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August 30, 2001 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WTO INTRODUCES NEW MEMBER Gold and one meter long, phallus is brand-new technology to control distant workers
Anti-WTO impostors have struck again, delivering a lecture about the rights of slavery, the stupidity of Gandhi, and the supremacy of free trade to an enthusiastic crowd of scientists, engineers, and marketing professionals--all of whom thought they were watching an official WTO representative.
The 150 experts at the "Textiles of the Future" conference in Tampere, Finland heard one Hank Hardy Unruh explain that Gandhi's "self- sufficiency" movement was entirely misguided, because it centered around protectionism, and that Lincoln, by outlawing slavery, had criminally interfered with the trade freedom of the South, as well as with slavery's own freedom to develop naturally. Had slavery never been abolished, Unruh said, today's much cheaper system of sweatshops would have eventually replaced it anyhow; following this free-market logic to the end, Unruh declared the Civil War just a big waste of money.
Finally, to applause from the highly educated audience, Unruh's business suit was ripped off to reveal a golden leotard with a three-foot-long phallus. The purpose of the "Management Leisure Suit", he explained, was to allow managers, no matter where they were, to monitor their distant, impoverished workforces and to administer shocks to encourage productivity--assuring that no "Gandhi-type situation" develop again.
"If a group of Ph.D.s cheers at such crudely crazy things, just because it's the WTO saying them, what else can the WTO get away with?" said Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men, the impostors' umbrella group. (The entire PowerPoint lecture is available at http://www.theyesmen.org/finland/, along with some shots captured by a video crew preparing a film on the Yes Men's activities.)
The Yes Men had a similar experience last October with a group of international trade lawyers (http://www.theyesmen.org/wto/). And in July, a member of the group, again passing as a representative of the WTO, appeared on a major television network show about protest's effect on the market (http://theyesmen.org/tv.html); among other things, he spoke about how the privatization of education will naturally eliminate "unproductive" thinkers from the high-school classroom, a long-term solution to the problem of protest. (Because the imposture was not noticed and the Yes Men hope for further appearances, the show's name is being withheld.)
In other quarterly developments:
* A conference session on techniques to counter anti-corporate activism, normally available for $225 to corporate clients, is available to activists for free at http://rtmark.com/prsa/, thanks to an anonymous donor.
* At the G8 protests in Genoa, activists distributed one thousand vanity mirrors, which were then used to reflect the sun into the eyes of attacking policemen; this fulfilled RTMark project MIRR (http://rtmark.com/archimedes.html), and those who carried it out received a $1,000 anonymous investment.
The "Archimedes Project" comes on the heels of the medieval catapult attack on the FTAA fortress in Quebec City, for which the workers were awarded $200. For the upcoming IMF protests in Washington, D.C., on September 29, an RTMark investor has offered $500 to any Lacrosse team that harnesses their skills and equipment to throw tear gas canisters back to the police (http://rtmark.com/fundhigh.html#LACR).
* A software development kit and book from http://hactivist.com, entitled "Child as Audience", allows anyone to reverse-engineer the Nintendo Gameboy. Because of content that many will find objectionable, RTMark has lent its corporate veil to the project, meaning that any legal flak will be absorbed by the RTMark corporate body rather than by those responsible.
* The same label that enraged Geffen Records with "Deconstructing Beck" is issuing its fourth RTMark-sponsored release, "A Mutated Christmas," a paean to musical sharing illegally assembled from copyrighted holiday music. Promotional copies will be available in late September; press and radio requests should be directed to mailto:illegalart at detritus.net.
RTMark's primary goal is to publicize corporate subversion of the democratic process. To this end it acts as a clearinghouse for anti-corporate projects. A list of just-added projects is maintained at http://rtmark.com/new.html.
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