Oh those pesky moral issues...
According to Patrick Bond
> Which says to me, don't do alliances with Trent Lott, Pat
> Buchanan and the like, because if you aren't bringing more to the
> table than Saunders, De Fazio and Kucinich, you will lose in a
> terribly unsatisfying way.
Don't do alliances with Trent Lott and Pat Buchanan because their theocratic authoritarianism and bigotry leaves a malodorous whiff of clerical fascism. There is a difference between similar action and coalition. These folks would toss a large portion of a potential progressive coalition overboard, as noted in the text from Krebbers and Schoenmaker, below. Just what is Ralph Nader doing promoting a working coalition with union-busters like the Milliken family (major John Birch Society funders through advertising) and the US Business and Industrial Council? These are not our allies. Remember the disasterous folly of the Sierra Club briefly falling for the siren song of anti-immigrant bigotry, which took a swift kick from the Political Ecology Group to refocus?
<<start clip>>
"Seattle '99, wedding party of the left and the right?"
by Eric Krebbers and Merijn Schoenmaker (De Fabel van de illegaal, Netherlands)
http://www.savanne.ch/right-left-materials/seattle-marriage.html
"The Seattle summit will be a historic confrontation between civil society and corporate rule", says Mike Dolan. He works for the American consumer watchdog group Public Citizen founded by Ralph Nader. Public Citizen is connected to the IFG and initiated the campaign against the MAI treaty. Dolan now acts as the great coordinator and spokesman of the counter movement in Seattle. Not everyone seems to be happy with him, but little can be done about his presence. He sits in the middle of the web, like a spider. On the one hand Dolan supports the American PGA caravan with several thousand dollars, on the other he speaks up for the extreme Right Pat Buchanan, now a candidate for the American presidency, representing the Reform Party. "Whatever else you say about Pat Buchanan, he will be the only candidate in the 2000 presidential sweepstakes who will passionately and unconditionally defend the legitimate expectations of working families in the global economy," Dolan writes. Indeed, Buchanan supports American workers. As long as they are conservative and obedient and not unemployed, black, gay, female, lesbian or Jewish. He's also not particularly fond of left-wing workers. Buchanan on Argentina: "With military and police and free lance operators, between 6.000 and 150.000 leftists disappeared. Brutal: yes; also successful. Today peace reigns in Argentina; security has been restored."
<<end clip>>
----- Original Message ----- From: Patrick Bond <pbond at wn.apc.org> To: Brad De Long <delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU>; <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Saturday, December 18, 1999 5:47 AM Subject: Re: Sierra Club On It's WTO Activities
> Brad, you didn't notice half a million demonstrators in Bangalore a
> few years ago demonstrating against GATT on grounds it would
> hasten multinational corporate penetration of their seed stock?
> Same as turtle-loving steelworkers. The potential for global popular
> unity against neoliberalism is really formidable.
>
> And surely the 1998 IMF recap debate -- amongst critics that is --
> was not about more or less globalisation, but rather between left
> attacks on the institution's neolib ideology and the banking
> interests it represented (and ordinary people it kills), in contrast to
> the right's concerns over institutional wasteage/corruption, IMF
> promotion of statism, and waning yankee power (and maybe
> slightly about NY banks getting bailouts). The right had more
> (hundreds more) congressional votes and therefore both refunded
> the IMF last October and also made it yet more vicious, more
> expensive and shorter-term in orientation.
>
> Which says to me, don't do alliances with Trent Lott, Pat
> Buchanan and the like, because if you aren't bringing more to the
> table than Saunders, De Fazio and Kucinich, you will lose in a
> terribly unsatisfying way. Spend the time and energy on building
> the base to demand full defunding of the IMF and World Bank,
> starting with getting your pension fund, university endowment and
> the like to boycott Bank bonds. (Brad isn't listening now and
> wouldn't get it anyhow; but others out there do?)
<<SNIP>>