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TechnoratiNoam Chomsky: 'US Foreign Policy is Straight Out of the Mafia'
Noam Chomsky is the west's most prominent critic of US imperialism, yet he is rarely interviewed in the mainstream media. Seumas Milne meets him
But the bulk of the mainstream western media doesn't seem to have noticed. His books sell in their hundreds of thousands, he is mobbed by students as a celebrity, but he is rarely reported or interviewed in the US outside radical journals and websites. The explanation, of course, isn't hard to find. Chomsky is America's most prominent critic of the US imperial role in the world, which he has used his erudition and standing to expose and excoriate since Vietnam.
![[Noam Chomsky: 'Obama's campaign rhetoric was completely vacuous' Photograph: Rex Features]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/Noam-Chomsky-001.jpg "Noam-Chomsky-001.jpg")
Like the English philosopher Bertrand Russell, who spoke out against western-backed wars until his death at the age of 97, Chomsky has lent his academic prestige to a relentless campaign against his own country's barbarities abroad - though in contrast to the aristocratic Russell, Chomsky is the child of working class Jewish refugees from Tsarist pogroms. Not surprisingly, he has been repaid with either denunciation or, far more typically, silence. Whereas a much slighter figure such as the Atlanticist French philosopher Bernard Henri-Lévy is lionised at home and abroad, Chomsky and his genuine popularity are ignored.
Indeed, his books have been banned from the US prison library in Guantánamo. You'd hardly need a clearer example of his model of how dissenting views are filtered out of the western media, set out in his 1990's book Manufacturing Consent, than his own case. But as Chomsky is the first to point out, the marginalisation of opponents of western state policy is as nothing compared to the brutalities suffered by those who challenge states backed by the US and its allies in the Middle East.
We meet in a break between a schedule of lectures and talks that would be punishing for a man half his age. At the podium, Chomsky's style is dry and low-key, as he ranges without pausing for breath from one region and historical conflict to another, always buttressed with a barrage of sources and quotations, often from US government archives and leaders themselves.
But in discussion he is warm and engaged, only hampered by slight deafness. He has only recently started travelling again, he explains, after a three-year hiatus while he was caring for his wife and fellow linguist, Carol, who died from cancer last December. Despite their privilege, his concentrated exposure to the continuing injustices and exorbitant expense of the US health system has clearly left him angry. Public emergency rooms are "uncivilised, there is no health care", he says, and the same kind of corporate interests that drive US foreign policy are also setting the limits of domestic social reform.
All three schemes now being considered for Barack Obama's health care reform are "to the right of the public, which is two to one in favour of a public option. But the New York Times says that has no political support, by which they mean from the insurance and pharmaceutical companies." Now the American Petroleum Institute is determined to "follow the success of the insurance industry in killing off health reform," Chomsky says, and do the same to hopes of genuine international action at next month's Copenhagen climate change summit. Only the forms of power have changed since the foundation of the republic, he says, when James Madison insisted that the new state should "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority".
Chomsky supported Obama's election campaign in swing states, but regards his presidency as representing little more than a "shift back towards the centre" and a striking foreign policy continuity with George Bush's second administration. "The first Bush administration was way off the spectrum, America's prestige sank to a historic low and the people who run the country didn't like that." But he is surprised so many people abroad, especially in the third world, are disappointed at how little Obama has changed. "His campaign rhetoric, hope and change, was entirely vacuous. There was no principled criticism of the Iraq war: he called it a strategic blunder. And Condoleezza Rice was black - does that mean she was sympathetic to third world problems?"
The veteran activist has described the US invasion of Afghanistan as "one of the most immoral acts in modern history", which united the jihadist movement around al-Qaida, sharply increased the level of terrorism and was "perfectly irrational - unless the security of the population is not the main priority". Which, of course, Chomsky believes, it is not. "States are not moral agents," he says, and believes that now that Obama is escalating the war, it has become even clearer that the occupation is about the credibility of Nato and US global power.
This is a recurrent theme in Chomsky's thinking about the American empire. He argues that since government officials first formulated plans for a "grand area" strategy for US global domination in the early 1940s, successive administrations have been guided by a "godfather principle, straight out of the mafia: that defiance cannot be tolerated. It's a major feature of state policy." "Successful defiance" has to be punished, even where it damages business interests, as in the economic blockade of Cuba - in case "the contagion spreads".
The gap between the interests of those who control American foreign policy and the public is also borne out, in Chomsky's view, by the US's unwavering support for Israel and "rejectionism" of the two-state solution effectively on offer for 30 years. That's not because of the overweening power of the Israel lobby in the US, but because Israel is a strategic and commercial asset which underpins rather than undermines US domination of the Middle East. "Even in the 1950s, President Eisenhower was concerned about what he called a campaign of hatred of the US in the Arab world, because of the perception on the Arab street that it supported harsh and oppressive regimes to take their oil."
Half a century later, corporations like Lockheed Martin and Exxon Mobil are doing fine, he says: America's one-sided role in the Middle East isn't harming their interests, whatever risks it might bring for anyone else.
Chomsky is sometimes criticised on the left for encouraging pessimism or inaction by emphasising the overwhelming weight of US power - or for failing to connect his own activism with labour or social movements on the ground. He is certainly his own man, holds some idiosyncratic views (I was startled, for instance, to hear him say that Vietnam was a strategic victory for the US in southeast Asia, despite its humiliating 1975 withdrawal) and has drawn flak for defending freedom of speech for Holocaust deniers. He describes himself as an anarchist or libertarian socialist, but often sounds more like a radical liberal - which is perhaps why he enrages more middle-of-the-road American liberals who don't appreciate their views being taken to the logical conclusion.
But for an octogenarian who has been active on the left since the 1930s, Chomsky sounds strikingly upbeat. He's a keen supporter of the wave of progressive change that has swept South America in the past decade ("one of the liberal criticisms of Bush is that he didn't pay enough attention to Latin America - it was the best thing that ever happened to Latin America"). He also believes there are now constraints on imperial power which didn't exist in the past: "They couldn't get away with the kind of chemical warfare and blanket B52 bombing that Kennedy did," in the 1960s. He even has some qualified hopes for the internet as a way around the monopoly of the corporate-dominated media.
But what of the charge so often made that he's an "anti-American" figure who can only see the crimes of his own government while ignoring the crimes of others around the world? "Anti-Americanism is a pure totalitarian concept," he retorts. "The very notion is idiotic. Of course you don't deny other crimes, but your primary moral responsibility is for your own actions, which you can do something about. It's the same charge which was made in the Bible by King Ahab, the epitome of evil, when he demanded of the prophet Elijah: why are you a hater of Israel? He was identifying himself with society and criticism of the state with criticism of society."
It's a telling analogy. Chomsky is a studiedly modest man who would balk at any such comparison. But in the Biblical tradition of the conflict between prophets and kings, there's not the slightest doubt which side he represents.
73 Comments so far
Show Allchomsky has proven himself useless time & time again. time to go away now because you offer no solutions.
take off the rose colored glasses and retire into obscurity for the betterment of humanity.
9/11 truth is the bottom line. its one the the MAIN reasons why we are here and have a foreign policy run by gangsters and banksters.
I must confess I have come late to this thread and read only a few of the comments but, at the risk of repeating something already said, I want to point out that Bernard-Henri Lévy is not "lionised at home and abroad" as Milne says. At home, that is, in France, he is not taken seriously by the intelligentsia and is also mocked by the general public for the vain fop that he is. His championing of human rights has a great big glaring hole in the middle: you guessed it, Israel. I have seen him give passionate defenses of Israel's massacres in Jenin, Lebanon, and now Gaza. He is an adamant Zionist and a hypocrite of the first order. Indeed the only people who seem to take him seriously are television talk-show producers, in whose studios he appears all too often. To call him a "philosopher," as Milne does, is stretching things, though it's true that the French have a rather broad definition of the term, often using it for writers who are at best termed "essayists" in English. And whether Lévy is "lionised abroad" I can't really say, though I do know that his work gets roundly panned in serious American book reviews such as the NYRB and the Brits themselves never seem to pass up a chance to poke fun at him. In any case he has no moral-ethical standing whatsover in France, for the abovementioned reasons, and in objective terms is less than an ant in comparison to the great Chomsky. The two should not even be mentioned in the same breath.
I learned about Noam Chomsky from my son,who thinks Chomsky is the greatest American. I have respect and admiration for Noam and agree with most of his views. However I agree with the posts I have read that he may be wrong about JFK. Some people used to say that Bobby was the brains behind JFK and I know that Bobby was against the Vietnam war. I have records of Bobby's views regarding the Vietnam war he opposed. I also believe that U.S. policy against Afghanistan was wrong and agree that it was one of the most immoral acts in modern history.However The U.S. policy against Iraq of selling them chemical weapons, bombing them into the stone age, imposing the harsh economic sanctions on Iraqi war devastated people for over 13 years then lying about them being a threat to the U.S.and invading them and setting up a corrupt government ,put up walls to separate them, then brag about a successful surge that internally and externally displaced about 4 million Iraqi people,send foreign contractors in to do the jobs that Iraqi people desperately needed,get oil contracts for American corporations instead of sharing the wealth with the people of Iraq, imprison an Iraqi doctor for 22 years for breaking the economic sanctions and getting food, medicine and like "Heifer" animals to the poor in Iraq, was the most immoral act in modern history, in my opinion.
and the USA is "threatening" the same to IRAN...because of course the USA MAFIA mentality is:
"NO ONE SHALL OPPOSE US".
note that the article below makes NO mention of the Nuclear NOn Proliferation Treat of which IRan and the USA are signatories and under which Iran has FULL rights to develop nuclear power - the SAME ONE that was INITIATED bythe USA with iran (even using the same facilities begun) when IRAN"S BRUTAL SHAH was the USA's lackey - which was itself a RESULT of the USA's destruction of Iran's DEMOCRACY in 1953 under Mossadegh.
note the LAST remark of the iranians in the article:
"“The countries which were proposed to receive our 5 percent uranium were not countries that the Islamic republic trusts to trade with, because in the past, these countries have not held up their side of trade agreements.””
and these countries ARE the western countries such as USA, ENGLAND, FRANCE, GERMANY . the very same ones calling themselves the *international community*...the very same ones with an INTEREST in IRAN's *second largest reserves of gas and oil* in the world, all the way SINCE When the USA toppled the democratically created Iranian regime in the 1950's.
if ANYONE should not be trusted - it's NOT the iranians who had NEVER attacked any nation for a thousand years almost unless attacked themselves..and who were the VICTIMS of the USA's OWN henchman Saddam Hussein in the 1980 aggression by Saddam Hussein UNDER THE BEHEST OF THE USA as punishment for sending away the USA's DEAR FRIEND THE BRUTAL SHAH OF IRAN..---
it's "these western countries" that can't be TRUSTED.
=======================
November 9, 2009
Iran Is Said to Ignore Effort to Salvage a Nuclear Deal
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, attempting to salvage a faltering nuclear deal with Iran, has told Iran’s leaders in back-channel messages that it is willing to allow the country to send its stockpile of enriched uranium to any of several nations, including Turkey, for temporary safekeeping, according to administration officials and diplomats involved in the exchanges.
But the overtures, made through the International Atomic Energy Agency over the past two weeks, have all been ignored, the officials said. Instead, they said, the Iranians have revived an old counterproposal: that international arms inspectors take custody of much of Iran’s fuel, but keep it on Kish, a Persian Gulf resort island that is part of Iran.
A senior Obama administration official said that proposal had been rejected because leaving the nuclear material on Iranian territory would allow for the possibility that the Iranians could evict the international inspectors at any moment. That happened in North Korea in 2003, and within months the country had converted its fuel into the material for several nuclear weapons.
The intermediary in the exchanges between Washington and Tehran has been Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the energy agency. He confirmed some of the proposals — including one to send Iran’s fuel to Turkey, which has nurtured close relations with Iran — in interviews in New York late last week.
But members of the Obama administration, in interviews over the weekend, said that they had now all but lost hope that Iran would follow through with an agreement reached in Geneva on Oct. 1 to send its fuel out of the country temporarily — buying some time for negotiations over its nuclear program.
“If you listen to what the Iranians have said publicly and privately over the past week,” one senior administration official said Sunday, “it’s evident that they simply cannot bring themselves to do the deal.” The administration officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were speaking about delicate diplomatic exchanges.
NYTimes article continued
================
Iranian officials told the energy agency on Oct. 29 that they could not agree to the deal that their own negotiators had reached, but they never explained why. Iran has never publicly rejected the deal, but its official reaction has been ambiguous at best.
Dr. ElBaradei insisted he still had hope, but he conceded that the chances were receding.
“I have been saying to the Iranian leadership, privately and publicly, ‘Make use of that opportunity. Reciprocate,’ ” Dr. ElBaradei said last week. But he said that it now appeared that “the foreign policy apparatus in Iran has frozen,” partly because of the country’s own domestic turmoil.
So far, President Obama has said nothing about the stalemate threatening his first, and potentially most important, effort at diplomatic engagement with a hostile foreign government. When the first meeting in Geneva ended Oct. 1, Iranian and American officials said they would meet again later in the month to discuss the nuclear program and the potential for a broader relationship. That meeting never occurred, and none is scheduled.
Mr. Obama’s aides say he is still willing to wait until year’s end before concluding that Iran is rejecting his offers of diplomatic engagement. What happens after that is unclear: Mr. Obama has suggested he would then turn to much more severe sanctions than the United Nations has already imposed against Iran, though it is unclear whether Russia and China would go along.
Officials in Israel, which feels the most threatened by Iran, have hinted that if Iran does not accept the Geneva deal they will revive their consideration of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Mr. Obama’s own aides say they cannot determine whether the Israelis are bluffing.
Iran’s backpedaling from the Geneva deal — which would require Iran to ship 2,600 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Russia by Jan. 15 for processing into fuel rods for a reactor in Tehran used for medical purposes — will almost certainly be discussed when Mr. Obama meets the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the White House on Monday evening.
In public, Mr. Netanyahu expressed support for the deal after it was announced. Privately, Israeli officials here said they expected it to fall apart because they doubted the Iranian government would part, even temporarily, with the fuel it had spent years accumulating.
Administration officials say they had been working closely with Russia each step of the way, and were pleased over the weekend that the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, had raised anew the prospect of economic sanctions if Iran rebuffed the offer. Russia has an economic interest in the deal: it would reap considerable revenue for converting Iran’s fuel — a step that Turkey would not be able to perform — and Russian officials appear to still be pressing the Iranians to take the deal.
“Russian efforts may well prompt Iran to accept,” an administration official said Sunday. “There is still time for Iran to make the right choice” before the board of the I.A.E.A. meets later this month.
But few other American or European officials interviewed in recent days seem to believe that the Iranians will agree to send the fuel to Russia, Turkey or any other nation. Officials would not say which other nations would possibly accept the fuel.
Officials say they believe that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who first suggested the country might be willing to export its uranium temporarily, may have never expected that suggestion to be considered seriously. Some officials speculate Mr. Ahmadinejad’s offer may have been overruled by other Iranian authorities.
The idea of offering to help Iran use its stockpile to fuel the medical reactor attracted Mr. Obama because it would buy him time. Iran has generated enough fuel to make between one and two weapons — if it were further enriched — and it would take Iran roughly a year to replace the fuel it sent out of the country. That would take the pressure off some of the negotiations.
For that reason, it touched off a nationalistic backlash in Iran, and Mr. Ahmadinejad was criticized by both reformers and hard-liners. “The countries which were proposed to receive our 5 percent uranium were not countries that the Islamic republic trusts to trade with,” Hosein Naghavi-Hosseini, a member of Iran’s Majlis Security Council, said over the weekend, according to Iran’s state-run press, “because in the past, these countries have not held up their side of trade agreements.”
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, used the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran last week to warn Iranians against Mr. Obama’s offers of diplomatic engagement.
Mr. Obama is reported to have sent Ayatollah Khamenei two private letters this year, but he received only one response, mostly a litany of past grievances.
Robert F. Worth contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.
I never thought King Ahab and henry8 had so much in common. I guess Ahab called it "Israel bashing" back in those days.
You are one pathetic little guy. Your personal attacks with no provocation define you for the little coward you are.
The article title is redundant: the US govt. IS a mafia structure.
Chomsky could be a great leader. ...If only he would actually lead us somewhere besides into a snit of futile anger and anxiety!
Calling for anarchy in a world of generalized shortage is to call for chaos and the rise of warlords. It is nonsense that cannot stand the light of a new moon. In fact, anarchy is the model of 'free' Rand-ian capitalism, and it will most certainly lead to imperialist illegitimacy, if it were allowed to blossom in a world already divided by the dominant imperialists.
For failing to openly call for communism, the fakir Chomsky will go down in history as a sometimes brilliant coward, who misled the American Left for decades. The sharp observer will note that he does not entertain questions about communism, and there is a reason.
Stop complaining, and wringing your hands - a la Chomsky, and start moving forward! There is exactly one way to win universal peace, sustainability, equality & affluence, and that is to establish a world communist economy. That movement must have the disciplined leadership of a Leninist Party. The task of today is to build the party of world communism!
Chomsky for President.
I was interested in the comments above of how Noam Chomsky views anti-semitism as it relates to Israel. I think it is fair to say that Chomsky is a discerning commentator on American foreign policy with a blind spot regarding Israel probably because he is a member of the Jewish community. He worries that anti-semitism might get out of hand, and jumped at the chance to attack the Mersheimer and Walt theses about Israel and the Jewish lobbies influence on our Middle East policies. I think his position has little merit yet it is easy to understand from where he speaks.
Herman Schmidt
I agree. His assertion that Israel has no strangle hold on US policy is based on his blind spot, not reality.
As long as he is talking about imperialism and failed state policies, however, he is quite correct in condemning the USA.
What the author says about young people clamoring to see Chomsky is true. I experienced the frenzy first hand.
Many years ago, at an event bringing Chomsky to speak at a small school auditorium, I volunteered to watch one of the doors, since it was a fund-raiser talk. Sure enough, people without tickets (it was a sold-out event) tried to sneak through with excuses about meeting a friend inside, etc.
At one point, there was pounding on the door from the outside. I almost didn't open it. When I did, it was one of the organizers trying to usher Chomsky into his own event!
Most articles that get published about Chomsky do follow the same lines at this Seumas Milne piece. Probably, because of the corporate media shutout of Chomsky in the United States, it's necessary to write and rewrite these intro articles.
Milne's quibbling over the "radical liberal" label for Chomsky isn't very helpful. Meanings are probably different across the pond, but maybe the French interpretation of a political liberal should be followed - that is, a supporter of free enterprise. The word "liberal" in the United States is mostly identified with mainstream Democrat views, which are pro-corporate yet contain some contradictory social views that are pretty much ignored in Dem leader policy formulations.
I just wouldn't use the liberal label for Chomsky at all. That's not where he's at. He's brought back the views of 19th century anarchist thinkers, which are highly relevant today. Anarchist philosophy is mostly unheard of, and untaught in U.S. schools. Start reading some Emma Goldman and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon today!
-TIA
I attended a Chomsky lecture at Washington State University in 2005 and it was the same, too many people showed up for the event. They had only opened a portion of the autitorium (for some reason), and some people did sneak in there and listen. A lot of police showed up too, probably expecting some radical show of rebellion, which never happened.
When Chmosky walked ontage I realized I had passed him earlier that day while going into the elevators across from the anthropology department. I didn't catch the name on the sticker on his shirt when we passed each other but I thought he looked familiar. Damn! I could have invited him for a coffee. That man is an intellectual superstar and an American hero, at least to those exposed to his brilliance.
Chomsky was here in Mexico about a month ago--and gave a talk in a large lecture hall at the national university in Mexico City.
I did not bother to make the trip up there, as I knew there was no way I would get anywhere near enough to see or hear.
I did listen and watch on the La Jornada website stream, however.
And was glad I didn't make the trip--the place was mobbed.
And considering that Chomsky doesn't speak Spanish....
Eduardo Galeano, author of the book that Chavez gave Obomba in Trinidad, also packs them in here. I was fortunate enough to meet him after a reading at Bellas Artes in Mexico City in 2000--got the last seat, in fact. He was here again relatively recently, but I was out of the country and missed him.
("one of the liberal criticisms of Bush is that he didn't pay enough attention to Latin America - it was the best thing that ever happened to Latin America").
Isn't that the truth? Old George W. may never get to live on that land he bought in Paraguay in order to escape legal retribution for his global criminal acts.
Mr. Chomsky, you seem to overlook the not-so-trivial fact that the Mafia in its heyday was infinitely more successful than Obama's foreign projects are today. The failures are beginning to pile up: Israel/Palestine; Honduras; Iran; Japan; North Korea; elections in Afghanistan; Pakistan. Name one lasting success and I will kneel down and admit my abject ignorance.
The carpet bombing of North Vietnam started in 1965 after the CIA instigated fraud of the "Gulf of Tonkin" incident. That was under Johnson, not Kennedy.
http://www.paralumun.com/viet.htm
Correct. However, our involvement with "saving Vietnam from the communists" began in the Eisenhower administration and Kennedy, instead of ending it, actually expanded our involvement.
The American involvement in Vietnam was started under Truman, not Eisehnower.
Thanks for correcting me.
An excellent and eye-opening complement to this article is the piece just posted at Common Dreams about the millionaires that are members of Congress.
See this excerpt from the article:
"Among the highlights: Two-hundred-and-thirty-seven members of Congress are millionaires. That's 44 percent of the body -compared to about 1 percent of Americans overall."
After one takes stock of the data provided by that article, one should no longer be surprised by the voting record of these greedy old men (it's mostly men, let's face it!). Their true colors and their real allegiances become clear as noon day. Big money sides with big money and against the majority of the citizenry, which necessarily cannot be wealthy. Big money also has a monopoly on state-legitimized violence (the police and the military)
As I have said many times before in my posts here, the wealthy never constitute the majority of a society. They cannot do so, for, otherwise, the society would no longer have any motive for working and being productive. There are no exceptions to this iron-clad rule in the entire history of mankind (Lichtenstein and Monaco do not count, as they are mere parasitical entities that prove the rule). Once the majority of the citizens of an enlightened society becomes aware of this fact and stops deluding itself about who and how many from its ranks can become wealthy, the question becomes what does one do about that fact?
NO-CHANGE OBAMA
Many say Noam is too pessimistic, but in the grand scheme of things my
vision is that he has mellowed toward our darling self-absorbed majority
with time.
For the upper half of society, the 50% who own wealth, they like things
to remain unchanged and hired no-change Obama to get the job done.
Actually, the wealth in the U.S. is a bit more concentrated than the "50% who own wealth". The top 5% own more wealth than the rest of the population. The richest 10% of families own about 85% of all outstanding stocks, they own 85% of all financial securities and 90% of all business assets.
Although I am concerned about the lack of "change" in the Obama Administration, it's a bit early to make final judgements. The wealthy did not "hire" Obama and glib statements like that may feel good but they don't reflect reality. It was McCain who represented no change and it is the Republican party of "NO" that is the biggest impediment to change and wants to maintain the status quo.
It's certainly abundantly clear today that when Obama told us, before the election, that Bill Ayers of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) had absolutely no influence on him, that he was telling the truth ---- because Obama has sure as hell not been doing anything to fight for a 'democratic society' (against economic oppression, racism, imperialist wars, etc. etc.).
Obama never mentioned anything, before we 'gave him' our votes, about the ruling-elite corporate/financial imperialist war-machine, racist tyranny, and working-class economic inequality that SDS fought against in the late 1960's --- and which, in the last 40 years, has gotten worse.
Obama was being truthful with us when he totally ignored the very existence of this ruling-elite corporate/financial Empire that controls our country by hiding behind the facade of its two-party 'Vichy' sham of democracy, and he was being totally truthful when he said nothing about this Empire that he himself was auditioning to become the best 'front-man' for.
It's just that we were too stupid, before the election, to ask him, "Hey, what about this Empire that is killing our country and the world? Will you represent this deceitful and hidden corporate/financial Empire or will you represent us?"
We never asked him about which side he was on in our battle with Empire --- so he wasn't lying when he said, and now has done, exactly nothing.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
So true Alan,
next time we should ask.
Great Metaphor:
The Five Families of the ruling Oligarchy Mafia:
1. Big Oil
2. The Imperial Industrial Complex (aka MIC)
3. Big Agriculture
4. The Illness and Death Profit Industry (IDPI)
5. The legal industry
We can trace just about every policy to one or more of the Five Families. We need to make them an offer they can't refuse
You're forgetting the Entertainment Industry, which brings in more revenue than Big Oil. It loses only to MIC
SOME ALLOWED TO OWN WEALTH ---- BUT MAJORITY RULES
So the super-intelligent elit own super-wealth, but that
has nothing to do with who rules.
For in all nations a self-absorbed majority always rules, and since the
beginning of civilization this his always been true.
So their brainwashed in the direction of darkness,
so our job is to bring them out of darkness.
It's not much different here at home either.
Why hasn't Chomsky been invited on John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Bill Moyers and a couple of other liberal stalwarts of the few allowed on the MSM, never mind Tavis Smiley, Charlie Rose and other talk shows?
This travesty, the censoring of one who has been called America's greatest living intellectual is no accident. Kind of makes one suspect that the liberals the money-power allows us to watch are either complicit or being censored themselves. I've never heard criticism of Israel from any of them. In fact, Maher had and praised Zionist Netanyahu on his show. He frequently escalates the paranoia against the terrorists America breeds.
Chomsky is ostracized by American media because he goes for the jugular and lets the chips fall where they may. If the oligarchy can't control you, they ignore you.
And why has Chomsky never been on PRI or NPR except for a 5 minute
tape that he had to redue three times before they would run it.
And even then they canceled the scheduled time for it without
notice, and then ran it a later time, also without notifying
anyone.
Absolutely nothing does darkness love more then to put out the light.
Chomsky's own impressions seem to be that he's off NPR for ideological reasons, and that he's off most of the commercial circuit partly for ideologically but mostly because of the difficulties of fitting dissent into soundbytes.
I am paraphrasing broadly, but the idea insofar as I get it is that if you assent, the framework of assumptions surrounding assent needs little repetition, and a few phrases might present a position, but if you call those assumptions into question, you need to discuss terms and present evidence, and the whole soundbyte-twostep-cut-to-GE rhythm of broadcast media disallows it.
It's an interesting comparison. I had thought for some time that this was inherent to multi-media, but long podcast lectures are becoming quite popular, and it's a good bet that more CD regulars have downloaded podcasts from www.chomsky.info or www.onebigtorrent.org than not.
In a Net environment, audio seems to be a nice way of supplying sequential language and fluid explanation over this oft-shifting visual collage, so lecture is becoming a viable form.
Chomsky is part of the Vanguard of the Zionist State. I got that characterization from the article "Tikkun and Michael Lerner: Vanguard of the Zionist State", google it. Here is an sample from the article ... it applies to Chomsky exactly as it applies to M. Lerner -
Lerner's stance is you can criticize the policies and politicians of the state of Israel. This is not anti-Jewish bigotry. But desire for the abolition of an Israel that's a "Jewish state" led by a Zionist ruling class, he maintains is anti-Semitism. From the former perspective Lerner has been creating space within the Jewish American community for debate. From the latter he still wishes to obscure the fundamental nature of economic, social and political relationships involved in the maintenance of the Zionist state. Why? He wants to believe, against all historical and contemporary evidence, that the fundamental contradictions of the "Jewish state" are not fundamental at all.
Did Chomsky support a division of South Africa into black and white side by side countries? Of course not, it's absurd on its face. No less absurd is the existence of Israel as a Jewish state in the middle of millions of hostile Arabs. But, don't tell Chomsky.
Not Allan, I think you need to make up your mind.
Chomsky has repeated over and over again that he is not in favor of a Jewish state. He finds the idea racist. He has also repeated more times than I can track that the two-state solution does not constitute a solution.
He does present a "two-state solution" as a way forward. That's different.
My not acknowledge that it makes little sense to bind the Palestinians into a state that would obviously be Jewish and racist in practice?
Israel need not stand "in the middle of millions of hostile Arabs" if it does not want to. If they would just establish an actual liveable place for Palestinian refugees, they could kiss off their extraordinary security problems and arrive at something roughly like the security status of a roughly normal state.
Why do so many people treat Muslim anger as though it were an act of God, an immutable natural phenomenon, or something outside of human control? How do people miss that Middle Eastern anger towards Israel, the United States, and "the West" in general is concretely motivated.
It's even pretty reasonable as these things go.
That being the case, the motive for anger could be withdrawn. Would anger remain? Sure. But it would reduce quite a bit, and the motive for continued battle would be almost completely eliminated.
The trouble would resolve quickly except for these factors:
- Some Israelis would rather fight than give up land
- The US government is happy to pay the Israeli government to draw fire for US empire
This unspoken but fairly obvious US policy is about as antisemitic as that of any player in the region and at least as cynical.
I am consistently puzzled that so few commentators who otherwise seem so sensitive about antisemitism mention it in this context. I'd like to avoid the conclusion that they find a protest against antisemitism less important than support for the Israeli war effort, but more and more it seems likely.
[He does present a "two-state solution" as a way forward.]
We've had a de facto two state solution for the last 60 years, so there has been sufficient time to go foward. Either you favor the continuation of the 60 year old two-state solution right now, or your don't. Chomsky does. Chomsky's purpose is to preclude and prevent fundamental criticism of Israel. The Zionists control the entire spectrum of the debate, from Bill Kristol on the right to Chomsky on the left. Any non-Zionist is completely excluded from the US media and politics (with the singular exception of Ron Paul, who lays low on the issue).
[Israel need not stand "in the middle of millions of hostile Arabs" if it does not want to.]
You're joking, right. You want them to pack up and leave?
[If they would just establish an actual liveable place for Palestinian refugees,]
I'm surprised that you can't see how racist, not to mention hopeless, this idea is.
[That being the case, the motive for anger could be withdrawn.]
Yes it could. But not so long as Israel remains a Jewish state on Arab land. The one-state solution is the only just, not to mention stable, solution.
[This unspoken but fairly obvious US policy is about as antisemitic as that of any player ... ]
US policy is made by Zionists and supports Zionism 100%. The Zionists are not antisemitic, no matter how you try to spin it. That trope is part of the game of course, with right wing Zionists calling left wing Zionists like Chomsky 'anti-semite' and worse, but it's all a charade.
How exactly does Chomksy equate with Lerner? I don't believe Chomsky is a Jewish White Supremacist and although I don't agree with everyting he writes and says, on many issues he is dead on the mark.
We may not agree with his stances on 9-11 and certain aspects of Israel/Zionism. However, if you look at the larger picture, demonizing Chomsky is a bit hysterical. What do you have to say, in general about the man's record over the last decades?
Very few public figures can match Chomsky.
[What do you have to say, in general about the man's record over the last decades? ]
Chomsky is one of my favorites. After reading his articles I'm usually left in awe of his knowledge and insight. And I usually agree with him. However, on the issue of the Israel issue he is just another Zionist who is trying to use the US to accomplish Israel's ends. See above post for how I see his role in the good cop (Chomsky) bad cop (Kristol) charade we see in the US.
Fair enough, although calling Chomsky a Zionist is not helpful. I reckon that depends on how you define Zionism. Dershowitz, Horowitz, Kristol, Nuttyahoo, Cheney, Rahym Emmanuel, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden etc. are racist imperialist Zionists. Chomsky is clearly quite a different animal. I would welcome Chomsky's discourse any day over the propaganda that our media and govt. spews.
Chomsky IS a Zionist. Here's how I define it - one who supports the existence of Israel as a Jewish state (that is the raison d'etre of Zionism). Simple criteria - a Zionist favors the two-state solution, a non-Zionist favors the one-state solution.
But, I must confess, my whole analysis of Zionists restricting and dominating the entire spectrum of opinion ..... comes right from Chomsky .... I just looked this up ..... LOL ....
Noam Chomsky: How Propaganda Works in the West
"Keeping the People Passive & Obedient
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views."
This is EXACTLY what we have in the US on the Israel issue, with the lively debate being between Kristol on the right and Chomsky on the left. That is surely the span of debate on CD, and it is ever more restricted in most of US media/politics.
Put it this way, the only acceptable opinion is US media/politics is some variation of Zionism. Non-Zionists are 100% excluded. Of course, we have lively debate between the various schools of the Zionists, like that between Kristol and Chomsky, but non-Zionists, who do not believe Israel has a 'right to exist as a Jewish state' are excluded 100%.
Yeah, but how functional is that definition of Zionism? From a functional power base perspective how can Zionism be separated from the US military and US and British spawned oil companies, and their intentions and assistance in picking the Middle East for a Jewish homeland over Africa, Europe, etc.; in conjunction with the Jewish faction of Zionist power? Doesn't one's argument lose power when it's filled with conceptual labels that are disassociated from the acting intentions and powers within the Earth plane carbon field?
[Yeah, but how functional is that definition of Zionism?]
It's spot on, completely functional. It's not all encompassing, however. Zionism doesn't explain the motivations or role of anyone but the Jews, really. And, it doesn't completely explain the motivations and role of the Jews, but it does explain a significant part.
[From a functional power base perspective how can Zionism be separated from the US military and US and British spawned oil companies, and their intentions and assistance in picking the Middle East for a Jewish homeland over Africa, Europe, etc.; in conjunction with the Jewish faction of Zionist power?]
The relationship between Zionism and the British and US oligarchies is beyond me, but I'm trying to discover it. From the power base perspective I suspect they operate together for the most part. This is the grand conspiracy, it's largely a mystery to me.
[Doesn't one's argument lose power when it's filled with conceptual labels that are disassociated from the acting intentions and powers within the Earth plane carbon field?]
The label and definition of Zionist seems like a good one to me, especially in explaining the role and motivations of the US Zionists like Chomsky, Perle, et. al., all the public Zionists. Just because Zionism doesn't explain everything doesn't mean it doesn't explain anything.
Chomsky is not the only one in the debate; Norm Finkelstein, Joel Kovel, Phyllis Bennis, Neve Gordon, Ilan Pappe, Walt and Mearsheimer, Ali Abunimah, Chris Hedges, Robert Fisk, Naomi Klein and many others are at the forefront of the debate.
Chomsky is somewhat in the background on this issue as I see it. Kristol's credibility is non-existent, he can't make a logical argument anymore.
OK, let's go throught the list ...
Finkelstein - Zionist,
Kovel - non-Zionist,
Phyllis Bennis - after 10 minutes of googling I can't tell
Gordon - Zionist
Pappe - non-Zionist
Walt and Mearsheimer - Zionists
ali Abunimah - LOL - non-Zionist
Hedges - Zionist
Fisk - 10 minutes of googling and I can't tell
Klein - implicit non-Zionist since she favors boycott, although not critical of a two state solution that preserves universal human rights, i.e. a horse with feathers.
The point is not that there are no non-Zionists, the point is that they are excluded from the media and politics in the US. None of the above definite non-Zionists in the above list are published in the US. As for the maybes, Fisk is published in Europe and makes some of the blogs in the US, and Klein makes some of the blogs, but neither, as best I can tell, is explicitly non-Zionist, and only Klein favors political action against the current Israeli govt.
So, Chomsky and Kristol are not the point, the point is that ALL the media figures generally taken to be Zionists, like Kristol, really are Zionists, and ALL the media figures generally taken to oppose Zionism, like Chomsky, are also Zionists. This is Chomsky's role in the vanguard of the Zionist state. To provide a false image of opposition to Zionism. Marginal figures like Kovel, Pappe, and Abunimah, don't figure into the equation in the US. Klein is an outlier. She's the closest thing to a non-Zionist media/political figure in the US.
Incidentally, to see a real non-Zionist analysis of the founding of Israel and its consequences, google holohoax 101
Well, your narrow definition of Zionist is not quite the same as mine. I agree with most of what you say, and also what Puck points out above. However if people who you say are Zionists, why are they not included in the corporate propaganda machine? Why does AIPAC call them traitors, self-hating Jews and anti-Semites? We are splitting hairs at this point but I would welcome any of them on mainstream TV all though they are not pure enough for you.
I do disagree with your assessment of the authors I list, NONE of them are marginal because there is no discusssion in the mainstream discourse. They are ALL marginal.
Your lack of familiarity with many of the authors I listed leads me to believe you are making a sweeping generalization without researching the topic fully, no disrespect or arrogance intended.
Lumping Chomsky et al. in with Dershowitz, Cheney, Horiwitz, Kristol etc. does not help at all. It just confuses the matter. A more nuanced definition of Zionism or a sub-category would make the classification nomenclature more effective.
[Why does AIPAC call them traitors, ]
This is the part I love the best. The right wing Zionists call the left wing Zionists not only traitor but anti-semites. Look at what happened to J. Carter, also Chomsky, Finklestein, the rest. That's to be expected. Here is where it gets good. The left wing Zionists have also figured out a way to call the right wing Zionists anti-semites, I just saw it in another article. Here's how it goes - the left wing Zionists claim that the right wing Zionists policies are in the long run detrimental to Israel, and therefore the right wing Zionists are de facto anti-semites. You gotta love this.
[I do disagree with your assessment of the authors I list, NONE of them are marginal because there is no discusssion in the mainstream discourse. They are ALL marginal.]
You were trying to list non-Zionists. I pointed out that many were in fact Zionists. You should thank me for enlightening you. I had to briefly research some of them, and am happy to learn of non-Zionists like Abu Abunimah and others, LOL. Maybe all on your list are marginal, but there are plenty of prominent Zionists - Jimmy Carter, Charles Krauthammer, every media and political figure in the US !!! That's the point.
[Lumping Chomsky et al. in with Dershowitz, Cheney, Horiwitz, Kristol etc. does not help at all. ]
It does help. That is my whole point, as made by Chomsky himself. It is essential to see what is going on. Just as Chomsky writes in his propaganda analysis, the Zionists are controlling the ENTIRE SPECTRUM OF THE DEBATE. Non-Zionists like Abu Abuminah are simply not heard from. That is what sophisticated propaganda is all about. Any fool can see that Charles Krauthammer is a Zionist, you have to pause for a moment to realize that Chomsky is no less a Zionist. Chomsky is what I call a 'humanitarian' Zionist, like Carter, Finkelstein, etc., they want the Palestinians to give up their land, but they'll be nice to them in return. And, they never call themselves Zionists. Their purpose is to fool you, to make you think the entire range of opinions is getting attention in the media, like CD, when in fact every opinion expressed is a variation of Zionism. They are the true vanguard of the Zionist state.
What a pathological liar and back-stabber you be,
if Chomsky had friends like you he surely would need no enemies.
calm down and read my comment again. Have you heard of understatement as a rhetorical device? We aint talin religion here, so quit with the holier than thou attitude.
Man of intelligent ruling class, half of society has not the
intelligence to understand you, surely an intent to lock in
darkness is the goal of you.
You say part of what our hero says is light, part is darkness,
and unless we have your intelligence we cannot tell light
from darkness.
Since my return from the Vietnam War you Zionists have been repeating
such lies and fiction about Chomsky, for all you know how to do is
generate darkness and that is why your ungodly nation is,
"Babylon, land of deepest shadow and deep darkness,
where even light is like darkness."
Excellent concise summary of Chomsky!
But to be fair, Edward Herman was the principal author, and did most of the leg-work, for "Manufacturing Consent - The political Economy of the Mass Media". I hope everyone here has read it.
Great book, and Herman's independent work is definitely worth time.
- The Myth of the Liberal Media: An Edward Herman Reader
- Triumph of the Market: Essays on Economics, Politics, and the Media
- Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the News in an Age of Propaganda with Matt Wuerker
- Corporate Control, Corporate Power: A Twentieth Century Fund Study (kind of hard to find)
There are probably others, but Herman makes a nicely delineated and well documented argument throughout.
You've got to love anarchists that ruffle mainstream feathers.
What?! He speaks out against the atrocities of the Warfare State? Silence this man!
He is very right, and I am suprised at how stupid people can be for believing that he is anti-american, just because he isn't ignorantly patriotic. I agree with Chomsky!
Most progressives like Chomsky love American ideals and are not anti-American, which the whore press likes to call them, but are anti-American foreign policy, because like Chomsky correctly states, American foreign policy is straight out of the mafia; however, I am disappointed that he was conned to vote for Obomba, but it just proves my point again: Obomba, the consummate con man!
Congress, with very few exceptions, is a bunch of old capos in the service of the corporate big bosses!
Chomsky knows why he is virtually ignored by the "too big to fail" media.
My Grandparents came out of the Jewish social bund secret meetings in the woods and chased by the Czar's Cossacks.... my Grandfather was an anarchist socialist too. He made a threat against the Czar and probably kept his real name a secret to be safer from the secret police.
You don't have to study to know about what goes on when you grow up targeted in that kind of empire of War.
Chomsky is true to his roots.
Noam Chomsky in criticizing US foreign policy is being the truest patriot in the tradition of Charles Schurz, who said in his , "My country right or wong When it's right, keep it right. When it's wrong put it right," The main objection I have to Chomsky is extreme antagonism toward the Kennedys which comes out even in this article. I recommend he read "JFK and the Unspeakable" by James Douglass and maybe even "Brothers" by David Talbott to get a more objective look at the Kennedys and especially John F Kennedy. JFK did actually quite a few things which were liberal to progressive while he was in the White House, and both those book make that point. JFK didn't commit to using unlimited air power against the insurgency in Southeast Asia the way his successors did. He never backed a coup against any truly democratic government such as the Greek one, which is in birthplace of democracy the way Lyndon B Johnson did. Nor did he do so with the independent regime in Indonesia over the dead bodies of about a million people. Kenndey wouldn't even allow any direct US military support for the Bay of Pigs invasion In contrast both Kennedy's successors supported regime change to bring in puppet governments in the Third World routinely over tens of thousands of bodies. This even continued under Gerald Ford in East Timor.
The GOP president elected in 1968 would back one regime change to put in right wing puppet governments after another. Surely the mass of people in these countries suffered much more with JFK's successors than with JFK, based on this fact.
Bill Fulbright, known as such a liberal dove favored using US air power in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 but Kennedy refused, and for that reason we are here to talk about this today. Fuilbright would later admit that Kennedy was right and Fulbright was wrong. The time this occurred the people in the USA were pushing for a full scale military confrontation with Moscow as was the US Congress. Nobody in the US Congress at that time was attacking Kennedy for being to much of a war monger, and even the Nation was providing only the mildest of criticism of JFK on foreign and domestic policy. Nation after the Bay of Pigs would even say that Kennedy was much less of a hard liner than either Harry Truman or Dwight D Eisenhower.
AD
"Noam Chomsky in criticizing US foreign policy is being the truest patriot in the tradition of Charles Schurz, who said in his , "My country right or wong When it's right, keep it right. When it's wrong put it right,"
Great comments everyone here,
Presidents have to resist the one-sided War-hawk agenda. Both Thomas Jefferson and President John Adams before him, had to fight tooth and nail to keep the War-hawks from bankrupting the country in pursuit of military self-glory and greater world war. Even though, Hamilton had raised a tremendous Army and massed it in preparation to invade Florida, President John Adams refused to give the order to advance; in fact he expressly forbade the Federalist agenda to conquer it. Hamilton, fully dressed in a General's Uniform and having personally trained this vast army, never forgave him. It ran out of funding and dissolved. The price for Adam's courage, was political retribution. Hamilton moved heaven and earth to convince Federalists not to back Adams for re-election. This gave us Jefferson, who despite open French raids on American shipping refused to get sucked into another European conflict.
Unfortunately today, We have no John Adams (Federalist: conservative) or no Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican: Libertarian/Liberal)
We have instead, a selected figurehead from Harvard who exists in the shadow of a Pentagon Mafia and a Wall Street Mafia. Norm Chomsky is right: To restore democracy, we must cherish and protect the internet. Once it is strangled, even by just slowing down sites such as CD, All is lost. All of us have to support Net Neutrality. See the eff.org. Send them something however small.
TJ
"To criticize those in power, is the highest form of patriotism" - Thomas Jefferson
How interesting that you quote Charles(Karl)Schurz who was sent into the Southern States by President Lincoln to report on the conditions of the former, now liberated, slaves. When Schurz, who is thought to have coined the phrase "one acre of land and a mule" returned to Washington to present his report Lincoln was dead and Johnson apparently never read his report.
My great-grandfather almost accompanied his good friend Schurz when he decided to leave Europe and migrate to the USA. Schurz hid briefly in my great grandpa's inn (Zaehringer Hof in Offenburg) when he was a fugitive from the law of the State of Baden.
It should also be pointed out that US bombing in Vietnam began in March 1964 under LBJ. Kennedy not only did not bomb Vietnam, he had set a timeline for withdrawal. The book Lessons in Disaster, McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam by Gordon M Goldstein presents a thorough analysis of JFK's intentions toward that country.
We are beginning to learn from the occupation of Iraq that "setting a timetable for withdrawal" is not identical with actual withdrawal. Just as Obama cannot easily accept being accused of "losing Afghanistan" with Presidential elections coming up, so it would have been difficult for JFK to accept "losing Vietnam" with his reelection at stake. JFK expanded our involvement in Vietnam and talked about some timetable for withdrawal but never withdrew any unit from Vietnam. Neither you nor I can possibly know what he would have decided had he not been murdered. My hunch, but it is not more than a hunch, is that he would have ended our involvement in Vietnam because he had experienced the ravages of war himself, something Obama cannot claim.
Read the book I suggested. Bundy is very clear that JFK wanted us out of Vietnam. He steadfastly refused to commit combat troops to the theatre, only advisers. LBJ sent in the first combat troops in 1965. When LBJ took the oath of office in November 1963, American casualties totaled 108.
Yes, thanks for clearing that up.... It is also why the CIA/Mafia with ties to hit men around the world took JFK out.
They even had another Oswald set up in the background to keep the great cover of confusion. the cover up in the name of National Security... ostensibly to avoid nuclear war.
The Southern strategy and the rise of the Old eastern establishment takeover with the Texas Oil military CIA/mob connections now rob and poison the world behind the shield of "full spectrum dominance".
We are in for a hell of a fight!
The side of profits, like all of US fighting for the fund of it, of course!
I do not believe it was only a "perception" but was actual policy for the USA to support "harsh and repressive regimes" in order to get cheap oil.
Chomsky's Mafia Point is well taken.
It does seem as if the primary purpose of the USA invasions is akin to the ancient practice of a total laying waste to defiant opponents.
Thus the instigation of civil war in both Iraq ( the swat like team that blew up the Golden Mosque of Sammarra)and Afghanistan( currently with the arming of Tajiks).
Chomsky is ignored by the media because the truth he reveals unnerves the corporate controlled power structures.
Noam Chomsky just isn't sexy, at least by American standards. I once read where Timothy Leary advised Dr. Kervorkian to leave the houses of those he put rest wearing a hawaiian shirt, holding a champagne glass and with a big grin on his face. Somehow I think similar advice would do Chomsky well. Perceptions are so important in mass media.
If Brad Pitt had Chomsky's brains he still wouldn't get media exposure, your analysis is flawed. Chomsky doesn't get air time not because of his looks but because of his message, which the corporate media wants to stay away from like the plague. Look at Larry King, who's just as unattractive as Chomsky but gets on national TV every night.
Noam Chomsky is not a political campaigner.
not being blindly pro-American is not the same as being anti-American.