| 1999 Seattle WTO protest notes |
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I20 people's celebration of the throne's theft
¹ local mirror of tactical refs from Justice Action Movement's inaugurAUCTION.org 2000 | ||
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daily recount with video Matt Drudge on Seattle net video procedure for the masses Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book 413K file online preface w/ link Next 5 Minutes ultra-rad Euro wireheads re tactical media in Linux vs Nokia civil war |
first person recount Blase Bonpane, Jr addressing Seattle judge who disparaged civil liberties when sentencing WTO protestors | |
tactic: Have video cameras & foldup tables ready outside jailhouse to document arrested protesters' narratives immediately after release.
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Gap's New Image 6.18.01
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Monday, Gap unveiled a new promotional display at stores nationwide. Faded black jeans hanging in front
of an anarchist-red banner, the words "INDEPENDENCE," "FREEDOM," and "WE THE PEOPLE" scrawled across
display windows in fake black spray paint. Despite the fact that Gap makes their clothes in sweatshops, and
have been subject to many demonstrations across the nation, they believe that the growing movement against
corporate power is now large enough to begin marketing on. Now the protest itself can be essentially sold to
consumers as an image.
Currently, the majority of consumers are unaware of how Gap stands on "independence" & "freedom." Gap
Inc. is the corporation under which Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic exist. All 3 companies have been
notorious for paying sweatshop workers as little as 11¢ per hour in the third world, denying them basic health
care and the right to form unions, as well as harassing, beating and forcing contraceptives on them. Sweatshop
workers generally work 12-14 hour days (although sometimes 24) and can be as young as 12 years old.
Although many of Gap's clothes say "Made in USA" they are actually produced in Saipan, a US territory where
normal US labor laws do not exist. |
C A U T I O N
As is customary with street actions, there were widespread reports of
provocateurs in league with police. Do not be surprised by this; you have no
excuse. This was even more prevalent in the VietNam war
protests. Provide badges concealed underneath clothing collars as
recognition symbols but don't put much effort into this because it will be
compromised early.
Hacktivists stage virtual sit-in at WEF website
"At first, the [WEF] website got more general traffic than it had experienced before. Then, [the site] had what
appeared to be an intentional denial-of-service attack, which made it impossible for people to access content," said
Akamai Technologies president Paul Sagan, called in by the WEF to get its site running again, and to shield the
WEF's web fare from additional protests. Sit-in organizing group Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) co-founder
Ricardo Dominguez, called the action a "global ya basta -- enough is enough!" Despite news reports to the
contrary, Dominguez & EDT deny responsibility for closing the WEF site. "EDT could not have taken the WEF
site down," he wrote in an e-mail," I think that something else happened to the WEF URL or, perhaps, the WEF
infrastructure is as badly built as the WEF's economic vision during the last 31 years."
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Deliberately shutting down a web site could be construed as hacking, which is theoretically punishable by up to 5
years in the prison and a $25,000 fine. "The idea is not to destroy or disrupt these [websites]. It's to disturb,"
Dominguez said. "It's a series of almost immaterial gestures that represent a mass community in protest. It's been
[likened] to being pecked to death by a duck." By being an electronic nuisance, Dominguez hopes to bring media
attention to his anti-globalization beliefs. "We don't have massive PR firms or the ears of the NYTimes. So we have
to make gestures that are attractive to the media," he said. This action, also promoted by groups like RTMark and
Federation of Random Action, did, during a protest period conspicuous in its silence, manage to capture the
interest of The Times, among others. But many activists were unimpressed.
"The 'protesters' assaulting the WEF web server are little more than petty fascists who see plurality of opinion as
dangerous, and are therefore the lowest of criminals themselves," posted one user to Indymedia.org, an online
gathering point for anti-globalization activists. Another wrote, "You scream to demand your voices be heard, yet you
distribute these tools to silence the voices of others? How hypocritical of you." "Oxblood," a member of the hacker
group Cult of the Dead Cow, added, "They use the metaphor of the sit-in. But it doesn't translate. There are no
sidewalks in cyberspace. No one walks past you and sees what you are doing. There's no chance to engage the
public. The public knows the site is down, but they don't know why."
Other groups staged their own technology-driven protests around the WEF meeting, which brought to the opulent
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel over 2,500 corporate and political big-wigs (with a few labor, religious, and environmental
leaders thrown in for good measure). Globalization foes created parodies of the WEF's official site using the
"reamweaver" software from online pranksters The Yesmen. Another group called The Bureau of Inverse
Technology sporadically hijacked the transmission of New York's National Public Radio affiliate to relay its own
radical messages. And The Institute for Applied Autonomy helped protestors avoid the surveillance cameras that
have become increasingly pervasive on the New York streets.
During last year's WEF meeting, a hacker group, "Virtual Monkeywrench," stole from the WEF site a private list of
27,000 names, incl former President Bill Clinton and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The list included phone
numbers, credit card data, and other personal information of participants. Dominguez, born in Las Vegas and
trained as a Shakespearean actor, began his activist career in the mid-1980's, when "AIDS started killing many of
my friends," he said. In response, he joined ACT-UP, the AIDS organization, and began leading agitprop theater
productions. Inspired by William Gibson, the novelist who coined the term "cyberspace," Dominguez in the early
1990's started teaching himself to code (these days, he's a broadband consultant and well-regarded Internet artist).
During that time, he claims, he helped develop a theory of electronic civil disobedience, a theory that was put into
practice when the Zapatistas called for a worldwide network of supporters.
Dominguez responded with his electronic sit-ins. He still continues to use the Zapatistas as inspiration for all his political actions. An online plea to join his most recent protest ended with a rambling, seemingly unrelated Zapatista screed. In 1999, EDT released the sit-in application to the public as part of a "Zapatista Disturbance Developer's Kit." Later that year, gay activists Queer Nation and Harvard student protestors used the tools to stage their own electronic protests. Among the Harvard demonstrators was Sasha Costanza Clark, who helped promote the WEF online action. Like Dominguez, he refuses to admit that their activities could have crippled the Forum's online presence. "I'm surprised the site went down," he said. "I wasn't at all expecting this."
Economist on Prague demos 9.00
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WashDC "Angry & effective" Threat of renewed demonstrations against
global capitalism hangs over next week's annual meetings of the IMF & World Bank. This new kind of protest
is more than a mere nuisance: it is getting its way.
Debt & development
N30, A16, S11, S26.
If you are part of the anti-capitalist resistance, these terms will need no explaining. Each denotes a day of protest
against 'corporate-led globalisation'. First came the World Trade Organisation's ill-fated ministerial meeting in
Seattle in November 1999; then the spring meetings of the World Bank and the IMF in April this year; next, the
World Economic Forum's gathering in Melbourne on September 11th; and, coming to Prague next week, the main
annual meetings of the Bank and the Fund. Each term also connects you to a website where the plans for the
demos, and other useful information for would-be protesters, are posted.
The approach is the same every time. A variety of ill-defined and sometimes spontaneous 'radical' groups'
environmentalists, feminists, anarchists, neo-communists, and assorted non-aligned malcontents, to name only
some, join to march on the streets. A 'convergence centre' is proposed, usually a disused warehouse. (As The
Economist went to press, the Prague venue had not been announced.) This is where protesters are housed and
fed (vegan food preferred); and where they receive medical and legal advice, plus training in 'non-violent'
civil protest.
The lack of hierarchy is ostentatious. The protesters have no leaders.They join small 'affinity groups'. Despite this,
the events are well organised. Possible activities include colourful puppets, street theatre, catchy slogans and lots
of noise, and for some (to quote the S26 site) 'pickets, occupations of offices, blockades and shutdowns,
appropriating and disposing of luxury consumer goods, sabotaging, wrecking or interfering with capitalist
infrastructure, [and] appropriating capitalist wealth and returning it to the working people'. The immediate
aim is to shut down, or at least badly disrupt, the meetings of the global elite. Afterwards, the movement evaporates
into cyberspace.
| 9.17.00 Salon Seattle's 23yr old K.Morrison was standing on the platform at the Bad Schandau train station in Germany waiting for the train to Prague. She planned to join some 12,000 demonstrators who sought to disrupt the 9.00 55th annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank in Prague. Morrison says she was approached by Czech Republic border police, who scanned her passport with a handheld computer. She was taken by train to another station, where police searched her belongings and informed her she was on the list of "persona non grata", not welcome in Prague this week "or in the future." |
Even so, this could be the biggest invasion of foreigners since the Russian army arrived in 1968. All these elitists
and anti-elitists will be crammed together into Prague's warren of narrow winding streets, a tricky situation for
the authorities. The Czech police have been co-operating with the FBI and the British police. Not noted for restraint,
they are inexperienced at dealing peacefully with large-scale protest. Some errant officers have reportedly sent
death threats to protest organisers. Meanwhile, some of the organising websites sound an ominous note. One of them, promises a 'mass working-class protest', dismissing Seattle as a
'passive ideological showpiece'. Neo-Nazi skinheads may turn up as well, to fight on one side or the other.
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Russia to discuss WTO entry with U.S. in July 7.7.01 Reuters
ROME Russia will use a visit of senior U.S. officials to Moscow later this month to seek the backing
of the United States in its drive to speed up accession to the World Trade Organization, a Russian government
official told Reuters on Saturday. Russia, which has identified quick and smooth entry to the multilateral trading
system a priority this year, is trying to secure support of the world's richest countries after the protracted talks
stalled last week over additional requirements put forward by the WTO. "We hope the problem will be resolved after
the U.S. top officials' visit to Russia," said a source at the Russian delegation, invited to attend Saturday's meeting
in Rome of finance ministers from the Group of Seven nations. ¹ He said
U.S. Treasury Sec. Paul O'Neill, Commerce Secretary Don Evans and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
are expected to visit Russia at the end of July and Moscow aimed to put the WTO accession issue high on the talks
agenda. |
World Bank president praises Putin ¹ 7.8.01 AP
ST. PETERSBURG The president of the World Bank praised President Vladimir Putin's promises of
economic and legal reform but said the changes should benefit everyone, not just the elite. Arriving in St.
Petersburg on Sunday, James Wolfensohn told reporters that the bank "fully backs what Putin is doing to transform
Russia into a very serious competitive state.'' Later, at the opening of an international conference on court reform,
he said he was "impressed with how elegantly and vigorously Putin was talking about the importance of judicial
questions.'' Putin has pledged sweeping reform of Russia's cumbersome and often corrupt judicial system, which
remains largely unchanged since the Soviet era. Bills introducing jury trials and requiring court orders for arrests
are working their way through parliament, but it will take years for some of the changes to take hold. Wolfensohn
said the overall goal of reforms, judicial or otherwise, should be to improve the standard of living of all Russians.
"The question of poverty is not just a question of money, it's a question that gets to the very rights of people,'' he
told the conference in the czarist-era Tavrichesky Palace.
He said St. Petersburg was an appropriate choice for the conference because it held Russia's first parliament,
before the Bolshevik Revolution, and Russia's first jury trial. The deputy chief of staff of Russia's presidential
administration, Dmitry Kozak, delivered a greeting from Putin and urged efforts toward developing an independent
judiciary. About 400 people, including justice ministers, judges and parliament members, were expected to attend
the conference. Wolfensohn arrived Sunday for a six-day visit that will include talks on World Bank projects in
Russia, including education reform and upgrading heating, water and sewage systems. On Monday, he will travel
to Moscow to meet with Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. Later he is to meet with Central Bank chief Viktor
Gerashchenko and Economic and Trade Minister German Gref, among other officials. |
Mr. Speaker, developing countries were sold a bill of goods, but so were we. Corporations, with the help of the
WTO, have forced workers throughout the world into a deadly game of chicken. The WTO should protect basic
social services and prioritize human rights and the environment in an environment that is democratic and
transparent. Instead, it hurts the poor, benefits the rich at the expense of us all, and it does it in secret and in back
rooms.
Mr. Speaker, this is no way to build a new world order. We need to put our money where our professed values are:
fair trade, democracy, respect for workers, sensible environmental standards, and allowing poor countries to
grow. Mr. Speaker, I have introduced the Corporate Code of Conduct Act because I do not think that freedom,
equality, human dignity and human rights are for sale. Unfortunately, the folks at WTO do not agree. They have
unleashed unbridled corporate excess on all of us. The current system is wrong and in need of a serious fix.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.
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