One of the thoughts I've had about the idea of rent is that people who are landowners in the Americas could choose to give up permanent personal title (and the need for paying rent) and revert to the traditional standard, where personally using the land conveys the always-temporary right to keep doing it. So someone who's willing to *personally* 'care for' a piece of land by living on it, farming it, making sure that it doesn't get polluted, etc. would have an open-ended 'title' from the community to carry on. If enough people did that, it feels like it could gradually erode the European 'mine! mine!' way of life and restore the saner sharing that many aboriginals used to enjoy.

But as a practical matter the question remains where, how, by whom, and by what authority is the line drawn to reverse illegitimate territorial actions by states, military alliances, international orgs, etc., and how far back into human history is it reasonable to go to set such wrongs aright?
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The general standard is that, if people (for some definition of 'people') agree a law, then that law applies to them thereafter.

I have no doubt at all that the standard comes from the inbuilt need for predictability that evolved in all high-order life. Indeed, that's the *basis* for high-order life. If we're forced to endure a situation where the past is no guide to the present, i.e., where we can't predict the effects of our actions and can't predict how others will behave, we go mad and cease being able to function at all. We're pattern-matchers. If the patterns have no stable meaning, we're screwed and we stop functioning. That's what's so awful about delusions and hallucinations - the patterns we match in them have no real-world referents. And so we walk off the edge of a building because the voices assure us we can fly, or we shoot the strangers having coffee at the outdoor cafe because they're CIA and controlling our thoughts via the tv.

So the question 'how far back' has the answer 'for sure since the law'. And maybe further, depending. But for *sure* since the law. The law is the benchmark.

Which means that the answer in the case of Palestine is "1946 for sure". The descendents of the Jews who came to Palestine before 1946, they're good. They get to stay, if they want. In an important way it doesn't matter that they were able to come because of British guns. That was more or less 'the law' at the time.

But after 1946? New rules. 100% new rules. No colonialism. Political self-determination for all indigenous peoples. The fact that the law seems to be honored as much in the breech as the keeping doesn't count - psychopaths always ignore the laws, if they can. The trick is for the law-abiding to 'encourage' them to obey, instead. Our starting to hang them would be good.

The giveaway of Palestine was an egregious violation of the new laws, and no defence is possible. So it has to be undone for the same reason a robber doesn't get to keep the proceeds of his crime. What about the Jews who were born in Palestine-called-Israel? Being innocent of personal wrongdoing (if they are) they get to stay, though probably at a price. The incomers? Aroys mit!

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Would Native Americans, for example, be morally or legally legitimated in now demanding the uncreation of the USA and the full return of their stolen lands?
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No, because it was over before the rules changed. What the Europeans did was disgusting and, by our lights today, unethical as hell. But it was accepted practice, then.

But an excellent *ethical* case can be made, and shouldn't even need to be made, for compensation. Europeans can't un-invade, but we can pay rent. And the rent must be sized to the benefits and continue as long as the benefits continue, i.e. forever. The rent must be enough to ensure every aboriginal person of a comfortable, dignified life without want.

From my reading of Chomsky, I would say in response to,
"Every government in the world acts to protect itself and the primary interests of its people."

governments act to extend their power and control in the global arena, often at the expense of the primary interests of the people. He views governments, or any power structure generally, as disconnected from the people it purports to represent. It is obvious in the case of dictatorships but more subtle in the case of democracies. He does pick and choose facts to provide and omit, but I think his justification is that the other side of the story is well publicized.

Troll alert!

Irrational, anti semite Nobel Peace Prize winning comment. Oh and if Israel hits Iran first it will be a repeat of past strikes not an all out nuke strike. Hezbollah would never attack Isreal and Iran would never supply Hezbollah.

Contested Law is finally about what its empowered administrators say it is.
This doesn't make it the Law's determinations morally right or even legally consistent, necessarily. But it does make them legal -- until a counterforce has the power to say otherwise.
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Which is why I carefully distinguish between 'legal' and 'legitimate'. 'Legal' is merely whatever we can't prevent. 'Legitimate' is what we would agree is fair.

The Nazi treatment of the Jews was 'legal' under the Nazi legal system -- William O. Douglas believed that it was legal under international law at the time, too, and that Nürnberg was an ex-post-facto show trial, not unlike the ones any totalitarian state puts on as a sort of 'theater of legality'. The Allies *claimed* that international law had made land theft by force illegal before the Nazis started up, but no claimant (to my knowledge or, apparently, Douglas's) ever pointed to an agreed international document to defend that claim.

'Nazi law' is the only level on which the theft of Palestine was or the ongoing atrocities are 'legal', too.

And if we want not to be laughed at when we claim to be civilised, we need to remember that thefts and atrocities are no less thefts and atrocities just because there were crooked cops who helped and crooked judges who dismissed the victims' attempts to get justice. Fiat justicia, ruat coelum.

I think you can answer that: Because he doesn't go all gooey in the knees over how wonderful Gringolandia's history of murder and mayhem has been for the planet and its people.

Hell, here in Mexico--which is governed by an admittedly rightwing military kelptonarco gang of thieves who don't even believe in the separation of church and state, Chomsky packs any venue--especially with YOUNG PEOPLE. I knew I wouldn't be able to get anywhere close enough to see or hear him if I went to the UNAM in Mexico City, which is why I watched and listened to a fairly technically inept streaming on the La Jornada website.

Imagine what would be the situation in Gringoland if the NYT streamed him on its website: everybody in the Times building (soon to be owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim anyway) would be lynched.

But this is a useless legal point to make under the loose rubric of Zionism, since International Law created Israel's 1947-48 boundaries with due deliberation and intention.
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Not so. There is *nothing* in the UN Charter that grants it or any subset the power to decide who gets control of what land. No powerful nation would tolerate any such rule, especially not the US. What the US et al. did was, mutatis mutandis, what the Gang Of Five did in Bush v Gore.

It was a Crime Against Peace, and a Crime Against Humanity, and Truman and the Zionist leadership should all have been hanged for it.

The crime was committed largely as a sop to US Jews. Truman admitted he had to whip other countries into line, and that he was doing so for political reasons: the US was home to many Jews but few Arabs...not exactly a principled position, but certainly one consistent with other appalling choices he made such as going along with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Good insight, Moonpie, if perhaps without a positive direction.

The best advice Chomsky can offer is for us all to pressure competing imperialist governments to behave more nicely. Isn't that sweet? No mention of the need for working class insurrection or a Leninist party, of course. He doesn't have the nerve to say what he must know: the only way out is international communist revolution. Everything else is a distraction or delaying tactic that serves the present gross economic illegitimacy. He gets everybody fired up, but then offers a non-solution. At some point, it begins to look sinister, eh? Build the party of communist revolution, if you want universal peace, sustainability, equality and affluence. One thing is certain: capitalism offers NONE of the above.

And could you please share with us your plans and actions to resist the empire and corporatocracy?

Considering that he lived in the safe state of Massachusetts, Chomsky probably didn't vote for Obama.

But he did argue that election day be put in it's proper perspective. When one has no other choice in a situation, voting for the lesser evil is perfectly rational. However it is what the individual is doing the other 1460 days that is more important.

Ad hominem, Lex.

Radioactive weapons could reasonably be considered chemical warfare, but are usually treated as a different category. An atomic or hydrogen bomb depends on chemicals and distributes chemicals, though the central reaction that causes the principal explosion is not called a "chemical reaction."

Unfortunately, DU weapons are frequently not regarded as either.

"...in order to provide strong support to the other side in the class war. Maybe Chomsky should encourage such a development." –(kivals)

–You succinctly hit on one of Noam Chomsky's 'shortcomings.'

One can be in awe of and make use of the clarity of his commonsensical analysis, as 'analysis,' but there is always the residue of a curious, almost de-politicized 'neutrality' in all his work.

This adamantine refusal to endorse a harder left programmatic strategy is, it seems, the logical aspiration of his pacifism. This is an observation and should not be taken as a criticism that attempts to negate or quibble over the extreme and indomitable value of his oeuvre.

It is no longer up to Noam Chomsky to "encourage" the agenda of the next stage beyond his earnest proscriptions; that will have to be left up to others. Noam Chomsky is not a militant. The Chomsky dimension has alway excluded a more radical program of a purely political nature.

In fact, to many on the left he is not a 'leftist' at all, for better or for worse. I am in agreement with you that "other side of the class war" needs to be taken up by– as you correctly say– "a cohesive international movement."–(Jill Bains).

kivals,

I believe that your "endless class war" is soon to begin on a new chapter. Computers will soon allow international boycotts aimed at the costs of negitive externalities. Nations for instance, that have allowed imports of food products which cause diet-related disease epidemics, will eventually run into the same health-care wall, which the US is currently struggling with. When the world's taxpayers tire of paying the negitive externality costs of goods that benefit some stockholders of some nations, and not others, and some classes on a global basis, and not others, international boycotts should follow. These same types of costs are also at the center of the climate change issues. And corporations will have the choice of complying, or folding. Corporations will be put at odds with their stockholders and are therefore completely vulnerable. Globalization, for all of its flaws so far, has a silver lining that is going to change the dynamics of the corporatocracy. This in part due to the threat of international boycotts, but also because international trade agreements will be forced to deal with the negitive externality issues as dictated by world opinion.

Ummmmm... Chomsky is one of the most famous anarchists (Libertarian Socialist to be more specific) in the world. He - and other anarchists - would advocate for a world without nation states. In fact, I bet he would agree with much of what you said. Furthermore, a "cohesive international movement" is essentially what existed from the 1860s - 1930s (approximately), at least as much of a movement that was possible. May 1st, a day celebrated all over the world (not in America) was actually a day where workers celebrated the struggle of America workers in acquiring rights like the 5 day work week (and paid tribute to the Haymarket Massacre). funny, how that has been thrown down the memory hole. A worldwide holiday that celebrates the rights American workers gained, and we don't even know it exists in America. So... I agree, there needs to be a "cohesive international movement" that includes all the peoples of the world. Most writers who are advocating more democratic control over resources, decision making, and the like would agree as well... in fact, I believe it was Marx who wrote "Workers of the world unite."

Chomsky (and many other academics) understand that this cancer of global Empire is a hidden tumor in this last super-power/Empire, and that it is our seminal problem. They have spoken out about this Empire. The American people must elect, or now change the will of their poorly chosen president, to speak out on Empire, to 'Break the Silence' --- even by shaming him into it, if necessary.

Obama’s crucial decisions on Afghanistan --- and ‘Beyond Afghanistan’ --- on EMPIRE.

All the media talk is about the crucial decision that Obama faces in Afghanistan. Whether to give in to the generals, and allow the war to expand, after years of 40,000 to 70,000 US troops fighting and training Afghanistanis, to over a 100.000 troops (or more) with a massive weapons build-up.

But while the intense speculation regarding Obama’s decision about expanding the Afghanistan War, the designed-to-be-expanded ‘Global War on Terrorism’, into a likely AfPak war is on everyone’s front-burner, Obama has a multiplicity of other foreign policy decisions, and an even more vast array of domestic economic and social goals he desperately wants to pursue in the U.S.

Has any president, has any leader, ever had so many critical decisions to make at one time, and so many issues to speak to the American people about –-- and build their confidence that he can speak with them openly and address their combined problems?

Has any leader ever had such a problem in dealing with critical domestic issues that mean so much to him, and yet had such risks to his plans and hopes caused by a foreign war he would rather not have to speak about?

Like Obama, Rev. Martin Luther King was confronted with a similar monumental decision about whether to speak-out against the imperialist war ‘abroad’, that was grinding up the working-class sons of both black and white Americans, or to continue focusing on his most heart-felt problem ‘at home’ of inequality and racism’s tyranny against young blacks.

For more than a year, Rev. King kept his focus on the racial battle at home, and would not be detoured by addressing the combination of multiple issues that would inevitably spring from taking-on the crimes of imperialist foreign war, domestic racism, and the ‘class-warfare’ that linked these crimes of Empire.

Finally, on April 4th, 1967, and at the Riverside Church in New York City, Dr. King decided that it was “A Time to Break Silence” not only about Vietnam, but Beyond Vietnam, and to speak the truth about the nature of Empire and the class-war that Empire always uses to maintain its unfair, unjust, and un-democratic control over the indivisible political-economics of power both ‘abroad’ and ‘at home’.

Hopefully, Obama will reach the same monumental decision as Dr. King – and even more hopefully, average Americans of all colors will respond to a seminal outing of Empire by recognizing their common humanity, their common-wealth in country, their common ‘public interest’ in democracy (against the ‘private interest’ of Empire), and by treating this 21st century messenger and leader against Empire and for democracy differently than Dr. King was treated.

I hope that Obama is benefiting, in his time of decision, from taking the time to re-read King’s Riverside speech:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

King noted, “The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit”

And today, hopefully, Obama will take note that, “The war in [fill in the blank____________] is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit”

King continued:

“It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Finally, King concludes with, “If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”

I hope that Obama, in preparing to make his choice, recognizes that the multiplicity of those “jangling discords of our world”, those pressing problems ‘abroad’ and ‘at home’ are but the uniform fingerprints of one thing ---- EMPIRE.

I hope that Obama recognizes that those “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism”, plus the arrogance of super-power (as Francis Fukuyama now recognizes) are really the shadow of EMPIRE --- even if it is presented under the veil of sweet sounding speeches and through the facade of 'Vichy' democracy.

I can only hope that Obama recognizes that what makes peaceful revolution impossible is EMPIRE --- and that he soon shares this terrible truth with the American people, that the Empire is posing as us, the U.S.

Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine

Chomsky is not alone in this, Struggle. If there's anyone working on strategy and tactics (except for demonstrations) they're keeping it a closely guarded secret.

I don't get it. How can progressives ever expect to have any influence without a plan, and a public forum to formulate that plan?

The problems are obvious to us all, but no one seems interested in discussing doing anything about them. How strange.

Actually, Chomsky is pretty explicit about what can be done: organize and educate. his major points, are always that democracy is being undermined. After all, all of these evils of the world, the majority of the population dislikes (insert atrocities here). If we democratize our institutions: unionize the workforce, take television back from corporate elites after all the airwaves belong to the people, change the laws re: corporations so that they are beholden to the STAKEHOLDERS in the community, not the shareholders in Wall St., etc... then eventually the structures of power that are making these decisions to bomb Iraq, or support Israel, or invade Afghanistan, or deny Health Coverage, etc... will lose their legitimacy and the population will be free to make decisions that benefit us all, not just the top 1%.

but... it all starts with educating and organizing. The population already agrees with most of the things we all agree with. They just don't see how anything can be accomplished. It doesn't have to be that way. An educated, mobilized, organized population is the worst nightmare for corporate America, because that means real, substantive democracy, and elites in America hate democracy.

Not Allan, I am a little confused about your opinion of Mr.Chomsky's position on Zionism. I admittedly do not know much on this subject. But, you seem to be accusing Mr. Chomsky of being on both sides of the Zionist fence at the same time(considering his position from the article)?

As for your "It is time for some non-Zionist critics of US pollicy to be heard", I totally agree. I wrote this on a thread here just a few days ago:

..."That is not to suggest though that the domestic economy would not benefit from higher wage levels right now, because it would, any comparison to economic trends of the 1960s shows that. But there is a more pressing consideration. For decades the IMF has encouraged poor nations to buy dollar related assets. These assets were then used as criteria so as to deturmine credit worhtiness and this affects the interest rate levels that poor nations are required to pay on devolopment loans etc.. So, without going into the moral issues here, which I doubt the word limit would allow, the value of the dollar affects the global economy to such an extent that its value trumps all other considerations. (please do not think that I am advocating anything here, this is all intended to be objective)"

"So, now it is important to understand just how fragile the value of the dollar is. Hypothetically, if the the Chinese for example, decided to exchange their vast dollar related holdings for gold and other simular assets the supply of dollars to the currency market would cause the dollar's value to plummet. This would simutaneously cause gold values to spike with commodity values not far behind. But of course the Chinese would not actually benefit because the global economy would collapse. And it is this balance between gain and loss that maintains economic order. So it is critical to understand that economic stability is in part due to the global dependence on the dollar's value, that maintains economic order. A type of deturrent exists as the result of the incentivizing done through the development loan process and other reserve currency implications. This due in part, as I explained, by using the holding of dollar related assets as criteria so as to encourage a dependency on the dollar's value. (Clever and Arrogant)"

"What this dependency has done though is create a positive wealth flow from poor nations to rich ones. According to Dr. Stiglitz, for every dollar the poor nations get in aid, three dollars is gained by the developed nations via trade. And so it is critical to understand that the U.S. military is a defacto global-economy-police-force. It is widely known in leadership circles that hegemony is intrinsic to world trade and so the potential for conflict is very high at the national level. The little wars that have become so much a part of this nation's foreign policy, are in part intended as a warning to those who might threaten economic stability. Which, conviently, happens to be in the world's best interest. But it is what it is, and wages are not going to rise significantly in this country so long as the current world order exists. The U.S. has chosen its role in the Globalization plan and it thereby has limitted the alternatives of its people."

The above was on the subject of Minimum Wages as related to a position that Ralph Nader had presented in an article that touched on a variety of issues. It applies to my point here, and yours I presume, because I consider the value of the dollar to be far more significant than the cost of crude. Oil is of course the most important commodity, and the mid-East is the most important region. But I think the Zoinist view has had a "squeaky wheel" affect on how Americans prioritize what ultimately shapes their opinions. Most Americans have heard a greal deal about mid-east issues, even going back to before the current wars in that region, but surprisingly little is made out of the fact that the U.S. has 700+ military bases in 140+ nations. Again, according to Dr.Stiglitz, the populations of some poor nations have received as little as 5% of the total value of resources being extracted from their countries.

Most of what is known by the public is of course greatly influenced by the MSMs incessant spin. A spin which Mr. Chomsky has fought against like no other. So without suggesting that Mr. Chomsky has not done his share of reporting such instances of neo-imperialism, because his voice has been a critical one, and a voice devoted to injustice everywhere, but he does put too much emphasis on mid-east issues insofar as the need for his voice is concerned on a global scale. It is however his voice and so it is unfair to blame Mr. Chomsky for what is one of the world's most informed viewpoints and what is ultimately his viewpoint(not to say that you suggested otherwise). But if your contention is that Jewish viewpoints are too prevelant because Jews represent too high of a percentage of intellectuals, then I completely agree with that evaluation. And as a non-Jew I suspect that the imbalance of "smarts" has less to do with Jews being smarter, than it does with non-Jews being dumber, myself included. Perhaps we have had it too easy in this country, for too long. And I think you made an important point with your comment.