[Peace-discuss] News notes, 12/2 (Part 2 of 2)

[C. G. Estabrook]

NOTES ON THE WEEK'S NEWS, FOR AWARE MEETING, 12/2 (Part 2 of 2)

[NB: This week's notes are organized chronologically, day by day.  Each
note is followed by an indication of its source.  At the end of the notes
is an edited version of an interview with Noam Chomsky.]

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2001

Former UN Relief Chiefs Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday Speak Out
Against an Attack on Iraq: The current policy of economic sanctions has
destroyed society in Iraq and caused the death of thousands, young and
old. There is evidence of that daily in reports from reputable
international organizations such as Caritas, UNICEF and Save the Children.
A change to a policy of replacement [Of Saddam Hussein] by force will
increase that suffering ... the hidden agenda is well understood by
ordinary people. We should not forget Henry Kissinger's brutally frank
admission that "oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the
hands of the Arabs" ... The UK and the US, as permanent members of the
council, are fully aware that the UN embargo operates in breach of the UN
covenants on human rights, the Geneva and Hague conventions and other
international laws ... The two governments have consistently opposed
allowing the UN security council to carry out its mandated
responsibilities to assess the impact of sanctions policies on civilians.
We know about this first hand, because the governments repeatedly tried to
prevent us from briefing the Security Council about it. The pitiful annual
limits, of less than $170 per person, for humanitarian supplies, set by
them during the first three years of the oil-for-food program are
unarguable evidence of such a policy ... Despite the severe inadequacy of
the permitted oil revenue to meet the minimum needs of the Iraqi people,
30 cents (now 25) of each dollar that Iraqi oil earned from 1996 to 2000
were diverted by the UN security council, at the behest of the UK and US
governments, to compensate outsiders for losses allegedly incurred because
of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. If this money had been made available to
Iraqis, it could have saved many lives ... The most recent report of the
UN secretary-general, in October 2001, says that the US and UK
governments' blocking of $4bn of humanitarian supplies is by far the
greatest constraint on the implementation of the oil-for-food program The
report says that, in contrast, the Iraqi government's distribution of
humanitarian supplies is fully satisfactory (as it was when we headed this
program). The death of some 5-6,000 children a month is mostly due to
contaminated water, lack of medicines and malnutrition. The US and UK
governments' delayed clearance of equipment and materials is responsible
for this tragedy, not Baghdad ... British and US intelligence agencies
know well that Iraq is qualitatively disarmed, and they have not forgotten
that the outgoing secretary of defense ... told incoming President George
Bush in January: "Iraq no longer poses a military threat to its
neighbors". [GUARDIAN]

ROBERT FISK: despite the fact that Hitler's monsters were responsible for
at least 50 million deaths -- 10,000 times greater than the victims of 11
September -- the Nazi murderers were given a trial at Nuremberg because US
President Truman made a remarkable decision. "Undiscriminating executions
or punishments," he said, "without definite findings of guilt fairly
arrived at, would not fit easily on the American conscience or be
remembered by our children with pride." No one should be surprised that Mr
Bush -- a small-time Texas Governor-Executioner -- should fail to
understand the morality of a statesman in the Whitehouse. What is so
shocking is that the Blairs, Schröders, Chiracs and all the television
boys should have remained so gutlessly silent in the face of the Afghan
executions and East European-style legislation sanctified since 11
September. There are ghostly shadows around to remind us of the
consequences of state murder. In France, a general goes on trial after
admitting to torture and murder in the 1954-62 Algerian war, because he
referred to his deeds as "justifiable acts of duty performed without
pleasure or remorse". And in Brussels, a judge will decide if the Israeli
Prime Minister, Arial Sharon, can be prosecuted for his "personal
responsibility" for the 1982 massacre in Sabra and Chatila... George Bush
says that "you are either for us or against us" in the war for
civilisation against evil. Well, I'm sure not for bin Laden. But I'm not
for Bush. I'm actively against the brutal, cynical, lying "war of
civilisation" that he has begun so mendaciously in our name and which has
now cost as many lives as the World Trade Centre mass murder. At this
moment, I can't help remembering my dad. He was old enough to have fought
in the First World War. In the third Battle of Arras. And as great age
overwhelmed him near the end of the century, he raged against the waste
and murder of the 1914-1918 war. When he died in 1992, I inherited the
campaign medal of which he was once so proud, proof that he had survived a
war he had come to hate and loathe and despise. On the back, it says: "The
Great War for Civilisation." Maybe I should send it to George Bush.
[INDEPENDENT]

Growing up in Alabama, Johnny (Mike) Spann dreamed of being a "Top Gun"
like Tom Cruise ... "That's going to be me," Spann said once when his high
school football team was watching the hit movie about the highest echelon
of Navy combat pilots. "I'm going to be doing that someday."  Yesterday,
confirmation came to Winfield, Ala., that its 32-year-old native son, a
CIA officer, had become the first American to die in combat against
terrorism in Afghanistan. [NY DAILY NEWS]

While John Ashcroft touted the Responsible Cooperators Program, under
which foreigners might be able to extend their time here-and maybe even
become citizens-if they provide good information about terrorist doings
... a string of lawsuits are coming down the pike ... The director of the
Constitutional Law Center in New York accuses Bush of trampling habeas
corpus, the procedure that protects citizens from being held illegally by
the government. "My job is to defend the Constitution from its enemies,"
the director, Bill Goodman, says. "Its main enemies right now are the
Justice Department and the White House." [NY TIMES]

Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, a noted liberal, justifying DOJ
actions:  "Civil liberties is not only about protecting us from our
government. It is also about protecting our lives from terrorism." He
criticizes Bush's military tribunal: Congress, which alone has the
jurisdiction to consider the anti-terror regime in its totality, should
roll the executive order back, but it should not get rid of it entirely
[NEW REPUBLIC]

Judge Richard Posner argues for a cost-benefit analysis of civil
liberties. Whenever the value of greater security outweighs the cost of
reduced liberties, those liberties should be curtailed. [ATLANTIC] The
same magazine contains a ridiculous puff-piece about the dangerous airhead
Samuel Huntington, professor of government at Harvard, author of the
"clash of civilizations" bromide.

BUSINESS WEEK reported under the headline, "Ashcroft's Global Internet
Power-Grab," that a "new law lets the Justice Department go after foreign
hackers, even if US computers weren't a target," and asks whether the US
should be the global cyber police.  "An amendment to the definition of a
'protected computer' for the first time explicitly enables US law
enforcement to prosecute computer hackers outside the United States in
cases where neither the hackers nor their victims are in the US, provided
only that packets related to that activity traveled through US computers
or routers. This remarkable amendment is to the Computer Fraud and Abuse
Act ... Under the Department of Justice's interpretation of this
legislation, a computer hacker in Frankfurt Germany who hacks into a
computer in Cologne Germany could be prosecuted in the Eastern District of
Virginia in Alexandria if the packet related to the attack traveled
through America Online's computers. Moreover, the United States would
reserve the right to demand that the extradition of the hacker even if the
conduct would not have violated German law, or to, as it has in other
kinds of cases, simply remove the offender forcibly for trial." [BUSINESS
WEEK]

Brushing aside criticism, President Bush defended his authorization of
military tribunals and the questioning of Middle Easterners in the United
States.  "We're an open society, but we're at war," the president said
Thursday. [AP]

Corvallis, Ore., police said Wednesday they would refuse to interview
foreign visitors as part of the federal probe. Portland, Ore., had been
the only city to refuse the request by the Justice Department to
participate in the interviews, citing state privacy laws ... Corvallis
Police Chief Pam Roskowski said the city of 50,000 will be better served
if officers concentrate on criminal investigations rather than
interviewing people on the federal list who are not criminal suspects ...
Federal agents will likely question 23 foreign visitors in the Portland
area since police have refused to take part, the US Attorney's office said
Wednesday. About 30 people will be interviewed in Corvallis, home of
Oregon State University ... On Wednesday, the Detroit Free Press reported
on a US Immigration and Naturalization Service memo that said some
foreigners wanted for questioning may be jailed without bond if
investigators wanted to scrutinize them further.  The memo, dated Friday,
also said people with visa violations and those of interest to local FBI
agents and US attorneys can be held by authorities. Noel Saleh, a Detroit
immigration attorney, expressed fears that using the INS to hold people
based on a request from the FBI left plenty of room for abuse. [AP]

The Department of Justice already is using its new anti-terrorism powers
to monitor cable modem users without obtaining a judge's permission first.
A top Bush administration official lauded the controversial USA Patriot
Act at a Senate hearing on Wednesday, saying that the new abilities have
let police obtain information in investigations that was previously
unavailable.  "We would not have been able to do (this) under prior law
without a specific court order," said Michael Chertoff, assistant attorney
general in the Justice Department's criminal division. [WIRED]

No one who has made a clear and dispassionate assessment of the situation
in the region could possibly say the new Afghan war is "just about oil."
It's also about drugs ... In the good old days, when the mujahedin were
united against the Soviet devil, all shared equally in the drug-running
trade, under the benevolent eye of that great lubricator of illicit
commerce, the CIA. When the Northern Alliance was driven from Kabul --
having killed 50,000 of the city's inhabitants during its civilized rule
-- the Taliban seized the lion's share of Afghanistan's opium production.
The noble lords managed to hold on to several prize fields in the north,
however, and together with avaricious Taliban, they helped fuel a
worldwide rise in heroin traffic. Earlier this year, the US administration
bribed the Taliban to stop growing opium -- a most effective use of
baksheesh, according to the United Nations, which found that Afghan opium
production dropped from 3,300 tons annually to less than 200. But the
Northern Alliance leapt manfully into the breach, engineering a threefold
rise in opium output in its territory this year. [MOSCOW TIMES]

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2001

WILLIAM GREIDER: No one will mistake the WTO agreement in Doha, launching
a new round of global trade negotiations as a victory for the people ...
[After Seattle] The initial reaction from governing elites and their media
camp followers was disbelief. What on earth are the rabble talking about?
Don't they know that globalization lifts all boats, especially those of
the poor? Two years later, those pious sermons have been dropped ... A far
more substantive advance is the great concession made by the United States
and others when they accepted that public health in poor countries comes
before the patent rights of Big Pharma. The monopolistic greed of the drug
companies is so blatantly inhumane that one hardly needs to congratulate
our trade officials for recognizing it. Given the spongy nature of these
agreements, we cannot even yet be sure that the breakthrough is real.
[NATION]


SATURDAY, DECEMBER 01, 2001

Even the conservative Economist of London notes Donald Rumsfeld's
pronouncement that US troops will neither take POWs nor allow foreign
Taliban recruits to return home "came horribly close to an invitation to
kill even surrendering combatants." [ECONOMIST]

Attorney General John Ashcroft is considering a plan to relax restrictions
on the FBI's spying on religious and political organizations in the United
States, senior government officials said today.  The attorney general's
surveillance guidelines were imposed on the FBI in the 1970's after the
death of J. Edgar Hoover and the disclosures that the FBI had run a
widespread domestic surveillance program, called Cointelpro, to monitor
antiwar militants, the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Panthers and the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr., among others, while Mr. Hoover was director. [NY
TIMES]

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson,
called for a probe into the suppression of the armed Taliban uprising at a
prison fortress near the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Amnesty
International said "serious abuses of international human rights and
humanitarian law may have been committed".  Faced with growing calls for a
probe into whether a massacre had been committed by the Northern Alliance,
supported by the US and Britain, the US-led coalition insisted the
prisoners themselves were responsible for the slaughter ... Amnesty
condemned Britain's stance: "The rejection of an inquiry by the United
Kingdom into what is apparently the single most bloody incident of the war
... raises questions about their commitment to the rule of law." [AGENCE
FRANCE-PRESSE]

Reuters quoted a commander saying his unit had captured and executed 160
Taliban soldiers, mowing them down with machine gun fire.  Other accounts
suggested that the bloody revolt of the Taliban prisoners held at the Qala
Janghi fortress - a revolt whose brutal suppression resulted in the deaths
of hundreds of prisoners, some of whose hands were tied behind their backs
- may have come because the captives feared they faced summary execution.
The United States, however, has given short shrift to the issue of
prisoners of war, with our top military officials saying, on the one hand,
that the United States doesn't want the foreign soldiers to be allowed to
slip away, but, on the other, that the country has neither capacity nor
plans to hold prisoners ourselves. [BOSTON GLOBE]

ANTHONY LEWIS: On the basis of secret evidence, the government accuses a
non-citizen of connections to terrorism, and holds him in prison for three
years. Then a judge conducts a full trial and rejects the terrorism
charges. He releases the prisoner. A year later government agents rearrest
the man, hold him in solitary confinement and state as facts the terrorism
charges that the judge found untrue.  Could that happen in America? In
John Ashcroft's America it has happened. Mazen Al-Najjar, a Palestinian,
came to the United States in 1984 as a graduate student and stayed to
teach at a university ... Last Saturday immigration agents arrested Mr.
Al-Najjar again ... Mr. Al-Najjar is not only back in prison, he is being
treated with exceptional severity, indeed cruelty. He is in solitary
confinement 23 hours a day. He is not allowed to make telephone calls, and
he may not see his family... [NY TIMES]

JEFF COHEN: Days after their son Greg died in the World Trade Center
terror, Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez wrote a letter to the New York Times
that counseled against "violent revenge, with the prospect of sons,
daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying, suffering, and nursing
further grievances against us. It is not the way to go. It will not avenge
our son's death. Not in our son's name. Our son died a victim of an
inhuman ideology. Let us not as a nation add to the inhumanity of our
times."  The New York Times didn't publish the letter: It is just one of
the crucial items of information that have been distributed since Sept. 11
to vast numbers of people using the Internet. Grassroots networks have
used email to breach the barricades erected by US mainstream media -- much
like underground samizdat literature was passed from hand to hand in the
old Soviet Union. Post-Sept. 11 samizdat ranges from interviews with Noam
Chomsky to essays by Indian novelist Arundhati Roy to frontline dispatches
by Robert Fisk of the London Independent. [FAIR'S EXTRA UPDATE]

Since the war began, the US has dropped about 600 cluster bombs-each
disperse 202 soda-can size "bomblets," about 5 percent of which land
unexploded. That leaves about 6,000 "potential deathtraps" that can be
easily set off by unsuspecting civilians. [LA TIMES]

Time magazine describes the misery of 6 million Afghan refugees bracing
for winter. It quotes a man helpless to protect his family from starvation
and cold: "I just want to die once instead of this dying a little every
day. The Americans should have bombed us as well." [TIME]

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 02, 2001

BRYAN ATINSKY: The retaliation against Israel that everyone in the Middle
East was expecting occured last night. (especially Sharon, his cabinet and
the Army Generals) has hit big.  After all, why would the The Israeli
government committed more assasinations (especially Abu Hannoud, one of
the heads of Hamas) just before the American mission of Gen. Zinni was to
come to Israel.  10 dead (so far) and 150 wounded in Jerusalem, and now,
as of an hour ago, ten dead (so far) and tens wounded in Haifa, plus one
more bus bomb in Birkat Yarden (however only 6 were wounded lightly).
Further, there have been 3 wounded by gunfire between Beit Jalla and Gilo
and one Palestinian dead near the Old City in Jerusalem after a security
guard shot and killed him. Channel 2 (Israel) television's military
correspondent has repeated Israel's retaliation will not be normal, that
more assasinations and strategic occupations of cities in Area A
(Palestinian controlled areas) are obviously not working, and that there
is likely to be a more total retaliation against the Palestinian
Authority, of a larger scale than has been seen since the beginning of the
Intifada.Further he stated that Sharon and his cabinet were likely to make
a final decision on whether Arafat and the Palestinian Authority were to
be considered full enemies, with the result in the next days of an all out
war with the PA.  What is to come in the next days looks to be worse than
the terrible last weeks in which the Israeli army occupied for weeks on
end, major cities in the West Bank (in fact there was only a pull-out from
Jenin 4 days ago).  There is NO WAY to concieve that Sharon and his Army
Generals didn't know that there would be a quick and harsh retaliation for
assasinating Hannoud, and the timing is just too close to the renewed
American pressure (even if it was only superficial) and Zinni's visit. And
further, there is no way that one can realistically concieve that the
choice to assasinate Hannoud was done because they actually thought that
it would prevent future terrorist acts, they know that the opposite has
ALWAYS been true.  So this leads to the conclusion that what happened
today was taken into consideration as part of Sharon's plan. Israeli
Civilian casualties are the price paid for the wider security of the State
of Israel in the sick cost-benefit analysis of Israeli Realpolitik.
[IMC-ISRAEL]

The blasts came only hours after more than a dozen members of the radical
Islamic Jihad group were arrested in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by
Palestinian police.  They included senior leader Mohammed al-Hindi, who
made a dramatic escape from his home in the Gaza Strip during a gun battle
before surrendering.  A security source said the arrests were made because
the group is not committed to a cease-fire called by the Palestinian
Authority.  An Islamic Jihad member detonated explosives strapped to his
body on a bus in Pardes Hanna in northern Israel on Thursday, killing
three Israelis as well as himself and wounding another six in a massive
explosion.  Two days earlier, an Islamic Jihad gunman, joined by another
from an armed offshoot of Arafat's Fatah movement, opened fire at a bus
station in northern Israel and killed two Israelis and wounded more than
two dozen others.  The two gunmen were then shot dead by police ... The
14-month Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation has killed more
than 1,000 people ... In the West Bank, Israeli forces shot dead two
Palestinians, including a 12 year-old boy, as soldiers stormed the
Palestinian self-rule city of Jenin, following a rash of suicide attacks
in Israel. [AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE]

Twenty-four people were killed in a rash of violence blamed by military
and police officials on the right-wing United Self Defense Forces of
Colombia. [AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE]

Fifteen villagers, including nine children, were killed in a bombing raid
on a hamlet in which US forces appeared to have mistaken an ageing jeep
for a military vehicle ... All five houses which made up the hamlet
between Kandahar airport and the city were demolished in the raid ...Sites
in and around Kandahar have come under increasingly relentless attack from
US warplanes in recent days ... One Kandahar resident who spoke to AFP
here Sunday said that 14 people had been killed when two other vehicles
were hit close to the city on Saturday. The Afghan Islamic Press claimed
Saturday that at least 30 civilians were killed when US warplanes bombed
vehicles travelling on the road between Kandahar and Spin Boldak, but the
US Central Command in Washington dismissed the claims as "rumours".
[AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE]

[AND FINALLY on this day in 1954, US Senate censures Joe McCarthy
(Sen-R-WI) for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor &
disrepute".  In 1999, on WTO Day Three, the World Trade Organization
delegates meet as the core 50 block area of downtown Seattle is declared
off-limits to protestors & most businesses in the area close.  Seattle
media begins to blame confrontations & acts of vandalism on Oregon's
Eugene anarchists.]

	*	*	*
 
Q: Has September 11 changed history?

CHOMSKY: It has changed history because guns have been turned against the
United States.  Indeed, the September 11 attack on the US was a terrible
atrocity. But the incident was not unusual. Much of the world has been
subjected to much worse atrocities over the years. The US is now
destroying Afghanistan because the Taleban refused to turn over Osama bin
Laden unless the Bush administration gave some evidence [of his
involvement in the attacks]. The US refused to provide any evidence.
	The US and Europe are supposed to attack and destroy others, but
they are not supposed to be attacked themselves. It is the first time in
the history of the USA and in fact the first time in the history of Europe
that guns have been turned in their direction. That is a dramatic change
in history. So far, Europe and USA have countered the world in a grimly
brutal fashion, by massive extermination of peoples across the world. So
far, Europe and USA have been immune to any attacks and retaliation from
outside. So you can understand the shock and impact of September 11.

Q: You mean the US should not have attacked Afghanistan without offering
evidence of Osama bin Laden's involvement in the September 11 tragedy?

CHOMSKY: There is no justification for the US war in Afghanistan because
it is being carried out to suit American interests. The US has not cared
to show the world any hard evidence to prove that a particular person or a
country is behind the September 11 attacks.

Q: What method then do you suggest the Bush administration should have
embarked on before bombing Afghanistan?

CHOMSKY: The US has no right to kill thousands of innocent people in
Afghanistan in the name of catching one person called Osama bin Laden.
Instead, it should have pondered deep into the background of the September
11 attacks. It should have offered evidence, accepted the Taleban offer of
negotiations, and asked for bin Laden.
	But has the US been practising what it is preaching? No. In the
US, there is a Haitian leader -- Emmanuel Constant -- of a paramilitary
force in exile, who has been tried and convicted in Haiti for murdering
over 5,000 people. But the US won't hand him over because of its
complicity in the incident. It is not even reported in the US media. I do
feel the US is now carrying out terrorism in Afghanistan because its war
is killing thousands of innocents.

Q: What do you mean by US terrorism?

CHOMSKY: The US leads the pack of rich and powerful nations that carry out
international terrorism on smaller nations. The US is the only country in
the world that has been criticised by the International Court of Justice
for perpetuating terrorism in Nicaragua. Who nurtured the Islamic
terrorist organisations in the world? It is the Central Intelligence
Agency that has been aiding and abetting terrorist outfits across the
world, all for the diplomatic, strategic and economic advantages of the
US. So Osama bin Laden, for whom the US has been bombing a poor country
like Afghanistan, has been the creation of the US.
	The US is not alone in this war. There are a number of powerful
supporters to the US cause in Afghanistan for their own strategic
interests, not for wiping out terrorism and for the betterment of the
world. India and Pakistan have been trying to win over the US, all because
of Kashmir. The United Kingdom supports the US in all the crimes. Russia
is eager to support the US action because it wants the Bush
administration's tacit approval in Chechnya. China wants to legitimise the
massacre of Muslims in western China. So all these powerful nations are in
the same league. They all are setting up terrorist groups and training
them. So how can the US call it a global fight against terrorism?

Q: How do you think the world should fight terrorism? Should the United
Nations take the initiative?

CHOMSKY: The biggest problem is that the world's most powerful country,
the US, behaves like a mafia head. The US has completely disregarded the
United Nations because it wants to carry out its policy of terror across
the world. There cannot be any global fight against terrorism unless and
until the US changes its policies. During the Cold War, the two
superpowers -- US and Russia -- carried out atrocities in their own
domain. In the case of Russia, it was Afghanistan and Chechnya. In the
case of the US, it was all over the world. Both sides claimed that the
actions were against the other superpower.

Q: But the Cold War policies have changed.

CHOMSKY: Not at all. The Cold War may be over. But these days, the
policies remain the same, only the pretexts have changed. It is another
reason why the US military budgets have been increasing year after year.
It is not a defence against Russia anymore. It is against the
technological sophistication of the Third World. The US believes that
globalisation has deeply polarised the handful of rich and the poor
worldwide. To keep the poor nations in control, you need new military
systems.

Q: Do you think the September 11 attacks were the result of a clash of
civilisations?

CHOMSKY: It is US propaganda that the current war against terrorism is the
result of a clash of civilisations. It is complete nonsense. There is no
clash of civilisations in the current war. After the fall of the Soviet
Union, it was necessary for the US to invent new pretexts to carry out the
same policies. And one of the pretexts, terms invented by the academic
world, is the clash of civilisations. So, before, the US was fighting
communism. Now it is fighting the civilisation of Islam or whatever.
	You know, it is all nonsense. If you look at the alignment of the
world, you see that there is not simply any clash of civilisations. The
most fundamentalist Islamic state in the world is Saudi Arabia. But Saudi
Arabia is the favourite country of the US. The biggest Muslim state in the
world is Indonesia, which is one of the most favoured nations by the US.
An Indonesian general in 1965 carried out a huge massacre, killing over a
million people, mostly peasants, and destroyed the only mass-based
communist party in the country. Since then Indonesia has been in the US
favour. So the US has been carrying out policies for its own strategic
benefits.
	Many people these days term the current war in different terms.
Some call it the clash of civilisations. Others say it is all because of
globalisation.

Q: How do you describe the impact of globalisation?

CHOMSKY: The term globalisation is very seriously misused in contemporary
ideology. Globalisation just means international integration. That is a
fine thing. So everyone is in favour of globalisation. But the term is now
used in a special way. It is used to refer to a specific form of
international economic integration that has been imposed in the past 25
years by a small sector of wealthy and powerful nations, the international
financial and corporate sectors they control.
	The power of Western nations and institutions is so enormous that
their notion of globalisation has become the common term. So when we talk
about globalisation we should be careful to make clear that we are
referring to a specific doctrine of construction related to concentrated
power. The impact of globalisation on education and employment is harmful.

Q: Has the current form of globalisation been harming the economies of
many nations?

CHOMSKY: Yes, globalisation is harming the economies of many poor and even
rich nations, contrary to the propaganda you hear. The world economy or
its rate of growth has declined significantly in the last 25 years. For
instance, in the United States, the rate of the growth of the economy or
productivity has slowed considerably and for most of its population it has
been an extremely poor period in terms of income, working hours and so on.
There has been enormous concentration of wealth and power in various
sectors. But general economic growth has slowed considerably under
globalisation.
	Surprisingly, even trade has slowed down in the last 25 years. In
general, it is a pretty gloomy period for most of the world under
globalisation. One of the crucial aspects of globalisation is to undermine
democratic functioning, to move decisions from the public democratic
arena, to move decisions to private hands, to the unaccountable
concentration of wealth and power. Globalisation has taken resources away
from education and it has taken resources away from the public, and
transformed them into unaccountable private hands.
	The average wages in the US are now lower for 70 per cent of the
population if you compare with the situation 20 years ago. Meanwhile,
working hours have increased dramatically. An average family in the US
works about a month and half in a year more than they did 10 years ago.
But their security of life has been very sharply reduced. People do not
know whether they are going to have a job or not. That is similar in
Europe and other developed nations.

	--<http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/nov/24inter.htm>

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