Wallach interview

Peter K. peterk at enteract.com
Sun Apr 23 12:52:01 PDT 2000



>Please, if you're going to respond to a 22k posting, don't quote the
>whole thing.
>
>Doug

So does this mean it's okay to put up a 22k message? What's the limit? I was going to just give the URL, but with the 22k people can easily print it out.


>>Yeah, but she completely fudged on the Luddites/technology issue as well
as
>>a couple of other issues...

Lisa & Murray, yeah, but the web version is condensed and edited. I don't know much about Foreign Policy except that it's a creature of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a John Deutch - the former CIA director? - is on the editorial board. For the web, they cut out the following, among other things. (notice the elipses when she discusses Friedman):

MN: But who embodies, in your mind, the forces you're trying to overcome?

Wallach: Well, when it comes down to nuts and bolts, the real power pushing this particular system is a handful of big multinational corporations. So people like the CEOs of Monsanto and some other particularly egregious corporations frequently come to mind.

MN: Who else?

LW: For differenct countries, different people. In the United States, for example, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike. Bill Gates gets an enormous amount of attention. But also, you know, there are individuals in government who so typify the sort of arrogance and lack of attention to the public interest. Like Larry Summers, who is just the poster child. And Charlene Barshefsky is someone whom I think a lot of people think just deeply doesn't get it. It is not even so much like Carla Hills, who is evil; Charlene just doesn't get it.

And then, you know, there are individuals who get the foot-in-the-mouth award. We cried many a tear when Renato Ruggiero resigned as the head of the WTO, because he was a one-man public relations operation for us. I mean, some of the things he said were so revealingly honest. And he had these attacks of candor at the most useful times - for instance, after the WTO released its big report on the environment saying, oh, it's not mutually, you know, incompatible. He gave a speech then where he said basically that any attempt to modify anything in the trade system to preserve the environment can only result in failure of the global trading system, which obviously is more important than the environment.

Then there is the New York Times' Tom Friedman, who inevitably ends up getting hooted at as just the most uninformed . . . I must have 40 e-mails saved of you-have-to-laugh-out-loud, almost wet-your-pants things that he's said, that are just so ignorant and out of touch with political reality. So much of the so-called mainstream media has religiously avoided dealing with any of these issues, except in the most boosterish, noninformative, non-open-minded way. Until Seattle.

etc.

[end quote] Doug, did you find Summers arrogant? Can we have a taste of the interview?

Peter



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