Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Ripple before the storm Al-Ahram Weekly Online
26 July - 1 August 2001
Issue No.544 20
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
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Ripple before the storm
As the people's protest movement intensifies, the G-8 desperately try to
shrink public space, writes Noam Chomsky
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The mass popular protests against the investor rights agreements that
masquerade under the rubric of "free trade" have been a matter of deep
concern for years to those who are described in the business press, with
only a touch of irony, as "the masters of the universe" (Financial Times).
To avert popular reaction, negotiations are conducted mostly in secret,
with the participation of the business world and of course known to the
media, but scarcely reported. Nonetheless, through independent means
(Internet, popular organisations, etc.), information has reached a great
many people, leading to fears that opponents of these agreements have an
"ultimate weapon," the general population (Wall Street Journal), and that
it is becoming "harder for negotiators to do deals behind closed doors and
submit them for rubber stamping by parliaments" (Financial Times, quoting
"veteran trade diplomats").
The US leadership is desperately eager to reinstitute "fast track
legislation," which permits international economic agreements to be reached
Stalinist-style: by the state executive, with Congress granted only the
right of ratification. The International Financial Institutions and G-8
have been compelled to modify their rhetoric, to a limited extent their
programmes, in fear of the "ultimate weapon." Future meetings are planned
in remote places (e.g., Qatar), to marginalise the public even further.
The doctrinal systems (government and corporate media) increasingly resort
to extensive campaigns of defamation, denouncing protestors bitterly in
often ludicrous terms, while rarely allowing them to express their actual
views. Police violence has increased, most recently at Genoa, including
attacks on offices of nonviolent organisations so extreme as to have
aroused some censure even in the mainstream business press. It is not
unlikely that at least some of the violence attributed to demonstrators
results from the classic tactic of police provocateurs. These actions
should be understood, I think, as part of the effort to defame, intimidate,
and deter popular protest.
In the background is a general matter of profound significance. The
protestors generally understand very well that the primary thrust of the
"neoliberal programmes" that are instituted in the international
agreements, with their complex array of liberalisation and protectionism,
are a device to restrict the public arena -- the arena of democratic
participation, to the extent that countries enjoy a measure of meaningful
democracy -- and to transfer decisions over human affairs into the hands of
unaccountable private concentrations of power, linked to one another and to
the most powerful states.
The demonstrations are only the froth on the rising tide of popular protest
against this attack on fundamental human rights, a tide that is becoming
increasingly difficult to resist.
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