More on the Mike Dolan and Lori Wallach/Public Citizen/Roger Milliken contro.
Michael Pugliese
http://www.thenewrepublic.com/052200/notebook.html
Daily Notebook
BREAKING THE SILENCE: Back in January, when we first reported on the relationship between right-wing mogul Roger Milliken and Ralph Nader's Public Citizen ("Silent Partner," by Ryan Lizza, January 10), we knew the Naderites were sheepish about speaking on the subject. In particular, they were extremely reluctant to address rumors that Milliken was financing Public Citizen's anti-globalization efforts. Public Citizen's top trade lobbyist, Lori Wallach, who works closely with Milliken's top trade lobbyist, dodged our question about whether Milliken has given money to Public Citizen by telling us, via e-mail, that Public Citizen doesn't take any "corporate or government funds" and has never taken money from Milliken's company. When we followed up with an e-mail message asking whether Milliken himself has ever given any money to Public Citizen, Wallach never responded; she also refused our repeated requests for a phone interview. When we finally got her deputy Mike Dolan on the phone, he was forced to end the interview immediately when Wallach found out whom he was talking to. In the end, Public Citizen and its sister organization, Citizens Trade Campaign, would neither confirm nor deny a financial relationship with Milliken. But all this stonewalling seems relatively quaint compared to the--well, how should we say this?-- disinformation campaign Wallach has waged since the publication of the article. After reading our article, a radical trade activist who calls himself Mark S., upset that his allies on the left might be taking money from Milliken, asked Wallach about Public Citizen's relationship with the billionaire. Instead of explaining it, Wallach attacked our article. "[T]he answers to your questions," wrote Wallach, in an e-mail message to Mark S. that is now posted on his website and was recently brought to our attention, "were given--both verbally and in writing--to the New Republic person who wrote that goofy article--BEFORE he wrote it when he was interviewing us." On the contrary, while we were reporting the story no one from Public Citizen or Citizens Trade Campaign ever provided us with anything, either "verbally" or "in writing," that explained their connection to Milliken, other than the neither-confirm-nor-deny statement, Dolan's truncated phone conversation, and Wallach's dodgy e-mail. Despite the fact that Wallach wouldn't talk to tnr for the story, she told Mark S., "I speak to reporters from neoliberal rags like New Republic." Worst of all, Wallach told Mark S. that our article had factual mistakes: "Indeed, several other people quoted in the piece have forwarded me their letters to NR stating that they were quoted saying things they had never said." That statement is patently false--at least as far as tnr goes. We have not received a single complaint from anyone suggesting they were misquoted in the article. As for whether Wallach has these letters, we asked for them, but, as we went to press, she had yet to produce any. Alas, Wallach's e-mail message to Mark S. wasn't an isolated incident. After Chris Nelson, a trade analyst who writes a daily trade newsletter, penned an item on Public Citizen and Milliken that cited our story, Wallach wrote him an e-mail dismissing our "high-school journalism quality attempted hatchet job." Wallach alleged to Nelson that Public Citizen had provided tnr with "not only ... lists of our funding sources but a written answer to his [Lizza's] inquiry about Milliken--i.e. that we DO NOT take money from Milliken or for that matter any corporate or government funds." Again, hogwash. The lists of funding sources Wallach was presumably referring to were publicly available 990 tax forms, which reveal the amount of contributions to the group but not the specific sources of the money. The written response Wallach was apparently touting was her nonresponsive e-mail. And these are just the slings and arrows from Wallach that we know about; there's no telling how many other people she has peddled this nonsense to. For all her complaints, Wallach has yet to write to TNR about the Milliken article. The letter Public Citizen did send to this magazine--written by its president, Joan Claybrook--made no mention of Wallach's allegations. And still, to this day, neither Lori Wallach, Public Citizen, nor Citizens Trade Campaign has ever unequivocally denied a financial relationship between their organizations and Roger Milliken. Wallach, in an interview in the Spring 2000 issue of Foreign Policy, did say, "Roger Milliken does not fund Public Citizen." But, when we asked her whether Milliken funded or contributed to other Public Citizen-affiliated organizations--specifically Citizens Trade Campaign--Wallach refused to answer, saying that she'd already violated her organization's policy by talking about Milliken to Foreign Policy. Given Wallach's penchant for word games, her Foreign Policy answer hardly seems unequivocal. So much for the Naderites' vaunted commitment to openness and integrity in public affairs. (05.11.00) [This item has been corrected. Chris Nelson is a trade analyst, not a trade lobbyist. We regret the error.]
From: Olivier Hoedeman To: right-left at savanne.ch Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2000 3:03 AM Subject: [right-left] fwd: Mike Dolan's response to"Aryan Politics and Fighting the WTO"
I forward you Mike Dolan's (Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch) wrote to the response to the critique in "Aryan Politics and Fighting the WTO", which was posted on several WTO-campaign related email lists.
Olivier
To: <corporations at envirolink.org>, <mai-not at flora.org>, <iww- news at iww.org>, <wtoseattlediscussion at listbot.com>, <mayday2k at onelist.com>, <StopWTORound at egroups.com>, <antti at polly.phys.msu.su> From: "Michael Dolan" <mdolan at citizen.org> Date sent: Wed, 17 May 2000 15:30:21 -0400 Subject: [StopWTORound] Re: "Aryan Politics and Fighting the WTO", by J. Sakai
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Enough already!
This is an important piece of writing. Reasonable minds will come to different conclusions about implied prospective strategies in our shared struggle against corporate globalization. But I must object to the continued mischaracterization of my role and my political sentiments:
1) I was NOT the "chief organizer of the Seattle mobilization." Many progressive and radical activists contributed to our historic success at the WTO Ministerial.
2) It is NOT TRUE that I am "enthusiastically endorsing Right-Wing politician Pat Buchanon [sic]." At the time I wrote that Email, over a year ago, to challenge the liberal Democrats to abandon their slavish devotion to so-called "free trade," there was no other presidential candidate who was standing up with workers in this country to oppose the corporate agenda. Now, I observe, Ralph Nader is seeking the Green Party nomination; and the anti-globalization movement has no more articulate nor progressive champion in this country than Ralph. Mind you, as an NGO guy, I am not permitted to _endorse_ one way or another. But I completely acknowledge Pat Buchanan's abhorrent right-wing views across a spectrum of issues. I wish I had never posted the Email; and I further wish De Fabel would give me a break.
3) I do not endeavor to marginalize anyone's tactics. We have many arrows in our progressive anti-corporate quiver, as we demonstrated in Seattle.
In solidarity and stuff,
Mike Dolan
Deputy Director
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
_________________________________________________________
>>> Antti Rautiainen <antti at polly.phys.msu.su> 05/17/00 10:56AM >>>
No-WTO
ARYAN POLITICS & FIGHTING THE W.T.O. by J. Sakai
"Don't watch the light, watch the cars. Lights ain't going to hit you. " Moms Mabley
There's been an illusion that opposing the WTO is by its very nature a left issue. That it's all really our party, naively thrown for us by those establishment types, those innocent social-democratic officials of the AFL-CIO and all the nice global liberals and lobbyists. In this view, while some stuffed shirts may have disapproved of the ruckus--and a Pat Buchanan or two may have awkwardly crashed our party in downtown Seattle we were the action in an anti-corporation festival. As the poet said at another revolution: "Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive/ But to be youiig was very heaven. " Nice, but no cigar.
The anti-WTO protests in Seattle were a radicalizing experience for many, on a tactical level. But on a larger scale, the Left has unacknowledged strategic problems with this issue. To sum it up simply, we have the problem that we may be helping to fuel the explosive growth of the Right and neo-fascism. And we have to think of refocusing to fight the Far Right in the anti-WTO struggle--just as we need to in every other contested terrain.
[snip]
Mike Dolan of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen lobby, who was the chief organizer of the Seattle mobilization, is quoted by De Fabel as not only accepting the participation of but enthusiastically endorsing Right-Wing politician Pat Buchanon: "Whatever else you say about Pat Buchanan, he will be the only candidate in the 2000 presidential sweepstakes who will passionafeIy and unconditionally defend the legitiinate expectations of workers families in the global economy. " De Fabel adds: "As long as they are conservative and obedient, and not unemployed, black, gay, woman, lesbian or Jewish."
In De Fabel's analysis, the problem is not so much the Buchanans as it is the international lobbyists and opinion-makers of the anti-WTO campaign. While student activists, grassroots environmentalists, and white radicals created the militant action downtown in Seattle, it was the NGO (non-governmental organizations---such as Nader's Public Citizen) leaders represented in the elite "think tank" of the International Forum on Globalization that built the alliance the first place and set the overall politics. And they are largely conservative behind a thin humanitarian veneer, in De Fabel's view (instead of repeating at length from De Fabel's papers, we urge you to read and evaluate them yourself. The same with Alan Kessi's "Millenium Round" of the WTO Under fire...From Both Left and Right. )
[snip]
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