GATT: A prophetic interview with Sir James Goldsmith in 1994

[Nikki Stone 1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI&feature=related

"It will unleash an unemployment that will attack economies around the world."

Sir James Goldsmith rightly predicts the dangers of GATT and the economic situation we are in today. He predicts that eventually GATT will destroy American society by creating massive unemployment and inequitability.   A real must watch.  Parts three, four and five show a debate between Goldsmith and the Clinton administration's Laura Tyson.  It's also interesting how Charlie Rose, following the common wisdom of the time, thinks that NAFTA has been successful. It's also clear what side Charlie Rose takes (the wrong one), and how he ignores Goldsmith's factual evidence of the effects of "free trade" in Europe.   


Part One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI
Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/wa...n-87w&feature=related
Part Three: http://www.youtube.com/wa...TNV5k&feature=related (Debate with Laura Tyson)
Part Four: http://www.youtube.com/wa...2Y6Qs&feature=related (with Laura Tyson)
Part Five: http://www.youtube.com/wa...6aa_A&feature=related (with Laura Tyson)
PArt Six: http://www.youtube.com/wa...KZLjc&feature=related

[Nikki Stone 1]

Goldsmith's speech to the Senate: November 1994

http://www.youtube.com/wa...8vTO0&feature=related (narrator for first 17 seconds)
http://www.youtube.com/wa...XtbtE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/wa...vWPJ4&feature=related

A fantastic speech.  He predicts exactly what GATT will do and explains what it is about.  He also notes that Senators have been told that they "must sign it [GATT] quickly", to prevent some sort of harmful result.  Sound familiar?

[tbyg52]

OK, I gotta get high speed internet so I can watch stuff like this.  I'm no economist nor genius, but this sounds like just what I thought.

[Bellator]

OK, I gotta get high speed internet so I can watch stuff like this.  I'm no economist nor genius, but this sounds like just what I thought.

Yes you need to watch/listen to these.

Let me tell you briefly what I saw. A man....a self made Billionaire who was also a member of the House of Commons. A man who had done hostile takeovers. A man who understood how capitalism worked. Sort of like Perot warning against the dangers of NAFTA.

The arguments he laid out in 1994 are coming true today. When he gave the above interview NAFTA had just passed a few months before. He was warning as loud as he could about the dangers of GATT. He was not in favor of NAFTA, but to him it was nothing compared to the damage to be unleashed by GATT.

Laura Tyson.....watching this now. Was she stupid?....or did she know the truth and was lying through her teeth?? If she was lying she should be behind bars. If she was just stupid she should at the very least be ashamed of herself.....pitiful.

Part 4 had a discussion on then implications of industrial agriculture. If this is allowed to manifest it will displace 2 billion people. He said the world would be in chaos.

He had dire predictions about the way business would be conducted that have come true. I'm sure he was portrayed as some sort of crackpot, but he has proved himself anything but.

I hope more people watch these video's. The warnings about what has recently come to pass are out there......If this continues we are facing a much different world in the very near future....

[Nikki Stone 1]

Part 4 had a discussion on then implications of industrial agriculture. If this is allowed to manifest it will displace 2 billion people. He said the world would be in chaos.

He had dire predictions about the way business would be conducted that have come true. I'm sure he was portrayed as some sort of crackpot, but he has proved himself anything but.

I hope more people watch these video's. The warnings about what has recently come to pass are out there......If this continues we are facing a much different world in the very near future....

Is it possible for you to go into some more detail on part 4?  I don't have the time at the moment to do transcripts, as I have been doing in a number of threads.  I'd appreciate it for people who are on dial up and can't see these videos.

Thanks

[Bellator]

Is it possible for you to go into some more detail on part 4?  I don't have the time at the moment to do transcripts, as I have been doing in a number of threads.  I'd appreciate it for people who are on dial up and can't see these videos.

Thanks

I'll do the best I can from memory from watching it one time. I might not be perfect on this.

With the GATT trade agreements he was talking about fighting at the time. He said NAFTA represented a few hundred million people. Gatt was so much bigger and would have impact on billions of people. That is why he said NAFTA was so insignificant in comparison to Gatt.

With that said....he believed Gatt would open up trade and encourage production agriculture as practiced in the U.S. At the time of this video he said massive protests were being held in India because they understood the implication of an invasion of high production agriculture. Yes it would provide an abundance of food......what wasn't being addressed was the displacement of 2 billion small farmers around the world. He said the very nature of this type of capitalism was the profit motive and nothing beyond that. There was no consideration for society. He believed Capitalism worked in a country only if it also took care of the population of the society it worked with.

I don't want to put words into his mouth, but he said something along the lines that a business needs to consider the needs of the people.....these new trade agreements were forcing business to look only at the profit motive to survive. If a good business was watching out for it's people fine. But a competitor could move its factory to one of these other countries at 1/43 of the wage and bring the products back to sell just below the cost of production of the good company. The good company had a choice.....go out of business or move it's production facility to a low labor cost country. He said these new free trade agreements (GATT, NAFTA) would do nothing but encourage this activity. Their was no motivation for helping society...only itself by producing profit.

Hope that makes some sense...

[Nikki Stone 1]

Thank you!

[Bellator]

One other thing I wanted to add to this.....it's been stuck in my head since I watched it.

Sir James Goldsmith at the time of this taping was a multi-billionaire. He was a British citizen. He was most certainly a member of the top one tenth of one percent of people in the world as far as net worth. He made no apologies for who he was and stated he believe in capitalism and would always be a capitalist.

I don't remember which segment it was, but the question came up about politicians. He flatly laid out his feelings on this subject....he said something like....the politicians have no control. In Britain and the United States politicians have had no control for many years. He didn't specify how many years he thought that had been.

It really made me think....If all of us would truly understand and except this reality then we can see the government circus for what it is. We replace one party with another and get the same results. It hasn't been that long ago that I blamed all the ills on the Republicans. Now the Democrats have the Presidency, both houses of congress and really nothing has changed.

I think the tea bag party is blaming all ills on the Democrats.....where we were just a few years ago except with the Republicans.......

We have to define who is in control of our lives....our country before we can make a change. The Republicans and Democrats are in no more control then we are....  they just make alot more money...

[followthemoney]

This interview could have come from, "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" by Ralph Nader.  Sure, it's fiction.

Could anyone imagine real discussion of issues before laws like NAFTA and GATT were passed?

[Bellator]

Could anyone imagine real discussion of issues before laws like NAFTA and GATT were passed?

You have a point.....no I could not

A while back I posted a debate between Ross Perot and Al Gore. It was on the Larry King show and was a discussion about NAFTA.....Perot against and Gore for.
It was eyeopening to watch after all this time passed. Perot came off as a babbling idiot at the time.....but time has proved him correct.