<nettime> _the reg_: WTO head blames violence on 'dot com types'

["nettime's_roving_reporter" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

     ['very nettime'--tbyfield]

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/20242.html>

   Dot-commers to blame for anti-capitalist violence, says WTO boss
   By Andrew Orlowski
   Posted: 06/07/2001 at 22:12 GMT

   "Dot com types" are to blame for the violence at recent gatherings of
   the World Trade Organisation, according to WTO director general Mike
   Moore.

   Moore made his remarks in Geneva, in an appeal for citizens groups
   (NGOs) to distance themselves from "masked stone-throwers who claim to
   want more transparency, anti-globalization dot.com-types who trot out
   slogans that are trite, shallow and superficial," he said.

   Which came as news to us. We thought "dot com" types were too busy
   braying into mobile phones and snorting enormous quantities of
   Bolivian marching powder as they vandalised a communication
   infrastructure created at great public expense for research purposes,
   with marketing plans that would get a six year old suspended from
   kindergarten for frivolity.

   They'd certainly be the last group we'd suspect of complaining about
   capitalism.

   "Critics, who are not all mad or bad, frequently say we have too much
   power," Moore conceded generously.

   Moore then went on to propose a contract demanding "transparency from
   NGOs as to their membership, their finances, their rules of
   decision-making," which most citizens groups will find deliciously
   ironic.

   Alas, we suspect, he was being serious.

   A full text of Moore's speech can be found here[1] ®

   Related Story
   Police caused more damage to IT firms than protestors[2]
   
---
[1] <http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/spmm_e/spmm67_e.htm>
[2] <http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/18688.html>






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