What's worse, the 9/11 Truth petition, or the Summers Memo? [View All]

[Enrique]

Van Jones was out over the former, but hardly a mention of the latter...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/lawrence-summers-africa-i_b_141706.html

(...)

But there is a lesser known episode in Summers' past that further highlights his reckless tendencies, and foreshadows a politically nettlesome nomination process.

On December 12, 1991, while serving as chief economist for the World Bank, Summers authored a private memo arguing that the bank should actively encourage the dumping of toxic waste in developing countries, particularly "under populated countries in Africa," which Summers described as "UNDER-polluted." Summers added that public outrage over the heightened rates of prostate cancer caused by his proposed dumping would be mitigated by the fact that poor people in developing countries rarely live long enough to develop prostate cancer.

Read the full Summers memo here.

When the Summers memo leaked to the public in February 1992, Brazil's Secretary of the Environment, Jose Lutzenburger, responded with an indignant missive. "Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane," Lutzenburger told Summers. "Your thoughts a concrete example of the unbelievable alienation, reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional 'economists' concerning the nature of the world we live in... If the World Bank keeps you as vice president it will lose all credibility."

If Obama nominates Summers, he will send a dispiriting message to governments of developing countries -- especially in Africa -- just as they have begun to look at the United States as a beacon of hope.

Back in the U.S., Summers' nomination would prompt a reexamination by the media of the countless controversies he has fomented. Even an episode as tangential as Summers' romantic fling with right-wing hatemonger Laura Ingraham could become a source of political embarrassment for the White House. Summers should be left to write his memoirs, not memos.






edit to add important context from Huff Post's comments section:

lantpritchett 05:04 PM on 11/08/2008 0 Fans

In 1991 Larry signed was a seven page, single spaced, memo written entirely by me. The purpose of that memo was to give comments on a draft of another report. The ironic, and if taken non-ironically unquestionably offensive, text was buried on page 5 of that memo. The passage used irony as a rhetorical device to clarify and sharpen arguments and was not intended to be taken as a free standing "suggestion" or "proposal." The memo was distributed in paper form only to the four people responsible for that report and was never intended for any wider distribution or purpose.

What you have posted a link to is a fraud, there is no such document, what is there has been created through cut and paste. While the words were in the memo, presenting the words in that form may convey the erroneous impression that Larry Summers read that text as a memo in its entirety, endorsed that text as a serious proposal or analysis that represented his views, and on that basis signed it and sent it as a free standing message intended for distribution as a "suggestion" about policy. The impressions created by presenting these words this doctored form and out of context are, on every point, completely and utterly false. I feel your readers should not be encouraged to form views based on doctored documents and without all the facts.