Relentlessly feeding on poverty and economic dislocation, a New World Order was taking shape.

For the West, the enemy was not "socialism" but capitalism. How to tame and subdue the polar bear, how to take over the talent, the science, the technology, how to buy out the human capital, how to acquire the intellectual property rights?

Legal and illegal activities had become inextricably intertwined.

The achievements of past struggles and the aspirations of an entire nation are [being] undone and erased.... No Agent Orange or steel pellet bombs, no napalm, no toxic chemicals: a new phase of economic and social (rather than' physical) destruction has unfolded. The seemingly neutral and scientific tools of macro-economic policy constitute a non-violent instrument of recolonization and impoverishment.

Global poverty is an "input" on the supply side; the global economic system feeds on cheap labor.

The budget targets imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions, combined with the effects of the devaluation, trigger the collapse of public investment.

Lost in the barrage of images and self-serving analysis are the economic and social causes of the conflict.