelevant kind of recycling
where the target individual consumers
like you and me or
of, uh, non-edible industrial products
is such a tiny part of the problem.
Rather we're talking about
really recycling what counts where it counts.
To begin to understand the theory behind this
you must first realize that the human body is not really very efficient.
When ingesting heavy foods
only about 20%
of the nutrients are absorbed by the elementary passageway,
while the other 80% finds itself expelled in post-consumer by-products.
Already 20 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 10 times
providing a cumulative total
of three times the nutritional value
of the original fresh hamburger.
Now again, a certain amount of cultural openness is required,
um, as we investigate solutions.
And I'd love to take any, uh, questions.
Yes, you've been...
Coming from a Third World country
I found most of what you said pretty offensive.
It's as if, uh... Everyone is equal
but some are more equal than others?
And, uh...
Who is to say whether people in the third world want a burger?
You know, I, in my heart sometimes find it, to agree that...
That cultures deserve equal consideration
perhaps to develop on their own terms
but, you know, we're different.
We're culturally different. We're rich, they're poor.
This is the most humane solution we can come up with
that stays within the market logic.
BONANNO: If it's all right, I could answer a portion of that,
of that question as well.
And this answers the question about desire for the product
because, the biggest growth areas are the developing world.
And so, uh, in fact people do want the product.
We do have a kind of video presentation about this that I...
I came prepared to show. It's not...
The program isn't actually completely ready yet.
BONANNO: So, as you can see here there's a consumer
uh, in the first world entering McDonalds and, uh...
Consuming a hamburger.
And afterward, this is a process we're all familiar with.
I don't need to explain it to anyone.
(AUDIENCE CHUCKLES) BONANNO: But...
You see, it's rendered out in this style because, uh,
studies have shown that consumers are most responsive
to 3D animation right now particularly in developing cultures.
(CLEARING THROAT) So, as you can see it goes through
a piping system, a kind of...
And this isn't unusual, we do this for oil.
We could do this for food as well.
And as you can see it goes back up through the plumbing
and emerges in a McDonalds.
Now the part of this video that isn't completed yet is the filtering process.
There will be a... A very well rendered
uh, filtering... (AUDIENCE GROANS)
(AUDIENCE CHUCKLES) (CLAPPING)
BONANNO: And, uh, as you can see,
this might answer somebody's question from before
but at the McDonalds in a developing country,
and in fact in this country as well,
you'd be able to choose...
The number one, number two, number three, number four, number five
would no longer refer to combinations of food.
But rather, uh, just the number of times a product had been recycled.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
We were lucky to partner with the World Trade Organization
which, uh, you know, has slightly different goals.
Of course, McDonalds' goals are to profit and grow
and, uh, we hope that we can provide
a nutritious and tasty product in the process.
Our goals are to help McDonalds profit and grow and all other corporations.
I think you guys, like the WTO
is kind of lacking kind of like a human element. You know, like...
If you saw...
Have you ever seen starving people?
Uh, in pictures, yes. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
So tell me, if you saw somebody starving to death
you would probably think a lot, you know, like...
That would kind of hit you in a sensitive, you know, place to say, like...
Oh, well, you know, maybe markets and money
and this and that don't really mean as much.
And actually, like, feeding people means a little bit more.
Yeah, well, it is true that there is a personal side of it that, um...
I have to say, in the WTO there are questions that we...
We have about this as human beings.
But we're not as subject... We have a kind of firmer grasp on theory.
We are able, um, fortunately,
to simply direct world trade in a much more theoretical way.
Um, in collaboration with our colleagues at the largest corporations.
So, uh, you know?
Yes, probably if I went to these countries
I'd be... I'd feel, um...
I'd think about things a little differently perhaps.
But, um, at the same time I don't think I would forget all my schooling.
I don't think I would forget you know, all these theories, and so on.
So, um, perhaps one day I'll do that.
This is a money maker. Correct?
Yes. Well, it's a money maker, starvation solver. Sure.
And how much does McDonalds pay you
to come here and speak this garbage?
Like this is a mouse with an ear growing out of its back.
How are you going to get around cultural and legal implications?
Cannibalism. They're basically asking us to recycle shit.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
The reality is that we already
treat, um, people in the third world far worse than
we treat our domestic animals.
That's, that's... It's not saying it's right.
It's just saying that's the reality.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(CLEARING THROAT) Well, after thinking about it for a little while
it seems the Plattsburgh lecture just went great!
And it went exactly the way
we originally expected these lectures to work. Yeah.
Which was that, at a certain point it's like light bulbs going off
in the heads of the different people in the audience.
And they're realizing that it was just too crazy to be real
and yet sort of it was based on reality and so...
BONANNO: You know, they started throwing globes at us.
They got angry, they got frustrated.
It worked. Exactly like we thought it would.
They don't ask you if you believe in it.
You don't get to vote on the World Trade Organization treaties.
They don't let you vote on it.
They don't give you a say in it.
They let you listen to the one sided propaganda.
Name me a single columnist in America
who doesn't stand up and cheer under the banner of so called free trade.
There's no public discussion.
There's no dissent in any of the parties. Political parties.
There's no debate, there's no discussion. There's no vote.
In fact, the only nation
which has called for a vote is Brazil.
And, already... Which is saying
that it will not sign any more trade treaties
without a plebiscite of its people.
And the world trade barons are losing their damn minds
trying to prevent this type of democracy
from spreading planet wide.
Because once people know what this stuff is about
and get to vote on it,
no-one's going to vote themselves into poverty.
BONANNO: Here we go. Australia country code.
Oops.
BONANNO: Oh, Australia. 61. It's 61. Sixty one.
(DIAL TONE)
Hi, this is Kinnithrung Sprat from the WTO.
WOMAN: Hello, how are you?
Good, thanks. How are you?
Where are you now? I'm in New York at the moment.
New York, are you? Yeah.
Kinninthrung Sprat, just called a person
who's coordinating Sprat's visit.
I'm due in Hong Kong the week after, um, this.
And that date is firm
but my travel to Australia is as yet, um,
not, not firm.
Yeah. She's actually, it turns out
been e-mailing all these people
and basically calling journalists
and getting people to attend his lecture.
And she fully expects him to attend
because she had spoken to Hildegard West,
uh, Sprat's assistant
and Hildegard West had told her that everything was on
and Sprat was definitely going.
So now we just decided we really have to go
to honor this arrangement with, uh, Australia.
BONANNO: So, it's back on now. After we totally thought it was off.
And instead of giving this lecture
that we've been planning for like nine months,
we're gonna like, you know,
disband the WTO. (BOTH CHUCKLING)
BONANNO: Shouldn't we get you a pair of shoes that actually are reasonable?
I mean, they just don't look like dress shoes.
They look like wrestling shoes.
All right. There are no shoes here for you.
BONANNO: Never mind. No. Shoes are out.
BONANNO: I like that tie.
Uh-huh. Around...
Oh, wait. Did you try this?
Yeah.
I did a set of these with an ink-jet
and they just don't look as real.
Ah! Something about them. They look, um...
Kind of hand made. BICHLBAUM: These look perfect.
I printed off some letterhead for you.
BICHLBAUM: Nice. I guess you guys already saw that.
Yeah. And I just kept it real simple.
That's perfect. So that it would show up well on the fax.
BONANNO: That is the most ridiculous photo.
(CHUCKLING) It's like something really weird about this public...
Public relations guy. Wow! I love that.
A little magnetic strip on the back.
BONANNO: Wow! BICHLBAUM: Really beautiful.
You know what I did? I went to, uh, I went to Google.
(CHUCKLING) Uh-huh. And I went to Google image search
and I typed in ID card.
And you wouldn't believe the numbers of ID...
Pictures of ID cards that show up on the web. Wow.
And I just went through and took a little bit from each one.
You know, it said...
This one's got like a little bar code at the bottom.
And this one uses the logo over here.
BICHLBAUM: That is so nice.
(TALKING INDISTINCTLY)
No, I don't know. I'm just really nervous 'cause, um...
I don't know, this feels different from all the other things that we've done.
It's not like the same kind of play, fun, crazy, weird,
impossible stuff.
This is like, sincere, you know?
It's about like replacing the WTO with something better.
Do you think that satire is more fun?
BICHLBAUM: Yeah, definitely.
I got this feeling that it's less... For some reason, um...
Maybe it's less fun to be sincere.
But it is less fun, isn't it?
In a way, yeah.
Maybe it's more fun to be satirical than...
Serious.
BICHLBAUM: Yeah.
BONANNO: It's about 9:00 in the morning.
And this is the big day for Kinnithrung Sprat
to go talk to CPA Australia
and close down the WTO.
It's kind of an exciting day for us.
You know, we finally get to shut it down.
(WHIRRING)
BONANNO: I'm writing a local phone number for this cell phone
on the business card so...
We give these to journalists or anybody else
who wants to contact Mr. Sprat, they'll be able to do it
in the next couple of days.
We have to leave in about 10 minutes though. I know.
BICHLBAUM: I'm just gonna do as little as possible.
Okay, let's just go by there.
We have some time yet. Yeah.
Let's just keep walking. Just walk straight.
Don't look. BONANNO: Don't look.
Don't turn left.
Don't... Okay, no. Oh...
Don't do that. (BEEPING)
Uh-oh.
(CHUCKLING) Answer it.
Hello. Michael Bonanno here.
Hi, Jane. How are you?
All right then. I guess we'll see you in just a few minutes.
And we just come up to level three then?
Great, thank you very much.
All right. Bye bye.
(BOTH CHUCKLING)
BONANNO: Oh wait, shit! This is the building.
MAN: Thank you for coming. Oh, thank you for having us.
MAN: Sorry for the confusion and problems and everything else.
Oh. It's to be expected these days, I think.
Um, no thanks for going out of your way to arrange this.
This is really terrific.
(CLAPPING)
Um, thank you all for coming.
I'd like to, um...
BICHLBAUM: Like to thank the organizers for
going out of their way to create this panel,
this luncheon, um... (CELL PHONE BEEPS)
In the face of some odds.
The conference having been canceled of course.
(CLEARS THROAT) And I'd especially like to begin
by apologizing for a rather sudden change in the program.
Uh, consequent upon a rather dramatic
development in Geneva, yesterday.
I originally intended to transmit today an upbeat report on
some new technologies that affect agro business in a global sense.
Instead, I find myself the messenger
of some rather disturbing news.
Um, the WTO will be issuing a public statement
in detail 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 at the WTO
will endeavor 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, uh, universal declaration of human rights.
Upon which we feel, uh, we can make a good foundation
to ensuring that the organization will have human
rather than business interests as its bottom line.
My reaction was one of total surprise.
We were expecting a speech more based on
what the World Trade Organization does
in its relation to Australian trade.
It sort of blew me out of the water
when the, uh, the announcement was made that
the World Trade Organization is significantly reinventing itself
to focus on issues relating to
um, people as opposed to economics.
Something that hopefully
could be of significant benefit
to, uh, the poor and needy throughout the world in all the developing countries.
The UN estimates that poor countries...
The poorest countries in the world lose
approximately two billion dollars a day
because of unjust trade rules
many of them instituted by our own organization.
And this is 14 times the amount
that they receive in aid from developed countries.
I thought the speech itself was, um, was compelling
in terms of its information.
It was... I was astounded to find
that they're actually going to dismantle the WTO.
I was also amazed to see that, um,
there was admission that perhaps it had failed.
Um, it's going to have a huge effect on international business.
And particularly for us as an organization, I feel.
Um, the hardest thing I find will be
the, um, the balance that, let's say the U.S. EU and Japan
in terms of being major components of the world economy.
The effect, you know, will they really change
in terms of this new organization?
And will there actually be genuine change?
And perhaps a benefit you know, to the world's poorest countries.
I must admit I'm a cynic with regards to that occurring.
Liberalization. The process of liberalization,
often enables the knowledge of the poor to be converted
into the property of global corporations.
BICHLBAUM: Specific statistics are rather shocking.
Out of 26,000 patents
um, applied for in Africa in 2000 and 2001,
only 31 were from residents of Africa.
The rest were from residents of first world countries.
Thirty one out of 26,000 patent applications.
Uh, it wasn't what I was expecting.
(CHUCKLING) I was expecting something on agro business
and what the World Trade Organization does.
But I have to say I believe it's fairly positive.
Um, because I think that, uh, this, as the gentleman said,
"The strong are getting stronger and the weak are getting weaker."
And you can't let that keep on going.
And even we know to sit here in Australia where some of
the trade arrangements that are made.
If you're powerful, you can get whatever you like
and if you're not, you can't. And it's just...
The world with the population we've got can't keep going that way.
So I think it was fairly positive and I think it's a very brave decision
by an organization to admit that they've been going down the wrong track
and dissolve themselves and start to look for something different.
I think it's, it's fantastic. Yeah.
Disparity is growing between the rich and poor.
The richest fifth have 80% of the world's income
and the poorest fifth have one percent.
Um, this gap... We all know this figure
but we don't always remember that this gap has actually doubled since 1960.
More and more thinkers are therefore noting
uh, that there is no evidence that
liberalization favors growth or benefits the poor.
I think we are all generally aware of increases in poverty
and low living standards and issues faced by developing countries.
And what Mr. Sprat I think had to say today,
really gives out a terrific sign of hope
for what I think we all aspire to.
And as a global economy that benefits all people.
JOHN DUNCAN: Now, after protected, protracted and detailed review
of current trade policy, the World Trade Organization
has decided to effect a cessation of all operations
to be accomplished over the next four months
culminating by the end of September. The World...
BICHLBAUM: Well, I think that the Yes Men have kind of played out their course
in relation to the World Trade Organization for the moment.
You never know when we might get another invitation.
We're lucky to be able to provide a sort of sense of closure by ending the WTO.
We also hope that other people will just start doing the same things
in all kinds of different contexts.
You know, impersonating whoever holds power, that needs to be criticized.
So if the opportunity arises,
we're just going to keep doing it. We're going to go
and be the Yes Men again. Or I should say be the WTO again in another event.
The future is bright for the Yes Men.
The future of the world is a different story.
BONANNO: You know, this isn't, this isn't the way he usually dresses.
He works for the World Trade Organization.
You know, the WTO? Yes.
He works see... We're at a conference
and he's demonstrating a new kind of technology.
Uh, this is um... Well, it's a device to
measure employee working in less developed countries.
There's a thing here, where...
(THUDS)
(CHUCKLING) On this screen. I can see the...
BONANNO: So, he watches... He watches people working there.
And they have little devices that give them shocks.
Uh, it's just regular fabric.
In the future, it'll be sensitive, smart fabric.
It's a little hot. (ALL LAUGHING)
That one looks better.