"That was kept under a veil of secrecy for almost three years", Noam Chomsky interviewed by Ray Suarez

"False, False, False, and False", Noam Chomsky interviewed by Ray Suarez: "CHOMSKY: Well, okay, maybe the most striking example is--has to do with the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. That was such a striking example that it seriously frightened the international business press. This is a--an agreement that--a--a treaty that was negotiated essentially in secret--although it was perfectly public--for about three years in the OECD among the--the rich man's club, as it's called, the 29 rich countries. It--the--there was participation--public participation namely by the business world, so the--the International Council on Business, which is the international organ of the Chambers of Commerce, basically--now that was deeply involved all the way through. The corporations were involved all the way through. The national media knew all about it. It wa--it--it--when it finally hit the press, BusinessWeek described it accurately about a year ago as the mo--the explosive trade deal you've never heard of.

Now both parts were correct. It was explosive and you'd never heard of it unless you were right in the center of the corporate sector and the parts of the government that catered to it. That was kept under a veil of secrecy for almost three years. It finally broke through as a result of activism that used the Internet, in p--in large part; first in Canada, then in other countries. There was a leaked version of the treaty that was put on the Internet. It got around to various activists and public interest groups.

Finally, a wave of opposition--public opposition developed, which was so strong that early--well, la--early last year, 1998, the major media had to finally begin paying a little bit of attention to it, a--a--misleadingly, but at least some. And the pressure was enough to be a significant factor in the rejection of the treaty, the refu--the--the non-endorsement of the treaty at least, on the scheduled dates last April and again last October as a--several major countries, in fact, backed out, in large part under public pressure.

That caused, well, near hysteria in the inter--in the international business press, quoting trade diplomats as saying that, 'The day may be past when we can reach trade agreements behind closed doors and have them rubber-stamped by Parliament.' That's close to a quote from The Financial Times. And it was a striking example of how the Internet was, in fact, used by public interest groups, by grass-roots organizations to confront, to a--to evade the limitations by choice of the major media, which had kept it silent, and to have a big effect on at least delaying a program that the public would be strongly opposed to if they knew about it. That's one of the reason--that's one example. There are others. The--and, in fact, it should be noted that the Internet and the Web are now a terrain of considerable struggle.

President Clinton mentioned last night, accurately, that the Internet had been developed through public expense and public initiative. It was a state project. It developed from--in fact, since the late 1960s, it's been developed in the huge state sector of the American economy. It was only handed over to private corporations a few years ago, commercialized, and open to advertisers and so on, i--incidentally over the opposition of about two-thirds of the public on--according to industry polls. And right now, the--the--the--the business world has made it very clear that they would like to take it over to eliminate what's called its once eclectic properties--you know, it's easy access to lots of people--and to turn it into essentially a--you know, a home-marketing service, marketing for both goods and ideas and attitudes. Much of the public is opposed to that. They want to have control of or at least a share of this public creation, which is now being handed over to private profit. And that is a significant terrain of conflict and struggle right at this moment.

Un--let me just make one other comment. When one talks about the--the fact that through the--i--ra--assuming that this remains in the public domain and is not turned over to private--to private power and private control, which is a big assumption, but if that were to be true, still, we should be a little cautious about saying that it provides access. It surely does provide access to people with a degree of privilege, people like us, and in a rich society like ours, that's a large number of people. But it's not the typical situation by any means.

Alan Greenspan was just quoted at the top of the news as talking about the outstanding performance of the American economy, but he had a very narrow part of the economy in mind. He didn't have in mind the typical American family, which, as compared with 20 years ago, 25 years ago, is working about 15 hour--putting in 15 hours more a week a year to keep living standards either stagnating or declining. When you have that--the US has by far the--the highest workload of any major industrial country--and under those conditions, when a family has to have two people working hard to keep food on the table, talk about easy access to information by avoiding the national media is a little bit misleading. "