Re: <nettime> The best defence is to give no offense

["Mark Dery" <markdery@mindspring.com>]

"Neoliberal," Declan, is European econospeak for "laissez-faire"---you know,
free-market fundamentalism in the Friedman mold. The term is universally
used---everywhere, that is, except in the States, where it usually elicits
head-scratching puzzlement from Americans who think it means liberal in the
political sense of the word.

By the way, if you're speaking at Cato, give Jose Pinera, co-chair of its
Project on Social Security Privatization, a soul hug for me. As I wrote on
this list a little while ago, I'm given to understand that Mr. Pinera's
invaluable experience as a former minister of labor and welfare in Chile,
overseeing the gunpoint privatization of Chile's pension system in the early
1980s under the
watchful eye of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, is much valued at Cato. <See
http://www.accuracy.org/articles/cato.htm> Reminds me of the time I was in
Santiago, Chile, on a lecture tour, and happened to catch Uncle Milty on TV
(Milton Friedman, a true believer in the providential Invisible Hand, for
those of you who don't read the religious tracts of the Chicago school). He
was genially defending the good General, pooh-poohing his human rights
abuses as the cost of free trade, open markets, that sort of thing, you
know. So what if a few clueless Marxists who refused to get with the program
ended up in unmarked graves? What was it WIRED's anointed used to
say---you're either part of the rubber, or part of the road? Sometimes
literally, it seems...

Regards,

M. Dery

----- Original Message -----
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: Nettime <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2001 5:35 PM
Subject: Re: <nettime> The best defence is to give no offense


> On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 05:10:46PM -0400, Brian Holmes wrote:
> > Interesting to note that the Cato Institute, "non-partisan" as it may be,
> > is one of the major neoliberal think tanks, and as such, one of the
> > artisans of the present world order.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "neoliberal" -- Cato is in fact
> libertarian -- but you may want to look at an excellent webcast of
> a Cato discussion about terrorism and civil liberties. It's taking
> place right now, but should be archived:
 <...>

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