Linked with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, with Why Does the WTO Want My Water?, with big-picture.tv BPTV, and with The Public Citizen.
She is Trade lawyer and author, and she is the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, an organization founded in 1995 (as a division of Ralph Nader’s consumer advocacy group Public Citizen) to promote government and corporate accountability in issues involving trade and globalization. Wallach herself was an early entrant into the anti-globalization arena, founding the Citizens Trade Campaign in 1993.
She says: ” … it didn’t seem like the corporations who should be fighting us on the food-safety bills were fighting us face to face. I started to get this feeling … that there was another door; I was guarding only one door to the bank, and someone was ripping off the loot through another door. So I started snooping around, and after I’d heard « GATT » and « NAFTA » a couple of times, I started thinking, there’s some international negotiation going on that’s going to undo all this food-safety stuff I’m trying to do here in the Congress, and where the heck could it be going on? … « . (Read the whole Interview on ‘Wallach’s Road to Activism: Trade Agreements and Consumer Protection’).
Lori Wallach – USA
She works for Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, and for the Citizens Trade Campaign.
She says also (excerpt): … « So, interestingly, the administration’s raising [globalization as a remedy to terrorism] has really made people start saying: « Hm. Well, if that’s true, what does it mean? » And then by [the administration’s] saying more of the same answer, it’s gotten a real backlash: It’s gotten a backlash in the public; it’s gotten a backlash in Congress. They’re saying: « Hm. All right.
Let’s say there is some link between international commercial policies and our sense of world stability and peace. Then should we do more of the same, or should we revisit it? And under any circumstances should we rush into it? » The one common denominator is that everyone is saying: « Why do they want to rush into this? Shouldn’t we be thinking about this? » We have a whole new post-September 11 world to think about; we should think about our commercial policies as well, and [whether we] are helping or hurting. So on one hand the tone and the message has changed, and everyone for a month or so just went into a mournful shock, because frankly, that’s how we felt as human beings. No one could have done anything even if they wanted to. And now the Bush administration’s basically revived the issue … « . (Read the whole on ‘Free Trade: Help or Hindrance to World Peace and Stability?‘).
Look at this 5 minutes video with her on Big-Pictures about ‘Free trade, how free is it?‘.
Read: ‘Clinton and the Shift in the Democratic Agenda‘.
To read more interviews with Lori Wallach, go to pbs).
links:
Le Monde Diplo in english;