| |
HOPES AND PROSPECTS by NAOM CHOMSKY | WORLD AFFAIRS
I grew up with the believe that the USA did good, ever since liberating Europe in WWII and helped to restore economy and well being of Europe ever since. A product of my education and upbringing.
But I am a big boy now, have read up on the subject and the truth seems quite different.
The U.S., in their own perception of itself as a force for good in the world, ran into a few misguided military pursuits for which any other country would have been brought before an international tribunal. But because of its #1 military supremacy and economic power most countries kowtow to Washington's demands.
Even further down the sceptical spectrum is Naom Chomsky, an author I value for his clear mind and insight, who is able to step wide from the general perception. His political view of US political evangelism is that it is a grotesque hypocrisy, cunningly deployed to mask imperialistic ambitions.
Noam Chomsky has bundled and updated a series of lectures and essays since 2006 in Hopes and Prospects. It is a bonfire of myths and lies, sophistries and delusions which the 81-year-old linguistics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology saw published in 2010, by Haymarket Books.
Allegedly, he is the closest thing the intellectual far left has to a rock star...
The content of the book shows as follows...
PART I - Latin America
Year 514: Globilization for Whom?
latin AMerica and US Foreign Policy
Democracy and Development: Their Enemies, Their Hopes
Latin American and Caribbean Unity
Part II - North America
"Good News", Iraq and Beyond
Free Elections, Good News and Bad
Century's Challenges
Turning Point?
Elections 2008: Hope Confronts the Real World
Obama on Istrael - Palestine
The Torture Memos
1989 and Beyond
I found Hopes and Prospects not easy to consume: the facts, quotes, references and data stream from the pages like machine gun fire, there is no time for some gentle prose. But the content demands respect and pages are read and reread with a frown between the eyes.
A few highlights: the capture of the US state and subordination of democracy to a narrow commercial and financial elite; the media's complicity; the uniquely high penalty paid by Latin America for the misfortune of being in Washington's backyard; the function of Israel as America's military client in the Middle East....
Here are a few excerpts that struck me in particular.
"In brief, the twenty-five years of economic sovereignty, state-coördinated economic growth, and capital controls under the (1944) Bretton Woods system led to better social and economic results that the following twenty-five years of neoliberalism, by just about every relevant measure, and by significant margins.
It is improtant to stress that the results include social indicators. In the United States, for example, growth during the Bretton Woods period was not only the highest ever over a lengthy period, but was also egalitarian. Real wages closely tracked increase in the productivity, and social indicators closely tracked growth.
That continued until the mid-1070s, when neoliberal policies began to be imposed.
Growth continued, but gains were heavily skewed towards the rich, spectacularly so for the very rich. Productivity continued to increase, though more slowly, but real wages for the majority stagnated and the profits went into few pockets, increasingly so in the Bush II years.
From 1980 to 1995, real wages for American workers declined about 1 percent, far more sharply for those lower on the income ladder.
A tech bubble raised wages in the late-1990s, but after it burst, the stagnation and decline continued, worsening in the Bush years, which also left a long-lasting fiscal burden as a result of sharp tax cuts and war spending, greater than the effect of Obama-era stimulus and bailout, contrary to much fevered commentary.
From 1975, social indicators began to decline, reaching the level of 1960 by the year 2000, the latest results available."
[p.84]
"A basic principle of modern state capitalism is that cost and risk are socialized to the expent possible, while profit is privatized. That principle extends far beyond financial institutions, the current focus after the financial meltdown of 2007-8.
But much the same is true for the entire advanced economy, which relies extensively on the state for innovation, R&D procurement when purchasers are unavailable, direct bailouts, and numerous other benefits.
[p.114]
"In September 2009, the Israeli army invaded the North Gaza district south of the town of Beit Laha and kidnapped five Palestinian children on their way home after grazing sheep. Details are reported by the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights.
No coverage could be discovered in the English-language press, though the capture of Shalit, a soldier of an attacking army, receives regular wide coverage, and is regularly depicted as a prime obstacle to peace."
[p.147]
"Criminal actions by Palestinians, such as Qassam rockets fired from Gaza, are angrily condemned in the West. The far more violent and destructive Israeli actions sometimes elicit polite clucking of tongues if they exceed approved levels of state terror.
Invariably Israeli's actions - for which of course the United States shares direct responsibility - are portrayed as retaliation, perhaps excessive.
Another way of looking at the cycle of violence is that Qassam rockets are retaliation for Israel's unceasing crimes in Gaza and the West bank, which is not separable from Gaza except by U.S.-Israeli fiat. But standars racist-ultranationalist assumptions exclude that interpretation."
[p.149]
"Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz announced that "the current Isralei government will not accept in any way the freezing of legal settlement activity in Judea and Samaria".
The term 'legal' in US-Israeli parlance means 'illegal, but authorized by the government of Israel with a wink from Washington'."
"Obama administration officials informed the press that the Bush I measures are not 'under discussion' and that pressures will be 'largely symbolic'. In short, Obama understands, just as Clinton and Bush II did."
[p.187]
"...to Israel's U.S.-backed invasion of Lebanon in 2006, with pretexts that are hardly credible in light of Israel's regular practices of kidnapping, hijacking, and internment in secret prisons, as already discussed.
The invasion that Obama supported so enthusiastically, Israel's fifth, killed over 1.000 Lebanese and once again destroyed much of southern Lebanon as well as parts of Beirut.
This is the sole mention of Lebanon among foreign issues on Obama's campaign website. Evidently, Lebanon has no right of self-defense. Infact who could possibly have a right of self-defense against the United States or its clients?"
[p.250]
"Perhaps culpability would be greater, by prevailing moral standards, if it were discovered that Bush administration torture cost American lives. That is, in fact, the conclusion drawn by US major Matthew Alexander (pseudonym), one of the most seasoned interrogators in Iraq. Alexander expresses only contempt for the harsh interrogation measures: "The use of torture by the U.S.," he believes, not only elicits no useful information but has "proved so counter-productive that it may have led to the death of as many U.S. soldiers as civilians killed in 9/11."
From hundreds of interrogations, Alexander discovered that foreign fighters came to Iraq in reaction to the abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and that they and their domestic allies turned suicide bombing and other terrorist acts for the same reason."
[p.266]
"A year after Washington's victory over the Church of the Gospels in El Salvador, the demon of liberation theology emerged again in Haiti with the democratic election of a liberation theology priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. As discussed earlier, Washington moved at once to destry the threat, reinstating the rule of the military and traditional ruling elite.
A few years later the demon raised its head again in Honduras. One of the reason's for Obama's indirect but sufficient support for the military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government and restored power to the traditional rulers, was Zelaya's moves toward 'alliance with liberation-theologian priests and other environmental activists protesting mining and biofuel-induced deforestation' .
[p.276]
"It turns out that Bush-Baker promised that NATO would not even fully extend to East Germany (GDR). They told Gorbachev that 'no NATO forces would ever be deployed on the territory of the former GDR... NATO's jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward.'
They also assured Gorbachev that 'NATO would be transforming itself into a more political organization.' There is no need to comment on that promise.
What Gorbachev did not know, and Kohl and Genscher dismissed, is that President Bush kept to his position that 'we prevailed, they didn't, so they can impose no conditions."
[279]
www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jul/04/hopes-and-prospects-chomsky-review
en.wikipedia.org:_Noam_Chomsky
[15NOV2016]
|
