Chomsky Miami Herald USA FULL EaRTH RULER

An Appreciation of Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Full Spectrum Dominance, by Noam Chomsky

By GLloyd Rowsey

When it was published in 2004, Hegemony or Survival extended Noam Chomsky's critique of post-WWII American foreign policy into 2003; and it put the developments in 2003 squarely in the context of the evidence for American foreign policymakers' willingness to risk the human race's survival in their quest for global dominance.

The book appeared at one of the darkest times in American history. Bushco had invaded Iraq, and there seemed to be little hope that the American war machine could be slowed, much less stopped.

In the book, Professor Chomsky conducts his readers on a tour of various hot spots around the world noting undisputed facts about which the American public was befuddled in 2003, due to the distortions of politicians and pundits in the media.
The author is sometimes sarcastic, which I don't recall in his more scholarly pre-1990 writings. For example, on page 175 of the Metropolitan Books First Edition, where the tour stops in Israel, there is this, "More than half of Qalquila's agricultural lands were reported to have been confiscated, to be annexed to Israel, with the munificent offer of onetime compensation equal to the market price of one year's harvest."
But these expressions of exasperation are few and far between. And Chomsky proceeds characteristically unflinchingly in Hegemony or Survival, wielding his two redoubtable intellectual weapons: (1) his moral imperative that policies must be judged prospectively by the foreseeable risks and rewards they entail, not by whether they "succeed" or "fail" in retrospect; and (2) his methodological imperative that his analysis shall be based on public information.
Hegemony or Survival reprised, deepened, broadened and raised to the highest level Chomsky's critique of post-WWII American foreign policy. But in 2004, public irresponsibility and celebrity worship seemed to be at an all-time high, and the book was widely ignored. At the time, I heard it suggested that America's “biggest national resource" was either Jack Nicholson or Ed Harris.

Today, that all seems like ancient history. And thankfully Noam Chomsky - America's biggest national resource - remains undeterred.

 
"How could I fail to speak with difficulty? I have new things to say." I'm sixty-seven and live in Northern California. I graduated from Stanford Law School in 1966 but have never practised law. I retired in 2001, after working 23 years for the U.S. Forest Service. I have radical politics, and before going to work for the Forest Service in 1978 I spent ten years trying to contribute to the revolution. 

I have a LiveJournal blog with one or two of my writings which aren't at OEN

YOUR OPINION: We are witnesses to the wake of democracy

he Patriot Ledger
Posted Oct 10, 2009 @ 05:01 AM

HALIFAX â€"
1/2 We are now a “corporatocracy,” not a democracy.
We listen to profits, not prophets.
Our media is dominated by five major corporations that, as Noam Chomsky points out in “The Manufacturing of Consent,” orchestrate the public demeanor and are urged on by the totally right wing pundits on the radio and television.
The Santa Clara Ruling passed in the last part of the 19th Century drove the first nail into the coffin of our democracy.
Corporations were now persons â€" the inequity is too obvious to mention â€" and the wake is being held as I write this.
GERALD LAGADEC
Halifax

Gerald, this is very scary, and very true. Anyone who payed attention over the last 30 yrs could see it coming. Starting with ' Reaganomics' The middle class has had their heads spun around with the right wing war cry, and their pockets were picked. Clinton did his share of damage, and W fast tracked it. Listen and watch what follows.
First of all we are supposed to have a constitutional republic , not a democracy. The real reason why America has lost her way is the lack of participation of the voters. People just dont care to get involved. Less than 255 of the elected voters come to the polls in municipal elections, that is shamful. We get the govrnment we deserve by not participating. The elected officials get away with what they get away with, not becasue they are evil, but becasue for evil to triumph good men do nothing to stop it

Sure chief, our economy has nothing to do with the national economy, we live on an Island ? Don't be so angry .. a lot of people were fooled by the great neo-con B.S about trickle down, supply side, darwinistic pull yourself up by your bootstraps economics. The system is broken, and it was not the hardworking honest businessman or the average working stiff, it was the greedy power brokers who made their own rules ...... nobody was watching! Romney? F'n Romney? This silver spooned manikin made his money by buying up corporations, laying everyone off , then short spike in stock and its sell time! Scam, scam, scam.

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Anti-war activist's works banned at prison camps

US intellectual and linguist Noam Chomsky gives a lecture at the Catholic University of Peru, Oct. 23, 2006, in Lima. Chomsky is in Peru to give two academic lectures and get in touch with the Peruvian press and politicians. JAIME RAZURI / GETTY IMAGES

BY CAROL ROSENBERG
CROSENBERG@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Interventions for the library, which has more than 16,000 items.
Chomsky, 80, who has been voicing disgust with U.S. foreign policy since the Vietnam War, reacted with irritation and derision. ``This happens sometimes in totalitarian regimes,'' he told The Miami Herald by e-mail after learning of the decision.
``Of some incidental interest, perhaps, is the nature of the book they banned. It consists of op-eds written for The New York Times syndicate and distributed by them. The subversive rot must run very deep.''
Prison camp officials would not say specifically why the book was rejected but Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, a Guantánamo spokesman, said staff reviews ``every proposed or recommended library item to assess force protection issues associated with camp dynamics -- such as impact on good order and discipline.''
The banned book showed the bespectacled professor-emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in button-down shirt and sweater staring out of a black cover of a 2007 edition printed by a Beirut publishing house.
RESTRICTIONS
A rejection slip accompanying the Chomsky book did not explain the reason but listed categories of restricted literature to include those espousing ``Anti-American, Anti-Semitic, Anti-Western'' ideology, literature on ``military topics,'' and works that portray ``excessive graphic violence'' and ``sexual dysfunctions.''
The list of approved material includes poetry, fiction, art, math, history, religion, politics and current events.
A Pentagon defense lawyer sent the book to Ali Hamza al Bahlul, a confessed al Qaeda member who had worked as Osama bin Laden's media secretary in Afghanistan at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
A military jury convicted Bahlul, 40, of soliciting murder and conspiracy and sentenced him to life in prison in November for creating al Qaeda propaganda. The key evidence was a two-hour video he made by splicing fiery bin Laden speeches with Muslim bloodshed and stock news footage of the aftermath of the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole off Aden, Yemen.
Bahlul is currently the lone war crimes convict at Guantánamo, where the prison camps commander ordered him separated from the other 245 war-on-terror captives at the U.S. base in Cuba under an interpretation of the Geneva Conventions that forbids holding detainees with convicted prisoners. Two earlier convicts were sent back to their native countries, Australia and Yemen, and are now free after serving short sentences.
Prison camp staff would not say how many donated books have been refused.
BOOKS EVALUATED
But DeWalt said detainees are forbidden from receiving gifts of books as personal property. Instead, he said, books sent to the captives are evaluated for their suitability for the library -- a trailer where Defense Department staff have catalogued a collection that recently ballooned to more than 16,000 books, magazines and videos even as the Pentagon is downsizing the prison camp population.
President Barack Obama has ordered the prison camps closed by early next year, a deadline the White House now says it may miss.
Meantime, staff there say quality-of-life improvements will continue until the last detainee is gone.
The library is also a featured stop on weekly tours for reporters, members of Congress and other invited guests brought to the sprawling prison camp compound in a Pentagon bid to demonstrate that the much-maligned detention center is ``safe, humane and transparent.''
Library staff have since 2005 described the Harry Potter series as a borrowing bestseller among the mostly devout Muslim population -- and shown off translated versions in the stacks that separate Arabic from Urdu, French from Farsi and cover more than a dozen languages.
Other reportedly popular items include old World Cup soccer playoff videos, a French cuisine cookbook published in Beirut and scholarship on the Koran, prescreened to make sure they contain mainstream messages.
For a time, Richard Nixon's Victory Without War flew off the shelves, a librarian reported. So much so that alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed referred to it during a war court hearing earlier this year.
CHAVEZ FAVORITE
But not Chomsky, who in recent years got high-profile plugs from two of America's most ardent adversaries.
In September 2006, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez held up Chomsky's 2003 Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance in a speech at the United Nations that also likened President George W. Bush to Satan, and gave the book a bump in sales for several weeks.
A year later, bin Laden popped up in a keep-the-faith video address to his followers that proved he was alive and ridiculed the U.S. invasion of Iraq while praising the professor's ``sober words of advice prior to the war.''
DeWalt said ``force protection reasons'' barred him from explaining why any title or author was banned but said as of this week there were no Chomsky works of any type at the Guantánamo library in any language.
sourcewww,miamiherald,com/news/americas/guantanamo/story/1275646.html

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