News ·
Thom Yorke argues for fair trade in the Guardian
first posted on Treefingers by Miro, Jaro · rewritten for the archive
Thom Yorke has an opinion piece, “Losing the faith”, in today's Guardian, part of the paper's fair trade special report before the World Trade Organisation's ministerial summit in Cancún. He wrote it, he says, on his small soapbox in a hotel bathroom in Washington DC.
On Saturday the Guardian came with Big Noise, a free CD for Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign and its Big Noise petition. Track three is Radiohead's demo of “Where I End and You Begin”, the Hail to the Thief song, rather than the album take.
Yorke argues that handouts are no longer the answer and that the poorest countries have to be able to trade on fair terms. Developing countries selling to the West pay tariffs four times those rich countries charge each other, he writes, at a cost of £63bn a year.
He likens free-trade liberalisation to a faith, and notes that the EU can send 500 people to WTO meetings while some poor countries cannot afford to send one. This, to me, feels like a bus full of religious lunatics rolling into town singing free trade songs and banging tambourines
2.
He worked with Jubilee 2000 on persuading governments, the IMF and the World Bank to cancel debts that could never be paid, and expected them to agree. The situation was so utterly ridiculous I didn't believe they would deny us. But they did.
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Big Noise (free with the Guardian, 6 September 2003)
| # | Artist | Track |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Coldplay | “Politik” |
| 2 | R.E.M. | “The Lifting” (live at the Museum of TV & Radio) |
| 3 | Radiohead | “Where I End and You Begin” (demo) |
| 4 | Lemon Jelly | “Ramblin' Man” |
| 5 | The Chemical Brothers | “Otter Rock” |
| 6 | Mali Music featuring Damon Albarn and Afel Bocoum | “Niger” |
| 7 | The Sakala Brothers | “Masulani Nichito Zamalonda” |
| 8 | Ladysmith Black Mambazo featuring Desmond Tutu | “Make Trade Fair” |