National Radio Project

MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #38-98 Undeterred: International Activism
September 23, 1998

Program description at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/1998/9838.html

Phillip Babich: Welcome to Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas, and important information. This week on Making Contact:-

Noam Chomsky: A lot of people feel that we can't do anything, it’s a gloomy prospect and so on. I don't think that's true at all. In fact, this is a fairly, rather dramatic illustration of the opposite. Against tremendous odds confronting the most concentrated power in the world... despite that grassroots activism was able to stop it.

Phillip Babich: Last year's defeat of Fast Track legislation in Congress and the delay in passage of the latest global trade treaty, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, have been key victories for activists opposed to economic globalization.But recent police crackdowns in Europe against anti-globalization organizers could be a sign of what’s to come. I’m Phillip Babich, you host these week on Making Contact.

Fast Track would have been a fine feather in President Clinton's free-traders cap, with his new powers and any future president, would have been able to force Congress to vote up or down, with no amendments, any trade deal the president brought home. Labor unions and grassroots organizations mounted a fierce opposition campaign largely credited for sinking the bill at the end of last year.

This year it hasn't been smooth sailing for the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, the new trade accord that would grant transnational corporations unprecedented power.In April the Organization for Economic Cooperation Development delayed its vote on the MAI, in part due to grassroots opposition.

Making Contact's national producer, David Barsamian spoke with long time political activist and scholar Noam Chomsky about these and other developments. Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at MIT and is the author of numerous books and articles on U.S. foreign policy, international affairs and human rights.His most recent book is titled, "The Common Good".

David Barsamian: Do you see a possible trend here beginning with the successful UPS strike and the wide spread public support for the strikers and the defeat of Fast Track, the reversal on MAI and also the aborted Iraqi bombing campaign which was stopped in late February?

Noam Chomsky: The only reservation I have is that I don't think it's new; I think it's been going on for a long time. I mean, like right through the 80s for example popular activism was so strong that the Reagan administration was never able to intervene directly in Central America. They were never able to do anything remotely like what Kennedy and Johnson did in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and that's simply because there was far too much public opposition. So they had to do it indirectly through clandestine terror.

You can sort of see it in the reporting that's going on now in the death of the Bishop in Guatemala. Read that reporting. There's a slight omission. They talk about -- they point out that the -- he was killed -- the fact that another leading church figure is murdered in Central America -- is not big news. That's been happening for a while. But he was killed right as he was about to release a big study done by the church, "Nunca Mas, Never Again" which gave, apparently, from reports, a very detailed analysis of the atrocities carried out in Guatemala, which is one of the real horror stories in the past years. They calculated that about 200,000 people had been killed, over a million-and-a-half refugees, and hundreds of thousands of orphans, and widows and so on. They attributed about 80% of it to the government and the para-militaries connected with the government. 10% to the guerrillas, the rest unknown. Who was the government? The government was established by the United States, armed, trained by the United States, supported by the United States. The U.S. couldn't move in directly because of popular opposition, so they used mercenaries.

They had a whole international terror network: Taiwan, Israel, Britain, Argentine neo-Nazis, all sorts of people involved. And they carried out a huge massacre. But they could never become -- in fact the worst atrocities which were pointed out in the Bishop's -- the church report shows-- were during the rule of Riasmont, who was the favorite of Washington. Reagan was praising him all over the place as a real friend of democracy, getting a bum rap from the human rights groups. Meanwhile, killing tens of thousands of people, while the U.S. was pretty much excluded from the discussion. In fact, in some reports it wasn't mentioned at all. But it was behind the scenes, and crucially it was not directly involved, the place was not being bombed by B-52s. There weren't hundreds of thousands of American troops roaming around, U.S. troops. Well, that's because of the brake that was imposed by the popular activism of the 80s which was all over the country; it was not concentrated in urban centers, colleges and so on and so forth.

It was in rural areas in the Southwest and the Midwest and so on and it was very strong. So there is nothing new about this.In fact, we shouldn't -- it's sort of right in front of our eyes -- I mean, the big popular movements, the environmental movement, the feminist movement, these are all recent movements -- 70s, 80s, 90s. And they are achieving a lot. Fast Track is rather dramatic in this respect because as the White House correctly pointed out, it had been -- that's an option that had been available for presidents quite -- all the time, nobody ever paid attention, because it was considered right. I mean if the president wants to make important deals in secret and leave the public and Congress out of it, well, what could be wrong with that? Well, now people feel there's something wrong with it. And that's a lot of progress. They not only feel there is something wrong with it but feel that strongly enough as they are able to overcome the extraordinarily powerful forces that are trying to ram it through. This is a lot of progress.

David Barsamian: The Multilateral Agreement on Investment, MAI, has been called a political Dracula, in that it cannot survive sunlight or any kind of public scrutiny. You cite in that Z Magazine article an interesting quote from the famous Harvard pundit and political scientist, Samuel Huntington. He says, "The architects of power in the U.S. must create a force that can be felt but not seen. Power remains strong when it remains in the dark. Exposed to sunlight it begins to evaporate."

Noam Chomsky: This is a good illustration of that. He's no fool. He understands how power works, and he understand the profound importance of keeping the public in the dark. Making sure that they don't interfere. That policy will be designed and executed by the authentic centers of power without scrutiny. That's what Fast Track was about, that's what was illustrated by the MAI. In fact the point of the Multilateral Agreement on Investments is to put up a barrier behind the design and implementation of policy that people will not be able to penetrate. It's to put it behind corporate walls in effect. And those are impenetrable; apart from Congressional subpoena you can't find out what's going on inside these tyrannical systems. And if they are in a position to make the decisions about social and economic and political affairs for the world, okay, that's very efficient tyranny.Now there's even a nice World Bank phrase for this that says that these people should be able to work in what they call "technocratic insulation." These are the technocrats who know how to run things, the smart guys, and they have to be insulated from scrutiny or interference by the rabble. It's not a novel idea, but Huntington is describing the forms it has to take in a formally democratic society where you can't just send out the death squads.

David Barsamian: Who do you have in mind when you talk about worthy and unworthy constituencies?

Noam Chomsky: Well in this case it was made dramatically clear, in fact the article that you mentioned was called, "Domestic Constituencies" and that phrase is taken from the one public statement the White House did make about it. In reaction to the queries from Congress, which were not getting answered, and to the public protest which was beginning to surface; they did issue a public statement. It was made by Undersecretary of State and the leading trade representative Stuart E. Isenstat, actually as far as I am aware the public statement was never reported, but it was made. And in it the two White House spokespersons stated they wanted to assure the public, the audience, that their interests, of their deep commitment to democratic principle, so they said, "You can be sure we are making certain that all of the domestic constituencies that have a vital stake in these issues are being consulted all the way and are being informed and we wouldn't leave any of them out." And they went on to say that at the OECD we are leading the demand that this be true because of our profound commitment to democracy. That's approximately the wording of the statement.Well, that's an interesting statement, because now we can ask, we can sort of carry out a little exercise in logic and say, "Well, who are the domestic constituencies?" It plainly wasn't Congress.

In fact, they simply weren't -- undoubtedly people in Congress knew, but Congress in general was not even informed. And when 25 Representatives wrote a letter to the White House saying, "How come you've been negotiating this for three years without telling us when according to the Constitution, international commerce is the province of the Congress." They got a, you know the kind of letter that you get if you write a letter to the White House, it comes back saying, "Dear David, thank you for your interesting comments..." written by some computer. That's the letter they got back. So Congress wasn't a constituency, the public plainly wasn't a constituency -- in fact, it was kind of like a negative constituency. The idea was to "keep them out of it. Keep them off our backs." So the public isn't a constituency. Congress isn't a constituency, but the international council for business, that's a constituency. They were informed all the way. They were intimately involved. The whole corporate sector was involved and so on. So the White House was telling us plainly and clearly who their domestic constituencies are. And it's very rare that political leaders are so frank, in such a clear and vulgar fashion about exactly the way they perceive the world. And accurately, it's an accurate perception; but it's not what you're supposed to teach in 8th grade civics or graduate courses in political science at the University of Colorado. It's just the truth. So it's nice that they said it, and I think the media were smart enough to keep it quiet and suppress it. Maybe somebody would think it through.

David Barsamian: Well, you've even said that the word "Americans" doesn't refer to Americans because you were citing a New York Times article which said, "Americans are basking in the happy glow of an American boom, a fairy tale of U.S. expansion..." So which Americans?

Noam Chomsky: Well, that was interesting. There have been a series of article about America. This one was -- the headline was "America is Smug and Prosperous." The lead story, one of the front page stories in the Week in Review. In the Times was something about America is fat and happy, you know. And it's all about the fairy tale boom, and Americans are so confident and prosperous and everything is so wonderful and so on. We can ask the same question. "Who are they talking about?" I mean is it the roughly two-thirds of Americans whose wages and incomes have either stagnated or declined during the last 25 years? Are they the ones who are smug and prosperous and confident? Is it the ones who Alan Greenspan is talking about when he attributes the fairy tale economic boom to what he calls ‘worker insecurity’? Namely workers are so intimidated they won't ask for a raise which is a great thing for the health of the economy because you can drive down wages and make profits high and so on?Are they the people who are smug and confident and prosperous? I mean, is it the people who are going to the food banks, which are getting increased demand through the fairy tale boom? Well, no, it's not the three-quarters of the population.

The fact that these articles make it clear who they have in mind, the only example they give of Americans who are happy and prosperous and smug and confident, the one example they keep coming back to is the stock market. Which is fair. The people who are in the stock market, sure they're doing great. Who are they? Well, it turns out that one percent of households own about fifty percent of the stock. One-half percent of households, the top half percent own about forty percent of the stock. So the next half owns the next ten percent, and about ten percent own about ninety percent of the stock. So they're doing fine. Way at the peak, so high off the chart that the census bureau doesn't even count them because they're the top half percent or one percent. They're making out like bandits and it sort of drifts down to maybe the top twenty, twenty-five percent of the population, maybe, who are getting by or doing all right or maybe even doing well. Then comes maybe seventy-five percent who don't count. They are doing worse than before.

But when you say that Americans are smug and prosperous, you're not referring to them; they're not the people that you meet in the elegant restaurants and the corporate boardrooms and the editorial offices and so on. "Americans" means those people.There have been a couple of other articles which sort of bring this out in a curious way, Lewis Uchutel who is the economics correspondent, he talked about the great times, wonderful and so on and so forth, all through the article he quoted the Jerry Jasinowski who's the head of the National Association of Manufacturers. Jasinowski was talking about how great it is, how terrific it is and profits are going through the roof and so on and so forth, and then he says, something like this, "But even the millions of Americans who are suffering, are now accepting what Mr. Jasinowski calls the 'right priorities.'" That is, their aspirations have diminished. Then he quotes the head of the University of Michigan Research Center, a center that monitors public attitude, he says something like this, "It’s as if people are saying: 'Well, we're not quite able to get by, but it could be a lot worse. So we'll have to live with this.'" So that's, "Americans are smug and prosperous."

Phillip Babich: Noam Chomsky speaking with David Barsamian.

Shereen Meraji: You're listening to Making Contact a production of the National Radio Project. This program can now be heard across the United States and Canada, and Haiti and South Africa and around the world on Radio For Peace international short-wave. You can also hear us on the Internet.If you want more information about the subject of this week's program or you would like to learn how you can get involved with Making Contact, please give us a call, it's toll free. 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcript orders. That's 800-529-5736. We also welcome comments and suggestions for future programs.

Phillip Babich: The OECD will be discussing in the Multilateral Agreement on Investment this fall in Paris. Meanwhile groups opposing the MAI have been holding conferences and seminars to exchange ideas about the treaty's implications and to coordinate their efforts to defeat what some are terming, "NAFTA on Steroids." Although peaceful, some of these gatherings have drawn harsh responses from law enforcement officials. In Geneva, last May, Swiss police arrested non-violent protesters at an anti- World Trade Organization event. And, perhaps more disturbing, on August 27th, police in Geneva raided an international seminar on globalization resistance. According to witnesses, 50 people were detained and thoroughly searched and questioned. Speakers at the seminar included international economists, journalists and representatives from human rights and non-governmental organizations. One of the speakers was the world renown author, Susan George. To hear more about this incident, I spoke with Stephanie Welch by telephone. She's with the International Forum on Globalization and was at the seminar when the raid took place. Welch spoke to us from Italy where she traveled shortly after the seminar.

Stephanie Welch: Yeah, that was kind of a surprise. I arrived on the 26th, actually, and the conference had been going on for a little over a week before I got there, and I got there specifically to cover the session on resistance to globalization and strategies and actions for the future and things like that and I arrived and there were workshops going on. People cooking food. It was a really nice peaceful sort of camp set up and everybody went to bed late that night around the fire. And the next morning we were woken up by about thirty police officers all in -- they weren't in riot gear, but they were in all of these vests and things where they had no badges or anything. And they routed everyone out of their beds and demanded identification. They went through our back packs and all of our address books. They confiscated materials. They went through computer files. It was really organized, and apparently I think they got there a little earlier and had raided the house first because everyone was out in tents, and I was in the house and they got to us first.

Phillip Babich: These were police, Swiss police then?

Stephanie Welch: Yeah, Geneva police. And without explanation, without any explanation whatsoever they took us all down to the station. There were probably about between 50 to 60 of us. Put us in police vans and took us down to the station and detained us for a little over two hours. We asked them why. They never responded. We asked who was responsible. They wouldn't give us names or badge numbers or anything, so it was obviously an illegal raid. In fact, a few people had asked specific questions and some police had come back with comments like, "Yes, we know this is totally illegal" or they said, "You know that we'll relay this to the international press, what's happened here?" And they said, "Yes, well, this is a democracy here, you can do that." and things like that. It was pretty -- in fact, a lot of people agreed that the police were rather nervous, and not because they thought that there was going to be a fight or anything, but because they knew it was illegal. So they let most of us go but kept three people, I think it was three people detained, or maybe it was four, and by the end of that day all but one person had been released and that one person had coincidentally been in Geneva in May during the WTO protest with People's Global Action and had been deported for five years, which they have done with a lot of activists. So they held her and then released her, I think, two days later. Although they never let her have contact with her lawyer and it was a big mess, but everything was given back to us. All of our materials and everything, but most of it, all of our video tapes, everything, they had gone through all of that stuff for the whole day.

Phillip Babich: Tell us a little more about the conference and what you all were discussing there.

Stephanie Welch: It was conference, actually a seminar on globalization and resistance. A lot of people had been contacted. I knew about it for a couple of months before I decided to go and so it was very well planned. There were people -- international activists around the world. Really, really exciting group of people and most of the workshops were centered on information, sort of let's talk about global institutions like the WTO, the IMF; let's talk about labor, unemployment, a lot of the activism that is going on around that. Really basic things. All of the trade agreements. And then of course the final part was to be on resistance strategies and apparently the police had been by a few times that week to check up on things, and, in fact, helicopters were flying low. And I thought it was a little paranoid thinking "What are they doing?" and people said, "They are police helicopters, they've been looking at us for the past two weeks." They had been planning this raid apparently.And it was mostly a strategy meeting so that people could kind of get together to plan future events, future actions together.

Phillip Babich: As I understand it you interviewed people after the raid. What were some of assessments as to why this raid took place?

Stephanie Welch: There were some debates. A few people were really angry and said, "They don't want us to have this seminar, they want to disrupt our organizing." and some people said, "No, it's really just to get information." And then apparently one person had talked to a policeman who mentioned the fact that a press conference had taken place earlier in the week by a group of people who have been active against the MAI, based in Geneva from what I understood, who were protesting who announced a protest of an upcoming event with -- it's called the Geneva Business Dialogue which I was hoping to get more information on that before I left, I was unable to -- but from what I understood it was an alliance or meeting between UN officials and industry. And that's all I really know about it right now actually. I'd like to know more.

And they assumed that we were maybe part of that group who had planned these protests and so perhaps they were coming in to find out information. I think what they're trying to do -- they held us long enough to get our names and our passport numbers and information into a computer -- perhaps to check Interpol to see if there were any other events that we had been part of or things like that. But my feeling is that Geneva, after the WTO event that took place in May, Geneva is obviously a meeting point for a lot of people from around the world, business industry people to meet talk about trade agreements, etcetera. The WTO is based there. And I think they are really trying to keep international activists from being there. To prevent actions from taking place in that city, maybe. And to prevent a lot of bad press. So what they did in May was round up about 300 activists, and had so many of them deported, illegally, for five years. You can't return for five years.

Phillip Babich: Is there any evidence that the WTO itself was somehow involved with the raid that took place in Geneva recently and also the arrests in May?

Stephanie Welch: Not that we know of. It was very much -- they didn't tell us anything. You know, I think people are following up on it, of course, as much as they can trying to find out who was responsible, but they are very reluctant to give us any information whatsoever. You know, it was mostly information gathering situation. They got all of our names, and I am sure if I tried to go back there and be involved in another protest, I would probably be deported as well.

Phillip Babich: Now what does this mean for resistance against globalization, what's your assessment of that?

Stephanie Welch: Well, I think it really put it in perspective. It made everybody think that we're really being effective. What we did actually, we arranged an action against this move by the police. We went to the Palace of Justice and I actually have a little bit of that on tape. We continued our seminar there, in protest, to show that it's about free speech, it's about human rights. We were there just to talk to each other, it was a very peaceful gathering that we had. We didn't even have an action planned. It was only to meet and exchange information. So we continued our seminar there in public and we made flyers and actually three different newspapers had stories about this police action, and so the word got out.

Phillip Babich: I think people think of Geneva as kind of the paragon of neutrality. Is that not your experience since you've been there organizing against globalization?

Stephanie Welch: It's sort of ironic because one person, I wish had his name now, anyway his name is Ghopal , he's a human rights activist from Nepal. He was there and made a speech at our event to all of the public and the tourists and everyone is Geneva saying, " I'm shocked. I was here --", he was also there for a U.N. event on human rights. And he was shocked that he was part of this international seminar, very peaceful meeting that was raided by the police, and that that would happen in Geneva of all places. And I think it was very powerful. A lot of the people from Geneva around that area-- I actually interviewed a few people from the city itself, they were also shocked and outraged that this would take place.

Phillip Babich: Lastly, as you're traveling and attending more globalization conferences, is there a lot of talk about this and any possible action that activists may take?

Stephanie Welch: Well, I know as far as there are some different events that I hope to go to, a few that I have missed. But one big one -- it'll be in Paris when the negotiations resume for the Multilateral Agreement on Investments, if it's not postponed by the OECD, but that will be happening in mid-October 19 and 20th they plan to have that. And so there are a lot of people coming from all over Europe to meet in Paris for that. They're calling people from everywhere to just come there and protest the MAI. And it's very strong in Europe and the MAI is very unpopular here. And there are people coming from all different aspects of activism just to fight this one thing. And I expect to see similar treatment for activists there in Paris. We'll see.

Phillip Babich: We've been speaking with Stephanie Welch. She's with the International Forum on Globalization and is now traveling in Europe covering globalization issues and conferences. Stephanie, thanks for joining us on Making Contact.

Stephanie Welch: Thank you.

Phillip Babich: That's it for this edition of Making Contact. A look at globalization and resistance. Thanks for listening. And special thanks this week to Michele Simon, Susan Celli and Shereen Meraji for production assistance. I'm Phillip Babich. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. Or if you'd like to make a comment or suggestion for future programs. That's 800-529-5736.

Making Contact is an independent production funded by individual contributors. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. Our national producer is David Barsamian. Phillip Babich is our managing producer. our senior advisor is Norman Solomon. Shereen Meraji is our production assistant. Peggy Law is our executive director. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. For everyone at Making Contact, thanks for listening.