[wordup] WTO falls victim to spoof website

[Adam Shand]

The whole thing is hilarious, but this just tops it off:

  The main complaint made at the time, he said, was from a woman who
  said the phallus metaphor was inappropriate because women too can
  exploit workers. 

Damn straight. :-)

Adam.

Via: http://melbourne.indymedia.org/archive/features/2002/05/2002-05.html#3845
From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_2006000/2006536.stm
More: http://theyesmen.org/tro/

Friday, 24 May, 2002, 14:42 GMT 15:42 UK
WTO falls victim to spoof website
By Andrew Walker

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has found itself on the receiving end
of an elaborate internet hoax.

A group of anti-WTO campaigners, with a history of lampooning free
trade, have used an internet site purporting to be the WTO's own to
issue a statement that the organisation is being disbanded. 

The internet site concerned is very cleverly designed to look like the
WTO's one. It even uses as its address the name of the WTO's predecessor
organisation, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt).

A statement on the site says that current trade liberalisation rules
have led to increased poverty and inequality and have eroded democratic
principles - so the WTO is being disbanded and The main complaint made
at the time, he said, was from a woman who said the phallus metaphor was
inappropriate because women too can exploit workers. replaced by a new
organisation called the Trade Regulatory Organisation.

Fake conference delegates

It is of course not true, but it has prompted the WTO to issue a
statement warning journalists not to be taken in.

The group behind the hoax are called the Yes Men - despite the name they
are men and women, who describe themselves as a network of impostors. 

They have impersonated WTO officials on a number of occasions, using
satire to make their criticisms. As a result of the bogus website they
have received invitations to speak at conferences intended for the WTO's
Director General Mike Moore.

They have replied to some by saying Mr Moore himself was unavailable but
could send a substitute.

On one occasion, at a textile conference in Finland last year, the bogus
WTO official making a presentation removed his clothes to reveal a
golden leotard with a metre long golden phallus containing what he
called video interface which could be used to deliver electric shocks to
employees in the developing world not working hard enough.

A spokesman for the Yes Men said that nobody at the conference seemed to
spot the hoax.

The main complaint made at the time, he said, was from a woman who said
the phallus metaphor was inappropriate because women too can exploit
workers.