NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/soc/culture/latinam/5590

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Subject: Chomsky:NWO,Mideast & C.Amer/2
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Subject: Chomsky:NWO,Mideast & C.Amer/2
From: nyxfer!jad (John DiNardo)


Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Part 2, Chomsky on the New World Order, Central America,
 and the Middle East (continued)



*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
                        (continuation)
NOAM CHOMSKY:
Well, that hits the nail on the head. The primary concern of the
United States in the Third World has, in fact, always been the
problem of meaningful democracy which is, in fact, a threat to
power and privilege. And that has to be crushed. It has to be
crushed abroad, and it has to be crushed at home. And without
understanding that, you understand very little about doestic or
foreign affairs, or about American society and culture.

Now, of course, the methods for crushing democratic forces at
home and abroad are different. Abroad, you can do it pretty much
in the way that it's done by totalitarian states. They use violence.
In fact, unrestricted violence. At home, over centuries of popular
struggle, the capacity of the state to coerce and control has
been limited, so a whole variety of other devices have been
needed. But it's been well understood -- and it's a major theme
of intellectual discourse, if you like, for centuries -- that
methods have to be found to control and divert what they call
"the rascal multitude" and to keep them from interfering in what
is none of their business; namely the management of public affairs.
As Walter Lippmann put it: "The elements that rule have to be
protected from meddling and ignorant outsiders -- that is, the
mass of the population. And if you can't do it by force, you do
it by other means.

Well, a few weeks after this report on the extraordinarily
positive relations with the Mexican tyranny, a leading journal
in Mexico published an article reporting on a conference in
Mexico -- a conference on international traffic of children,
minors -- the report quotes a leading researcher at the National
University, the autonomous university in Mexico, from the institute
for law research, who writes: every year, twenty thousand Mexican
children are sent illegally to the United States for organ
transplants or for sexual exploitation, or for various experimental
tests. The conference report also quotes a report of the United
Nations saying that over a million children a year suffer from
slavery, forced participation in criminal acts, prostitution,
organ transplant sales to rich countries. Well, is any of this
true? The answer to that is: Nobody really knows, and more
importantly, nobody cares -- at least nobody important cares.
It's not the kind of thing we discuss around here. But whether
it's true or not (it may be; it may not be) an interesting fact
about our domains is that this is very widely believed. There are
lots and lots of reports like this one from all through Latin
America and other parts of the Third World domains, largely of
the United States, that report such things. You can get similar
reports from the London Anti-Slavery Society and others. And
whether they're true or not, the fact that they're widely believed
alone is a reflection of the reality of life in the areas where
our influence has been overwhelming.

This became much worse during the Reagan-Bush years which was a
period of an enormous catastrophe of capitalism throughout the
entire world, aside from the state-capitalist industrial countries
themselves which, in various ways, were able to protect themselves
from it.

Latin America is a striking example. We might proceed
with Latin America by quoting .... I'll just pick something that
happened to arrive in the mail yesterday, a Latin American church
journal which has an article from Uruguay by a Uruguayan journalist
called, "The War Waged on Latin American Street Kids" (that's the
English translation of it) and he describes (I'll give some quotes)
the war being waged against millions of abandonded children
throughout Latin America where death squads, run by the police and
financed by the business sector, target and exterminate street kids
who are trying to survive as beggars, thieves, prostitutes, drug
runners or cheap factory workers. Some of the victims are gunned
down while they are sleeping beneath bridges, on vacant lots or
on doorways. Others are kidnapped, tortured or killed in remote
areas. In Brazil, where U.S. influence has been decisive ....
the overthrow of Brazilian democracy was described as the greatest
victory for freedom in the mid-twentieth century by the
Administration when it took place with no little U.S. support
.... In Brazil, the bodies of young death squad victims are found
in zones outside the metropolitan areas with their hands tied,
showing signs of torture, riddled with bullet holes. Street girls
are frequently forced to work as prostitutes. In one town, in the
first six months of 1991, a thousand so-called "disposable children"
were assassinated. In Guatemala City, another place where we have
succeeded in imposing the kind of values we like, the majority of
the five thousand street kids work as prostitutes. They are found
with their ears cut off and their eyes gouged out, and so on.
In Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, reports indicate that an average
of three children under the age of eighteen are killed daily by these
death squads financed by the business community. Almost all murders
have been attributed to those death squads. Going on, the journalist
points out that this is a region where a hundred and eighty-three
million people live in abject poverty, so that death by violence
is only one of the threats for street children. Regional statistics
show that every minute, twenty-eight children die from hunger.
According to UNICEF, sixty-nine million children survive by doing
menial labor, robbing, running drugs, and prostitution.
In Ecuador, about a hundred thousand children from age four up
work ten to twelve-hour shifts in one region -- in Western-run,
mostly U.S.-run corporations. Panama had a system of protection
for miners, but the miners' protective tribunal buildings were
bombed during the 1989 U.S. invasion, rendering work there nearly
impossible. Following the invasion, the number of criminal gangs
robbing stores in search of food increased. In Peru, fifty thousand
of the six hundred thousand children born this year will not survive
their first year. In one Brazilian state on the Bolivian border,
appoximately a thousand children work as slaves extracting tin.
Another two thousand adolescents work as prostitutes. According
to union sources, children work eighteen hours a day in water,
up to their knees, and are paid a daily ration of bananas and
boiled yucca, according to the labor union reports. Going on
(I won't go on reading it), the journalist ends up saying:
"Until recently, the image of the abandoned Latin American child
was of a ragged child sleeping in a doorway. Today, the image is
of a body lacerated and dumped in a city slum.

Well, we may feel proud of our contributions to this picture of
capitalist democracy triumphant in the "new world order", and
that's what the "new world order" is all about -- an intensification
of the horrors of the old world order.
                       (to be continued)
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

    A 90-minute video documentary, from which this transcript was made,
    is available exclusively from JCOME.  In addition to the full
    Chomsky lecture, the documentary contains background information
    about Chomsky and about JCOME, the only Jewish-American organization
    of which Chomsky is a member of the Advisory Committee.

    JCOME is extending a special offer at this time.  To get a copy
    of the video documentary simply send a check for $20 (only $15 for the
    documentary and $5 shipping) and indicate you read about Chomsky and
    JCOME on Internet or e-mail.  Send to:

                 The Jewish Committee on the Middle East
                             P.O. Box 18367
                         Washington, D.C. 20036

Phone orders cannot be taken.  But for additional information about JCOME --
including copies of recent magazine ads and the MID-EAST REALITIES newsletter
that can be sent directly to your fax machine -- call JCOME 24-hours daily to:

                     (202) 362-JCOME    [phone]
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                        JCOME would be grateful to you for posting
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                        bulletin boards, as well as posting hardcopies
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                        BBS dial-in numbers can be found in the Usenet
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                Transcribed for JCOME by John DiNardo.


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