UN General Assembly
1983

27. The barriers which have been put up to shut out the new are the different faces of colonialism—economic, technological and the powerful weapons of food and information. These are the walls at which we raise our voices. That is why we lay stress on a new economic order, a new information order, preserving cultural identities. Walls do not move and can be got around. 28. Vast knowledge and technological advances concentrated in the hands of a few can lead to a new type of oppression, the barbarity inherent in technological excellence when it is monopolized by the powerful and used for their ends. What just a few years ago were considered as interesting fantasies are today perilously close to the facts of contemporary living. Brainwashing is not confined to any one system or one part of the world, to say nothing of the other cruelties of deprivation.