Is this a joke? I mean, not that they wouldn't propose this...but would they use the word "slavery"?
...............
Yes, this is a joke or, more accurately, a spoof.
The World Trade Organization's real URL is this:
The source of the slavery story's URL is this:
A WHOIS search reveals the site's owner to be Andy Bichlbaum. A Google search for that name uncovers the following story:
Pranksters Sink the WTO
by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno & Bob Spunkmeyer
They started out as small-time pranksters. But when their fake WTO website began drawing invitations from around the world to speak on behalf of the World Trade Organization, they rose to the challenge
The connection? None. But for three years, we have traveled around the world to important meetings of lawyers, managers, engineers, and policy makers, where we have given elaborate and outrageous lectures about WTO policy—as WTO representatives. If you are of sound mind, you would see through us immediately. Yet to our surprise, we found we had absolutely no trouble fooling the experts.
[...]
<http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1176>
Bichlbaum is one of the founders of the Yes Men:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men>
.d.