to program james jim garrison he's the chairman of that organization an extremely important organization called world forum and they're having a conference here in new york in conjunction with the millennium summit at the united nations welcome very much to conversations and congratulations on a magnificent event here at the hilton hotel thank you one if you could share just briefly the world for when it got started i guess about five years you've been going it's a very important venue for expression of the human spirit and so what we could share a little of the history of that and leading up to the event of this millennium will of functions sort of in collaboration with the united nations yes we were founded in one thousand nine hundred five by m gorbachev and a group of about twenty co chairs from around the world ranging from ted turner to mohammad yunus to jane goodall to maurice strong to desmond tutu elie weisel and the purpose of the state of the world forum was to convene a global network of leaders from all walks of life and from literally around the planet to gather together on a regular basis to look at what principles and values and actions should seven was that the secretary general was going to convene during the millennium year a special millennium summit of heads of state we felt that it would be a unique opportunity for the forum to also convene civil society and business leaders from around the world so that while the heads of state were meeting we could convene as a turned out upwards of two thousand leaders from other sectors of society so that with the heads of state that would join us from the united nations we could gather together to deal with what that issue which in many people's minds is of utmost importance to the human community at the change of the millennium and the new century namely the issue of globalization how do we govern globalization what do we think actually constitutes globalization how do we make it more equitable how do we make it more democratic so that's why we're here yeah it's extremely timely to be able to bring in an almost like a systems way many other disciplines and get a comprehensive understanding of the human opportunities and challenges that confront us because they are interconnected and it's important to bring other people other than just governmental important is that is to bring other academic and intellectual consideration together in the sort of systems way i think you do that uniquely though you in the in the in the world form concepts i think that probably the state of the world form convenes more diversity at more levels and maybe any other organization in the world and if you think back a hundred years the principal players on the world stage were governments but at the beginning of the twenty first century governments are certainly there but so are the global corporations of the hundred largest economies in the world fifty one are corporations and growing and growing and there's also the emerging role of civil society so what the former is trying to do is honor the government's honor the corporations honor the emerging civil society in the belief that if you can triangulate those three sectors in the broadest sense of those terms then that is really what constitutes the most effective future of global governance who might go to realize some real synergies thank you very much thank you very much for that appreciate it brigid there's no guarantee that director of the world forum being convened here thank you very much for ewing and i will be more coming up from the form here at the old early september the year two thousand jim once again thank you very much and good luck welcome back to conversations where it's a pleasure to welcome program a friend of conversations that being jeff gates he's been here and he's a he's been easy with the shared capitalist institute i guess or what it's called he had written incredibly  is called democracy at risk rescuing main street from wall street and then has a blazing across the top of it a populist vision for the twenty first century very good we really need that right well i sat there and turns out that ralph nader picked it up as a kind of a tragically cup our couple months ago and i've been out here course were in the peace corps for ronald reagan and what i propose in this new book is something called the prosperity corps that if we're going to really get beyond a genuine peace we need to we need to have genuine prosperity worldwide so all the fames and there is that economically sound ecologically sound prosperity is within our reach so we should go for that it's a unique view in a certain sense from the standpoint of many in terms of economics that you do have an it's coming off this idea that we have to build some ownership into the folks rather than just have a concentrated in the traditional ownership class it's a sort of unique take on economics from what we had whether was champion or arcanes or whatever we have theoretically it's a pretty unique view don't don't you think and yet there's many many important people like you say ralph nader among others a great number of others who picked up on and seen the wisdom of the need of something like what you're suggesting right now what i call it is common sense art anomic so what we have what we have now is seventeen trillion dollars that's seventeen thousand billion in the hands of money managers and what they do what has now happened is financial values have become a proxy for all values and so if it doesn't show up on a financial radar screen it's simply not taken into consideration so a thought is you need to take ownership in people laws and local laws and human sizes and that's the only way that capitalism becomes generally what i call community why is he reconnected to people and so that's the theme of the book and it's a large scale thing and it's i know i saw i remember that issue that that issue i guess the addition of meet the press where he did say that and he said this book is been you know you've got a new book out ralph nader you're running on the green ticket then in georgia and which are the georgia race because of a death as a special election so you're not really identified on the ballot is having a party affiliation but the green party approach me to run for nukes again or just say about two years ago and i said no they came back and because of ralph having based his campaign around this new back when he was working with senator long way back you know years and years ago but one thing we did promise each other is that we will indeed do an in depth interview with him about this book and i look forward to that one too a little piece here to share the fact that he was just  communication and people are tending to really rush a long way since it's very important to have a global perspective and to find out the picture beyond the costs of the puzzle that you may be involved home we have is really terrifying if you take that along with human cruelty and green it presents a pretty grim picture but i do have hope for resisting the mazing ingenuity of the human brain now that we know the problems and we have looked at them the resilience of nature if we give her a chance and perhaps a helping hand the tremendous enthusiasm of young people if they are empowered and the and you know reducing emissions and things are reducing greenhouse gases hopefully reducing chemicals elise things can be done but they've got to be done in combination with leveling off this explosive growth of the human population and something we've got to do something about the horrible greedy over consumption of the affluent societies around the world do you think there's something about the human nature that dictates that there will be greedy or is it a more malleable thing if the conditions were such they might be able settle down into a more appropriate ecological idea in terms of the relationship of the material world think it's probably quite deeply innate human nature but that doesn't say that we have continue behaving in this way because we have culture we have brains and we are capable of suddenly realizing that if we continue with this selfish way which seems to be gratifying now three billion people have never in all of their life made a single phone call which is i'm pretty in for him read a book thing we're talking about the internet and some technological development there's a big divide between the haves and have nots in the world s absolutely no no no i think this economy fun we have and i know what you're saying we we have to i repeat we have to reduce the growth rate of our human population done more for the poorest of the four than any other in this century or maybe ever and he's show that you can bring the poorest of the poor and give them telephone so that they start this divide start nature we need to balance the gap between the rich and the for the haves the have nots we have to balance the car between men and women we have to improve the condition of children we have to learn to live in peace  or their own children there's a similar one in a similar kind of initiative to bring people together i went to one of those and it was pretty similar the same kind of ideals so i'm sure there are other well i i would like to think that the same issues are being raised perhaps in both but the juxtaposition of both means that there's an ever expanding dialogue taking place not only with heads of state but with international organizations with  citizen groups civil society representatives and corporations even who have been present and some of these discussions and i think there's been an emerging consensus that we all need to work together if we're going to tackle almost all of the problems that have been laid out as the most serious pressing global challenges that the world faces today both at the u n and by civil society and meetings like this yeah they're all interrelated and comprehensive pattern is what we increasingly need in the genome just been invented problems that are integrated in their causes as well and so therefore the forum two thousand the millennium summit and other meetings that are taking place in new york at this time all have the possibility  of contributing but handsome dialogue and contributing to coalition building among different groups across doctors as well as within sectors and those coalitions have already proven very successful on a drug addressing arms issues and health issues and and poverty issues around the world so hopefully will be accelerating the progress that we make and also you know that some of the corporate world while they're playing an increasingly important role and it seems to me assuming a an increasing social responsibility in many of their actions for example in terms of immunization programs and other health programs that corporations have joined with united nations and non governmental organizations to make possible just in the last i presume you agree with me for coming together yes it's very important because there are scientists and the politicians and the peacemakers and the people who are interested in spiritual ety it's a coming together of min field it's true it's absolutely true because here you have people discussing the impact of biotechnology on the ecosystem the impact of the ecosystem on our identity the evolution of consciousness globalization period and i think that you know for a long time it really isn't truly a seamless well i mean it's you know web of life which connects everything with everything else and you think that we're getting a comprehensive view here sufficiently away from the action  and because of there were few you have great insights no one people who can actually take it the next step so i think you know like anything else everything is always and constantly in ever in the evolution and creativity directed outwards science and technology creativity directed inward is the evolution of consciousness if we focus only on our creativity directed outward  genome project or nuclear technology then we have tools for mass destruction the genome project can be used for the elimination and extinction of all life on this planet or it could be on the other hand it can be the salvation of not only humanity but of the larger web of life so technology is neutral what we do with it is up to us we have to integrate our inner evolution with creativity  understand itself even the genome and the desire to understand the genome is coded in the genome right yeah well it didn't think we were going to a combination of understanding things even the d n a i was talking to a friend of mine got six billion human beings the d n a ten trillion cells in your body each one is in communication with all the other absolutely no maybe a good model for the guy we've got six billion souls heading for ten and then we have to each of those operating would a little life infested the rock yeah ok so you know if you looked at things from a bigger perspective you'd see that you know like a few microorganisms on a very much still in the infancy of scientific understanding you know in less than a few decades you'll have the technology even if you think there is no life in the other parts of the galaxy in a few years you'll be able to take the genome information e mail it to a distant star or distant planet and then use the draw material and dust of that line is and through robotics the galaxies with life you have to have an email you have to of earth day or the initiator of that and he's here in the congress and john welcome very much conversation thank you harold it's a pleasure to be here and this is a momentous day for me i was telling you that yesterday i had i met you knew margaret meet you and you have the earth started we back in ninety seven that that's correct and my whole life prepared me for this my father was an evangelist and people say i'm preaching but anyway i was in five bring in all this stuff but anyway ok well i'll just mention i think it was beautiful if we look for the good where we have problems it really moves us ahead and he said that he had tried he had written about the importance of again if we can have more money for education than for bullets we're going to have a great future well let me let me go along with you now you earth proclamation you've been putting together over the years and getting this signature idea of to get across the idea of peace justice in the care of earth we want every individual and institution our problem is both the nature of people as they think today and our institutions well this proclamation could you tell us about that the people who thought this was a great idea some of you names you'll recognize david brower for example all eugene mccarthy he thought this was great john gardner but the main thing was we thought you know you got global attention for this it was  press release we have participation all of the world buzz aldrin i met with him the astronaut one and i could go on some of the more interesting names and the intent of the well is it says right yes or peacefully in the scourge of war provide an opportunity for the children of the disinherited poor to obtain their rightful and arrogance of the earth redirect the energies of industry and society from progress through products to progress through harmony with earth's natural systems for as the improvement and quality of life i'm in and that was a statement that went through one thousand nine hundred seventy and you had now how many signatures are you that it's a rather write well  twenty years of effort and we could with that but more time with you you you you you met with him for about a half an hour right right and had a one on one that's right he thought this was great and i feel if we can now if we can only wake up the media is there is a kind of subtext emerging at this meeting and indeed at the united nations too and the ike chemically a single speech by a single person here on any subject at any meeting in which at some point the internet was not mentioned yeah well it should be and and it i think it recognizes that in fact we are now living in the very early stages the cave painting stages as it were a revolution which is quite the biggest change to come along in human affairs than to the capture of far quite plain and much and ironically it has rendered much of what he said here interesting but irrelevant that is to say they are still discussing the the the whole frame of reference in which the discussions are being held is necessarily within the context of nation states and organizations and governments and arrangements that were set up to to work within the concept of nation states as they have existed for you know a thousand years the internet doesn't necessarily respect the let all the internet has ended all governments of flesh and steel and given way to a new a new community of mind in which people are united only by their shared taste information and i don't think you don't think those in those people are interested in the information environment internet and what i well enough represented at this meeting here were at the world forum meeting or at the united nations itself this summit that's being held there or not you know i think that all of the meetings here could benefit immensely from the presence of somebody like stewart brand oh from this all this information technology developing where i've sort of grown up with it i started in radio before television existed in the in the town i was i was working in right and then i was in perth in australia and then i went to  see this wonderful new thing called television yes and became part of that became involved in the news and then you know went from there to the united done and then i got to visiting the united states i realized that this really is the belly of the beast oriel  and that this is the center of the media in new york is the center of the media where it is going to come from but this is in itself is also changing because the nature of the internet is such that it creates a world in which the center is everywhere in the where it really redistributes power and and renders old of form a kind of centralized structure is obsolete or some of the people that you know they've come on in the last let's say few couple  another thread die i think i first heard inundated by stewart brand who said that we're going to spend the next hundred years just working out things to do with limitless bandwidth yeah that's right and gilda talks about the fact that we are now thresholding to it's going to be a test it's going to be a strange been a great challenge i don't think everything will be smooth and everything will be good and many of the streams and tensioners created by this very rapid change are evident i think in many of the conferences here  there is a real deep fret about what are we going to do because it stretches and strains the fabric of tradition and life and existence and many of us are going to have to those who survive will be those who who most quickly sort of shed the the traditions that have held them back in many ways but then again if i could if i start over this a quote from stewart brand let me end with another one why not he said when a big change comes along you're either or your part of the road can turn or said lead follow or get out of the way which it which is which i will challenge i think is a mistake because it doesn't leave room for the critics like the idea and any given time in the great evolution of history a lot of people say well it's just the great leader two thousand stage and we come back with more and again kevin thank you very very much indeed for coming right back welcome to this time of the program was pleased to welcome to the program larry gal dr larry gal and he's the director general of the international agency for economic development wide experience in terms of the business world on an on a global strategic thinking level and has been involved in the u n for a very long time in terms of particularly archiving the videotaping events over there and larry w much conversation to close this program out thank you very much tonight to be here harold and the such an important meeting the world of form yeah very very important one thing i want to cover because one of the things that came out we talked to a number of people representation of people here on but one thing that came up consistently from everyone it seems to me is that the concerns that are since this is tied into the u n millennium summit for his the new united nations one of the concerns is there's a great deal going on of communicating of some of the events and the ideas that are there to a broader audience and you've been very involved in that room with you and videotaping and so forth and we want to get to that but i want to maybe get share a little of your own personal background and so forth and how you was almost exclusively at the united nations where i've just discovered that the people of the united nations the countries and these organizations that are here at the world forum have just discovered globalization now they're all beginning to focus on globalization and the beginning to say hey there's a lot of problems out here in the world and we need now open and transparency with the world trade organization and with the united nations and if you think about the united nations it has been for fifty five years a totally closed operation where a inadequate in a certain sense in terms of the value of what's going on and particularly also against the fact that it's getting easier and easier to archive and you know intel is really an intellectually important material and considerations that are going on  and if you think about that process of closing the down for that long period of time if you look at the number in specially in relationship to the number one can so that criticism of the united nations number one grizzled one of the nine nations like this forum is a  of good people who come together they mean well and they just discuss topics and they never implement anything in the next year they discuss the topic again so that is import into the view of war where the topic come out and they can do it but that that is an important function in and of itself but see that was a criticism of the united nations and therefore they said well them it's not necessary to put the information out because they don't do anything with it anyways they just discuss it on the other hand that criticism in my opinion is the number one strength of the united nations that these people of the world former absolutely correct what has happened is on the one hand globalization has been going off in this direction and doing just fine it's been working wonderful for the corporations that to go bligh's in getting bludger stocks been going up wealth has been accumulated and so forth for the corporat causing a tremendous gap between the middle class and even those in the for separation of separation that's caused religious groups and will for groups like this world form to come together and to bring people from all different background the and heads of governments to come in and start complaining about it so what's happening is while the corporations have been going off in this way globalizing now building these people's organizations that are beginning to address and it's and it's a collection of all civil society lines that are beginning to address these issues and so they're beginning to look at institutions like the world trade organization and the united nations and say hey we should know what's going on in there because you guys are analyzing the world's problems you should share that with us outside you have before you were an international consultant time for the world business leadership and that sort of globalization you were also involved strategic air command yeah you heard in these type of thing is that war is too important to be left only to the generals yeah in a certain sense you might say globalization is too important to be left only to the consideration and reform does bring some of that in yes in a way and does also the u n take those things human rights and so we adequately are able to take that out of million to account yeah but look at me i was the only person ever in the history the nine nations for about six years six years that's and i easy and i mean with this new technology and now it's becoming digital it's getting very very better quality and you are able to go and videotape in a very cost effective kind of way of these things were going on an archive to make it available to n g o s and kind of them to the new head of the united nations coffee n n and his department of public information which is run by mr hogan from japan has basically fundamentally close that down and said no we're not going to do that and now why we have never really been able to find out why they said there was a lot of written what was cop it's a long story but you know we never really been able to find out why that's been closed down i've approached the u s mission about it and they seem to just look the other way the whole place becomes opaque so on the one hand they're sitting over there saying we want to be misrepresented but he was not being responsible like you wouldn't take that your level or is that a policy level they just want the place to be closed down they don't want the information going up what he thinks of direct you or the director i don't know if that sort of principle that the u n should be closed to the scrutiny of the world yeah i think it's that first you know you have to you have to realize for fifty five years here at the united nations they've never allowed it out you know most of the reason for now i come along and i'm allowed to do that in the end they also allowed me to put it on the air  or was it a matter of there just wasn't the right combination or wasn't there wasn't funding in the terms of very bureaucratic organized very costly expensive ways to record things and over there they just couldn't get it together in terms of budgetary what was the reason they didn't and why did they allow you to do it know i mean you're you're an innovative individual who's able to take advantage move you know with with alacrity and that sort of thing get things done that's an important question why you were allowed to be put in this position of having thousands of hours you know important activities going on you and you know up to date medium format and i think the answer to the first question of why it wasn't allowed is that an absolute foreign policy probably of the u s government not to allow or definitely of the united nations which is basically controlled as we know by what is the single strength the united nations the single strength the nations is that they can address a world problem better than any better than the u s government better than any government of the world better than any institution of the world because it can bring one hundred now a hundred eighty nine countries in and they can focus the ambassadors in the ministers that are focused on that particular issue they can bring in the bell or it's the world's experts again bring in the universities and the private sector and they can delineate that problem and identify  itself its task is to communicate why haven't they been able to do that is that they've not been able to take is it just a matter of inefficiency or do you think it's a matter of i don't want to use the word nefarious or something that's so they want to cover up and not let know what's going on there because it's there they have a saying about how don't ever let anybody see how you make sausage and that kind of thing and got them away are cigarettes and it's an important question because there should be an opening up on the un because it's the only institutional world in their people would know about it and what you've been doing is on the van of that and that's what particularly important because that's the thing that keeps coming up with this form is we have to communicate to people right and you were doing it right and why aren't they doing it what steps are being take and in your view for them that they're go meet this transparency need to get information out in the in a reasonable format to the world population in a responsible way do you think you know i think the only way to do it is like there's a major religious movement at the united nations to the saying that they need that kind of transparency and openness and then forms like this world form is sixteen the important to get you have to organize groups worldwide put pressure on them to start opening them back up and and allow that information out because i don't know how you can solve the problems of the world if you don't know what the details of it are don't know what the causes are you don't know the information how can you work on the solutions we've had already important we've had all these conference the major cairo beijing and so where they had all the billion in the issues have been pretty well done by these major conferences the u n is organized it was last a solution to is it because there isn't a comprehensive solution to the problems that confront it if they take this attitude here my my opinion is pure out of the if you look at the non governmental organizations in the united nations for fifty years or so the u s government totally supported them and even encouraged them to do these global aid conferences the delineated the world's problems and they used to be the likely non governmental organizations because they could use all that bad information to focus against quote the evil empires but when russia and china suddenly became our business partners and there's no evil empires out there then all these non governmental organizations that have been focused on all these issues around the world including all of the countries turned and looked at a superpower and i feel sorry for america turned and looked at us as a superpower with their hand out and said ok we know what the problems are we know how to solve it it's going to cost money what do you do without the problem and the u s says oh my god we created the monster because we just got this guy gingrich in washington with his car interact with america to convince