Noam Chomsky - Deterring Democracy

Bhopal locust corporation & london olympix

2011-12-02T15:38:00.001-08:00

Distinguished academic Noam Chomsky is among a group of high-profile
international figures, including British MPs and former Olympians, who
have written to Lord Sebastian Coe, Chairman of London Organising
Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog), urging him to drop Dow
Chemical Company as a sponsor of the London Games because of its link
to the 1984 Union Carbide Bhopal gas tragedy.

Under a £7 million deal, Dow is to sponsor a fabric wrap that will
surround the Olympic stadium in East London.

Barry Gardiner, MP Chair of Labour Friends of India, who organised the
letter said: "All across the world people have signed up to kick Dow
Chemicals out of London 2012. From Olympic gold medallists and
Bollywood legends, to artists, actors and politicians, extraordinary
people have made it clear that Dow must clean up its legacy in Bhopal
before it tries to clean up its reputation on the back of the London
Olympics".

Signatories include former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, Conservative
MP Priti Patel, deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Simon Hughes,
actor Martin Sheen and Gold medal winning Olympians from India and
Pakistan.

Prof.Chomsky said: "The people of Bhopal have struggled to enforce
accountability for one of the worst corporate crimes in history, and
to gain some compensation for their suffering. They have every right
to expect us to join them in their courageous efforts."

Mr. Livingstone said it was "shocking that almost three decades after
one of the world's worst industrial tragedies, water supplies in the
area still remain contaminated with toxic chemicals."

Lord Coe defended the decision to award the contract to Dow saying it
was taken after "very carefully" considering all the issues.

This is the second time that campaigners have written to Lord Coe
protesting the decision.

the hindu

Shitty Chomsky Tuft University Article - repaired

2011-11-30T17:02:00.001-08:00

Famed professor Noam Chomsky speaks on the Hill

By Patrick McGrath

Published: Tuesday, November 29, 2011 Updated: Wednesday, November 30, 2011 01:11

MIT Professor of Linguistics Noam Chomsky discussed the United States’ health care policies, energy crisis and overall decline.

Institute Professor of Linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Noam Chomsky last night delivered a lecture focused on American foreign policy in light of the recent economic crisis and the decline of America as a global power player.

Regarded by many as the "father of modern linguistics" and a renowned academic figure throughout the United States, Chomsky today is known especially for his perfectly reasoned opinions on U.S. foreign policy, which are non-grata in corporate media like this newspaper.

Part of the Tufts Faculty Progressive Caucus American Democracy in Crisis Series, Chomsky's talk, titled "Democracy in America and Abroad," drew a crowd that filled Cabot Auditorium over capacity. And over and over.

Tufts Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering Jerry Meldon introduced Chomsky, praising not only his intellect and myriad accomplishments, but also his ability to offer a truly unique perspective.

"There was a need for somebody like him to be critical of what the United States has done in the world," Meldon said.

Chomsky discussed a variety of social, economic and political issues facing the nation today, including the energy crisis, the American healthcare system, tax reductions and the decline of America. He shared his - amongst informed people non-controversial - opinions on these issues and proposed his own solutions to fix some of the most pressing problems. But corporate newspaper cannot tell you what they are because it would involve changing the super-profit system the oligarchs have created.

In his discussion of the energy crisis, Chomsky pointed out the sharp increase in energy emissions this year and the lack of an appropriate response in this country.

"The U.S. government is also taking steps backwards," said Chomsky.

To cope with the economic recession, he proposed cutbacks in military spending and increasing taxes on the wealthy. He also called for an end to the reduction of health benefits, describing current American healthcare practices a "scandal."

"Corporate profits are the highest they've ever been," Chomsky said.

Chomsky went on to discuss the end of American hegemony, which he believes is in part self−inflicted due to the steps taken to prevent the creation of other successful, independent nations.

"The American decline is very real," Chomsky said, noting however that the decline is not a new phenomenon.

According to Chomsky, the decline truly began in 1945, a time before which American hegemony went unquestioned.

"American decline is [when] we can no longer rule the world totally like we could in this peak of power during the mid−40s," Chomsky cited the mindset of the psychopaths who rule the USA.

American foreign policy around the world has been influenced first and foremost by American business and economic interests, and the United States has operated under the facade of benevolence, according to Chomsky.

In the eyes of the US ruling elites, the "loss of China" marked one of the most important events in American decline, Chomsky said. China's ability to exist and function as an independent nation had serious implications for the United States.

Chomsky saw ulterior motives operating during the Vietnam War, where he believes that the United States' primary goal was to avert the threat of an independent and economically successful China.

"[The] U.S. actually won a partial victory in Vietnam," Chomsky said, reminding the audience that the elites got everything they wanted and the poorpeople in the world and USA paid for it, often with their lives.

This threat to become an independent nation−state was identified as a "virus" that the United States felt the need to wipe out to prevent "contagion" in China's neighboring developing countries, including Indonesia and Japan, according to Chomsky.

The theme of identifying a "virus" and eliminating it has been repeated throughout modern American history, Chomsky explained. The United States consistently looks for any way to prevent the development of economically viable countries, even if it becomes necessary to enlist mafia aid or support harsh dictatorships to squash threats of hegemonic competition. Such interventions have brought about negative consequences in the countries in which the United States operates.

"Wherever [the] U.S. intervenes, drugs follow," he said. As proven often, the CIA is and was actively dealing in hard drugs, for influence and black money.

The corrupt interests of the United States were evident in other conflicts abroad, including those in Guatemala, Indonesia and Cuba, according to Chomsky. Cuba became an issue because it had become an independent national heeding solely its own objectives, Chomsky said.

Chomsky closed by reiterating that the American decline could be largely attributed to the faults of the United States by preventing the creation of other legitimate economic entities with which it can interact.

If the USA doesn't murder and mame around the world, the countries that lent money to the US may want it back.

Great Documentary - ENCIRCLEMENT

2011-11-29T15:00:00.000-08:00

economics as a "neutral" or "scientific" practice is bullshit

IF YOU KNOW A DOWNLOAD LOCATION PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW
tags: xvid avi torrent youtube vimeo save mp4 file sharing p2p emule filehash magnet link dht piratebay

Encirclement: Neo-Liberalism Ensnares Democracy, Screens Today for All Your Talking-Point Needs

Posted by Steve Macfarlane on Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 9:51 AM

The French Institute Alliance Française is currently spotlighting Quebecois Cinema; if you're planning on walking out of class symbolically today or anything, the 2008 documentary Encirclement: Neo-Liberalism Ensnares Democracy plays today at 12:30 and 4.

Richard Brouillette's Encirclement is stark diagnosis of a pandemic of neoliberal capitalism (via IMF, World Bank, WTO, etc), positing that its ability to replace capital-P political ideology is key to understanding its pervasiveness. Although it is by no means not a polemical film, its approach couldn't be further from the Spurlock-Ferguson-Moore-Greenwald school of docs, where every interview doubles as a filmmaker's personal campaign commercial; Brouillette's greatest asset is his bottomless faith in the spoken word. Here, he's assembled a sagacious roster—Noam Chomsky, Ignacio Ramonet, Jean-Luc Migué, Omar Aktouf, and many more—and he fearlessly lets them expound in a passionate, free-flowing conversation on economics, culture and totalitarianism (or, more specifically, "globalitarianism"). It's heady stuff, no doubt, and even though Brouillette cleaves the conversations into tidy explanatory chunks, the result can be head-spinning.

The speakers essentially delineate the history of free trade after World War II, from the foundation of the aforementioned international organizations to the newfound consideration (thanks to guys like Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes) of economics as a "neutral" or "scientific" practice. That's a classification that more than one interviewee dismisses as bullshit, along with the idea that Adam Smith's "invisible hand" was ever intended as a means of regulating world commerce. There's scrupulous discussion of the ascendancy of think tanks as liaisons between government and commerce, of unfair price controls set by Washington firms that can devastate entire economies in the so-called "global South", and of the implicit irony in "privatization"—that is, taking something out of taxpayers' hands and putting it to commerce—as a force for democracy. Susan George offers: "the great 18th-century theoreticians never imagined that capital itself would be free to go where it wanted."

Brouillette and company make broader philosophical claims as well; one title card refers to "a sprawling network of mind control" as the reason for capitalism's worldwide victory. Examples are posited closer to home, such as one claim that Channel One News—whereby schools unable to afford televisions were granted TVs and VCRs on condition of playing 12 minutes of corporate-sanctioned infotainment a day—was a ploy to transform American tweens into obedient, measurable units of media-consumptive power. Chomsky lets the air out of "military humanist" triumphs like the 1995 signing of the Dayton Accords, which took place thousands of miles away from anything resembling a Bosnian popular vote, and cites governments' popular vocabulary of "liberation" as nothing new. Only a fool would argue that political individualism hasn't been quelled by the last 65 years of globalization, but Encirclement's main argument will resonate more or less depending on how deliberate you think the process has actually been.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q130kCHIa28

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha9bePl1Qqg conquistadores trade kill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zbTrbp1rvc wickedness laissez faire wto seattle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX6hpryPstg verlaine hugo socrates not employable

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulgtQpPK-js privatization cancels democracy

Chomsky at KUTZTOWN University

2011-11-22T17:33:00.001-08:00

7

Self defence of the Police? Pepperspray USA - willing executioners? Lawful use of force?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjnR7xET7Uo LONG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuWEx6Cfn-I Don't Shoot students!

reading eagle writes

Chomsky blasts American stance on U.N.

11/22/2011

One of the nation's foremost political thinkers raised concerns about the state of American politics during an informal round-table discussion with the media Monday at Kutztown University.

Noam Chomsky, a critical observer of politics for more than 50 years, pointed to the apparent inability of Congress to deal with the nation's most pressing problems.

"There's been a breakdown in democracy," Chomsky declared.

His indictment came hours after Democrats and Republicans announced they were unable to reach agreement on a plan to cut $1.2 trillion from the federal budget over the next 10 years.

Following his meeting with the media, Chomsky delivered the inaugural United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Philosophy Day lecture to a packed house in Kutztown's Schaeffer Auditorium.

Sean Dallas, university spokesman, estimated the audience at 800 in the auditorium. An overflow crowd, he said, viewed the lecture on closed circuit in Boehm Science Building.

Dr. Asharaf Adeel, a Kutztown philosophy professor who introduced Chomsky, said the lecture was intended to promote peace and understanding among nations.

"Noam Chomsky is a truly global figure who, for decades, has promoted peace and justice for all peoples of the world," Adeel said. "He is the intellectual of our age and the conscience of our time."

Chomsky, 83, widely considered the father of modern linguistics, is a distinguished professor of linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Better known publicly for his anti-Vietnam War activism in the 1960s, Chomsky has written more than 100 books and 200 articles on politics, philosophy and international affairs.

A staunch critic of American foreign policy, his lecture was titled, "The U.S. and the U.N."

Chomsky chastised the U.S. for withholding funding to the United Nations because of its recent acceptance of Palestine as a member.

He portrayed the U.S., which he claimed exercises its veto on the U.N. Security Council too frequently, as isolated from the world community.

"The real issue is not whether the U.S. funds the U.N., but whether the U.S. has the right to run the world," Chomsky said.

During his meeting with the media, Chomsky fielded questions on a wide range of political and economic issues facing the country.

The focus on cutting the federal budget, Chomsky argued, is misplaced.

"There ought to be a joblessness commission," he said, "not a deficit commission."

Chomsky had harsh criticism for the Republicans, who he charged have ceased to be a political party.

"The Republicans are so far in the pockets of the corporations, you couldn't find them with a microscope," he said. "Their only program is to serve the very rich."

Asked if the Occupy Wall Street movement would ever reach the scope of the anti-war movement of the 1960s, Chomsky said it's an open question.

In 1965 and 1966, when he was a leader in the anti-war movement, protesters were attacked during demonstrations in Boston. By 1967, the movement had gained widespread acceptance.

Chomsky agrees with the goals of Occupy Wall Street.

"We should break up the banks that are too big to fail," he said. "And, get big money out of politics."

Contact Ron Devlin: 610-371-5030 or rdevlin ----at----- readingeagle.com

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Chomsky - University of Toronto, April 7, 2011

2011-11-22T15:54:00.000-08:00

The State-Corporate Complex: A Threat to Freedom and Survival

Noam Chomsky

Text of lecture given at the The University of Toronto, April 7, 2011

(Transcript courtesy of Yvonne Bond)

I'm going to talk mostly about the United States, in part because I know it better, but also in part because it its unique significance in the global system. That's been true dramatically since the Second World War. The character and extent of this uniqueness often isn't understood and would be easily worth a talk in itself, but I won't go into that.

However, we constantly see that even in relatively small ways. So for example when the housing bubble in the United States burst a couple of years ago, that initiated a global economic crisis which most of the world is still mired in. The worst outcomes were just averted by quite desperate measures.

In another domain, when France and Britain wanted to bomb Libya a couple of weeks ago, they had to turn to a more reluctant Washington to do the heavy lifting and provide the vast bulk of the means of violence. The U.S. has a huge comparative advantage in that domain. Furthermore, although the United States -- U.S. society and its political economy -- are unusual in some respects, it's not that different from elsewhere. And in fact developments within the United States over the years have often foreshadowed what is going to happen pretty soon in other industrial societies in the state capitalist world.

That world, in fact the whole world, is of course always changing, but there are significant continuities and they're worth bearing in mind. One continuity is that those who control the economic life of a country also tend to have overwhelming influence over state policy. That should be a truism taught in elementary school. It was formed succinctly by Adam Smith in words that I've quoted before but are important enough to repeat. He, speaking of Britain of course, wrote that the principle architects of policy are the owners of the society, in his day the merchants and manufacturers, "the masters of mankind" as he called them. And they insure that state policy serves their interest, however grievous the effect on others, including the domestic population, but primarily the victims of what he called their savage injustice abroad, and India was his prime example. That was early in the days of the destruction of India.

Today the masters of mankind are multinational corporations and financial institutions, but the lesson still applies and it helps explain why the state-corporate complex is indeed a threat to freedom and in fact even survival. By now there are important elaborations of Smith's truism applied to the modern world. The most significant and sophisticated version that I know is by political economist Thomas Ferguson, what he calls his investment theory of politics which in brief, simplified, simply views U.S. elections as occasions in which the coalitions of private investors coalesce to invest to control the state. It turns out to be a thesis of quite predictive success over more than a century as he shows.

What it means in effect is that elections are pretty much bought and that the buyers expect to be rewarded, and that happens all the time. It's illustrated very clearly in the last U.S. Presidential election in 2008. President Obama's victory traces largely to a huge influx of capital from the financial institutions, especially toward the end of the campaign. They preferred him to his opponent, McCain, and they expected to be rewarded. And of course they were. The country at that time was mired in a deep recession, so Obama's first act was to select an economic team. It was drawn almost entirely from those who had caused the severe economic crisis that he inherited. He systematically avoided critics of their practices, including quite prestigious ones, Nobel laureates.

Actually the business press wrote rather ironically about this. The Bloomberg News did a review of Obama's economic team, went through each one of them and looked at their records and concluded that these people shouldn't be on the economic team to fix up the economy. They should be getting subpoenas, which was pretty correct. They didn't, of course.

Well, not surprisingly the team chose measures which rewarded the major culprits who are now richer and more powerful than before, and poised to lead the way to the next and probably more severe financial crisis. There was recently an interesting article about this by the Special Inspector of the bailout programs, Neil Barofsky. He wrote a bitter condemnation of the way it was executed. He points out that the legislative act that authorized the bailout was a bargain. The financial institutions that were responsible for the crisis would be saved by the taxpayer and the victims of their misdeeds, in fact real crimes -- the victims would be somewhat compensated by the measures to protect home values and preserve home ownership. It was mostly a housing crisis.

Only the first part of the bargain was kept. The financial institutions were rewarded lavishly for causing the crisis and they were forgiven for outright crimes, but the rest of the program floundered. As Barofsky points out, I'm quoting him, "Foreclosures continue to mount with eight to 13 million filings forecast over the program's lifetime while the biggest banks are 20% larger than they were before the crisis and control a larger part of the economy than ever." They reasonably assume that the government will rescue them again if necessary. Indeed, credit agencies incorporate future government market bailouts into their assessments of the largest banks. That means exaggerating market distortions that provide them with an unfair advantage over smaller institutions which continue to struggle.

So in short, as he puts it, Obama's programs were a giveaway to Wall Street executives and a blow in the solar plexus to their defenseless victims. In other words, the government listened to those who have a voice in the political system and acted accordingly, all completely in accord with Smith's truism.

While there should be no surprises here, there are careful studies of Senate votes over a long period and they show that the Senate is indeed responsive to the sector of the population [that is] the top third in income. Actually a closer analysis would show that it's a very small fraction of that top third. In contrast there's no correlation at all between Senate votes and opinions of the middle third. And for the bottom third there is a correlation. It's negative. Senate votes are counter to preferences for the bottom third. And on major issues of foreign and domestic policy, there's quite a sharp disconnect between public opinion and public policy over a long period.

One might argue that these results don't really depart very far from the intentions of the founders of the society. So James Madison, who was the main framer of the Constitutional order, explained to the Constitutional Convention that power should remain in the hands of the Senate. The Senate was not chosen directly by voters until about a century ago. In those days the executive was pretty much an administrator, not an emperor. And the House, the third part of the system, which is closer to the public, had much more limited authority. That's the way in fact it was set up. As Madison explained to the Constitutional Convention, "the Senate represents the wealth of the nation, the more capable set of men, men who have respect for property owners and their rights and understand that government must protect the minority of the opulent against the majority."

That's quite accurate. Something else that ought to be taught in elementary school.

We should bear in mind, however, kind of in Madison's defense, that his mentality was pre-capitalist. So he assumed that a Senator would be, as he put it, "an enlightened statesman and benevolent philosopher." The Senate would be a "chosen body of citizens whose wisdom may best discern the true interests of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations." They would therefore refine and enlarge the public views by guarding the public against the mischiefs of democratic majorities. This is all rather like the noble Roman gentleman of the fantasies of the day. Adam Smith before him had a sharper eye.

Well, it didn't take long for Madison to shift his thinking about this. As he viewed the early results of the democratic experiment, he had second thoughts. In fact by 1792, a couple of years later, by then he deplored what he called "the daring depravity of the times as the stock-jobbers become the Praetorian band of the government, at once its tool and its tyrant, bribed by its largesses and over-aweing it by clamors and combinations," which isn't a bad description of today's political system and its social and economic correlates.

Today in the richest country in human history, 20% of the population qualify for food stamps. Real unemployment today is at the level of the Great Depression for much of the population, manufacturing workers for example. And in fact their actual circumstances are much worse than in the Great Depression, which I'm old enough to remember. Most of my family were unemployed working class and the country was of course far poorer than it is today. But it was a hopeful period in many ways. There was a sense that people were doing something about it and that times would get better. And indeed they did, thanks to very active organizing, CIO, other things. And then an immense government stimulus, first during the War and then continuing through the post-war decades.

That's not true today. The jobs that are being lost are unlikely to return, at least under the current programs of the masters of mankind. Not graven in stone, but that's their programs. While the population suffers, Goldman Sachs, which is one of the main architects of the current crisis, is now richer than ever and they have just quietly announced 17.5 billion dollars in extra compensation for last year with the CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, getting 12.6 million while his base salary more than triples. And exactly as Barofsky said, they're poised to play the same game again.

And why not? They can rely on the government insurance policy that enables them to safely engage in risky transactions, make huge profits, and they don't take into account what in the jargon of economics are called externalities -- the effect of a transaction on others; crucially in their case what's called systemic risk, that is, the likelihood that the whole system will collapse as a result of their risky and hence profitable transactions.

And when it does collapse, as is anticipated, that's not a big problem. They can run to the powerful nanny state that they nurtured, clutching in their hands their copies of Hayek and Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand and so on and they can demand the bailout to which they're entitled because they're too big to fail as it's put. As one commentator added, Riley, also too big to jail for quite serious crimes. It's a pretty impressive scam. Of course it's in radical violation of capitalist principles, but the masters of mankind believe in those principles only for others, not for themselves.

That stance has a long pedigree. That's another matter that's important to understand if we want to grasp the nature of the world in which we live: actually lies in the background a very revealing interaction that's taking place between two countries that are quite different in terms of independence and economic development: the United States and Egypt. The democracy uprisings in the Arab world, particularly in Egypt, these are events of truly historic importance. And they're very frightening to western power, for very simple reasons. The west is certainly going to do whatever it can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.

To see why it's enough to take a look at the studies of Arab public opinion, which is certainly known to planners, even though not to the western public, at least to those who keep to the media. What they show is for example in Egypt about 90% of the population think that the United States think that the United States is the main threat that they face. Maybe 10% think Iran is a threat. Actually about 80% think the region would be more secure if Iran had nuclear weapons. Those figures happen to the high in Egypt but they're pretty much true across the Arab world, so it's obvious that the west is going to do whatever it can to prevent those opinions from entering into policy which means to prevent any form of authentic democracy.

Well, these are extremely important events and it's important to take a look at how they're developing. All of these have long histories incidentally. So for example the Egyptian movement as you probably saw was led by a group of young tech-savvy people who called themselves the April 6th Movement. Why April 6th? That's a reference to a major action that was planned on April 6, 2008. At one of the major industrial installations in Egypt, the Mahalla textile installation, there was supposed to be a big strike. There were a lot of support activities. It was crushed by the military dictatorship that we were supporting. Forgotten here; who cares? But not forgotten there. And the same is true of the other countries.

The things that have suddenly burst forth are not coming from nowhere. That's true of the first one too, which doesn't even get reported. The current wave of uprisings actually began in the last African colony, one of the two countries of the Arab world that was invaded, occupied, and settled by an outside power. That's Western Sahara, technically a U.N. dependency, supposed to move on to independence. It was invaded in 1975 by Morocco, a brutal invasion like most. [They] settled a lot of the Moroccan population there, illegally of course. And there have been repeated protests. There was another one in last November, an effort to set up a tent city. Moroccan forces quickly crushed it. Since it's a U.N. responsibility the issue did come to the Security Council, but France made sure that there would be no inquiry into what happened. It has to protect its Moroccan client. That was the first of the other occupied countries so far the lid has been on tightly. That's Palestine. Plenty to say about that, but I think most of you are familiar with it, not least from the very courageous and important work done right here by the late Jim Graff.

Whatever is going to happen it's not clear. All of this is still a work in progress. But despite the internal barriers and internal constraints, these popular movements have achieved substantial success and they have pretty exciting prospects. One of the most dramatic recent moments was last February 20 when Kamal Abbas sent a message from Tahrir Square in Cairo to the Wisconsin workers saying "We stand with you as you stood with us." Abbas is a leader of the years of struggle of Egyptian workers for elementary rights that lie in the background of today's Arab spring, as I said brutally crushed by the western-backed dictator. He's also a leading figure in the current uprising. And Abbas' message of solidarity to Wisconsin workers evoked the traditional aspirations of the labor movement -- solidarity among working people of the world and populations generally.

Right now the trajectories in Cairo and Madison are intersecting but they're heading in opposite directions: in Cairo towards gaining elementary rights denied by the dictatorships; in Madison towards defending rights that have been won in long and hard struggles and are now under severe attack. Each of these is kind of a microcosm of tendencies that are underway in global society following varied courses. There are sure to be far-reaching consequences of what's taking place in the decaying industrial heartland of the richest and most powerful country in human history and in what President Eisenhower called the most strategically important area in the world, the Middle East -- "a stupendous source of strategic power and probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign investment." Those are the words of the State Department in the 1940s. That was a prize that the U.S. intended to keep for itself and its allies in the unfolding new world order of the day that they were organizing and implementing, and in fact still do.

It's normal for the victors to consign history to the trash can and it's normal for the victims to take it seriously. If we want to understand the world we should follow their example. Today is in fact not the first occasion when Egypt and the United States are facing similar problems and moving in opposite directions. That was also true in the early part of the 19th century in ways which are quite crucial for both societies and generalize across the world, and are crucial for understanding of the creation of the divide between the rich First World and the poor Third World, much less sharp back in those days.

At that time, early 19th century, Egypt and the United States were both well placed to undertake rapid economic development. Both of them had rich agriculture. That included cotton, which is sort of the fuel of the early industrial revolution. Although unlike Egypt, the United States had to develop cotton production and a work force by conquest, extermination, and slavery, with consequences that reverberate to the present. There was one fundamental difference between Egypt and the United States, namely the United States gained independence and it was therefore free to ignore the prescriptions of economic theory -- pretty much the same ones as today. At the time they were delivered by the greatest economist of the day, Adam Smith, in terms similar to those preached to what are called developing societies today.

So Smith urged the American colonies to keep to what was later called their comparative advantage, that is, to produce primary products for export and to import superior British manufactures and certainly not to try to monopolize crucial goods. That meant particularly cotton in those days, kind of like oil today. Any other path, he warned, I'll quote him, "would retard instead of accelerating the further increase in the value of their annual produce and would obstruct instead of promoting the progress of their country toward real wealth and greatness." Approximately what you study in economic courses today and the advice given to the world by the IMF and the World Bank. Having gained their independence, the U.S. colonies were free to ignore the laws of sound economics. They were free to follow England's own course of independent state-guided development with high tariffs to protect industry from superior British exports, the first textiles and later steel and others, and a wide variety of other modes of state intervention in order to accelerate economic development.

The independent republic also tried and came pretty close, to get a monopoly of cotton -- for a good reason. The purpose was to place all other nations at our feet, as the Jacksonian presidents put it at the time when they were annexing Texas and half of Mexico. They were particularly concerned with England. England was the big enemy in those days. It was a deterrent and they figured if they monopolized cotton they could bring England to its feet. It's pretty important. For example, it's one of the reasons why Canada wasn't conquered. The British deterred it several times. Maybe it's being conquered in other ways, but that's another matter. But it wasn't militarily conquered.

They also couldn't conquer Cuba, much as they wanted to, because the British fleet was in the way. They did finally conquer in later in the century in 1898 under the pretext of liberating it but actually conquering it. The idea was if they could monopolize control of cotton they could overcome this deterrent that was in the way of expansion. Actually it's kind of interesting that that's essentially the policy that was attributed to Saddam Hussein in 1990, ridiculous at that time. But if you look back at the propaganda at the time of the invasion, the pretext was, well, he's trying to monopolize oil to bring us all to his feet. That's totally outlandish. But what was charged, the crime attributed to Saddam Hussein, was in fact one of the main ones that led to U.S. economic development. It happened and it's had a big effect, one of the reasons it's out of history except that it's in history.

That was the United States. What about Egypt? Egypt couldn't follow a comparable course because it was barred by British power. It wasn't independent. So the British Lord Palmerston declared, in his words, that "no ideas of fairness toward Egypt ought to stand in the way of such great and paramount interests of Britain as preserving its economic and political hegemony." And he expressed what he called his hate for the ignorant barbarian Muhammad Ali, the developmentalist leader who was trying to direct Egypt on an independent course. Britain's fleet and financial resources were deployed to terminate Egypt's quest for independence and economic development.

After World War II the United States displaced Britain as global hegemon and it adopted the same position. The U.S. made it clear that Washington would provide no aid to Egypt and the whole world badly needed aid at the time. The U.S. would provide no aid to Egypt unless it adhered to the standard rules for weak, the ones I cited, which of course the U.S. continued to violate itself, imposing high tariffs to bar Egyptian cotton and causing a debilitating dollar shortage. Actually [this is] the usual interpretation of market principles. It's fine for you, fine for disciplining the weak and controlling them, but not me, please. I want the nanny state to make sure I'm okay. That applies home too, the way Goldman Sachs and its colleagues and its representative in government understand very well. These are really leading themes of modern history. They're essentially the basis for the First – Third World distinction -- this generalizes all over -- and for what's happening internal to the rich societies as well.

As these kind of quite simple principles predict, elections are increasingly just becoming a charade run by the public relations industry which tries to mobilize populations to vote while making sure that issues are marginalized for the reason I mentioned. The public has different opinions about issues than the masters of mankind so you want to keep them aside.

I should say while I'm talking about the United States, it's not true everywhere. If you go, say, to the poorest country in South America, Bolivia, they actually had democratic elections, pretty remarkable ones and especially in the last ten years. So in the last ten years the most bitterly repressed segment of the population, the indigenous population, have actually entered the political arena, pressed their demands, took part in elections, won the elections, elected someone from their own ranks -- a poor peasant, not somebody from the Skull and Bones at Yale -- and won the election on real issues, serious issues like control over resources, cultural rights, how to handle problems of justice in a complex multiethnic society. And then in another election a couple of years later they did even better.

That's democracy. You have to look pretty hard to find anything like that in the industrial world. What's happening in our societies is something quite different. The public relations industry, which essentially runs the elections, is applying certain principles to undermine democracy which are the same as the principles that applies to undermine markets. The last thing that business wants is markets in the sense of economic theory. Take a course in economics, they tell you a market is based on informed consumers making rational choices. Anyone who's ever looked at a TV ad knows that's not true. In fact if we had a market system an ad say for General Motors would be a brief statement of the characteristics of the products for next year. That's not what you see. You see some movie actress or a football hero or somebody driving a car up a mountain or something like that. And that's true of all advertising. The goal is to undermine markets by creating uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices and the business world spends huge efforts on that.

The same is true when the same industry, the PR industry, turns to undermining democracy. It wants to construct elections in which uninformed voters will make irrational choices. It's pretty reasonable and it's so evident you can hardly miss it. It's another one of those things that ought to be taught in elementary school. It's kind of embarrassing to talk about something so obvious to a university audience.,

All of this is second nature to the masters of mankind. So for example after his 2008 victory as perhaps you know, Obama immediately won an award from the advertising industry for the best marketing campaign of 2008. He beat out Apple Computers. And if you look at the business press, where people talk more openly, executives were euphoric. They said they'd been marketing candidates like toothpaste ever since Reagan but 2008 was the greatest achievement. They said it was so great it's going to change the style in corporate boardrooms.

The 2012 election is now expected to cost two billion dollars. It's going to have to be mostly corporate funding. So it's not at all surprising that Obama is selecting business leaders for top positions. The public is quite angry and frustrated, but unless western populations can rise to the level of Egyptians they're going to remain victims.

In the United States the Republicans long ago ceased any pretext of being a traditional political party. They are so deep in the pockets of corporate America, the super rich, you need a telescope to find them. Democrats, who incidentally by now are what used to be called moderate Republicans, they're not too far behind. Obama's choice of an economic team which I mentioned is an example. Actually I didn't put in quite accurately. There was one exception in his economic team, namely Paul Volcker. He was the Secretary of Treasury under Ronald Reagan. But the spectrum has shifted so far to the right that Volcker was the last liberal calling for some kind of regulation -- was, incidentally, not is. He was kicked out, replaced by Jeffrey Immelt. He was the CEO of General Electric. That's the nation's largest corporation.

His special responsibility, if you look back at the rhetoric, was to create jobs. Actually more accurate comment, again by Tom Ferguson, is that what we actually have here is the disappearance from the scene of the best-known and most visible critic of the excesses of the financial sector and his replacement by the sitting CEO of a company that is heavily dependent upon government aid of all sorts including diplomatic assistance to invest more in China and to shift jobs there. This is not about jobs, it's about political money. The White House knows it will need to raise about a billion dollars for its re-election campaign.

That's the context in which this and Obama's other recent appointments need to be judged, and the business world not surprisingly was quite pleased. The London Financial Times reported that Mr. Immelt's appointment was applauded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the major business lobby, which they said which they said has been among the President's harshest critics and funded many Republicans that ran against Democrats in last November's election. But maybe that will be over and the last barrier to business rule could be out of the way.

If you look at GE, General Electric, more than half of its work force is abroad and more than half of its revenue comes from overseas operations. Also most of its revenues come not from production though it's regarded as a manufacturing enterprise but from financial operations, for which, incidentally, it received a hefty bailout when Wall Street tanked. While the appointment was proclaimed to be for job growth, it actually has little to do with that and more accurately it's what's called follow the money. More than a century ago the great political financier Mark Hanna said that two things are important in politics: money and I've forgotten the second one. Another thing for elementary school.

That's far more true today especially with the radical changes of the past thirty years. They're important to understand. These developments roughly the last 30-odd years followed one of the major changes in world order in the modern period, namely the dismantling of the post-Second World War economic system, so-called Bretton Woods system, which had been designed by the victors of the Second World War, the United States and Britain. The basic designers were John Maynard Keynes from Britain and the New Deal economist Harry Dexter White for the United States.

One central component of this system was regulation of currencies. In fact that was part of the basis for the huge economic growth for the next couple of decades, the highest in history. That was dismantled about 40 years ago. That was one factor that led to the huge explosion in the financial speculation and the vast growth of financial institutions. At that time they were small components of the economy and they were mostly doing what the banks are supposed to do in state capitalist systems, namely to direct unused funds like your bank to some kind of productive investment.

That was then. By 2007, just before the great crash, they gained about 40% of corporate profits in the U.S. Their profits come mostly from complex financial manipulations, actions that have little if any social or economic utility and are harmful to the economy and also to people in many ways. These practices would be sharply curtailed if capitalist principles were to prevail. They would be curtailed by crashes and losing your money. But thankfully there's no fear of that, at least for the rich.

Another factor in the financialization of the economy was that the rate of profit in production was declining so it was easier to make money by financial manipulations, of course always with the protection of the nanny state. A closely related development was the offshoring of production. That's within a global trade system that is very carefully designed to set working people in competition with one another worldwide along with a very high level of protection for wealth and unprecedented rights for investors. That's the usual interpretation of market discipline again: fine for you, but not for me, please.

These developments set in motion a vicious cycle of concentration of wealth and with it concentration of political power, again in accordance with Smith's maxim. For the past 30 years state corporate policy has been very precisely designed to accelerate this cycle so inequality as you probably know has soared to the highest levels in U.S. history. But less known is that this is actually misleading. The radical inequality results primarily from the extraordinary wealth of the top one percent of the population, actually more accurately the top one tenth of one percent. It's a group so small that it's missed by the U.S. census, which vastly underestimates inequality for this reason. It's been studied by economists.

Meanwhile for the majority of the population real incomes have pretty much stagnated. People are getting by with heavier workloads, much more than, say, in Europe and Japan; debt, and asset inflation like the last housing bubble. The miniscule category of victors, and it is extremely small, that's primarily CEOs, hedge fund managers and the like. And they use their political power to enhance the process. The cuts, for example, are carefully crafted to benefit the super rich. If you look back, until 1980, until Reagan, taxes in the United States were somewhat redistributive -- that's according to the analysis of the Internal Revenue Service -- as in most countries. That's what they're supposed to be. Since then with a couple of blips, that in fact has declined, and if other factors are introduced, like tax havens and other evasion options, they redistribute upwards. That's carefully designed.

Take the Bush tax cuts ten years ago, which are huge burden on the economy. They were designed very carefully. They started the first year with a small tax rebate to people. So you get a couple of hundred dollars in the mail and you think this is great, a tax rebate. But they were designed so over the years the benefits would shift towards the rich, and by the tenth year when they were set to expire, more than half of the tax benefits went to the top one percent, the people that count. But then it's kind of invisible if it happens that way. There's a name for it. It's called the sunset technique. They make sure that by the time the sun sets, things are happening the right way. You kind of delude people at the beginning. Only those who are inside the game can see what's planning down the road.

These are perfectly normal kind of policies for the people who are called conservatives, who now want to make it permanent. Take a look at the front page of the newspapers. They want to make these cuts permanent, but for jobs, the same as here. The reason we have to give a huge amount of money to the top one percent of the population or a fraction of that, which spends it on whatever they feel like, is for jobs. Actually there's an interesting changes that's taken place in the English language in this respect. There is a word which has become obscene, so since there may be children in the audience I can't say it but I'll spell it: P-R-O-F-I-T-S. You're not allowed to say that. In fact it has a pronunciation. It's called jobs, and that's kind of by now routine.

And that's what this is about. The same here. That was the Bush tax cuts, but the same thing is happening right at this moment. Like the lame duck session of Congress, the session after the November election before the next Congress takes office. Obama was greatly praised for his achievements during the lame duck session, a statesmanlike display of bipartisanship and so on. Praised by his own supporters, in fact. There were some achievements. The main achievement was a tax break for the super-rich, and I mean super-rich. Like I'm pretty well off, but I'm below the cutoff for that one. It was super-rich tax cut. Of course it increased the deficit, which is supposed to be the big thing we're worried about. Carrying that off required some pretty impressive footwork but it was done.

Also at the same time there was a tax increase for federal workers, but it wasn't called that because you're not supposed to talk about tax increases. It was called a freeze, I think for five minutes. A freeze for maybe five seconds. A freeze for public sectors is identical to a tax increase for them, so this is a tax increase for public sector workers disguised as a freeze. There was also a payroll tax decrease for Social Security. Social Security is paid by working people. It doesn't contribute anything to the deficit -- to the contrary. The workers pay for it, and there was a decrease in that payment, which kind of sounds good. The people need the money. But again it was a Trojan horse. Take a look at the way it was designed. It was the sunset technique again. The freeze was carefully designed so that it ends right before the Presidential election.

Political figures understand perfectly well that with an election coming up, nobody's going to say let's raise the payroll tax. So that essentially makes it permanent, which is a way to defund Social Security. Social Security is actually in pretty good shape despite what everybody screams about. But if you can defund it, it won't be in good shape. And there is a standard technique of privatization, namely defund what you want to privatize. Like when Thatcher wanted to defund the railroads, first thing to do is defund them, then they don't work and people get angry and they want a change. You say okay, privatize them and then they get worse. In that case the government had to step in and rescue it.

That's the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital. That's the Social Security scam. If they can succeed in defunding it -- they've been trying for decades, it's too popular to do much about, and very efficient incidentally, miniscule administrative costs. Nothing like the privatized health care system. So it's kind of hard to get rid of. But if you can defund it, it might work out. That's the point of this decision in the lame duck session. That's kind of important. First of all, if it can be privatized it's a huge bonanza for investors. There's a ton of money in the Social Security system. It's kept in a trust fund or invested in government bonds and goes back to working people. But if that can get into the hands of financial institutions, they can make a ton of money by using those funds to enrich themselves. And as usual when the system crashes, going back to the taxpayer to bail them out.

Also, Social Security really has defects. It's almost of no use at all to wealthy people. They may get it but they're not going to notice it. It's a toothpick on a mountain. So who cares? But for a large part of the population it's their means of survival. That's particularly true right now. People had a tremendous amount of their fake wealth which they believed it in housing. It was all a fake bubble but they believed in it. So it was used borrowing, for education, for anything. That's gone. Eight trillion dollars of it are gone. Those people are going to be surviving on Social Security that's of no significance to the wealthy, of course.

There's a kind of a deeper point, that Social Security is based on the principle that Kamal Abbas was talking about, namely social solidarity. Social Security is based on the idea that you're supposed to care what happens to people who are in need. So like if there's a disabled widow across town and she doesn't have food to eat, you're supposed to care about it. That's what Social Security is about. And that's a bad idea. You're supposed to look after yourself, not care about other people. Social Security is dangerous. It kind of undermines preferred doctrines and can even lead to action, which could change the way the world works. So we don't want that. In fact there's a large scale attack on public education that's based on the same principle, if you can privatize. . . and the same techniques are being used. Defund it so it doesn't work, complain about how it doesn't work, privatize it, it gets worse. But then you've undermined social solidarity and it's fine for the wealthy anyway. They'll get what they want.

All of this is part of a quite impressive campaign of class war, which has many aspects. A lot of them aren't immediately visible but they're there. So for example the government sets rules on how corporations are run, what's called corporate governance. And the rules that have been set up during this passionate class war period, the rules are that CEOs can pick the boards that set their salaries and work out techniques like, say, stock options which conceal short-term gain. You can imagine how that works when you pick your own board.

There have been efforts to try to get this to be more transparent, but they were beaten back by Congress. The same is true of deregulation. During the period when New Deal deregulations were maintained there were no financial crises. The system went along smoothly. Since Reagan there have been regular financial crises, each one worse than the preceding one. But the rich and powerful make out fine for the reasons I mentioned. The public pays, the rich benefit.

All of this is kind of a new stage of state capitalism. Loyalty to firms is less and less necessary when the goal of management is short-term profits, which of course comes mostly from financial manipulations. So who cares about the firm? If it goes under, fine. I'm rich. Domestic unemployment is not a problem. There's no need for a domestic work force when Mexico and China and Vietnam and other sources of cheap and brutally exploited labor can be used as assembly plants, and they are assembly plants. Major industries increasingly have their work forces overseas, like General Electric, while -- I have to say that word, I'm afraid; sorry -- while profits come home back to the pockets of a few.

Take IBM. It's quite an interesting example. The business press recently ran a big article about them and said correctly that IBM may strike many people as the quintessential American company, but over 70% of its work force was outside of the United States at the end of 2008. And the following year, while continuing to reduce its U.S. employment, the company announced a program to offer employees the opportunity to move their jobs to emerging markets. In other words, you have the opportunity to move to India, say, where you could live at a much lower standard of living. Nice opportunity, but that increases the efficiency of the company and it provides wealth for the masters. If employees don't take this opportunity that is so benignly offered to them, they have options. They can join the people standing in line for food stamps. But IBM's a benevolent company, the article points out. They're offering to foot some of the relocation costs so they're really nice guys.

The report in the business press didn't explain why IBM should be regarded as the quintessential American company, but there are in fact good reasons. One is that IBM relied on the taxpayer for its wealth. That's how it learned to forget about earlier things like helping out Nazi Germany. But just in the recent period it learned to shift from punch cards to modern computers. It learned it at Pentagon-funded labs where I worked, for example. Finally in the early sixties the firm was able to produce its own fast computers but they were too expensive for businesses, so the United States stepped in to purchase them. In general a procurement by the state is a major device of taxpayer subsidy.

Many years, actually decades later, IBM was finally able to make profits in the market and it was also able to spin off wildly successful enterprises like Microsoft and others which also benefited amply from public subsidy. So indeed it's true: it is the quintessential American company and management is following sound economic principles in shifting employment abroad. What happens to the country is not their business. It's worth noting that this really isn't new. Not very long ago the long-term future of the firm was an important consideration for management. Less and less so under modern forms of state capitalism.

Rather interestingly these issues were foreseen by the great founders of modern economics, Adam Smith for example. He recognized and discussed what would happen to Britain if the masters adhered to the rules of sound economics -- what's now called neoliberalism. He warned that if British manufacturers, merchants, and investors turned abroad, they might profit but England would suffer. However, he felt that this wouldn't happen because the masters would be guided by a home bias. So as if by an invisible hand England would be spared he ravages of economic rationality.

That passage is pretty hard to miss. It's the only occurrence of the famous phrase "invisible hand" in Wealth of Nations, namely in a critique of what we call neoliberalism. The other leading founder of modern economics, David Ricardo, he drew similar conclusions. He hoped that home bias would lead, I'm quoting him now, "would lead men of property to be satisfied with the low rate of profits in their own country rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations." He said "These are feelings that I would be sorry to see weakened." Their predictions aside, the instincts of the classical economists were quite sound.

I mentioned before one well-known market inefficiency, the market inefficiency of dismissing externalities; that is, the effect of a transaction on others. In the case of financial institutions, the externality that's dismissed in systemic risk, the risk that the whole system will crash as the result of some failed transaction. You don't take that into account when you make a transaction. In that case the taxpayer can come to the rescue. That way you can make sure that those who profit from risky transactions will be saved.

But that's not always an option, and the consequences can be severe -- in fact awesomely severe. So nobody's going to come to the rescue if the environment is destroyed, and that it must be destroyed is close to an institutional imperative under contemporary state capitalism. Just think it through. Business leaders right now are conducting massive propaganda campaigns to convince the population that anthropogenic global warming -- global warming because of human interference -- is a liberal hoax, and they're succeeding. Like in the United States probably two-thirds of the population believes this by now.

The CEOs who are running these campaigns, they understand what all of us understand. They understand that the threat is very real, very grave; that it'll destroy everything they own, that it'll wreck the lives of their grandchildren. They know all of that. But then as CEOs of a corporation, in that institutional role they have no choice. They can pull out of course, but if they stay there they have to maximize short-term gain and market share. Actually that's a legal requirement under Anglo-American law. If they don't do it, they'll be out and somebody else will come in who does do it. So it's an institutional property, not an individual one. And it does set off a vicious cycle, one that could be lethal.

To see how immanent the danger is, just have a look at the new Congress in the United States, the one that was propelled into power by large scale business funding and propaganda. Almost everyone there is a climate change denier and they've already been acting on those assumptions. They've been cutting the limited expenditures there are for dealing with environmental problems. If the United States doesn't do anything significant, the rest of the world isn't either.

Worse than that, some of them are true believers. For example the new head of one of these committees on the environment explained that global warming can't be a problem because God promised Noah that there wouldn't be another flood. That takes care of that. If that was happening in Andorra or some small remote country, maybe we would laugh. But it's not laughable when it's happening in the richest and most powerful country in the world. Before we laugh, we might bear in mind that the current economic crisis is traceable in no small measure to the fanatic faith in such dogmas as the efficient market hypothesis and in general to what Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz 15 years ago called "the religion that markets know best." The religion made it unnecessary for economists and the Federal Reserve to notice that there was an eight trillion dollar housing bubble that had no basis at all in economic fundamentals, that was way off historical trends, and that devastated the economy when it burst. No need to look at it because we have the religion. Markets know best, so forget it. That religion is resuscitated despite what happened.

All of this and much more can proceed as long as the general population is passive, apathetic, devoted to consumerism or maybe hatred of the vulnerable. As long as that's true the powerful can do as they please and those who survive will be left to contemplate the ruins.

Uri Avneri - Israel Fascism progresses

2011-11-22T00:09:00.000-08:00

Uri Avneri

Weimar Revisited 19/11/11

"YOU AND your Weimar!" a friend of mine once exclaimed in exasperation, "just because you experienced the collapse of the Weimar Republic as a child, you see Weimar behind every corner."

The accusation was not unjustified. In 1960, during the Eichmann trial, I wrote a book about the fall of the German Republic. Its last chapter was called: "It can happen here" Since then I have come back to this warning time and again.

But now I am not alone anymore. During the last few weeks, the word Weimar has popped up in the articles of many commentators.

It should be sprayed in huge letters on the walls.

ISRAELI DEMOCRACY is under siege. No one can ignore this anymore. It is the main topic in the Knesset, which is leading the attack, and the media, who are among the victims.

This does not happen in the occupied territories. There, democracy never existed. Occupation is the very opposite of democracy: a denial of all human rights, the right to life, liberty, movement, fair trial and free expression, not to mention national rights.

No, I mean Israel proper, the Israel inside the Green Line, The Only Democracy In The Middle East.

The attackers are members of Binyamin Netanyahu's government coalition, which includes semi-fascist and openly fascist elements. Netanyahu himself tries to remain discreetly in the background, but there can be no doubt that every single detail has been orchestrated by him.

In the first two years of this coalition, attacks were sporadic. But now they are determined, systematic and coordinated.

At this moment, the anti-democratic forces are attacking on a wide front, The three main pillars of democracy – the courts, the media and the human rights organizations – are under simultaneous, deadly assault. (Remember Weimar?)

THE SUPREME COURT is the bastion of democracy. Israel has no constitution, the Knesset majority is totally unbridled, only the court can (if reluctantly) check the adoption of anti-democratic laws.

I am not a blind admirer of the court. In the occupied territories, it is an arm of the occupation, devoted to "national security", approving of some of the worst incidents. Only in rare cases has it come out against the worst practices. But in Israel proper, it is a stout defender of civil rights.

The extreme rightists in the Knesset are resolved to put an end to this. Their front man is the Minister of Justice, who was appointed by Avigdor Lieberman. He is pushing a series of scandalous ad hominem bills. One of them is designed to change the composition of the public committee that appoints the judges, with the undisguised intention of bringing about the appointment of a particular right-wing judge to the Supreme Court.

Another bill has the undisguised purpose of changing the existing court rules in order to put a certain "conservative" judge in the chair of Chief Justice. The declared purpose is to abolish the rule of an independent court which dares, though only in rare cases, to block "anti-constitutional" laws enacted by the Knesset majority. They want the court to "represent the will of the people". (Remember Weimar?)

Until now, since the first day of the state, the justices have been, in practice, chosen by cooptation. This has functioned perfectly for 63 years. Israel's Supreme Court is the envy of many countries. Now this system is in mortal danger.

Another bill, which would have compelled candidates for the Supreme Court to undergo grilling by a Knesset Committee chaired by another Lieberman appointee, and obtain their approval, was withheld at the last moment by Netanyahu himself, He had already given his approval, but shrank back after the almost universal condemnation – and is now posing as the defender of democracy from his own underlings.

The chairman of the Judicial Committee of the Knesset, another Lieberman appointee, is rushing these laws through his committee, contrary to established procedures. In a stormy session this week, a female member called him "a coarse thug". He replied: "You are not even a beast".

A minimal purpose of these bills is to terrorize any judges considering vetoing the other anti-democratic bills that are being enacted. Some say that the effects are already being felt.

In several famous cases, the government openly flouts the Supreme Court's orders, especially concerning the evacuation of "settlements outposts" built on lands belonging to Palestinian farmers.

Who will defend the court? The former Chief Justice, Aharon Barak, who was hated by the rightists because of his pioneering "judicial activism", once told me: "The Court has no army divisions. Its power rests solely on the support of the public."

THE ASSAULT on the media started some time ago when the American casino baron, Sheldon Adelson, a close friend of Netanyahu, started a daily tabloid paper with the express purpose of helping Netanyahu. It is being distributed for free and now has the biggest circulation in the country, threatening the existence of all the others (but also bribing them by giving them huge printing orders.) Money is no object. Huge sums are being spent.

That was only the beginning.

In 1965 the Labor party government enacted a new libel law (called literally "the Law of the Evil Tongue") which was then clearly designed to muzzle "Haolam Hazeh", the mass-circulation news magazine I was editing, which had introduced investigative reporting to Israel. I appealed to the public to send me to the Knesset in protest, and 1.5% of the voters were incensed enough to do so.

Now the right-wing gang in the Knesset wants to sharpen this anti-media law even more. The new amendment grants up to $135,000 damages to anyone claiming to be hurt by the media, without their having to prove any damage at all. For newspapers and TV channels, which are already in a precarious financial position, this means that they better give up all investigative reporting and any criticism of influential politicians and tycoons.

The new winds are already being felt. Journalists and TV editors are cowed. This week, a program on Channel 10, considered the most liberal, gave five minutes to a song glorifying the late "Rabbi" Meir Kahane, who was branded by the Supreme Court as a fascist, and whose organization was outlawed for advocating what the court called "Nuremberg laws". An avowed member of this organization, which is alive and kicking under another name, is now a vocal member of the Knesset. (Remember Weimar?)

A major purge of TV journalists is already underway. One by one, directors of all TV channels are being replaced by confirmed rightists. It was openly admitted that the government would force the closure of Channel 10 by calling in outstanding debts if a certain journalist were not fired. Though generally an establishment type, this reporter had irked Netanyahu by exposing his and his wife's luxurious traveling style at government expense.

AT THE same time, human rights and peace NGOs are under heavy attack. The Knesset gang is producing bill after bill to silence them.

One bill already under way forbids human rights associations to receive donations from foreign governments and "state-like organizations", such as the UN and the EU. Right-wing organization receive, of course, huge sums of money from Jewish American billionaires, who fund the settlements (which are also indirectly financed by the US treasury, which gives tax-exempt status to the so-called "charitable organizations" that fund the settlements.)

The law which levies huge indemnities on organizations and individuals who advocate a boycott on the products of the settlements is already in force. The hearing of an application submitted by Gush Shalom to the Supreme Court against this suppression of political protest has been postponed by the court again and again and again.

This parliamentary terrorism is accompanied by the accelerating violence of fascist gangs from the settlements. These SA-like gangs call their actions "Price Tag". Usually, they react to the isolated cases of the army demolishing a few "illegal" buildings in a settlement by attacking a neighboring Palestinian village, setting fire to a mosque or carrying out what can only be described as a pogrom. (Remember Weimar?)

MARTIN NIEMÖLLER, a German U-boat captain and later pacifist pastor, who was thrown into a concentration camp by the Nazis, coined the famous lament: "When the Nazis came to take the Communists, I was silent. After all, I was no Communist. When they took the Jews, I was silent. I am no Jew. When they arrested the Social Democrats, I was silent. I was no Social Democrat. When they came to take me, there was no one left to protest."

What we are witnessing now are not isolated attacks on one or another human right – what we are seeing is a general attack on democracy as such. Perhaps only people who have experienced life under a fascist dictatorship can fully realize what that means.

Of course, the similarity between the collapse of the German republic and the processes in today's Israel does not mean that the same events must follow. Nazism was unique in many ways. The end of real democracy may be followed by different systems. There are many models to choose from: Ceausescu, Franco, Putin.

Certainly, there is no similarity between the small German town called Weimar and Tel Aviv. Except perhaps the fact that many houses in Tel Aviv were designed according to the Bauhaus architectural school - which originated in Weimar.

Weimar was once a cultural center, where geniuses like Goethe and Schiller produced their masterpieces. The German republic which was founded in 1919, after World War I, was called by this name after the national assembly which framed its very progressive constitution there.

On these lines, the endangered democratic State of Israel, whose Declaration of Independence was signed in 1948 in Tel Aviv, could rightly be called the Tel Aviv Republic.

We are not yet in 1932. The Storm Troopers are not yet roaming our streets. We still have time to mobilize the public against the looming danger. This week's demonstration that will take place in Tel Aviv against the de-democratization of Israel may mark a turning point.

Palestine 1946 to 2000 - Israeli Lebensraum Fascism

click to enlarge

Capitalism USA style - Class War against the poor

2011-11-21T20:46:00.000-08:00

"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."

– Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

"The American Dream has been under assault for 30 years," says former President Bill Clinton.

Dateline 13-Sep-2011 (AP):

The Census Bureau reports the number of Americans in poverty jumped to 15.1 percent in 2010, a 27-year high.

About 46.2 million people, or nearly 1 in 6, were in poverty. That's up from 43.6 million, or 14.3 percent, in 2009. It was the highest level since 1983.

The number of people lacking health insurance increased to 49.9 million, a new high after revisions were made to 2009 figures. Losses were due mostly to working-age Americans who lost employer-provided insurance in the weak economy.

A lobbying group, Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford, put out a memo to one of their clients, the American Bankers Association about "constructing a negative narrative about Occupy Wall Street". I'm not sure it is really a smoking gun as most of this falls into the realm of "common knowledge". I do think that most folks believe this is how our sick system really works. It is, however, very scary to see this in print.

From an article on CommonDreams.org gleaned from MSNBC:

According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, "This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye."

NEWT WANT TO REINTRODUCE CHILD LABOUR
there are obviously no taboos anymore

Was next? Slavery? Your locust corporate paymasters would save lots of money!!!

Newt Gingrich: Child labor laws 'truly stupid'

By Kim Geiger

November 21, 2011, 12:29 p.m.

Promising "extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America," Newt Gingrich said Friday that he would fire school janitors and pay students to clean schools instead.

Speaking at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the Republican presidential candidate and former speaker of the House challenged laws that prevent children from working certain jobs before their mid-teens.

Gingrich blames "the core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization" for "crippling" children.

"It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, in child laws, which are truly stupid," he said.

"I tried for years to have a very simple model," he continued. "Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they'd have pride in the schools, they'd begin the process of rising."

Gingrich, who over the weekend said Occupy Wall Street protesters should "get a job" and "take a bath," suggested during the Harvard appearance Friday that poor children need to build a work ethic.

"Get any job that teaches you to show up on Monday," he said. "Get any job that teaches you to stay all day even if you're having a fight with your girlfriend. I mean, the whole process of making work worthwhile is central."

Gingrich is the latest Republican presidential candidate to challenge front-runner Mitt Romney in the polls.

kim.geiger@latimes.com

Chosmky visits children's School in Australia

2011-11-08T03:15:00.000-08:00

While USA and Israel talk about comitting mass murder by bombing Iran...

Peace envoys captivate school

BY JENNA DAROCZY - 08 Nov, 2011 03:03 PM

FROM this year's Sydney Peace Prize winner to its potential future winners, a message of hope, peace and justice was delivered at Cabramatta High School's annual Peace Day celebrations on Friday.

Linguist, activist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky visited the school during his whirlwind trip to Sydney, during which he made only two other public appearances, both in exclusive Peace Prize related events.

Guard of honour: Mr Chomsky was welcomed by an honour guard of students
dressed in the national costume of more than 20 nationalities.

Professor Chomsky, who teaches in many disciplines at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discussed the legacy his generation was leaving for the next.

He paid tribute to the well-researched questions on world politics posed by students.

"As well as the threat of nuclear war, the second shadow that hangs over the future is of environmental destruction," he said.

"We are now at the point where humans have the capacity to destroy life for future generations.

"Your generation will have the choice to remedy the legacy our generation has, not proudly, left."

Students asked questions about future relations between the US and Iran, government policy of keeping information from their own people as revealed by WikiLeaks, and the future for the Middle East in the context of America's decline, which drew detailed and provocative responses from Professor Chomsky.

"I'm at a stage of life where I can't help but reflect on what kind of world I'm leaving to my grandchildren, who are about your age, and it's not a legacy of which I'm proud," he said.

"It's a future that radically violates the commitments of the Peace Foundation, that violates a dream of a peace with justice.

"But just your interest today is our hope for the future, which is in your hands."

The director of the Sydney Peace Foundation, which awards the annual Peace Prize, Stuart Rees, said the warm welcome he and Professor Chomsky had received from students was a good omen for the future.

"Ghandi said the offer of hospitality was always the first step when you want to make peace," Professor Rees said.

"And in your warm welcome today and the design your school has selected for today — of a world being freed from a cage — it's evident many of you have come here having sought peace, and seeking to spread it in your futures."

Cabramatta High School principal Beth Godwin commended her students on their contributions to Peace Day, from performances to written compositions.

"Any one of you could be a future winner of this prize, inspired today by the words of Noam Chomsky," she said.

"You are the ones who have come here, knowing the value of peace, and every day you make me believe peace is possible."

While a school in Australia is talking about peace,
USA and Israel talk about comitting mass murder by bombing Iran...

Hitler also spoke of security and defence ...

Security and Defense: Rattling the cage

By YAAKOV KATZ 11/04/2011 17:02

Jerusalem is signaling to the world that it is time to get serious about putting a stop to Iran's nuclear program.

On Wednesday, Israel test fired a long-range ballistic missile believed, according to foreign reports, to be a version of the Jericho 3 missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads up to ranges of 4,000 kilometers.

That same day, the Israel Air Force announced that it had returned from a week of joint maneuvers with Italy over Sardinia that included long-range flights, midair refueling and complicated bombing runs. On Thursday, the Home Front Command held a large-scale civil defense exercise aimed at preparing the public for missile attacks in the center of the country.

On their own, these exercises do not seem overly exciting, especially since they were planned months in advance. Israel's missile tests are not something done randomly; they require immense preparations, particularly since they are launched to the west, over the Mediterranean Sea. Joint exercises with foreign countries cannot be planned at the spur of the moment and also require months of advanced planning.

At the same time, these events are also part of Israel's saber-rattling and are Jerusalem's way of signaling to the world that it is serious about the need for Iran's nuclear program to be put to a stop. This message is being conveyed in the run-up to the report set to be published next week by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is expected to cast some new light on Iran's weapons program.

The IAEA is under pressure to release the report in response to the recently uncovered Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

The report is expected to say that Iran is moving forward with its weapons program, something the US National Intelligence Estimate was unable to ascertain in late 2007.

If the report is damning to Iran, it could serve as the basis for a major crackdown would likely focus on economic sanctions, for example against the Iranian Central Bank, which has yet to be targeted, before any military action would be taken.

On the other hand, the report could also serve as a justification for military action against Iran, either by Israel, by the US or by a coalition of countries. A report by the IAEA, which is considered to be an objective UN agency, is not the same as having a country's own intelligence agencies claim that the country is developing weapons of mass destruction, as in the case with Iraq in 2003.

Either way, there is no question that something is afoot. WAR MONGERING Defense Minister Ehud Barak flew to the US in September and two weeks later US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta came to Israel for another round of talks, during which he urged Israel to "work together" with the international community to stop Iran.

New CIA chief David Petraeus recently visited Israel as well, as did head of the European Command Adm. James Stavridis and additional US military officials.

British Chief of Defense Staff Gen. David Richards secretly visited Israel this week, after which Barak flew to London for talks with the defense and foreign secretaries. The Guardian reported that the British military was drafting plans for the part it will play in a potential US-led attack against Iran's nuclear facilities.

While this all seems dramatic and as though Israel is on the verge of launching a war, it is something that has happened in the past.

In early 2010, for example, US Vice President Joe Biden, then-CIA director Leon Panetta, National Security Adviser Jim Jones, National Security Council strategist Dennis Ross, Deputy Secretaries of State Jim Steinberg and Jack Lew, head of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee Sen. John Kerry and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen all passed through the gates of Ben-Gurion Airport in the span of just six weeks.

This time appears to be different though – not necessarily because of a change in Israel but because of developments in Iran, where sanctions are not believed to have had a major impact on the progress of the nuclear program.

On the contrary. Israeli intelligence believes that the moment Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei decides to make the bomb (he is not believed to have made the decision yet), it would take about a year to make a crude device and around two to three years to make a weapon that could be installed on the wing of an aircraft or on a ballistic missile.

Iran is also continuing to disperse its capabilities and has announced intentions to move some of its advanced centrifuges to the Fordo facility near the city of Qom, which Barak has said before is immune to conventional military strikes. As reported last month in The Jerusalem Post, this has led to an assessment among analysts that the window of opportunity for a strike against Iran is quickly closing.

The debate among the inner cabinet members regarding the Iranian issue are not new. Likud party cabinet members Dan Meridor and Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon are known opponents of such a strike and believe that Israel should not be placing itself at the forefront of efforts to stop it. On the other side are Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Barak, the latter having been accused of sparking the recent media focus on the issue.

In a country like Israel where the censor often imposes restrictions on issues that are far less sensitive for national security than the Iranian problem, it is telling that there has been no censorship in this case.

The past two times that Israel bombed a nuclear reactor – in Syria in 2007 and in Iraq in 1981 – there was not nearly as extensive a debate as there is today. In the Syrian case, for example, the public did not even know that President Bashar Assad had built a nuclear reactor to begin with.

That is why on the one hand the government might actually want this debate, which began with Nahum Barnea's sensational headline in last Friday's Yediot Aharonot, to be held in the media. This way the message will get out to the world, which will then hopefully take action.

On the other hand, maybe the news was not originally intended for publication. If that is the case, then there is actually something comforting in the ongoing debate in the media and the public regarding military action against Iran.

Unlike the operation in Syria, which was hidden from the public, Iran's nuclear program has been a threat to Israel for over a decade and the public, which could face unprecedented rocket and missile fire following a strike, has the right to know where their government is leading them, what the risks are and what they potentially stand to gain.

Barak and Netanyahu could in fact gain from this ongoing discourse. On the one hand, it takes the attention away from the doctors' strike and the social protests and allows them to focus on the really important issues that they believe they were elected in order to deal with. It also could potentially lead the US and Europe to take more decisive action against Iran – starting with economic sanctions – that have not been taken before.

The problem is that it's possible that the increased tension between Israel and Iran will cause one of the sides to make a mistake that could lead to a war that neither side currently wants.

Iran's response to an Israeli attack could vary. Israel's greatest concern stems from the Hizbullah's missile arsenal, which is estimated at 50,000 with the ability to cover the entire State of Israel. For that reason, there are some estimates that when and if it attacks Iran, Israel will also simultaneously attack some of the known Hizbullah targets with an emphasis on the group's long-range missile.

But one of the main questions we are left with is how long such a war would last. Judging by the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, which lasted eight years, when Iran is determined and driven by radical ideology and religion almost nothing can stop it. It is therefore possible that Iran will continue fighting for as long as it feels like it is achieving its goal of hurting Israel.

Chomsky connection to Zionist movement

2011-11-08T01:05:00.001-08:00

every crime that Israel commits is Because U.S. Participation and Authorization - Noam Chomsky
Graffiti of Noam Chomsky | Photo by flickr user Jon Jordan (CC BY 2.0)

I (Gabriel Schivone Chicano-Jewish American founder of Jewish Voice for Peace at the University of Arizona and co-founder of U.A. Students for Justice in Palestine. He is also a volunteer with migrant justice organization No More Deaths/No Más Muertes. He currently attends Arizona State University and can be followed on Twitter via @GSchivone.) had the opportunity a few weeks ago to meet with leading American social critic Noam Chomsky in his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where we spoke about a number of issues of international youth activism regarding American involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict. One of the issues I was curious about was his youth advocacy work within the Zionist movement during the waves of foreign immigration to—and settlement of—Palestine, before Israel was established.

Magazine about the jewish superstition ... http://www.newvoices.org

Today, as a result of Zionist expansion over the area whereby 78% of former Palestine has been swallowed up, the remaining 22% (Gaza, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem) is held under a harsh and crushing 44-year military occupation, while starkly illegal Israeli settlement rapidly continues in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem at the authorization of, and through provisions provided by, U.S. power and policy.

In the opening paragraphs of his 1969 essay, "Nationalism and Conflict in Palestine," Chomsky begins by providing some personal background to his remarks on the subject: "I grew up with a deep interest in the revival of Hebrew culture associated with the settlement of Palestine… enormously attracted, emotionally and intellectually, by what I saw as a dramatic effort to create, out of the wreckage of European civilization, some form of libertarian socialism in the Middle East."

Though Zionism today has many different meanings to many different people, a point that elicits some wonderment, even confusion, among both those who call themselves "pro-Israel" and among those who struggle to end Israeli apartheid, is this old brand of Zionism, seemingly all but extinct today. While clearly accepting, or at least trying to shape in a particular direction, foreign settlement of Palestine as the norm in the pre-state period, these Zionists advocated for what they described as a democratic and secular Palestine, as opposed to a Jewish state. Here Professor Chomsky speaks about his experiences within this little-known area of history:

SCHIVONE: You've mentioned that you were a Zionist youth organizer opposed to a Jewish state. What sort of Zionism did you and other youth envision and want to organize around?

CHOMSKY: I was connected to a considerable part of the Zionist movement which was opposed to a Jewish state. It's not too well known, but until 1942 there was no official commitment of Zionist organizations to a Jewish state. And even that was in the middle of World War II. It was a decision made in the Hotel Biltmore in New York, where there was the first official call for a Jewish state. Before that in the whole Zionist movement, establishing a Jewish state was maybe implicit or in people's minds or something, but it wasn't an official call.

The group that I was interested in was bi-nationalist. And that was not so small. A substantial part of the Kibbutz movement, for example, Hashomer Hatzair, was at least officially anti-state, calling for bi-nationalism. And the groups I was connected with were hoping for a socialist Palestine based on Arab-Jewish, working-class cooperation in a bi-national community: no state, no Jewish state, just Palestine.

There were significant figures involved in that. Actually one of them in Philadelphia was Zellig Harris, the guy I ended up studying with at the University of Pennsylvania. He was one of the leaders of a group called Avukah. By the time I got there it had disbanded but through the 1930s and early 1940s it was quite an important organization of left-wing, Zionist, anti-state, young Jews. Plenty of people went through that—a lot of people who are pretty well-known now—from all over the place. It was not an insignificant part of the young, left Jewish community in the United States, and happened to be partially in Philadelphia.

I can remember when the UN partition resolution was announced in 1947. It was almost like mourning in these circles because we didn't want a Jewish state.

The Anglo-American Commission claimed that about 25% of the Jewish population in Palestine was opposed to a state. There was kind of a different mentality at the time. To talk about socialism wasn't considered a joke at that time. It was a real meaningful, live phenomenon. And a large part of the Yishuv—the Jewish community in Palestine—was, in fact, a co-operative community with collectives, co-operative industry, commerce, lots of socialist institutions. They were also racist Jews. But there was also a lot of opposition to that, too in our groups. We thought they should be Arab-Jewish.

From about then, from the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, I think bi-nationalism was actually a feasible objective. Even then it could have moved in that direction. By then it would have taken a different form than pre-1948, of course. But there could have been moves toward a kind of federalism, which might have evolved further into a more integrated, bi-national community. And, in fact, even elements of Israeli intelligence were pressing for something like this.

By 1975, the opportunity had been lost. By that time, Palestinian nationalism had entered the international agenda and mainly among Palestinians. And since about 1975, I don't think there has been any way of realizing objectives like that except in stages with a two-state settlement being the first stage. If there was some other way of doing that, I'd be in favor of that, but I've never heard of it.

People now talk about one state—which would, of course, be a bi-national state—but without saying how you get there. At that time of my youth, there was, pre-1948. In the early 1970s, it was possible to think about how to get there directly. Now, as far as I can see, the only way to achieve goals like that is indirectly, through a two-state.

And incidentally, I've never been really in favor of a bi-national state because I don't see any reason to worship the imperial borders. They're perfectly arbitrary. Actually, when my wife and I lived on a kibbutz back in the early 1950s, we were backpacking around the place.

Before you were at MIT?

Before MIT, we were grad students. We were backpacking in the Northern Galilee, in Israel. We happened to cross the border. The border wasn't marked. We didn't know. There was a road, and we just walked across the border. The only reason we knew is, a jeep came by on the Israeli side and the guy started yelling at us, telling us to get back on that side. But aside from the imperial powers, there's no reason to honor those borders. There ought to be a more regional integration, in which communities run their affairs as integrated as they choose—sort of what existed under the Ottoman Empire. True, nobody wants the Ottoman Empire but some of the structures it had were pretty reasonable for that area.

Was going to live there part of actualizing your ideals of Arab-Jewish cooperation?

Yeah, at the time we intended to. We were in the middle of school and thought we would go back and stay. In fact, my wife went back and stayed for a longer period. We thought we might go and never did. There were a lot of impediments. The country [Israel] was very different from the way it is now, but there were a lot of problems. But at that time these were not considered outlandish ideas. They were not at the center of the Zionist movement but they were an element of it.

A 1976 interview with Noam Chomsky in which he discusses anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism and council communism as well as the possibility of a free society.

The Jay Interview, July 25, 1976

QUESTION: Professor Chomsky, perhaps we should start by trying to define what is not meant by anarchism -- the word anarchy is derived, after all, from the Greek, literally meaning "no government." Now, presumably people who talk about anarchy or anarchism as a system of political philosophy don't just mean that, as it were, as of January 1st next year, government as we now understand it will suddenly cease; there would be no police, no rules of the road, no laws, no tax collectors, no post office, and so forth. Presumably, it means something more complicated than that.

CHOMSKY: Well, yes to some of those questions, no to others. They may very well mean no policemen, but I don't think they would mean no rules of the road. In fact, I should say to begin with that the term anarchism is used to cover quite a range of political ideas, but I would prefer to think of it as the libertarian left, and from that point of view anarchism can be conceived as a kind of voluntary socialism, that is, as libertarian socialist or anarcho-syndicalist or communist anarchist, in the tradition of, say, Bakunin and Kropotkin and others. They had in mind a highly organized form of society, but a society that was organized on the basis of organic units, organic communities. And generally, they meant by that the workplace and the neighborhood, and from those two basic units there could derive through federal arrangements a highly integrated kind of social organization which might be national or even international in scope. And these decisions could be made over a substantial range, but by delegates who are always part of the organic community from which they come, to which they return, and in which, in fact, they live.

QUESTION: So it doesn't mean a society in which there is, literally speaking, no government, so much as a society in which the primary source of authority comes, as it were, from the bottom up, and not the top down. Whereas representative democracy, as we have it in the United States and in Britain, would be regarded as a from-the-top-down authority, even though ultimately the voters decide.

CHOMSKY: Representative democracy, as in, say, the United States or Great Britain, would be criticized by an anarchist of this school on two grounds. First of all because there is a monopoly of power centralized in the state, and secondly -- and critically -- because the representative democracy is limited to the political sphere and in no serious way encroaches on the economic sphere. Anarchists of this tradition have always held that democratic control of one's productive life is at the core of any serious human liberation, or, for that matter, of any significant democratic practice. That is, as long as individuals are compelled to rent themselves on the market to those who are willing to hire them, as long as their role in production is simply that of ancillary tools, then there are striking elements of coercion and oppression that make talk of democracy very limited, if even meaningful.

QUESTION: Historically speaking, have there been any sustained examples on any substantial scale of societies which approximated to the anarchist ideal?

CHOMSKY: There are small societies, small in number, that I think have done so quite well, and there are a few examples of large scale libertarian revolutions which were largely anarchist in their structure. As to the first, small societies extending over a long period, I myself think the most dramatic example is perhaps the Israeli kibbutzim, which for a long period really were constructed on anarchist principles, that is: self-management, direct worker control, integration of agriculture, industry, service, personal participation in self-management. And they were, I should think, extraordinarily successful by almost any measure that one can impose.

QUESTION: But they were presumably, and still are, in the framework of a conventional state which guarantees certain basic stabilities.

CHOMSKY: Well, they weren't always. Actually, their history is rather interesting. Since 1948 they've been in the framework of a conventional state. Prior to that they were within the framework of the colonial enclave and, in fact, there was a subterranean, largely cooperative society, which was not really part of the system of the British mandate, but was functioning outside of it. And to some extent, that's survived the establishment of the state, though of course, it became integrated itself into the state and in my view lost a fair amount of its libertarian socialist character through this process, and through other processes which are unique to the history of that region which we need not go into.

However, as functioning libertarian socialist institutions, I think they are an interesting model that is highly relevant to advanced industrial societies in a way in which some of the other examples that have existed in the past are not. A good example of a really large-scale anarchist revolution -- in fact the best example to my knowledge -- is the Spanish revolution of 1936, in which, over most of Republican Spain, there was a quite inspiring anarchist revolution that involved both industry and agriculture over substantial areas, developed in a way which to the outside, looks spontaneous. Though, in fact, if you look at the roots of it, you discover that it was based on some three generations of experiment, thought and work which extended anarchist ideas to very large parts of the population in this largely pre-industrial -- though not totally pre-industrial -- society.

And that, again, was, by both human measures and indeed anyone's economic measures, quite successful. That is, production continued effectively; workers in farms and factories proved quite capable of managing their affairs without coercion from above, contrary to what lots of socialists, communists, liberals and others wanted to believe. And in fact, you can't tell what would have happened. That anarchist revolution was simply destroyed by force, but during the brief period in which it was alive I think it was a highly successful and, as I say, in many ways a very inspiring testimony to the ability of poor working people to organize and manage their own affairs, extremely successfully, without coercion and control. How relevant the Spanish experience is to an advanced industrial society one might question in detail.

QUESTION: It's clear that the fundamental idea of anarchism is the primacy of the individual -- not necessarily in isolation, but with other individuals -- and the fulfillment of his freedom. This in a sense looks awfully like the founding ideas of the United States of America. What is it about the American experience which has made freedom as used in that tradition become a suspect and indeed a tainted phrase in the minds of anarchists and libertarian socialist thinkers like yourself?

CHOMSKY: Let me just say I don't really regard myself as an anarchist thinker. I'm a derivative fellow traveler [of anarchism], let's say. Anarchist thinkers have constantly referred to the American experience and to the ideal of Jeffersonian democracy very very favorably. You know, Jefferson's concept that the best government is the government than governs least, or Thoreau's addition to that, that the best government is the one that doesn't govern at all, is one that's often repeated by anarchist thinkers through modern times.

However, the ideal of Jeffersonian democracy -- putting aside the fact that it was a slave society -- developed in an essentially pre-capitalist system, that is, in a society in which there was no monopolistic control, there were no significant centers of private power. In fact, it's striking to go back and read today some of the classic libertarian texts. If one reads, say, Wilhelm von Humboldt's critique of the state of 1792 [English language version: The Limits of State Action (Cambridge University Press, 1969)], a significant classic libertarian text that certainly inspired Mill, one finds that he doesn't speak at all of the need to resist private concentration of power, rather he speaks of the need to resist the encroachment of coercive state power. And that is what one finds also in the early American tradition. But the reason is that that was the only kind of power there was. I mean, Humboldt takes for granted that individuals are roughly equivalent in their private power, and that the only real imbalance of power lies in the centralized authoritarian state, and individual freedom had to be sustained against its intrusion -- the State or the Church. That's what he feels one must resist.

Now, when he speaks, for example, of the need for control of one's creative life, when he decries the alienation of labor that arises from coercion or even instruction or guidance in one's work, he's giving an anti-statist or anti-theocratic ideology. But the same principles apply very well to the capitalist industrial society that emerged later. And I would think that Humboldt, had he been consistent, would have ended up being a libertarian socialist.

QUESTION: Don't these precedents, suggest that there is something inherently pre-industrial about the applicability of libertarian ideas -- that they necessarily presuppose a rather rural society in which technology and production are fairly simple, and in which the economic organization tends to be small-scale and localized?

CHOMSKY: Well, let me separate that into two questions: one, how anarchists have felt about it, and two, what I think is the case. As far as anarchist reactions are concerned, there are two. There has been one anarchist tradition -- and one might think, say, of Kropotkin as a representative -- which had much of the character you describe. On the other hand, there's another anarchist tradition that develops into anarcho-syndicalism which simply regarded anarchist ideas as the proper mode of organization for a highly complex, advanced industrial society. And that tendency in anarchism merges, or at least inter-relates very closely with a variety of left-wing Marxism, the kind that one finds in, say, the Council Communists that grew up in the Luxembourgian tradition and that is later represented by Marxist theorists like Anton Pannekoek, who developed a whole theory of workers' councils in industry and who is himself a scientist and astronomer, very much a part of the industrial world.

So, which of these two views is correct? I mean, is it necessary that anarchist concepts belong to the pre-industrial phase of human society or is anarchism the rational mode of organization for a highly advanced industrial society? Well, I myself believe the latter, that is, I think that the industrialization and the advance of technology raise possibilities for self-management over a broad scale that simply didn't exist in an earlier period. And that in fact this is precisely the rational mode for an advanced and complex industrial society, one in which workers can very well become masters of their own immediate affairs, that is, in direction and control of the shop, but also can be in a position to make the major, substantive decisions concerning the structure of the economy , concerning social institutions, concerning planning, regionally and beyond. At present, institutions do not permit them to have control over the requisite information, and the relevant training to understand these matters. A good deal could be automated. Much of the necessary work that is required to keep a decent level of social life going can be consigned to machines -- at least, in principle -- which means that humans can be free to undertake the kind of creative work which may not have been possible, objectively, in the early stages of the industrial revolution.

QUESTION: I'd like to pursue in a moment the question of the economics of an anarchist society, but could you sketch in a little more detail the political constitution of an anarchist society, as you would see it in modern conditions? Would there be political parties, for example? What residual forms of government would in fact remain?

CHOMSKY: Let me sketch what I think would be a rough consensus, and one that I think is essentially correct. Beginning with the two modes of organization and control, namely organization and control in the workplace and in the community, one could imagine a network of workers' councils, and at a higher level, representation across the factories, or across branches of industry, or across crafts, and on to general assemblies of workers' councils that can be regional and national and international in charter. And from another point of view, one can project a system of government that involves local assemblies -- again, federated regionally, dealing with regional issues, crossing crafts, industry, trades, and so on, and again at the level of the nation or beyond.

Now, exactly how these would develop and how they would inter-relate and whether you need both of them or only one, well, these are matters over which anarchist theoreticians have debated and many proposals exist, and I don't feel confident to take a stand. These are questions which will have to be worked out.

QUESTION: But, there would not be, for example, direct national elections and political parties organized from coast to coast, as it were. Because, if there were that would presumably create a kind of central authority which would be inimical to the idea of anarchism.

CHOMSKY: No, the idea of anarchism is that delegation of authority is rather minimal and that its participants at any one of these levels of government should be directly responsive to the organic community in which they live. In fact, the optimal situation would be that participation in one of these levels of government should be temporary, and even during the period when it's taking place should be only partial; that is, the members of a workers' council who are for some period actually functioning to make decisions that other people don't have the time to make, should also continue to do their work as part of the workplace or neighborhood community in which they belong.

As for political parties, my feeling is that an anarchist society would not forcefully prevent political parties from arising. In fact, anarchism has always been based on the idea that any sort of Procrustean bed, any system of norms that is imposed on social life will constrain and very much underestimate its energy and vitality and that all sorts of new possibilities of voluntary organization may develop at that higher level of material and intellectual culture. But I think it is fair to say that insofar as political parties are felt to be necessary, anarchist organization of society will have failed. That is, it should be the case, I would think, that where there is direct participation in self-management, in economic and social affairs, then factions, conflicts, differences of interests and ideas and opinion, which should be welcomed and cultivated, will be expressed at every one of these levels. Why they should fall into two, three or n political parties, I don't quite see. I think that the complexity of human interest and life does not fall in that fashion. Parties represent basically class interests, and classes would have been eliminated or transcended in such a society.

QUESTION: One last question on the political organization. Is there not a danger with this sort of hierarchical tier of assemblies and quasi-governmental structure, without direct elections, that the central body, or the body that is in some sense at the top of this pyramid, would get very remote from the people on the ground? And since it will have to have some powers if it's going to deal with international affairs, for example, and may even have to have control over armed forces and things like that, that it would be less democratically responsive than the existing regime?

CHOMSKY: It's a very important property of any libertarian society to prevent an evolution in the direction that you've described, which is a possible evolution, and one that institutions should be designed to prevent. And I think that that's entirely possible. I myself am totally unpersuaded that participation in governance is a full-time job. It may be in an irrational society, where all sorts of problems arise because of the irrational nature of institutions. But in a properly functioning advanced industrial society organized along libertarian lines, I would think that executing decisions taken by representative bodies is a part-time job which should be rotated through the community and, furthermore, should be undertaken by people who at all times continue to be participants in their own direct activity.

It may be that governance is on a par with, say, steel production. If that turns out to be true -- and I think that is a question of empirical fact that has to be determined, it can't be projected out of the mind -- but if it turns out to be true then it seems to me the natural suggestion is that governance should be organized industrially, as simply one of the branches of industry, with their own workers' councils and their own self-governance and their own participation in broader assemblies.

I might say that in the workers' councils that have spontaneously developed here and there -- for example, in the Hungarian revolution of 1956 -- that's pretty much what happened. There was, as I recall, a workers' council of state employees who were simply organized along industrial lines as another branch of industry. That's perfectly possible, and it should be or could be a barrier against the creation of the kind of remote coercive bureaucracy that anarchists of course fear.

QUESTION: If you suppose that there would continue to be a need for self-defense on quite a sophisticated level, I don't see from your description how you would achieve effective control of this system of part-time representative councils at various levels from the bottom up, over an organization as powerful and as necessarily technically sophisticated as, for example, the Pentagon.

CHOMSKY: Well, first, we should be a little clearer about terminology. You refer to the Pentagon, as is usually done, as a defense organization. In 1947, when the National Defense Act was passed, the former War Department -- the American department concerned with war which up to that time was honestly called the War Department -- had its name changed to the Defense Department. I was a student then and didn't think I was very sophisticated, but I knew and everyone else knew that this meant that to whatever extent the American military had been involved in defense in the past -- and partially it had been so -- this was now over. Since it was being called the Defense Department, that meant it was going to be a department of aggression, nothing else.

QUESTION: On the principle of never believe anything until it's officially denied.

CHOMSKY: Right. Sort of on the assumption that Orwell essentially had captured the nature of the modern state. And that's exactly the case. I mean, the Pentagon is in no sense a defense department. It has never defended the United States from anyone. It has only served to conduct aggression. And I think that the American people would be much better off without a Pentagon. They certainly don't need it for defense. Its intervention in international affairs has never been -- well, you know, never is a strong word, but I think you would be hard put to find a case -- certainly it has not been its characteristic pose to support freedom or liberty or to defend people and so on. That's not the role of the massive military organization that is controlled by the Defense Department. Rather, its tasks are two -- both quite anti-social.

The first is to preserve an international system in which what are called American interests -- which primarily means business interests, can flourish. And, secondly, it has an internal economic task. I mean, the Pentagon has been the primary Keynesian mechanism whereby the government intervenes to maintain what is ludicrously called the health of the economy by inducing production, that means production of waste.

Now, both these functions serve certain interests, in fact dominant interests, dominant class interests in American society. But I don't think in any sense they serve the public interest, and I think that this system of production of waste and of destruction would essentially be dismantled in a libertarian society. Now, one shouldn't be too glib about this. If one can imagine, let's say, a social revolution in the United States -- that's rather distant, I would say, but if that took place, it's hard to imagine that there would be any credible enemy from the outside that could threaten that social revolution -- we wouldn't be attacked by Mexico or Cuba, let's say. An American revolution would not require, I think, defense against aggression. On the other hand, if a libertarian social revolution were to take place, say, in western Europe, then I think the problem of defense would be very critical.

QUESTION: I was going to say, it can't surely be inherent to the anarchist idea that there should be no self-defense, because such anarchist experiments as there have been have, on the record, actually been destroyed from without.

CHOMSKY: Ah, but I think that these questions cannot be given a general answer. They have to be answered specifically, relative to specific historical and objective conditions.

QUESTION: It's just that I found a little difficulty in following your description of the proper democratic control of this kind of organization, because I find it a little hard to see the generals controlling themselves in the manner you would approve of.

CHOMSKY: That's why I do want to point out the complexity of the issue. It depends on the country and the society that you're talking about. In the United States, one kind of problem arises. If there were a libertarian social revolution in Europe, then I think the problems you raise would be very serious, because there would be a serious problem of defense. That is, I would assume that if libertarian socialism were achieved at some level in Western Europe, there would be a direct military threat both from the Soviet Union and by the United States. And the problem would be how that should be countered. That's the problem that was faced by the Spanish revolution. There was direct military intervention by Fascists, by Communists and by liberal democracies in the background, and the question how can one defend oneself against attack at this level is a very serious one.

However, I think we have to raise the question whether centralized, standing armies, with high technology deterrents, are the most effective way to do that. And that's by no means obvious. For example, I don't think that a Western European centralized army would itself deter a Russian or American attack to prevent libertarian socialism -- the kind of attack that I would quite frankly expect at some level: maybe not military, at least economic.

QUESTION: But nor on the other hand, would a lot of peasants with pitchforks and spades...

CHOMSKY: We're not talking about peasants. We're talking about a highly sophisticated, highly urban industrial society. And it seems to me, its best method of defense would be its political appeal to the working class in the countries that were part of the attack. But again, I don't want to be glib. It might need tanks, it might need armies. And if it did, I think we can be fairly sure that that would contribute to the possible failure or at least decline of the revolutionary force -- for exactly the reasons that you mentioned. That is, I think it's extremely hard to imagine how an effective centralized army deploying tanks, planes, strategic weapons, and so on, could function. If that's what's required to preserve the revolutionary structures, then I think they may well not be preserved.

QUESTION: If the basic defense is the political appeal, or the appeal of the political and economic organization, perhaps we could look in a little more detail at that. You wrote, in one of your essays, that "in a decent society, everyone would have the opportunity to find interesting work and each person would be permitted the fullest possible scope for his talents." And then, you went on to ask: "What more would be required in particular, extrinsic reward in the form of wealth and power? Only if we assume that applying one's talents in interesting and socially useful work is not rewarding in itself." I think that that line of reasoning is certainly one of the things that appeals to a lot of people. But it still needs to be explained, I think, why the kind of work which people would find interesting and appealing and fulfilling to do would coincide at all closely with the kind which actually needs to be done, if we're to sustain anything like the standard of living which people demand and are used to.

CHOMSKY: Well, there's a certain amount of work that just has to be done if we're to maintain that standard of living. It's an open question how onerous that work has to be. Let's recall that science and technology and intellect have not been devoted to examining that question or to overcoming the onerous and self-destructive character of the necessary work of society. The reason is that it has always been assumed that there is a substantial body of wage slaves who will do it simply because otherwise they'll starve. However, if human intelligence is turned to the question of how to make the necessary work of the society itself meaningful, we don't know what the answer will be. My guess is that a fair amount of it can be made entirely tolerable. It's a mistake to think that even back-breaking physical labor is necessarily onerous. Many people, myself included, do it for relaxation. Well, recently, for example, I got it into my head to plant thirty-four trees in a meadow behind the house, on the State Conservation Commission, which means I had to dig thirty-four holes in the sand. You know, for me, and what I do with my time mostly, that's pretty hard work, but I have to admit I enjoyed it. I wouldn't have enjoyed it if I'd had work norms, if I'd had an overseer, and if I'd been ordered to do it at a certain moment, and so on. On the other hand, if it's a task taken on just out of interest, fine, that can be done. And that's without any technology, without any thought given to how to design the work, and so on.

QUESTION: I put it to you that there may be a danger that this view of things is a rather romantic delusion, entertained only by a small elite of people who happen, like professors, perhaps journalists, and so on, to be in the very privileged situation of being paid to do what anyway they like to do.

CHOMSKY: That's why I began with a big "If". I said we first have to ask to what extent the necessary work of the society -- namely that work which is required to maintain the standard of living that we want -- needs to be onerous or undesirable. I think that the answer is: much less than it is it today. But let's assume there is some extent to which it remains onerous. Well, in that case, the answer's quite simple: that work has to be equally shared among people capable of doing it.

QUESTION: And everyone spends a certain number of months a year working on an automobile production line and a certain number of months collecting the garbage and...

CHOMSKY: If it turns out that these are really tasks which people will find no self-fulfillment in. Incidentally, I don't quite believe that. As I watch people work, craftsmen, let's say, automobile mechanics for example, I think one often finds a good deal of pride in work. I think that that kind of pride in work well done, in complicated work well done, because it takes thought and intelligence to do it, especially when one is also involved in management of the enterprise, determination of how the work will be organized, what it is for, what the purposes of the work are, what'll happen to it, and so on -- I think all of this can be satisfying and rewarding activity which in fact requires skills, the kind of skills people will enjoy exercising. However, I'm thinking hypothetically now. Suppose it turns out there is some residue of work which really no one wants to do, whatever that may be -- okay, then I say that the residue of work must be equally shared, and beyond that, people will be free to exercise their talents as they see fit.

QUESTION: I put it you, Professor, that if that residue were very large, as some people would say it was, if it accounted for the work involved in producing ninety per cent of what we all want to consume -- then the organization of sharing this, on the basis that everybody did a little bit of all the nasty jobs, would become wildly inefficient. Because, after all, you have to be trained and equipped to do even the nasty jobs, and the efficiency of the whole economy would suffer, and therefore the standard of living which it sustained would be reduced.

CHOMSKY: Well, for one thing, this is really quite hypothetical, because I don't believe that the figures are anything like that. As I say, it seems to me that if human intelligence were devoted to asking how technology can be designed to fit the needs of the human producer, instead of conversely -- that is, now we ask how the human being with his special properties can be fitted into a technological system designed for other ends, namely, production for profit -- my feeling is that if that were done, we would find that the really unwanted work is far smaller than you suggest. But whatever it is, notice that we have two alternatives. One alternative is to have it equally shared, the other is to design social institutions so that some group of people will be simply compelled to do the work, on pain of starvation. Those are the two alternatives.

QUESTION: Not compelled to do it, but they might agree to do it voluntarily because they were paid an amount which they felt made it worthwhile.

CHOMSKY: Well, but you see, I'm assuming everyone essentially gets equal remuneration. Don't forget that we're not talking about a society now where the people who do the onerous work are paid substantially more than the people who do the work that they do on choice -- quite the opposite. The way our society works, the way any class society works, the people who do the unwanted work are the ones who are paid least. That work is done and we sort of put it out of our minds, because it's assumed that there will be a massive class of people who control only one factor of production, namely their labor, and have to sell it, and they'll have to do that work because they have nothing else to do, and they'll be paid very little for it. I accept the correction. Let's imagine three kinds of society: one, the current one, in which the undesired work is given to wage-slaves. Let's imagine a second system in which the undesired work, after the best efforts to make it meaningful, is shared. And let's imagine a third system where the undesired work receives high extra pay, so that individuals voluntarily choose to do it. Well, it seems to me that either of the two latter systems is consistent with -- vaguely speaking -- anarchist principles. I would argue myself for the second rather than the third, but either of the two is quite remote from any present social organization or any tendency in contemporary social organization.

QUESTION: Let me put that to you in another way. It seems to me that there is a fundamental choice, however one disguises it, between whether you organize work for the satisfaction it gives to the people who do it, or whether you organize it on the basis of the value of what is produced for the people who are going to use or consume what is produced. And that a society that is organized on the basis of giving everybody the maximum opportunity to fulfill their hobbies, which is essentially the work-for-work's-sake view, finds its logical culmination in a monastery, where the kind of work which is done, namely prayer, is work for the self-enrichment of the worker and where nothing is produced which is of any use to anybody and you live either at a low standard of living, or you actually starve.

CHOMSKY: Well, there are some factual assumptions here, and I disagree with you about the factual assumptions. My feeling is that part of what makes work meaningful is that it does have use, that its products do have use. The work of the craftsman is in part meaningful to that craftsman because of the intelligence and skill that he puts into it, but also in part because the work is useful, and I might say, the same is true of scientists. I mean, the fact that the kind of work you do may lead to something else -- that's what it means in science, you know -- may contribute to something else, that's very important quite apart from the elegance and beauty of what you may achieve. And I think that covers every field of human endeavor. Furthermore, I think if we look at a good part of human history, we'll find that people to a substantial extent did get some degree of satisfaction -- often a lot of satisfaction -- from the productive and creative work that they were doing. And I think that the chances for that are enormously enhanced by industrialization. Why? Precisely because much of the most meaningless drudgery can be taken over by machines, which means that the scope for really creative human work is substantially enlarged.

Now, you speak of work freely undertaken as a hobby. But I don't believe that. I think work freely undertaken can be useful, meaningful work done well. Also, you pose a dilemma that many people pose, between desire for satisfaction in work and a desire to create things of value to the community. But it's not so obvious that there is any dilemma, any contradiction. So, it's by no means clear -- in fact, I think it's false -- that contributing to the enhancement of pleasure and satisfaction in work is inversely proportional to contributing to the value of the output.

QUESTION: Not inversely proportional, but it might be unrelated. I mean, take some very simple thing, like selling ice-creams on the beach on a public holiday. It's a service to society: undoubtedly people want ice-creams, they feel hot. On the other hand, it's hard to see in what sense there is either a craftsman's joy or a great sense of social virtue or nobility in performing that task. Why would anyone perform that task if they were not rewarded for it?

CHOMSKY: I must say, I've seen some very cheery-looking ice cream vendors...

QUESTION: Sure, they're making a lot of money.

CHOMSKY: ... who happen to like the idea that they're giving children ice-creams, which seems to me a perfectly reasonable way to spend one's time, as compared with thousands of other occupations that I can imagine.

Recall that a person has an occupation, and it seems to me that most of the occupations that exist -- especially the ones that involve what are called services, that is, relations to human beings -- have an intrinsic satisfaction and rewards associated with them, namely in the dealings with the human beings that are involved. That's true of teaching, and it's true of ice cream vending. I agree that ice cream vending doesn't require the commitment or intelligence that teaching does, and maybe for that reason it will be a less desired occupation. But if so, it will have to be shared.

However, what I'm saying is that our characteristic assumption that pleasure in work, pride in work, is either unrelated to or negatively related to the value of the output is related to a particular stage of social history, namely capitalism, in which human beings are tools of production. It is by no means necessarily true. For example, if you look at the many interviews with workers on assembly lines, for example, that have been done by industrial psychologists, you find that one of the things they complain about over and over again is the fact that their work simply can't be done well; the fact that the assembly line goes through so fast that they can't do their work properly. I just happened to look recently at a study of longevity in some journal on gerontology which tried to trace the factors that you could use to predict longevity -- you know, cigarette smoking and drinking, genetic factors -- everything was looked at. It turned out, in fact, that the highest predictor, the most successful predictor, was job satisfaction.

QUESTION: People who have nice jobs live longer.

CHOMSKY: People who are satisfied with their jobs. And I think that makes a good deal of sense, you know, because that's where you spend your life, that's where your creative activities are. Now what leads to job satisfaction? Well, I think many things lead to it, and the knowledge that you are doing something useful for the community is an important part of it. Many people who are satisfied with their work are people who feel that what they're doing is important to do. They can be teachers, they can be doctors, they can be scientists, they can be craftsmen, they can be farmers. I mean, I think the feeling that what one is doing is important, is worth doing, contributes to those with whom one has social bonds, is a very significant factor in one's personal satisfaction.

And over and above that there is the pride and the self-fulfilment that comes from a job well done -- from simply taking your skills and putting them to use. Now, I don't see why that should in any way harm, in fact I should think it would enhance, the value of what's produced.

But let's imagine still that at some level it does harm. Well, okay, at that point, the society, the community, has to decide how to make compromises. Each individual is both a producer and a consumer, after all, and that means that each individual has to join in these socially determined compromises -- if in fact there are compromises. And again I feel the nature of the compromise is much exaggerated because of the distorting prism of the really coercive and personally destructive system in which we live.

QUESTION: All right, you say the community has to make decisions about compromises, and of course communist theory provides for this in its whole thinking about national planning, decisions about investment, direction of investment, and so forth. In an anarchist society, it would seem that you're not willing to provide for that amount of governmental superstructure that would be necessary to make the plans, make the investment decisions, to decide whether you give priority to what people want to consume, or whether you give priority to the work people want to do.

CHOMSKY: I don't agree with that. It seems to me that anarchist, or, for that matter, left-Marxist structures, based on systems of workers' councils and federations, provide exactly the set of levels of decision-making at which decisions can be made about a national plan. Similarly, state socialist societies also provide a level of decision-making -- let's say the nation -- in which national plans can be produced. There's no difference in that respect. The difference has to do with participation in those decisions and control over those decisions. In the view of anarchists and left-Marxists -- like the workers' councils or the Council Communists, who were left-Marxists -- those decisions are made by the informed working class through their assemblies and their direct representatives, who live among them and work among them. On the state socialist systems, the national plan is made by a national bureaucracy, which accumulates to itself all the relevant information, makes decisions, offers them to the public, and says, "You can pick me or you can pick him, but we're all part of this remote bureaucracy." These are the poles, these are the polar opposites within the socialist tradition.

QUESTION: So, in fact, there's a very considerable role for the state and possibly even for civil servants, for bureaucracy, but it's the control over it that's different.

CHOMSKY: Well, see, I don't really believe that we need a separate bureaucracy to carry out governmental decisions.

QUESTION: You need various forms of expertise.

CHOMSKY: Oh, yes, but let's take expertise with regard to economic planning, because certainly in any complex industrial society there should be a group of technicians whose task it is to produce plans, and to lay out the consequences of decisions, to explain to the people who have to make the decisions that if you decide this, you're likely to get this consequence, because that's what your programming model shows, and so on. But the point is that those planning systems are themselves industries, and they will have their workers' councils and they will be part of the whole council system, and the distinction is that these planning systems do not make decisions. They produce plans in exactly the same way that automakers produce autos. The plans are then available for the workers' councils and council assemblies, in the same way that autos are available to ride in. Now, of course, what this does require is an informed and educated working class. But that's precisely what we are capable of achieving in advanced industrial societies.

QUESTION: How far does the success of libertarian socialism or anarchism really depend on a fundamental change in the nature of man, both in his motivation, his altruism, and also in his knowledge and sophistication?

CHOMSKY: I think it not only depends on it but in fact the whole purpose of libertarian socialism is that it will contribute to it. It will contribute to a spiritual transformation -- precisely that kind of great transformation in the way humans conceive of themselves and their ability to act, to decide, to create, to produce, to enquire -- precisely that spiritual transformation that social thinkers from the left-Marxist traditions, from Luxembourg, say, through anarcho-syndicalists, have always emphasized. So, on the one hand, it requires that spiritual transformation. On the other hand, its purpose is to create institutions which will contribute to that transformation in the nature of work, the nature of creative activity, simply in social bonds among people, and through this interaction of creating institutions which permit new aspects of human nature to flourish. And then the building of still more libertarian institutions to which these liberated human beings can contribute. This is the evolution of socialism as I understand it.

QUESTION: And finally, Professor Chomsky, what do you think of the chances of societies along these lines coming into being in the major industrial countries in the West in the next quarter of a century or so?

CHOMSKY: I don't think I'm wise enough, or informed enough, to make predictions and I think predictions about such poorly understood matters probably generally reflect personality more than judgment. But I think this much at least we can say: there are obvious tendencies in industrial capitalism towards concentration of power in narrow economic empires and in what is increasingly becoming a totalitarian state. These are tendencies that have been going on for a long time, and I don't see anything stopping them really. I think those tendencies will continue. They're part of the stagnation and decline of capitalist institutions.

Now, it seems to me that the development towards state totalitarianism and towards economic concentration -- and, of course, they are linked -- will continually lead to revulsion, to efforts of personal liberation and to organizational efforts at social liberation. And that'll take all sorts of forms. Throughout all Europe, in one form or another, there is a call for what is sometimes called worker participation or co-determination, or even sometimes worker control. Now, most of these efforts are minimal. I think that they're misleading -- in fact, may even undermine efforts for the working class to liberate itself. But, in part, they're responsive to a strong intuition and understanding that coercion and repression, whether by private economic power or by the state bureaucracy, is by no means a necessary feature of human life. And the more those concentrations of power and authority continue, the more we will see revulsion against them and efforts to organize and overthrow them. Sooner or later, they'll succeed, I hope.

Israeli Citizens Database - ONLINE FOR DOWNLOADu

2011-11-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

Agron 2006 Population Registry data online for download

In 2006 the Agron program with personal information of millions of Israelis was distributed online, now after five years, police crack the case and expose those responsible for leak. Six have been arrested

Aviad Glickman

The Justice Ministry's Law, Information and Technology Authority (LITA) announced Monday that they have cracked the 2006 case in which an exact electronic copy of information of over nine million of Israel's citizens listed in the Israeli population registry was stolen. The copy included personal details and even details of minors and deceased citizens.

install utorrent and click this link:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:JG4ZTKQSYTUGSLOY6WGPN7TNFZ7XDH44

The Agron program which was a program developed on the basis of the stolen information and was distributed online, became a download hit at the time and could be found in many households in Israel

According to the Justice Ministry, the electronic copy was stolen by an employee of the Social Affairs Ministry in 2006 and kept in his home.

The information included Israeli citizens' names, identification numbers, addresses, birthdates and other important dates as well as relationships between various citizens. Six suspects were arrested in connection with the case and were released under limited conditions.

According to LITA the thief transferred a copy of the stolen information to a business associate who then transferred a copy to his friend. The information eventually made it into the hands of a person dealing in illegal information who then transferred it to a software developer who created the Agron 2006 program that incorporated all the stolen information.

Available to general public

The Agron 2006 program allowed users to present queries about any of the listed citizens and according to the Justice Ministry was intended for illegal redistribution. LITA noted that Agron's unique quality was in its ability to easily divide various sectors of society according to requested parameters as well as trace relationships between citizens.

The investigation revealed that the program was soon made available to the general public via various file sharing websites. A website was even created to explain how to use the program. The Justice Ministry added that the website even encouraged others to distribute the illegal information.

LITA attorneys Yoram Cohen, Mili Bach (Photo: Yaron Brener)

Reacting to the breakthrough in the investigation, LITA Chief attorney Yoram Cohen said that "any person who handles personal information and any citizen should lose sleep over the chain of information from the now exposed theft of the Population Registry information…"

LITA investigations' department Chief attorney Mili Bach added that "the online availability of the Population Registry and the Agron program was, for years, a blatant testimony to the intolerable gap that exists in Israel between the daily reality and the state law."

Reacting to the public disclosure of the case, the attorney representing the suspects said: "We believe that we shall once again find out that they have made much ado about nothing. This will be one of those investigations that commence with a boom and end on a weak note.

"This is what happens when for years the State of Israel chose not to deal with the phenomenon and not to enforce the ban on use of the repository in spite of knowing of the common use of the Population Registry information."

What this database include?
ü 9,220,583 people! (Harisumonim others include only about 5 million)
How did we get this number?
ü that include the stock of the deceased and those defined as active (moved abroad)
In addition:
ü an excellent search software! Very quick and easy.
ü advanced filtering option and easy by each field separately.
ü Finding family ties - a \ a spouse, children, siblings, parents (both deceased)
ü Printing options, creating labels, Export Office, a temporary buffer and save more.
In short an amazing software!

What fields are included in the software?
ID No.
First name
Last name
Gregorian Birthday
Hebrew Birthday
Age
Sex
Marital status (single, married, divorced, a from)
Status (active, has died)
Children
First Name
A. M parent
Parent Name
A. M if
If there
Street
House No.
Signal
Login
Apartment
City
Targeting
Phone (partial information)
Place of birth
Increase Gregorian date
Date Jewish immigration
Gregorian date of death
Hebrew death date

Tariq Ali - #Occupy: defend the public sector

2011-11-06T13:26:00.000-08:00

Tariq Ali - thinks 911 was done by arab twens, haha.

"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at", wrote Oscar Wilde, "for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias."

The spirit of that 19th century socialist is alive among the idealistic young people who have come out in protest against the turbo-charged global capitalism that has dominated the world ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters who have taken up residence at the heart of New York's financial district are demonstrating against a system of despotic finance capital: a greed-infected vampire that must suck the blood of the non-rich in order to survive. The protesters are showing their contempt for bankers, for financial speculators and for their media hirelings who continue to insist that there is no alternative.

Since the Wall Street system dominates Europe, local versions of that model exist here too. (Interestingly it was the Wall Street occupiers rather than the indignados of Spain or the striking workers of Greece who had an impact in Britain, revealing once again that the real affinities of this country are Atlanticist rather than European.) The young people being pepper sprayed by the NYPD may not have worked out what they want, but they sure as hell know what they're against and that's an important start.

How did we get here?

How did we get here? Following the collapse of communism in 1991, Edmund Burke's notion that "in all societies, consisting of different classes, certain classes must necessarily be uppermost" and that "the apostles of equality only change and pervert the natural order of things" became the commonsense wisdom of the age. Money corrupted politics, big money corrupted absolutely. Throughout the heartlands of capital we witnessed the emergence of: Republicans and Democrats in the United States; New Labour and Tories in the vassal state of Britain; Socialists and Conservatives in France; the German coalitions, the Scandinavian centre-right and centre-left, and so on. In virtually each case the two-party system morphed into an effective national government. A new market extremism came into play. The entry of capital in the most hallowed domains of social provision was regarded as a necessary "reform". Private finance initiatives that punished the public sector became the norm and countries (such as France and Germany) that were seen as not proceeding fast enough in the direction of the neoliberal paradise were regularly denounced in the Economist and the Financial Times.

To question this turn, to defend the public sector, to argue in favour of state ownership of utilities, to challenge the fire sale of public housing, was to be regarded as a "conservative" dinosaur. Everyone was now a customer, rather than a citizen: young, upwardly mobile, New Labour academics would coyly refer to those forced to read their books as "customers", as if to say we are all capitalists now. The social and economic power elites reflected the new realities. The market became the new God, preferable to the state.

But those who swallowed this line never asked: how come this happened? In fact the state was necessary to make the transition. State intervention to shore up the market and help the rich was fine. And given that no party offered any alternatives, the citizens of North America and Europe trusted their politicians and went sleepwalking to disaster.

Wall Street crisis

The politicians of the centre, intoxicated by the triumphs of capitalism, were unprepared for the Wall Street crisis of 2008. So were most citizens, hoodwinked by huge advertising campaigns offering easy loans and a tame, uncritical media, into believing that all was well. Their leaders might not be charismatic but they knew how to handle the system. Leave it all to the politicians. The price for this institutionalised apathy is now being paid. (To be fair, the Irish and the French people scented disaster in the arguments over the EU constitution that enshrined neoliberalism at its heart, and voted against it. They were ignored.)

Yet it was obvious to many economists that Wall Street deliberately planned the housing bubble, spending billions on advertising campaigns to encourage people to take out second mortgages and increase personal debt to spend blindly on consumption. The bubble had to burst and when it did the system tottered until the state rescued the banks from total collapse. Socialism for the rich. As the crisis spread to Europe, the single market and competition rules were flushed down the toilet as the EU mounted a rescue operation. The disciplines of the market were now conveniently forgotten. The extreme right is small. The extreme left barely exists. It is the extreme centre that dominates political and social life.

As some countries collapsed (Iceland, Ireland, Greece) and others (Portugal, Spain, Italy) stared into the abyss, the EU (in reality the BU, a Bankers' Union) stepped in to impose austerity and to save the German, French and British banking systems. The tensions between the market and democratic accountability could no longer be masked. The Greek elite was blackmailed into total submission and the austerity measures being thrust down the throats of the citizenry have brought the country to the brink of revolution.

Greece is the weakest link in the chain of European capitalism, its democracy long submerged beneath the waves of capitalism in crisis. General strikes and creative protests have made the task of the centre extremists very difficult. Watching recent images from Athens, where the police have used force to prevent tens of thousands of citizens entering parliament, one feels that the rulers of the country might not be able to rule in the same old way for too long.

Earlier this year in Thessaloniki, where I was addressing a literary festival, the main concerns of the audience were political and economic rather than literary. Was there an alternative? What should be done? Default immediately, I replied. Quit the eurozone, re-introduce the drachma, institute social and economic planning on local, regional and national levels, involve the people in discussions on how to stabilise the country but not at the expense of the poor. The rich should be made to disgorge the money (by special taxation) accumulated by dodgy means over the last decade.

But the visionless politicians at the heart of the system are far removed from any such ideas. Many are on the payroll of the small number of people who own and control the economic resources of a country.

Occupy movement

The debt-ridden United States, under Obama (a president who for all practical purposes has continued the policies of his predecessor), has seen the emergence of a new movement of protest spreading to all the large cities. The energy of the young occupiers is admirable. Spring had absconded from the heart of political America for far too long. The frozen winters of the Reagan and Bush years didn't melt with Clinton or Obama: hollow men who rule over a hollow system where money overpowers all and the much-maligned state is used mainly to preserve the financial status quo and fund the wars of the 21st century.

The fog of confusion has finally lifted and people are searching for alternatives, but without political parties since virtually all of these have been found wanting. The occupations currently being staged in New York, London, Glasgow and elsewhere, are very different from protests in the past. These are actions being mounted in times of growing unemployment and where the future looks grim. A majority of young people – hysterical protestation to the contrary notwithstanding – will not get a higher education unless they conjure up huge amounts of money and will soon, no doubt, be confronted with a two-tier health system. Capitalist democracy today presupposes a fundamental agreement between the main parties represented in parliament so that their bickering, limited by their moderation, becomes utterly insignificant. In other words, citizens can no longer determine who (and how) controls a country's wealth – wealth that has largely been created by the citizens themselves.

If crucial questions such as the allocation of resources, the social welfare provisions, the distribution of wealth are no longer the subject of real debates inside representative assemblies, why the surprise at the alienation of the young from mainstream politics or the huge disappointment with Obama and his global mimics? It is this that is forcing people out into the streets of more than 90 cities.

The politicians refused to accept that the crisis of 2008 was related to the neoliberal policies they had been pursuing since the 1980s. They assumed they could get away with carrying on as if nothing had happened, but the movements from below have challenged this assumption. The occupations and street protests against capitalism are in some ways analogous to the peasant Jacqueries (revolts) of preceding centuries. Unacceptable conditions lead to uprisings, which are then usually crushed or subside of their own accord. What is important is that they are often harbingers of what is yet to come if conditions remain the same. No movement can survive unless it creates a permanent democratic structure to maintain political continuity. The greater the popular support for any such movement the greater the need for some form of organisation.

Latin America

The model South American rebellions against neoliberalism and its global institutions are telling in this regard. Huge and successful struggles against the International Monetary Fund in Venezuela, against water privatisation in Bolivia and against electricity privatisation in Peru created the basis for a new politics that triumphed at the polls in the former two countries, as well as in Ecuador and Paraguay. Once elected, the new governments began to implement the promised social and economic reforms with varying degrees of success.

The advice proffered to the Labour Party in Britain in 1958 by Professor HD Dickinson in the New Statesman was rejected by the Labour Party but accepted by the Bolivarian leaders in Venezuela some 40 years later:

If the welfare state is to survive, the state must find a source of income, of its own, a source to which it has a claim prior to that of … a profits-receiver. The only source that I can see is that of productive property. The state must come in some way or another, to own a very large chunk of the land and capital of the country. This may not be a popular policy: but, unless it is pursued, the policy of improved social services, which is a popular one, will become impossible. You cannot for long socialise the means of consumption unless you first socialise the means of production.

The rulers of the world will see in these words little more than an expression of utopianism, but they would be wrong. For these are the structural reforms that are really needed, not those being pushed by the isolated PASOK leadership in Athens. Down that road lie further deprivation, more unemployment and social disaster. What is needed is a complete turnaround preceded by a public admission that the Wall Street system could not and did not work and has to be abandoned. Its British followers, like all converts, were more ruthless and coldblooded in their acceptance of the market as the only arbiter, backed by a neoliberal state machine. To continue on this path will require new mechanisms of domination that will leave democracy as little more than an empty shell. The occupiers are instinctively aware of this, which is why they are where they are today. The same cannot be said for the extremist politicians of the centre.

I am full of admiration for all the young people occupying squares and streets in different parts of the globe. They are challenging our rulers with humour, brio and panache. But the hard-faced bankers and politicians who dominate the world will not be easily displaced. A decade of struggle and organisation is needed to win a few victories.

Why not unite everyone we can behind a charter of demands -– a "grand remonstrance" to the parliament that represents the interests of the rich -– and march with a million or more to deliver the remonstrance in person next autumn. The law (imposed after the Restoration of 1666) bans tumultuous demonstrations outside parliament, but we can interpret "tumultuous" just as well as any lawyer.

NATO faces ICC war crimes probe

2011-11-06T13:06:00.001-08:00

Libyans inspect the damage at a factory targeted by NATO air strikes in Bir Ghanam on August 6, 2011

The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) says his office will investigate alleged crimes committed by NATO during the civil war and intervention in Libya along with those of the Gaddafi regime and the rebels.

Luis Moreno Ocampo did not provide any details on allegations against NATO forces as he reported to the UN Security Council on Wednesday.

The ICC will probe into war crimes allegedly committed by anti-Gaddafi forces, including persecution of civilians, killings of combatant captives and the death of the former Libyan leader himself, the prosecutor said.

The investigation however will focus on alleged crimes of the ousted regime and particularly on those attributed to Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam and his head of intelligence al-Senussi. Both men are still at large, presumed to be somewhere in Libya.

"It is up to the UN Security Council and states to ensure that they face justice for the crimes for which they are charged," Ocampo said.

Russia backs the ICC's effort and hopes that all parties which violated the international law will be brought to justice, the country's deputy envoy to UN Sergey Karev said.

"The number of civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure from actions of all the belligerent parties in Libya is are very high. Unfortunately, actions of the NATO-led coalition resulted in civilian deaths too," the diplomat said. He added that Moscow expects "all those guilty of serious crimes – according to the international law – committed in Libya will be punished."

Karev added that Russia fears that the new Libyan leaders, who promised a full investigation into the death of Gaddafi, will fail to deliver.

"We can't help but doubt that a proper investigation will be possible immediately in the country, with ruined governing structure and virtually no functioning law enforcement or prosecution bodies," he said.

Russia calls on the ICC to closely monitor the investigation, and "if at some point the Libyan side will for some reason be unable to perform such an investigation, the ICC will have to take over," the diplomat explained.

murderous Anglosphere - Chomsky Sydney Peace Price Lecture

2011-11-03T07:53:00.000-07:00

3 November 2011, 3.58pm AEST

Noam Chomsky: can revolutionary pacificism deliver peace?

Noam Chomsky has been awarded the Sydney Peace Prize.

Wednesday 2nd November, 7 pm Sydney Town Hall: City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture by Prof Noam Chomsky.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Noam Chomsky has been awarded this year's Sydney Peace Prize, Australia's only international peace prize.

This is a full transcript of Professor Chomsky's City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture, "Revolutionary Pacifism: Choices and Prospects", reproduced with permission from the Sydney Peace Foundation.

As we all know, the United Nations was founded "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." The words can only elicit deep regret when we consider how we have acted to fulfill that aspiration, though there have been a few significant successes, notably in Europe.

For centuries, Europe had been the most violent place on earth, with murderous and destructive internal conflicts and the forging of a culture of war that enabled Europe to conquer most of the world, shocking the victims, who were hardly pacifists, but were "appalled by the all-destructive fury of European warfare," in the words of British military historian Geoffrey Parker. And enabled Europe to impose on its conquests what Adam Smith called "the savage injustice of the Europeans," England in the lead, as he did not fail to emphasise.

The global conquest took a particularly horrifying form in what is sometimes called "the Anglosphere," England and its offshoots, settler-colonial societies in which the indigenous societies were devastated and their people dispersed or exterminated. But since 1945 Europe has become internally the most peaceful and in many ways most humane region of the earth – which is the source of some its current travail, an important topic that I will have to put aside.

In scholarship, this dramatic transition is often attributed to the thesis of the "democratic peace": democracies do not go to war with one another. Not to be overlooked, however, is that Europeans came to realize that the next time they indulge in their favorite pastime of slaughtering one another, the game will be over: civilisation has developed means of destruction that can only be used against those too weak to retaliate in kind, a large part of the appalling history of the post-World War II years. It is not that the threat has ended. US-Soviet confrontations came painfully close to virtually terminal nuclear war in ways that are shattering to contemplate, when we inspect them closely.

And the threat of nuclear war remains all too ominously alive, a matter to which I will briefly return.

Can we proceed to at least limit the scourge of war? One answer is given by absolute pacifists, including people I respect though I have never felt able to go beyond that.

A somewhat more persuasive stand, I think, is that of the pacifist thinker and social activist A.J. Muste, one of the great figures of 20th century America, in my opinion: what he called "revolutionary pacifism." Muste disdained the search for peace without justice. He urged that "one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist" – by which he meant that we must cease to "acquiesce [so] easily in evil conditions," and must deal "honestly and adequately with this ninety percent of our problem" – "the violence on which the present system is based, and all the evil – material and spiritual – this entails for the masses of men throughout the world." Unless we do so, he argued, "there is something ludicrous, and perhaps hypocritical, about our concern over the ten per cent of the violence employed by the rebels against oppression" – no matter how hideous they may be.

He was confronting the hardest problem of the day for a pacifist, the question whether to take part in the anti-fascist war. In writing about Muste's stand 45 years ago, I quoted his warning that "The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will teach him a lesson?" His observation was all too apt at the time, while the Indochina wars were raging. And on all too many other occasions since.

The allies did not fight "the good war," as it is commonly called, because of the awful crimes of fascism. Before their attacks on western powers, fascists were treated rather sympathetically, particularly "that admirable Italian gentleman," as FDR called Mussolini. Even Hitler was regarded by the US State Department as a "moderate" holding off the extremists of right and left. The British were even more sympathetic, particularly the business world. Roosevelt's close confidant Sumner Welles reported to the president that the Munich settlement that dismembered Czechoslovakia "presented the opportunity for the establishment by the nations of the world of a new world order based upon justice and upon law," in which the Nazi moderates would play a leading role.

As late as April 1941, the influential statesman George Kennan, at the dovish extreme of the postwar planning spectrum, wrote from his consular post in Berlin that German leaders have no wish to "see other people suffer under German rule," are "most anxious that their new subjects should be happy in their care," and are making "important compromises" to assure this benign outcome.

Though by then the horrendous facts of the Holocaust were well known, they scarcely entered the Nuremberg trials, which focused on aggression, "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole": in Indochina, Iraq, and all too many other places where we have much to contemplate.

The horrifying crimes of Japanese fascism were virtually ignored in the postwar peace settlements. Japan's aggression began exactly 80 years ago, with the staged Mukden incident, but for the West, it began 10 years later, with the attack on military bases in two US possessions. India and other major Asian countries refused even to attend the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty conference because of the exclusion of Japan's crimes in Asia – and also because of Washington's establishment of a major military base in conquered Okiniwa, still there despite the energetic protests of the population.

It is useful to reflect on several aspects of the Pearl Harbor attack. One is the reaction of historian and Kennedy advisor Arthur Schlesinger to the bombing of Baghdad in March 2003. He recalled FDR's words when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on "a date which will live in infamy."

"Today it is we Americans who live in infamy," Schlesinger wrote, as our government adopts the policies of imperial Japan – thoughts that were barely articulated elsewhere in the mainstream, and quickly suppressed: I could find no mention of this principled stand in the praise for Schlesinger's accomplishments when he died a few years later.

We can also learn a lot about ourselves by carrying Schlesinger's lament a few steps further. By today's standards, Japan's attack was justified, indeed meritorious. Japan, after all, was exercising the much lauded doctrine of anticipatory self-defense when it bombed military bases in Hawaii and the Philippines, two virtual US colonies, with reasons far more compelling than anything that Bush and Blair could conjure up when they adopted the policies of imperial Japan in 2003. Japanese leaders were well aware that B-17 Flying Fortresses were coming off the Boeing production lines, and they could read in the American press that these killing machines would be able to burn down Tokyo, a "city of rice-paper and wood houses."

A November 1940 plan to "bomb Tokyo and other big cities" was enthusiastically received by Secretary of State Cordell Hull. FDR was "simply delighted" at the plans "to burn out the industrial heart of the Empire with fire-bomb attacks on the teeming bamboo ant heaps of Honshu and Kyushu," outlined by their author, Air Force General Chennault. By July 1941, the Air Corps was ferrying B-17s to the Far East for this purpose, assigning half of all the big bombers to this region, taking them from the Atlantic sea-lanes. They were to be used if needed "to set the paper cities of Japan on fire," according to General George Marshall, Roosevelt's main military adviser, in a press briefing three weeks before Pearl Harbor.

Four days later, New York Times senior correspondent Arthur Krock reported US plans to bomb Japan from Siberian and Philippine bases, to which the Air Force was rushing incendiary bombs intended for civilian targets. The US knew from decoded messages that Japan was aware of these plans.

History provides ample evidence to support Muste's conclusion that "The problem after a war is with the victor, [who] thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay." And the real answer to Muste's question, "Who will teach him a lesson?," can only be domestic populations, if they can adopt elementary moral principles.

Even the most uncontroversial of these principles could have a major impact on ending injustice and war. Consider the principle of universality, perhaps the most elementary of moral principles: we apply to ourselves the standards we apply to others, if not more stringent ones. The principle is universal, or nearly so, in three further respects: it is found in some form in every moral code; it is universally applauded in words, and consistently rejected in practice. The facts are plain, and should be troublesome.

The principle has a simple corollary, which suffers the same fate: we should distribute finite energies to the extent that we can influence outcomes, typically on cases for which we share responsibility. We take that for granted with regard to enemies. No one cares whether Iranian intellectuals join the ruling clerics in condemnation of the crimes of Israel or the United States. Rather, we ask what they say about their own state.

We honored Soviet dissidents on the same grounds. Of course, that is not the reaction within their own societies. There dissidents are condemned as "anti-Soviet" or supporters of the Great Satan, much as their counterparts here are condemned as "anti-American" or supporters of today's official enemy. And of course, punishment of those who adhere to elementary moral principles can be severe, depending on the nature of the society.

In Soviet-run Czechoslovakia, for example, Vaclav Havel was imprisoned. At the same time, in US-run El Salvador his counterparts had their brains blown out by an elite battalion fresh from renewed training at the John F. Kennedy School of Special Warfare in North Carolina, acting on explicit orders of the High Command, which had intimate relations with Washington. We all know and respect Havel for his courageous resistance, but who can even name the leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, who were added to the long bloody trail of the Atlacatl brigade shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall – along with their housekeeper and daughter, since the orders were to leave no witnesses?

Before we hear that these are exceptions, we might recall a truism of Latin American scholarship, reiterated by historian John Coatsworth in the recently published Cambridge University History of the Cold War: from 1960 to "the Soviet collapse in 1990, the numbers of political prisoners, torture victims, and executions of nonviolent political dissenters in Latin America vastly exceeded those in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites." Among the executed were many religious martyrs, and there were mass slaughters as well, consistently supported or initiated by Washington. And the date 1960 is highly significant, for reasons we should all know, but I cannot go into here.

In the West all of this is "disappeared," to borrow the terminology of our Latin American victims. Regrettably, these are persistent features of intellectual and moral culture, which we can trace back to the earliest recorded history. I think they richly underscore Muste's injunction.

If we ever hope to live up to the high ideals we passionately proclaim, and to bring the initial dream of the United Nations closer to fulfillment, we should think carefully about crucial choices that have been made, and continue to be made every day – not forgetting "the violence on which the present system is based, and all the evil – material and spiritual – this entails for the masses of men throughout the world." Among these masses are 6 million children who die every year because of lack of simple medical procedures that the rich countries could make available within statistical error in their budgets. And a billion people on the edge of starvation or worse, but not beyond reach by any means.

We should also never forget that our wealth derives in no small measure from the tragedy of others. That is dramatically clear in the Anglosphere. I live in a comfortable suburb of Boston. Those who once lived there were victims of "the utter extirpation of all the Indians in most populous parts of the Union" by means "more destructive to the Indian natives than the conduct of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru" – the verdict of the first Secretary of War of the newly liberated colonies, General Henry Knox.

They suffered the fate of "that hapless race of native Americans, which we are exterminating with such merciless and perfidious cruelty…among the heinous sins of this nation, for which I believe God will one day bring [it] to judgement" – the words of the great grand strategist John Quincy Adams, intellectual author of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine, long after his own substantial contributions to these heinous sins. Australians should have no trouble adding illustrations.

Whatever the ultimate judgment of God may be, the judgment of man is far from Adams's expectations. To mention a few recent cases, consider what I suppose are the two most highly regarded left-liberal intellectual journals in the Anglosphere, the New York and London Reviews of Books.

In the former, a prominent commentator recently reported what he learned from the work of the "heroic historian" Edmund Morgan: namely, that when Columbus and the early explorers arrived they "found a continental vastness sparsely populated by farming and hunting people … . In the limitless and unspoiled world stretching from tropical jungle to the frozen north, there may have been scarcely more than a million inhabitants." The calculation is off by tens of millions, and the "vastness" included advanced civilizations, facts well known to those who choose to know decades ago.

No letters appeared reacting to this truly colossal case of genocide denial. In the companion London journal a noted historian casually mentioned the "mistreatment of the Native Americans," again eliciting no comment. We would hardly accept the word "mistreatment" for comparable or even much lesser crimes committed by enemies.

Recognition of heinous crimes from which we benefit enormously would be a good start after centuries of denial, but we can go on from there. One of the main tribes where I live was the Wampanoag, who still have a small reservation not too far away. Their language has long ago disappeared.

But in a remarkable feat of scholarship and dedication to elementary human rights, the language has been reconstructed from missionary texts and comparative evidence, and now has its first native speaker in 100 years, the daughter of Jennie Little Doe, who has become a fluent speaker of the language herself. She is a former graduate student at MIT, who worked with my late friend and colleague Kenneth Hale, one of the most outstanding linguists of the modern period.

Among his many accomplishments was his leading role in founding the study of aboriginal languages of Australia. He was also very effective in defense of the rights of indigenous people, also a dedicated peace and justice activist. He was able to turn our department at MIT into a center for the study of indigenous languages and active defense of indigenous rights in the Americas and beyond.

Revival of the Wampanoag language has revitalized the tribe. A language is more than just sounds and words. It is the repository of culture, history, traditions, the entire rich texture of human life and society. Loss of a language is a serious blow not only to the community itself but to all of those who hope to understand something of the nature of human beings, their capacities and achievements, and of course a loss of particular severity to those concerned with the variety and uniformity of human languages, a core component of human higher mental faculties.

Similar achievements can be carried forward, a very partial but significant gesture towards repentance for heinous sins on which our wealth and power rests.

Since we commemorate anniversaries, such as the Japanese attacks 70 years ago, there are several significant ones that fall right about now, with lessons that can serve for both enlightenment and action. I will mention just a few.

The West has just commemorated the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and what was called at the time, but no longer, "the glorious invasion" of Afghanistan that followed, soon to be followed by the even more glorious invasion of Iraq. Partial closure for 9/11 was reached with the assassination of the prime suspect, Osama bin Laden, by US commandos who invaded Pakistan, apprehended him and then murdered him, disposing of the corpse without autopsy.

I said "prime suspect," recalling the ancient though long-abandoned doctrine of "presumption of innocence." The current issue of the major US scholarly journal of international relations features several discussions of the Nuremberg trials of some of history's worst criminals.

There we read that the "U.S. decision to prosecute, rather than seek brutal vengeance was a victory for the American tradition of rights and a particularly American brand of legalism: punishment only for those who could be proved to be guilty through a fair trial with a panoply of procedural protections." The journal appeared right at the time of the celebration of the abandonment of this principle in a dramatic way, while the global campaign of assassination of suspects, and inevitable "collateral damage," continues to be expanded, to much acclaim.

Not to be sure universal acclaim. Pakistan's leading daily recently published a study of the effect of drone attacks and other US terror. It found that "About 80 per cent [of] residents of [the tribal regions] South and North Waziristan agencies have been affected mentally while 60 per cent people of Peshawar are nearing to become psychological patients if these problems are not addressed immediately," and warned that the "survival of our young generation" is at stake. In part for these reasons, hatred of America had already risen to phenomenal heights, and after the bin Laden assassination increased still more.

One consequence was firing across the border at the bases of the US occupying army in Afghanistan – which provoked sharp condemnation of Pakistan for its failure to cooperate in an American war that Pakistanis overwhelmingly oppose, taking the same stand they did when the Russians occupied Afghanistan. A stand then lauded, now condemned.

The specialist literature and even the US Embassy in Islamabad warn that the pressures on Pakistan to take part in the US invasion, as well as US attacks in Pakistan, are "destabilizing and radicalizing Pakistan, risking a geopolitical catastrophe for the United States – and the world – which would dwarf anything that could possibly occur in Afghanistan" – quoting British military/Pakistan analyst Anatol Lieven. The assassination of bin Laden greatly heightened this risk in ways that were ignored in the general enthusiasm for assassination of suspects. The US commandos were under orders to fight their way out if necessary.

They would surely have had air cover, maybe more, in which case there might have been a major confrontation with the Pakistani army, the only stable institution in Pakistan, and deeply committed to defending Pakistan's sovereignty. Pakistan has a huge nuclear arsenal, the most rapidly expanding in the world. And the whole system is laced with radical Islamists, products of the strong US-Saudi support for the worst of Pakistan's dictators, Zia ul-Haq, and his program of radical Islamization.

This program along with Pakistan's nuclear weapons are among Ronald Reagan's legacies. Obama has now added the risk of nuclear explosions in London and New York, if the confrontation had led to leakage of nuclear materials to jihadis, as was plausibly feared – one of the many examples of the constant threat of nuclear weapons.

The assassination of bin Laden had a name: "Operation Geronimo." That caused an uproar in Mexico, and was protested by the remnants of the indigenous population in the US. But elsewhere few seemed to comprehend the significance of identifying bin Laden with the heroic Apache Indian chief who led the resistance to the invaders, seeking to protect his people from the fate of "that hapless race" that John Quincy Adams eloquently described. The imperial mentality is so profound that such matters cannot even be perceived.

There were a few criticisms of Operation Geronimo – the name, the manner of its execution, and the implications. These elicited the usual furious condemnations, most unworthy of comment, though some were instructive. The most interesting was by the respected left-liberal commentator Matthew Yglesias. He patiently explained that "one of the main functions of the international institutional order is precisely to legitimate the use of deadly military force by western powers," so it is "amazingly naïve" to suggest that the US should obey international law or other conditions that we impose on the powerless.

The words are not criticism, but applause; hence one can raise only tactical objections if the US invades other countries, murders and destroys with abandon, assassinates suspects at will, and otherwise fulfills its obligations in the service of mankind. If the traditional victims see matters somewhat differently, that merely reveals their moral and intellectual backwardness. And the occasional Western critic who fails to comprehend these fundamental truths can be dismissed as "silly," Yglesias explains – incidentally, referring specifically to me, and I cheerfully confess my guilt.

Going back a decade to 2001, from the first moment it was clear that the "glorious invasion" was anything but that. It was undertaken with the understanding that it might drive several million Afghans over the edge of starvation, which is why the bombing was bitterly condemned by the aid agencies that were forced to end the operations on which 5 million Afghans depended for survival. Fortunately the worst did not happen, but only the most morally obtuse can fail to comprehend that actions are evaluated in terms of likely consequences, not actual ones. The invasion of Afganistan was not aimed at overthrowing the brutal Taliban regime, as later claimed.

That was an afterthought, brought up three weeks after the bombing began. Its explicit reason was that the Taliban were unwilling to extradite bin Laden without evidence, which the US refused to provide – as later learned, because it had virtually none, and in fact still has little that could stand up in an independent court of law, though his responsibility is hardly in doubt. The Taliban did in fact make some gestures towards extradition, and we since have learned that there were other such options, but they were all dismissed in favor of violence, which has since torn the country to shreds. It has reached its highest level in a decade this year according to the UN, with no diminution in sight.

A very serious question, rarely asked then or since, is whether there was an alternative to violence. There is strong evidence that there was. The 9/11 attack was sharply condemned within the jihadi movement, and there were good opportunities to split it and isolate al-Qaeda. Instead, Washington and London chose to follow the script provided by bin Laden, helping to establish his claim that the West is attacking Islam, and thus provoking new waves of terror. The senior CIA analyst responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden from 1996, Michael Scheuer, warned right away and has repeated since that "the United States of America remains bin Laden's only indispensable ally."

These are among the natural consequences of rejecting Muste's warning, and the main thrust of his revolutionary pacifism, which should direct us to investigating the grievances that lead to violence, and when they are legitimate, as they often are, to address them. When that advice is taken, it can succeed very well. Britain's recent experience in Northern Ireland is a good illustration. For years, London responded to IRA terror with greater violence, escalating the cycle, which reached a bitter peak. When the government began instead to attend to the grievances, violence subsided and terror has effectively disappeared. I was in Belfast in 1993, when it was a war zone, and returned a year ago to a city with tensions, but hardly beyond the norm.

There is a great deal more to say about what we call 9/11 and its consequences, but I do not want to end without at least mentioning a few more anniversaries. Right now happens to be the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's decision to escalate the conflict in South Vietnam from vicious repression, which had already killed tens of thousands of people and finally elicited a reaction that the client regime in Saigon could not control, to outright US invasion: bombing by the US Air Force, use of napalm, chemical warfare soon including crop destruction to deprive the resistance of food, and programs to send millions of South Vietnamese to virtual concentration camps where they could be "protected" from the guerrillas who, admittedly, they were supporting.

There is no time to review the grim aftermath, and there should be no need to do so. The wars left three countries devastated, with a toll of many millions, not including the miserable victims of the enormous chemical warfare assault, including newborn infants today.

There were a few at the margins who objected – "wild men in the wings," as they were termed by Kennedy-Johnson National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, former Harvard Dean. And by the time that the very survival of South Vietnam was in doubt, popular protest became quite strong. At the war's end in 1975, about 70% of the population regarded the war as "fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a mistake," figures that were sustained as long as the question was asked in polls. In revealing contrast, at the dissident extreme of mainstream commentary the war was "a mistake" because our noble objectives could not be achieved at a tolerable cost.

Another anniversary that should be in our minds today is of the massacre in the Santa Cruz graveyard in Dili just 20 years ago, the most publicized of a great many shocking atrocities during the Indonesian invasion and annexation of East Timor. Australia had joined the US in granting formal recognition to the Indonesian occupation, after its virtually genocidal invasion. The US State Department explained to Congress in 1982 that Washington recognized both the Indonesian occupation and the Khmer Rouge-based "Democratic Kampuchea" regime. The justification offered was that "unquestionably" the Khmer Rouge were "more representative of the Cambodian people than Fretilin was of the Timorese people" because "there has been this continuity [in Cambodia] since the very beginning," in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took over.

The media and commentators have been polite enough to all this languish in silence, not an inconsiderable feat. A few months before the Santa Cruz massacre, Foreign Minister Gareth Evans made his famous statements dismissing concerns about the murderous invasion and annexation on the grounds that "the world is a pretty unfair place,…littered…with examples of acquisitions of force," so we can therefore look away as awesome crimes continue with strong support by the western powers. Not quite look away, because at the same time Evans was negotiating the robbery of East Timor's sole resource with his comrade Ali Alatas, foreign minister of Indonesia, producing what seems to be the only official western document that recognizes East Timor as an Indonesian province.

Years later, Evans declared that "the notion that we had anything to answer for morally or otherwise over the way we handled the Indonesia-East Timor relationship, I absolutely reject" – a stance that can be adopted, and even respected, by those who emerge victorious. In the US and Britain, the question is not even asked in polite society.

It is only fair to add that in sharp contrast, much of the Australian population, and media, were in the forefront of exposing and protesting the crimes, some of the worst of the past half-century. And in 1999, when the crimes were escalating once again, they had a significant role in convincing US president Clinton to inform the Indonesian generals in September that the game was over, at which point they immediately withdrew allowing an Australian-led peacekeeping force to enter.

There are lessons here too, for the public. Clinton's orders could have been delivered at any time in the preceding 25 years, terminating the crimes. Clinton himself could easily have delivered them four years earlier, in October 2005, when General Suharto was welcomed to Washington as "our kind of guy." The same orders could have been given 20 years earlier, when Henry Kissinger gave the "green light" to the Indonesian invasion, and UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan expressed his pride in having rendered the United Nations "utterly ineffective" in any measures to deter the Indonesian invasion – later to be revered for his courageous defense of international law.

There could hardly be a more painful illustration of the consequences of the failure to attend to Muste's lesson. It should be added that in a shameful display of subordination to power, some respected western intellectuals have actually sunk to describing this disgraceful record as a stellar illustration of the humanitarian norm of "right to protect."

Consistent with Muste's "revolutionary pacifism," the Sydney Peace Foundation has always emphasized peace with justice. The demands of justice can remain unfulfilled long after peace has been declared. The Santa Cruz massacre 20 years ago can serve as an illustration. One year after the massacre the United Nations adopted The Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which states that "Acts constituting enforced disappearance shall be considered a continuing offence as long as the perpetrators continue to conceal the fate and the whereabouts of persons who have disappeared and these facts remain unclarified."

The massacre is therefore a continuing offence: the fate of the disappeared is unknown, and the offenders have not been brought to justice, including those who continue to conceal the crimes of complicity and participation. Only one indication of how far we must go to rise to some respectable level of civilised behaviour.

On Wednesday 2nd November, Prof Chomsky delivered the City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture. Welcomed to the stage by a standing ovation, the 2000-strong crowd were eager to show their appreciation to Prof Chomsky, whose life's work as a challenger of unjust power has lent influence and inspiration to activists world wide.

-Thursday 3rd November, 10:30am Sydney Opera House: Chaired by veteran Australian broadcaster Mary Kostakidis, Prof Chomsky answers audience questions on 'Problems of Knowledge and Freedom'- linguistics, global politics, human rights, responses to climate change, the nature of democracy.

- Thursday 3rd November, 7pm MacLaurin Hall, the University of Sydney: Gala Dinner when Patrick Dodson will award Noam Chomsky with the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize; a $50,000 prize and a hand-made glass trophy crafted by the Australian artist Brian Hirst.

- Friday 4th November, 8:30am Cabramatta High School – "Voices Inspiring Peace". A welcome by thousands of high school student, hundreds in national costumes from all over the world, in a music and dance festival to honour Noam Chomsky. The release of two dozen peace doves in that day's finale is the last piece of Sydney hospitality for Noam Chomsky.

ALL TICKETS TO ALL EVENTS HAVE SOLD OUT.

http://www.sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELEwjVRxxGE
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USA Israel your friends... remote control murder US drones

2011-11-01T15:24:00.001-07:00

Israel stopped due payments to palestinian government.
Israel ordered building of new settlements
USA defunds UNESCO

Great friends of yours. And so democratic !!

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-to-expedite-settlement-construction-in-response-to-palestinian-unesco-membership-1.393191

The eight senior ministers also decided to suspend the transfer of tax money which Israel has collected for the Palestinian Authority in October. The money, which amounts to more than NIS 300 million, was supposed to be transferred to the Palestinian Authority before the Eid al-Adha holiday, when the money was to be used to pay the salaries of policemen and clerks of the Palestinian Authority.

At least 2,200 people have been killed and more than 1,100 others injured by the unauthorized US drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, a report says.

A new study conducted by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has also revealed that up to 168 children have lost their lives in more than 291 attacks since they began under George W. Bush, a Press TV correspondent reported on Friday.

remote control murder US drones

The aerial raids have escalated since President Barack Obama took office in 2009. At least 236 attacks have taken place during his term, the report added.

Washington claims the attacks target al-Qaeda linked and pro-Taliban militants in Pakistan's northwestern tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. However, locals say the strikes kill civilians.

"Most of the people here in Pakistan are opposing the drone attacks anywhere in Pakistan only because they think innocent people, especially women and children are dying in these attacks," Mumtaz Bangash, a political analyst said.

"People are saying that these attacks should immediately stop. Not only the people in Pakistan but people here in the American consulate have recently opposed [the strikes] and say they should be controlled," Bangash added.

remote control murder US drones

At least twenty-five people were killed in the latest drone attack in North Waziristan on Wednesday after the unmanned aircraft fired two missiles on a vehicle and a compound.

Islamabad has repeatedly condemned the strikes as a violation of its sovereignty, asserting that such attacks have proved counterproductive in US-led war against terrorism.

Remote control murder: Afghan drones operated from Nevada and Virginia

By Julie Hyland
15 July 2011

Last week's admission that Britain's Royal Air Force killed four civilians and injured two others in Afghanistan has highlighted the growing resort to remote-controlled "drones" as weapons of choice by the major powers.

The Guardian reported that the incident took place on March 25 when a UK Reaper drone struck two trucks on the ground in the Now Zad district of north Helmand. Supposedly directed at a Taliban commander, an investigation by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed that "civilians were discovered in the vehicles following the airstrike during a battle damage assessment".

Britain's military were quick to insist that it was the first instance in which an RAF drone had caused civilian deaths. A Whitehall source told the newspaper, "It was extremely unfortunate that the civilians were killed".

The article noted grimly, "The families of the civilian victims will be entitled to compensation if they report to a British base and can prove their identity".

Given that drone attacks are known to incinerate their victims, destroying them beyond recognition, this statement is particularly cynical.

The usual description of drones as "unmanned" is a misnomer. A separate article in the same newspaper explained that the March 25 attack was the responsibility of 39 Squadron, based at the Creech air force base near Las Vegas, Nevada.

Described as an "elite unit formed in some haste during 2007", the RAF unit works out of three metal "pods" resembling a cockpit, using "Playstation-style" technology to track down and launch murderous, sneak attacks on people several thousand miles away in Afghanistan.

Two RAF pilots, seated side by side and surrounded by a bank of TV screens delivering virtual real-time surveillance, "fly" and fire at targets.

"The aircraft can fire four Hellfire missiles and two 500 pound laser-guided bombs from five miles away; the target would have no idea a Reaper was overhead", the Guardian reported.

"Once they have been briefed about a mission, the pilots rely on an array of systems to run the aircraft; the decisions they make in Nevada travel by fibre-optic cable to Europe, where they are beamed up to a satellite and then back down to Afghanistan. There is a two second delay".

Drone use has risen sharply since 2001. The UK government has had three Reaper drones in Afghanistan, and also reportedly rents 450 Hermes drones from Israel on a "pay-as-you-go" basis. It is intended that, by 2030, some 30 percent of the RAF's capacity will be comprised of drones.

It is the United States, however, that leads in the use of technology targeting people for assassination from thousands of miles away.

US drones are operated by the CIA from close to its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and by the military from airbases in Texas, Nevada and elsewhere. They can operate 24/7.

Aviation Week July 6 noted, "There is an unofficial but lethal drone war taking place over Pakistan, Yemen and Libya that has expanded the area of operation for US forces beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, with no real acknowledgement from the government that anything extraordinary is happening. The undeclared conflict on these three fronts might be the first Drone War, and warfare has never seen anything like it".

In Pakistan, an estimated 2,500 people have been killed in US drone attacks since 2004. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that in the week leading up to June 10 this year, more than 50 people had died as a result of such strikes. The attacks "show a return to levels last seen in mid March, prior to Osama bin Laden's killing", it said.

The Obama administration has ordered more than 200 such attacks since coming into office. Pakistan reported that US drone attacks had killed at least 42 people on Monday and Tuesday this week in the North and South Waziristan areas, bordering Afghanistan.

In late April, Obama authorized the use of drones in Libya as it escalated its intervention into the civil war with the aim of regime change. At the end of June, the US launched its first drone attack in Somalia, with the aim of assassinating Islamic militants. Several "fighters" were reportedly injured in the attack.

US author and journalist James Bamford said, "Death warrants for targets are signed by mid-level bureaucrats, and soccer moms and dads double as joystick killers. They operate in comfort and safety, half the Earth away from their targets and close enough for many to run home for lunch between kills".

Bamford said that there are more than 5,000 robotic vehicles and drones deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 50 of which can fly at the same time.

A global scramble for drone technology is underway. A 2011 study by the Teal Group forecast that global spending on "unmanned" aircraft capacity would double to $94 billion by 2021. Over that time, the US intends to double its own drone capacity by 2021—up from 340, currently, to 650. Israel is the second-largest manufacturer in the world, and regularly utilises the technology in its one-sided war against Palestinian militants.

Other countries are increasingly acquiring the technology. China has launched its own development programme, as has India. Pakistan is said to be seeking to obtain armed drones from China.

France and Britain are cooperating to develop a new unmanned system, in a partnership between Dassault and BAE Systems. The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), the pan-European defence corporation, has developed its own drone, the Talarion.

The Aviation Weekly report indicated the ramifications of the increased use of drones. It commented, "The notion that having access to armed, unmanned platforms may make it easier for the order to be given to fly lethal missions, and therefore permit politicians to take nations to war sooner, or without the planning and deliberation that is essential to engaging in conflict, is one that the UK Defence Ministry has considered. The ministry's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre released a report titled 'The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems' in March, which states '…the recent extensive use of unmanned aircraft over Pakistan and Yemen may already herald a new era. That these activities are exclusively carried out by unmanned aircraft, even though very capable manned aircraft are available, and that the use of ground troops in harm's way has been avoided, suggests that the use of force is totally a function of an unmanned capability".

The implications extend not only to overseas dissidents, or others who have become the targets of the major powers "overseas".

In June, it was reported that the 5,000 MQ-9 Reaper drone will soon start flying training missions over the Adirondacks, northeast New York.

Pilots from the New York Air National Guard's 174th Fighter Wing, are to fly the Reaper via satellite from bases at Fort Drum and Hancock Field air base in Syracuse. The latter has been the base for drone missions over Afghanistan since December 2009.

The drones will be unarmed and undetectable, it was reported. According to the Watertown Daily Times, "'It will not be used to spy on residents, because federal law prohibits that use,' Col. Charles Dorsey, vice commander of fighter wing, told members of the Fort Drum Regional Liaison Organization…".

"For training purposes only, the aircraft crews, based out of Hancock Field, will train using random objects, such as structures and vehicles, from afar".

The US Customs and Border Protection agency currently flies seven MQ-9 drones along southern and northern borders. It intends to regularly fly them over northern New York by 2016.

Occupy Boston marches into week four

2011-10-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

for a fairer distribution of our world's wealth.

Against Tax havens and corruption. For education and public good.

John Stephen Dwyer Oct. 28

Demonstrators hang their banner off a footbridge over Storrow Drive

This week, the fourth since setting up camp on September 30, Occupy Boston has increased its visibility through a series of marches including a trip to Harvard Square (by way of the Head of the Charles Regatta), several hostile visits to FOX News and the home of a Bank of America president, angry protests against the police response to Occupy Oakland, and a somber, rainy morning walk to the trial of Tarek Mehanna, 28, a Sudbury man accused of being a propagandist for Al-Queda.

March to Cambridge

On October 23, about 50 protestors from Occupy Boston took a meandering route from their tent city in front of South Station to "the Pit," an area in Harvard Square associated with various countercultures over the decades. En route they temporarily hung a "We are the 99%" banner from a footbridge over Storrow Drive and blocked traffic one-way on the Mass Ave bridge. They also paraded through the Head of the Charles Regatta chanting slogans such as "we got sold out, banks got bailed out" and "this is what democracy looks like" as a few people gave them thumbs up.

While certain previous marches – boosted by the support of labor unions and student groups from local colleges – have swelled into the thousands, this smaller protest was notable as Occupy Boston's first excursion outside the city. Dozens of people along the route showed their approval of the demonstrators; no detractors were obvious. The protest, though small by Occupy Boston standards, had style. Marching to a drum beat, they followed three masked flagbearers with the America flag flanked by a "don't tread on me" flag on each side. The demonstrators stopped along the route as often as necessary to regroup behind their banner or, even, sit down and decide where to go next.

These protestors, some active within the Direct Action working group, wear masks and hold a sign. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Despite many of the participants being masked or otherwise dressed in a way that might intimidate, the flag-waving march was oddly reminiscent of a patriotic scene from Boston's historic past. A few onlookers seem frightened by this loud group of people unaccompanied by uniformed police. Some clutched their children or scurried to give the marchers a wide birth. Most merely gaped. Plenty took pictures or video. A few punched their fists in the air to the beat of the protestors' drum.

Among Sunday's masked marchers, several are associated with Direct Action, a close-knit cadre of young people within Occupy Boston that plans protest marches and, more rarely, bolder acts of civil disobedience. But the demonstration also parents, children and at least one grandmother, Mary Andriotakis, 53, who came in from Sudbury with her husband, Chuck Andriotakis, 62, and grandsons Levi, Sam and Joe (ages 5, 6 and 11).

"I come into Occupy Boston whenever I can, and I bring whoever I can," Mary Andriotakis said. "I thought I wouldn't be able to go today because I have my grandchildren. But it's a beautiful day and I brought them. It's great for them to be able to be a part of this."

John Murphy, 24, of Falmouth, speaks to people in Harvard Square while wearing a shirt he made back at the Sign Tent at the Occupy Boston campground. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

Her grandsons held signs and obviously enjoyed chanting "We are the 99 percent" along with demonstrators drawn from local colleges, towns, and the streets. At one point, the boys shyly tried out the people's mic, a movement phenomenon through which a crowd repeats and amplifies a speaker's words. Andriotakis, having two children who volunteer at the Medic Tent in the campground, later said "I asked [my grandsons] which they like better, Occupy Boston or the Children's Museum and they said 'Occupy Boston, Occupy Boston!'"

After going through Downtown Crossing and cutting through Boston Common, the march turned left at the State House and headed down Beacon Street. They stopped to jeer and flip the bird at what may be the Beacon Hill townhouse of Robert E. Gallery, a local Bank of America president. Reaching a footbridge to the Charles River, the protestors ran onto it quickly and suspended a banner over Storrow Drive for several minutes on each side. The banner, the same one they march behind, reads "we are the 99%" and is decorated with white hands on a pink background. Less legibly, "occupyboston.com" is printed above the motto and "and so are you and you and you and you and me" is written in cursive writing below.

When they finally arrived in Harvard Square, protestors held a rally where they used the people's mic to explain the purposes of their protest. They also answered questions and talked to people one-on-one. At the end of the day, the demonstration left the marchers in high spirits. One elated woman said, "We've had marches much bigger than this, but I don't think we've ever seen so much positive attention. The movement is definitely growing. People are becoming more aware."

The group took the Red Line from Harvard Square back to South Station, each person paying their fare. They re-entered the tent city just as a group of smiling Sikhs was serving hot tea and warm food they had prepared off-site. By this hour, Occupy Boston was teeming with people who jostled shoulder-to-shoulder to pass along the narrow paths.

Chomsky and an almost-confrontation

Protestors young and older are visible as Occupy Boston parades through the 47th edition of the Head of the Charles Regatta. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

http://occupybostonglobe.com/ "It's awful how they hate America"

Last weekend, Occupy Boston showed signs of losing momentum as the majority settled into activities that didn't bring them into contact with those outside the camp. A march was planned for 6 pm on Saturday night, but when Noam Chomsky was rained out on Wednesday he moved his lecture to that time instead.

An estimated 1,000 people were present but Chomsky, 82, spoke at conversational volume and didn't use the people's mic. Despite him holding two microphones, at least half those assembled couldn't hear him. Many occupiers and visitors, happily anticipating Chomsky's visit for days, had their spirits dashed.

An impromptu march took place when Chomsky finished and culminated in about 100 protestors assembled on the same spot of Rose Kennedy Greenway where 141 people were arrested on October 11. A tight cluster of Boston Police stood by, frowning and talking into radios. Using the method of direct democracy popular across the Occupation Movement, the protestors held a General Assembly. People spoke from atop the gray pumpkin statue that makes a good soapbox.

Occupy Boston free t-shirt

Despite tough talk about taking that park again, it didn't happen. Some didn't like the idea of doing something so important without the consensus of the whole Occupy Boston community. Some argued the park should be seized during the day so people working in the surrounding office buildings could see whatever ensued. Some, it was clear, simply didn't have the nerve.

Out of the park and into the streets

With the Boston skyline visible beyond crew teams on the Charles River, demonstrators use a hand signal to indicate approval during discussion. (Blast Staff photo/John Stephen Dwyer)

The next day, Sunday, the Occupy Boston encampment seemed to be under a lull. Certain tents designed for communal functions had lost their identifying signs days before or otherwise appeared closed for business. A few busy volunteers complained too many people were holed up in their tents avoiding the gritty realities of life in Dewey Square [link to crime & addiction article]. Positive energy at the campsite seemed in short supply; even the mellow people at the Sacred Space were getting cranky from the struggle to prevent it from becoming another messy public dormitory.

At 1 p.m., only a dozen people assembled for a march planned by Direct Action ("DA"). Members of DA, who tend to be younger than the camp as a whole, were livid at the low turn out. Young men and women clenched their fists and snarled in frustration, "people need to get the fuck out of their tents!" Rather than cancel the march, DA members led their small contingent four times around and through the Occupy Boston camp chanting "out of the park and into the streets" and, specially for this occasion, "out of your tents and into the streets."

Some habitués of the drum circle agreed to go to the march when confronted by DA members but soon sneaked back into camp. In the end, about 50 people accompanied Occupy Boston all the way to Cambridge.

Free School University Classes (10/28 – 10/30)

October 28, 2011 from http://occupybostonglobe.com/2011/10/28/free-school-university-classes-1028-1030/

Class descriptions at: http://www.occupyboston.org/calendar/ Classes meet at the bright, orange Soap Box, at the north end of Dewey Square.

FRIDAY, October 28
3:00pm – 4:30pm
Challenging Basic Assumptions: Personal & Political with Dennis Fox

4:00pm – 5:00pm
Crafting Your Story: A Fiction Workshop with Askold Melnyczuk

6:00pm – 7:00pm
The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series: Chand Montrie (UMass Lowell), author of "A People's History of Environmentalism in the United States"

SATURDAY, October 29
4:00pm – 5:00pm
Glenn Greenwald: With Liberty and Justice for Some

5:00pm – 6:00pm
The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series: Fred Magdoff

SUNDAY, October 30
1:00pm – 3:00pm
How To Run For Office

1:30pm – 3:00pm
Occupy Boston Writing Workshop: The Other 99%

4:00pm – 5:00pm
The Decline of Middle Class Incomes and Political Inequality with Dr. Ben Tafoya

5:00pm – 6:00pm
The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series: Anthony Arnove, who co-authored "Voices of a People's History of the United States" with Howard Zinn

Friday 10/28 at 4:30pm is the 1st FSU Volunteers Meeting:
Meet at the library 4pm to set agenda

FSU is looking for:
Drupal Developer – Open Scholar version, needed for a few things:
Context, Internationalization, Media, VOIP, Advanced Calendar, SMS.

Also:
A canopy, bull horn, sheet protectors, paper, pens and clip boards as well as bright orange fabric to designate the FSU space.

Here in Logistics,

we've been overwhelmed with gratitude for all of the wonderful donations we've received. From blankets to flashlights to an awesome Logistics sign, the community is really turning out to support us.

That being said, with winter quickly approaching, Winterization has become our primary concern for folks in camp as well as logistically (in terms of supplies and donations). A few of our team now sit on the Winterization Committee and are in the process of brainstorming ideas, going over blueprints of possible solutions, and working late to try and solve some of the coming obstacles.

We are in desperate need of certain supplies in order to winterize Boston's Tent City. And we need these quickly! Our current list of most pressing needs:

0 degree sleeping bags
Military style/surplus tents
Hot Food
Socks and Footware
Cots
Greenhouse Materials: PVC, EMT, PPL
EPS, extruded polystyrene
Shovels

We are also actively looking for ideas on where to procure outside heat and searching for a large public assemble space outside of Dewey Square, preferably indoors!

In an effort to make donations more accessible to the wider community as well assist in the online ordering process for folks from far away, we now have a mailing address! We would greatly appreciate your continued support, and we would love to see some packages come our way.

Occupy Boston

PO Box 51162

Boston, MA 02205

In addition, in order to prepare for the coming cold, we are beginning an Adopt-A-Camper Program. We are asking folks who live in the community to step up and offer hot showers or even a warm place to sleep if possible on the very cold nights if needed. We'll put you in contact with this camper, or two, or three or how ever many folks you're willing to adopt! This way we can help make sure that all of the Occupiers are safe, warm, and have a respite from the cold this winter. In get involved in this program, or if you have any questions, please email logistics@occupyboston.org

great, the best occupy wall streeet cartoon so far!!
Likens Chinese Tiananmen Square Pro Democracy movement against undemocratic Totalitarian Tanks to 99% people protestor vs undemocratic totalitarian investor class.banking finance elites.

Friday, October 28
9:00am
Open Group Meditation
12:00pm
Faith and Spirituality Group Meeting
12:30pm
Nurses Rally at Dewey
1:30pm
Yoga
2:00pm
Concert: Zanna
3:00pm
FSU Teach-In: Challenging Basic Assumptions, Personal & Political
4:00pm
Flu clinic: shots and spray
4:00pm
FSU Call for Collaboration and Participation | Keep the Free School University Healthy!
4:00pm
FSU: Crafting Your Story, A Fiction Workshop
4:00pm
Suffering and Compassion in Tibetan Buddhism: Meditation and Discussion with Joe Hodgkin
5:00pm
FSU: The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series, Chand Montrie
5:00pm
Riki Ott
6:00pm
Outreach Meeting
6:00pm
Transparency Working Group
7:00pm
OB Ideas Public discussion: How does OB preserve it's momentum?
9:00pm
Open Group Meditation

Saturday, October 29
9:00am
Open Group Meditation
10:00am
FSU Workshop: The Practice of Non-Violence and Civil Disobedience
12:00pm
Faith and Spirituality Group Meeting
12:30pm
Non-Violence Working Group
1:00pm
Solidarity March
1:30pm
Yoga
2:00pm
Winterizing meeting
3:00pm
**Concert:Cowgill**
3:30pm
Women's Caucus
4:00pm
**Concert:The Doctors Fox**
4:00pm
FSU: Glenn Greenwald, With Liberty and Justice for Some
5:00pm
**FSU: The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series, Fred Magdoff
7:00pm
General Assembly
9:00pm
Open Group Meditation

Sunday, October 30
9:00am
Open Group Meditation
11:00am
(POSTPONED) FSU: Fair Trade Coffee Hour and Discussion
12:00pm
Children's Program
12:00pm
Faith and Spirituality Group Meeting
1:00pm
FSU: How To Run For Office
1:30pm
FSU Writing Workshop: The Other 99%
1:30pm
Yoga
2:00pm
** Concert: TBA **
2:00pm
Art Committee Meeting
3:00pm
Sacred Circle Dancing in the Streets with Ellen Kennedy
4:00pm
**FSU: The Decline of Middle Class Incomes and Political Inequality
5:00pm
Lutheran Reformation Sunday
5:00pm
**FSU: The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series, Anthony Arnove
6:00pm
**FSU Book Reading with Aidan Parkinson
7:00pm
General Assembly
9:00pm
Open Group Meditation
9:30pm
Ideas working group meeting

Monday, October 31
9:00am
Open Group Meditation
12:00pm
Faith and Spirituality Group Meeting
1:00pm
Student Zombie Walkout
1:00pm
**FSU: Consensus: So That All Voices May Be Heard, a Workshop with C.T. Butler
1:30pm
Yoga
4:30pm
** Concert**- for the 99%: Education is a Right.
6:00pm
**Comedian:Sandra Bernhard will be appearing/giving away tickets to her sold out shows!
7:00pm
Info Tent Volunteer Training
9:00pm
Open Group Meditation

Tuesday, November 1
9:00am
Open Group Meditation
12:00pm
Faith and Spirituality Group Meeting
1:00pm
**FSU: Consensus, So That All Voices May Be Heard, a Workshop with C.T. Butler
1:30pm
Yoga
3:00pm
**Facilitation Workshop by C.T. Butler
3:00pm
FSU: Money, Banking, and Democracy
5:00pm
Anarchist Potluck / Caucus
5:30pm
Women's Caucus
6:30pm
Concert: Zumix Drumline
7:00pm
General Assembly
9:00pm
Open Group Meditation

Wednesday, November 2
9:00am
Open Group Meditation
12:00pm
Faith and Spirituality Group Meeting
1:00pm
Non-Violence Working Group
1:30pm
Yoga
5:00pm
**Holding for Rebooking Concert
6:00pm
Ideas Working group meeting
6:30pm
**FSU: Big Pharma, Another Big Player on Wall Street
7:00pm
OB Ideas Public discussion: Topic TBD
9:00pm
Open Group Meditation

Thursday, November 3
9:00am
Open Group Meditation
9:30am
**FSU Workshop: My Red Carpet Moment, How Do I Best Express What I Do?
12:00pm
Faith and Spirituality Group Meeting
1:30pm
Yoga
2:00pm
Historical March Campaign
4:00pm
**FSU: The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series, The Perils of American Democracy
5:00pm
**FSU: The Housing Crisis, Where Did it Come From, Where are we Going?
7:00pm
General Assembly
9:00pm
Open Group Meditation
9:00pm
Winterizing meeting

Assassinating Children - YEMEN DRONE MASSACRES

2011-10-28T08:17:00.001-07:00

by Jacob G. Hornberger

The extraordinary power of the U.S. government to assassinate people has, once again, been manifested in the assassination of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. No, that's not Anwar al-Awlaki, the American Muslim cleric whom U.S. officials recently assassinated in Yemen. That's Abdulrahm al-Awlaki, the 16-year-old son of Anwar al-Awlaki.

There are several things that are especially fascinating about the U.S. government's assassination of this American teenager, who apparently traveled to Yemen looking for his father before his father was assassinated:

First, the U.S. government has assassinated a minor.

Second, no one except the assassins knows why they assassinated the boy.

Third, the people who planned and carried out the assassination — from President Obama, to the Pentagon, to the CIA — aren't talking.

Fourth, nobody can force them to explain why they killed the boy.

The assassination of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki reveals in stark clarity where the U.S. government's imperialist foreign policy and resulting war on terrorism have brought us as nation and as a people. We now live in a country in which the president and his military and paramilitary forces now wield the omnipotent authority to assassinate anyone they want, anywhere in the world, with impunity and without having to provide an explanation to anyone.

In a news story on the assassination of the boy, Time magazine cites a young friend of Abdulrahman asking, "Who can't America kill?"

Indeed! The fact, as discomforting as it might be, is that the president, the military, and the CIA can now kill anyone they want for whatever reason they want, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. The assassination of 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki confirms the extent of this extraordinary post-9/11 power now wielded by the U.S. national-security state.

It's never been made clear the precise reasons for the assassination of the boy's father, Anwar al-Awlaki. Some people speculate that it's because he was exhorting Muslims to resist U.S. imperialist policies with violence. Others speculate that it was because he was actually conspiring to commit terrorist attacks against the United States. Others suggest that it was because he was purportedly a member of al-Qaeda. Others say it was because he was committing treason.

Neither President Obama, nor the Pentagon, nor the CIA have ever provided an explanation for the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, confirming, once again, that we now live in a country where government officials can assassinate anyone they want, foreigners and Americans alike, with impunity.

Why assassinate the 16-year old boy?

Was he supposedly doing what his father was doing? Was he allegedly exhorting Muslims to resist U.S. imperialism with force? Was he allegedly conspiring to commit terrorist attacks himself? Was he supposed to be a member of al-Qaeda?

We don't know. The only people who know are President Obama, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the CIA and, again, they're not talking and, under the war on terrorism, are apparently not required to talk.

According to that Time magazine article, some unidentified U.S. official is quoted as saying that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was "in the wrong place at the wrong time" — collateral damage in the assassination of an al-Qaeda terrorist who was killed as part of the same strike.

One problem, of course, is that that information might well be false, especially since it's not under oath and comes from an unidentified official. Thus, the information is worthless insofar as understanding why the assassins ended the child's life. Another problem is that even if the claim was true, an obvious question arises: Did the assassins know that 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was present and, therefore, would likely be killed in the attack?

Perhaps I should mention that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki wasn't the only teenager assassinated in the attack. Also assassinated were his teenage cousin and six other people with whom he was having dinner. Were they also alleged to have been terrorists? Again, we just don't know. The president, the Pentagon, and the CIA just aren't talking and apparently don't have to.

Did the U.S government assassinate Abdulrahman al-Awlaki because he was the son of an alleged terrorist? Did they assassinate him to send a message to other would-be terrorists — that this is what will happen to your children (or other relatives) if you oppose the U.S. Empire? Did they assassinate him to preclude the possibility of his growing up with a thirst for vengeance and retaliation arising out of the assassination of his father?

We just don't know. I think the idea is that while the government is disappearing people from life through assassination, we, the citizenry, are expected to not dwell on such things and instead to simply continue going about our daily lives with the understanding that the government is doing what is necessary to keep us safe.

But one thing is for sure: The assassination of 16-year-old American Abdulrahman al-Awlaki confirms, once again, that we now live in a country whose government has the unfettered authority to assassinate anyone it wants, adult or minor, foreigner or American, and remain mute about it.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

At the same time, people are murdered by the US supported Yemeni Government.
Photo like of Pieta Maria and Jesus Child 2011

His father Anwar al-Awlaki was ACCUSED (not convicted by law) of being a "terrorist"

Wikipedia: Al-Awlaki's 17 year old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was reportedly killed 2 weeks later on October 14, 2011, by an American drone strike in Yemen

The embedded Government Mouthpiece New York Times writes:

The American drone strike last month that killed the Qaeda official, Anwar al-Awlaki, has been particularly controversial in the United States. Despite being an American citizen, Mr. Awlaki, a Qaeda propagandist, was killed without a trial.

The killing of his son in a drone attack on Friday night, if confirmed, would be the fourth time an American was killed by such a United States attack in Yemen, although it was not clear if the son was an intended target. A second American, Samir Khan, the editor of Al Qaeda's online magazine, was killed in the attack on Mr. Awlaki, which was launched from a new secret C.I.A. base on the Arabian Peninsula.

Local reports citing witnesses said the strikes were carried out by American drones, and that they had killed nine people.

American drone strikes have increased in Yemen this year

Abdelrahman al-Awlaki, 17, who lived in the capital and was visiting the family home in the Assan District of Shabwa Province after his father's death.

Two other relatives of the Awlaki family were also killed, the family said.

The American, Abdelrahman al-Awlaki, was at least the fourth American killed in such a strike

Fascism version 2.0

USA kill 15 civilians per militant

2011-10-22T19:49:00.001-07:00

Assassination Rights

By Edward S. Herman

Assassination is as American as apple pie. The record-breaking case of assassination-targeting is Fidel Castro. The 1976 Church Committee report on "Alleged Assassination Plots on Foreign Leaders" listed "at least" seven attempts to kill Castro, but the book by Fabian Escalante, the Cuban former official in charge of protecting Castro, claimed that the number of tries ran into the hundreds. Duncan Campbell pointed out that Luis Posada Carriles was still living in Florida after his failed effort to murder Castro (among his other terrorist actions) and Campbell noted sardonically that Florida is "a place where many of the unsuccessful would-be assassins have made their home" (see "638 tries to kill Castro," Guardian, August 3, 2006). It would be a mistake, however, to think that Florida is the terror center of the world—that honor falls to Washington, DC and its environs. Florida is just one branch of the center, just as Guantanamo is one branch of a DC-centered torture network.

Aggression Rights

It is, of course, well established that the United States has aggression rights and that international law applies only to others, although clients like Israel also have such exemptions by virtue of the power of their protector (see Herman, "Aggression Rights," Z Magazine, February, 2004). U.S. aggression rights were made perfectly clear with the U.S. attack, invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, which was as clear a violation of the UN Charter as Saddam's 1990 invasion/occupation of Kuwait. In the latter instance, the UN rushed to condemn Saddam on the same day his tanks and troops rolled into Kuwait, and that great law-enforcer, the United States, rushed to oust him by massive force.

On the other hand, when Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, this was seen as merely a case of tolerable "birth-pangs of a new Middle East" (Condo- leezza Rice). When the UN came into the picture, it was more to protect poor little Israel from future pea-shoots from Lebanon than to protect Lebanon from current and future attacks and invasions by a state that had already aggressed against it twice.

Even more interesting was the invasion of Rwanda by elements of the Uganda army in October 1990, two months after Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. Here, as in Lebanon, the invading forces were supported by the U.S., so the UN imposed no impediment or penalty and, in various other ways, aided the invading party and facilitated a genocidal process in the 1990s (which extended into the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

Assassination Rights

Assassination rights follow in the same manner, flowing from military and economic power, arrogance, self-righteousness, and client status. As of early September 2011, it is not clear whether Moammar Kadaffi is dead or alive—or, if alive, will long survive—but it has been openly acknowledged that the United States and its NATO allies have more than once bombed Kadaffi's compound in Tripoli in an effort to kill him, the first incident occurring as early as March 20, the second day of the war. This is by no means the first time that the West has tried to assassinate Kadaffi. The British and French both tried and the United States made an earlier effort in 1986 when it bombed Kadaffi's residence in Tripoli, missing him but killing his baby daughter and many nearby civilians.

Assassination of civilians violates numerous international prohibitions of such killing beyond military "necessity" and it violates a stream of U.S. executive orders that declare, for example, that, "No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination." This is regularly ignored by U.S. leaders, hence by the media and by any potential theoretical national or international law enforcement bodies.

The rationales for ignoring law and executive orders can be funny. We can go after Kadaffi because he is "commander-in-chief" of the Libyan armed forces, hence a military target. One exposition of assassination law notes that "it seems fairly obvious that eliminating Qadaffi will go far toward bringing attacks on civilians to an end" ("Assassination under International & Domestic Law," on the IntLawGrrls website, May 2, 2011). This might be especially true if his elimination would have ended NATO attacks on Libyan civilians, which, along with those of the NATO-supported insurgents, seem to have far exceeded those of Kadaffi and his forces.

Bringing a war to a quicker end has long been a rationalization for attacking civilians. During the bombing war against Yugoslavia in 1999, the stepped up attacks on Serbian civilian structures and civilian occupants was explicitly designed to force a quicker surrender and the bombing of the Belgrade state broadcasting station (16 killed) was explained on grounds that the station served up state propaganda and was, therefore, a quasi-military target whose destruction would hasten an end to the war. Then, of course, U.S. wars are always framed as a matter of self-defense against the threat of weapons of mass destruction or some other threat to the pitiful giant.

Israel's Assassination Rights

Or for our pitiful little client in the Middle East, which is a kind of pioneer in "targeted assassinations" and "preventive strikes." Israel has been killing Palestinians in extra-judicial actions for many years, both in the occupied territories and in Israel itself. The Palestine Centre for Human Rights estimates 604 targeted killings of Palestinians between September 2000 and March 2011, plus another 256 "collateral damage" bystanders killed. B'Tselem estimates 228 executions carried out by the Israel Defense Force (IDF) between September 2000 and October 2006, plus 154 non-targeted civilians. This just scratches the surface of the forms of violence carried out by the Israeli state and its settlers against those who stand in the way. The IDF uses only rubber bullets in Israeli protests, but live ammunition in dealing with the Palestinians. The assassination programs are built on the foundation that Israel is confronted with "terrorists" who can be dealt with summarily. That the IDF is the operative body of a system of wholesale terrorism that daily violates international law is unrecognized, not only in Israel, but throughout the world. Similarly, the Israeli wars of aggression in Lebanon and the genocidal war on Gaza in 2009 do not elicit sanctions or war crimes tribunals or discredit the Israeli state or leadership. Its right to aggress and assassinate remains intact.

In 2006, the Israeli assassination program received the imprimatur of the Israeli Supreme Court, which found that the assassinations of "terrorists," who had not been tried in any court of law, were legal. "We cannot determine in advance that all targeted killings are contrary to international law," the court ruled. "At the same time, it is not possible that all such liquidations are in line with international law." But the Court did make it illegal to carry out an assassination attack where more than one victim was unidentified and was possibly an innocent ("Israeli court backs targeted killings," BBC News, December 14, 2006). Of course, the non-innocence of the properly liquidated targets had not been determined in a court of law, but this extra-judicial decision-making, which flies in the face of international law, was acceptable to the court.

The court also required that, if feasible, the terrorists should be arrested rather than simply assassinated. If the target resisted arrest, killing them would be acceptable and assassinating them where an arrest was not practicle was also acceptable.

This was a de facto "license to kill," that would only put the killing establishment to some minor pains to keep the record clean and lawful. "Targeted Assassinations—a License to kill" was, in fact, the title of an article published in Haaretz on November 27, 2008 by Uri Blau, using some IDF internal documents that described how the Israeli Supreme Court's assassination-approving decision would only slightly inconvenience the IDF's assassination program. Blau shows that the Israeli military regularly carried out assassination operations, planned in advance as targeted killings, under the guise of planned arrests.

Blau cites evidence that top Israeli officers approved in advance the killing of Palestinians defined as "wanted." This has been a scandal in Israel, with the alleged leaker of documents (Anat Kam, then a 23-year-old former IDF soldier) under arrest and Blau, a refugee in England, fearful of returning to Israel. Needless to say Blau's "License to kill" and its findings have not been widely disseminated in the press, nor has the freedom of speech scandal gotten much attention.

The U.S.: From Assassination to Global Free-Fire-Zone Rights

With its greater capacity to kill on a global scale, the U.S. "license" far surpasses Israel's. Despite its serious domestic problems and resource scarcity for its civil society needs, the U.S. permanent war establishment is upping-the-ante in pursuing its villain choices across the globe. The Nation's Jeremy Scahill testified before the House Judiciary Committee in December 2010 that the U.S. Special Operations Forces and CIA have steadily expanded their ongoing "shadow wars" around the world, con- ducting missions in 60 countries during the Bush administration and as many as 75 under Obama's. As Scahill added, the Obama "administration has taken the Bush era doctrine that the 'world is a battlefield' and run with it."

Based on press reports dating back to June 17, 2004, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (UK) estimated that by the end of August 2011, between 2,309 and 2,880 persons had been killed in the U.S.'s "Covert Drone War" in Pakistan, with airstrikes by remote-controlled aerial killers under Obama outnumbering Bush's by 243 to 52. These researchers found the reported civilian death-toll to be between 392 and 783—though the actual civilian toll is likely far greater.

The press reports which form the basis of this research tend to repeat the U.S. and Pakistani government line that every strike kills "militants" and only in exceptional cases are civilian fatalities acknowledged in the reports (see Chris Woods, "Drone War Exposed," and David Pegg, "Drone Statistics Visualized," Bureau of Investigative Journalism, August 10, 2011).

A photographic exhibit in London last summer by the Pakistani Noor Behram, titled Gaming in Waziristan, detailed the wreckage caused by the U.S. drone war. Behram's theme, in his own words, was that "far more civilians are being injured and killed than the Americans and Pakistanis admit." As he told the Guardian's Peter Beaumont: "For every 10 to 15 people killed, maybe they get one militant. I don't go to count how many Taliban are killed. I go to count how many children, women, innocent people are killed" ("US drone strikes in Pakistan claiming many civilian victims, says campaigner," July 17, 2011).

A lawsuit filed in Islamabad against the retired CIA lawyer John A. Rizzo on behalf of two surviving family members of drone attacks accuses him of having played a role in determining targets for the attacks and thus deciding who should die. This and similar evidence in other U.S. free-fire zones—Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya (until the overthrow of Kadaffi in August), and elsewhere—stands in dramatic contrast with the reassuring words of White House's Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser John Brennan, who said, in answer to a question on June 29, that in the "types of operations the U.S. has been involved in in the counterterrorism realm...there hasn't been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we've been able to develop."

During the same speech, Brennan previewed the U.S. strategy in its Global War On Terror for the years ahead. Unsurprisingly, remote-controlled drones and U.S. Special Forces Operations in different countries where no official U.S. declaration of war has ever been made were featured prominently ("U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy; Ensuring Al-Qaida's Demise," Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, June 29, 2011).

Brennan was lying about the sure-sightedness of this method of kill. Six weeks later the New York Times helped him get-off-the-hook when he "adjusted the wording of his earlier comment on civilian casualties," no longer saying that "there hasn't been a single collateral death" in the past year, but that "American officials could not confirm any such deaths." In an amazing gloss on the argument, Georgetown University Pakistan expert C. Christine Fair also told the Times: "This is the least indiscriminate, least inhumane tool we have" (Scott Shane, "C.I.A. Is Disputed On Civilian Toll In Drone Strikes," August 12, 2011).

Given the monumental scale of the violence and of the death and destruction caused by U.S. military attacks against multiple countries around the world (formally or informally; in uniform or by hired-hands), the reported deaths in Pakistan to date are relatively small when compared to the deaths of one to two million Iraqis caused by the United States and its allies from August 1990 to the present. But perhaps the most important point to note is the institutionalization, growth, and normalization of the work of the U.S. military machine. The CIA has grown in size, especially in its killing activities, featuring its drone war management, which Gareth Porter contends is unstoppable because of bureaucratic imperatives and power ("CIA's Push for Drone War Driven by Internal Needs," IPSnews, September 5, 2011). It is, in the words of one CIA official, "one hell of a killing machine." However, it is probably exceeded in its death-dealing by the semi-secret Joint Special Operations Command, which "has killed even more of America's enemies in the decade since the 9/11 attacks" (Dana Priest and William Arkin, "'Top Secret America': A look at the military's Joint Special Operations Command," Washington Post, September 2, 2011).

These, along with the Pentagon, have made the entire globe a free-fire- zone in which people are assassinated without trial at U.S. discretion. NATO has been integrated into this process, expanded greatly since the break-up of the Soviet Union, whose alleged threat was the rationale for building NATO. NATO is now stressing "out of area" operations that gear well with the U.S. "projection of power." It was noted recently in a reflection on 9/11 that America's wars have greatly increased rather than decreased since the demise of the Soviet Union and the ending of their supposed threat to international peace and security (see Greg Jaffe, "On a war footing, set in concrete," Washington Post, September 5, 2011).

But that seeming paradox rested on the belief that it was the Soviets who needed to be contained, rather than the United States and its allies. The latter still do. And, as during the Vietnam war where U.S. policy—free-fire zones, chemical warfare, massive killings of civilians in napalm and bombing raids—created a steady stream of recruits to keep fighting the aggressor, so today the U.S. (and Israeli) killing machine continues to produce recruits and resistance to its "out of area" advances. As this is a permanent self-fulfilling enemy- and war-generating process, it is ominous and may be an Armageddon March.

Edward S. Herman is an economist, media critic, and author of numerous articles and books. His latest is The Politics of Genocide (with David Peterson).

Chomsky never tried Marijuana!!!

2011-10-19T06:31:00.000-07:00

The High Times Interview with Noam Chomsky July 29, 2011

Q: You've spoken out against the War on Drugs, explaining that it's
essentially a means to lock up poor people, that it actually increases
drug use, and that it serves as an excuse to control foreign nations.
Would you briefly elaborate on these points?

A: Let's grant that there's a drug problem, for the sake of argument
-- drugs meaning, you know, cocaine, marijuana and so on. Suppose you
accept that. How do you deal with it? There are studies -- government
studies and others -- that say that the most cost-effective way is
prevention and treatment. More expensive and less effective is
policing; still less effective and more expensive is border
interdiction. And the most expensive and the least effective is
out-of-country operations, like what they call "fumigation" -- which
is, in fact, chemical warfare -- in Colombia and so forth. I've seen
it firsthand; it really is chemical warfare. So those are the basic
facts, and I don't think anyone questions them very much.

Now take a look at the way the Drug War is conducted over the past 40
years. It goes back farther, but start from 40 years ago: There's very
little spent on prevention and treatment. There's a lot on policing, a
ton of stuff on border control and a lot on out-of-country operations.
And the effect on the availability of drugs is almost undetectable;
drug prices don't change on measures of availability. So there are two
possibilities: Either those conducting the Drug War are lunatics, or
they have another purpose.

Well, in the law, there's a standard way of trying to determine
intention, and that's by looking at predictable consequences. You have
40 years of experience with almost no effect on what they claim
they're trying to do, and you have very predictable consequences -- in
fact, several. At home, you lock up the people who are essentially
superfluous. The economy shifted dramatically in the '70s away from
domestic production and towards financialization and the export of
production. That leaves a class problem: What do you do with
unemployed workers? We happen to have a very close class/race
correlation in America, so that means, overwhelmingly, black males and
Hispanic males. Well, you know, we're a civilized country, so you
don't assassinate them -- you stick them in jail. And, in fact, the
incarceration rate has been shooting up, especially since the early
'80s; it's now way out of line with any other comparable country.
Meanwhile, overseas, the War on Drugs contributes to counterinsurgency
operations. So a rational conclusion is that those are the purposes.
The only alternative I can think of is sheer lunacy.

Furthermore, it's known, just from experience, that prevention works.
Here we get to the question of what's the drug problem. Well, in fact,
by far the worst problem is tobacco: Tobacco kills way more people
than hard drugs, 20 times as many or some huge number. So that's a
really dangerous substance. The second most dangerous is alcohol,
because of its direct consequence to the user, but also because it
harms others. Marijuana doesn't make you violent; alcohol does. So it
contributes to abuse, violence -- drunk driving kills people. It's a
killer.

Anyway, what happened is that, without any criminalization, the usage
of these substances has declined pretty significantly among more
educated people. And it's the same with say, red meat. It was a
lifestyle change, and it became a healthier lifestyle with no
criminalization. That's just education -- basically, prevention. So I
think there's almost no other rational conclusion other than the one I
mentioned: that the Drug War is not intended to deal with the use of
drugs. It's intended for other purposes, namely those that are the
actual and predictable consequences of it.

Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, made a pertinent comment a
couple years ago. He said, "If you want to destroy coca here, then let
us destroy the tobacco in North Carolina and Kentucky. It's a far more
dangerous substance. It kills way more people than coca does." That's
a joke, obviously -- the United States isn't going to let him do that.
Then again, it just shows up the cynicism of the whole program.

Q: You mentioned that money from drugs is used to support American
covert operations or counterinsurgency operations. Can you explain how
that got started and how it still works today?

A: The best source on this is Alfred McCoy's The Politics of Heroin.
He traces it back to early postwar Europe, post--World War II, where a
prime concern of Washington was to undermine the antifascist
resistance and the labor movements in Italy, France and Germany in
order to restore traditional social structures, including fascist
collaborators. It actually started earlier, before the war was over,
as US and British troops moved up the Italian peninsula with help from
the Mafia. In France, to break the powerful labor movement, the US
occupying forces needed strikebreakers and, more generally, goons.
They reconstituted the Corsican Mafia for that purpose and, in
payment, allowed them to restore the old heroin connection based in
Marseilles, which the fascists had crushed.

After that, the center of the drug trade quite consistently followed
the path of US intervention and subversion. The heroin trade moved
from the French Connection to Southeast Asia, where the so-called
"Golden Triangle" -- the area around Burma, Thailand and Laos --
became a major drug-producing area with the help of the US as it waged
secret wars against the populations of those countries. It then
shifted to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the '80s as the US supported
the Afghan resistance -- including warlords -- against the Soviet
occupation. Obviously, the terrorist operations carried out in Central
America under the Reagan administration were funded through the
cocaine trade, which was partly exposed in the Iran-contra hearings,
though mostly suppressed. It's quite natural: These operations need
thugs and black money, which commonly translates as illegal drugs.

On how it works today, you should check with people who follow these
matters more closely than I do, like Alfred W. McCoy or Peter Dale
Scott.

Q: Could you tell us about the connection between the drug cartels and
the large institutional banks?

A: Money laundering commonly goes through banks, which pretend not to
know about it. The scale is estimated to be huge. An interesting
illustration of how it works is Operation Greenback, launched on a
Treasury Department initiative in 1979, when investigators discovered
a sharp increase in cash deposits in South Florida banks as well as
cocaine imports. The investigation was aborted by the Reagan
administration, which evidently did not regard banks as an appropriate
target -- except for bailouts when they get into trouble.

Q: You subscribe to the theory of anarchism or anarcho-syndicalism.
Could you point out how your views on drugs and the Drug War tie into
that?

A: The Drug War, in my opinion, is a very highly illegitimate use of
state power. We can ask the question what should be done, but I think,
for the reasons I mentioned, what's actually being done is completely
illegitimate. Anarcho-syndicalism is a commitment to overcome the
illegitimate use of power, including state power, but also any other
kind of power, like corporate power or patriarchal families or
whatever it may be. There's a connection in that sense. This is simply
an instance of the illegitimate use of power by concentrations of
power that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Q: At times, you've been outspoken against the Libertarian Party and
its ideals. Recently, libertarians such as Ron Paul have courted
marijuana users on the basis that they oppose the Drug War. Why do you
oppose them?

A: What's called libertarianism in the United States is a significant
deviation from traditional libertarian thought. Traditionally, say in
Europe, "libertarian" meant the anti-state wing of the socialist
party. In the United States, "libertarian" means ultra-capitalist; it
means permitting capitalist institutions to function essentially
without constraint, or virtually with no constraint. That's a recipe
for one of the worst kinds of tyranny that exists: unaccountable
corporate tyranny.

Take a look at individual libertarians -- say Ron Paul. He may be
perfectly sincere, but as I read his programs and other programs of
the Libertarian Party or the Cato Institute and so on, they
essentially would give free rein to unaccountable concentrations of
private power. And that's about the worst kind of tyranny you can
imagine. Whatever government is -- say our government -- it's to some
extent accountable to the public, and the public can compel it to be
fairly accountable, at least in principle. That's why we have things
like New Deal reforms and so on: It's public pressure. On the other
hand, you and I can say nothing about the policies of Goldman Sachs or
General Electric. In principle, our only relationship to those
institutions is to consume what they produce or to serve them as an
obedient work force. We can maybe own some shares, but that's
meaningless given the concentration of shareholding. So they're
essentially unaccountable to the public except through a regulatory
apparatus that can be developed through the state in our society,
which can somewhat tame the excesses and destructive capacities of
these institutions.

Q: You and your friend and former colleague, the late Howard Zinn,
have promoted the idea of change coming from the bottom up, from
people organizing, rather than through elected leaders. You saw this
in the civil-rights and antiwar movements, and it's evident in the
marijuana movement today. Does recent progress in the campaign for the
legalization of marijuana give you hope for other causes?

A: First of all, I wouldn't go quite so far as what you said before --
there's an interaction between elected officials and popular activism.
So, for example, let's go back to the New Deal legislation or the
other liberal welfare-state measures that went on from the New Deal
right up through the Nixon administration. Nixon was basically the
last liberal president, and those liberal measures were in substantial
part the result of popular activism, from CIO organizing in the 1930s
up to the activism in the '60s and on to their impact in the early
'70s. They had an impact on legislation and on public officials. So
it's not one or the other; you can do both and recognize what the
interaction is like.

Marijuana legalization is a cause that's moving forward, and I think
it makes sense. It could be a dent in state controls that should be
relaxed or eliminated. Just how to proceed raises interesting
questions. I don't think, exactly, let's legalize everything -- you
have to consider the circumstances that exist, the culture that
exists, the society that exists, how people will react to the
legislation and other choices. It's not such a simple matter. I think
we can move in the direction of treating hard drugs the way we treat
tobacco, but you'll probably have to move in stages.

Q: Nixon was a liberal? HighTimes readers more likely see him as the
man who started the modern War on Drugs. Could you explain?

A: Nixon did a lot of rotten things much worse than starting the
modern War on Drugs, but the same is true of other liberal presidents.
His liberal initiatives included the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the
Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and much else. No president since
Nixon has passed such liberal initiatives. His perceived "class
treachery" appears to have been a factor in the substantial
business-led backlash against democracy and rights that took off in
the mid-'70s.

Q: Lastly, HighTimes readers may be curious if you've ever tried marijuana?

A: No, never even … I'm very conventional.

Chomsky at Columbia - Israel Zionism Facism

2011-10-19T05:13:00.001-07:00

Noam Chomsky on Israel-Palestine Prisoner Exchange, U.S. Assassination Campaign in Yemen

MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned linguist and political dissident, spoke Monday night at Barnard College in New York City about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, just hours before Israel and Hamas completed a historic prisoner exchange. "I think [Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit] should have been released a long time ago. But there's something missing from this whole story. There's no pictures of Palestinian women, and no discussion, in fact, in the story of—what about the Palestinian prisoners being released? Where do they come from?" Chomsky says. "There's a lot to say about that. So, for example, we don't know—at least I don't read it in the Times—whether the release includes the elected Palestinian officials who were kidnapped and imprisoned by Israel in 2007 when the United States, the European Union and Israel decided to dissolve the only freely elected legislature in the Arab world." Chomsky also discusses the recent U.S. assassination of U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. "Almost all of the critics, of whom there weren't many, criticized the action or qualified it because of the fact that Awlaki was an American citizen," Chomksy says. "That is, he was a person, unlike suspects who are intentionally murdered or collateral damage, meaning we treat them kind of like the ants we step on when we walk down the street. They're not American citizens, so they're unpeople, and therefore they can be freely murdered." [includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit returned home today after five years in captivity in Gaza in exchange for 477 Palestinian prisoners. Another 550 are slated to be released in two months. Forty of the Palestinian prisoners will be deported to Syria, Qatar, Turkey and Jordan. In his first interview, Gilad Shalit expressed support for the freeing of all Palestinian prisoners. While Palestinians are holding a massive celebration in Gaza today, Palestinian prison support groups note over 4,000 Palestinians remain locked up in Israel.

We turn now to MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned linguist and political dissident. He spoke Monday night here in New York at Barnard College about the Israel-Palestine conflict, the prisoner exchange, and the Middle East, overall.

    NOAM CHOMSKY: About a week ago, the New York Times had a headline saying "the West Celebrates a Cleric's Death." The cleric was Awlaki, killed by a drone. It wasn't just death; it was assassination—and another step forward in Obama's global assassination campaign, which actually breaks some new records in international terrorism. Well, it's not true that everyone in the West celebrated. There were some critics. Almost all of the critics, of whom there weren't many, criticized the action or qualified it because of the fact that Awlaki was an American citizen. That is, he was a person, unlike suspects who are intentionally murdered or collateral damage, meaning we treat them kind of like the ants we step on when we walk down the street. They're not American citizens, so they're unpeople, and therefore they can be freely murdered.

    Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that's so deep in history that there's no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist. Some of the critics have brought up the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which says that no person — "person," notice — shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Well, of course, that was never intended to apply to persons, so it wasn't intended to apply to unpeople.

    And unpeople fall into several categories. There's, first of all, the indigenous population, either in the territories already held or those that were expected to be conquered soon. It didn't apply to them. And, of course, it didn't apply to those who the Constitution declared to be three-fifths human, so therefore unpeople. That latter category was transferred into—theoretically, into the category of people by the 14th Amendment, that—essentially the same wording as the Fifth Amendment in this respect, but now a person was intended to hold of freed slaves. Now that was in theory. In practice, it barely happened. After about 10 years, the category of three-fifths human were returned to the category of unpeople by the divisive criminalization of black life, which essentially restored slavery, maybe something even worse than slavery, actually went on 'til the Second World War. And it's being reinstituted now, past 30 years of severe moral and social regression in the United States.

    Well, the 14th Amendment was recognized right away to be problematic. The concept of person was both too narrow and too broad, and the courts went to work to overcome both of those flaws. The concept of person was expanded to include legal fictions, sustained—created and sustained by the state, what's called corporations, and was also narrowed over the years to exclude undocumented aliens. That goes right up to the present, to recent Supreme Court cases, which make it clear that corporations not only are persons, but they're persons with rights far beyond those of persons of flesh and blood, so kind of super persons. The mislabeled free trade agreements give them astonishing rights. And, of course, the court just added more.

    But the crucial need to make sure that the category of unpeople includes those who escaped from the horrors we've created in Central America and Mexico, try to get here—those are not persons, they are unpeople. And, of course, it includes any foreigners, especially those accused of terror, which is a concept that has taken a quite an interesting conceptual change, an interesting one, since 1981, when Ronald Reagan came into office and declared the global war on terror, what's called GWOT in current fancy terminology. I won't go into that here, except with a comment, a note, on how the term is now used, without any—raising even any notice.

    So take, for example, Omar Khadr. He's a 15-year-old child, a Canadian. Now, he was accused of a very severe crime, namely, trying to defend his village in Afghanistan from U.S. invaders. Obviously, that's severe crime, a serious terrorist, so he was sent first to secret prison in Bagram, then off to Guantánamo for eight years. After eight years, he pleaded guilty to some charges. We all know what that means. If you want, you could pick up a few of the details even in Wikipedia, more in other sources. So he pleaded guilty and was given eight more years' sentence. Could have—would have gotten 30 more years if he hadn't pleaded guilty. After all, it is a severe crime, defending your village from American aggressors. He's Canadian, so Canada could have him extradited. But with typical courage, they refused. They don't want to offend the master, understandably. Well, the crime of resisting aggression, it's not a new category of terrorism. There may be some of you old enough to remember the slogan "a terror against terror," which was used by the Gestapo—and which we've taken over. None of this arouses any interest, because all of these victims belong to the category of unpeople.

    Well, that—coming back to our topic now, the concept of unpeople is central to tonight's topic. Israeli Jews are people. Palestinians are unpeople. And a lot follows from that as clear illustrations constantly. So, here's a clipping, if I remembered to bring it, from the New York Times. Front-page story, Wednesday, October 12th, the lead story is "Deal with Hamas Will Free Israeli Held Since 2006." That's Gilad Shalit. And right next to it is a—running right across the top of the front page is a picture of four women kind of agonized over the fate of Gilad Shalit. "Friends and supporters of the family of Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit received word of the deal at the family's protest tent in Jerusalem." Well, that's understandable, actually. I think he should have been released a long time ago. But there's something missing from this whole story. So, like, there's no pictures of Palestinian women, and no discussion, in fact, in the story of—what about the Palestinian prisoners being released? Where do they come from?

    And there's a lot to say about that. So, for example, we don't know — at least I don't read it in the Times — whether the release includes the Palestinian—the elected Palestinian officials who were kidnapped and imprisoned by Israel in 2007 when the United States, the European Union and Israel decided to dissolve the only freely elected legislature in the Arab world. That's called "democracy promotion," technically, in case you're not familiar with the term. So I don't know what happened to them. There are also other people who have been in prison exactly as long as Gilad Shalit—in fact, one day longer. The day before Gilad Shalit was captured at the border, Israeli troops entered Gaza, kidnapped two brothers, the Muamar brothers, spirited them across the border, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, of course. And they've disappeared into Israel's prison system. I haven't a clue what happened to them; I've never seen a word about it. And as far as I know, nobody cares, which makes sense. After all, unpeople. Whatever you think about capturing the soldier, a soldier from an attacking army, plainly kidnapping civilians is a far more severe crime. But that's only if they're people. This case really doesn't matter. It's not that it's unknown, so if you look back at the press the day after the Muamar brothers were captured, there's a couple lines here and there. But it's just insignificant, of course—which makes some sense, because there are lots of others in prison, thousands of them, many without charges.

    There's also, in addition to this, the secret prison system, like Facility 1391, if you want to look it up on the internet, a secret prison, which means, of course, a torture chamber, in Israel, which actually was reported pretty well in Israel when it was discovered, also reported in England and in Europe, but I haven't seen a word about it here, in at least anywhere that anybody's likely to look. I've written about it, and a couple of others. All of this is—these are all unpeople, so, naturally, nobody cares. In fact, the racism is so profound that it's kind of like the air we breathe: we're unaware of it, you know, just pervades everything.

    Coming to the title of this talk, it could mislead, and it could be interpreted—misinterpreted—as supporting a kind of conventional picture of the negotiations, such as they are: United States on—over here and then these two recalcitrant forces over there; the United States is an honest broker trying to bring together the two militant, difficult groups that don't seem to be able to get along with one another. Now that's—it is the standard version, but it's totally false. I mean, if they were serious negotiations, they would be organized by some neutral party, maybe Brazil, and on one side you'd have the U.S. and Israel, on the other side you'd have the world. That's literally true. But that's one of those things that's unspeakable.

AMY GOODMAN: MIT Professor Noam Chomsky speaking Monday night at Barnard College.

LectureHop: Chomsky on Israel-Palestine

He's less iconic in person.

Last night, famous linguist and leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky spoke on "America and Israel-Palestine: Peace and War" at Barnard's LeFrak Gymnasium. The line to get in was long, but Bwog's radical correspondent Peter Sterne made it inside.

A full hour before Noam Chomsky was scheduled to begin speaking, the auditorium was already beginning to fill up, and by 5:40 pm, virtually every seat was taken. Attendees continued to stream in, but they were forced to stand on the sides or sit on the floor.

Professor Chomsky began by noting the distinction between "people" and "unpeople." People, he said, were entitled to human dignity and human rights, while unpeople "look human but are considered unworthy of human rights." Historically, unpeople have included indigenous peoples and "those the Constitution considered only 3/5ths of a person." In the War on Terror, he proposes, "unpeople" now include non-Americans. He noted that even though many were critical of Obama's decision to assassinate Anwar al-Awalki, an American citizen and alleged terrorist in Yemen, they didn't mind when the United States killed non-Americans. Chomsky used this example to illustrate how Americans are considered people with certain rights that should be respected, while non-Americans are not.

The same, he argued, is true of Israelis (people) and Palestinians (unpeople) in both the U.S. and Israel. He pointed to an October 12th front-page New York Times article, "Deal With Hamas Will Free Israeli Held Since 2006" (the online version's title is different), that was illustrated with a picture of Israeli women celebrating Gilad Shalit's release. In Chomsky's view, the article focused on the impact of Shalit's release on Israelis, while largely ignoring the individual Palestinian prisoners involved in the prisoner swap, because the Palestinians are considered "unpeople."

Chomsky's criticisms were harsh, and they could easily upset Israelis, for whom Gilad Shalit's release has been a national fixation. But it didn't seem like they were designed to inflame. Chomsky didn't have the angry or self-righteous attitude of a demagogue, but rather the tired and exasperated tone of a professor struggling to explain something simple to his students. It was obvious that he was extremely knowledgeable about the subject of Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab relations, and he proceeded to detail a brief history of diplomacy between Israel, Egypt, the U.S., Palestine, and other Arab states. He made a strong case that the United States has generally acted not to advance peace, but to advance its own interests, and that these are often tied to Israel's. Serious and fair peace negotiations, he argued, would have to be mediated by a neutral third party—not the U.S.—and be based on the internationally-recognized 1967 borders.

One example of the U.S. and Israel choosing their own interests above peace, according to Chomsky, occurred in 1971, when President Anwar Sadat of Egypt offered the Israelis full diplomatic relations in exchange for the return of the Sinai Peninsula (which Israel had occupied since the 1967 war). Israel rejected the agreement, preferring to move settlers into the Sinai, and the United States, under Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, supported the Israeli rejection. According to Chomsky, this was partly for racist reasons: a memo circulated in the State Department arguing that Egypt posed no threat to Israel because "Arabs don't know which end of the gun to hold!" With both Israel and the U.S. refusing to negotiate, Egypt launched an attack to reclaim the Sinai in 1973, which resulted in a war that killed 20,000 people and nearly caused nuclear war between the Americans and Russians. After the war, Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin met at Camp David to negotiate the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty, which was almost identical to Sadat's original proposal eight years earlier. Though these negotiations are often seen as a diplomatic triumph, Chomsky argued that the Camp David negotiations and 1979 treaty should instead be considered a diplomatic failure. After all, he explained, if the U.S. and Israel had simply accepted Sadat's offer in 1971, they could have avoided a disastrous war.

The audience seemed supportive of Chomsky during his lecture. He received a standing ovation at the end of his talk, and the crowd spontaneously broke into applause and laughter at particularly interesting moments in his lecture. The line "[Palestinian prisoners] are all unpeople, so nobody cares. The racism is so profound that it's like the air we breathe" was particularly well-received. The explanation that "the United States and Israel punished Palestinians with sanctions for voting the wrong way [i.e. for Hamas] in free elections. That's called 'promoting democracy,'" also caused a great deal of laughter.

The way questioners addressed Chomsky soon revealed that the audience were not uniformly fans. Two clear trends were discernible from the lines of questioning, which contributed to the divided atmosphere. Those who addressed their questions to "Dr. Chomsky" or "Professor Chomsky" asked why the United States tolerates Israel's behavior and what Israel should do about illegal settlements to achieve a two-state solution, while those addressing "Mr. Chomsky" asked about Ehud Barak's proposal to Arafat during the 2000 Camp David Accords (a central point in Dershowitz's celebrated "In Defense of Israel") and Binyamin Netanyahu's proposal for ostensible "negotiations without preconditions" at the U.N. a few weeks ago. In sum, around half the participants in the Q&A asked challenging questions, just as Alan Dershowitz had called for.

columbiaspectator

By Katie Bentivoglio

Spectator Senior Staff Writer .. Published October 19, 2011

Painting the world in stark dichotomies, famed linguist Noam Chomsky explained the Israel-Palestine conflict in simple terms to a crowded audience in LeFrak Gym: "Israeli Jews are people and Palestinians are 'unpeople.'"

Sponsored by the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University, Chomsky's speech "America and Israel-Palestine: War and Peace" was a harsh critique of American foreign policy in Israel. Professor of Linguistics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chomsky is one of the foremost American intellectuals to speak against American foreign policy concerning Israel and Palestine.

In a speech that read like a laundry list of Israeli-Palestinian history, he returned to the people/unpeople theme many times to explain Israel's treatment of Palestinians and America's acquiescence.

"Remember, these are all 'unpeople,'" he said. "So naturally, no one cares."

In addition to his psychological analysis, Chomsky focused on what he considers to be the greatest obstacle to moving forward in the peace process: the United States. The United States is one of Israel's last allies, offering political and financial support to the country despite decades of criticism from the international community.

"Israel offers a lot to the United States," Chomsky said, referring to American investments in Israel—especially in military capital and military technology—and its role as a strategic American ally in the Middle East. He also referred to "cultural" similarities, saying that both the United States and Israel share a history of removing indigenous peoples from their lands. "We did it, so it's got to be right. Jews are doing it, so it's got to be right," he said.

In the end, Chomsky said there are two simple options: that things continue the way they are or Israel and the United States allow for a two-state solution.

"If you're opposed to a two-state settlement at this point, you're telling the Palestinians to get lost," he said. "Of all the problems in the world, this has to be the easiest to solve," he said.

Following his speech, questions ranged from aggressive attacks on his political positions to practical inquiries about the details of his proposal for peace.

One student challenged Chomsky's claim that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak walked away from a peace settlement during the 2000 Camp David Accords, saying it was Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat who refused Barak's offer to give Palestinians all of Gaza and most of the West Bank. But Chomsky said that the terms of the agreement were unworkable from the beginning. "Clinton recognized that no Palestinian, no Arab, would ever accept the terms that they proposed," he said. "There's no need to discuss it."

He also questioned the veracity of many students' facts. "There is an official story, which is true, but like most official stories, it falls apart quickly if you look at the facts," he added.
Despite enthusiastic applause through much of his talk, Chomsky's wording attracted a crowd of mixed opinions.

"When he says 'unpeople,' what he means the audience to understand is racism," said Ryan Arant, SIPA. "But what I think he's describing are traditional power dynamics between the powerful and the powerless."

"There are real things to talk about," Arant added. "But calling Israel and the West racist is not one of them."

But others considered the event a valuable learning experience.

"It was a good way to get a view of it from a well-informed source," said Yaas Bigdeli, SEAS '14. "I was impressed," she said, adding that she was drawn to Chomsky by his fame and a desire to learn about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

But as Bigdeli noted, the notably dry Chomsky did end on a positive note.

"I think it's kind of optimistic," he said. "Because it means that the future is in our hands."

Internationally-recognized author, linguist, and activist Noam Chomsky will be speaking at Occupy Boston in Dewey Square tomorrow, October 19 at 6:15 pm as part of the Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series. Chomsky has already released statements of support for both Occupy Boston and Occupy Wall Street, and we are honored to be hosting him.

Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu's appeal rejected

2011-10-17T22:42:00.000-07:00

Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu's appeal rejected

by: Cory Collins October 17 2011

Mordechai Vanunu, the former Israeli nuclear technician and whistleblower, learned his appeal was rejected by Israel's Supreme Court last Thursday, continuing a range of restrictions on his rights re-imposed since his last release from prison in August 2010. Vanunu is also waiting for the Israeli government to respond to his request for revocation of his citizenship filed in July. On Sunday, he wrote that the court has allowed the government to delay their response.

Vanunu, who worked at the Negev Nuclear Research Center for nine years, leaked details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to two British newspapers in 1986, citing his opposition to weapons of mass destruction amidst Israel's policy of deliberate ambiguity - the country has never confirmed or denied maintaining a nuclear weapons program but Your Linkcredible estimates of its size were made based on the disclosure, many times greater than what independent analysts thought at the time.

Shortly afterwards, he was lured to Italy by a Mossad agent where he was abducted, drugged, transported to Israel and tried in secret, famously revealing the hearing's details by pressing his note-scrawled hand against the window of the car transporting him. He served a sentence of 18 years for charges of treason and espionage, including 11 years in solitary confinement.

Though he was released in 2004, he has since been subject to a range of prohibitions that were re-introduced again after further detentions in 2007 and 2010, each for violations of the rules regarding his communication and movement. Israeli authorities have justified the restrictions on security grounds, citing fears that Vanunu may disclose other state secrets, despite expert opinion that the full extent his classified knowledge is now publicly available.

The former technician's imprisonment and treatment have received condemnation from Amnesty International, the International League for Human Rights, and multiple laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize. Vanunu himself was nominated for a number of years, and received the Right Livelihood Award in 1987, among other honors. Nevertheless, his case remains little known, with individual developments gathering infrequent coverage.

"You can't take a poll on Vanunu," American linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky remarked on the case in 2005. "...[I]n the United States at least, I don't think one out of a million people have ever heard of him. ...But among people that have ever heard of it there's just total outrage."

Commenting in an email over the weekend, Chomsky called Israel's actions towards Vanunu "a scandal from the first moment" and said that the "continuing moves to punish him for revealing what we all should know are just another black mark added to an ugly record of vengeace." Israel is one of four non-parties to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty known or believed to have nuclear weapons, but the only one not to have formally acknowledged possession - though Israeli politicians and others have referenced them by implication or accident, an official admission would expose violation of United States laws against aide to WMD-producing states.

Vanunu has been variously forbidden from contacting non-Israelis and journalists; owning a cellphone or using a landline or the Internet; approaching embassies, bordering crossings and airports; and from leaving the state of Israel itself. Vanunu is also required to keep authorities informed of his residency information and whereabouts, though he has previously given foreign press interviews and maintains an active YouTube channel.

While in prison, Vanunu engaged in numerous symbolic acts of disobedience, such as refusing to exercise his limited rights to psychiatric treatment and social contact. In 1998, he appealed to Israel's interior ministry to revoke his citizenship, with hopes that it would increase his chances for gaining permanent residency in Europe.

Previously rejected on grounds that it would leave him a stateless citizen, Vanunu appealed again in 2010 but reported a week ago that "the [government] did not answer the [C]ourt yet" regarding his request. In his update on Sunday Vanunu said the court might allow the delay up until November 13, despite the protest of his attorney Avigdor Feldman.

Again citing a potential threat to national security, the decision means Vanunu will not be able to emigrate from Israel, the judges opining that he "has proved several times that he cannot be trusted and does not respect the letter of the law."

Though unclassified documents reveal the potential role that politics played in the rejection of his application to Norway, two other countries, Sweden and Ireland, also rejected his appeal on the grounds that absentee applications are not accepted. Therefore, his requests for asylum may continue to be denied.

Chomsky -- sit-down strike is just one step before taking over the factory

2011-10-12T00:07:00.001-07:00

Noam Chomsky spoke at the RMC (Rebellious Media Conference) opening session about the #Occupy Wall Street events taking place in the last few weeks and his views on how this movement could become more efficient, more radical, more permanent and more focused on obtainable goals. He left no doubt of his support to this "end of apathy" as the most important thing happening today.
PLEASE, SOMEBODY, PUT THE MP3 DOWNLOAD LINK INTO THE COMMENT (below)

Image by: Wikimedia Commons

Noam Chomsky (Wikimedia Commons)

Pressenza london, 10/11/11 Noam Chomsky was the keynote speaker at the conference organized by Peace News in London with the sponsorship of the Joseph Rowntree foundation and Quaker Peace and Social Witness. The central theme was how to progress the radical agenda through an equally radical Media.

Instead, Chomsky decided to focus his opening presentation on the #Occupy Wall Street movement and its offshoots in the US and other parts of the world, acknowledging but not giving much weight to the roots of this movement in the Arab spring and others. He celebrated these important events as the end of apathy, stressing that the inadequacies of the system are to be filled by those who have radical priorities. However he found some unusual mainstream support for this movement rather curious. The head of the Federal Reserve has declared the mobilisations "understandable". The Financial Times carried a front page story: "thousands rally against US inequalities". The Unions have joined in and again he stressed this is very rare as they tend to always support the government, e.g. with "the New Deal" of the 70s in which radical labour activity aimed at achieving more control over their workplace and dignity. He also mentioned the feminist labour movement. However in his view it all came to an end very quickly by the end of the 70s. For the last 35 years the Reagan/Thatcher ideology has been undermining workers rights and increasing inequalities.

He gave some insight into US peculiarities about class consciousness. The term "working-class" seems to be unmentionable in polite company. "My father is in jail" means underclass, "my father is a janitor" means middle-class.

In terms of the demands being made by the Occupy Wall Street movement Chomsky stressed that it is necessary to separate the obtainable from the unobtainable in the near future. He strongly supported the demand for regulation and taxation of the hedge funds, stressing that it had been the Clinton Administration that had broken the law that separated investment from speculation. However the more radical demand to end the two party Plutocracy, dismantle the Federal Reserve and the banking system he found that it would destroy the country and that such thing is not possible. In his view what appears to be deterioration during the last few years with corporations buying elections and the manifest corruption of the economic system has in fact been happening for more than 100 years. So if reasonable and doable demands are too far away from the more radical ones, if there is no awareness that only a long-term effort can achieve things, then his fear is that people will get discouraged and "give up to become a stock broker", as happened with the anti-war effort.

Perhaps this was his central concern, having seen so many radical movements rise and fall, like in the 30's with the New Deal (when management really feared that the workers would be taking over the factories). The same happened with the civil rights movement and its long hard struggle, with Martin Luther King's popularity starting to wane when he moved from race to class issues. He stressed that in relation to the Arab Spring things happened in an interesting way where there had been previously a militant labour movement.

He highlighted the need to instil consciousness and understanding on the general population. For instance, more could have been done when local factories were closed by the multinationals that owned them. Although those small industries were in fact profitable, they were not profitable enough for the multinationals' standards. The workforce could have bought them with public support. Similarly, the bailed out US auto industry could have seen the government, now its owner, handing it over to the workforce. They could have converted the technology to build much needed trains.

In response to the question: how to separate the "predators from the producers", he stated that banks in fact have a function, if they did what they are supposed to do, e.g., taking unused savings and putting them into production as it had happened during the 50s and 60s, then things could have been okay. In the 70s everything changed.

In relation to health care he said that the US system is an international scandal, private, unregulated, cruel and savage, with 50 million people who have no cover of any kind. "If the US had a system like the one the UK is destroying there would be no deficit. 85% of the population supports the change but Obama gave it away".

With respect to the nuclear issue he acknowledged that some of his friends see it as a moral issue but he regards it as a technical one, where it is necessary to evaluate the choices available. However in terms of nuclear waste he views the problem of Somali pirates, for example, as a consequence of the destruction of fishing in the area by the dumping of nuclear and other toxic waste.

He criticised the "intelligent minorities" for keeping the "ignorant masses" out of the decision-making. The Media pick on this and replicate it. He suggested that blaming the Media for undermining the left was like blaming the banks for making money.

When asked for his advice to the Assembly that was taking place on Westminster Bridge (by the Houses of Parliament) in support of the NHS and preparation for the October 15th mobilisation he suggested not to get trapped in a litany of complaints but to focus on feasible objectives. Leave the unobtainable goals out for now, the demonstration can spark efforts to gain understanding and organisation that end up making unattainable goals feasible. "Let us set up the structures, it is not a matter of instant gratification".

As for the market system, its inherent nature is to ignore externalities, "Even if that means the destruction of a species."

chomsky keynote talk @ rebellious media conference

October 08, 2011 23:00

noam chomsky gave the keynote speech today at the weekend-long rebellious media conference in london

packed hall

chomsky speaks

milan rai and michael albert listening

chomsky and rai

michael albert looks through written questions

q & a session

conference stage

heated discussions

Introductions came from conference organiser, milan rai, and znet founder, michael albert, who was noam's student and became a life-long friend. then noam chomsky stood at the lectern in front of a packed hall at the institute of education, while the speech was also beamed to a further overflow audience by video.

unsurprisingly he chose the wall street occupation as his main subject throughout the hour-long lecture, but while saying he didn't want to seem negative, he criticised the demands being made by the demonstrators, and characterised their fledgling movement as naive and ill-thought out.

i suppose having lived through, taken part in, and commented on the peace and revolutionary movements of the sixties, he may well have a realistic view of what is possible and what is not, but i couldn't help feeling that he might be ignoring or unaware of a new paradigm, an emerging global consciousness.

however, he was on good form with some ascerbic and witty comments, pointing out that demands for corporations to put people before profits would be asking them to behave illegally, since their whole purpose is to make profit, and any other interests would fall foul of company law.

he also answered a question about the role of the left-wing press and their failure to get behind protest movements with the quick-witted soundbite that "blaming the media for trying to keep people passive doesn't make any sense - it's like blaming banks for making money".

as well as questions from the hall, some written questions were chosen by michael albert that had been brought over from the overflow room.

chomsky was due to make an appearance later at the trafalgar square rally against ten years of war in afghanistan, and the conference continued with a multitude of smaller lectures and workshops during the afternoon. it is fully subscribed and there are no tickets available for tomorrow, where john pilger and noam chomsky will join others in a final plenary.

the conference is packed with great speakers, workshops and networking opportunities, and has been put together by a small group of organisations, instigated by 'peace news' magazine which is celebrating its 75th anniversary.

in a spirit of transparency and openness, they have published the accounts, and it shows they will be relying on such things as dvd sales to help fund the weekend. the dvd will contain highlights from many of the workshops as well as the key sessions, but they are looking for advance orders this weekend in order to make the editing and manufacture sustainable, so i'd urge people to take a look at the website and consider purchasing the dvd now.

Noam Chomsky: 'involvement of workers is key'

posted: 6.47pm Tue 11 Oct 2011

Writer and campaigner Noam Chomsky told an audience of over 1,000 that the new occupation movement has a "rare" level of mainstream support. He called the protests "mass popular demonstrations against capitalism".

"These are extremely important events, not least because of the initiative and participation of a lot of young people," he said.

"They're really the force that organised this. It's spread all over the country and it's growing every day."

Chomsky was speaking at the Rebellious Media Conference held in London last weekend. He commented on the occupiers' tactics.

The Wall Street protesters say they are inspired by the Arab Spring and the US

sit-down strikes of the 1930s.

Chomsky compared the movement to those. "Take the sit-down strikes," he said.

"They had a huge effect. They terrified owners and management, and there's a very good reason for that.

"A sit-down strike is just one step before taking over the factory, kicking out the bosses and the managers and saying, 'We'll run it ourselves'."

Chomsky went on to talk about the uprisings and revolutions that have swept across the Arab world.

"A critical fact about them is that they are taking place successfully where there is and has been for years a militant, active labour movement," he noted.

Successes

"The main successes are Tunisia and Egypt, where there have been major labour struggles for years which have finally broken through.

"It's when the labour movement began to seriously participate that the gains of these movements really became noticeable.

"That ought to be known if the occupy movements, spectacular as they are, are going to have real success."

USA povokes war with China - timely article

2011-10-09T10:25:00.001-07:00

Anti-China rhetoric raises threat of war

7 October 2011

The bill that was poised for passage in the US Senate Thursday with bipartisan support, mandating a US currency war with China, is a cynical diversion. Amid a rising tide of protest directed against Wall Street, the Democrats are taking the lead in an effort to provide a foreign scapegoat for the crisis of American capitalism.

The bill was introduced by Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, one of the states hardest hit by the collapse of US manufacturing, and it had the fervent support of other industrial-state Democrats like Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Charles Schumer of New York and Robert Casey of Pennsylvania.

Twelve Republican senators joined with most of the Democrats to provide the 62-38 margin to invoke cloture and end debate on the bill. These include some of the most notorious reactionaries in the Senate, including six from southern states devastated by textile mill shutdowns: Richard Burr of North Carolina, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson of Georgia, and Jefferson Sessions and Richard Shelby of Alabama.

One of the arch-warmongers in Congress, Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, backed the bill in a 79-19 procedural vote Monday to bring it to the floor of the Senate. Graham was one of nearly two dozen Republicans who support the bill but voted against cloture in an effort to add several reactionary amendments.

Democrats and Republicans vied to make the most strident denunciations of China for allegedly predatory currency and trade policies—as though American corporations and banks were innocent lambs, rather than the most rapacious and ruthless organizations on the planet.

Brown responded to warnings that the bill would spark a trade war with disastrous consequences for the world economy by declaring, "We have been in a trade war for a decade." Schumer added, "Critics of our bill say it would start a trade war with China. Well, I have news for them. We're already in a trade war with China — and it's not going that well."

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke appeared to throw his weight behind the bill as well—abandoning the usual hands-off posture of the Fed towards currency markets. "Right now, our concern is that the Chinese currency policy is blocking what might be a more normal recovery process in the global economy," he said. "It is to some extent hurting the recovery."

Bills to punish China for supposed currency manipulation have been a stock in trade of congressional Democrats, particularly those with close ties to manufacturing industries and the union bureaucrats who serve those industries, like the United Auto Workers and United Steelworkers.

Obama gave verbal support to the anti-China campaign at his Thursday press conference, declaring that China "has been very aggressive in gaming the trading system to its advantage," adding that "currency manipulation is one example of it." He went on to say, however, that there was no point in Congress adopting legislation that would run afoul of World Trade Organization rules that prohibit such protectionist actions.

The White House, together with much of corporate America, sees the value in using anti-China demagogy to divert popular anger over the economic crisis away from Wall Street and towards a foreign scapegoat. But the American financial aristocracy recognizes that escalating from verbal brickbats to direct action against China would undermine the global trading system, exacerbate the world economic and financial crisis, and, perhaps most importantly from the standpoint of American imperialism, alienate its chief creditor.

If such legislation were adopted, trade war with China would do nothing to reverse the decline of American manufacturing and the living standards of American workers, which is the product of the global crisis of the capitalist system, not the policies of a single country. The shock effects on the world economy would actually destroy jobs, not create them.

Even more dangerously, such an action would be a dramatic step towards outright military conflict with China, a rising military as well as economic power, which represents a threat to the longstanding domination of American imperialism in the Asian-Pacific region.

But the fact that US trade war measures contain such dangers does not rule out their implementation. The idea that "rational" considerations will prevail ignores the lessons of history. After all, numerous arguments were advanced prior to World War I that Germany and Britain would never go to war because of their close economic ties.

International relations are not governed by rationality but by material interests. Since it took office, the Obama administration has pursued a series of measures against China. And in the case of trade it is being urged on by influential voices in the liberal establishment.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who is well aware of the role played by trade conflicts in creating the conditions for World War 2, has been one of those urging measures against China. In a column published on October 2 entitled "Holding China to Account" he insisted that "we can and should take action against countries that are keeping their currencies undervalued … [and] that above all means China."

Krugman acknowledged that "getting tough" with China might "unleash trade war" but said such risks were "exaggerated."

While Krugman and Senate Democrats are beating the drums for economic warfare, House Republicans are conjuring up Red Scare stereotypes of "communist China" engaging in escalating military preparations and systematic espionage against the United States. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Mike Rogers of Michigan, told a hearing Tuesday that cyber-espionage by Beijing has "reached an intolerable level" and he called for combined US and European action "to put an end to this scourge."

A Pentagon report issued this week spotlighted the dependence of the US weapons manufacturing base on rare-earth metals only available from Chinese suppliers. China currently produces 95 percent of rare-earth oxides, 17 elements that play a critical role in high-tech electrical products vital to modern warfare. The report, issued Tuesday, said it was "essential that a stable non-Chinese source" of such metals be established.

Previous Pentagon reports have focused on the alleged threat of China's economic growth and military buildup, particularly for US dominance of the vast island territories to the south and east of the Asian mainland, from Australia and Indonesia to Japan. American imperialism cannot tolerate indefinitely the growth of such a rival, and it will use the alleged threat to "American jobs" as part of a propaganda campaign to mobilize popular support for military action.

In this context, the most dangerous role is played by the unbridled chauvinism of Democrats. Senator Schumer is perhaps the most brazen, declaring in one statement, "I for one, am not prepared to raise the white flag on American manufacturing and American jobs."

"I know that American manufacturing can successfully compete against Chinese competition at home, in China, and around the world--but only if the playing field is level," he claimed. The implications of this line of argument are deeply reactionary, and not only because it leads to support for imperialist war.

Schumer's call for a "level playing field" means lowering the wages and living standards of American workers to the level of those in China. That is what American corporate bosses mean by making American companies "competitive" with their overseas rivals.

The only alternative to such a policy of competitive lowering of wages is the international unity of the working class—American, Chinese, European, Japanese and throughout the world—in a common struggle to raise living standards of all working people to a decent level. This is only possible through the struggle to put an end to capitalism and to the nation-state system itself, and create a world socialist society with genuine equality in living standards and jobs for all.

Patrick Martin

Chomsky and "Occupy Philadelphia"

2011-10-07T22:20:00.000-07:00

PHILADELPHIA – Situated between the bastions of government and banking, "Occupy Philadelphia" settled in on their first night still hundreds strong. The political and financial protest that remained come Friday morning is an outgrowth of the weeks-old "Occupy Wall Street" protests.

Dilworth Plaza, where the occupying force is calling home for an indefinite period, is both at the foot of Philadelphia's City Hall building and across the street from a Wells Fargo bank office – two institutions the Occupy movement demands accountability from.

"If we've learned anything, it's that democracy is difficult," Occupy facilitation committee member Larry Swetman shouted to the crowds Friday night. Those crowds, though primarily made up of youth, are dotted with adults of all ages.

Swetman, who moved to Philadelphia a year ago from Georgia, was busy tending to his committee's responsibilities late Friday, though he said he'd be there all night. Even Mayor Michael Nutter made an unannounced visit at about 1:15 a.m. Friday.

The mass that has gathered in downtown Center City has an ideology aligned with those in New York City; a huge economic gap between "99 percent" of Americans and the wealthiest 1 percent is because of "corporate greed" and the politics that allow it to occur.

Philadelphia's general assembly has taken every aspect of daily life into consideration for their stay at Dilworth Plaza.

Copious amounts of free reading material was available, a donation center was set up as well as free food tables. The group needed to raise $125 to continue powering a generator at one of the half dozen tents erected around the plaza.

The third meeting of all occupiers commenced at 12:30 p.m. Friday and each of the 10 or so committees gave a briefing to the crowd and announced their needs and plans. Some of which include a Saturday march to the tourist-centric area where the Liberty Bell is housed.

Police presence appeared to have increased since Thursday night and officers were both in uniform and plain clothes with identifying arm bands. Philadelphia Police Department Commissioner Charles Ramsey told the Philadelphia Inquirer "we want to make sure officers understand and respect that these people have the right to be here."

Besides the shouting, which is primarily for communication purposes, the occupiers

Staff photo by Greg AdomaitisProtesters at Friday's Occupy Philadelphia rally.

have kept their protest peaceful. Wall Street occupiers have faced off with police there on more than one occasion, with many arrests being made.

Local occupiers explained their own reasons for attending and many came back to the same explanation; the failings of those in Washington.

High school student Nickolas Boker, of Bellmawr, planned to arrive Friday and spend the night.

Boker said he's from a "poor household, financially, and we're just about being kicked out of our home. America doesn't have to be like this ... but people with nefarious intentions steal from this country through tax loops holes, unneeded bail outs," and promote war with the assistance of sensationalized media.

Former Upper Deerfield resident Whitney King, 26, now lives in Manayunk. She said "there are various reasons people 'take to the streets'," but this country's leadership has done little more than "finger pointing and passing the blame."

"We've been battling bad economic times for how many years now, and no one seems to be making any progress in Washington," said King.

Former Pitman resident Emily Riccio, who now lives in West Philadelphia, came out Friday night because she's "sick of not doing anything or being involved in our government or in our country."

The Saint Joseph's University senior added job prospects aren't looking good for her and "there really needs to be major changes to the economy."

Philadelphia resident and U.S. Navy veteran R.W. Dennen, who served from 1956 to 1960, said he saw he the shift toward today's economic and political policies during the Reagan era.

Dennen, who had a faded anchor tattooed to his forearm, marched solo around the plaza Friday night waving an American flag high above his head.

Temple University political science professor Daniel Chomsky offered his insight of the movement on Thursday, while the local protest was still in its infancy.

"The Occupy Wall Street protests represent a long overdue response to the stagnation of incomes for ordinary Americans over a long period, the destruction of jobs and lives during the current crisis and the striking indifference of the political class to the needs and preferences of citizens," said Chomsky.

When asked what this means for the current administration in Washington, Chomsky said it is "an indictment of the Obama administration's failure to seriously confront unemployment, eroding income and corporate power."

Parenti explains CLASS perfectly

2011-10-03T05:00:00.001-07:00

Class Warfare Indeed

By Michael Parenti Monday, October 03, 2011

Over the last two decades or more, Republicans have been denouncing as "class warfare" any attempt at criticizing and restraining their mean one-sided system of capitalist financial expropriation.
The moneyed class in this country has been doing class warfare on our heads and on those who came before us for more than two centuries. But when we point that out, when we use terms like class warfare, class conflict, and class struggle to describe the system of exploitation we live under—our indictments are dismissed out of hand and denounced as Marxist ideological ranting, foul and divisive.
Amanda Gilson put it perfectly in a posting on my Facebook page: "[T]he concept of 'class warfare' has been hi-jacked by the wrong class (the ruling class). The wealthy have been waging war silently and inconspicuously against the middle and the poor classes for decades! Now that the middle and poor classes have begun to fight back, it is like, the rich want to try to call foul---the game was fine when they were the only ones playing it."
The reactionary rich always denied that they themselves were involved in class warfare. Indeed, they insisted no such thing existed in our harmonious prosperous society. Those of us who kept talking about the realities of class inequality and class exploitation were readily denounced. Such concepts were not tolerated and were readily dismissed as ideologically inspired.
In fact, class itself is something of a verboten word. In the mainstream media, in political life, and in academia, the use of the term "class" has long been frowned upon. You make your listeners uneasy ("Is the speaker a Marxist?"). If you talk about class exploitation and class inequity, you will likely not get far in your journalism career or in political life or in academia (especially in fields like political science and economics).
So instead of working class, we hear of "working families" or "blue collar" and "white collar employees". Instead of lower class we hear of "inner city poor" and "low-income elderly." Instead of the capitalist owning class, we hear of the "more affluent" or the "upper quintile." Don't take my word for it, just listen to any Obama speech. (Often Obama settles for an even more cozy and muted term: folks, as in "Folks are strugglin' along.")
"Class" is used with impunity and approval only when it has that magic neutralizing adjective "middle" attached to it. The middle class is an acceptable mainstream concept because it usually does not sharpen our sense of class struggle; it dilutes and muffles critical consciousness. If everyone in America is middle class (except for a few superrich and a minor stratum of very poor), there is little room for any awareness of class conflict.
That may be changing with the Great Recession and the sharp decline of the middle class (and decline of the more solvent elements of the working class). The concept of middle class no longer serves as a neutralizer when it itself becomes an undeniable victim.
"Class" is also allowed to be used with limited application when it is part of the holy trinity of race, gender, and class. Used in that way, it is reduced to a demographic trait related to life style, education level, and income level. In forty years of what was called "identity politics" and "culture wars," class as a concept was reduced to something of secondary importance. All sorts of "leftists" told us how we needed to think anew, how we had to realize that class was not as important as race or gender or culture.
I was one of those who thought these various concepts should not be treated as being mutually exclusive of each other. In fact, they are interactive. Thus racism and sexism have always proved functional for class oppression. Furthermore, I pointed out (and continue to point out), that in the social sciences and among those who see class as just another component of "identity politics," the concept of class is treated as nothing more than a set of demographic traits. But there is another definition of class that has been overlooked.
Class should also be seen as a social relationship relating to wealth and social power, involving a conflict of material interests between those who own and those who work for those who own. Without benefit of reason or research, this latter usage of class is often dismissed out of hand as "Marxist." The narrow reductionist mainstream view of class keeps us from seeing the extent of economic inequality and the severity of class exploitation in society, allowing many researchers and political commentators to mistakenly assume that U.S. society has no deep class divisions or class conflicts of interest.
We should think of class not primarily as a demographic trait but as a relationship to the means of production, as a relationship to power and wealth. Class as in slaveholder and slave, lord and serf, capitalist and worker. Class as in class conflict and class warfare.
And who knows, once we learn to talk about the realities of class power, we are on our way to talking critically about capitalism, another verboten word in the public realm. And once we start a critical discourse about capitalism, we will be vastly better prepared to act against it and defend our own democratic and communal interests.

Michael Parenti is an internationally known, award winning author and scholar. Included among his recent books are The Face of Imperialism (2011), Democracy for the Few 9th ed. (2011), and God and His Demons (2009).

Occupy Wall Street Day 13

2011-09-30T00:02:00.000-07:00

Occupy Wall Street Day 13:

Transit workers' union joins strike, Moore reports live, Chomsky gets
interviewed, and what are protesters doing right?

by Miranda Nelson on September 29, 2011 at 11:26 AM

Today is Day 13 of Occupy Wall Street.

Lawrence O'Donnell interviewed Michael Moore live from Liberty Plaza
on his program on September 28. They spoke about the greed of the
rich, the poverty crisis in the U.S.—including foreclosures, under-
and unemployment, and the lack of health care—and the rise of
non-violent protest. Watch the video below. Bonus: you get a little
propaganda from ExxonMobil (Pro-fracking! Oil sands are great!) before
the video starts. Anyone else see the disconnect?

Russia Today's Marina Portnava interviewed Noam Chomsky about the
Occupy Wall Street action, the overlap between politics and business,
and if there's any hope for democracy in the U.S.

The Daily Kos is reporting that the New York Transit Workers Union
voted to join the Occupy Wall Street protesters at a meeting on
September 28. A tweet from today from @TWULocal100 to @Newyorkist
stating "As I understand it, our executive board endorsed a march from
City Hall to Zuccotti Park on Oct. 5. #occupywallst". Now there's a
force that could bring New York City to its knees.

In the video below, Christine Williams, also a member of TWU 100, said
that some members would be attending the marches on Friday (September
30).

Another union in solidarity? Airline pilots.The Daily Mail has some
great photos from Day 11, when hundreds of Continental and United
Airlines pilots as well as employees of other carriers belonging to
the Air Line Pilots Association took to the street advocating for
better wages. While these protesters are not specifically affiliated
with the Occupy Wall Street group, this sort of union protest action
is indicative of greater unrest in many employment sectors in the U.S.
and around the globe. Teamsters Local 814 declared their support for
the action on Day 6.

Dissent Magazine has put out an article by Mark Engler called Five
Things That #OccupyWallStreet Has Done Right, including choosing an
appropriate target, allowing the momentum of the movement to build,
and capitalizing on said momentum.

The Guardian published a piece about the successes achieved by the
Occupy Boston movement. Watch a video of Occupy Boston member Marissa
Egerstrom addressing the group below.

Noam Chomsky's statement on the Wall Street protests

2011-09-28T06:27:00.000-07:00

To anyone who knows of Noam Chomsky's background, it should come to no surprise that he has sent a "strong message of support to the activists at the Occupy Wall Street movement."

By the age of 13, Chomsky had identified with anarchist politics, forming the intellectual he is today. Because of who he is, his opinion on the current Occupy Wall Street protests is considered extremely relevant to the Wall Street movement and to many of its supporters.

"Anyone with eyes open knows that the gangsterism of Wall Street — financial institutions generally — has caused severe damage to the people of the United States (and the world). And should also know that it has been doing so increasingly for over 30 years, as their power in the economy has radically increased, and with it their political power. That has set in motion a vicious cycle that has concentrated immense wealth, and with it political power, in a tiny sector of the population, a fraction of 1%, while the rest increasingly become what is sometimes called "a precariat" — seeking to survive in a precarious existence. They also carry out these ugly activities with almost complete impunity — not only too big to fail, but also "too big to jail.' "The courageous and honorable protests underway in Wall Street should serve to bring this calamity to public attention, and to lead to dedicated efforts to overcome it and set the society on a more healthy course." (personal email from Noam Chomsky to Terri Lee)

Police carry away a participant in a march organized by Occupy Wall Street in New York on Saturday Sept. 24, 2011. Tensions are rising at the Occupy Wall Street protest, currently in its eighth day, as organizers for the protest claim that 80 have been arrested. Eyewitness accounts report that "dozens" have been arrested. Police would not confirm the exact number. Videos and eyewitness accounts show violent clashing between protesters and the police.

WNYC reports that "of the dozens arrested, most were for disorderly conduct, obstructing vehicular and pedestrian traffic, resisting arrest and, in one case, assaulting a police officer, the police said."

The skirmish escalated in Union Square Saturday afternoon, as Twitter users report a huge influx of police officers. This video, below, appears to show female protesters being penned and maced pepper-sprayed by police officers:
.

A political analyst, in wikiquote.com Chomsky is quoted as saying, "the best way to restrict democracy is to move the decision-making from the public to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations." He continues to describe the U.S. political system as a very marginal affair made of two political parties, so called…but considered them factions of the same party, the Business Party, a group of intellectuals who consisted of a herd of independent thinkers. He humorously went on to say, "Unfortunately, you can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place." (Government in the Future, Poetry Center of New York, February 16, 1970) Born in 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Noam Chomsky's mother had belonged to radical activism of the 1930s, while his uncle owned a newsstand that was an intellectual center for professors who would discuss world philosophies. Professor Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is now recognized as one of the strongest anti-capitalist activists and intellectuals in the United States, in addition to being one of the nation's leading public academics and the most cited living author in the United States. A man whose commentaries are insightful, free of demagoguery, plainly spoken, and courageously honest, Chomsky has received multiple death threats because of his personal criticisms of the United States foreign policy. When teaching at MIT, he often receives undercover police protection.

In June of 2011, Chomsky was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in honor of promoting human rights, unfailing courage, and critical analysis of power as an American linguist. This is the only International Peace Prize awarded in Australia, promoting peace with justice. Chomsky was also awarded the IEEE Intelligent System's Al's Hall of Fame for his significant contributions to the field of Al and intelligent systems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HvGy2gY0eM

Noam Chomsky 1970

The Occupy Wall Street protest that began on September 17th in New York's financial district has entered its second week. Yesterday, scores of demonstrators were arrested during a march from the group's encampment at Liberty Plaza to Union Square, and more arrived from around the city and across the country. Similar protests and assemblies are apparently now being planned in over thirty cities.

Thousands of protesters descended on lower Manhattan last Saturday in response to a call for occupation-style protests against the influence of money in politics on the model of Egypt and Spain. Hundreds have camped in a nearby park every night since. Their numbers swell into the thousands during the day. More appear to be arriving from across the country on a regular basis.

numerous incidents of excessive force by police in the face of civil disobedience during the march to Union Square
Similar protests are now being planned in over thirty cities across the country, according to an informal umbrella site, called Occupy Together, which has become a hub for the spontaneous network nationwide.

Freed Hikers thank Hugo Chavez, Noam Chomsky, Cindy Sheehan

2011-09-26T01:51:00.001-07:00

TRANSCRIPT full text verbatim of hikers press statement,
which was only selectively broadcast (censored) on
western corporate whore media channels.

Media update from www.freethehikers.org – September 25,
2011

Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, the two Americans released
by Iran after more than two years in detention,
returned to the United States today after a three-day
layover in Muscat, Oman with their families. They made
the following statements in New York.

JOSH FATTAL:

Good afternoon and thank you for coming here today.
My name is Josh Fattal.

After 781 days of prison, Shane and I are now free men.

Last Wednesday, we had just finished our brief daily
exercise in the open air room of Evin Prison when
something totally unexpected happened. On any other
day, we would have been blindfolded and led down the
hallway to our eight foot by 13 foot cell. But on that
day, the guards took us downstairs. They finger
printed us and gave us street clothes. They did not
tell us where we were going. Instead, they took us to
another part of the prison where we saw Dr. Salem Al
Ismaily, the envoy of His Majesty, Sultan Qaboos of
Oman. The first thing Salem said to us was, "Let's go
home."

What followed was the most incredible experience of our
lives. We were held in captivity in almost complete
isolation for more than two years. But for the past
few, precious days we have been experiencing free life
anew with our families in Muscat.

In all the time we spent in detention, we had a total
of 15 minutes of telephone calls with our families and
one, short visit from our mothers. We had to go on
hunger strike repeatedly just to receive letters from
our loved ones. Many times, too many times, we heard
the screams of other prisoners being beaten and there
was nothing we could do to help them. Solitary
confinement was the worst experience of our lives and
it was a nightmare that Sarah had to endure for 14
months. Sarah's strength during the one-hour meetings
we were allowed with her lifted our spirits daily. One
year ago, when Sarah was released, our world shrank.

We lived in a world of lies and false hope. The
investigators lied that Ambassador Leu from the Swiss
Embassy in Tehran did not want to see us. They told
us, again falsely, that we would be given due process
and access to our lawyer, the courageous and persistent
Mr. Masoud Shafii. Most infuriatingly,
they even told us that our families had stopped writing
us letters.

Releasing us is a good gesture, and no positive step
should go unnoticed. We applaud the Iranian
authorities for finally making the right decision
regarding our case. But we want to be clear that
they do not deserve undue credit for ending what they
had no right and no justification to start in the first
place. From the very start, the only reason we have
been held hostage is because we are American. Sarah
was held for 410 days. The two of us were held for 781
days. That is far longer than the American hostages at
the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979.

It was clear to us from the very beginning that we were
hostages. This is the most accurate term because,
despite certain knowledge of our innocence, Iran has
always tied our case to its political disputes with the
US. Thank you. I would like to hand over now to
Shane. He helped me through the worst days of my
life. I cannot imagine how I would have made it
through these two years without you, Shane.

SHANE BAUER:

Thank you, Josh, and thank you everyone for being here.

We will always regret the grief and anxiety that our
fateful hiking trip led to, above all for our families.
But we would like to be very clear. This was never
about crossing the unmarked border between Iran and
Iraq. We were held because of our nationality.
Indeed, there are many other cases of unauthorized
entry to Iran in which people were simply fined or
deported after a short time. We do not know if we
crossed the border. We will probably never know.
But even if we did enter Iran, that has never been the
reason why the Iranian authorities kept us in prison
for so long.

The only explanation for our prolonged detention is the
32 years of mutual hostility between America and Iran.
The irony is that Sarah, Josh and I oppose U.S.
policies towards Iran which perpetuate this hostility.
We were convicted of espionage because we are American.
It's that simple. No evidence was ever presented
against us. That is because there is no evidence and
because we are completely innocent. The two court
sessions we attended were a total sham. They were made
up of ridiculous lies that depicted us as being
involved in an elaborate American-Israeli conspiracy to
undermine Iran.

Sarah, Josh and I have experienced a taste of the
Iranian regime's brutality. We have been held in almost
total isolation from the world and everything we love,
stripped of our rights and freedom. You may
ask us, "Now that you are free can you forgive the
Iranian government for what it has done to you?"

Our answer is this. How can we forgive the Iranian
government when it continues to imprison so many other
innocent people and prisoners of conscience?
It is the Iranian people who bear the brunt of this
government's cruelty and disregard for human rights.
There are people in Iran who are imprisoned for years
for simply attending a protest, for writing a
pro-democracy blog or for worshipping an unpopular
faith.

Journalists remain behind bars and innocent people have
been executed. If the Iranian government wants to
change its image in the world, and ease international
pressure, it should release all political prisoners and
prisoners of conscience immediately. They deserve
their freedom just as much as we do.

In prison, every time we complained about our
conditions, the guards would immediately remind us of
comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay. They would
remind of us CIA prisons in other parts of the world,
and the conditions that Iranians and others experience
in prisons in the U.S. We do not believe that such
human rights violations on the part of our government
justify what has been done to us. Not for a
moment. However, we do believe that these actions on
the part of the U.S. provide an excuse for other
governments, including the government of Iran, to act
in kind.

Thank you. Josh and I now want to express
our thanks to everyone who helped make today happen.

JOSH FATTAL:

When our mothers were allowed to visit us in May of
2010, they told us about the campaign to win our
freedom. We owe a lifelong debt of gratitude to so
many people. Their efforts mean we are free and we
will never be able to thank them enough.

Our thanks go first and foremost to our wonderful
families, who have done more for us than we can ever
repay. This has been their ordeal as much as our
ordeal and they have sacrificed so much for us to be
here today. That includes Sarah, who joined them as
soon as she was free in their tireless work to help
achieve our freedom. We owe all of you a great debt
and our love for you is unqualified and eternal.

They include all of our friends, here at home and
overseas. Like our families, many of our friends put
their own lives on hold to fight for our freedom. Like
our families, they did so while coping with their own
pain over our detention. You are true friends and
always will be.

And they include tens of thousands of people in America
and all over the world, including in Iran. They have
expressed their support for us, donated to the Free the
Hikers campaign, and prayed for us, each in his or her
own way. We will never know most of those people but
we want them to know that we love them and always will.
Thank you all for the energy and comfort that you sent
to us in our hours of darkness.

Our lawyer Mr.Masoud Shafii took on our case at the end
of 2009 and has been a determined and brave advocate
ever since. He was never allowed to represent us
properly, but he never gave up. We will always
stand by him, as he stood by us for so long.

His Majesty, Sultan Qaboos of Oman and his envoy Dr.
Salem Al Ismaily worked ceaselessly to bring us home.
We are humbled by their humanity and their unswerving
commitment to justice. We are eternally
grateful for the kindness and hospitality they and the
people of Oman have shown to us and our families.

The Swiss Ambassador to Iran, Livia Leu Agosti, and her
colleagues never stopped trying to gain consular access
to us and to resolve our case. We were denied our
rights to their visits but we know that Livia and her
colleagues would show up time and again at Evin Prison
to try to see us. Thank you for your unstinting
dedication to us.

SHANE BAUER:

We also want to express our great thanks to the many
world leaders and individuals who championed our cause.
They include the U.N. Secretary General Ban ki-Moon,
President Jalal Talabani of Iraq and President Hugo
Chavez of Venezuela and the governments of Turkey and
Brazil. They were certain of our innocence and their
certainty made a difference.

They include the actor Sean Penn, the great Muhammad
Ali, Noam Chomsky, the singer Yusuf Islam, Cindy
Sheehan and the Nobel Laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu
and Mairead Maguire. We will always remember that you
stood by us.

There were also U.S. government officials who worked
for our release, and some of them found creative ways
to try and lessen the tension between the US and Iran.
Consular officials at the State Department supported
our families throughout. Our Members of Congress
spoke up for us, publicly and privately. Ambassador
Richard Schmierer, his wife Sandy and the staff of the
U.S. embassy in Oman were most gracious with their time
and hospitality twice now. They have our gratitude for
their support and kindness.

The sympathy and support of many Muslim and other
religious leaders in America, the Iranian people and
the elements within the Iranian government that worked
for our freedom were also all invaluable. Thank you.

Finally, we want to thank the media, in the United
States and around the world, for keeping our case in
the public eye. It means a lot to us. And now that we
are home, we know you will give us the time we need to
reconnect with our families and rebuild our lives.

When Sarah was about to walk out of Evin Prison last
year, we vowed to each other than none of us would be
entirely free until all of us were free. That moment
has now thankfully come. Sarah, Josh and I can now
finally leave prison behind us. We want more than
anything to begin our lives anew and with a new
appreciation for the sweet taste of freedom.

Thank you everyone.

Published on September 25, 2011, 07:14PM

Freed American hikers thank Hugo Chavez, Noam Chomsky, Cindy Sheehan

comment to the article further below

If there was any more unsupported, unsubstantiated, and unjustified innuendo and supposition in this article, my head may have exploded. Must be a slow news day. This is a pathetic excuse for analysis and opinion on an important news story. Seems you just can't handle the facts that they stated, so you feel compelled to subject them to some kind of discredit. Too bad that there is ZERO evidence of their left-wing copnnections before their arrest. You can't blame them for the fact that they became international news and famous leftists sought to intervene for (gasp) humanitarian reasons. But then again, you folks don't understand humanitarian motivations - only profit motivations. So you wouldn't understand.

here now the washingtontimes (right wing yellow press) propaganda piece:

Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, the now freed American
hikers who were held in an Iranian prison after being
convicted for espionage, appeared before cameras and
reporters in New York on Sunday and gave prepared
statements about their detentions in Iran. According to
reports, the Gulf sultanate of Oman paid for both of
the men's bail ($500,000 each), the same fee that was
paid for Shourd's bail by Oman last year.

Bauer, a freelance journalist, along with Sarah Shourd,
a teacher and women's rights activist, and Fattal, an
environmentalist, were arrested July 31, 2009 while
hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan. Shourd was released last
year. Bauer's and Fattal's remarks were critical of
American foreign policy towards Iran as well as the
Iranian government's treatment of it's own people.

"The only explanation for our prolonged detention is
the 32 years of mutual hostility between American and
Iran. The irony is Sarah Josh and I oppose U.S.
policies towards Iran which perpetuate this hostility.
We were convicted of espionage, because we are
American," said Bauer. He continued, "It's that
simple. No evidence was ever presented against us. That
is because there is no evidence and because we are
completely innocent."

Towards the end of the men's remarks, they began naming
specific world leaders, public officials, and
celebrities who the two believed helped with gaining
their freedom. In fact, two hikers also specifically
named among others: Venezeulan dictator Hugo Chavez,
Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu, Code Pink's Cindy Sheehan,
liberal writer Noam Chomsky, and actor Sean Penn.

"From the very start, the only reason we have been held
hostage is because we are American. Sarah was held for
410 days. The two of us were held for 781 days. That is
far longer than the American hostages at the U.S.
embassy in Tehran in 1979," said Fattal.

Fattal and Bauer gave no clue as to why they were
hiking on the border of Iraq and Iran, but their views
of U.S. foreign policy and those who they thanked in
their remarks may actually begin to paint a picture as
to why they were hanging out in such a dangerous region
in the world.

All three appear to be heavily involved in left-wing
foreign policy activism overseas. In 2009, according to
Reuters, 80 left-wing policy activists signed a letter
to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asking for the
release of all three hikers: (bolding is mine)

The prominent collection of academics,
intellectuals, artists, adventurers, writers,
journalists and activists, urged Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to make good on his pledge to
pursue maximum leniency for the three.

"To continue to detain them without due process
raises grave concerns that Iran is holding these three
young Americans for political purposes and calls into
question Iran's stated commitment to the rule of law,"
the group said in a letter.

The signatories included, Ms. Magazine co-founder
Gloria Steinem, Mother Jones magazine editor Monika
Bauerlein, civil rights activist the Rev. Jesse
Jackson, Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope,
peace activist Noam Chomsky and antiwar activist Medea
Benjamin, who founded the group Code Pink.

Also signing were Palestinian activist Hanan
Ashrawi, Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson, former
Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and 1976
Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire.

Code Pink activists have gone to Iran in the past on
left-wing political missions. This begs the question if
the three American hikers were in the region as a
result of a left-wing political activism mission that
went awry at the last minute. The hikers' statements on
Sunday seems to give more evidence to this. Here's a
blog post from a 2008 Code Pink trip to Iran:

Our first meeting was with our dear friend Rostam
Pourzal, who works with the anti-sanctions group CASMI.
Rostam used to live in Washington DC, but moved back to
Iran recently. Thank goodness he came to greet us,
because it turned out that the government person who
was supposed to set up our schedule today didn't show
up. So Rostam filled in the day for us with an amazing
variety of activities and meetings.

First, he brought over a filmmaker, Habib
Ahmadzadeh, who works on films that deal with the
Iran-Iraq war. Habib took us out to a delicious lunch
in a typical, old Persian restaurant where we ate
scrumptious lamb, eggplant and kabobs. Then we went to
his office, but along the way he stopped to show us the
old, abandoned U.S. Embassy. It is now surrounded by
murals with anti-American slogans—a stark reminder of
the harsh rhetoric emanating from both governments.

Shane Bauer excoriated the both the U.S. and Iran. He
asked, "Sarah, Josh, and I have experienced a taste of
the Iranian regime's brutality. We've been held in
total isolation of everything we love...stripped of our
rights and freedom. You may ask us, 'Now that you are
free, can you forgive the Iranian government for what
it has done to you?"

"Our answer is this: How can we forgive the Iranian
government when it continues to imprison so many other
innocent people and prisoners of conscience. It is the
Iranian people who bear the brunt of this government's
cruelty and disregard for human rights."

Bauer also said, "In prison, every time we complained
about our conditions, the guards would immediately
remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo bay.
They would remind us in other parts of the world and
the conditions that Iranians and others experience in
prisons in the U.S."

"We do not believe such human rights violations on the
part of our government justify what has been done to
us. Not for a moment. However, we do believe these
actions on the part of the U.S. provide an excuse for
other governments, including the government of Iran to
act in kind," Bauer explained.

The hikers' defenders will say Shourd, Fattal, and
Bauer were on a innocent excursion and nothing else,
but the hikers' explicit political statements on Sunday
as well as high profile left-wing political connections
may make many wonder if their trip had less to do with
sight-seeing and more to do with political activism
overseas.

Chomsky Korea Naval Base

2011-09-20T00:41:00.000-07:00

Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Korean artist Koh Gill-chun, activist advocating for Gangjeong Village residents in Jeju's Seogwipo against the government's plans to build a naval base, hold signboards reading "Repeal the Naval Base Plans!" and "Protect Gangjeong!" at Chomsky's office at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sept. 16.

They discussed the naval base resistance and strategies for the road ahead for the Save Jeju Island campaign. Chomsky reaffirmed his complete support for the villagers, watched videos of their efforts and read a letter from the imprisoned Gangjeong Village Mayor Kang Dong-kyun. Chomsky says he has been deeply saddened by the news of Kang's arrest and greatly admires his courage.

Jeju-do[1] Population     531,887 (transliterated Korean for Jeju Province, short form of Jeju Special Self-Governing Province or Cheju Island) is the only special autonomous province of South Korea, situated on and coterminous with the country's largest island. Jeju-do lies in the Korea Strait, southwest of Jeollanam-do Province, of which it was a part before it became a separate province in 1946. Its capital is the city of Jeju.

The island contains the Natural World Heritage Site Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes.

According to legend, three demi-gods emerged from Samsung-hyeol which is said to have been on the northern slopes of Mt. Halla and became the progenitors of the Jeju people who founded the Kingdom of Tamna.

It has also been claimed that three brothers including Ko-hu who were the 15th descendants of Koulla, one of the Progenitors of the Jeju people, were received by the court of Silla at which time the name Tamna was officially recognized, while the official government posts of Commander, Prince and Governor were conferred by the court upon the three.

However, there is no concrete evidence of when the "Three Names" (Samseong-Ko, Yang and Pu) appeared nor for the exact date of when Ko-hu and his brothers were received by Silla. It may be supposed that the founding Period by the "Three Names" occurred during the Three Kingdoms (Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla) period on the mainland of Korea.

Taejo, founder of Goryeo, attempted to establish the same relationship between Goryeo and Tamna as Tamna had had with Silla. Tamna refused to accept this position and the Goryeo court dispatched troops to force Tamna to submit. Ko ja-gyeon, chief of Tamna, submitted to Goryeo in 938 and sent his son, Prince Mallo, to Goryeo's court as a de-facto hostage. In 1105 (King Sukjong's 10th year), the Goryeo court abolished the name Takna which had to this time been used and from that year on, the island was known as "Tamna-gun" (district) and Goryeo officials were sent to handle the affairs of the island.

Tamna-country was changed to Tamna-county in 1153 during the reign of King Uijong and Choi Cheok-kyeong was posted as Tamna-Myeong or Chief of Tamna. In 1121 during Huijong's reign, Tamna was renamed "Jeju" and the posts of Judiciary were established on the island.

In 1271, General Kim Tong-jeong escaped with what remained of his Sambyeolcho force from Jindo and built the Hangpadu Fortress at Kwiil-chon from where they continued their fight against the combined Korean government-Mongolian army but within 2 years, faced by an enemy army of over 10,000 troops, the Sambyeolcho was annihilated.

The Jeju Uprising, which began on April 3, 1948, was part of a larger problem across Korea at this time. The rebellions on Jeju-do, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of officials, armed organizations, and villagers alike culminated in widespread violence on the island and the center of the island (Halla Mountain) being listed as an "enemy zone" by the government of the Republic of Korea. Over 30,000 people were killed as some villagers and communist radicals alike were imprisoned in internment camps under the policies of mainland government.[3]

While claims have been made that the US government oversaw and supported "anti-communist" activities administratively if not openly in the field, validation remains to be made. It is a fact the US was heavily involved in counter insurgence operations across Korea at this time leading up to the Korean War and UN involvement. Similarly, the Northwest Youth League, a Korean government sponsored watch-dog group made up of refugees who had fled northern Korea, actively repressed any and all "communist sympathizers" with an ardent campaign of shooting anyone on sight entering or leaving the president's "enemy zone", raping/violation, torturing, and killing hundreds of islanders using open armed violence and what would be labeled today as terrorist activities. Intolerance by mainland Korean officials of islanders in general at the time, government and organization sponsored isolation of the island, and rumored cover up of evidence linking the rebellion's suppressors with foreign powers and people who have today gone un-prosecuted is believed to be the primary cause of public ignorance, hedging on denial, over the April 3, 1948 genocide on Cheju-do. A documentary by the BBC and PBS, Korea: The Unknown War and many activities and publications by organizations and persons from within Cheju-do and around the world continue to attempt shedding the light on this event.

The provincial administrative building was burned to the ground in September 1948 and a new building was completed in 1-do, 2-dong in December, 1952.

Construction of a naval base

In June 2007, the Korean government selected Gangjeong, a village on the southern coast of the island, as the site of a $970 million naval base.[4] The base is to house twenty warships, including submarines.[5]

In January 2010, the South Korean Navy signed two contracts with two construction firms to build pier facilities.[4]; construction began in January 2011.[5] By August, about 14 percent of the contract had been spent on initial construction work, but significant progress had not been made due to local resistance to the base.[4]

Trying to prevent dredging and bulldozing, residents of Gangjeong have been living in tents in and near areas where construction is planned or ongoing. In addition to protests, the villagers have filed lawsuits to try to block construction, and have widely publicized their opposition.[6] The government has responded by stationing hundreds of police officers at the construction site, charging and fining protestors for obstruction, and jailing peace activist Choi Sung-hee [7] for three months.

The South Korean Navy has erected a billboard in the village displaying an artist's conception of a state-of-the-art, "eco-friendly" port, covering about 125 acres and receiving luxury cruise ships as well as military vessels.[5] In August 2011, a spokesperson for the Korean Government said that the construction site was selected after accommodating opinions of local residents, that environmental assessments had shown the project would have no effect on the environment, and that measures were being taken to protect vulnerable species native to the island.[8]

Historical names

Historically, the island has been called by many different names including:

    Doi (??, ??, literally "Island barbarian")
    Dongyeongju (???, ???)
    Juho (??, ??)
    Tammora (???, ???)
    Seomna (??, ??)
    Tangna (??, ??)
    Tamna (??, ??)
    Quelpart (q.v. gyulbat, ??, ??, literally "orange orchards")

Before the Japanese annexation in 1910, the island was usually known as Quelpart to Europeans. The name "Quelpart" apparently came from the first European ship to spot the island, the Dutch "Quelpaert", which sighted it after being blown off course on its way to the Dutch trading base in Nagasaki, Japan, from Taiwan (then the Dutch colony of Formosa).

When Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, Jeju then became known as Saishu-, which is the Japanese reading of the hanja for Jeju.

Before 2000, when the Seoul government changed the official Romanization of Hangul, Jeju-do was spelled Cheju-do. Almost all written references to the island before that use that spelling.

Geography

Jeju Island is a volcanic island, dominated by Halla-san (Halla Mountain): a volcano 1,950 metres (6,400 ft) high and the highest mountain in South Korea. The island measures approximately 175 miles (282 km) across, end to end, at the widest points.

The island was created entirely from volcanic eruptions approximately 2 million years ago, during the time period from the Tertiary to the beginning of the Quaternary period, and consists chiefly of basalt and lava. The eruptions took place in the Cenozoic era. It has a humid subtropical climate, warmer than that of the rest of Korea, with four distinct seasons. Winters are cool and dry while summers are hot, humid, and sometimes rainy.

There is a crater lake which is the only crater lake in South Korea.[citation needed]

An area covering about 12% (224 square kilometres or 86 square miles) of Jeju is known as Gotjawal Forest.[9] This area had remained untouched until the 21st century, as its base of ?A?a- lava made it difficult to develop for agriculture. Because this forest remained untouched for a long time, it has a unique ecology.[10] The forest is the main source of groundwater, the main water source for the half millon people of the island, because rainwater penetrates directly into the groundwater aquifer through the cracks of the ?A?a- lava under the forest. Gotjawal forest is considered an internationally important wetland under the Ramsar Convention by some researchers[11] because it is the habitat of unique species of plants and is the main source of water for the residents, although to date it has not been declared a Ramsar site

Because of the relative isolation of the island, the people of Jeju have developed a culture and language that are distinct from those of mainland Korea. Jeju is home to thousands of local legends. Perhaps the most distinct cultural artifact is the ubiquitous dol hareubang ("stone grandfather") carved from a block of basalt.

Another distinct aspect of Jeju is the matriarchal family structure, found especially in Udo and Mara, but also present in the rest of the province. The best-known example of this is found among the haenyeo ("sea women"), who were often the heads of families, because they controlled the income. They earned their living from free diving, often all year round in quite cold water, without scuba gear, in order to harvest abalones, conchs, and a myriad of other marine products. It is thought that women are better at spending all day deep-water diving because they resist cold better.[18] However, because of rapid economic development and modernization, few haenyeo are still actively working today.[19][20]

Bangsatap

Bangsatap are small, round towers made of many stones. There are many Bangsataps and you can see them near the countryside in Jeju. People usually pile up many stones, making a shape like a tower in order to protect themselves from the bad luck in their village. They have built Bangsatap according to the theory of divination because they believe that geography is very important in choosing the right place for them. It is also a good example to demonstrate religious belief in Jeju island because it is an object that people can rely on putting rice paddle inside the Bangsatap to gather as much money as possible and also putting an iron pot to overcome a disaster and fight fire in their village. Nobody knows that when the Bangsatap was built in the past year.

Chomsky at Williams

2011-09-17T21:11:00.001-07:00

Noam Chomsky Questions Humanitarian Intervention At Williams

By Andy McKeever
iBerkshires Staff
10:33PM / Saturday, September 17, 2011

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Controversial linguist and political pundit Noam Chomsky told Williams College students to question if humanitarian intervention even exists.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor weaved through the history, as he is known to do in his books criticizing U.S. Foreign Policy, of humanitarian intervention to make the point that those actions are not simple and come with a huge amount of politics while simple things that could truly save lives are overlooked.

Chomsky started with the 1850s with John Stuart Mill posing the idea that England should intervene not only when its safety and interest are in danger but because it is dedicated to peace. Philosophers added to the growing thought - painting a "saintly glow" of modernized countries - by saying "barbarians" needed protection from the civilized power.

While the ideas may have begun then, it wasn't until after the Cold War when the idea began to pick up momentum. When the Soviet Union fell, NATO - against handshake agreements with Mikhail Gorbachev - expanded to the entire world.

"The condition was that NATO does not expand one inch to the east. That meant east of Germany. NATO immediately moved east of Germany and then further east," Chomsky said. "These were only gentleman's agreement.. He was stupid enough to believe western diplomats."

NATO continued to expand and became a "global, U.S. run intervention" organization and with that the U.S. also shifted their foreign policy, Chomsky said. Former President George H. Bush continued to keep a large military presence to ensure global safety by keeping an eye on the Middle East.

"It wasn't because of the Russians, it was because of the technological sophistication of third world powers," Chomsky said. "There was an ideological change too, a large, sudden interest in the concept of humanitarian intervention."

In 1999 the "crown" of humanitarian intervention came with the bombing of Serbia. In what sometimes considered NATO's first humanitarian intervention, the goal was the end ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians. When most of the world condemned the move humanitarian intervention took another turn, he said.

"At that point a new concept was invented. That was called the responsibility to protect," Chomsky said but added there were two versions.

The version that was adopted by the rest of the world, including the countries that condemned the Kosovo action, did not include a stipulation that the western world took. When western cultures point to the responsibility to protect and say it was supported by the rest of the world, that is not entirely correct, Chomsky contends.

"It provides for NATO and NATO alone to intervene freely anywhere without authorization from the Security Council," Chomsky said. "There is only one region that can do this... The one regional group that can do that is NATO and the region of their authority is the world."

While Kosovo is often considered the first humanitarian intervention, Chomsky contends that there are many other world actions that should also be considered but had fallen of the radar.

Chomsky cited a scholarly study on humanitarian intervention written by Sean Murphy, who found three examples between the two world wars. Those examples are Italy's invasion of Ethiopia led by Benito Mussolini, Japan's invasion of Manchuria and Adolf Hitler's invasion of parts of Czechoslovakia. All three invading countries had "convinced" themselves that they were sacrificing themselves for the betterment of the other country and the rhetoric followed.

"They all had the properties of humanitarian intervention," Chomsky said. "They meant it."

Also left out of consideration, Chomsky contends, is India's intervention of East Pakistan to end Pakistani atrocities and Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia that ended Pol Pot's reign.

"Neither of these figures in the literature of humanitarian intervention because of two reasons. One reason is, wrong agency. They did it. We didn't do it. The second and more powerful reason is the U.S. was bitterly opposed to both of these interventions," Chomsky said. "There are cases where intervention has had benevolent effects."

But with all the political jargon and political forces that have changed humanitarian intervention throughout history, six million infants die every year in countries that lack the ability to perform simple medical procedures that would cost very little to the wealthiest nations, Chomsky said. With on a "tiny percentage of the GDP" from the largest nations the most elementary form of humanitarian intervention could save six million, he said.

Chomsky appeared at Williams as the first part of a two-part dialogue about the dilemmas in humanitarian intervention. Fiona Terry will be the next speaker on Tuesday, Oct. 18, at 8 p.m., also at the '62 Center.

Noam Chomsky has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. He is currently Institute Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at M.I.T. This talk is sponsored by the Class of '71 Public Affairs Forum and is the first of a two-part dialogue on Humanitarian Intervention (see also Fiona Terry, Oct. 18). The event is free, but tickets are required. Book signing to follow.

Note: This event is currently sold out. We are no longer taking names for the wait list. A wait line will open at 6 pm on Sept 15 in the CTD lobby. Any tickets not picked up by 6:50 pm will be released at that time. This event will also be taped for airing on Williams YouTube the following week.

http://www.youtube.com/user/WilliamsCollege#p/search

New Chomsky videos

2011-09-17T21:03:00.000-07:00

JUST UPLOADED

videos of chomsky and roy
http://www.youtube.com/user/aatifwahab

Middle East Crises - Noam Chomsky addresses students at MIT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQyZSPHpj40

The Militarization of Science and Space - Noam Chomsky [ATIF WAHAB]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86um-YYzBlg

Fun!
Chomsky & Dershowitz Debate, Future of Israel and Palestine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxB-q9Td3QM&feature=related

Chomsky Iceland, short and to the point.

2011-09-12T12:46:00.001-07:00

Noam Chomsky in Iceland: Compares Nixon and Kissinger to bin Laden

chomskyThe renowned American linguist Noam Chomsky gave a lecture in
Iceland on Friday September 9. Professor Chomsky began his lecture by
saying that in two days we would remember September 11, a terrible
crime that had been committed with cruelty.

"But it could have been worse", he said according to mbl.is. He added
that terrorists could have succeeded in blowing up the White House,
kill the president and put in place a terrible military junta, which
would have killed thousands of people and get a group of economists,
the boys from Kandahar, to ruin peoples lives.

Chomsky continued that this sequence of events was not imagination. In
reality, he said, this was an account of Latin America and an event
that was often called the first 9/11, when Americans deposed Chilean
President Salvador Allende in 1973 and replaced him with General
Augustos Pinochet. The 'boys from Kandahar' is a reference to the
Chicago economists, including Milton Friedman, who gave advice to the
military government of Pinochet.

Chomsky said that the US had unilaterally taken the right of a
superpower to influence world events as the pleased. Their own
behavior was subject to a different criterion than that of others.

"Let's imagine, that on the tenth anniversary of the first 9/11, a
group of people would have been sent out to murder Nixon and Kissinger
and throw them into the ocean. Would that have been applauded? That's
what they did to bin Laden after he was taken, unarmed and
defenseless", Chomsky said.

The lecture was held in a packed Háskólabíó, a movie house that holds
one thousand people. Professor Chomsky was in Iceland on the
invitation of the University of Iceland, which is celebrating its
centennial. Chomsky is a professor emeritus at MIT in Boston and is
known both for his theories in linguistics and for his outspoken
criticism of US politics. He is 82 years old.