Walden Bello, Filipino anti-WTO activist speaks in SF 11/3 audio

Walden Bello'

Dr. Walden Bello is widely considered amoung the world's most knowledgeable and outspoken critics of the emerging global trade regime. He has played prominent roles at the anti-WTO/World Bank/IMF protests in Seattle, Washington DC, Bangkok and Prague in the last year.

He was recently in the US to recive the Denver Peace and Justice Award.

Bello combines his activism with scholarship. A Ph.D holder in Sociology from Princeton, Bello is a respected author and university professor. He first made his mark in the 1970s as an anti-dictatorship, anti-imperialist campaigner in the Phillipines. Based in Wahington DC for much of martial law in the Phillipines, he lobbied the US congress to withdraw support from Ferdinand Marcos and close down the US military bases in the Phillipines. During this period, he co-wrote Development Debacle, an inflential book that investigated the role of the World Bank in propping up the Marcos regime.

In the 1990s, Bello has been preoccupied with the political economy of the developing world, advocating against corporate globalization and econmomic liberalization. He helped established Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based think tank of which he is executive director.

In his most recent talks, Bello has joined forces with many others in calling for the resignation of Phillipine President Joseph Estrad, who has been accused of taking bribes from illegal gambling lords. However, Bello laments that the corrution scandals besieging the Estrad regime have overshadowed --or make impossible-- public debates about the country's economic policy.

Like in many developing countries, the government in the Phillipines has adhered closely to World Bank/IMF prescriptions by lowering investment and trade barriers, opening up its domestic market to foreign agricultuarl products, and orienting its economy towards export markets. Critics like Bellow fear that such economic policies empower foreign corporations at the expense of the state, the sovreighnity of poor nations, and the human rights of their citizens.

Thanks again to POSUD in Berkeley. http://www.bwf.org/posud.

I got the groups name wrong this time It should PUSOD and the web site: http://www.bwf.org/pusod.

Sorry jen

I found the article about Walden Bello interesting. However it was marred by typographical errors on almost every line. Even Philippines was misspelled twice. Please run your text through the standard spell check.

Tbank you.

horacio