Comment: The Yes Men (by Kristina Hunter)

In a world governed by the sole aims of maximizing the profitability of free trade at all costs, maybe we have something else that will knock our double-dealing corporation-saturated society into place.

It is Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum, two activists from New York, who lead us in uncovering how pathetic leaders and representatives for free trade and the World Trade Organization have become, in their documentary entitled The Yes Men (2003). In this documentary, Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum hilariously impersonate expert representatives from the WTO in order to finally give the people an honest speech about its true goals.

Yet how do these individuals on an identity correction mission even get invited to such high profile events? The Yes Men had set up a replicate website of the WTO at the domain gatt.org in 1999, but filled the website with the true aims and values of the WTO and their policies.

Being the oblivious society we have morphed into, people began to visit this site, not reading the parody of the content, and began to ask them to attend meetings and conferences, believing they were truly inviting representatives from the WTO.

Yet, when the impersonators began to give their proposals, which ranged from a democracy that gave votes to the highest bidder to developing a market in human rights exploitation to increase the efficiency of free trade, the reactions, or lack thereof, were shocking.

One would hope to believe that world trade lawyers and representatives at international trade conferences would show at least some signs of disgust, if not rage, when a representative from the WTO suggests using electric shocks to spur on workers, and even child laborers in developing countries, to maximize profit. But, the odd silence and mysteriously blank faces showing acceptance of such an indecent proposal dominated the response of all expert individuals, who are trusted to handle a large portion of world trade policies. One must begin to wonder what our world is coming to when proposals that create a market out of human abuse generates a response similar to one you would make when listening to the daily weather report.

The World Trade Organization is actually the "only international organization dealing with the global rules of trade between nations" with a goal to "improve the welfare of the peoples of the member countries" as so stated on their website. Yet, evidence seems to prove their goals lie mainly in improving the welfare of corporations in richer and more powerful nations. Anti-WTO activists are able to point out many things that simply make the WTO a corrupt international organization that has warped free trade into something that would revive Adam Smith from his grave to hack off the tentacles of the corporate WTO disguised in the name of free trade.

One example is that the policies of the WTO tend to create monopolies and commodities out of things we see as basic human rights like water, the genetic code or health care, according to Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. These trade agreements have patent protections requiring every single country signed under the WTO agreement to adopt a monopoly-like system where every company filling in a patent will have monopoly rights to market and distribute their product.

One monopoly that has been created is on the patented antiretroviral drugs used by patients with HIV/AIDS, which cost $8,000 per year per person for the patented version. Yet the generic non-patented versions, which did have to do research but were unable to access the monopoly protectionism price, cost only $400 per year.

Clearly, due to monopoly protection rights from WTO policies, generic drugs are prevented from being produced and purchased and people are forced to buy into versions of the drug that come from monopolies. In regions like Zimbabwe where health budgets lie at $118 USD per person (World Health Organization June 2005), these drugs become virtually unattainable.

The World Trade Organization outlines many things for which they have been bashed under "The 10 Misunderstandings" of the WTO, yet the Yes Men are determined to bust through the façade WTO would like to have us believe. One of their more memorable hoaxes to protest the WTO is the one that occurred in Salzburg, Austria.

An invitation was sent to The Yes Men through www.gatt.org, asking Mike Moore, the WTO's director general, to speak at a legal seminar for international trade. The Yes Men had "Mike Moore" decline the invitation but sent "Dr. Andreas Bichlbauer" as a replacement. Under the identity of Dr. Andreas Bichlbauer, The Yes Men delivered a radical lecture about factors that stunted free trade. Their proposals were alarming, yet one could say, true to the values of the WTO. Andy Bichlbaum suggested that human abuse was more than appropriate in the banana trade, given that prices remained low and free trade persevered, and that the siesta in Spain and the long lunches in Italy should be eliminated as they hindered efficiency. Finally he promoted the sale of votes through Voteauction.com. Even with politeness being high on the list of socialization skills we've acquired as a society, maybe we've become too polite as no one even challenged the ideas of "Dr. Andreas Bichlbauer" and only the comment made about the long lunches in Italy generated some shock. Does society teach us that it is rude to speak up against human rights abuse?

The Yes Men have definitely generated a stir and much-needed negative publicity for the WTO, yet will it be enough to have them rethink their agenda? Or have we, as a society, let the WTO grow into something too massive and powerful to even hope for a change in direction?

Maybe the Yes Men will help reverse the downward spiral we have fated ourselves to, or maybe our society has become too brainwashed and narrow-minded to see anything beyond our own lives in order to help those who are being crushed by trade policies that have made North America so powerful. Or maybe all The Yes Men will only ever be able to accomplish a few laughs and people will just drop off to shop at the corporate black hole known as Wal-Mart on their way to Blockbuster to return this film. But personally, I beg to differ as a massive movement of people are waking up and letting the WTO know that society has not been brainwashed enough yet to let them get away so easily with their hidden agendas.

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