the closest thing to citizen journalism i saw the post doingwas Post writer Norma Connoly holding her own video camera at the ''riot.'' but i haven't seen everything and shis is just a personal comment.

One more chicken skinned and boned.

Regarding your response on 'cultural imperialism', free trade does not offer choice. There are many examples where aggressive Western companies stamp out the 'choice' - for example, there used to be several alternatives to Coca-Cola in India, such as Thumbs Up, but all competitors (locally run) were bought out. Even in Hong Kong, (one of the world's 'freest' economies) there is an oligopoly of only two supermarkets (no-one else can set up and compete mostly because Wellcome and/or Park n Shop tend to own the shopping centres too).

Basing the WTO on the Convention on Human Rights WOULD help matters, as it would mean the WTO would become a regulatory body to protect people - who are actually more important that enriching an already rich circle of executives. Companies must be regulated more, not less - as profit will always be put over people and the environment.

Governments DO try tot protect human rights, but are not allowed to maintain or set up laws to protect workers or the environment as these are 'barriers to trade', and the WTO will override them.

Let's take a look at some of the 'artificial barriers and constraints' the WTO is looking at scrapping in the talks here...
• Energy efficiency labelling on appliances such as washing machines, fridges and irons (challenged by Korea, USA and China).
• A European Union scheme that ensures imports comply with health, safety and environmental protection laws (challenged by China).
• Labels which show whether a product is recyclable or from sustainable sourcing.
• Safety testing on imported foods, like compulsory testing for lethal toxins in shellfish.
How do scrapping these benefit anyone except corporate stock prices?

I feel you are taking the WTO's mantra at face-value, looking beyond the WTO website will reveal the true nature of this powerful and oppressive organisation. I also feel that just by spending a few weeks living amongst the people these policies worse affect would change your outlook. If we’re going to have capitalism – which of course I have reservations about too - it must at least be a level playing field.

For those interested in my activism, and why I'm in a 'flap' over the WTO, I'm collecting some articles here on my website... http://www.globalcitizen.co.uk/rants/activism.html and will be making a tit of myself across the province over the next week.

Apologies for any typos or if I missed anything – this was written in a bit of a rush!

Cheers....
Tom - HK chicken man.

Again, Korean peasants dominate local Chinese newspapers.

Your first sentence betrays you, chickman. Free trade only offers choice. It does not force consumers to buy. It does not force companies to close. It just allows people choices. If you don't like capitalism, that's another debate. But Coke coming to dominate in India is about Indians liking Coke. Don't blame the company - they play by India's national laws and consumer choose. That's the system working.

I don't understand why you want to turn the WTO into a regulatory body, given your first arguement said it wasn't democratically elected (true) and that was a bad thing (false). What do you mean by "protect" people? What kind of company regulations are required? Give me examples that we can talk about, not generalities.

What WTO treaties do is prevent governments from hiding trade protection measures behind "environmental" or "workers" standards.

I'm happy to take the WTO at face value - it's proved exceptionally beneficial to millions so far.

I entirely agree with Simon on this one. Why set up committees to try to legislate how to help everyone in every single market? History has shown that is unlikely to work.

No, the best thing the WTO can do for consumers worldwide is to bring down the prices of goods by cutting tariffs - which then end up with governments that waste it by going to meetings like these.

I'm pretty cool with capitalism and free trade, but the chicken does have some points on problems with the WTO's potential vision of free trade. In particular, I'm thinking of the examples of challenges to labelling (eg energy labelling on products) as a barrier to free trade. In both cases, absence of such labelling reduces consumer choice.

Sure, consumers could do their own research, but let's be realistic. Compulsory labelling empowers consumers and lets them make more informed decisions about issues that their (in the West, at least) democratically elected government deems to be a health, environment or other relevant issue. However, these requirements are being increasingly challenged on the basis that they are artificial barriers to trade which are prohibited under WTO obligations.

Another downside of the current WTO arrangements is that countries (eg China) are able to challenge another countries imposition of health checks on food. In the time of SARS and bird flu, this is quite worrying. As an example of where the WTO framework (? may have be another multilateral treaty) has been used to challenge such things in the past, see the US's challenge to the EU's ban on sale of meat containing growth hormones (if I recall correctly, they were found to be in breach of trade obligations and have maintained the ban and just paid the monetary penalties).

This doesn't mean I'm anti-WTO in general eg I think the Korean farmers are contemptible. However, it's a bit easy to oversimplify the argument to pro-free trade vs anti-WTO. There's a lot of nuances which are lost on both sides of the debate, which lets some real concerning issues slip through.

There's also a lot of dumbing down, particularly on the anti-WTO side. I read a booklet earlier this week claiming that the WTO was the cause of increasing rural poverty and suicide in the PRC, which completely misses the reality of the situation. From discussions with anti-WTO protestors (and I know a fair few), I suspect that some of them go to developing nations and, through a process of selective education, lead garment workers et al to believe that the WTO is responsible for all economic-related suffering. I base this suspicion on discussions with some protestors over various meals, attendance at some of their seminars (which varied in coherency and relevancy from poor to good) and their materials.

However, the dumbing down of the opposition doesn't free the "I like free trade in general"-minded proponents from thinking hard about what the WTO regime actually does and where its downsides are.

Just to add one note - I support limited violence against protestors if they are behaving idiotically. If Chicken Man is the guy who was standing behind the HK TV presenter who was wearing a hard hat - I'm fine with the crew forcibly turfing you out of the way. Whatever the validity of your point re: the hard hat being unnecessary, you demonstrated a fundamental lack of comprehension of the Cantonese audience who would take your behaviour as justifying the reporters attire.

Some of the arguments you raised in your post are quite valid, but it's all lost in the presentation of a big loud gwailo wearing a chicken suit.

Are you familiar with the Bruce Springsteen classic, "Atlantic City"?

Opening Line: "Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night // now they blew up his house too//Down on the boardwalk they're gettin' ready for a fight // gonna see what them racket boys can do"

Not that I'm suggesting anything! Just free association at work. Even though I don't agree with much anything of what the anti-WTO people have to say, I do support their right to peaceful protest, because if nothing else, it reminds us all that behind words like 'corporate restructuring' and 'mid-career re-training' are real people with families to feed.

I'll try and respond quickly to all comments; I'm a busy chicken this week. I've never partaken in a debate online like this before, but it's fulfilling as usually I preach to the converted…

SIMON:
The example of Coke dominating in India may partly be due to Indians liking Coke, but they've also bought out all competitors. This is no good for India and certainly doesn't create choice, if they stamp out the competition. My point also stands on supermarkets in Hong Kong - an example on our doorstep - there's little choice there. I also believe there are only 1-2 choices for power in HK. More regulation is required, not less - as the polices of 'free trade' demand.

Regarding what regulations are required: Laws on child labour, slave wages, working hours and conditions are all irrelevant under the 'free trade' idea. The WTO could reform and incorporate minimal standards for countries and companies to follow on each of these issues. And I've already given examples of some of the environmental regulations they're trying to scrap at this meeting - do you agree with them being overridden?

Regarding its undemocratic nature - I may have been misunderstood. I don't expect elections to be held in each country to decide who represents them at the meetings - rather, the organisation needs to allow working people, perhaps unions, to have a say in proceedings. I'm no economist, but when something has this much power, it is absurd that we don't have any input. Plus, the whole thing should be more transparent so we know what is being decided on our behalf.

And the WTO has done more harm than good - sure, the glossy website and such all looks great on paper (as does communism, capitalism etc...)

TIU FU FONG:
You've got the wrong idea about my TVB / ATV run-in. And it happened tonight too, live on Pearl. I was totally peaceful; the hard-hat only became 'justified' when the crew attacked me. I may file a complaint with the Journalist's Association - but I've got hold of the video (which I'll have a link on my website to soon), and it seems I did more harm than good for our side. In reality, I may have made the scene more dramatic and the reporter said, in Cantonese, that I was trying to stop the broadcast. Over the next few days, I'm toning it down to a Cantonese sign and will be filming the crew so I have evidence of their ridiculously violent behaviour.

As I said, it was peaceful direct action - subverting/hijacking a live broadcast on a station that is blurring the facts - and if you were there, I think even you guys would agree.

Doktor: I have never said the WTO is perfect. Far from it. Most free trade advocates have beefs (pardon the pun) with the WTO, and I've said elsewhere there is actually significant common ground between the anti-WTO protesters on the streets and us free-traders. I don't know the arcana of the labelling debate, but I know that more regulation and rules often act as artificial barriers to trade as much as they are about enhancing consumer choice. The same applies to health checks - Japan has only just allowed American beef back into the country, after a 3 or 4 year ban sparked by the Mad cow disease fear. Previously America exported more than US$1 billion of beef to Japan each year. Often the science does not support these "health checks", and that's when there are challenges under WTO rules. That is the case in the EU/US battle.

The crux is the battle is not pro-free trade vs anti-WTO. It is pro- and anti-free trade; and seperately pro- and anti-WTO. There are many subtleties to consider in every issue, and trade issues are particularly nuanced. I agree there are plenty of shades of gray. Your anecdotes about anti-WTO activities in developing countries are particularly worrying; but you are right that those of us on the other side also are responsible for pushing our side, rather than sit smugly knowing we're right.

Chicken man:

I'm happy to continue this debate in public, whenever you like. In the interim...

Coke is a big company with lots of money. That is because many people like what they sell. It also means they can buy smaller companies from the owners of those smaller companies. This is capitalism. Many countries (not HK) have competition laws to prevent dominant companies from abusing market power, to curb any excesses. But I don't see the problem in India having fewer Coke brands. As for your HK examples, you are right, the city is dominated by oligopolies, especially in capital intensive industries such as power or logistical ones such as supermarkets. Hong Kong is a small market and even with a competition law such oligopolies would exist - the same happens in Australia. Are consumers worse off? Hard to prove, but not demonstrably so. At times the goverment may regulate the industry (such as power in HK), but that leads to perverse incentives (such as over-investment in HK's case).

In short, usually more regulation is the problem, not the solution. Who would you rather sort out problems? Government bureaucrats or the market place? I suggest reading Wisdom of Crowds if you want the answer.

As for your proposed regulations, these are the very misguided policies that developing countries hate. Child labour laws make Westerners feel good while leaving poor workers in developing countries without any means to support themselves. One man's "slave" wages are another's pay packet. I'm not saying it's fair. The world isn't a fair place. But imposing such policies harms those you are patronisingly trying to "protect". People in developing countries know the potential that schooling offers, but sometimes having enough to eat matters more. Minimum wages destroy jobs by creating an artificially high price of labour. To give an example, if the government said Coke must cost $10 a can, fewer people would buy Coke and less Coke would be made. That's a sub-optimal result, beacuse there are people that would buy Coke for less and there are people who would sell it for less. Generally messing with markets makes a mess of things.

The WTO does allow NGOs and unions a say. Pascal Lamy has gone out of his way to canvas opinions from outside the governmental framework. But the WTO is, in the end, a Governmental body. What's the absurdity?

The case you fail to prove is "the WTO has done more harm than good", and that the WTO has so much power. The WTO only has the power that governments agree to give it, and that is only for dispute resolution. Otherwise it is only a platform for negotiating a multilateral treaty, which individual countries then agree to and ratify. Part of the WTO's problem is it has no power - it's power comes from that which its members give it.

The other thing you could mention Simon is that child labour laws drive very large numbers of children into prostitution and slavery because that is the only option left to earn money.

Simon, I'd think more deeply about how "minimum wages destroy jobs by creating an artificially high cost of labour".

As you must have seen from various sources, particularly in textiles and shoes, for example, manufacturing labour is an incredibly small part of the overall cost base of most fashion good companies with international supply chains. (I believe we generally hear about figures like under $1 for shoes costing $150.)

As shoe manufacturing has moved to cheaper countries (not under the control of the brand owners, but their subcontractors) the savings made would have shown up in the subcontractors and brand owners' shareholder returns.

If (say) labour prices doubled overnight, while shareholder returns would be affected, I'm quite confident that *demand* wouldn't, because the cost of labour isn't a material part of the total cost of the shoes.

In the case of a domestic economy, I'd point out to you that in a broad sense, better paid workers have more money to spend and are better able to e.g. ensure that their children get basic education, which benefits everyone (except providers of capital in the short run.)

I totally agree with you that these things (and other issues like health and safety standards) are the provisions of governments, not the WTO. However, the WTO's ability to rule on those issues, and the fact that its policies have deep consequences on a lot of the stakeholders, mean that it also carries some resposibility.

Effects of specific policies aside, the protestors are simply vocalising to what could be a legalistic body that looks at trade in very narrow terms that their policies affect real people in the outside world.

Dave:

You are partly right, and in fact hit the nail on the head. These policies are the responsibility of governments. The WTO is an intergovernmental forum. But it is not the right place to introduce policies that are the responsibility of national governments. Who is the WTO to tell China that it must pay its textile workers US$5 an hour? Even if it is a small component of the cost of textiles, at the margin it is significant enough to make a difference - otherwise why the scramble by the both the Americans and EU to negotiate "deals" restricting textile exports despite the ending of restrictions at the start of 2005.

Your Henry Ford argument is right - if you pay workers more, they can afford to buy your products. But that's up to the employer to decide.

As I said elsewhere - the world isn't fair. Some countries have low wages, wages far below what people would for in developed countries. But already China is finding upward pressure on wages as migrant labour starts to demand more money and labour shortages emerge in Guangdong. The market can sort these things out with a minimum of fuss.

I should add I'm no advocate of abusing human rights. Slavery and indentured labour is clearly wrong. But I still see minimum wages as doing more harm than good...and I've thought and studied this topic extensively.

But I do understand that people want their voices heard by the WTO, so that negotiators realise the consequences of their policies. I think that's already been done effectively by some groups (Oxfam springs to mind) but not by others (Korean farmers). The negotiators are all from governments, and even if not democratically elected governments depend on popular will to exist. They are constantly reminded of the protesters desires and Pascal Lamy goes out of his way to incorporate outside voices, despite no legal need to.

I am off to Nam for Christmas (please restrain yourselves before the ironic 'chicken flu' comments start to flow), but I'll try and respond to what's written above before I go... In the meantime, here's a letter I've circulated to the HK press.

Bear in mind that I was actually present at all of the major scuffles, and peacefully witnessed what really happened...

Dear Sir,

The scare-mongering sensationalist media circus, the over-the-top policing and bleeding hearts about Hong Kong's broken history of peaceful protest have all became quite tiresome.

I spent the week and preceding month touring the city in a chicken costume to raise awareness of the WTO's true nature. I worked to trivialise and undermine media attempts to create a climate of fear by decorating riot shield lines with Christmas decorations, I also subverted live TV broadcasts as the anchors went to air donning helmets especially to exaggerate the level of danger, when there was absolutely no threat.

I was amongst the 99% of completely peaceful demonstrators (who were still tear gassed without warning!). Those who caused disturbance were NOT 'rioting' in a chaotic 'war zone', smashing up shops, cars and infrastructure or beating up civilians and policemen. They were simply trying to get to the Convention Centre and the police were an obstacle. This 'militant mob' picked up litter and returned police shields after their protests and it was never more than a few dozen activists at the front using force to break police lines.

If a country invites the WTO to their city, authorities should not be surprised if some of the millions of desperate people it affects turn up to express their anger. I was shocked by the diabolical lack of journalistic integrity and fairness shown by reporters and have set up a website detailing my observations at www.tvb.wxs.org .