How Trade Negotiations Work #2

If you found Ngaire Woods’ report on how the WTO works a little dry, you probably won’t appreciate the humour at this site, run by the Yes Men.

They’ve posted a press release from the WTO announcing a “Formalized Slavery Model for Africa”.
Save the Whales - Sell them

“The same can be applied to poor Africans”, claims GATT.org.

The press release continues

“a WTO initiative for “full private stewardry of labor” for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500 years of Africa’s free trade with the West.

The initiative will require Western companies doing business in some parts of Africa to own their workers outright. Schmidt recounted how private stewardship has been successfully applied to transport, power, water, traditional knowledge, and even the human genome. The WTO’s “full private stewardry” program will extend these successes to (re)privatize humans themselves.

“Full, untrammelled stewardry is the best available solution to African poverty, and the inevitable result of free-market theory,” Schmidt told more than 150 attendees. Schmidt acknowledged that the stewardry program was similar in many ways to slavery, but explained that just as “compassionate conservatism” has polished the rough edges on labor relations in industrialized countries, full stewardry, or “compassionate slavery,” could be a similar boon to developing ones.

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