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Ripple before the storm
by Noam Chomsky
The mass popular protests against the
investor rights agreements that masquerade under the rubric of "free
trade" have been a matter of deep concern for years to those who are
described in the business press, with only a touch of irony, as "the
masters of the universe" (Financial Times). To avert popular
reaction, negotiations are conducted mostly in secret, with the
participation of the business world and of course known to the media, but
scarcely reported. Nonetheless, through independent means (Internet,
popular organisations, etc.), information has reached a great many people,
leading to fears that opponents of these agreements have an "ultimate
weapon," the general population (Wall Street Journal), and that it
is becoming "harder for negotiators to do deals behind closed doors and
submit them for rubber stamping by parliaments" (Financial Times,
quoting "veteran trade diplomats").
The US leadership is desperately eager
to reinstitute "fast track legislation," which permits international
economic agreements to be reached Stalinist-style: by the state executive,
with Congress granted only the right of ratification. The International
Financial Institutions and G-8 have been compelled to modify their
rhetoric, to a limited extent their programmes, in fear of the "ultimate
weapon." Future meetings are planned in remote places (e.g., Qatar), to
marginalise the public even further.
The doctrinal systems (government
and corporate media) increasingly resort to extensive campaigns of
defamation, denouncing protestors bitterly in often ludicrous terms,
while rarely allowing them to express their actual views. Police
violence has increased, most recently at Genoa, including attacks on
offices of nonviolent organisations so extreme as to have aroused
some censure even in the mainstream business press. It is not
unlikely that at least some of the violence attributed to
demonstrators results from the classic tactic of police
provocateurs. These actions should be understood, I think, as part
of the effort to defame, intimidate, and deter popular protest.
In the background is a general
matter of profound significance. The protestors generally understand
very well that the primary thrust of the "neoliberal programmes"
that are instituted in the international agreements, with their
complex array of liberalisation and protectionism, are a device to
restrict the public arena -- the arena of democratic participation,
to the extent that countries enjoy a measure of meaningful democracy
-- and to transfer decisions over human affairs into the hands of
unaccountable private concentrations of power, linked to one another
and to the most powerful states.
The demonstrations are only the
froth on the rising tide of popular protest against this attack on
fundamental human rights, a tide that is becoming increasingly
difficult to resist.
Source:
by courtesy & © 2001 Al-Ahram Weekly & Noam Chomsky
by the same author:
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