119: The Yes Men

The Yes Men, a movie, follows a couple of anti-corporate activist-pranksters as they impersonate World Trade Organization spokesmen on TV and at business conferences around the world.

The story follows Andy and Mike from their beginnings with GWBush.com, and on to their tasteless parody of the WTO's website. Some visitors don’t notice the site is a fake, and send speaking invitations meant for the real WTO. Mike and Andy play along with the ruse and soon find themselves attending important functions as WTO representatives.
Delighted to speak for the organization they oppose, Andy and Mike don thrift-store suits and set out to shock their unwitting audiences with darkly comic satires on global free trade. Weirdly, the experts don’t notice the joke and seem to agree with every terrible idea the two can come up with.
Exhausted by their failed attempts to shock, Mike and Andy take a whole new approach for one final lecture.
The Yes Men is directed by Dan Olman, Sarah Price, and Chris Smith, whose previous credits include the 1999 Sundance Winner “American Movie.” It was released by United Artists. -  From http://theyesmen.org/movies/theyesmen

This is a documentary I watched today, which was quite interesting, funny and sad at the same time.

Within the documentary they show how these two guys go around to conferences and TV interviews, pretending to be representatives of the WTO. Within these interviews/conferences, they assume the opinion of the WTO, which is pro trade liberalization and so will always defend/protect the WTO as if they really are part of it. What they however do, is take these points to quite an extreme where they propose new policies which are quite ludicrous, but in a way do very closely resemble how the WTO works/operates -- it's just more emphasized.

So in the documentary for instance, they show how they go to a conference in Finland to talk about 'The Future of Textiles'. For this conference, they created this golden tight costume, which has got an inflatable penis attached to it, with a screen on the head of the penis. In this conference where lots of educated people are sitting, they showcased the suit on how managers can overcome the obstacle of work and monitoring their workers in Third World Countries while at the same time enjoying leisure time. So here, the suit is set up with monitoring devices and sensors, where the manager can keep an eye on the slave workers in Third World Countries and send them shocks to implants in their shoulders -- all from the suit.

At the conference, the guy who is doing the presentation is wearing the costume underneath his suit, and after his 'assistant' rips his suit off and the costume is revealed, he does a presentation of the suit along with showing an animation clip with all the benefits of this amazing suit. So this is one of the funny parts, because here's apparently a guy from the WTO, which is considered to be one of the representative points of capitalism and our current economic system -- walking around in this conference in a penis suit.

One of the sad parts however, is that they've been in this game for quite a while, and previously when they did this type of gigs, they were already going a bit 'over the top' but no-one seemed to notice that they were pulling a joke. They expected people to immediately find out what they were doing and get thrown out, but instead everyone received their message very well and encouraged what they are saying. So that's pretty scary -- where simply because the WTO represents that point of 'authority' -- people will simply accept whatever they say and support it, within believing that it's the right thing to do without being critical in anyway whatsoever.

So now with this penis suit, they thought it was going to be quite clear and they were pulling off a joke, and that they were going to be thrown out -- and as I was watching the moment in suspense, I was completely flabbergasted by the level of apathy in the audience and how they were not at all questioned or thrown out.

Some of the things you see in the documentary, where they do their speeches, are really quite disturbing and completely 'off of this world' and the complete zombie-ness of the audience/participators is just....scary.

I definitely recommend watching this documentary, as it clearly shows how our so called 'educational elite' is completely clueless as to what to do with this world, and are just brainwashed zombies who will accept anything 'society' throws at them from if they perceive them as an 'authority' -- even if what they throw at them goes beyond any form of reason and is completely ridiculous. It also shows the extent of the human problem and how much work there is to be done in terms of re-educating human beings and supporting them to for the first time become being with actual common sense and integrity. Because right now, humanity's really a joke -- and a bad one at that.

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Day 110: Evilution - Neocolonialism

This blog is a continuation to:
Day 98: The Unholy Trinity
Day 99: Money Votes
Day 102: Liberalism
Day 103: Abstract Equality
Day 104: We have to Protect our Freedom!
Day 105: Human Liberties
Day 106: Structural Adjustment
Day 107: Getting Reality to conform to an Illusion
Day 108: Virtual Democracies
Day 109: Politics as a Double-Faced Game

Let’s have a look at why many countries who are under Structural Adjustment Programs, came to turn to international institutions like the IMF and the World Bank.

Most of these Third World Countries had been previously colonised by the West.
During this time, the colonised countries’ existence was only relevant to the Colonising country in so far that it could use it for resource extraction or trade benefits. During the colonial rule, a lot of changes took place in terms of the colonies’ infrastructures. Infrastructures were built in relation to the country’s function, and like we just mentioned, this function was to serve the colonising country.

So any and all infrastructures built in these countries, were built to direct the flow of resources towards the West. Most of the time, these infrastructures were focused on only a few goods, like cocoa, tobacco, coffee.

So what happened after independence?

During the colonial rule, all these countries were submerged into the international economic/money system – they were now part of the game. When the colonial rulers left, they had no choice but to continue playing the game – the ties were already too much ingrained. So now they had to come up with a plan to be able to continue to play the game. Unfortunately, the only infrastructures in place in these countries in terms of international trade, were those to serve the West. So even though the colonial rulers left – these colonised countries still continued to play the exact same role after colonisation. Considering that there were many of these countries, and many of them focused/specialised on the same goods/crops – they were now competing with each other to get their goods sold to the West, which forced them to lower their prices as much as possible just to get their stuff sold.

Previously during the colonial rule, the occupiers would finance much of the country’s development that would further trade. Now that they had left, these third world countries were left with nothing. The only thing they could do to ‘kickstart’ their economies = was to borrow money.

Every since then, many of these countries went into Debt and have so far not been able to repay it.

The loans they get now, are conditional as seen in Day 98 and Day 106 – where not only these countries are at the mercy of the West economically – but now also have to conform politically. So in essence, nothing has really changed. Just through money, a new form of ‘indirect’ colonialism replaced the older ‘direct’ colonialism – but countries are still being exploited.

Look at it simplistically:

The West comes and colonises Third World Countries. They take their resource and built stuff which only serves the West. Then they go away and leave the Third World Countries alone, and let them plunge into massive Debt just for the sake of survival. But the only reason why they had to go into Debt, was because of the actions of the West.

I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense!

We call ourselves ‘civilised’ and ‘evolved’ – but we’ve really not changed at all, we’ve just gotten better at covering up what we do and make it sound more acceptable – while it is totally NOT.

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Day 106: Structural Adjustment

Next we will be looking at some of the main conditions that are called for by the World Bank and IMF, These conditions have been placed in order to ‘assist’ the borrowing country in economic growth so that it will be able to pay off its debts. In many cases though, the actual results from structural adjustment report that the borrowing country is worse off after having accepted a loan from the IMF/World Bank – while the rich countries are reap the benefits.

Government Reduction

The main reason the IMF and World Bank think that a country is unable to pay its foreign debt, is the assumption that the Free Market is being obstructed by government activity. Their rationale is that if the government gets downsized, markets will function more effectively, which in turn will stimulate economic growth.

In the case of government reduction policies the government requires to abandon certain functions so that the private sector can take these functions over and optimize them. In the areas or functions that the government still retains (because it is either impossible for the private sector to do it better or those functions that are hard to impossible to capitalise from but are a necessity for society) – cutbacks in spending and staff are demanded.

In most countries (both rich and poor), the government is the largest employer. In poor countries where a strong private sector has not yet been developed, the government is most often the dominant force in the country’s economy. Sudden and extensive cuts in government spending can leave hundreds of thousands of people jobless and contribute to a massive surge in unemployment. In addition to that, because the private sector is not as developed as in other countries, frequently the functions and services the government stopped providing, do not get continued by the private sector – because there is simply no-one to take it over!

Privatization

Government reduction goes hand in hand with privatization plans. Governments agree to lay off thousands of workers to prepare the way for corporations to privatize.
This however does not leave the private sector untouched by the IMF and World Bank. Privatization is often also affected by downsizing, as well as private employer assaults on unions and demands for wage reduction.

Labour Flexibility

IMF and World Bank often demand higher labour flexibility. This concept refers to the transformation of labour to a mere commodity. This policy promotes and enables companies to hire and fire workers, and change the terms and conditions of work with only minimal regulatory restriction.

The IMF/World Bank reason that if labour is treated like a commodity, the free market system will function more efficiently and effectively, which in turn will stimulate economic growth.

The theory however does not match up with reality. Joseph Stiglitz, former World Bank chief economist shared with ‘Multinational Monitor’: “The evidence in Latin America is not supportive of those conclusions. Wage flexibility has not been associated with lower unemployment. Nor has there been more job creation in general.” Where “labor market flexibility was designed to move people from low productivity jobs to high productivity jobs, too often it moved people from low productivity jobs to unemployment, which is even lower productivity.”

Wage Decompression

Wage decompression refers to the increasing of the ratio of highest to lowest paid worker. This concept is most commonly applied within the public sector where the government has the authority to regulate wages, and is done in order to “reduce government expenditure”. However, this concept is not applied to managers where the belief is held that higher pay is needed to attract high quality employees and to provide an incentive for hard work.

Sometimes the World Bank and IMF also apply wage freezes, wage cuts and wage rollbacks in the private sector (where the minimum wage is frozen or reduced). These various policies of wage adjustment are often referred to “wage flexibility”.

Pension Reforms

Pension reforms come down to the implementation of lower benefits, provided at a later age – along with the privatization of social security

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Day 98: The Unholy Trinity

The World Banks, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trading Organization (WTO) – together they form the ‘Unholy Trinity’.
Together these three organizations form a vast and extensive set-up that enforces a neo-liberal economic ideology through conditional lending and foreign aid

The World Trade Organisation

At the end of World War II, it was proposed that a global economic organisation ought to be established. This organisation – the International Trade Organisation (ITO) – would have the task of establishing rules relating to world trade, business practices and international investment.
Through opposition of the United States though, the ITO never came into being.

Later on, some twenty-three countries entered negotiations in relation to tariff reductions. These negotiations led to tariff reductions affecting roughly one-fifth of world trade. Among the tariff reduction negotiations, other agreements were reached on rules of trade. These agreements become known as the ‘General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade’, also known as ‘GATT’.
Through the establishment of the GATT, trade barriers were gradually brought down and world trade started growing. Throughout the years, non-tariff trade related barriers started demanding more and more attention as the tariff subject was becoming of lesser importance. It was decided that a new organization should be set up to replace the GATT. This organization is now known as the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The WTO carried over its key principles from GATT: non-discrimination and national treatment.
These two principles are integrated in the overall mission of the WTO, which encompasses the promotion of fair competition, insurance of market access, encouragement of economic development and economic reform.

The World Bank & the International Monetary Fund

Besides the WTO, two other global organisations were set up after the events of World War II: the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
To avoid re-experiencing a complete collapse of economic relations which had followed the First World War, discussions were held between countries regarding the shape of post-war international economic order.
The end result of their regular discussions was the formation of a framework of what would become the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank).


The function of the IMF is to provide its members loans under different programmes (short, medium and long-term). Each member country is charged with a particular quota for their membership which is in proportion with their economic power. The same way, will the voting power of a country within the IMF and World Bank depend on their economic wealth. As a result, the United States holds for instance 20% of all votes – while 43 African countries together hold less than 5%.


The IMF’s most prominent role is to intervene, on request, whenever a country is experiencing a crisis in its international payments. The price countries pay for a loan is an agreement by the borrowing country to make fundamental changes to its economy (which generally means making amendments to the government and its relation to the free market) – to prevent the reoccurrence of the same problem. These requirements are known as “IMF conditionality” or “structural adjustment policies”.


Originally the World Bank was known as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). The name clearly indicates that the main purpose for creating the organisation was to assist with the reconstruction of countries that had been badly affected by World War II. As time went by the countries affected became more stable, it was suggested that undeveloped countries could benefit from capital investment to speed up the development process. In the meantime the IBRD has become one of five subgroups within the World Bank. Each group has a different focus – though all groups are related towards the development of poor countries, and only developing countries are allowed to borrow from the World Bank (unlike the IMF).

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