On Globalism.

[myrmidon of Che]

Patrick Buchanan and Ralph Nader, The Battle in Seattle
Transcript from Nov. 28, 1999




Timehost: Our guests tonight, Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader ... two very different political figures, who are coming down on the same side of a hotly debated issue...globalization. Patrick Buchanan has just joined us! Welcome, Mr. Buchanan. Thanks for coming by.

Pat Buchanan: Glad to be here in the chat room with my old friend and antagonist Ralph Nader.

Timehost: Mr. Nader should be here in just a few minutes... but let's take the first question.

lady504 asks: Please tell me what this "battle" is all about.

Pat Buchanan: The battle in Seattle is about whether global free trade shall triumph over all other values. Whether it be the environment human rights, economic independence or national security. And almost all of us going out to the WTO to oppose the agenda say no.

Timehost: Mr. Nader has just joined us... He adds to that :

Ralph Nader: I would not use the language of the adversary. It isn't free trade. If it was free trade why do they need hundreds of pages of rules and regulations. If it was free trade they could do it in two sentences. GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade] and WTO is a massive global regulatory system concocted by corporations, lawyers and their minions without any accountability. It's an autocratic system.

BlueSilkBebe asks: I would like to know how the two of you ended up on the same side of the issues?

Pat Buchanan: What brought me to the issue is the massive loss of good paying jobs, the decline of America's economic independence, and the emergence of a global government unresponsive to the people.

Ralph Nader: What attracted me to the WTO was the fact that it's government of the big corporations, by the big corporations, for the big corporations, that undermined our democracy, that gave up more of our sovereignty than we have ever given up in our entire history in order to subordinate all human values for workers consumers, small taxpayers and the environment and our democratic processes to the dictates of international commerce.

Pat Buchanan: It's trade uber alles.

bradknick asks: Have Messrs. Nader and Buchanan discussed WTO-related issues in depth together? Or is it strictly a marriage of convenience - "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" sort of thing?

Ralph Nader: Nonsense. We've discussed this for five years. We've held press conferences. And it's a cooperation of convictions that we must defend and improve our democracy so that we can agree to disagree freely.

Pat Buchanan: Ralph and I have been in this battle for almost six years since the great NAFTA fight. And we stand together firmly on one principle, that whatever the decisions about the economic destiny of Americans are, they will be made by the American people and not by the trans-national corporations in collusion with this embryonic institution of world government.

richardm999 asks: Pat, are there any people in office now that agree with you on these specific issues and who are they?

Pat Buchanan: Well, there must be...you've got 200 House votes on fast track [trade treaty negotiating authority for the President]. Let's take the fast track vote. The defeat of fast track by a majority in the house means that the idea of economic patriotism and anti-globalism is on the rise.

Ralph Nader: And the vote on NAFTA was a very close vote.

Pat Buchanan: We would have won it if they hadn't been buying and selling votes.

Louisk39 asks: For Ralph Nader: Why mix environmental concerns with trade policy? Free trade is good for America; if you want developing countries to have concern for the environment, go there and convince their governments.

Ralph Nader: Tell that to the timber companies who are cutting down the equatorial forests. Tell that to the giant fishing fleets who have reduced the ocean catch for the first time in history. Tell that to the biotechnology corporations who are trying to control the seeds that the farmers are using. Tell that to the fossil fuel giants who are contaminating the air, water and land of 3rd World countries along with automobile manufacturers. To summarize: Trade issues and enivromnental issues should be separated. Environmental and health issues should not be subordinated to trade matters. The first mistake of the WTO is that it subordinates the health and environment to trade. They should not try to subjugate democratic processes to trade.

ironpumper35 asks: Why are not more Republicans fighting this new world order that takes American sovereignty away to give to the UN?

Timehost: Or in this case, the WTO.

Pat Buchanan: First, we've gained support among Republicans in the house from about 43 who opposed NAFTA to about 70, I believe, who opposed fast track. Second, the significant slice of the Republican Party are the bellhops of the Business Roundtable, If they say no to the Business Roundtable, they'll probably hold their next Republican Party Gala at a Motel 6.

Louisk39 asks: For Buchanan, why lock our workers into old 19th century factory jobs via protectionism? The best examples of protectionism are in North Korea and Cuba. We have 20 million new jobs under freer Clinton/Gore trade.

Pat Buchanan: The gentleman is ignorant of history. The greatest growth in American history was from 1860 to 1913 when we averaged 4% a year. We had an economy half the size of Great Britain at the start, and ended up with an economy twice the size of Great Britain's, while the British embraced free trade and we embraced protectionism. And how can you say these are 19th century jobs, building cars, motorcycles, textiles, toys, etcetera, when Americans, on the eve of the 21st century, are consuming them in greater volumes than ever before.

Ralph Nader: US trade with all foreign nations accounts for less than 12% of our GNP. All international trade between all countries, including countries in the European Union, all totaled, is less than the size of the US economy. It runs a little over 6 trillion dollars; the US economy is more than 10 trillion. That 6 trillion dollar figure includes all trade between all other countries, Germany with France, Brazil with Peru, Malaysia with India, everything. Countries prosper when they get their domestic economies growing. Japan is the leading protectionist nation; that's how it made its economy grow.

Pat Buchanan: Every nation that has risen to greatness, and preeminence, Britain before 1860, the US prior to WW1, Bismarck's Germany prior to WW1, postwar Japan, all of them, protected their domestic markets and invaded foreign markets. They all used the same Hamiltonian formula. And none of them rose to prominence by throwing open their borders.

ihc55 asks: How are you going to stop globalization?

Ralph Nader: The way to stop the WTO is to enforce all the accusations of member countries against other member countries. The US puts out an annual report along with Canada and Japan, accusing other countries by name of violating laws. All you have to do is enforce most of them and the WTO would collapse under an uproar of popular indignation and revolt.

Pat Buchanan: I think that the rise of economic patriotism in countries all over the world including the US is going to bring down these global governmental institutions which basically work at the behest of transnational corporations, that override the interests of nations and their people. Seattle is a dress rehearsal for what is coming

Ralph Nader: The procedure is that any nation can withdraw from WTO given six months notice.

Timehost: Going back to what Ralph said about cutting the rain forest...

abbeydoggy asks: Mr. Nader, if they are cutting down forest to plant crops and raise cattle to feed themselves, what is wrong with that?

Ralph Nader: First of all, the timber giants of Japan, US and Europe are not cutting down forests to feed themselves. They're doing it for export, and they're ruining the forests' ability to renew themselves. In Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere there are landslides, floods and huge problems because huge areas have been clear-cut by multinationals and others. When the farmers go into the Amazon and burn huge acreage to plant crops, the soil is so fragile, that they can only go for two years before they have to burn again. In the Amazon, an area the size of Wisconsin was burned two years ago. That's not the best use of the Amazon.

bobreform asks: Mr. Nader, Do you endorse Mr. Buchanan's presidential campaign?

Ralph Nader: Since I am going to decide whether to run early next year, I can't support any one at this point.

Pat Buchanan: What party?

Ralph Nader: The Green Party.

dwguy55 asks: Are there any responsible corporations out there or is that an oxymoron?

Pat Buchanan: Let me say that my criticism of American corporations is that so many of them are ceasing to be American in their outlook, in their interest and in their concern. They're turning their backs on their country, and their workers and that's not the system of free enterprise I've celebrated all my life. And I have no interest in defending that. They've ceased to be American companies

Ralph Nader: About two years ago, I sent letters to some of the largest American corporations. I asked since they were born in the US, since they made their profits off the labors of American workers, since when they get in trouble they go to Washington. for corporate bailouts by US taxpayers, and when they get in trouble overseas they call the US Marines, I suggested that these companies pledge allegiance to the American flag and the republic for which it stands, of course, ending with the delightful phrase, with liberty and justice for all. Only one company said it was a good idea: Federated Department Stores, I guess because they can't relocate overseas. All the rest who replied, about half of them, said no. I guess that illustrates what Pat was saying.

Pat Buchanan: I got great response on that column.

Ralph Nader: I suggest a great new book by Paul Hawkins, "Natural Capitalism," in which he talks about some good companies, including Interface Corporation of Atlanta, the nation's second largest commercial carpet and tile manufacturer. (You've probably walked on their products.) And they are blazing new pathways in recycling of materials and closed loop pollution control systems. They're moving for zero pollution.

andrew93_2000 asks: All the jobs leaving the USA are no-tech and low-tech, though they are unionized. Why not focus on the new hi-tech labor force we need rather than save the low-tech jobs?

Pat Buchanan: Look, we have working men and women in this country many of whom do not have advanced degrees and computer skills. For years, these Americans had a yellow brick road right to the middle class: tens of millions of manufacturing and industrial jobs in a country that produced at one point 30% of all the world's manufactured goods. It's these jobs we're sending overseas. And it's these workers and Americans who we are selling out when we deprive them of a manufacturing job with health insurance and force them into a service job that may pay only two thirds of their previous wages.

Ralph Nader: The jobs that are staying at home are the $6 an hour low-tech, McDonald's food jobs. And the capital-intensive jobs moving over the Rio Grande into Mexico are not low-tech jobs. They are capital intensive jobs. So the reality is just the opposite of what the questioner poses.

hyde_volpe asks: Pat and Ralph: Do either or both of you see this coming together of the old liberal and conservative politics over the sovereignty and corporate power issues as the beginnings or a truly new populist movement that may have equal significance to the one of the last century?

Pat Buchanan: I think there's a realignment coming in American politics. It will leave Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton and their minions in the same party. And there will be a new party that's rooted in traditionalism and economic patriotism and that puts America and the American people first. And I think the battle will be between globalism and patriotism.

Ralph Nader: It began a few years ago on corporate welfare issues, where liberal and conservatives got together to defeat the Clinch River breeder reactor boondoggle. And most recently in the testimony by the same groups at the first-ever congressional hearing on the corporate welfare issue conducted by John Kasich. That was in June 1999, stimulated in part by the great Time magazine cover story on the issue, by Bartlett and Steele, from whom nothing has been heard of since. We want to hear more from them. Giant corporations are on a collision course with democracy. Whether liberals and conservatives disagree on all sort of issues, they have got to agree on one: they can't operate without democracy.

Pat Buchanan: The transnational corporate interests are repeatedly coming into conflict with US national security interests, as we see in the China WTO deal. Some of my conservative friends on Capitol Hill should wake up to that reality.

billbarnwell19 asks: Pat, will the rank and file in the Teamsters and Steelworkers unions walk the party line or do you think you can bring them to you?

Pat Buchanan: I think we can win over many of them in a general election. I think we'll see out here in Seattle that some union leaders have really lost touch with their rank and file. They may have spent too many nights in the Lincoln bedroom.

ZEN413_99 asks: Pat, Ralph: Any suggestions on how a new "patriotic" and "responsible" form of capitalism can replace this new worship of the almighty dollar above national pride, national interests and patriotism?

Pat Buchanan: My ideas are best outlined in my book "The Great Betrayal."

Ralph Nader: One way is to really stop the discrimination against small business in favor of big business. in national economic policy. Because small businesses are not going to threaten to move overseas if they donÕt get their way. That's what big business does. The second: we need more activism by the pension trusts. I mean by the people who have money in the pension funds and not the big banks that hold their shares. There are 4 trillion dollars of worker pension funds, most of which are invested in corporations on the New York Stock Exchange but the workers who own the money don't control the shares. The way to make business more accountable is to make sure that the people who own the shares control the shares. Right now, it's the people who run the companies, the boards of directors, people like that, who make all those decisions and control the shares.

Timehost: Some final thoughts from both of you....

Pat Buchanan: In conclusion, the great battle of our time, succeeding the Cold War, is for people in nations and republics to control their own destinies, their lives and futures. The great threat that we have inherited comes not from the evil empire, the Soviet Union but from an emergent, global government, and an international political class that seeks to control the destiny of the world in furtherance of its own ideology. I think this is the great battle of the future.

Ralph Nader: President Woodrow Wilson became famous for advocating self-determination of nations all over the world. Corporate globalization is replacing the self-determination of nations with global corporation domination. George Soros, the international financier, said that the large multi-national corporations are today the main threat to democracy in the world. If we believe in community, if we believe in self-reliance, if we believe in local, state and national governments accountable to their people, there needs to be broad-based popular resistance to corporate globalization, a US withdrawal from the WTO, and a renegotiation of international trade agreements that pull up other nations rather than pull down ours, that no longer subordinate environmental, consumer and worker standards.

Timehost: Thank you both, Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Nader, for joining us. And thanks for all your great questions! Sorry we couldn't get to them all.

[gogo gomez]

gee... i remember when all this first came out and it did not seem so complicated. this is a bunch of bull shit. im forcing myself to read all of it since someone obviosly took the time to note it all donw. geez...nothing changes does it.. are we doomed or what...change the world...yeah right. suckas.

VIVE LA ESPERANZA!

[Kez]

how can u post when u banned?
ich bin confused

comrade kamo

[El Commandante]

It was an ancient post, if you look at the date that it was posted it was sometime in July, a while before the banning, none of the posts were deleted, they're all still there.