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Titolo: Ancora Noam Chomsky su CLINTON (2)

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The Clinton Vision: Update
Noam Chomsky
Z Magazine, January 1994 
1. Clinton's Bottom Line
November 17 was a grand day in the career of Bill Clinton, the day
when he proved that he is a man of firm principle, and that his
"vision" -- the term has become a journalistic reflex -- has real
substance. "President Emerges As a Tough Fighter," the New York Times
announced on the front page the next day. Washington correspondent
R.W. Apple wrote that Clinton had now silenced his detractors, who had
scorned him for his apparent willingness to back down on everything he
claimed to stand for: 
"Mr. Clinton retreated early on Bosnia, on Haiti, on homosexuals in
the military, on important elements of his economic plan [namely, the
minuscule stimulative package]; he seemed ready to compromise on all
but the most basic elements of his health-care reforms. Critics asked
whether he had a bottom line on anything. 
On NAFTA, he did, and that question won't be asked much for a while."1
In short, on unimportant matters, involving nothing more than millions
of lives, Clinton is a "pragmatist," ready to retreat. But when it
comes to responding to the calls of the big money, our hero showed
that he has backbone after all. 
The importance that the corporate world saw in the NAFTA issue was
revealed with some clarity in the final stages. Usually, both the
President and the media try to keep their class loyalties somewhat in
the background. This time, all bars were down. Particularly striking
was the bitter attack on labor for daring to interfere in the
political process, understood to be the domain of business power in a
well-ordered democracy. 
The logic is familiar. When ordinary people enter the political arena,
we have a "crisis of democracy"; things are OK, however, when the
President is able to "govern the country with the cooperation of a
relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers," as the
Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard (Samuel
Huntington) has explained, articulating the vision of democracy
propounded by elite opinion for hundreds of years. 
Accordingly, corporate lobbying was considered unworthy of mention --
a reasonable decision; one also doesn't report the air we breathe. 
President Clinton denounced the "naked pressure" and "real roughshod,
muscle-bound tactics" of organized labor, "the raw muscle, the sort of
naked pressure that the labor forces have put on." They even resorted
to "pleading...based on friendship" and "threatening...based on money
and work in the campaign" when they approached their elected
representatives. Never would a corporate lobbyist sink that low; those
who believe otherwise merely reveal themselves to be "Marxists" or
"conspiracy theorists," terms that are the cultivated equivalent of
four-letter words or a punch in the nose, a last resort when you can't
think of an argument. Front-page stories featured the President's call
to Congress "to resist the hardball politics" of the "powerful labor
interests." Business was reeling from the onslaught, unable to face
the terror of the mob. At the outer limits of dissent, Anthony Lewis
berated the "backward, unenlightened" labor movement for the "crude
threatening tactics" it employed to influence Congress, motivated by
"fear of change and fear of foreigners." 
In a lead editorial the day before the vote, the Times courageously
confronted the "raw muscle," denouncing local Democrats who oppose
NAFTA in fear of "the wrath of organized labor" with its powerful
political action committees that "contribute handsomely to their
election campaigns." A box within the editorial headed "Labor's Money"
records labor contributions to NAFTA opponents in the New York City
area -- "an unsettling pattern," the editors observe ominously.2 
As some aggrieved representatives and others noted, the Times did not
run a box listing corporate contributions. Nor did it list Times
advertisers and owners who support NAFTA, raising ominous questions
about their editorial support for the bill, perhaps an instance of an
"unsettling pattern." Such reactions are not to the point, however,
for several reasons. First, information about corporate lobbyists,
owners and advertisers would be irrelevant, since conformity of
government and editorial policy to their views is the natural order.
And if the hysteria about the improprieties of working people was a
bit crass, it is after all understandable in a moment of panic, when
the mob is practically at the gates. Furthermore, after endless
wailing about the terrifying power of labor and the unfair uses to
which it was put, the Times did run a front-page story revealing the
truth: Michael Wines, "Off Stage, Trade Pact Lobby Had a Star's
Dressing Room." 
The corporate lobbyists, Wines reported, were "Chamber of Commerce
types, accountants, trade consultants," who "occupied a stately
conference room on the first floor of the Capitol, barely an elevator
ride away from the action in the House chamber," with TV sets,
cellular telephones, and other appurtenances in abundance, and
celebrities everywhere. The picture was enough to convince a former
Carter official, now a lobbyist, that "It's going to be a blowout." A
look at labor's "raw muscle" only reinforced the conclusion: "The
boiler room for the forces opposed to the pact, by contrast, was more
of, well, a boiler room," a "barren hearing room" far from the House
debate, with only one telephone, "basic black." "The dress was
union-label, inexpensive suits and nylon jackets inscribed with
numbers and insignias of various locals." Wines even spoke the usually
forbidden words "class lines," referring to the "nastier and more
divisive battle" over NAFTA, unlike the "previous two battles," which
left no scars: the battle over the $19 billion stimulus (quickly lost)
and the tax and spending cuts.3 
True, the story that finally set things right was published the day
after the vote. But the newsroom is a busy place, media savants
explain, and sometimes things fall through the cracks -- in an oddly
systematic way. 
Before the vote, it wasn't only labor, with its awesome power, that
was pummelling Congress while the business world looked on in helpless
dismay. The morning of the vote, a front-page story in the Wall Street
Journal denounced "the muscle-flexing by the broad antitrade
coalition," which extends beyond labor bureaucrats to "upscale
environmentalists, suburban Perot supporters and thousands of local
activists nationwide." These extremists believe that NAFTA is designed
"for the benefit of multinational corporations. Their rhetoric is pure
down-with-the-rich populism," laced with "conspiratorial, antielitist
arguments." A pretty scary crowd.4 
The news columns of the Journal usually try to keep a dispassionate
tone, leaving Maoist-style ranting to the editorial and opinion pages.
But in this case, the pain was too much to bear. 
2. Winners and Losers
The Wines story on lobbyists was one of several interesting post-vote
contributions. In another Times story, also curiously delayed, Thomas
Lueck reviewed the expected economic impact of NAFTA, which had
elicited such enthusiasm in the weeks before, rising to virtual
hysteria as the day of decision dawned. Leading gainers would be those
sectors "based in and around finance," Lueck reported: "the region's
banking, telecommunications and service firms" -- that is, insurance
companies, investment houses, corporate law firms, the PR industry,
and the like. "A vast assortment of professional service firms, from
management consultants and public relations to law and marketing, are
poised to seek new businesses in Mexico," while "Banks and Wall Street
securities firms, which would probably draw more benefit from the pact
than any other businesses, say that they are itching to buy Mexican
businesses or invest in them." There will be some gainers among
manufacturers too, primarily in high technology industry and
pharmaceuticals, which will benefit from one of the many protectionist
features that made NAFTA so attractive to corporate leaders: the
increased protection for patents and "intellectual property"
generally, provisions designed to ensure that major corporations, some
of which dwarf many governments in scale, will control the technology
and products of the future. Other potential gainers include "the
region's two largest manufacturing industries," the capital-intensive
chemical industry and publishing -- more ominous signals about the
Times editorial policy, by the logic of the editors. 
Alongside this impressive array of beneficiaries, there will also
unfortunately be a few losers, "predominantly women, blacks and
Hispanics," and "semi-skilled production workers" generally. But that
was inevitable anyway, and not important enough to merit more than a
few side comments in this upbeat analysis of the "Free Trade Accord"
-- the part that is "free" being "the amount of money passed around
Washington to pass it, said Representative James Traficant," cited at
the tail end of the column that belatedly discovered the truth about
corporate and labor power. "Change can indeed be painful," as Anthony
Lewis admonished the labor movement -- for some, at least.5 
Noted economists supporting NAFTA made similar points about winners
and losers, observing that the only negative consequences of NAFTA
would be "a slight fall in the real wages of unskilled U.S. workers"
(Paul Krugman) and ridiculing talk about job loss because "only union
leaders and Ross Perot would be surprised to hear that the
productivity ratio between U.S. and Mexican workers...is higher than
the ratio of hourly compensation" (Gary Hufbauer). These scornful
rebuttals forgot to add, however, that 70% of the work force is
categorized as "unskilled," and that at comparable productivity levels
Mexican wages are a fraction of US wages, kept that way by harsh
repression, destruction of unions, and a huge army of unemployed.6 
Reports from Mexico also compared winners and losers. "Economists
predict that several million Mexicans will probably lose their jobs in
the first five years after the accord takes effect," Tim Golden
reported from Mexico in the Times after the House vote; the effect on
wages is predictable. "Business leaders like deal; others see rich
getting richer," a Boston Globe headline read the day after the vote,
reporting that "Mexico's business classes reacted with glee" while
"environmental, human rights and labor activists in Mexico continue to
criticize the accord." Previously, such voices had been largely
unheard, while journalists and economists informed us confidently of
the opinions and goals of "the Mexicans" -- who regularly turn out on
inspection to be corporate executives, bankers, political leaders,
American investors, and the like. Some of them go on to condemn the
jingoist "national perspective" of critics of NAFTA who depart from
convention by explicitly focussing attention on concerns of Mexican
workers and farmers -- not "the Mexicans" -- and thus "implicitly
assume that Mexican issues and interests are secondary" (James
Galbraith, "What Mexico -- and the United States -- Wants," World
Policy Journal); it takes some skill to thread one's way through the
ideological contortions. Readers of the Newsletter of the Society for
Historians of American Foreign Relations could learn that there were
huge demonstrations against NAFTA in Mexico, "well articulated, if
too-little-noticed in the United States, cries of frustration against
government policies -- involving repeal of constitutional labor,
agrarian and education rights stipulated in the nation's popularly
revered 1917 constitution -- that appear to many Mexicans as the real
meaning of NAFTA and U.S. foreign policy here," realistically enough
(historian Seth Fein, writing from Mexico City). Readers of the major
media and journals heard little of this. 
Mexican concerns about job loss had sometimes been reported before the
vote, framed as "worries [that] would seem to rebut critics in the
United States who have described Mexico as the clear beneficiary of
the accord" (Golden); so we should proceed on course. Occasional more
serious commentary reported the great anxiety of Mexican workers not
only about job loss but about the erosion of their "hard-won labor
rights," likely to "be sacrificed as companies, trying to compete with
foreign companies, look for ways to cut costs" (Juanita Darling, Los
Angeles Times) -- a prime reason why the corporate version of NAFTA
and other trade agreements, carefully crafted to protect investor but
not labor rights, are so appealing to business leaders.7 
A study carried out by Mexico's leading business journal, El
Financiero, which strongly supported NAFTA, predicted that Mexico
would lose almost a quarter of its manufacturing industry and 14% of
its jobs in the first two years. Other analysts have predicted that
millions of peasants will be driven from the land by cheap US
agribusiness exports, enhancing the impact of repression and
neoliberal policies that have helped to drive down wages and reduce
labor's share in the economy from 36% in the mid-1970s to 23% by 1992,
a crucial component of the "economic miracle" that NAFTA advocates
hope to "lock in place." Stagnation or perhaps reduction of Mexican
wages will then facilitate new pressures to reduce wages of US and
Canadian workers, contributing still further to the "welcome
development of transcendent importance" that the Wall Street Journal
hailed in mid-September: the reduction of US hourly pay below any
major industrial country apart from England. Profits will accordingly
increase, at least, as long as the social policy designed to enhance
the welfare of investors can be sustained.8 
The economists who preach about the merits of "free trade," knowing
the term to be largely fraud, also know the likely consequences of the
corporate-executive version of NAFTA. "Many economists think NAFTA
could drag down pay," Steven Pearlstein reported in the Washington
Post, expecting that "lower Mexican wages could have a gravitational
effect on the wages of Americans." A study by one leading specialist,
Edward Leamer of UCLA, concludes that the kind of globalization that
is enhanced by this NAFTA "would add about $3000 a year to the
earnings of professional and technical workers by the end of the
decade while reducing the income of everyone else by $750 -- a loss of
about $200 a year for the average American," sufficient reason to
explain the overwhelming enthusiasm for the Bush-Clinton NAFTA on the
part of corporate power and their spokespersons.9 The reasons for the
gravitational effect do not lie in "free trade principles," which have
only limited relevance to an international economy of a corporate
mercantilist character with vast state intervention, but are an
inherent part of the social policies that are implemented by the
powerful, and built into their version of "trade agreements." 
Commentary on the impact of NAFTA on "Mexico," "the United States,"
and "Canada," or what these entities "want," is at best meaningless,
at worst vulgar propaganda. The "class lines" that the Times detected
after the fray tell a truer story. The version of NAFTA rammed through
by state-corporate power is designed to carry forward the
internationalization of the economy in a particular form, which
includes the extension to the industrial societies of the Third World
pattern of sharply two-tiered societies. 
The primary stakes are not the impact on jobs, about which little is
understood with any confidence, the economic models being so remote
from reality. Or even wages, though the conclusions here are more
persuasive. A more far-reaching issue, as critics of the executive
version of NAFTA have stressed from the outset, is the erosion of
freedom and democracy, both process and culture, as parliamentary
institutions are increasingly displaced by decision-makers and
investors who operate within their own totalitarian institutions or in
the quasi-governmental structures that have taken shape to serve the
needs of transnational corporations and finance. The "transcendent
importance" of removing the annoyances of democracy is revealed in a
vulgar way by the hysteria about labor's "raw muscle," but in fact
lies far deeper.10 
The conclusion holds for Mexico as well. Advocates here speak of the
compelling need to "lock Mexico into its pro-market reforms" as the
primary motivation for NAFTA (editorial, New York Times). They are
expressing once again the abiding fear that a "`democracy opening' in
Mexico could test the special relationship by bringing into office a
government more interested in challenging the U.S. on economic and
nationalist grounds," the dark cloud on the far horizon that a Latin
America Strategy Workshop in Washington saw in September 1990. Perhaps
a "democracy opening" cannot be forestalled forever, but at least an
agreement with near-treaty status may block the grim effects of
policies directed to some interests beyond those of investors. Mexican
political scientist Jorge Casta$eda may exaggerate when he writes that
"the whole purpose of NAFTA" was to strengthen the "authoritarian
regime" of the always-ruling party, the PRI, but there is little doubt
that a major purpose was to "lock in" the benefits that repression and
violence offer for profit-making.11 
3. "Wooing, and Pleasing, Big Business"
It was not only the pose of media objectivity and independence of
class interests that was cast aside as the day of the crucial House
vote neared. The pretense that the executive NAFTA was a "free trade"
pact also became too inconvenient to maintain. "In Twist,
Protectionism Is Used to Sell Trade Pact," the Times proclaimed with
wonder, discovering what both critics and advocates of the "Trade
Pact" had been shouting from the rooftops for a year. The
protectionist features of NAFTA had been "negotiated by the Bush
Administration out of political necessity to drum up corporate
support," economic correspondent Keith Bradsher reported, but "went
largely unnoticed until recently, when they began to attract criticism
from abroad, notably from Japan." 
The example illustrates the power of ideological institutions to
shield themselves, and their audiences, from unwanted ideas and
discussion. The task of the day has been to laud the US for its
dedication to the free market -- "the wave of the future -- a future
for which America is both the gatekeeper and the model," as ideologues
exuberantly proclaim. The executive version of NAFTA was therefore a
"free trade" agreement by ideological necessity, independently of the
fact that it went far beyond trade and was anything but free, not as a
matter of negotiation out of political necessity but in its essential
design, and was attractive to domestic business power in large part
for these reasons. One cannot expect the Free Press to attend to
critical commentary from the Third World, or to anything beyond the
very narrow spectrum of respectability at home. But it takes some
discipline not to hear corporate executives lauding NAFTA for its
protectionist features, or the voices of eminently respectable
specialists, ranging from supporters of trade regulation like Clyde
Prestowicz, who came to support NAFTA in part because its provisions
favoring North American (effectively, US) firms "will let us better
compete with Asians," to leading advocates of free trade such as
economist Jagdish Bhagwati, who wrote in Foreign Affairs that NAFTA is
"dressed up as a great free trade move" though "it is evident that the
main motivation is protectionist: Mexico becomes America's
preferential market, with Japan and the EC at a disadvantage." Hence
the "passionate support" in business circles for NAFTA as compared to
GATT, where "any advantages America [i.e., US business] gains...are
equally doled out to rivals." All this is aside from such
protectionist features as the intellectual property rights provisions
on which US state-corporate power insists.12 
The Clinton Administration "has resorted to the odd tactic of selling
a free-trade pact by highlighting its protectionist provisions,"
Bradsher reports. Translating to English, Clinton resorted to the
quite understandable tactic of highlighting the protectionist
provisions that are at the heart of the agreement and that account for
the "passionate support" of business, while the pose that this is "a
free-trade pact" cannot be sustained under duress, even by the
doctrinal institutions.13 
Clinton's advisers understood that well. In his "11th-Hour Bid for
NAFTA," the Wall Street Journal reported, Clinton stressed that if the
US did not succeed in locking Mexico into its protectionist sphere,
the Japanese would do so; hardly a likely contingency, though the
rhetoric is enlightening. Clinton's key point, the Journal observed,
is "that Japan and Europe will capture the Mexican market if the U.S.
doesn't"; we'd better establish protectionist barriers quickly, or
someone will beat us to it. 
The President also addressed a plea to US corporations to make a
public pledge not to move jobs to Mexico, assurances that "would be
particularly timely as the highly charged NAFTA debate winds down,"
the Journal observed. Of course, if NAFTA advocates believed what they
publicly proclaim, such a call would be absurd: after all, the
agreement is supposed to provide a flow of "jobs, jobs, jobs." But
anything goes, in the desperate effort to ram through an agreement on
investor rights that locks the door, one hopes, on a potential
democratic threat.14 
The business community is naturally pleased by Clinton's firmness in
defending the "bottom line," and understands well just how far that
line reaches. A lead Wall Street Journal article on November 19 was
headed: "Unlikely Allies: President Is Wooing, And Mostly Pleasing,
Big-Business Leaders." The article does not explain why it is so
"unlikely" that a conservative and outspokenly pro-business "New
Democrat" should have kept to his consistent course; his "affinity for
the business establishment continues a pattern begun when he was
governor of Arkansas," the Journal observes, recalling his "close
working relationship with the group of top corporate executives
nicknamed the Good Suit Club" -- all in pursuit of "jobs," the report
hastens to assure us, using the conventional paraphrase for the
forbidden "P-word." Unlikeness aside, the Journal report accurately
describes the President's continuing "affinity." He is "aggressively
wooing big business, inviting small groups of top corporate
executives...to lunch. On issue after issue, Mr. Clinton and his
administration come down on the same side as corporate America," NAFTA
being "only the most conspicuous example." Others include the big
government initiatives that corporate America admires, among them the
proposal that "the government pick up the health-insurance tab for big
companies' early retirees" and the plan "to alter U.S. foreign aid to
force recipients to buy more U.S. goods" while suppressing human
rights concerns. Clinton has also wisely "avoided the extremes of
environmental regulation and is moving toward compromise on such
contentious matters as reform of the Superfund dump-cleaning program."
"`We're getting along much better with this administration than we did
with previous ones," confides Harold `Red' Poling, the recently
retired chairman of Ford Motor Company." Others agree. The Chairman of
Bethlehem Steel ranks Clinton as "good for American business" on issue
after issue: trade, health, the economic plan, etc. 
Clinton's pro-business attitudes are fine-tuned, the Journal
continues: "Democratic presidents do tend to appeal more to big
corporations than to the legions of small-business owners," and
Clinton is no exception. His health care plan "is far kinder to big
companies than to small ones," also favoring "major insurers" over
smaller ones; "and big companies are the big winners" on other
health-related issues. Business is also generally pleased with Clinton
on fiscal and environmental policies. In the latter domain, the report
continues, the only lapse of the Clinton-Gore team that troubles
executives is an order to the government to use more recycled paper.
On trade, beyond NAFTA, business is pleased with Clinton initiatives
to strongarm competitors and "his plan to link about $150 million in
foreign aid to purchases of US goods," another proper form of state
intervention to protect business from market forces. The "activist
Clinton presidency has revived the Business Roundtable, which consists
of 200 big-company CEOs." Formerly a major business advocacy group,
the Roundtable "was nearly irrelevant" under the Republicans
(self-lobbying being unnecessary) but has now again become a "major
player" thanks to Clinton's activist presidency, forming the core of
the NAFTA lobby among other tasks. The big government New Democrat is
a man of principle across the board, the business community is pleased
to see.15 
As these developments again illustrate, it is a calumny to claim that
politics in the world's leading democracy is limited to two factions
of the business party. On the contrary, there is a spectrum ranging
from the party of big business all the way to the party that
"aggressively woos and pleases" it, marginalizing other concerns. It
is that model that we must proudly defend, and make sure that others
understand and adopt for themselves. 
4. The Summit Triumph
Particularly gratifying to Clinton's Business Roundtable friends is
the decision to maintain China's "favorable trade status." The issue
reached the front pages right after the NAFTA victory, as Clinton took
off to lead the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group (APEC) summit
in Seattle. The events posed a number of problems for government-media
doctrinal management. One was to portray the events with sufficient
grandeur while conceding that nothing had happened. A second was the
usual problem of presenting massive state intervention in economic
affairs in the interests of corporate power as dedication to the free
market. A narrower problem was to reconcile our deep commitment to
democracy and human rights with the open courting of China,
overlooking its record and its role in missile and nuclear
proliferation, a problem rendered even more difficult by Clinton's
decision to provide China with means to pursue these policies more
effectively. Let's have a look at how these onerous tasks were
handled. 
The first two were not too demanding. There was much hullabaloo about
Clinton's "grand vision for Asia," while only on the back pages was it
conceded quietly that the Summit achieved nothing. "The unusual
combination of energy and ambiguity" -- meaning PR and reality --
"that surrounded this meeting was captured in a `vision statement'
issued by the leaders at the close of their session," Thomas Friedman
reported toward the end of an upbeat lead story: "It was long on
vision and short on specifics." One achievement, however, was that the
Asian leaders picked up the favored rhetorical styles, learning how to
scatter the word "vision" profusely through their pronouncements and
interviews. 
It was the "grand vision," not the missing specifics, that was in the
forefront. "Clinton Preaches Open Markets at Summit," the headline of
the lead Times news story read. "We have agreed that our economic
policies should be open, not closed," the President declared. Clinton
is undertaking "what may be the biggest rethinking of American policy
toward Asia" in the past half century, David Sanger wrote in the lead
story of the Times Week in Review, stressing "the breadth of Clinton's
vision of a Pacific Community" dedicated to free trade and open
markets as he spoke "inside a giant airplane hangar at the Boeing
company." Boeing is the country's largest exporter, Sanger noted. 
More generally, civilian aircraft constitute the leading US export,
running a net trade surplus of $17.8 billion in 1991. Furthermore, US
comparative advantage in the international economy increasingly lies
in services, not manufacture, and "by far the largest export of U.S.
services is travel and tourism, which accounts for a third of the
service surplus," the Wall Street Journal reports; travel and tourism
means aircraft. Accordingly, it is natural for Clinton to tout the
marvels of the free market at the Boeing Company, telling "a cheering
throng" that Boeing "is a model for companies across America" and the
prime example of the "new vision of American relations with Asia,"
where "China alone now buys one of every six of [Boeing's] planes";
the other prime example is the Cray supercomputer corporation, given a
boost by Clinton's decision to sell its advanced computers to China in
violation of congressional legislation, announced at the same time.16 
Or is it natural? Hidden in the crevices is the embarrassing fact that
Boeing, Cray supercomputers, and the aircraft and computer industry
generally are the prime modern examples of the dramatic departures
from the free market that created and sustained a viable economy in
the United States (as elsewhere). These industries were founded and
survive thanks to enormous taxpayer subsidies. They have always been
funded through the Pentagon funnel, a system devised in the late 1940s
with exactly that purpose in mind as even the public record
demonstrates, one of several major government programs to impose a
particular kind of state capitalist social and economic order. Another
was the program of "suburbanizing America" which, under the cover of
defense, established the modern motor and air transport industries as
core elements of the economy, with a cost to the public that goes far
beyond the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars used in this massive
government social engineering project. 
In the case of aircraft, hence the tourism industry as well, the facts
are too obvious to require discussion. As for computers, their
development was fully funded by the public in the 1950s, before they
became marketable and therefore handed over to "private enterprise";
in electronics generally, government funding covered 85% of all R&D in
1958. The public subsidy continued, mounting again under Reagan-Bush
in the guise of Star Wars and through the initiatives of DARPA (the
Pentagon research funding agency) which "became a pivotal market
force" in high-performance computing from the early 1980s, Science
magazine reports, "boosting massively parallel computing from the
laboratory into a nascent industry," now to be extended through a
multi-agency government supercomputing agency that will aim for speeds
of a trillion operations per second, focusing more on "the crowded
field of young supercomputer companies it had played a role in
creating" than on university teams.17 
A few problems might arise, then, in offering aircraft and
supercomputers as the "model" for the "grand free market vision." They
might arise, that is, if the self-image that the ideological
institutions portray with such awe had any resemblance to reality. In
any event, the problems did not arise. 
Sanger also observes that Boeing is involved in co-production with
Mitsubishi in Nagoya, Japan, one element of "multi-million dollar,
job-creating investments outside the United States on a scale that
would terrify NAFTA's opponents." This, he notes, is another aspect of
the Clinton "vision that implies tradeoffs and job displacements far
more wrenching than any posed by" NAFTA. Adding the forbidden fact
that Boeing is a publicly-funded private corporation, we conclude that
US workers are providing funds to Boeing executives for them to use in
"job-creating investments" abroad on a massive scale. Boeing
executives, not workers in the plants or communities, have the
unrestricted right to make such decisions about disbursal of public
funds under the "free market" assumptions that permit totalitarian
control within huge publicly-funded corporate institutions that
increasingly dominate cross-border commercial interchanges -- hardly
"trade," in any serious sense. The model for the free market future is
the kind of absolute unaccountable power and taxation without
representation that outraged 18th century libertarians. 
Economists will surely be at hand to explain with proper scorn that in
the long run the job-displacements arranged by Boeing executives will
benefit all, at least in the universe of their abstract models. The
real world and major human concerns are another matter. The question
"who decides," and by what right, is not a topic in an intellectual
culture that excludes any concern over functioning democracy and its
contemporary erosion. 
The same is true of more technical matters, for example, the market
distortions from internal pricing policies of transnational
corporations, which may be quite substantial in scale, political
economist Ian Robinson observes, but, unlike governmental tariff and
non-tariff barriers, do not fall within the purview of the "trade
agreements." Yet another footnote to the odes to the new world order
of free trade and open markets is added by a 1992 OECD study, which
concludes that "Oligopolistic competition and strategic interaction
among firms and governments rather than the invisible hand of market
forces condition today's competitive advantage and international
division of labor in high-technology industries."18 
The question of supercomputers brings us to the third problem for
doctrinal managers: China. That proved a harder nut to crack, and the
conflicting versions are almost as bewildering as White House leaks of
its health plan. 
It was hard to overlook the fact that "Mr. Clinton is touchingly
ardent in his efforts to get along" with China, R.W. Apple reported
from the Seattle APEC summit, seeing "trade with China as the magic
elixir that can cure many of the ills of the American economy."
Secretary of State Warren Christopher, "defending the decision to sell
a supercomputer to the Chinese for the first time since the Tiananmen
Square killings in 1989, said...that the United States had to close a
$19 billion trade deficit with China,...human rights symbolism
notwithstanding...," Sanger reports. The supercomputer sale reflects
the fact that the Administration is "eager to give a lift to the
financially troubled" Cray corporation, Elaine Sciolino added from
Washington, noting that "Even more significant for American business,
the Administration has also decided to lift the ban on important
components for China's nuclear power plants, like generators," which
"could mean billions of dollars in sales" for GE. Christopher also
assured China that the Clinton Administration "would be prepared to
interpret an American law governing the export of high technology to
allow the export of two of the seven sophisticated American-made
satellites banned by sanctions imposed on China in August [1993],
senior Administration officials said," referring to the legislation
passed by Congress after US intelligence provided "conclusive proof"
that China was exporting missile technology and equipment in violation
of international agreements (Sciolino); a Pentagon official,
questioning the wisdom of sending China equipment for nuclear power
plants, added that China had "disregarded American appeals to end its
nuclear cooperation with Iran." 
The Chinese leaders did not make Clinton's task easy: they "gave no
ground at all on human rights" and "provided no fig-leaf to cover
President Clinton's nakedness," Apple reports, noting however that it
was only "a relatively unsophisticated Cray supercomputer," so the
"grand vision" remains unsullied, just as it survived the effective
exclusion of human rights issues, even the right of workers to
organize, from NAFTA. Two days earlier, Sciolino had cited "senior
American officials" as saying that it was "a sophisticated $8 million
dollar supercomputer" that the US was selling to China -- as "a good
will gesture toward China," "part of the Administration's strategy to
embrace, rather than isolate, China despite disagreements over human
rights, weapons proliferation and trade." At the tail end of
impressive oratory on the "vision," brief news clips reported that 81
workers died in a factory fire in southeastern China, most of them
locked in "to keep people inside during working hours," a factory
spokesman said. This China-Hong Kong joint venture makes dolls,
probably for sale to American children as Christmas presents; let's
hope any dried blood was washed off. Two people had been killed by
toxic fumes at another toy factory a week earlier, and on August 5, an
explosion and fire at a chemical depot killed 18 people and injured
dozens more. The deadly accidents "have drawn attention to industrial
safety conditions in southern China," widely hailed as the site of an
"economic miracle." The attention apparently did not reach as far as
Seattle, where Clinton was "embracing" the Chinese rulers and
proclaiming his "grand vision," to much applause. 
Squaring the circle becomes still more difficult as we proceed.
Clinton's new "notion of national security," Thomas Friedman explains,
rests on two principles: "promoting free trade and stemming missile
proliferation." Sciolino's adjacent column describes the sale of a
sophisticated supercomputer and nuclear power equipment to China, all
produced in radical violation of free trade doctrines and easily
adaptable for missile and nuclear weapons proliferation. Further
proliferation should hardly come as a surprise to the Administration
that "decided to allow the sale despite clear evidence that China has
broken its promises to Washington by exporting M-11 missile components
and technology to Pakistan" in violation of an international missile
control accord. The supercomputer is for weather prediction, the
Administration assures us, and will be used "under strict conditions,
including substantial American monitoring that will prevent its
diversion for military uses." A Pentagon official involved in
proliferation issues added the obvious: "if the Chinese manage to use
the supercomputer in a weapons program, no one's going to go in there
and pull the plug." Other Asian and US sources said that the "advanced
supercomputer...would be useful in China's strategic weapons programs,
particularly in simulated tests of new missiles," Paul Quinn-Judge
reported, quoting US specialists who say that China is engaged in "the
world's most comprehensive program of transfer of missile technology,"
providing missiles to Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq, and possibly having
helped North Korea in the development of a 600-mile range missile.19 
Summarizing, Clinton's "grand vision" for free trade, ending weapons
proliferation, and promoting human rights rests on the following
principles. The model is state-subsidized corporations that use
taxpayer dollars to maximize their profits, investing where they
choose whatever the effects on their workers and communities, those
who pay the bills generally, and workers and communities abroad. High
technology and other exports will be provided to leading human rights
violators who may use them freely for missile and nuclear weapons
proliferation in violation of international agreements. Labor rights
and human rights concerns generally -- say, the right not to be burned
to death when you are locked into a factory -- are off the agenda,
except, of course, for those who do not offer commercial advantage for
US corporations, and official enemies who get in the way. 
In short, the powerful do what they want, leaving it to the educated
classes to construct the proper imagery. 
Another slight problem is that Clinton had "accused Mr. Bush during
the presidential campaign of not doing enough to halt the spread of
nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic missile technology"
(Sciolino). But having taken over the reins, "in effect, [Clinton]
said that abuses of civil liberties in China must not be ignored but
must not be permitted to dominate the relationship -- a formulation
remarkably like that which guided the Bush Administration and which
Mr. Clinton roundly criticized during the 1992 campaign," adopting it
now as part of his "continuing effort to loosen the linkage between
human rights and commercial relations" (Apple). These, however, are
just more of the unimportant issues that don't bear on Clinton's
"bottom line," which he firmly held, silencing his critics, as Apple
had explained two days earlier. They fall in the same category as
Clinton's first decision: to modify the Bush policy of turning back
Haitian refugees, which he had bitterly condemned during the campaign,
by harshening it further with a total blockade -- a blockade which,
somehow, seems to miss the boats that sustain the military rulers by
ferrying drugs in and out. 
"There was no linkage" in the supercomputer sale to China, a senior
Administration official said. Not too much of a surprise, after all.
As well-known, Clinton drew much of his top staff from the Carter
Administration, which opened its human rights crusade by confronting
the issue of arms sales to Iran, the world's leading purchaser of US
arms and ranking high (perhaps first) in torture of political
prisoners and other human rights violations. In April 1977, the Carter
Administration addressed the problem forthrightly by imposing
pressures on Iran -- to purchase advanced armaments that it had not
requested and probably could not use, sophisticated surveillance
planes to monitor and control air battles, at a cost of $850 million.
US Air Force personnel would operate the system, reports from
Washington indicated. Visiting Teheran a month later, Secretary of
State Cyrus Vance stated that "no...linkage has been discussed"
between arms sales and human rights, also clarifying to reporters that
his talks with the Shah had "laid no particular stress" on human
rights issues. "Each country has a responsibility to itself to deal
with terrorist problems," Vance told the press, and the new Human
Rights Administration had little to say to the Shah about such
matters. 
Reporting the April 1977 efforts to sell Iran advanced armaments, the
New York Times observed that "one of the principal reasons behind the
Pentagon pressure for the offer to Iran was to keep the Boeing
production line open." More generally, sale of arms to oil producers
was one of the devices employed to sustain the publicly-subsidized
privately-run corporations that are the "model" for the free market
vision, and to ensure that the huge profits from oil production would
continue to flow to the US (and its British client), not to the people
of the region, the central doctrine of US Middle East policy. In
pursuit of the same goals, James Baker and George Bush intervened in a
secret meeting in October 1989 to ensure that their friend Saddam
Hussein would receive another $1 billion in loan guarantees,
overcoming Treasury and Commerce department objections that Iraq was
not creditworthy. Gassing of Kurds and torture of dissidents were not
issues, linkage with human rights concerns having been properly
loosened. The additional $1 billion for Saddam was justified, the
State Department explained, because Iraq was "very important to US
interests in the Middle East," being "influential in the peace
process" and "a key to maintaining stability in the region, offering
great trade opportunities for US companies."20 
Interesting to see how much changes over the years, as one vision
replaces another. 
5. The Broader Vision
Meanwhile, other elements of the vision fell into place. While linkage
to human rights and proliferation was being loosened at the Seattle
Summit, USAID announced that 21 missions serving 35 countries and
territories would be terminated as Washington reduced its aid program,
one of the most miserly in the industrial world, still further. The
announcement was "criticized by David Beckman, president of Bread for
the World, a Christian organization dedicated to alleviating hunger,"
AP reported. "Mr. Beckman said most of the cutbacks affect very poor
countries. The problems of hunger, poverty and environmental
degradation are not priorities for the Clinton Administration, he
asserted." They too fall below the "bottom line." 
On the front page the same day, Times correspondent Clifford Krauss
reported that the Senate passed "a broad and expensive anticrime
package whose leading provisions would add 100,000 police officers to
the nation's streets, build a network of high-security regional
prisons and create more boot camps for young offenders," also
extending the death penalty to 52 Federal crimes and requiring states
that receive Federal money for the construction of the new regional
prisons to adopt harsher sentencing rules. This $23 billion package
over 5 years "would amount to a sixfold increase in the annual subsidy
that Washington now gives to state and local governments to fight
crime." An amendment, passed unanimously, allows for secret
deportation trials for "alien terrorists," though "it couldn't even
get to the floor during the Reagan-Bush years," the Nation editors
observe. Another makes membership in a street gang a crime. Another,
passed by 91-1, requires automatic life imprisonment without parole
for a third felony, whatever the offense. 
It is "the finest anticrime package in history," Senator Orrin Hatch
remarked, observing the proceedings with pleasure from the far right.
"Mr. Clinton did not have to engage in much lobbying on behalf of the
bill," Krauss added, though he presumably would have done so if
necessary, having always taken pains to show that he is one tough
hombre. Writing in the London Sunday Telegraph several months earlier,
American TV correspondent Charles Glass had asked "what is the
connection between an Iraqi artist named Layla al-Attar, and Rickey
Ray Rector, a black man executed in 1992 for murder in Arkansas?" The
answer, he pointed out, is Bill Clinton's need to improve his ratings,
in one case, by sending missiles to bomb Baghdad, killing al-Attar
among others; in the other, by returning to Arkansas in the midst of
his presidential campaign to supervise the execution of a mentally
incapacitated prisoner, proving "that a Democrat could be tough on
crime." Alexander Cockburn drew the same connection here in a Wall
Street Journal Op-ed, a jarring note in the general enthusiasm for
Clinton's war crime. The new legislation merely updates it. 
Law-enforcement experts doubt that "even legislation this vast" will
have a significant effect on crime unless it deals with the "causes of
social disintegration that produce violent criminals," Krauss
continues. The social disintegration is an integral part of the
"vision," as policy is crafted to entrench more deeply the Third World
model of a two-tiered society, with a surplus population that is
increasingly useless for profit-making, the value to which all else
must be subordinated.21 
Reviewing "Clinton's accomplishments" as the Seattle summit ended, the
liberal Boston Globe detected real progress, even signs of "a
potential transformation" in American politics. "Even a majority of
Republican voters think Clinton has a vision," a GOP pollster says.
True, "much of Clinton's `vision' has yet to become law," and his
"record at transforming his ideas into reality is not perfect." But it
is impressive nonetheless, with real successes: raising taxes on the
wealthy, protecting the right of abortion and guaranteed parental
leave, and the "motor voter" bill that allows people to register when
they get a driver's license. They forgot to mention the environmental
initiative that marred the record otherwise applauded by the business
community: the order to government offices to use more recycled
paper.22 
A closer look at Clinton's accomplishments suggest that the business
leaders sampled in the Wall Street Journal have a sharper eye. 
Noam Chomsky
Nov. 26, 1993 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go back to the archive. 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
1 Apple, NYT, Nov. 18, 1993. 
2 Gwen Ifill, NYT; John Aloysius Farrell, BG, Nov 8. Lewis, Nov. 5.
Editorial, NYT, Nov. 16, 1993. 
3 Wines, NYT, Nov. 18. 
4 Bob Davis and Jackie Calmes, WSJ, Nov. 17, 1993. 
5 Thomas Lueck, NYT, Nov. 18; Wines, Lewis, op. cit. 
6 Krugman, Foreign Affairs, Nov./Dec. 1993; Hufbauer, NYT, Nov. 15.
Samuel Bowles and Mehrene Larudee, ibid., on productivity; labor
economist Harley Shaiken, cited by Steven Pearlstein, WP weekly, Nov.
8, 1993; Shaiken has done extensive studies on this issue. On the
category of "unskilled workers," see Ian Robinson, North American
Trade as If Democracy Mattered (Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives, Ottawa and International Labor Rights Education and
Research Fund, Washington, 1993), n. 224. 
7 Golden, NYT, Nov. 19, 5; Diego Ribadeneira, BG, Nov. 18; Darling,
LAT-Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 17, 1993. Fein, Newsletter, SHAFR, March
1993. Galbraith, WPJ, Fall 1993. Galbraith condemns the "nationalist
perspective" of the US labor movement, basing himself on an irrelevant
phrase from its critique of NAFTA, which devoted much attention to the
problems of Mexicans (though not his "Mexicans"); he took the phrase
from a quote in an article of mine that takes the same point of view
with no departure from a strictly internationalist position, so that I
am selected as spokesperson for the "nationalist perspective," in
standard scholarly style. 
8 El Financiero, Robinson, op. cit., n. 183. David Barkin,
"Salinastroika and Other Novel Ideas," Aug. 10, 1992; SourceMex, U. of
New Mexico, Latin America Data Base, to appear in new edition of
Barkin, Distorted Development, Westview, forthcoming. 
9 Pearlstein, op. cit. 
10 For useful recent discussion, see Robinson, op. cit. 
11 Editorial, NYT, Oct. 30, 1993; Latin America Strategy Development
Workshop, Sept. 26 & 27, 1990, minutes, 3. Casta$eda, WP Nov. 19,
1993. 
12 Bob Davis, WSJ, Sept. 17, 1993; Foreign Affairs, Spring 1993. 
13 Bradsher, NYT, Nov. 7, 1993. 
14 Michael Frisby, WSJ, Nov. 2; Asra Nomani, WSJ, Nov. 1, 1993. 
15 Jeffrey Birnbaum and David Wessel, WSJ, Nov. 19. 
16 R.W. Apple, Friedman, NYT, Nov. 21; Sanger, NYT week in review,
Nov. 21; Lucinda Harper, WSJ, Nov. 22, 1993. Laura Tyson, Who's
Bashing Whom? (Institute for International Economics, 1992), 155, on
aircraft export. 
17 See, among others, my Turning the Tide (South End, 1985), chap. 4.
For a valuable recent study of the origins of the system, see Frank
Kofsky, Harry Truman and the War Scare of 1948 (St. Martin's Press,
1993). On the social engineering project, see Richard Du Boff,
Accumulation and Power (M.E. Sharpe, 1989), reviewed in my Year 501
(South End, 1993). Science, April 2, 1993. Tyson, op. cit. 
18 Robinson, op. cit., 63. Dieter Ernst and David O'Connor, Competing
in the Electronics Industry (Pinter, 1992), cited in Tyson, op. cit. 
19 Sanger, Apple, op. cit. Sciolino, Friedman, NYT, Nov. 19;
Quinn-Judge, BG. Nov. 20. Industrial accidents, Reuters, NYT, Nov. 20;
special, NYT, Nov. 21, 1993. 
20 Sciolino, op. cit.; Apple, NYT, Nov. 20, 1993. NYT, April 27, 1977;
Joe Alex Morris, Los Angeles Times, May 1977. See my `Human Rights'
and American Foreign Policy (Spokesman, 1978), 72f. Iraq, Lionel
Barber and Alan Friedman, FT, May 3, 1991; see Year 501, chap. 3.5. 
21 AP; Krauss, NYT, Nov. 20. Editorial, Nation, Dec. 6, 1993. Glass,
ST, July 4; Cockburn, WSJ, July 1, 1993. 
22 BG, Nov. 21, 1993. 
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michele rossi ha scritto:
3 msg totalmente Off-Topic, senza minimamente segnalarlo, scritti in
inglese e che, complessivamente sono lunghi la bellezza di:
3220-tremiladuecentoventi righe
Non hai proprio capito un cazzo.
[IT] Dire poi che Aramesh non sa qualcosa e' gia', di per se',
abbastanza grave.
-- 
Pierangelo
-------------------------------
Il pericolo e' il mio mestiere
Farsi male no
(C.G.)

3220-tremiladuecentoventi righe
Infatti. Io di solito scarico tutti gli header automaticamente, facendo
Ctrl+N su tutto il gruppo. Stasera vedo che mi ci mette la bellezza di 23
minuti per scaricarmi i 400 messaggi circa, contro i 10-12 minuti soliti
per un numero simile. Vado a controllare e mi trovo 'ste robe che oltre che
stronzate pure (Chomsky è considerato fra gli economisti ed i politologi
come Di Bella fra i medici) sono anche totalmente off-topic.
Io non ho mai usato finora il killfile (quella riguardo al Battok era un
pura pantomima per farlo rosicare un po') ma ora sono costretto a farlo con
'sto rossi. Spero solo di aver capito come si usa, non voglio pagare un
paio di scatti in + al giorno per costui.
Il Michael Jordan di It.Arti.Chicago.Bulls (All times top monthly poster of
IACinema, 652 posts, March 1999) aka La leggenda della fortezza del Cinema
aka Il braccio secolare del Mito della Settima Arte aka Davide Tosi
Il Principe Rupert (3-segue)
"Vai Polonius o inginocchiati, i mietitori han designato l'alba del loro raccolto
 Tutti i tuoi diabolici cucchiai anneriti arrugginiranno nel nostro grano
 Ora sopporta il Principe Rupert vagabondare sul suo prato ombreggiato dall'albero della pioggia
 La lucertola diventa fango. E là nasce un cigno"
 Pete Sinfield - 1970 - 'Prince Rupert Awakes'

 per un numero simile.
Rinnovo la mia offerta, passata evidentemente inosservata all'ala
piu' pervicacemente luddista del niusgrùp.
MI CRESCE un favoloso modem a 14.4 della Trust.
In sette, otto minuti fa tutto (sveltine comprese).
Ciao.
leo.

In sette, otto minuti fa tutto (sveltine comprese).
Io ho proprio un modem a 14.4 della Trust.
Il problema della lentezza deve essere evidentemente un'altro (penso che
sia soprattutto il mio 486 D100 ad essere troppo lento nel fare gli
aggiornamenti)


In sette, otto minuti fa tutto (sveltine comprese).
Dipende anche dalla linea, purtroppo, caro Leo.
Io ho un 28.800 ma vado lo stesso a pedali.
MorganaLaFata
Hear me say
better things will surely come my way
-MA-

 Io ho un 28.800 ma vado lo stesso a pedali.
Sono lusingato.
C'e' ancora qualcuno che mi prende sul serio.
Ciao.
Leo.