A Brilliant Hoax: WTO Disbanding Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - "Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory" A Brilliant Hoax: "WTO Disbanding" Rumor and burlesque definitely have a place in social action movements. The story of the impending disbandment of the World Trade Organization [see http://www.gatt.org ] is patently false...but let's keep the lie in the family for a while and let the WTO itself clean the egg off its face, even though it was smeared on by someone else. (Background for those who missed this story: On May 23, a press release, purportedly issued by the World Trade Organization, began to make it's way around the Internet. In both language and sensibility antithetical to the entire project of the WTO, the press release began: "After a protracted and detailed review of current trade policy and its effects on developing countries, the World Trade Organization has decided to effect a cessation of all operations, to be accomplished over a period of four months, culminating in September. The WTO will reintegrate as a new trade body whose charter will be to ensure that trade benefits the poor. "As of September, agreements reached under the WTO will be suspended pending ratification by the new organization, tentatively referred to as the Trade Regulation Organization. Many existing agreements are likely to be re-ratified, but each will be subject to individual review for compliance with the TRO's charter, which is based upon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights....") What really happened is that an ingenious group of anarcho-pranksters registered the Internet domain gatt.org (after General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and built a bogus website that legitimately mirrors many parts of the World Trade Organization's site. But they stuck in a few pages that decidedly were not authored by or documents of the WTO, including the bit about the WTO disbanding and restructuring. These pages look bona fide, even down to the colors, typefaces and formatting, which match, in every detail, the real site of the real WTO. All in all, a brilliant job--first rate political satire! This hoax is reminiscent of the one pulled off in the 1970s by Guy Debord and Italian Situationist Gianfranco Sanguinetti. Sanguinetti authored, under the pseudonym "Censor", a document entitled "Rapporto verdico sulle opportunita di salvare il capitalismo in Italia" ("A Truthful Report on the Opportunity for Saving Capitalism in Italy") and privately circulated it among several hundred of the most influential and prominent members of Italy's ruling class. His report appeared to be authored by a member of that class, and it was a calculating, sinister and coldhearted blueprint for saving and perpetuating capitalism. The ruling class and its media thought it was brilliant and praised the text, although a closer reading of it would have revealed how unscrupulous capitalism and capitalists can be. When Sanguinetti "came out", as it were, as the real author of the report, the ruling class, thoroughly embarrassed, was forced to squirm out of the kudos it had lavished on the report, and had to unacknowledge what had previously been acknowledged. But by that time, the damage had been done--the thoroughly inhumane dynamics and motivations of capitalism had been made transparent throughout Italy. For more background, see http://www.notbored.org/report.html . Equally scandalous in its day was Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" (1729). His proposal--that hunger and famine in Ireland could be alleviated by allowing the poor to eat their own children--stunned and shocked polite bourgeois society, which had not a clue that "A Modest Proposal" was satire of the most vicious kind. The result, though, was that both England and Ireland were forced to admit that hunger existed and was quite widespread; Swift's tract also furthered the rising tide of Irish nationalism. "A Modest Proposal" can be found at http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html . --Bill Koehnlein ***** A whois search for gatt.org reveals the following: Search Results Registrant: Prince & Associates Inc (GATT5-DOM) 1414 17th St Suite #300 NW Washington, DC 20036 Domain Name: GATT.ORG Administrative Contact, Technical Contact: Prince, J (JP4605) jonathan@KILLYOURTV.COM Prince and Associates Inc 1414 17th St #300 NW Washington, DC 20036 US 202-462-8537 202-462-8537 Record expires on 01-Nov-2002. Record created on 31-Oct-1997. Database last updated on 24-May-2002 02:25:34 EDT. Domain servers in listed order: NS.CYBORGANIC.COM 209.220.30.170 NS2.CYBORGANIC.COM 64.0.199.170 It seems unlikely that the administrative contact for the website of GATT or the WTO would have an email address at the domain "killyourtv.com", doesn't it? A whois search for killyourtv.com shows that the GATT site and the killyourtv.com is registered by... Search Results Registrant: Prince & Associates Inc (KILLYOURTV-DOM) 1414 17th Street NW #300 Washington, DC 20036 US Domain Name: KILLYOURTV.COM Administrative Contact, Technical Contact: Prince, J (JP4605) jonathan@KILLYOURTV.COM Prince and Associates Inc 1414 17th St #300 NW Washington, DC 20036 US 202-462-8537 202-462-8537 Record expires on 27-Apr-2004. Record created on 26-Apr-1997. Database last updated on 24-May-2002 02:27:30 EDT. Domain servers in listed order: NS230.PAIR.COM 209.68.2.75 NS000.NS0.COM 216.92.61.61 ...and the domain name servers are held at: Search Results Registrant: Cyborganic Media (CYBORGANIC-DOM) 2261 Market Street, Suite 100 San Francisco, CA 94114 Domain Name: CYBORGANIC.COM Administrative Contact, Technical Contact: Steuer, Jonathan (JS108) jonathan@CYBORGANIC.COM 2261 Market Street, Suite 100 San Francisco, CA 94114 415.551.5144 Record expires on 10-Nov-2002. Record created on 09-Nov-1993. Database last updated on 24-May-2002 02:28:38 EDT. Domain servers in listed order: NS.CYBORGANIC.COM 209.220.30.170 NS2.CYBORGANIC.COM 64.0.199.170 So...go to all three sites: http://www.gatt.org http://www.killyourtv.com and http://www.cyborganic.com You might enjoy what you find. And, to set the record straight, the real URL for the real World Trade Organization is http://www.wto.org Search Results Registrant: WTO (WTO-DOM) c/o UNICC, Palais des Nations Geneva, 10 1211 CH Domain Name: WTO.ORG Administrative Contact: Name Service Administrative Contact (NSA13-ORG) ns-admin@UNICC.ORG UNICC Palais des Nations 1211 Geneva 10 CH +41 22 929 14 11 Technical Contact: Name Service Technical Contact (NST4-ORG) ns-tech@UNICC.ORG UNICC Palais des Nations 1211 Geneva 10 CH +41 22 929 14 11 Record expires on 20-Apr-2003. Record created on 19-Apr-1995. Database last updated on 24-May-2002 02:36:23 EDT. Domain servers in listed order: NS.UNICC.ORG 192.91.247.3 NS1.IP-PLUS.NET 164.128.36.34 DXMON.CERN.CH 192.65.185.10 ********************************************************************* "The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated." --José Martí ********************************************************************* The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory http://www.toplab.org ********************************************************************* ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytmed-05.24.02-05:13:47-14509