	id AA18215; Mon, 31 Oct 94 11:47:32 CST
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 62


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2  Num. 62
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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NOAM CHOMSKY -- 10/17/94
 
My transcript of part of a talk given by Noam Chomsky at UICC 
(University of Illinois at Chicago Circle) on October 17, 1994. 
Special thanks to Paul Mueth for travelling to Chicago, taping 
the talk, then broadcasting it on local radio station WEFT 90.1 
FM on Saturday, October 29, 1994.
 
 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +
 
[Response to question about GATT and intellectual property rights]
 
NOAM CHOMSKY:
...really important topic, and in fact it was one that I'd hoped 
to talk about but didn't have time for.
 
GATT is called a "free trade agreement", just as NAFTA was. But 
that's nonsense. These things... they're not free trade. They're 
not about free trade. And they're certainly not agreements. In 
fact, most of the people in the world are opposed to them. And 
they're not about trade, they're about services and all sorts of 
other things. They're certainly not free, and what you mentioned 
is an extreme case of that.
 
Intellectual property rights have to do with protectionism. The 
U.S., which has -- and in fact, the rich countries, generally. 
But primarily the U.S. -- has led the insistence that the GATT 
agreement, like NAFTA, include strong intellectual property 
rights. That's protectionism. That means *increasing* the power, 
the strength of patents.
 
O.K. Patents are protectionist devices. O.K., they are designed 
to ensure that the technology of the future is in the hands of 
transnational corporations -- most of which, incidentally, you 
guys pay for. 'Cause remember, they don't believe in free market. 
They want to be publicly subsidized. So they get publicly 
subsidized in research and development and, you know, controlled 
markets, and so on.
 
So, intellectual property: the strengthening of intellectual 
property rights means longer patents, which will... means, let's 
say, drugs, for example. Take, say, India. India happens to have 
a big drug, happens to have a good pharmaceutical industry. 
Meaning they can produce drugs at a *fraction* of the cost of 
what the, of what, say, Merck wants to sell 'em for. So, in fact, 
drug prices are *way* lower in India than in Pakistan, next door. 
Because India happens to develop its own pharmaceutical industry.
 
Well the American corporations don't like that. They want more 
children to die in India. I mean, it's not that they care that 
children die, they want more profit, which happens to *mean* more 
children die in India. So they wanna make sure that India doesn't 
produce drugs at less than the cost of American drugs.
 
Now this is done in two ways, under GATT. One way is to increase 
the *length* of patents. The other is to change their *character* 
-- from product patent... from process patents to product 
patents. That's very crucial. In the past, patents were process 
patents. Like if Merck, thanks to your taxes, designed a way to 
produce a certain drug, and then, say, some smart guy in India 
figured out a cheaper way to produce that drug, *that* was 
allowed! But we don't want that. We want to cut down 
technological innovation, cut back economic progress and economic 
efficiency, and increase profits. So now they're product patents, 
meaning if Merck figures out a certain way to produce a drug, 
they can hold that for 20 years and (of course, as a product), 
and then they can hold the process for another 20 years. They get 
40 years of holding onto that drug. You know, by then, 
everybody's forgotten about it.
 
Now just look at... There's some history about this. The 
developed countries, like us, we *never* accepted anything like 
that. In fact, even weak patent on technological development 
wasn't accepted by the rich countries until just a few years ago. 
And there *was* one time, that I know of, when product patents 
were actually tried; namely, in France. In the early part of the 
century they had such patents and that destroyed the French 
chemical industry. Because what happened is, they moved over to 
Switzerland, where they didn't have... So *Switzerland* had a big 
chemical industry and not France.
 
O.K. Now, the same thing. It's not... It's not a big secret, you 
know. Look. This is straight history. And the people who are 
planning GATT understand it. And they wanna make sure that they 
destroy the Indian, or Argentinian, or other pharmaceutical 
industries the same way that France's dumb choices destroyed the 
French chemical industry.
 
And it's already happened. So, for example, the *New York Times* 
about a couple weeks ago in the business section had a tiny, 10- 
line item saying that India -- with a gun pointed at its head, 
'cause there were *huge*... Nobody talks about this here, but in 
India there were hundreds of thousands of people protesting in 
the streets about it. Uh, they agreed finally, 'cause, you know, 
other guys got the guns, and they have decided to "liberalize" 
their pharmaceutical industry -- meaning sell it to western 
corporations so the drug prices won't shoot sky high in India, 
and, you know, children will die and so on and so forth. But 
there'll be more profits.
 
Now this has nothing to do with free trade. This is a *high* 
level of protectionism which, in fact, is specifically designed 
*even* to be contrary to the narrow definitions of "efficiency" 
that they teach you in the University of Chicago, you know, 
economics department [laughter]. So it's gonna cut down 
technological innovations, it's gonna cut down efficiency and so 
on. But it'll happen to increase profits. "By accident".
 
Well that's intellectual property rights. I mean it doesn't... I 
gave one example. But there's plenty of others like it. And if 
you look over the whole GATT agreement it's a sort of a 
complicated array of protectionist and liberalizing devices, 
*very* carefully geared to the interests of transnationals. As 
far as agriculture's concerned, there's a way of measuring 
efficiency of agricultural production -- which like most of these 
measures are just class-based ideology. They don't have anything 
to do with science or anything else. So the way you measure 
efficiency of agricultural production is to ask yourself... You 
know, you look at certain inputs, and certain outputs, and you do 
some calculations, and you figure out the efficiency of it. But 
some things are left out! Like you do the calculations their way: 
"Well, you know, the cost of, (say), of environmental pollution 
is not counted." That's called an "externality" (it means they 
worry about it in some other department). So that one you don't 
count. And there's another one you don't count: like suppose... 
It usually turns out to be the case that heavily subsidized 
western agri-business can produce, say, corn, more efficiently 
than, say, Mexican peasants. O.K., that's gonna be the case, you 
can be pretty sure. Now if you do a narrow measure, of the highly 
ideological type that they teach you about in economics 
departments, it'll turn out to be, you know, "more efficient for 
the world" if American agri-business produces corn, with big 
petroleum inputs and so on and so forth, than if Mexican peasants 
do it.
 
But there's a few things left out of that calculation. One part 
that's left out is that that means that maybe 10 or 15 million 
Mexican peasants are gonna be driven off the land. And they're 
gonna be driven into cities, where they're either gonna starve, 
or maybe somebody'll try to take care of them and so on.
 
Well there's a lot of *costs* associated with that. Put aside the 
human costs, which nobody cares about. But just take the straight 
economic costs, like taking care of them somehow. Well, you know, 
that's "somebody else's department". We don't count that one in. 
We define "efficiency" in a way which doesn't count that. Just 
like it doesn't count "externalities".
 
Well, you know, you put all this stuff together, you get 
particular choices. And, you know, any of you [who] have taken an 
economics course, you can... that's what you're first taught to 
do! To do these things.
 
But this is a *game* of class warfare. I mean, *masked* in big 
words. It sounds like science, with mathematical formulas and 
stuff. But if you simply ask perfectly common-sense questions, 
you can see there're all kinds of things that are left out. 
Which, I mean... For example, sending corn to Mexico. Well, you 
know, it takes... you gotta put it in trucks or, you know, send 
it over there. That takes... what about the transit costs, you 
know, how much, how much... It's a million things that aren't 
counted. Let alone the effect on Mexican peasants.
 
But the purpose of these agreements is to ensure that 
agricultural production is monopolized by transnationals. And 
that the third world gets *nothing*.
 
Actually, just a couple of weeks... If any Indians are around 
here and read the Indian press. They may have noticed that a 
couple of weeks ago, Indian customs officials stopped, at the 
border, some German, you know, alleged "scientists" who were 
leaving India with some funny stuff in their bags -- namely, a 
couple hundred thousand bugs. You know. And they didn't know, 
what the hell were they doing with these things.
 
Well we know what they're doing with those things. That's the 
gene pool that the western pharmaceutical companies are trying to 
*steal* from the south. That's *their* resources. But we get 'em 
free. You know, like maybe if [over] thousands of years people in 
the "south", so-called, have been developing crops and drugs and 
so on and so forth. They don't own 'em, right? We're... 'Cause 
there's no... They don't get any rights from that. We just go and 
steal 'em.
 
So they have the rich gene pool, they have the thousands of years 
of experience in creating hybrids, and figuring out what herb 
works, and so on and so forth. Then western corporations go in 
there and take it for nothing -- 'cause they don't own anything. 
[sarcastically] <<I mean, look. See if they got a piece of paper 
somewhere that says, "I own it." You know, a stamp with the 
writing authority.>> Well they don't, you know. So therefore we 
steal it from 'em. And then *we* make it appear in some biology 
lab. They, you know, minimally modify it. And then you sell it, 
you *sell* it to them. And they're not allowed to use the seeds 
again. Because, you know, now we patented it and now we've got 40 
year patents and so on.
 
I mean that's... It's a scam. It's a scam designed to rob the 
poor and enrich the rich. Like most social policy. And that 
shouldn't surprise you. After all, who makes social policy? I 
mean, this was a truism to Adam Smith. It should be a truism to 
us. The people who make social policy make it in their interests. 
And they wouldn't be in a position to make social policy unless 
they were rich and privileged, so they make it in the interests 
of the rich and privileged. Poor people suffer.
 
[...]
 
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."
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