Is It 1984 Yet? -- An avatar I made after seeing today's NYT article.

Excerpts from a debate between Noam Chomsky (quoting from these documents) and Richard Perle at The Ohio State University in 1988 (http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=8409).

Quotes from declassified State Department documents:

On the 3rd World:

"...a source of raw material and markets for the industrialist capitalist powers, to be exploited for their reconstruction"...

On Latin America:

"Prime concern is the protection of our raw materials. We have 50% of the worlds wealth but only 6% of its population, we must maintain this disparity to the extent possible, by force if necessary, putting aside vague and idealistic slogans such as human rights, raising of living standards, democratization, preferring police states if needed over democracies that might be to liberal and to indulgent to communists, the latter has lost any substantial meaning in US political rhetoric, referring simply to anyone who stands in our way."

"The primary threat to the US in Latin America is the trend towards nationalistic regimes that respond to popular demand for improvement in low living standards and production for domestic needs. That's not acceptable because the US is committed to encouraging a climate inductive to private investment, in particular guaranties for opportunity to earn and in the case of foreign capital to repatriate a reasonable return."

"We must therefore oppose what is regularly called ultra nationalism in secret documents, that means efforts to pursue domestic needs. We must foster exports or (...) production in the interests of US investors. It is recognized such programs have very little appeal to the Latin American public. So the conclusion is that we must therefore gain control over the military which can in turn control domestic opposition and overthrow civilian governments if necessary."

"One learns a lot from looking at the documentary record, and one learns a lot from the fact that certain people don't want you to look at it."
-- Noam Chomsky

"Since World War II, the U.S. government has supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador and, of course, Chile."
-- Harold Pinter