[Peace-discuss] Fundamental rights

[C. G. Estabrook]

...A basic principle of modern state capitalism is that cost and risk are 
socialized, while profit is privatized. That principle extends far beyond 
financial institutions. Much the same is true for the entire advanced economy, 
which relies extensively on the dynamic state sector for innovation, for basic 
research and development, for procurement when purchasers are unavailable, for 
direct bail-outs, and in numerous other ways. These mechanisms are the domestic 
counterpart of imperial and neocolonial hegemony, formalized in World Trade 
Organization rules and the misleadingly named "free trade agreements."

... the US Treasury now regards free capital mobility as a "fundamental right," 
unlike such alleged "rights" as those guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of 
Human Rights: health, education, decent employment, security, and other rights 
that the Reagan and Bush administrations have dismissed as "letters to Santa 
Claus," "preposterous," mere "myths"....

--from Noam Chomsky, at the VII Social Summit for the Latin American and 
Caribbean Unity, Caracas, 9/24/08 <http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18958>