Friday, April 14, 2006

The Type of People with Different Ideas You Want to Talk to and Meet with to Bring Change to the World (Oh, and Do Business With Too, Of Course)

"David Rockefeller n'a jamais rencontré un dictateur qu'il n'ait pas trouvé sympathique", disaient, au temps de la guerre froide, ceux qui lui reprochaient ses contacts avec les dirigeants de régimes non démocratiques, de Castro et Boumediène à Pinochet et Botha en passant par Saddam Hussein, sans oublier les maîtres communistes de l'Union soviétique et de la Chine.
Not until the end of his laudatory article on David Rockefeller does Patrick Jarreau admit that the "modest" writer of his 588-page memoirs founder may have detractors in America. Needless to say, he immediately dissolves the criticism with a Rockfeller (sic) quote, a self-serving excuse that the Europeans have conveniently used many times in the past. (Having just as conveniently done away with the type of criticism that isn't to its taste, Le Monde immediately puts it out of its mind and reverts to a state of being impressed that the grand-son of the founder of Standard Oil is the type of man to have been received "by Nasser, by Faisal, by Krushchev, or by Zhu En-Lai".)
"J'ai toujours jugé utile de rencontrer des gens qui ont des idées différentes des vôtres, se justifie-t-il. C'est la meilleure manière d'amener des changements dans le monde."

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