COMMENT
C Q M M E N T Red-Carpet Treatment When President Bill Clinton rolled out the red carpet for President Jiang Zemin in October, it marked the triumph of commerce over human rights. Clinton did...
...And the editors of Time let him get away with it...
...By the way, GE owns NBC, Westinghouse owns CBS...
...Maybe he should check U.S...
...Jiang, who once called the massacre at Tiananmen Square "much ado about nothing," was largely unrepentant about human-rights abuses in general and Tiananmen Square in particular...
...companies...
...It can lead to nuclear war...
...And given the density of the Chinese population, the toll of a nuclear...
...No, the sole voice of U.S...
...Nor are they consistent...
...And we were told, over and over, that 43 percent of Americans now own some stock...
...When those investors turned on them, they paid the price...
...It would unleash a virulent new strain of militarism in the United States, along with anti-Asian racism, secrecy, and intolerance of dissent...
...The U.S...
...For our part, we should not muffle our outrage over human-rights abuses, ever...
...China is crucial to the nuclear industry because the U.S...
...The implication was clear: Our economy is democratic...
...Wasserman says that Clinton could have encouraged President Jiang to head in a more promising direction, toward exploring China's limitless supplies of wind and solar-power energy...
...Myth 1: There is a new paradigm of smooth, upward growth...
...China is the fastest-growing market in the world for our goods and services," Clinton said at the joint press conference, and urged China to open its economy up even further...
...Oh, Those Silly French Twice in one month, Roger Cohen, The New York Times reporter covering France, went out of his way to ridicule the socialist government's effort to reduce the workweek from thirty-nine hours to thirty-five hours with no loss of pay...
...skepticism belonged to Steven Englander, an international economist at Smith Barney in Paris...
...Not the head of the U.S...
...Thousands of members of the leftwing Patriotic Union party, human-rights activists, peasant organizers, and unionists have been targets of a murderous counter-insurgency program...
...Consequently, the demand for Western goods will fall, and declining wages in Asia will put downward pressure on wages here in the United States...
...People on Main Street do not control the market, and they do not control individual companies...
...As anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman notes, it greatly increases the odds 'The Chinese asked us to move all the demonstrators so they would be out of [Jiang's] view...
...But for U.S...
...He neglected to quote any labor representatives...
...It's the same organization, and everyone in it is responsible," the general told American reporters...
...I believe the American people should be happy about that...
...October 27 gave a jolt to this Panglos-sian pap...
...And it doesn't help human rights there, either...
...nuclear-power-supply industry," the President's Export Council announced in June...
...media Played along...
...This technology is just too unsafe, too environmentally destructive to be relied upon...
...Here was one of the questions: "Should you make some gesture on human rights, which would smooth discussions across the whole breadth of U.S.-China issues...
...funds would be used entirely for anti-drug efforts...
...We should do all that we can to resolve these disputes now, not roil them, as the Oliver Norths of this world would do...
...And the U.S...
...This became comically obvious when The Today Show «aid that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett had lost about $2 billion each on the day the market crashed, but had gained back most of it the following day...
...And now we're paying a price, too: $3 billion to bail out Indonesia, the last country in the world that should be getting our help...
...This slogan was all the rage when the market was cruising along, but the recent speed bumps have quieted the cry...
...But McCaffrey was determined to make a show of being tough on drugs, so he borrowed the misleading term "narcoguerrillas," which the Colombian military uses to make it seem as though its political war is a war against narcotics...
...The first time, on October 11, Cohen belittled the "enduring French conviction that central planning can solve economic problems, even as other European countries have rejected such an approach...
...They shouldn't be punished for having brutal rulers...
...The political disturbance that occurred at the turn of spring and summer in 1989 seriously disrupted social stability and jeopardized state security," he said chillingly...
...But these stories were highly misleading...
...military muscle would also be counterproductive if the goal is to bring democracy to China, since it would play right into the hands of the hawkish rulers...
...power disaster could be catastrophic...
...We heard all about plumbers who would rather play the market than fix the pipes...
...nuclear-power companies, the China market looks like a godsend...
...The United States has enormous interests and investments here, and there have been a lot of Americans kidnapped by the guerrillas, and a lot of companies attacked by them...
...If this was victory, we'd settle for failure...
...A Dark Day in the Drug War For years, human-rights activists have been fighting to call attention to the wave of atrocities committed in Colombia in the name of the war on drugs...
...The radioactive cloud from Chernobyl reached California just ten days after its 1986 meltdown," Wasserman says...
...government is going along...
...aid intended for the drug war into a civil war against guerrillas and people with "subversive" ties...
...Myth 2: Privatize Social Security because the market knows best...
...General Jos6 Manuel Bonett, a spokesman for the Colombian military, said the aid would be used to fight people the military identifies as guerrillas throughout the southern part of the country—even if they have no connection to drugs...
...Cohen quoted the head of the employers' federation, who denounced the plan...
...market has dried up as a result of Three Mile Island and cheap natural gas...
...How many Three Mile Islands, how many Cher-nobyls, and how many tons of nuclear waste do we need before we understand that...
...Not a worker...
...It would strengthen their claim to nationalism, which is all they have left," Klare recently told The Progressive...
...Then, on October 20, Cohen returned to his theme...
...It doesn't mind the Stalinism too much, so long as there's money to be made...
...North, Buchanan, Bauer, and Helms do want to reignite the Cold War...
...According to press accounts, every Chinese dissident is either in exile or in prison today, Tibet is still under occupation, thousands of Chinese work in labor camps, and forced abortion is the order of the day...
...You don't hear them denouncing the brutal human-rights abuses of Suharto in Indonesia...
...The truth is that Colombia's military and its government are steeped in drugs...
...Clinton did scold Jiang over Tiananmen Square, but he didn't let the continued suppression of freedom in China, the slave labor, or the subjugation of Tibet get in the way of the main chance: big profits for U.S...
...We tried to explain to them as patiently as possible that we couldn't force them off of public streets.' —Edward Rendell, mayor of Philadelphia 'More Americans, perhaps needing one, are coming to regard China as an adversary.' R.W...
...They "seek to ignite a new Cold War with China— hoping thereby to breathe fresh life into the military-industrial complex and to justify the expenditure of hundreds of billions on new high-tech weaponry," Klare wrote in a letter to The Nation magazine of July 28/August 4. "Of all the scenarios I can envision for the twenty-first century, a U.S.-China Cold War is among the most terrifying...
...Guess who headed the Council's study on China...
...On whose part...
...Ironically, Washington and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is administering most of the shock therapy, are insisting that these countries take even more drastic free-market measures...
...The CEO of Westing-house, according to Dan Morgan and David Ottaway of The Washington Post...
...You can't say this guerrilla front is good and this one is bad...
...Countries like Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia were held up as models of Third World development...
...To place the financial security of our elderly in this casino makes no sense...
...That $3 billion of ours may just be a down payment...
...They seem to confirm notions of the French basket-case...
...And we should remember that U.S...
...By deregulating their economies, these countries placed themselves at the mercy of international investors...
...of The New York Times of a Chinese Chernobyl...
...Sometimes, leading members of the U.S...
...But the Colombian military is not even pretending to go along...
...We were told by many economic analysts that this stock market was different than all previous ones, that the internationalization of the economy had reduced the risks of market bubbles, and that this stock market would be able to sustain unprecedented levels of appreciation...
...companies export jobs to China...
...And Jiang's answer was a beaut...
...This stereotype linking violence in the country to drugs that the international media have created has served the Colombian government well," writes Father Javier Giraldo, author of Colombia: The Geno-cidal Democracy (Common Courage Press...
...First, Cohen would have to stop laughing so hard...
...Who did Cohen get to speak for the United States...
...And he said that "in the United States . . . the notion of a shorter week to create jobs tends to prompt skepticism...
...Myth 4: The Asian tigers show the way...
...The "nuclear-energy market of China is critical to the survival of the U.S...
...Apple Jr...
...No matter that unemployment stands at 12.5 percent in France in the wake of market innovations of the type Cohen applauds...
...Many people woke up on October 27 to the reality that Wall Street is no guarantee, that it is a giant gamble that can go bust overnight...
...Not a member of the AFL-CIO...
...They are not the most subtle people around...
...Michael Klare, a professor of peace studies at Hampshire College and a longtime progressive military analyst, warns us not to link arms with Republican China-bashers...
...Oliver North, Jesse Helms, Pat Buchanan, and Gary Bauer have been among the biggest bellowers on China...
...Somehow, actor Richard Gere, who's been speaking out about the human-rights situation in Tibet, didn't make the list Clinton contends that the more trade with China, the better...
...She tries to persuade me that, after all, I have to eat and try to get some sleep because the next day I have to continue working...
...Time didn't ask for a change in policy, just in cosmetics...
...So it was a victory when, in 1994, human-rights groups persuaded the U.S...
...has every right to defend itself, and the best way to defend itself is through the Colombian Government.' —General Jose Manual Bonett...
...And he opened the door for Westinghouse and GE to bid on some $60 billion in commercial nuclear-power plants, which could up China's reliance on nuclear energy tenfold...
...The editors at Time asked two questions on human rights, with no follow-up whatsoever...
...But the crash in their currencies that precipitated Wall Street's bumpy ride puts the lie to this rosy scenario...
...The winds from China can blow here even faster...
...France's ideas for reducing the workweek "naturally make many Americans smile, laugh out loud, or despair...
...China now combines the worst of two worlds, Stalinism and capitalism...
...saber-rattling is an extremely hazardous sport...
...This put the lie to all the clowning he did in public, a clear P.R...
...The last order for a new nuclear plant in the United States was placed in 1973," Morgan and Ottaway note...
...But we should remember that our problems are with the Chinese government, not the Chinese people...
...In a terrible reversal, the Administration announced in October that it would pour more than $50 million into the Colombian military and $100 million into the equally infamous Colombian police force—even though there has been no progress on human rights...
...aid should be used only to fight drugs...
...Flexing U.S...
...McCaffrey claimed that U.S...
...We must insist on the peaceful resolution of conflict...
...Should progressives hook up with rightwingers who denounce human-rights abuses in China, and share much of our critique of U.S...
...The editors' last question began in a promising way: "How can you sleep at night...
...Since the 1980s, Colombia has channeled U.S...
...China's human-rights record in Tibet includes liquidating a million people and committing such horrors as raping nuns...
...Nor can we be sure that this time the war would remain cold...
...Not a labor historian...
...And we must speak up for the pro-democracy movement—before it gets drowned out by the din of the international money machine...
...move by the People's Republic to pot a smiley face on brutality...
...Right before his visit, Time magazine ran an exclusive interview with Jiang, which was almost a parody...
...But then it trailed off into inanity...
...If anything would trigger nuclear war between China and the United States, Klare says, it is the disputes surrounding Taiwan and Korea...
...The State Department and the DEA understood this well enough to warn McCaffrey not to visit Colombia or shake hands with President Ernesto Samper, who has been accused of accepting millions of dollars in campaign contributions from wealthy drug traffickers...
...News & World Report, which noted in an article in its October 27 issue that some American companies have already "cut their workweek to thirty hours while paying their employees for a full forty...
...Myth 3: Wall Street is now Main Street...
...But it doesn't help American workers when U.S...
...On the one hand, it has enabled it to present itself in international forums as a 'victim' of violence outside its control by drug traffickers and the guerrillas...
...When they talk of China, they almost invariably call it Red China and wave the communist bloody shirt...
...That's Madeleine Albright's job...
...Therefore, the Chinese Government had to take necessary mea-•ures...
...General Barry McCaffrey, the White House drug czar, visited Colombia recently to highlight what he portrayed as a new assault on drugs...
...So though many in the middle class now have small investments in mutual funds or pension plans, they are not the major players...
...Department of Labor...
...For years, the mainstream media have been heaping praise on the Asian economies that have applied Washington's free-market formulas...
...Clinton hailed the nuclear-power agreement with China as one of the positive things to come out of the summit...
...policy there...
...But these unpleasantries remained unspoken...
...The invite list was a Who's Who of the international manufacturing and entertainment industries...
...Note the word "gesture...
...Toe the line...
...Little wonder, then, that the CEOs of Boeing, Westinghouse, and GE received White House invitations to sup with Jiang...
...Stay tuned to see if they explore this nuclear-export story to the fullest...
...As China has opened its doors to foreign capital, it has slammed doors shut on political freedoms...
...He celebrated the signing of a Boeing contract with China worth $3 billion in commercial jets...
...This is the kind of reasoning that has led toyna&S slaughter...
...We can be principled without being bellicose...
...government to suspend military aid, because of the Colombian military's abysmal human-rights record, and because it was ignoring conditions that stipulated U.S...
...And, on the other, permitted it to neatly conceal crimes of the state that exceed these others many times over...
...Colombian human-rights observers reject such a depiction...
...He talked about Tibet and said, "We have fundamentally resolved the problem of slavery there...
...If it does so, Clinton pledged to pressure the World Trade Organization to admit China as a member...
...And second, sending China further down the path of nuclear energy is a dead end...
...In attendance were the CEOs from Apple, Atlantic Richfield, AT&T, Bell Atlantic, Cargill, CNN, Eastman Kodak, GM, IBM, Lucent Technologies, Miramax, Mobil, Motorola, Pepsico, Procter & Gamble, Time Warner, United Technologies, Walt Disney, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Viacom, and Xerox...
...But they weren't alone...
...knowing that you have responsibility for 1.2 billion people...
...What they didn't tell us was that 1 percent of Americans owns nearly 40 percent of the stocks...
...We must object to open trade with human-rights abusers...
...First, there's the serious problem of China's role in the proliferation of nuclear-weapons technology...
...This allowed Jiang to go way out on a limb and thank his wife...
...He neglected to cite a single American who was smiling, laughing out loud, or despairing...
...Klare has a point...
...These measures will cause great hardship for the majority of people in these countries, as social spending drops and subsidies for the poor are eliminated...
...Speed Bumps on Wall Street The downs and ups of Wall Street this fall shook loose some of the foolishness that has so colored the discussion of the economy in the past few years...
...It was a new beginning for a corrupt old drug war, and a dark day for human rights...
...But instead, Clinton took the easy way out, giving Jiang what he wanted, and GE and Westinghouse what they wanted...
...They merely provide the patina of democracy for the oligarchy...
Vol. 61 • December 1997 • No. 12
