I am in shock and awe. As I am preparing for my two presentations in Charleston at this weekend's Southern Economic Association meetings, I come across this story [original link deleted - no sense giving these folks any more hits than they already get] titled: "WTO Announces Formalized Slavery Model for Africa." Well, it's called "full stewardship" but it's pretty darn similar to slavery:

A system in which corporations own workers is the only free-market solution to African poverty, Schmidt said. "Today, in African factories, the only concern a company has for the worker is for his or her productive hours, and within his or her productive years," he said. "As soon as AIDS or pregnancy hits—out the door. Get sick, get fired. If you extend the employer's obligation to a 24/7, lifelong concern, you have an entirely different situation: get sick, get care. With each life valuable from start to finish, the AIDS scourge will be quickly contained via accords with drug manufacturers as a profitable investment in human stewardees. And educating a child for later might make more sense than working it to the bone right now."

The article ends with the Orwellian statement:

"This is what free trade's all about," said Schmidt. "It's about the freedom to buy and sell anything—even people."

Shock and awe....shock and awe.

Looks like I bit on sucker-bait. I should know that if it sounds too good, or too crazy, to be true, it probably is. The piece does read like an "Onion" piece, but the follow up links were so good that I actually considered it real. My mistake. More than one helpful reader has pointed this out and hence the retraction. One helpful reader emails to point out:

I hope you know that www.gatt.org is not the real WTO website. That site is actually run by a group called the Yes Men. They're basically a "satire" group that attempts to sabotage some organizations and corporations by releasing statements falsely under their names. More information at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_men

Mea culpa - the upshot is they got me.

All I can say is "whew."