Noam Chomsky: The Paranoia of the Superrich and Superpowerful | Alternet

[This piece is adapted from “Uprisings,” a chapter in Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire, Noam Chomsky’s new interview book with David Barsamian (with thanks to the publisher, Metropolitan Books). The questions are Barsamian’s, the answers Chomsky’s.]

Does the United States still have the same level of control over the energy resources of the Middle East as it once had?

The major energy-producing countries are still firmly under the control of the Western-backed dictatorships. So, actually, the progress made by the Arab Spring is limited, but it’s not insignificant. The Western-controlled dictatorial system is eroding. In fact, it’s been eroding for some time. So, for example, if you go back 50 years, the energy resources — the main concern of U.S. planners — have been mostly nationalized. There are constantly attempts to reverse that, but they have not succeeded.

Take the U.S. invasion of Iraq, for example. To everyone except a dedicated ideologue, it was pretty obvious that we invaded Iraq not because of our love of democracy but because it’s maybe the second- or third-largest source of oil in the world, and is right in the middle of the major energy-producing region. You’re not supposed to say this. It’s considered a conspiracy theory.

The United States was seriously defeated in Iraq by Iraqi nationalism — mostly by nonviolent resistance. The United States could kill the insurgents, but they couldn’t deal with half a million people demonstrating in the streets. Step by step, Iraq was able to dismantle the controls put in place by the occupying forces. By November 2007, it was becoming pretty clear that it was going to be very hard to reach U.S. goals. And at that point, interestingly, those goals were explicitly stated. So in November 2007 the Bush II administration came out with an official declaration about what any future arrangement with Iraq would have to be. It had two major requirements: one, that the United States must be free to carry out combat operations from its military bases, which it will retain; and two, “encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq, especially American investments.” In January 2008, Bush made this clear in one of his signing statements. A couple of months later, in the face of Iraqi resistance, the United States had to give that up. Control of Iraq is now disappearing before their eyes.

Iraq was an attempt to reinstitute by force something like the old system of control, but it was beaten back. In general, I think, U.S. policies remain constant, going back to the Second World War. But the capacity to implement them is declining.

via Noam Chomsky: The Paranoia of the Superrich and Superpowerful | Alternet.

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Noam Chomsky: Who Owns the World?

Excerpted from “Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire.” Interviews with David Barsamian by Noam Chomsky.

Also see: The Paranoia of the Superrich and Superpowerful.

Editor’s note: “Power Systems” is a collection of recent conversations between Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian, director of Alternative Radio (www.alternativeradio.org).

Because of Noam Chomsky’s importance as a prescient and cogent analyst of the American Empire — and his longstanding invaluable writing on Truthout — we are featuring three excerpts from “Power Systems” this week on Truthout. “Power Systems” is yours with a minimum donation of $30.00 (which includes shipping and handling) — or a monthly donation of $15 — to Truthout. Click here.

David Barsamian: The new American imperialism seems to be substantially different from the older variety in that the United States is a declining economic power and is therefore seeing its political power and influence wane.

Noam Chomsky: I think talk about American decline should be taken with a grain of salt.

World War II is when the United States really became a global power. It had been the biggest economy in the world by far for long before the war, but it was a regional power in a way. It controlled the Western Hemisphere and had made some forays into the Pacific. But the British were the world power.

World War II changed that. The United States became the dominant world power. The U.S. had half the world’s wealth. The other industrial societies were weakened or destroyed. The U.S. was in an incredible position of security. It controlled the hemisphere, and both the Atlantic and the Pacific, with a huge military force.

Of course, that declined. Europe and Japan recovered, and decolonization took place. By 1970, the U.S. was down, if you want to call it that, to about 25 percent of the world’s wealth – roughly what it had been, say, in the 1920s. It remained the overwhelming global power, but not like it had been in 1950. Since 1970, it’s been pretty stable, though of course there were changes.

via Noam Chomsky: Who Owns the World?.

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Interview with Noam Chomsky | NewsClick

Vijay Prashad (VP): In Davos, at the World Economic Forum, the IMF chief Christine Lagarde made a strong statement for gender equality, naming Malala Yousufzai and the victim of the Delhi gang rape as sentinels for a redoubled effort for gender equality. It is a strange thing to read this, coming from the IMF at the WEF — not known for pursuing policies that enhance gender equality. What do you make of this?

Noam Chomsky (NC): Nothing. Capitalism in principle is race- and gender-blind, and it doesn’t seem to me surprising that rational capitalists wouldn’t be bothered to see a woman (like Lagarde) or a black face in a boardroom or limousine. Nor in favor of gender inequality. True, capitalism has used race, gender, and other devices to gain profit and power, but it’s not intrinsic to the system. Rather the way South African and western capital were able to agree finally to eliminate formal apartheid in return for maintaining the class system (with a few black faces).

via Interview with Noam Chomsky | NewsClick.

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ZCommunications | Hitting Society With A Sledgehammer by Noam Chomsky | ZNet Article

Minutes before the interview began we received news of a school shooting in CT (the Sandy Hook tragedy). Details were unclear at the time, but there was an indication that many young children had been killed. We thus opened the interview with a question about the school massacre.

Q: We are going to start with something we did not plan, we just got word about a tragedy in Connecticut. The Superintendent of Schools for the State of Connecticut just robo-called me to tell me, as a parent, that there has been a shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. 18 to 22 children killed. There were apparently two shooters, two teenagers, and one of the shooters is dead. The school has 600 students.

NC: Is there any motive, or anything?

Q: This is the latest. We don’t have much information.

NC: So there is nothing understood about the background?

Q: No. Nothing. So, does this say something about the society we live in?

NC: If it was just one incident you could think maybe [it was] some psychotic individual or something. But it’s been happening with unpleasant regularity, and it’s got to be a sign of social breakdown of some kind, which is not too surprising. I mean, the whole society has been under severe strain for about 30 years. [It’s] not at the level of Haiti or Central Africa or something but people don’t measure themselves against totally different circumstances—like nobody feels they’re rich because they’re richer than they were in the Stone Age. People judge their circumstances by what it ought to be, given what’s available in the society, given the wealth in the society, and given similar societies that they may know something about. After all, we’ve gone through a period of roughly a generation—late 70s, accelerating sharply in the 80s—of the US phase of the worldwide neoliberal assault against the populations of the world. It’s been taking different forms in different places.

via ZCommunications | Hitting Society With A Sledgehammer by Noam Chomsky | ZNet Article.

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Noam Chomsky: The responsibility of privilege – Talk to Al Jazeera – Al Jazeera English

Linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky remains as vigorous as ever at the age of 84.

His popularity – or notoriety as some would say – endures because he is still criticising politicians, business leaders and other powerful figures for not acting in the public’s best interest. At the heart of Chomsky’s work is examining the ways elites use their power to control millions of people, and pushing the public to resist.

In this episode of Talk to Al Jazeera, Noam Chomsky sits down with Rosiland Jordan to talk about the two main tracks of his life: research and political activism.

And it is his activism that keeps this US scholar engaged in the public discourse well into his ninth decade.

“The activism for me long antedates the professional work,” Chomsky says. “I grew up that way. So I was a political activist as a teenager in the 1940s before I ever heard of linguistics.”

Discussing US politics, he attributes the growing popularity of the Tea Party movement, and the fanatical opposition to President Barack Obama in some quarters, to what he calls “pathological paranoia”.

“It’s something that exists in the country. It’s a very frightened country, always has been,” he says.

At the same time, Chomsky sees Obama himself as a man without a “moral centre”.

“If you look at his policies I think that’s what they reveal. I mean there’s some nice rhetoric here and there but when you look at the actual policies … the drone assassination campaign is a perfectly good example, I mean it’s just a global assassination campaign.”

On Israel’s continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank, Chomsky says “there was no effort” by Obama to even try and curb it.

via Noam Chomsky: The responsibility of privilege – Talk to Al Jazeera – Al Jazeera English.

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‘Assad is facing assassination no matter what happens’ – Noam Chomsky : The Voice of Russia: News, Breaking news, Politics, Economics, Business, Russia, International current events, Expert opinion, podcasts, Video

Assad himself is facing assassination no matter what happens, I mean if he agrees to leave the country – he would probably be killed by his Alawite associates because he is abandoning them to whatever fate would happen. If he doesn’t leave the country sooner or later it would be wiped out. There have been proposals, just a couple of days ago there was a proposal by one serious specialist Nicholas Noe that there will be temporary some kind of partition in which a region around Damascus is left under Assad’s control and the rest of the country is left under rebel control and see if they can work out some modus vivendi in which there could be a reduction of violence and maybe a negotiated settlement. But that’s a long shot and I haven’t really heard any other good proposal.

Read more: http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_12_11/Assad-is-facing-assassination-no-matter-what-happens-Noam-Chomsky/

via ‘Assad is facing assassination no matter what happens’ – Noam Chomsky : The Voice of Russia: News, Breaking news, Politics, Economics, Business, Russia, International current events, Expert opinion, podcasts, Video.

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Noam Chomsky Post-Election: We Need More Organization, Education, Activism

Keane Bhatt: So let’s start with your post-November 6 analysis. What, in your mind, have been the lessons to take away from the elections?

Noam Chomsky: The United States is a special case, and for me, very interesting. It’s studied carefully and we know a lot about it. One of the most striking features of the elections is the class-based character of the vote. Now, class is not discussed or even measured in the United States. In fact, the word is almost obscene, except for the term “middle class.” And you can’t get exact class data; the census doesn’t even give class data. But you can sort of see the significance of it just from income figures.

If you look at income levels from the lowest to the highest, as you move up, the proportion of Republican votes increases almost in a straight line. If you take voters above the median, Romney would’ve won by a landslide; below the median, Obama would’ve. Now, that understates the reality, because almost half the population doesn’t vote, and they’re skewed very heavily towards the lower income distributions. And studies of these people show they are overwhelmingly Democratic – in fact, social democratic. So if they had voted, the small Obama victory would’ve been huge.

via Noam Chomsky Post-Election: We Need More Organization, Education, Activism.

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The Julian Assange Show: Noam Chomsky & Tariq Ali (E10) – YouTube

The Julian Assange Show: Noam Chomsky & Tariq Ali (E10) – YouTube.

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Chomsky: Occupy Wall Street “Has Created Something That Didn’t Really Exist” in U.S. — Solidarity

Noam Chomsky says the Occupy movement has helped rebuild class solidarity and communities of mutual support on a level unseen since the time of the Great Depression. “The Occupy movement spontaneously created something that doesn’t really exist in the country: communities of mutual support, cooperation, open spaces for discussion … just people doing things and helping each other,” Chomsky says. “That’s very much missing. There is a massive propaganda—it’s been going on for a century, but picking up enormously—that you really shouldn’t care about anyone else, you should just care about yourself. … To rebuild [class solidarity], even if it’s in small pieces of the society, can become very important, can change the conception of how a society ought to function.” Chomsky also gives his assessment of President Obama, whom he says has attacked civil liberties in a way that has “gone beyond [George W.] Bush.” [includes rush transcript]

 

via Chomsky: Occupy Wall Street “Has Created Something That Didn’t Really Exist” in U.S. — Solidarity.

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Noam Chomsky on America’s Economic Suicide | Alternet

LF: Let’s start with the big picture. How do you describe the situation we’re in, historically?

NC: There is either a crisis or a return to the norm of stagnation. One view is the norm is stagnation and occasionally you get out of it. The other is that the norm is growth and occasionally you can get into stagnation. You can debate that but it’s a period of close to global stagnation. In the major state capitalists economies, Europe and the US, it’s low growth and stagnation and a very sharp income differentiation a shift — a striking shift — from production to financialization.

The US and Europe are committing suicide in different ways. In Europe it’s austerity in the midst of recession and that’s guaranteed to be a disaster. There’s some resistance to that now. In the US, it’s essentially off-shoring production and financialization and getting rid of superfluous population through incarceration. It’s a subtext of what happened in Cartagena [Colombia] last week with the conflict over the drug war. Latin America wants to decriminalize at least marijuana (maybe more or course;) the US wants to maintain it. An interesting story. There seems to me no easy way out of this….

via Noam Chomsky on America’s Economic Suicide | Alternet.

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