Noam Chomsky - Foundations of World Order: the UN, World Bank, IMF & Decl. Human Rights 1999

patient souls who have been here for a long time holding their seats, welcome i am jane gould, the coordinator of the technology and culture forum and i would like to welcome you to tonight's

noam

chomsky

program on the 50 years of the

foundations

of the

world

order

of the un the

world

bank

the imf and the universal

decl

aration of

human

rights

before moving on to tonight's program I draw your attention to the next program of the technology and culture forum reinventing universities for the 21st century there is a poster with all the information about my head and come on Wednesday, March 3 at 5:30 p.m. m.

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noam

chomsky

chomsky is honored by mit as a professor of the institute his doctoral thesis on transformational analysis began his radical transformation of the field of linguistics honorary degrees acquired from professional societies major awards his list is luminous, few have gone unnoticed and yet, as A public intellectual professor, Chomsky has always taken seriously his responsibility to stimulate and direct public debate, as well as to speak and write. on linguistics and philosophy, has taken on intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs, US foreign policy, to name a few of its key topics, late last year I received an email encouraging me to participate in a birthday card number 70 for noam chomsky online global hundreds of thousands the list went on and people couldn't resist saying that Chomsky has challenged and inspired them tonight.

He is here to see the last 50 years. What we create. What we have and where we should go. Noam Chomsky just realized it when listening to Jane. The title says that it is also 50 years since I entered this building for the first time, but I won't talk about the fact that we just passed the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which a few weeks ago was the

decl

aration The Codified Human Rights Regime in that statement it is one of the pillars of the system of world

order

that was built on the remains of World War II.

There were two other important cornerstones: one was the international political order articulated in the United States. charter of the united nations and the third is the international economic system, sometimes called the Bretton Wood system, designed mainly by the United States and Great Britain, just at the end of the war, these three systems were closely integrated conceptually and in fact , the thinking behind them illustrates that like their interactions over the years and to a degree that is quite unusual in world affairs, the three

foundations

reflected public attitudes and concerns over a fairly wide range, for that very reason the principles that were articulated and to some extent instituted by those principles were quite unpleasant.

To the elite elements who were those who were really in a position to build, shape and guide the current world order and very quickly took measures to dismantle or at least mitigate the high principles, the conflicts over these matters constitute a large part of the modern history. Post-Cold War history is not the usual framework for discussing it, but in my opinion they should be important topics. There is a lot of print. There are still many treatises to be written, even to be researched. I don't think the themes have been written. has been addressed quite seriously, but I will try to give some indication of why I think it is an appropriate and instructive way of looking at the contemporary world system, it is our origin, the time of the second world war and perhaps it is probable future, so The main question I want to get at is what has been the fate of the three basic and integrated pillars of the world order that were established half a century ago and specifically what has been the role of the United States, which has been the main actor in the world stage remains so and is the most important to us for obvious reasons, regardless of the importance and scale of his contributions, which are usually quite large for equally obvious reasons.

Well, that's the main question I want to get at, but I'd like to take it on a detour just to make life more complicated and the detour has two leads that I'd like to explore a little bit and then get back to the questions. The first clue is simply to remind everyone what we already know that we have to keep in mind that the questions are not abstract and do not refer to some distant planet, so it is not like an academic topic for an academic seminar, we are trying with questions of life and death, of suffering, pain and despair.

The voices that are heard are not those, the voices that are heard are those of the are those are the rich and the powerful, naturally there are also those who have sought to be a voice for those who do not have a voice, their destiny has not been very happy, some of them were. simply killed by our hands or by those who work for us, a chapter of modern history that one does not read too much about, in fact they were killed and there are a good number of them doubly in the sense that first they were killed and then silenced so you can do it. a check and see how many of your friends can tell you the names of the dissidents from Eastern Europe and their murdered counterparts in Central America and how many books you have read by one and the other, etc., it is an instructive lesson, but the voices that We hear, those that remain are typically those of the powerful and that is important because that is not the only voice, it is the voice of a small minority here and a small minority around the world.

Well, let me illustrate right now that there are important stories in the press. In recent days, about the G7 meetings, the meetings of the seven richest industrial countries and the exchanges between their leaders, for example, President Sharax France, his exchanges with Robert Rubin, who I suppose could be called co-president of the United Joined. give alan greenspan at least half of the presidency, but that has been all over the front pages and those discussions are interesting and tell you a lot of things. I watch them closely, even not so closely, review the outcome of these discussions. The G7 and the other exchanges reveal the power of the United States quite dramatically and also its extreme isolation even among the richest countries and if one gets closer and learns a lot about the true nature of the international economic system that actually works system of the difference between the doctrines that are applied to the rich and the powerful by their insistence and the opposing doctrines that are imposed on everyone else that comes out with great clarity in the articles that discuss uh these these topics I will return to that In relation to the third pillar of the world order, the international economic system, well, there are no stories, and I mean none, about the G15 meetings that took place at the same time in Jamaica the last two weeks.

In the national press, it is literally zero. uh, I rely on a database search done by a friend who has access to that monster uh, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have no information on them, uh, there is no shortage of information, the associated press had stories except they weren't run and the bbc world services had extensive coverage and if you look at the peripheral press, particularly in florida, I suppose there was coverage in florida because of the latin american connection, but the national press did. deleted now, don't regret that they are not minor countries these are important these are not the ones that are dismissed as basket cases like sub-Saharan Africa this is Argentina Brazil Chile Mexico India Indonesia Nigeria quite important countries where people expect to make a lot of money if they can 17 of them even though it is they call g15 a good part of the world and they have something to say, believe it or not, and you can even read it, for example, you can read it on the home page if you subscribe to the leading magazine in Egypt. uh, which has an English edition so you can read it in English uh, the United States and Britain, mostly quotes, are not willing to engage in dialogue with the south, uh, the south is what is euphemistically called the developing world, uh, which direction are they.

In development it can be argued that the United States and Great Britain are not willing to engage in dialogue with the South, which is always forced to make concessions in the World Trade Organization for the benefit of the rich. The real story of globalization that continues is that the North. The G7 has to reap the maximum benefits and the South is only entitled to a limited margin of development and if this margin is crossed, the Western profiteers are there to finish you off as quickly as they can. That is not false, but it is a considerable euphemism and the writers surely know that the power and violence of the United States has also been there to take you down as quickly as possible if countries try to follow the path of independent and dependent development, which In US planning circles it is called radical nationalism or economic nationalism or sometimes even excessive development that is not to be allowed in the current period of globalization for reasons that I explain again it is not necessary to send the marines, what often speculators can do can do the job the g15 meeting continues to issue a plea to western investors says no We don't want to suppress you, but we want to know who you are and we want you to come and go in an orderly manner, that is precisely what the North will not accept.

The demand that this not be accepted is a central part of the multilateral agreement on investments that have been diverted thanks to the pressure of activists who managed to escape media controls but that the diverted ones did not stop returning in other ways and the The issue is to prevent what the G-15 asked for from becoming a reality; This is then accompanied by grim accounts of the effects of the specific form of globalization that has been instituted over the last 25 years there are two main aspects that are relevant here: one is that it has been an economic failure from a statistical point of view. , at least not from the point of view of the rich. so economic growth has slowed in most of the world and as a fraction of gross domestic product as a fraction of economic output the proportion going to workers has decreased, so workers are getting a smaller and smaller share of an economy slowing down, that is essentially the story.

The long-term trend of this is a form of globalization, it is a kind of globalization of the third world structural model and that is a very clear structural model that is found almost everywhere and that is a relic of European imperialism. I include American imperialism here. We find societies with a very small sector of extremely extremely rich people, generally linked to foreign masters, a large number of people who are between survival and suffering and a category of superfluous people in our dependencies, they are usually called disposable people, like in Colombia where you eliminate them you send the death squads or the paramilitaries we are a more civilized society we put them in jail instead of various fraudulent criminal wars uh but that model is spreading uh it takes a different form in a rich country like the United States and a poor country like, for example, Haiti, but the structure is quite similar and in the United States and Britain it is quite explicit in the rest, in the other rich countries, it is partially true and devastatingly true in most of the world, including now Eastern Europe. that the end of the cold war has led to its more or less predictable outcome and that the countries of Eastern Europe are returning to what they were before that attempt at independent nationalism, so that those who were a deep poverty of the third world or like Russia are leaving and returning to that state, those that were part of the West, like the Czech Republic, are returning to that state, as one should have expected, in my opinion, that's what the Cold War was about, uh, but uh, so that's that model that's familiar. and now it is globalizing a little, that is the process of globalization, well, that is the vision of the G15.

You have a much more painful and anguished vision when you get to the poorest countries, those are the richest countries outside the really rich world. silenced let's take a second example: a year ago the world trade organization celebrated the 50th anniversary of the world the global trading system was originally created now the world trade organization and that got a lot of media coverage and there was a lot of coverage of the rhetoric inspired by bill clinton and world leaders who spoke about the wonders that had been achieved through global trade and so on there was also a spokesman for the united nations there he was the secretary general of unkted the united nations conference on trade and development the main economic research of the united nations and organization ofanalysis that, according to its statutes, is committed to an international trade system that promotes economic and social development and gave a talk on behalf of the rest of the world, the united nations, he, as an economist at the e closed his speech by saying that No one should be fooled by the festive atmosphere of these celebrations.

Outside there is anguish and fear, insecurity about jobs and a life of quiet desperation. Well, there was extensive media coverage, as I said, but in fact they preferred to keep the festive atmosphere inside, although again , you can read this if you subscribe to a very good third world magazine that is published in Penang, Malaysia, the secretary general of uh, there is a name for that, it's called gratis.press I think the secretary general of uh unkted presented the practically same message at the recent g15 meeting a couple of days ago predicted a bleak future for the vast majority of people in the south, although a small sector is and will be still quite rich, well the story it describes is also similar here , including the part about insecurity, and that's not exactly a secret, which is why Alan Greenspan, when he testified before the Senate

bank

ing committee, was proud of the fairy tale economy as it's known. presided over a tribute and largely attributed it to what he called increased worker insecurity, meaning that workers just feel intimidated and are afraid that they won't have a job tomorrow and are afraid to ask for a raise or benefits and and that contributes substantially to what is called the health of the economy as a concept that is not correlated with the health of the people in the economy, but it is a concept, it is good, it keeps inflation low, it keeps profits high, it does all kinds of good things and it's real, if you look at surveys done, say by Businessweek, you find that about 90 percent of workers feel insecure about their job, some mean very insecure, about 70 percent fear that if they try to get involved in union organizing they will be The reasons for this intimidation are various, some of them quite simple, others are simply corporate crimes, which is very easy when backed by a criminal state.

The Reagan administration made it clear and open to the business world that it was simply not going to enforce the laws, as a result, layoffs of union organizers increased approximately threefold and other measures could be used to ensure that workers remained intimidated, which continues under Clinton administration, another intimidation measure is what is mistakenly called free trade. The agreements are not about free trade and they surely are not agreements, at least if population matters. The fact that they are called agreements is interesting because it is recognized that at least in any country that is democratic enough to conduct polls like Canada and the United States, the population is against them, but their agreements, anyway, which says something about the conception of democracy, if it were about free trade, let's say reducing tariffs, NAFTA could have taken two pages, it is 2200 pages because it is not about free trade but about what are called free agreements trade.

They have the property that they are a way of threatening workers, so there are even some studies on this by a very good labor historian at Cornell, Kate Bronfenbrenner, which shows that in about half of the organizing efforts since the NAFTA there has been an effort to disrupt the transfer threat and it is not an unreal threat where, however, the organization has been successful, the number of transfers triples and if you look where it triples it is in the mobile industries, not in construction but in manufacturing so it's a real threat and it helps intimidate people and contributes to the health of the economy and of course in a poorer country it's a much bigger threat so it's part of the economy fairy tale economics, which is indeed a fairy tale economy for some people, including people in the sector that most of us come from, me in particular. for that sector of the population it is a fairy tale when you look at the reports on the fairy tale economy you find two things that mention the return on capital and the stock market and for those who have stocks they say that the rapid inflation of assets in recent years has made It is debated what this means for the economy, but it certainly made them very rich, making it a fairy tale for the one percent of the economy who own about half the stocks.

Similar figures for other assets and for the 10 percent that owns most of the rest, about 85 percent of the benefits have gone to about 10 of the population, if you move on to the next 10 percent of the second decile, they have actually lost net worth during the Clinton recovery, it goes down even further, it looks uglier in recent years, in fact this recovery is unusual and I think unprecedented in the sense that, first of all, it is Quite slow even by the standards of the post-war period, it is certainly not very different from the slow recoveries of the 1970s and 1980s, well below the previous ones. but it's also unusual that the majority of the population has been left out just now after this is the peak of the business cycle which was 1989, so it's been almost 10 years since the median is getting back to where it was in 1989, there has never been such a slow recovery for the majority, it's probably 70 80 percent of the population, there has never been anything like this before, wages are about real wages or about 15 percent below what they were in 1973, in fact, are back to the level around 1964 o So it depends a little bit on how you measure income, to the extent that they stay high, they stay high because people just work a lot more, so the typical American family works about 15 weeks a year more than 20 years ago to try it. to keep it at a stagnant or declining level if you're interested in data on this, the best general database on this kind of thing, also written quite clearly, comes out every two years, it's called the state economic policy institute the United States workers, just released its 1998.-99th edition report just a couple of weeks ago, which can give you details up to the current evidence, well, let me postpone for a moment how this return relates to the fate of the three pillars, but the point I am trying to make is that all of this has to do with real

human

beings and their destiny, it is not a nice story and when we include the destiny of future generations who do not have the right to vote, as it is called in the market, the very restricted market systems that exist if we include them then the stories are even uglier well, that is the first detour, the second is and I will return to the topic that has to do with the rules and conventions for discuss all this or discuss the world order and There are some rules and conventions and if you deviate from them, you are not part of the discussion.

The norms and conventions are that the goals, intentions and purposes, as they are sometimes called, of the United States and its leaders are high. sincere, benign, other good things and that, fundamentally, it is true regardless of the facts and is understood to be true regardless of the facts, so, for example, the same academic books and articles, etc., that declare it as a truth are often also dedicated to showing that it is refuted by the facts and that's called irony or deviation, you know, some exogenous factor or something, that's pretty standard, so in fact the thesis is overwhelmingly refuted by the internal documentary record of the document, the planning documentary record and even more. dramatically by the historical record of the practice, but it doesn't matter, the principle remains true and provides the framework for discussion and part of a good education is understanding that it is internalized enough to then be able to participate in the debate that comes from In this way, it is reminiscent of medieval and early modern theological dogma and it is interesting that it is sometimes even presented in those terms, especially in what is called international realist theory, however, although the comparison comes to mind, I think it is unfair , is a kind of insult to the Middle Ages. theology, I'm very serious and I'll explain why if you're interested, but let me get it out of the way anyway, it has something of a theological principle.

Keep in mind that these principles don't apply to anyone else, so, for example, no one pays. any attention to the altruistic rhetoric of Stalin's constitution or to the exalted rhetoric that accompanies what those who carry it out call humanitarian interventions, the most obvious cases of which in this century, I suppose, at least judging by the rhetoric, are the invasion of Ethiopia by Mussolini. the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and northern China and Hitler's invasion of Czech Slovakia, the rhetoric was very impressive and full of humanitarian ideals and noble purposes, etc., and like most propaganda, it was not totally false, since You know, find fragments of truth in it.

So, for example, Hitler was invited by the president of Slovakia and the Japanese actually had one of the leading Chinese nationalists as a puppet, etc., but we don't pay any attention to those things, we don't consider it proof that benign intentions in those, in other cases, the principles apply only at home, not anywhere else, and here they apply regardless of the facts and, very often, in the same documents they say academic articles that present the facts to refute them, that's a bit misleading to give examples because that would underestimate uniformity and extremism and it would be misleading to quote the press, so I won't do it because it's too easy.

Let me give you an example that happened to be the last one I looked at last night. a current international affairs journal is an interesting case a very good academic very critical of the US government policies what makes this article also more interesting it is worth examining not only because it illustrates the conventions but because of the What we discover about what we discover when we look a little closer, not only about contemporary history but also about ourselves, what we do, how we deal with it, the record is particularly instructive here because the cold war is almost totally irrelevant , this goes back a long time and no cold war has ever been relevant the institution has been recognized the institutions of power and decision making remain unchanged hence we conclude, if we are rational, that it is likely to be quite a predictor good of where things are going, at least if we let them.

In fact, articles by a well-known Middle East academic is also a leading policy analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations and elsewhere. He has been very critical of US policy toward the Middle East, which is his specialty. the article is two and he and he give a recommendation that is actually highlighted by the magazine, so it's like the most important part of the recommendation, it says that the United States should more vigorously promote the core issues of American foreign policy, especially freedom, democracy and human

rights

. These are central issues of US foreign policy. No argument or evidence is presented to establish that fact because none is needed.

It is a theological dogma. It's like God is great or something. It is not necessary to present evidence to prove this. It's just a truth. So the article. It proceeds after having established the truth and continues and this is quite typical to describe how the United States has consistently acted against its current central foreign policy issues in the Middle East. The author then goes on to say: I am quoting now. There is no doubt that this is not only true, but there is no doubt that American foreign policy adopts a separate standard for the Middle East when it comes to values ​​such as democracy and human rights.

To prove that a double standard exists, evidence is needed. so he presents some evidence, the evidence is that, as he shows, the United States does not defend such values ​​in the Middle East, which is the area of ​​its expertise and attention, but it does defend them elsewhere. Surprisingly, he points out that the major Muslim states are the most important if they are not in the Middle East, which makes the point very clear and the most important case, of course, as he points out, is Indonesia, the largest Muslim state, which he cites to establish the certainty of the judgment that the United States has a separate territory. standard for the Middle East well, breaking with convention, let's look at the dogma maintaining the single and most important example cited, namely Indonesia, where the United States defends its values ​​of democracy and human rights, in a very similar way to Hitler Mussolini and Japan, this doctrine is not totally false, so on May 20, 1998, so it was last May, the United States made its first statement in favor of democracy in Indonesia.

Secretary of State Albright, theOn May 20, he asked President Suharto to resign and provide for a democratic transition a few years ago. hours later he resigned, maybe it's a coincidence, maybe it tells you something about power relations, you can find out for yourself, so last May we called for democracy, from the moment Suharto took power in October 1965 to May 1998, this gentleman was our kind of guy as the Clinton administration called him as he was slaughtering, torturing and robbing in a rather impressive manner, one of the world records of the modern period. The Clinton administration even went so far as to suspend its congressionally ordered review of Indonesia's atrocious labor situation. practices, uh, while at the same time praising Indonesia for bringing them closer to international standards and the Clinton administration also avoided Congressional restrictions on military support for our kind of people, it found various ways to pay for it from other pockets and that kind of things.

But it is true that last May the United States experienced a religious conversion and for the first time called for democracy in Indonesia; The force of the comparison with the Middle East, however, is somewhat weakened by the fact that the same conversion occurred there at about the same time. At the same time, in December 1998, Secretary of State Albright announced, quote: "We have concluded that the Iraqi people would benefit from having a government that truly represented them in both the Middle East and Indonesia, contrary to the thesis of the United States". underwent a religious conversion in favor of the central themes of its foreign policy, at least on paper the accuracy can be assessed at approximately the same time last year in the case of Iraq before the policy of the United States was to support what was called iron fist the iron fist was saddam hussein for a long time he was our kind of person during his most murderous crimes and most monstrous crimes after committing his first real offense, the thesis changed: we still wanted an iron fist, but he had to being a clone, someone who would rule with an iron fist just as Saddam Hussein had done during the period when he was our kind of person, that was more or less official policy, but in The Document at least it hasn't changed because in December In the past we discovered that they would benefit from a government that represented them, so in 1998 the United States announced its support for democracy, but in both the Middle East and Indonesia, what does this tell us?

The central themes of the US foreign policy response tell us nothing at all because these are doctrinal truths and therefore the facts are simply irrelevant, as if you know that God is great and merciful, you know , look at the factual truths, it actually looks better, put it aside, uh, let's look, uh, me. I don't want to take too many detours. Let's look a little closer at Indonesia, where there is no doubt that these issues of democracy and human rights were put into practice. There is a lot of concern at the moment about the possibility that Indonesia could break up into some sort of separate federation or perhaps separate territories and that prospect is much deplored, however the objection to it, whatever it may be, is certainly not an objection of principle and we can find out quite easily if we bother to Look at the irrelevant facts, so in 1958 that turned out to be a secret of official US policy, but now we know that it was official US policy. divide Indonesia.

The uh and the United States actually sponsored that uh carried out a major counterinsurgency and insurgency operation. The subversive operation, uh, probably the most important of the period after the Second World War, uh, to try to divide Indonesia, featured a rebellion on the outer islands, uh, those are the islands where the oil is and where most of the American investments, uh, and that. The goal was to separate them and the purpose was the reason was that the national government was neutralist and independent and in fact was too democratic, which was extremely worrying for Washington. The government was not suggesting it was a model democracy. but he was allowing the poor people's parties to function; there was a major party representing the poor peasants and it was allowed to function.

I was doing better and better with each election and that was shocking news in Washington if you look at the internal history we discovered. which most of it has been suppressed by the way, but bits and pieces have leaked out and there are some good academic studies on it, one actually done by the main founder of US Southeast Asian studies, George Cann at Cornell, uh , uh, but there are also some documents that have arrived. In the official channels there were fears that the government was, shall we say, too democratic and that it would be impossible, as they say, to repress the left-wing parties by ordinary democratic means and, therefore, they would have to be the The word is removed, they are the joint bosses, meanwhile, the outer islands would be separated, so within what is left, the bad guys have to be eliminated, the outer islands will be separated, the United States will take them well, the rebellion failed, but not before destroying any fabric of uh.

Parliamentary democracy existed in Indonesia and now, after 40 years, we are calling for it to be restored. After the failure of the rebellion, the United States resorted to what is standard operating procedure when wanting to overthrow a civilian government. try to undermine the civilian government but support the military because they are the ones who are going to overthrow the government for you, that is absolutely standard, case after case, uh, pinochet is an example, the real story about what is behind Iran con is the same and We know it had nothing to do with the hostages because it was started when there were no hostages, but that's just standard operating procedure.

In Indonesia it worked. The United States attempted to undermine the civilian government. He supported the military. It worked in 1965. In fact, there was a military coup Suharto took control then a massacre inspired by the army took place the CIA described it as one of the worst massacres of the 20th century comparable to that of Hitler Stalin and Mao it was reported quite accurately in the United States it was an astonishing bloodbath the new The York Times called it boiling blood: astonishing massacre, that was the Times' phrase that Time magazine devoted an entire section to what they called the boiling bloodbath in which hundreds Thousands of people were massacred, mostly poor peasants and the leadership of the poor peasants.

In fact, the peasant party was eliminated, it was reported accurately and with total euphoria, there was such joy about it that it could not even be suppressed, it is as if erased from history, but go back and read the newspapers of the time, the euphoria is total. across the intellectual spectrum, you know, Freedom House was applauding, etc., the United States government applauded. Secretary of Defense McNamara testified before Congress that the military aid we had given to the Indonesian military had paid dividends, in a private letter to President Johnson was particularly proud of the training that Indonesian military officers received at American universities where they got the right ideas on how to carry out mass killings comparable to those of Hitler Stalin and Mao.

The country became a paradise for investors. Suharto became America's favorite, our kind of guy stayed that way when he invaded East Timor he wiped out maybe a third or a quarter of the population and that goes on until 1997, then something went wrong, apparently he committed a crime, what crime? is? Well, actually, crime does. If you look closely, what led to religious conversion in favor of a democratic transition, there were actually two crimes here, two common ones, one crime, it began to delay the IMF's orders, the IMF rules were imposing extremely serious hardships to the people of Indonesia and to Suharto. he was a little slow in following orders, crime number one, the second crime is that he simply lost control, there was a democratic uprising and you know the army was no longer supporting him and at that point he is useless, so he received the advice to allow a democracy. transition in which he handed over power to his hand-picked vice president, well, that is the moment when the United States, after 40 years, began, at least on paper, to implement the central theme of its policy in an area where it did not There is a doubt that he has always implemented it, remember how different from the Middle East, when committing those two crimes, Suharto followed a very classic path.

Another recent example is Mobutu Saddam Hussein Duvalier, Marcos Samosa, Trujillo. It is a long list. The same two crimes are the ones you stop following. orders you lose control you are out and we are in favor of a democratic transition this happens routinely but it doesn't teach anything about it you don't learn anything about politics because the nature of politics is a theological dogma and therefore no evidence tells you anything well let's look a little closer at 1958 i still promise to come back to the topic if you're willing to resist uh it's very revealing uh in 1958 uh the main planning of the national security council you know the body had been now publicized secret meetings in which uh john foster dulles secretary of state uh presented uh described the crises on the world stage said that there are three major crises in the world seen in 1958 one was indonesia the second was algeria the third was the middle east notice that they are all muslim countries, but At that time there was no clash of civilizations.

Those of you who are respectable intellectuals will know that we now have to seriously debate the clash of civilizations because the cold war pretext for intervention has collapsed and we need what is called a new paradigm, eh, but we still had that pretext, so we didn't need a new paradigm, so the three main crises were Indonesia, Algeria and the Middle East. In fact, they were Muslims. It's irrelevant, but one thing is not irrelevant, which is, they all had oil. in fact, they were all oil centers, and in fact the effort to isolate the outer islands was related to US concern about Middle Eastern oil.

There were some concerns that it was getting out of control and they needed some temporary supplements because Indonesia is nowhere near the scale of the Middle East, but it is significant. Well, if you look back at what happened, you keep in mind that the United States is a world power, so its policies tend to be carried out consistently in many different places and many other things happened in 1958 the subversion in Indonesia the Indonesian rebellion it was the largest of the clandestine operations perhaps the largest ever but there were others in burma the united states was moving to overthrow the regime by supporting a chinese nationalist army that had partially taken refuge there and that the united states was supporting there, I won't go into details, but that led Burma at that time had an elected government that led to a military coup, the installation of the current military regime in Burma, one of the most brutal in the world, was also instrumental in turning Burma into the main producer of heroin in the world, a position it now occupies and a true horror story, the state of Massachusetts now has a kind of boycott, we can trace it back to 1958, right in parallel when we were carrying out the central themes of our policy abroad in Indonesia, another case right next door was Cambodia, which also had a neutralist government that the United States did not like.

The United States was supporting an attack against that country. That attack didn't work in 1958, but it did work in 1970. forces that overthrew Prince's government in Oak, leading to the massive United States bombing the Khmer Rouge, everything that followed didn't talk about a third place where something was happening in 1958 was again very close and Laos, Laos had its first and last free place. The 1958 elections went badly. The games that the left won. The United States did not accept that a military coup would take place. The United States installed what they called a pro-Western neutralist and he wasn't good enough, so they put a far-right general in that position. led to a total disaster, in some ways paved the way and in fact came quite close to a world war, and ended with the United States carrying out the most intense bombing in history against a defenseless peasant society in northern Laos and the effects of that are still with us, although you wouldn't read it, you can even read it in the American newspaper, that there is a very good article in the Wall Street Journal written by their veteran Asia correspondent about a year and a half ago, unfortunately it is the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal didn't have it in the US edition, but it's a pretty good article.

He gives an estimate that there are an unknown number of unexploded bombs littering the plane with vials. Hundreds of millions of them were released. They are much worse than. landmines are not targeted at properties they do nothing against atruck are meant to kill people they are murder weapons they are colorful little things that you know a kid can pick up and a farmer can hit or something they had an explosion failure rate of around 20 to 30 percent according to their manufacturers, Honeywell, and you know, as bad as the technology is, it's hard to believe that that wasn't built in, but maybe the technologists among you can assess that probability anyway.

They are supposed to have a 20 to 30 percent burst failure rate, which means they are present all the time like any personal weapon and there are still large quantities of them, uh, there is an estimate according to the Wall Street Journal report . casualties can reach up to twenty thousand a year, of which more than half are deaths, other figures or less, but some, since no one is counting them, no one really knows, but the Wall Street Journal in its Asian edition considers That figures of this type are not unreasonable. uh, uh, there's a mine clearance group, a civilian mine advisory group based in Britain, but you know, based ultimately on the British military and other countries have come in, uh, as the British press reports. , the United States is conspicuous by its absence in mine clearance. operation and, furthermore, the right-wing British press complains bitterly that the United States and the Pentagon refuse to provide what are called harmless procedures, procedures that would calm the mind so as not to kill the people who try to clean them. that's a military secret and in fact everything is a secret in the united states you have to work very hard to find out something about it that's a fact so that's laos another case in 1958 was vietnam i won't even talk about that in Each case includes all these, including Indonesia.

U.S. interventions that were significant led to appalling atrocities and in fact destroyed the basis of democracy and were in fact largely driven by that purpose, as in several of the cases I have mentioned. However, that does not influence the dogma, it is still correct, it still is, there is still no doubt that in the Middle East only the United States does not live up to its high ideals, but in these places it does well if we We get a little closer. Look at 1958. I won't go into this and mention it later if you want, but the other important case was, in fact, Iraq.

Iraq was withdrawing had a nationalist revolution. It was withdrawing from the United States' Anglo-American condominium over oil. It happened in 1958 and was an important phenomenon. Look at the documentary record and you'll get a pretty good explanation of everything that's happening up until today. Well, let me get that out of the way. One of the things that is happening today is quite surprising and brings me to the point, finally, is a minor aspect of the bombing last December, the bombing of the United States and the United Kingdom. An interesting aspect was that it is a blatant and outright violation. of the un charter and international law uh international law which is one of the three pillars of world order the basic principle of the un charter is that the threat or use of force in international affairs is prohibited except under circumstances very restricted that do not apply or if specifically authorized by the security council, otherwise prohibited, threat or use of force, there is no serious doubt that the United States and the United Kingdom simply ignored that they did not try to obtain a council authorization for the simple reason that they knew they would never get it.

Therefore, they just bombed now in the United States, there is essentially no discussion about this. I've done a pretty extensive review on where it is discussed as it is occasionally considered a bit of a technicality, the reason is if a reason is ever given. that we cannot allow others to veto our political decisions as required by the charter of the united nations and international law, but we alone cannot, others must support that, but we cannot, that, as far as I can discover, is indisputable, try to find some interesting exercise, try to find some challenge to that doctrine, I have not found it, there is something in England, there are many in other places, so, for example, the Indian in India, the association of jurists, has a case before the world court condemning the United States and Great Britain for war crimes.

I don't read about that either, but it is not discussed here because it is taken for granted that that is correct, we cannot submit to international law or the UN charter because we are a criminal, violent, lawless state and that is correct and that is what what does it mean. There is almost universal support for that principle, at least among the educated sectors, which should be taken as a warning by the world and, in fact, is taken as a warning by the world that does not like it but cannot do a lot about it. those who can do something about it uh the official position that we seem to be judging articulate sectors educated sectors support it so they are not going to do anything about it the official position was cited during the bombing in December that we prefer to act through our allies , but we will resort only to force if we have to realize that we do not even prefer to act through the united nations as international law requires in the charter, we can postpone joining our allies if they are willing to do so, but the UN is In fact, it is assumed that the timing of the bombing was intended as a slap in the face to the security council.

The bombing was scheduled just as the security council was being called into an emergency session to deal with the Iraq issue and had not been notified and if that didn't make the headlines here, people understood it elsewhere, things like that don't they happen by accident and were well understood, that is accepted across the spectrum and it is also accepted in other cases, so take a look at the rumblier meetings in kosovo. There was a debate there about what to do, the debate was between the United States and its allies and the NATO powers that no one else surrounds and the debate was about the wording of whether to declare that the wording of the NATO decision to bombing was authorized by the un that even at a rhetorical level and as always, the United States won, so the most they can do is authorize, support, not authorize, much less order, which is what the law requires and it is not only in this case, it is in all cases so take let's say the bombing of Sudan last August now I admit no one tries it very few even try to doubt deny that the United States just bombed the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and destroyed half of Sudan's pharmaceutical industry Well, you know, sometimes things go wrong, let's not talk about war crimes or let's talk about reparations, let's not even talk about apologies, I mean, why should we apologize if we destroy half of the pharmaceuticals in a country? poor East African?

Let's be serious, besides, that is accepted across the spectrum. Okay, there's more history to 10 years ago, the United States explicitly took the same position regarding the World Court daring to pursue a case against the United States and, in fact, condemn the United States for the illegal use of force and its war against Nicaragua. The position of the states was clear and explicit. The State Department's legal department said we cannot accept the jurisdiction of a world court. They explained why the reason is that other states don't agree with us. They don't accept their policies and said therefore we should reserve the right. to decide when court rulings apply and we should reject court rulings.

I cite now for any dispute involving matters essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the united states as determined by the united states. The example in question was the United States war against Nicaragua and the United States. The states determined that this was within their domestic jurisdiction so that the world court could be lost and that was done with practically one hundred percent support of educated intellectuals, including leading defenders of the world order who write legal articles and journals, etc. , etc., uh, the new The New York Times dismissed the court as a hostile forum and so it was that the court's ruling was not even reported and was radically violated.

Okay, that's the world court. This goes back much further, to 1962. Dean Atchison, a very respected statement. Statesman. You know, he advised the senior advisor. The Kennedy administration informed the American Society of International Law that a situation in which our country's position of power and prestige is at stake cannot be treated as a legal issue. He was referring to the United States embargo against Cuba, which of course he recognized was illegal, but nothing in which our position of power and prestige is involved can be treated as a legal matter and, consequently, at that time you heard to Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations defending the US attack on South Vietnam as a defense against internal aggression.

The South Vietnamese were carrying out internal aggression in South Vietnam. and we were defending south vietnam against them we were defending south vietnam against what john f kennedy called the assault from within that was when he launched the assault from without this goes back to previous years it had been secret so in previous years the The letter's outright rejection is explicit, very explicit, but secretly it dates back to 1947, the first memorandum of the national security council, which called for national mobilization in the United States, support for military action, paramilitary action , other similar things in Italy, if the communists took power by legal means in the elections, in other words, if a democratic election went wrong, we would use force to overthrow it, that is 1947 nsc, a story continues from there, the innovation in the Reagan years was that disdain for international law became completely open, it was no longer even a secret under Clinton and lost all pretense, so the bottom line is that the only reasonable conclusion is that the first pillar of world order, the international political order, has completely disappeared, it is available as a weapon against enemies, but there is nothing left to accept. the theological dogma that we defend the world order the international law that remains regardless of the facts so nothing else fits well let's move on let's move on to the universal declaration second pillar of world order this is a closely integrated document uh the uh the has been conventionally divided in three parts civil and political rights socioeconomic rights and what are called solidarity rights the integration of all of them was emphasized from the beginning you see the substance it is clear that it has been emphasized repeatedly since it is sometimes brief so I will not go into it to go over the history uh the An important law review article that just appeared on the 50th anniversary by Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon emphasizes that the universal declaration elevates sociosocial, economic, and cultural rights to the category of fundamental rights and that that is a crucial part of the universalization of rights carried out in the universal declaration, in short, there is no place for any kind of relativistic demand that certain rights should be relegated to a secondary status in accordance with, say, Asian values or some other pretext.

Glendon also points out quite accurately that the support that uh for that was very broadly based in The moment that I have to remember is the moment right at the end of the Second World War, there were values ​​of that type, those expressed in the UD , were deeply rooted in popular anti-fascist forces in Europe and in the colonial world and even in the United States that was deeply disturbing to us, the elites who sought to create a very different kind of world order and, in fact, we are quite explicit in respect, but the dog, the dogma remains and proclaims a more self-congratulatory version, well, there were some who dismissed the universal declaration as meaningless, which is why there is an oft-quoted phrase from andrei vyshinsky, the russian delegate whose record has no what to stop us, dismissed the universal declaration as a collection of pious phrases and was dismissed for quoting a letter to santa claus by gene kirkpatrick the UN ambassador to the UN who was mocking the socio-economic provisions of the universal declaration moving forward a couple of years is an empty vessel an absurd dangerous incitement that is Morris Abram the UN ambassador to the UN human rights commission is explaining Washington's rejection of what was called the right to development, which if we look at it is a paraphrase very close to the socioeconomic provisions of the universal declaration that was vetoed only by the united states, essentially by vetoing the socioeconomic provisions of the ud, the united states also violatesradically the civil and political provisions I will not go into details, but they are quite clear and it is not surprising that one of the last important purposes of international reports deals briefly with this: two pillars of the world order have been effectively demolished, except as ideological weapons that do not It means that the people of the world should not defend them, they are still ideals that people should try to defend, that they should fight for and that they should also transcend because they are not the end of the road in any way, except taking that position.

In the United States, they first have to do an act of intellectual liberation, they have to free themselves from the doctrines of the faith, they don't do that, they can't even enter the fray, they first have to free themselves from the doctrines of the faith, uh, and at least be willing to subject them to empirical verification if they are not even subject to empirical verification there is no point in discussing these matters clearly if they are you can ask if this analysis is correct or some different analysis is correct well, that is radical, simply the willingness to subject them to examination, the doctrines, that's a radical departure from prevailing norms, including everything in the education system, academic scholarship, the media and everywhere else, so it's not a little, well, a couple of words about the third. pillar of the Bretton Woods system, one of its central pillars, which again was fully integrated with the others and that is worth understanding, a central component of the Bretton Woods system was the regulation of finance, and there were several purposes for the reasons For this, one reason was that it was an effort in which it was understood that deregulation of finance would harm the global economy.

There are good reasons for this and they have been illustrated in recent years. The problem is that, as was understood, financial markets are quite volatile and unpredictable, to quote a A couple of MIT economists who specialize in these financial markets are governed by panics, manias and crises that oscillate well above and below any kind of sensitive fundamental values, creating bubbles that will burst. Paul Samuelson, who says the evidence for this is overwhelming and this was understood in the past. In the '40s, you know, if you deregulate the financial markets, you're going to have a disaster and you're going to hurt the overall economy.

That was one of the reasons. A second reason was closely related to world order and human rights. A reason for capital controls and currency maintenance. within a narrow band was that it was understood that the deregulation of capital is a tremendous weapon against democracy and social and socioeconomic rights before mentioning that let me say that the current debate between the united states and its g7 partners is about maintaining the currencies within a narrow band, if you read the articles about this you will notice that the US, the G7 position, Germany, Japan, France, etc., may not be Britain, but the other G7 countries, it is that currently the major currencies must be kept closely interconnected, not too volatile and that was rejected as crazy by US treasury secretary robert rubin because if we agreed with that it would mean that some other authority could determine that we cannot lower rates of interest to stimulate the economy if we want, if the economy is sinking into a recession, we will not be able to allow interest rates because that will affect the values ​​of the currencies and it would be crazy to allow another country, any other country, to us allow any international organization to prevent us from carrying out those fiscal policies. policies exactly the fiscal policies that we impose on all other countries, as the same articles point out without any sense of contradiction, take a look and think why deregulation of finance is a weapon against democracy and Human rights are very obvious and are He understood the reason to be that if the flow of capital is unregulated, it can quickly create what some international economists call a virtual senate, a senate consisting of concentrated international financial capital that will simply impose decisions on the government. uh, but because of the threat of capital flight, then if any government pursues irrational policies, policies that are intended to help the population, let's say, rather than increase profits for investors and are therefore irrational, like education or health, or you know, environmental policies or whatever. you can force them to stop by simply taking all the capital out of the country, which causes the country to raise interest rates, sends the country into depression, the usual consequences, therefore unless capital is controlled you have a democracy very restricted and Human rights well, that was understood then and is understood now.

The Bretton Woods system with financial regulation persisted until about 1970. That is a period commonly called the golden age of postwar capitalism. High growth period. High growth. Productivity expansion. social contract and also called welfare state that turned the universal declaration into something more than a letter to santa claus since the early 1970s that system was dismantled first at the initiative of the united states great britain followed by other other major economies it was not until the 1980s and the results would not have surprised the founders of the bretton wood system the results have transferred well some economists call it a transfer from a golden age to a latin age in the period since there was a slowdown in the economy to global and societal level The contract has dissolved dramatically in the US and Britain, to some extent elsewhere inequality has greatly increased.

The consequences I already briefly described, one region of the world temporarily escaped from this, it is East Asia, which is quite different from Southeast Asia, there it was, quote the chief economist of the world bank there was an unprecedented economic miracle that was based on the fact that they ignored religion, as he calls it, the religion that the markets know best and ignored the prescriptions of the international financial institutions, the so-called Washington consensus, and carried out an unprecedented economic miracle at the beginning of the decade 1990 South Korea liberalized the flow of capital under very strong pressure from the United States I should say one of several factors that is a major factor in the subsequent collapse in which it is generally accepted that until 1997 or 1998 the global economic system was considered really great, in fact it was what is called a fairy tale about an economic miracle.

I'm very much like how Mexico was an economic miracle during the period when the number of billionaires was increasing almost as fast as the poverty level. There was no crisis until 1997-98. There was anguish and fear, insecurity about jobs and a life of quiet desperation. He quotes um's boss, but that's not a crisis. I think it's a miracle, uh, because that was just outside the doors, remember that inside, the festive atmosphere was exuberant, but by 1998 the festive atmosphere inside was becoming a little disturbed the interests of the rich were being seen. affected so we went from the economic miracle to the crisis those are technical terms again it does not have much to do with what is happening to the people it has a lot to do with what is happening to rich people, rich and powerful people and their interests were beginning to be disturbed, so suddenly we had a crisis that is different from anguish and fear, etc.

Well, that crisis is now all over the front pages of the newspapers, so I won't waste my time on that, so it's interesting that a side effect of the crisis is that all these certainties have dissolved, so the payments bank international institutions in Basel, which is the most conservative and respectable institution that exists, is called central. The bank's central bankers in its latest report last summer said that no one has a clue what's going on and urged that instead of making confident pronouncements, we should be humble enough to admit that we have no idea. As for what's happening or what to do about it, prominent economists here in Cambridge have recently been publishing articles saying that the international economy is not well understood now that we may be heading toward a 1990s-style depression. 30 of the third world and I know what to do about it, in reality, the real crisis is much more fundamental and I will end up giving just two quotes that I think capture it quite well.

One of them is from an event organized by Jesse Jackson about Martin. luther king weekend in january this was an event in manhattan to support bill clinton at the time of his terrible trials there were many celebrities who came and admired each other and so on among them was the president of the stock exchange new york i I'm quoting the press now, he told the New York Times, he told Mr. Clinton that Dr. King is surely smiling at the meeting recognizing how Clinton had benefited my little corner of southern Manhattan, which is Exactly enough, other small corners of southern Manhattan fared quite differently. but the stock market on that Mr.

Clinton certainly brought many benefits, so without a doubt Martin Luther King is smiling at him, that is an appropriate comment that reflects the realities of a political system in which in the last elections in November In 1998, 95 data just arrived. Recently, 95 of the winning candidates spent more than their opponents, meaning you could predict with up to 95 percent accuracy who would win just by looking at how much money they had, so it's not like Russia where you could figure out by 100 percent that it was going to be the Communist Party. It's only 95, plus if you look at the contributions, same data, business contributions outspent labor contributions by about 12 to 1, which is very misleading, remember because labor represents many more people and individual contributions, although unmeasured, are certainly biased at least to the same extent.

To a large extent, what that translates to, to put it in English, is that a little corner of lower Manhattan and a couple of other little corners like this essentially buy candidates and put them in office and then set the conditions that they're going to meet. . they have to meet or otherwise also establish the general framework for the policy simply by virtue of their power, becoming the virtual senate, as I mentioned, once these instruments are in their hands, the second appointment, of course, They also require a powerful state, they are very insistent. On that there has to be a powerful State that socializes the risks and costs and we will make sure that there are no unpleasant noises in the utility rooms, so it still has to be there, but not with its old functions.

The second quote, the last one, is from David. rockefeller reflecting on the current scene uh remember david rockefeller is on the liberal end of the spectrum he is what is called the left part of the establishment it is called without irony should i say he is commenting on the reduction of the government's role in affairs public something that companies have always favored, he says, aside, the role of the government means the role of the population, the right of all the institutions that exist with all their defects, whatever they may be, the government is the only one in which, At least in principle, there is some possibility of participation, often In practice also in the operations of General Electric there are no possibilities in principle, so the government is the only institution in the general institutional framework in which people can have a say. role that it sometimes has and that role is diminishing.

Companies are happy with that, but he says that while the reduction of democratic participation is, of course, welcome. There is another side to that coin. Someone has to take the place of government. And companies seem to be the logical entity to do it. Well, that's Rockefeller. And he goes on to say that it is the responsibility of companies to fill this gap. with the demise of democratic government it is certainly not the role of the public that is certain, it is the left establishment, when you move to the right the message becomes much harsher, well that is a pretty clear picture of the current trend in politics, as you probably already know.

Corporations gained people's rights through judicial activism at the beginning of this century. They are not ordinary people like you and me. They are immortal people. They have extraordinary power unlike flesh and blood people. They also demand states' rights and get them under NAFTA. they got them partially under the mai, they would gain them even more fully, in fact they would get additional rights that are described as if they were innocuous, but they surely are not if you think about them under the mai, these people are legal fictitious. People are demanding what they call national treatment which is a right that no flesh and blood person can claim so under national treatment general electric can operate freely in Mexico but suppose some flesh and blood Mexicantry to get national treatment in new york no, that's not going to work, so this is only for fictitious collectivist legal entities, those types of people get states' rights, national treatment rights and, in addition, they have the right and the responsibility to assume the functions of government, they must do that, which would therefore reduce democracy. they form even more internally they are basically tyrannies, I mean I don't think that's in question and they try to run global society, including the minimum market type of system in an integrated way, they depend on powerful states to make sure that they can get what they want, they also demand and largely obtain the right to shape opinions, attitudes and beliefs, that is the role of the corporate media and indeed the education system to a large extent, that is, the right to define what What's a human being. is what constitutes a human life and doing it very well, apart from the continuous attack on the proclaimed values ​​of democracy, human rights, freedom and all good things, these tendencies, if tolerated, could lead to quite serious catastrophes and possibly even terminal, that's just speculation of course your speculations are as good as anyone's what isn't speculation is that trends don't have to be tolerated that's a choice you can make it you can't make it it's not a necessity the ability of making that choice is roughly measured by your share of privilege, more access to privilege, you have more choices you can make, it's also measured by the freedom of society, which means that for people like us the options are wide open and there are something we can be reasonably sure about.

I believe that neither conscience nor history will look favorably on the lack of will to face these decisions with care and dedication. Are there microphones? Are there microphones that are not in the house? Okay, if people want to say something, maybe they stand up to maximize the chances. someone will listen to you, go ahead, well, okay, you fight well, some of us are part of the educational system that you have described without much detail, right here in Massachusetts, John Silbert, someone who I think may have crossed swords. He is leading the war on public education and he and his colleagues use a variety of fiscal tactics.

There is a bill coming up in Massachusetts that will take away collective bargaining rights from teachers. In fact, it completely guts unions. The point is that some of us in the teachers unions are going to confront Silver, uh, and it occurred to me that if I'm not mistaken, he was on the Kissinger commission that investigated, uh, intended to investigate American policy in Latin America , I remember, yeah, okay, I just thought, let me put. It's another way, so I was one of his favorite characters and, of course, Professor Zun, I know some of the history between them.

I was wondering if you had anything to say about a person who, uh, about him, you know makes his own decisions. don't exceed them, okay, yeah, let me repeat the question, I mean the core of the question, the comment really is that, uh, John Silver, who is the chancellor of something or the state system or something like that is leading a campaign now to try to undermine? the teachers union, which is part of a general attack on the public education system, then come some questions about our personal relationships, which you know, leave aside, uh, uh, because this is a general issue, uh, that this It's a, I think there is very little.

A serious, very serious issue, one of the areas of government that means public participation that still exists is schools and on the far left of the spectrum, people like David Rockefeller would very much like to get rid of this government intervention in the economy or like contempt. I'm told that the latest edition of Paul Samuelson's economics changes the phrase to government interference in the economy. Tell me if I'm right, that would introduce an important doctrinal assumption into the description of uh, so we want to get rid of government interference in the economy. like public schools that have all kinds of bad characteristics, like they cultivate a sense of solidarity or concern for other people, like if there was a public school system, that's an expression of the fact that you care if the kid in the school street receives an education and that is a very bad thing because you are supposed to be, you know that you receive this message from childhood, through the television and everything else, that the only value of human life is to maximize what the industry advertising calls invented desires so that they You're supposed to invent desires for yourself and you're supposed to maximize them and that's the only thing you're supposed to care about, not worry about anyone else you know, you don't care about control.your life and their work are out the door but they maximize their own manufactured desires and the public the existence of the public school system is inconsistent with that because it is an expression of solidarity and care for others and compassion and all kinds of ideals that are not supposed existing in the system that is being created, the ideological system that is being created, uh, it's not just John Silber, there is a huge assault across the board on public schools.

I had an idea of ​​this a couple of years ago, when Elaine Bernard, who some of you know. She sent me an investment brochure from Lehman Brothers that was being sent out to their major investors or people who invested a lot of money, etc., and it was about new investment opportunities and this one was about what they called emos. I'll give you a second to figure out what that means, but the point is, you know the prison systems are being privatized, the healthcare system, as it's being turned over to the insurance companies with HMOS, there's still this residue in the system. educational, so the next target will be Emos educational management organizations that will be privately managed and publicly funded, of course all of this is publicly funded in one way or another, but the profits are privatized and that will achieve big profits, for example, by hiring non-union teachers. it doesn't have to be paid decent wages it doesn't require any attempts at security and so on, so it's very efficient to a certain extent and it will also be a way of breaking down this lingering sense of solidarity and mutual support that the public school system provides simply because its existence, so I think we can expect many such attacks, not only against that but against any other residue of human life that reflects any value other than the individual maximization of invented desires.

Anything beyond that is fundamentally unacceptable. fyi um this talk is apparently full of three overflowing rumors so congratulations it's a reflection of the fact that a lot of people are concerned about these issues and they have the right to be exactly so I think the only thing that can be done is to go beyond be I'm worried that they'll do something about it because it doesn't have to happen. That's part of what I'd like to ask you. I would like to ask you, in light of your comments tonight, to pay attention to Latin America and specifically. to the country of Colombia and what is happening there and the supposed reason for increasing US military support the supposed reason is the supposed war on drugs and a neighboring country of Colombia which is the nation of Peru and I have a particular reason for I want to ask you about peru, and there is an american woman who was a student here at mit whose name is laurie berenson who has been in prison in peru for over three years without trial and maybe in her comments about colombia and peru, you could also have something to say about your situation.

Well, there are actually two questions. One is about Lori Barrons, who was a student here a couple of years ago and is now in a prison in Peru without trial, and you know that's something we could really do. something about I mean the pressure of the US government, that is, the pressure of the population on the US government in Peru would take care of that case, there is no doubt about it, so that is a simple choice, you know you can do things about it or not, the options are open, the more general question about the entire Andean region Colombia Peru Bolivia has to do with several things there has been to the Colombia whose point Jack's point is that The United States is now increasing its military aid to Colombia.

In reality, Colombia has been one of the main recipients of US military aid during the 90s during the Clinton administration. It is also the most violent country in the hemisphere. There are reports from my State Department that would suggest. that about 10 people a day are victims of political violence has more than a million internal refugees most of the violence is attributed to paramilitaries, including by the state department, the paramilitaries are essentially a front for the military and landowners, other atrocities committed by the military directly, there are also guerrilla atrocities, but the vast majority are from the government and paramilitaries.

They are all connected in complicated and not so complicated ways to the control of land ownership resources, now in recent years, drug trafficking and so on, and the United States is fighting what it calls a war on drugs, including just one biological warfare, so no new fungicides are being introduced. You know what effect they will have. They are supposed to kill the coca but something else is happening. It is not our fumigation of commercial crops, just military violence from the power of the government. Everyone knows that the paramilitaries and the military are involved with drug trafficking.

Just a couple of months ago, the plane columbia air force one of the air force commanders was arrested full of drugs this is happening all over the region by the way the presidential plane of the president of nicaragua was recently the subject of a huge scandal in nicaragua kept out of the press here because he It's our guy and it was discovered that the plane was being used to transport drugs from Miami to anywhere via Nicaragua, which has become a major drug transit zone since the United States took it over in 1990, but Colombia is a In a much bigger war, the whole war on drugs, in my opinion you can't really talk about the tactics because everything is conceived in a way that you know has a kind of rationality from the point of view of who are carrying out the war. but it has no rationality from a human point of view, so from a human point of view the drug problem is in the United States.

In fact, the United States is the main, perhaps the main producer, or one of the main producers of most of the drug that is produced. The substances that are called are increasing more rapidly, that is, synthetic, they are manufactured right here, even the drugs that are manufactured in the Andes are products produced with American chemicals, the money passes mainly through American banks, the problem of drugs, as it is called, is largely. a manufactured problem, so if you want to find out what peak marijuana is like, marijuana has never been needed, no medical evidence has ever been presented that it's probably not good for you, you know, just like meat is not good for you or coffee or something, I'm sure it's not good for you, but the evidence on this is extremely slim, certainly no medical evidence was presented to justify its criminalization, in fact the American Medical Association never favored it, criminalization was a different thing as interesting history uh the maximum use to get the criminalization the maximum use of marijuana as I am, I remember the numbers, so they may not be exactly correct, but something like that was around 1980 and the level of criminalization was very low, the reason was quite simple.

They were people like you, you know, and they don't get sent to jail or their parents make a fuss and do things about it, etc., so those guys don't go to jail during the 1980s, two things happened about the substance use. a very broad range was declining among educated people and that's very broad marijuana hard drugs coffee tobacco red meat you know, a wide range of things were declining, I mean all kinds of lifestyle changes, but it was holding steady or perhaps it was even increasing among poor people, which means, and there is a closure, that the United States is almost alone in the industrial world in the sense that, although it has statistics on everything, it does not have statistics on class, that is a ideological decision, so class figures cannot be obtained from the census office.

It is possible to reconstruct them in some way, unlike in other countries, but there is a close correlation of class and race and among the poor and therefore, to a large extent among minorities, there was constant or increasing use of substances. Well, look at the trend lines and ask yourself when it was called the war on drugs and it was approximately when they crossed, so you could predict victory in the war on drugs among educated people because theTrend lines are already going down, so they will continue to go down and you could also predict what Senator Moynihan pointed out.

He's not my favorite character, but he turns out to be one of the few senators who paid attention to the social statistics of social scientists and pointed out that we are determined to declare war a crime and an increase in crime or you know something like that between minorities we are determined to declare a wave of crimes among minorities that is exactly what we are doing by declaring the war on drugs and I believe it was done and I believe it was done for reasons of social policy this is a superfluous population they are the counterpart of the disposable Colombians, disposable people and you want a criminal war between them for two reasons, on the one hand because you can get rid of them and put them in jail and on the other because you can scare everyone else and that is important.

Crime in general is a problem for you. I know in the United States it's kind of a political construct. Crime in the United States isn't much different from other industrialized countries, you know, with the sole exception of gun murders, which is something special about gun laws and guns. culture, but other than that, it's at the higher end of other industrial societies, the fear of crime, on the other hand, is way beyond other societies and it's manufactured, you know, it's manufactured by politicians, it's one of the few countries in which politicians excel. And you know, there's a debate about who's going to be tougher on crime.

Elsewhere, crime is considered a problem. You know it's like cancer or something. You try to deal with it, but you don't decide who is going to be tougher on him in the United States. there's an argument about who's going to be tougher on this back in 1980, the United States was much like other industrial societies again on the high end of incarceration rates, uh, it's since gone up a lot towards the end of the Reagan years , it was like five to ten times higher still increasing mostly a reflection of the war on drugs victim mostly victimless crimes possession of some kind or another receiving extraordinary sentences which is one of the human rights violations for which the United States is regularly condemned by the human body human rights organizations the scandalous sentences for victimless crimes that only target the poor and the disposable people, uh, and scare the rest, so instrument of social control, you go To the Andes, you know well the places where coca is produced, there you find another story, so Colombia, for example, was once an exporter of wheat, why is it no longer one?

Well, the United States flooded it with subsidized American agricultural exports. They called it food for peace in the 1950s and it undermined the Colombian wheat industry. He did not export more. Elsewhere, Colombia is a coffee exporter, but the coffee is not very good for small farmers for a very simple reason: the United States refused to allow agreements between producers to keep prices stable. If prices fluctuate everywhere, it does not harm agribusiness. It means that they have enough, you know that they have enough other things and so on so that they can realize if the prices of coffee go down, if you are a small farmer you can't do that, you have to feed your children tomorrow, you know, the price goes down too much, you are dead, so that drove people out of coffee production, out of wheat production, out of other production, well, where did they go?

Well, you know, they were being taught a lesson, it's called structural adjustment in all the neoliberalism in this whole region. The lesson is to stop producing things for local consumption such as food, we can do it cheaper with subsidized agribusiness, you must be a rational farmer produced for agro-export and produce what is going to generate the most money in agro-export. , that is a rational peasant who follows the rules. Are you a rational peasant? You produce coca, you know it grows well, generates a lot of money, etc., one part of American policy is to try to encourage the population to produce drugs and the other part of American policy is to kill them if you do, that is the support to the military and counterinsurgency, etc., and those two policies go together and have nothing to do with drugs in the United States, I mean, do those things as much as you want. the price of drugs remains stable, the quantity of drugs remains stable, etc., this is an internal US problem that has to do with serious social problems within American society and, furthermore, it is well known and It is agreed by criminologists and other specialists from all walks of life that the best way to deal with serious drug problems is education, but no money is spent on that because it does not serve social control or eliminating disposable people, so no I think talking about the tactics of the war on drugs makes a lot of sense.

You know, this whole thing is constructed in a way that is totally crazy, except for rich people, like the banks in New York, where most of the money flows instantly. What happens to money? It's an interesting question. Of course, it's illegal, so no one tracks it. You could track it, so the US, especially with computers, etc., the federal reserve system is well regulated. Requires notification of large deposits. Last time I looked, it was over ten thousand dollars, so you know, all of a sudden, a lot of money comes in. They say, right? and in fact there was a campaign by federal prosecutors in the early 1980s to carry out an entrapment exercise against banks in South Florida that were suddenly accumulating enormous amounts of money for reasons no one doubted. canceled whatever it was called operation dollar was canceled by the Reagan administration's drug czarGeorge Bush, that was canceled, so the money is supposed to go into the US banks.

Where is it going well? Take a look sometime. This is a guess, no one has ever studied it, but the US Department of Commerce regularly publishes, I think quarterly, tons of details on everything you can imagine and one of them is foreign direct investment (FDI). Take a look at the registry. I haven't done this for a year or two but I was doing it for a couple of years in the mid 90's. Check out the ied for latin america first for the separate canada category in the hemisphere it's like europe you know , but if we take the rest of the hemisphere minus Canada, let's look at foreign direct investment, it turns out that regularly about 25 percent of it went to Bermuda, about 15 percent went to Bermuda. going to the British Isles about 10 to Panama, that's about 50 of what's called foreign direct investment in this is the emerging markets period.

You know, everyone is excited about emerging markets, so about half were going to these places. it certainly wasn't the construction of steel mills and automobile plants, there aren't many of them in Bermuda. There is a kind of benign interpretation. It's just a way to scam the public, you know, evading taxes to hurt the poor. There is a less benign interpretation. which is possible and could be discovered if someone cared to look at it, but I haven't been able to find a technical article in all of the literature that even discusses the topic. Some of you may know if there are some economists in the audience, but I can't find one and no friend can find one and it's not a minor phenomenon there are 50 of us FDI and the big emerging markets big numbers uh well you know , make your own guesses anyway, the whole system is so corrupt and rotten from below that Talking about tactical changes is beside the point.

The current policies, exactly as you say, are to increase the military and biological warfare component of these policies abroad and continue the criminalization of disposable people at home. Those are the current policies. laurie berenson is a very unfortunate victim of this, i should say that the violence in colombia, if you want to take a look at it, has a very deep origin, a socioeconomic system in which a small sector of the population has most of the wealth in a fairly rich country and enormous and extraordinarily high poverty rates, famine, etc., that's where the violence comes from, yes, the third issue in Indonesia is the upcoming general elections, the future of East Timor and the disintegration that you mentioned before.

How did you elaborate on that, sir? And also, a couple of weeks ago, the IMF apologized to Indonesia, for its mistakes, the approach of getting Indonesia out of the current crisis, I think it was the World Bank, the World Bank, yes, the world. The bank published a report saying they had made all kinds of mistakes. You know, they were overly enthusiastic and their commitment. All these wonderful things were happening in Indonesia and, being a little too enthusiastic, they downplayed the corruption etc., that's not quite it. history, but yes, something interesting, the fact is that the world bank and the imf were praising indonesia to the skies along with thailand malaysia south korea for their strong economic fundamentals and the way they had been following all the rules and all the magnificent things that What I've been doing and, to your dismay, the top posts appeared exactly when the entire system was failing.

It's not the first time this has happened incidentally, but it was a pretty dramatic case, so they've been backtracking ever since and yeah, they said. they had made a lot of mistakes, that's slight, they knew what was going on and they decided they liked it because the rich in Indonesia were benefiting and the rich abroad were benefiting, so what's the problem? There is no crisis. Now there is a crisis, so yes. looking back and so on, they want to rebuild the situation and they don't know how, because Indonesia may just fall apart. There are two issues that you raise, one is the possible disintegration of this integration of Indonesia and the other is a specific case of East Timor.

The East Timor cases are difficult to understand, I mean Indonesia, suppose that an Indonesia has agreed to grant the What they call autonomy within the Indonesian federation or something beyond that, there is a policy divide that may reflect two different paths. of Indonesian politics or they could be two sides of the same cynical politics that no one knows about, in fact I suspect the part that the people making the policy probably don't know are waiting to see how things turn out, a political path would lead towards the independence, Another path of politics leads to an increase in violence, so while Indonesia talks about good, you can be independent if you want, at the same time you organize the paramilitaries, you arm them, you are carrying out violence, In fact, they are killing people, expelling people. the thousands and the places you know explode the same thing going back to the question is it happening in colombia is not an unusual pattern a movement towards peace negotiations and at the same time unleashing the paramilitaries with the military behind to destroy the place You know that there will be negotiations of some kind, you have to make sure that your goons have it under control, that those two paths commonly go side by side, uh, uh, you find it in other places too, in this case, I think it's hard to say.

I mean, it could be two sides of the same policy, it could be contradictory policies, it could just be uncertainty that they don't know what's going to happen. I don't think there's much point in speculating on this, frankly, like I said, I doubt it. The Indonesian generals know they are waiting to see what happens. The important thing here, as always, is that what we do about it can make a big difference, so one of the factors, and certainly an important, if not decisive factor, will be how the United States responds to all this and that It's the only factor we can do anything about, so there's no point in speculating about the others.

You should ask what can be done about it, because if Indonesia secedes, it could happen that there will be a strong independence movement in Aceh. what they call iran jaya west papua was handed over to indonesia despite the objections of its population that has an independence movement there is an independence movement in malacca it could take all kinds of paths don't forget that everything was patched like most of the world That was simply patched up by European imperialism, you know, they put it together for their reasons, not for the countries' reasons. So if you randomly divide the United States and put them under different flags, and so on, yes.

It would get very violent after a while because these collapses have nothing to do with what's happening on the ground, you know, in the Middle East, probably the only semi-rational structure that has existed in the last few thousand years was the Ottoman Empire which allowed local autonomy largely within a fairly lax, corrupt, imperial framework, well, you know, people were freer under the Ottoman Empire than they ever have been, as they could go from one place to another , for example, but they had national rights. Treatment as GeneralElectric wants to, but they, and that's probably right for most of the world, in fact, it's probably right for Europe too.

I mean, the borders in Europe are simply the result of hundreds of years of mutual slaughter in the most violent and barbaric corner of the world. which is exactly what europe was for hundreds of years the highest goal of Europeans was to massacre each other and the only reason it came to an end in 1945 is because everyone understood that they had reached a level of violence such that the next time I tried, that's the end for everyone, that's why there are political scientists who write books about democrats, how there are no wars between democratic societies, etc., yes they know they are smart enough to know they try once again what they have been doing.

The last 500 years and everyone has died, so right now they aren't fighting wars, but the borders left over from these wars are pretty irrational, you know? and in fact, along with European unification, devolutions are also being found, so there are pressures towards regional autonomy which probably makes a lot of sense because borders didn't make any sense, it's different in the United States, I mean, here it was easy to just remove the indigenous population and settle it with a fairly homogeneous population, okay, no big problems, but Europe is. It did not develop that way, nor was the rest of the world imposed by competing imperialisms.

The Dutch East Indies is what the Dutch were able to preserve and the form it takes, I don't think anyone can. prescribe, but to make them work in some way and it is not easy, I have not said that I do not think there is much free trade, in fact the standard figure among international economists is that perhaps 15% of world trade could be considered free in some sense of trade free trade yes I am free to be created by the north do you think that could be countered by a fear movement at least oh yes in fact if someone believed in that I mean everyone is supposed to They must admire Adam Smith, but don't you?

Reading it is supposed to be very crucial. If you read Adam Smith, one bad thing you discover is that his argument for the market was based on the assumption that, under conditions of freedom, a market will lead to equality, which is obviously a desideratum, so who therefore maintains that markets are good do not lead to equality. He also discovered that he was against the division of labor and all kinds of things you're not supposed to know, but one thing you're not supposed to know is that free trade is based on what he called free movement of hand. of work, well, you know I didn't think much about crossing borders in those days because nobody thought much about capital crossing borders in those days, but the principle is there, so it probably won't do it. have anything resembling free trade unless there is free movement of labor around the world; otherwise, you know you simply don't have labor markets.

I mean, we're not supposed to think about that along with a lot of other things, but yeah, that's true. having free movement of labor, well, you know, that raises all kinds of questions, questions about how people want to preserve their own communities, let's see, but then of course those same questions appear with the movement of capital, just you can't raise them. in the case of the movement of capital, okay, so they are difficult questions, you know, I don't think they have trivial answers, but you can't talk seriously about free trade unless there is free movement of people, that's one of the many reasons why talking about free trade is mainly a fraud, it is an ideological weapon, it is not a descriptive fact and there are many reasons, not only that, yes, for the Western involvement of the United States in Kosovo.

Kosovo is what you call a crisis, unlike, for example, Angola, Kosovo, and it's bad, you know? This is not a joke, as there have been many atrocities in Kosovo. Current estimates are that about 2,000 people died. This is a night bombing carried out by Jonas Savimbi. The reason Kosovo is a crisis and Angola, which is much worse, is not. a crisis is because Kosovo threatens the interests of the rich and powerful, that is, Europe is disturbed by conflicts that are essentially within it, you know, and they do not want them to spread, on the one hand, for it to be a big flow of refugees and on the other hand, I know that if that whole region starts to fall apart, you could end up with wars between Greece and Turkey, and you know, maybe in a world war, Russia could get involved, so it matters, in Angola, there are many those guys killing each other, who cares, besides, it's not like that.

It's nice to talk about him, since the main murderer turns out to be the person who was highly praised and praised as a great freedom fighter in the United States in the days of what was called constructive engagement, which was a nice name to support to the South African marauders. who were destroying the place and killing, you know, more than a million people, well, one part was our freedom fighter in Angola, who is now still destroying the place, not that the opposition is that big, that's another story anyway, it's a big massacre. that does not harm the Europeans at least as long as the resources flow and are flowing, so the Savimbi Unita forces are being supported mainly by the flow of diamonds which is monopolized by a couple of companies and they can trace the fact that it technically exists an embargo against diamonds. from angola and all the specialists in the field say that it is not difficult to identify the diamonds that come from there, but the name of that company is beer, yes the beer company says they can't do it, you know, just all the other experts They can, but they can't, so there's a free flow of diamonds out of there and all kinds of places like that in Belgium, Israel, and that supports one side, the other side, they have oil that goes directly to Western companies, so What, who cares? is and meanwhile they are killing each other or starving or whatever, but they don't bother the rich, so it's not a crisis, since you talked about a lot of things here and my question was how can you make a tracking these things and Learning these things when you recognize that all of you are not in the press they are definitely not in our education.

Look, you can. I mean, you can read Penang and Cairo magazines the same way I do. It takes a lot of work. Know? but it can be done and in fact today for those of you who use the internet, I don't, it's a lot easier, but the real answer is that no one can do it alone unless they are crazy. On the other hand, because you have to be a fan, if people do it together, it's not that difficult. I mean, you travel through churches in the Midwest in the 1980s and I mean, I've done it, you know, you come to a church in Lawrence, Kansas or somewhere where they know more, they knew more about Central America than the CIA, much more , because there were a lot of people and they worried about it. you know, there were people who went back and circulated information and were in contact with others and so on, now that way you can find out about things and in fact, sometimes remarkably well, I mentioned the multilateral investment agreement several times if you don't know that story, you should know it because it's an amazing story about how disorganized activist groups around the world are without any access to the press because the press kept it under control for years.

How much can an individual scientist like it? Suppose you are alone in Tahiti and you decide to work on quantum physics, how much are you going to achieve if you are in a lab at MIT where everyone else is also interested and can talk to each other and exchange and you know that someone read something and someone more came and delivered an article and so on, yes, and suddenly you realize that it has been magnified quite a bit, it is no different in this case, that is part of the reason for the enormous efforts. that they are made to separate people from each other, I mean, that's why there is a bombardment literally from childhood to separate people from each other and it's conscious, it's quite conscious, you know, you read the industry literature PR people, they explain it and it actually goes back a long time, if people get together, they're dangerous, you keep them isolated from each other, there's not much they can do, I can get angry about certain things and that's really the answer.

Clearly, our participation tonight suggests that these are issues of enormous importance. to this community that your voice, gnome chomsky, is the one we want and need to hear. We could go on with questions forever, but we don't have to thank you, gnome, thanks audio.