“All the NewsrnUnfit to Print” ignsi of tfje QCtmesJrnVol. 1 No. 11 November 1999rnWhat was the most important story unfitrnto print in 1998? No, it wasn’t Kosovo:rnChronicles may have been among the firstrnto expose the Clinton administration’srnmany lies, crimes, and misdemeanors inrnthe Balkans, but that particular cat is nowrnout of the bag.rnThere is a story still largely unknown,rnhowever, and so big that its non-reportingrnin the “mainstream” media can only be explainedrnby a deliberate decision at the toprnlevels of editorial control.rnEver heard of the Multilateral Agreementrnon Investment (MAI)? If and whenrnapplied, it will set in place a comprehensivernglobal system of protections for WallrnStreet investors and deliver the final couprnde grace to national sovereignty by givingrncorporations rights nearly equal to thosernof nations. Far more radical than NAFTA,rnMAI will force countries to relax or nullifyrnhuman, environmental, and labor protectionrnin order to qualify for investmentrnand trade. Most forms of food subsidies,rnrestrictions on land speculation, andrnhealth and environmental standards willrnbe deemed “illegal,” as will local controlrnof forests, bans on toxic dumping and thernuse of pesticides, clean air standards, andrnhmits on mineral, gas, and oil extraction.rnMAI was hatched in secret negotiationsrnthat began in 1995 among the UnitedrnStates and 28 other countries. Many peoplernare aware of this story only becausernProject Censored, a 22-year-old effort by arnteam of scholars and researchers at SonomarnState University in California. Eachrnyear. Project Censored reviews nominationsrnfor the most important suppressedrnnews stories in the United States. A reviewrnof the top 25 censored stories of lastrnyear is contained in a book {Censoredrn1999: The News That Didn’t Make thernNews by Peter Phillips), which proves thatrn”freedom of the press” is something veryrndifferent from free distribution of thernnews.rnAn attempt to locate “mainstream”rncoverage of the story yielded but one itemrnin the Arizona Republic (June 9), whichrndescribed the MAI asrnthe constitution for a newrnglobal economy . . . written inrnsecret by anonymous trade bureaucratsrnunder heavy influencernof big business. Thernagreement would go beyond NAFTArnand GATT by allowing corporationsrn”to sue any level ofrngovernment—state, municipal orrnfederal-for what they perceivernas losses based on l e g i s l a t i v ernactions, strikes or boycotts.”rnPeter Phillips, director of the programrnat Sonoma State, says that what most peoplernread, see, and hear is controlled by anrnincreasingly smaller number of corporaternboard rooms. Not surprisingly, his teamrnnamed the war in the Balkans as one of thernmost suppressed stories. “Western editorsrnseemed to prefer to keep the story simple:rnone villain and as much blood as possible,”rnPhillips observes.rnWarnings about American global actionsrnand designs—economic, political,rnand cultural—have been heard in Europernfor some time, but since the Kosovo intervention,rnthey are increasingly found in thernestablishment media. In a BBC Radio 4rndocumentary (“The Long Arm of UnclernSam,” August 2), Serge Halimi, editor ofrnLe Monde Diplomatique, opined thatrn”globalization” in fact means Americanization:rnFor many American p o l i t i c a lrnleaders, but also j o u r n a l i s t s ,rnthe American model shouldn’trnbe questioned, shouldn’t bernchallenged. And if i t werernquestioned or challenged, compliancernwould be enforced, notrnonly by the power of arms ifrnnecessary but also more subtlyrn. . . : the work of economicrni n s t i t u t i o n s such as the IMF,rnthe World Bank, the OECD andrnp o l i t i c a l i n s t i t u t i o n s such asrnthe United Nations which onlyrnseem to exist when i t ‘ s docilernto American wishes.rnThis resentment of America is not confinedrnto Europe, and not only to Americanrneconomic imperialism, according tornMichael Elliott—formerly with thernEconomist—who said on the BBC programrnthat “the extent to which non-Americansrndislike the imperialistic aspects ofrnAmerican power and globalisation is arntrue mystery to most Americans”:rnI t is an a r t i c l e of faith amongrnAmericans that their countryrni s different . . . because i trni s benign, because i t has nornimperial mission, no sense ofrnconquering other countries orrnother cultures. . . . I did arnround-the-world t r i p immediarnt e l y after the Chinese embassyrnwas bombed in Belgradernduring the Kosovo war. Everywherernone went, but of coursernp a r t i c u l a r l y in China, therernwas t h i s deep, deep, deep resentmentrnat the-not the i r r a ­trni o n a l i t y of the American powerrnbut the carelessness ofrnAmerican power. I was remindedrnof that marvelous passage inrnScott Fitzgerald’s novel. TenderrnIs the Night, when he describesrnthe principal protagonrni s t s , a couple called thernDivers, who were careless withrnpeople. They dropped things,rnthey dropped people, theyrndropped incidents in such a wayrnthat other people were hurt,rnwithout them r e a l l y being consciousrnof i t . And that to merni s how the United States isrnseen, and possibly even behavesrnoutside the US today.rnWhen France’s Prime Minister LionelrnJospin proclaimed “yes to the marketrneconomy, no to the market society,” he impliedrnthat in a financial world run by WallrnStreet, a star-spangled globalization willrnmake the Old Continent less civilized, lessrnitself. But one-world ideology demandsrnnot only a “global economy”—a universalrnsystem of laissez-faire to be ushered in byrnMAI—but also a global criminal justicernsystem. The Clinton administration hasrn26/CHRONICLESrnrnrn