arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Susan George is Vice President of Attac, President of the Observatoire de la Mondialisation in Paris, and author of numerous books on the subject of Debt, the global financial institutions and more recently The Lugano Report.

In the first of this 3 part Interview sequence recorded at the Attac summer university being held currently in France she talks about the extraordinary development of Attac, the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transaction for Aid to Citizens, from the original article by Ignacio Ramonet in Le Monde Diplomatique less than two years ago to a position where it has more than 25000 members in France and is represented in 17 countries.
(Video Real 11')
http://clients.loudeye.com/imc/france/sgeorge.ram
Susan goes on to talk about "next moves" after Seattle, the importance of the new national coalitions and seizing the "new political moment" to put pressure on the global financial institutions, the WTO and multinational corporations. "Wherever they are, some of us will be" but that "you shouldn't expect a Seattle every three months"

"This is a succesfull model, if it ain't broke, let's not fix it"

In the second of this 3 part Interview sequence recorded at the Attac summer university being held currently in France we discuss the protests surrounding the Republican and Democrat conventions this summer, the "terrifying" feedback she has received about police brutality and the role of the Coroprate Media. "Let's not be violent, but force them to deal with the actual issues"
Discussing the Ralph Nader campaign, she maintains hope that he will gain 8-10% of the vote, "even if that means that Gore loses" and if he manages to secure the 10+ million $ campaign funds, "imagine what the movement can do with that kind of money, we could take over the world"
Finally Susan discusses the context to her most recent, and most destabilising book "The Lugano Report" a hoax report on the future of capitalism pushing the logic of the neo liberal system to its limits. Is the neo liberal capitalist system in danger? "There are definite problems" replies her imagined Working Party concluding that the system is simply not manageable given 8 billion people on Earth.

Susan George "getting the message out"

In the third and final part of this 3 part Interview sequence recorded at the Attac summer university being held currently in France we discuss the dissemination of the message. Although she has not suffered personally from the negative effects of globalisation, "because I'm privileged, and probably because of the age I am" it's important to examine the local effects on communities. "The WTO wants to privatise absolutely everything" and if we're not careful we'll turn round one day and say "Hey, wait a minute, what happened to democracy"

A second section discusses the role of Independant Media and indymedia.org which Susan finds "terribly important, I always read the stuff that comes over the Web, I find it reliable but you need to avoid a tendancy to "ghettoisation."
"The movement in France has developed a credibility with the so called mainstream press, but I'm still astounded by the levels of ignorance. Indymedia should strengthen it's role in informing the mainstream press."

Finally we turn our attention to the autumn and the activities in Prague (s26), other autumn mobilisations and more specifically the need to put pressure on the United Nations during the s6 Millenium Meeting in N.Y. and alert activists to Kofi Annan's recent strategic mistake to enter into a non-binding "Compact with Corporations."