i couldn't resist--


_ Exporting the Mess

Trade officials, corporations find market solutions to pesky protestors.

by Dennis Hans Dec. 7, 1999

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A batch of late-breaking news items from the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle highlight some profitable new approaches to handling dissent:

Innovative Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is getting rave reviews for his proposal to improve the world's chronic imbalance in the trade of political dissidence, by exporting protestors from rich nations to poor ones. Summers, who years ago made a less-well received suggestion that poor nations be paid to import the First World's toxins and trash, maintains that developing nations are woefully underprotested. He points to China, which has had to pretend that a handful of religious oddballs pose a political threat, and to Haiti, whose protesting ranks were thinned considerably by police killings in the early 1990s. So Summers was delighted to announce Friday that Haiti and China have agreed to remove tariffs on a range of rabble-rousing products, from outside agitators to union organizers. Within the next few days 20,000 will be packed onto freighters docked in Seattle; they should arrive in their new homelands in time for the holidays.

"The key to cementing the deal," said Summers, "was the cultural sensitivity of the Clinton administration. We want the American dissidents to fit in, so we insisted that the host governments show them the same courtesies they show local dissidents."

Several WTO protestors drew fines for hoisting banners and chanting slogans that had been copyrighted by Nike on the eve of the gathering. "The Whole World is Watching," "The WTO Must Go," and the menacing "You want your free trade? I got your free trade" are all now official trademarks of the shoe making giant. Offenders have 30 days to pay their fines; otherwise, they face up to two years hard labor in a prison sneaker factory.

WTO adjudicators issued their first ruling of the meeting, declaring that window breakers not only committed a common property crime, but had damaged Microsoft's market position. "Because the word "windows" is linked in the public mind with Microsoft's operating system," the ruling stated, "the act of 'breaking windows' can only be construed as an attack on the corporation's good name." The judges ordered Kevin Bunkee, 21, of Portland, and Julie Jencks, 19, of Peoria, to pay Microsoft $5.1 billion.

Seattle mayor Paul Schell said the city saved $50,000 on rubber bullets by buying in bulk from Malaysia. "Ten years ago, steep U.S. tariffs placed the Malaysian Rib Tickler® beyond Seattle's means," he said. "We were stuck with cheap -- in quality, not price -- domestic knock-offs. Thank God for globalization."

Monsanto Corporation announced the development of a genetically engineered protestor guaranteed to, in Monsanto's words, "get with the program." The Rebel 2000® is neat, clean and polite, and resistant to locusts, droughts and populist appeals. Monsanto anticipates that early next year the WTO will require grassroots groups to staff their organizations exclusively with Rebel 2000® activists. A Monsanto spokesman scoffed at the notion the Rebel 2000® is not a "protestor" in the true sense of the word. "The Rebel® will express his resentment toward the WTO and big, bad corporations in his clothing," said the spokesman. "Marlboro haters will wear Camel gear. Gap, Inc. naysayers will don Liz Claiborne or Tommy Hilfiger."

David Brinkley, former ABC news anchor and commentator and current spokesman for agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, was in Seattle to film a commercial. He told this reporter he was impressed with the "energy" of the protestors, then excused himself to rehearse his lines. "Who will fuel the SUVs of the new millennium?" he asked in his distinctive clipped voice. "By converting anarchists into ethanol, ADM can free America from its dependence on foreign oil."

Dennis Hans' satiric essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the National Post (Canada), the San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, and online at the MoJo Wire and Z Magazine, among other outlets.

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