Broad and balanced?
On Thursday 14th November, bleary-eyed WTO delegates emerged in Doha after a days sleepless extension to announce a new trade round. Barry Coates has written a sizzling para-by-para critique of the announcement in openDemocracy, well worth a read. He describes it as making a mockery of the concept of a Development Round. Paul Hilder has responded, arguing its not all bad. Is globalisation coming into play ?
Fight the power
Meanwhile, bureaucrats from the Organisation are trying to shut down spoof site www.GATT.org, run by the Yes Men, a group of shadowy impersonators. The Yes Men get emails meant for Mike Moore of the WTO inviting him to speak at trade conferences, and respond and attend on his behalf, in deep cover. Their speeches are extraordinary and hallucinatory: 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.
A recent textiles conference in Finland saw a Yes Man WTO representative, Hank Hardy Unruh, stripping off his suit at the climax of his speech to reveal a shimmering golden outfit, the managerial suit of the future, with an enormous golden phallus as punchline. It seems most delegates applauded, continued to take him seriously, and conferred with him throughout the day.
The Yes Men have launched a counterstrike to defend GATT.org, releasing today a piece of open-source "parodyware" (http://theyesmen.org/yesiwill/) that will apparently "forever make this kind of censorship obsolete.
The software, called "Yes I Will!", automatically duplicates websites, changing words and images as the user desires. The WTO site can be made to speak of "consumers" and "companies" rather than "citizens" and "countries." Unleashed on the CNN.com website, the software can simplify the reporting even further by referring to Bush as "Leader," and the war in Afghanistan as one between "Good" and "Evil". The parody site updates itself automatically as the target website changes.
Democrats or terrorists? You decide.
Its all in the numbers
Strange news reaches us from an Indymedia site about CNNs coverage of demonstrations in Rome over the weekend. Apparently, at 2.20 AM on 11th November CNN published numbers close to reality (100,000 anti-war/40,000 pro-war); at 7.00 pm they changed the text, inverting the numbers to 100,000 pro-war and 20,000 anti-war. This text still stands on their site at time of writing.
Demonstration numbers are always contentious; and Indymedias notorious rumour about footage of Palestinians celebrating the WTC attack being reused from the Gulf War was proved false, so skepticism is in order. But this one seems to check out. CNNs story, which has been repeated elsewhere in the English language world, appears to be contradicted by reputable Italian outlets. Public broadcaster RAI calls the 100,000 anti-war figure credible, and estimates the pro-war numbers at 40,000. No less an authority than CNNItalia carries a story confirming 40,000 pro and 100,000 anti figures diametrically opposed to those of English language CNN.
An honest mistake? Perhaps. But CNN has not yet responded or corrected the error. Its no wonder conspiracies start and people switch to other media outlets.
Contact the Diary editor: dominic.hilton@opendemocracy.net
