December 13, 2005

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WTO MC6: Day 2

The first day of the conference proper. Inside, the Americans have already upped the ante, saying the elimination of cotton subsidies (deemed a key project to helping developing countries) is tied to broader agricultural subsidy cuts and saying a heads of government meeting may be needed to take talks forward - that's a vieled sleight at trade ministers, saying they need their bosses to take over because they're all useless. Good luck to the city hosting that gathering!

But as usual there's far more interesting things happening outside the convention centre. The SCMP is going to town on this, with liftouts and massive coverage, including a prominent pointer to their website...which requires paid access, and a cheery "We welcome all the delegates and wish the meeting every success." That should put delegates in the right frame of mind! They even ask for "citizen journalists"...see below.

For those that are wondering what all the fuss is about, Jake van der Kamp save me from having to explain why Italian textile workers and Korean farmers are their own worst enemy in opposing free trade, stealing from the poor to give to themselves and missing the real problems of the WTO. The full article is below the jump.

Other reading

This will be updated throughout the day.

  • The SCMP has thoughtfully put together a graphic and article of all the crowd control techniques to be used. See below the jump at the bottom.
  • More amazingly, the SCMP is getting in on the "citizen journalist" act:
    Here is your chance to become a citizen journalist. With the WTO ministerial conference getting under way today, opportunities abound for capturing newsworthy images on your mobile phone or video camera. SCMP.com would like to highlight the very best video clips and still images produced by citizen journalists....The SCMP - and our readers - look forward to seeing your work.
    Remember, SCMP.com charges for online access. Outsourcing journalisms' moment has arrived! What if citizen journalists do a better job than the SCMP's own team? This citizen journalist thing seems to be taking off.
  • A look at the precautions the press are taking in covering "the story of the year". I imagine many reporters dream of reporting from a war zone, and this is as close as most Hong Kong journalists will ever get to it. That's partly why they are talking up the chances of violence.
  • That said, when the SCMP reports the Korean Peasants League considers suicides a legitimate option in protesting the WTO talks, you realise how lunny some of these people are. That said, this same group couldn't get themselves organised enough to book hotel rooms at the Metropole. Perhaps suicide is Darwin's way?
  • Doug Crets at Curbside reports on the security preparations for the big event, including that hotels are spending HK$500,000 each on security.
  • Lin Kui-Ming in The Standard has an excellent op-ed noting why Hong Kongers are not behind the protesters and the potential for violence is lower than in Seattle or Cancun: because Hong Kongers are pro-globalisation. Glutter explains her gut instinct is to support the principles of free trade. Also Joanthan Cheng describes why Hong Kong is a great example of the benefits of free trade.
  • Immigration let in Jose Bove, well known McDonalds renovator, into Hong Kong after a slight (6 hour) delay. All these detentions at the airport are amazing - I always thought you had to be a Filippino to be stopped.
  • Here's a peaceful motto for you: Derail, dismantle, destroy (via FH)
  • Over at Curbside ESWN translates a Chinese blogger on the WTO in Hong Kong: My mom, or terrorist.
  • Fortress Hong Kong girds for the WTO - another review of the expected chaos. With so much expectation, surely the reality can only disappoint?
  • A WTO protester's diary.
  • More pictures and reports of closures and disruption due to the meeting.
  • Shaky's swampy count is currently at zero.
  • Salon on why South Korean farmers are the WTO's most lethal enemy.
  • The protest march is going on as I type this (around 14:20 HK time) - as this sorry band march through the streets of Causeway Bay, it seems there are more people watching than protesting. It appears yellow rainjackets are the clothing du jour. As a co-worker observed, there's far less people in Causeway Bay than on a typical shopping day. No Korean farmers have committed suicide....yet. They're not going to get the WTO quaking in their sweatshop sneakers with this. For a bunch of peasants, they all seem very at home protesting in the big city.
  • Prominent blogger Dan Drezner is in town for the meeting. He's reporting on what's happening inside the ministerial meeting...which in short appears to be not much.
  • And it's official, the protesters are nuts. They are swimming in Victoria Harbour, just outside the convention centre. Not only is the water cold, it must rate as amongst the most polluted ocean water in the universe. One guy's carrying a South Korean flag. Perhaps this is the first attempted suicide?
  • The current score: Pro-WTO protesters: 1, everyone else: 0. The media's looking at a real problem: deadlines are starting to loom and nothing's really happened. Long Hair got peppered sprayed and that's about it. And there's acres of newspaper to fill? Actually, Hong Kongers are coming out winners: the traffic is great right now.
  • Aren't Hong Kong's cops looking spiffy in their riot gear. Talk about money well spent. And they haven't even got it dirty or spoilt yet! At the moment (17:00 HK time) we've got the cops, media and protesters all standing on the street looking at each other and waiting for something to happen. I dare someone to scream out "Korean rice farmers suck"!
  • It's been a couple of hours and the police line has held. Liberal use of pepper spray and there seems to be more spectactors than there are protesters. Dare I say this is more a "for media" production than a real protest. Long Hair seems to be receiving more than his fair share of pepper spare. Are other scores being settled?
  • Irony alert: Behind the scenes at Tamar, the official protest site...is a BMW showroom!

Protesters shoot themselves in foot when they oppose free trade

"Many workers have lost their jobs and their wages have gone down in Italy. The working conditions have also become worse. Textile workers in Italy are most affected. We have come to protest against the talks and we want to tell the world that workers' rights should be respected and we should not be exploited."

Italian protester
Anti-WTO rally

Let us take it straight to the statistics. I have in front of me a United States labour department survey on production wages across the world in 2004. It puts the average wage rate in Italy at US$13.10 per hour. At current exchange rates that would be more like US$15.50 per hour.

Now let's try some comparable production wage rates in poorer Asian countries. These were not covered by the US labour department survey as they fell below its horizons but I have them from statistics published directly by these countries.

For China we shall make it US$6. This is worked out as an estimate from the official figure of 14,000 yuan a year. For Indonesia we come to about US$3.70 and for Bangladesh about US$2.40.

Oh yes, there is one thing I forget to tell you. These last three figures are for average daily wages, not hourly and I believe we are talking of more than an eight-hour workday in these countries. Let us just say that the average Italian production worker is paid somewhere between 30 and 40 times as much as the average poorer Asian one.

So are we to take it as the Italian point of view that the rights of workers mean the rights of Italian workers only and that it is the right of Italian workers to be on the winning side of this income disparity forever?

It is certainly an interesting notion. Exploitation in Italy is unfair. Exploitation in Asia, well, who cares? If textile workers in Bangladesh can compete with their Italian counterparts, then they must be cheating and not allowed to export their wares.

Here is another one from yesterday's paper, this time from a representative of a South Korean farm workers union - "Many farmers feel desperate as they can't make a living in Korea and they are deprived of their right to survival ... The WTO supports free trade, but farmers' and workers' rights are totally ignored."

Now turn to the bar chart. It shows you a comparison of retail prices for rice in US dollars per kilogram for those Asian countries that publish these figures. The rice varieties vary but I have taken the premium variety in each case.

Yes, Korean rice farmers do not gouge their customers quite as severely as Japanese ones do.

Japan is a byword in the world for inefficiently produced and costly rice.

Korean farmers do quite well for themselves, nonetheless. If they still cannot make money from rice sold to consumers at seven times the price that prevails in poorer Asian countries, then perhaps they should do a bit of research on their rice growing techniques.

Try it another way. The red line in the second chart shows you the retail price in US dollars per kilogram of locally produced beef in Korea. The blue line shows you the equivalent price in Hong Kong. We in Hong Kong pay only about 11 per cent of what Koreans pay for a cut of beef and yet we raise no cattle ourselves. Of course, Koreans also have the alternative of imported beef and it costs them only a fourth of what their local beef does. This is what upsets Korean farmers. They want beef imports, already highly restricted, banned from their market.

If you were a Korean consumer and made aware of these facts, would you really have wanted to join Sunday's protests here against free trade?

I accept that the WTO is still somewhat of a rich countries club held hostage to the self-interest of its richer members. I also accept that this results in inequities for poorer countries.

But let us make a distinction between what wealthy WTO hypocrites say and what they do. What they say is right. Free trade is a very worthwhile cause for the world's poor. It is the only way to bring fair wages to those Bangladeshi textile workers and fair prices to Korean consumers at last.

What they do is another matter but it amazes me that so many protesters fail to make this distinction and protest against their own interests when they object to free trade.

sodoffswampy.jpg

Blunt facts about mob control

As the WTO ministerial gets under way, a key issue is an extreme form of customer relationship management: crowd control. The authorities have reason to fret about how the inevitable protests unfold because major WTO events usually degenerate into riots spearheaded by anti-capitalist radicals. In fact, violence has become such a staple that Grand Theft Auto maker Rockstar Games has developed a WTO riot game called State of Emergency. No wonder police are reportedly stocking up on riot shields and rubber bullets, while the Highways Department is ensuring paving slabs are firmly in place so that protesters cannot use them as missiles.


Despite the rise of internet- and mobile-phone-enabled planning, at its core, rioting remains an enduringly primitive, almost caveman-like activity. In contrast, the technology designed to curb and prevent it has evolved dramatically.

Originally, cops around the globe relied on sticks, sorry, hardwood batons, with which they battered demonstrators into submission. Stick fighting was destined to be superseded by rubber bullets and Tazer, both of which are potentially deadly; another successor, tear gas, is relatively harmless but can drift with the wind.

Hence the emergence of an armada of hi-tech alternatives. One, the "non-lethal acoustic device" pioneered by police in America, and now deployed in Iraq, uses loud, focused sound that can travel about 2km. Commenting on its power, the head of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department technology exploration program Commander Sid Heal reportedly said: "You don't appreciate how powerful this stuff is until you stand a mile away and can't see the transmitter - but can hear every word in a Queen song."

"At a quarter mile, it sounds as clear as a car radio; at a half a mile, you have to raise your voice to talk to the guy next to you; at three quarters of a mile, labourers raking up leaves were putting in music requests," Mr Heal said.

Up close, a blast can be disturbing enough to disperse a crowd. Closer still, the sound can be scary and painful - or worse.

Earlier this year in Jerusalem, the Israeli Army used a device dubbed "The Scream" to break up protesters. They must have scattered fast because The Scream emits noise at frequencies that affect the inner ear, inflicting dizziness and sickness, or even damaging hearing.

Another fearsome hi-tech crowd control weapon, the Active Denial System (ADS), fires a 95-gigahertz microwave beam meant to heat skin and cause pain, but no physical damage. Built by the Massachusetts-based hi-tech defence firm Raytheon, which prides itself on developing "hot technologies", the ADS is slated for deployment in Iraq by 2006.

The ADS resembles a TV dish, and rides mounted on a Humvee. Critics fear that, despite Pentagon assurances that it does no lasting damage, "Rumsfeld's ray gun" could cook victims, causing cancer, or just blinding them.

The pulsed energy projectile (PEP) built by California-based Mission Research and meant to be aimed at ringleaders, is a ray gun with a kick. The PEP fires an invisible plasma pulse that heats up the air so that it explodes and creates a "flash-bang" designed to rock and hurt, but not kill.

Nonetheless, like many non-lethal weapons, the PEP appears distinctly sadistic. The sensible solution may lie left-field. Think "calmatives" and gross, but gentle, "malodorants".

Calmative agents include a profusion of psychoactive substances whose effects range from inducing sleep to overpowering hallucinations. Some such as ketamine, which was used to treat combat casualties in Vietnam, manage both.

Malodorant agents ("stink bombs") have existed since the World War II. Blessed with names such as Who-Me?, they sound silly, but are crudely effective.

Guess which smell is most effective. Clue: in 2001, one obscure Texan biotech firm patented the smell of human faeces to secure its grasp on the ultimate malodorant, which would surely erode the will of any mob, no matter how angry.

Other offbeat options include sticky foam and super lubricants designed to cause slip-ups. To some, these innovations may seem rather slapstick and raise the spectre of the proverbial mad scientist.

However, if protesters play up here, the ideal tactic might well be to neutralise them with soft, strange weapons rather than get physical - that is, thrash and shoot them. Nobody wants to see the blood that defines a real state of emergency.
posted by Simon on 12.13.05 at 05:50 PM in the WTO category.




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Comments:

Why would the police use Queen music? That's not gonna disperse a crowd - it’ll attract one!

I know, I know .. at a mile.

posted by: shaky on 12.13.05 at 11:50 AM [permalink]

Trouble has started - some people have tried to swim to the convention center and also burning material has been thrown at the barriers. Don't know any more yet.

posted by: Flagrant on 12.13.05 at 04:57 PM [permalink]




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