Illegitimate Transfer of Inalienable European Rights via Convention(s) & Supranational Bodies Establishment of Sovereignty-Usurping Supranational Body Dictatorships Enduring Program of DEMOGRAPHICS WAR on Europeans Enduring Program of PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR on Europeans Enduring Program of European Displacement, Dismemberment, Dispossession, & Dissolution
No wars or conditions abroad (& no domestic or global economic pretexts) justify government policy facilitating the invasion of ancestral European homelands, the rape of European women, the destruction of European societies, & the genocide of Europeans.
U.S. RULING OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR TO SALVAGE HEGEMONY [LINK | Article]
Who's preaching world democracy, democracy, democracy? —Who wants to make free people free?
... His comments post 9/11, when he described the US as a leading terrorist state drew hostile fire even from allies on the left.
He has the gloves back on, denouncing Western greed & hypocrisy.
Noam Chomsky:
We need not rehearse the reasons why Britain, and later the United States, have been determined to control the Gulf region.
It's enough to recall the observation of the State Department in 1945 that the resources of the region are a stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history
Book: The City of God (410 CE) Sait Augustine (354-430) Latin Church Father b. North Africa Bishop of city of Hippo The City of God written by him following sack of Rome by Alaric & the Vandals Pagans blamed conversion of Roman empire to Christianity for sack of Vandals http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/aug-city2.asp
[In respect of Chomsky book title]
Noam Chomsky:
That's plagiarised from Saint Augustine, who in The City of God has a story about Alexander. His forces capture a pirate, and there's an audience between the pirate and the emperor, and he asks the pirate, "How dare you molest the seas?"
And the pirate tells him, "I am a small man with a tiny boat, so they call me a pirate. You're an emperor with a vast navy and you molest the world, but they call you an emperor."
And that's a good allegory for the world and, in particular, for the contemporary world.
The pirates are the ones who were contemned and not the emperors.
Of course, the general population is attacked by both the emperors and the pirates.
Saint Augustine is not saying that the pirate is a nice fellow; he's just saying he's a small criminal as compared with a major criminal.
Interviewer:
So, who does control the world? Who are the emperors?
Noam Chomsky:
Overwhelmingly the United States since the Second World War, Britain before that, and concentrations of private power, which are enormous and tyrannical corporations closely linked to the powerful states.
It's a network of concentrated power with international institutions, like IMF and so on, which sometimes call themselves the 'Masters of the World'. It's a phrase that was in the Financial Times, a little ironically, but not wrong.
Actually, they call themselves the 'Masters of the Universe'. Adam Smith called them the 'Masters of the World'. Now they're called the 'Masters of the Universe'.
They didn't have space age in Smith's time.
Interviewer:
But don't you sometimes need big government to deal with big business, since there is a kind of balance between these large forces?
Noam Chomsky:
It's like saying that there's a balance between the members of the Board of Directors of General Motors.
Yes, there's some kind of a balance. But they're so closely interlinked and they're connected, that to first approximation they're the same thing.
Interviewer:
Now, did September 11th, do you think, mark a change in world politics?
Noam Chomsky:
It was a historic event. It was the first time in hundreds of years that the West, Europe, and its offshoots, have suffered the criminal atrocity that they constantly carry out against others, which is quite a change.
That's why there's such shock in the West.
This kind of thing we do to you, you don't do it to us.
It's like the reaction in England in the so-called Indian mutiny rebellion, in India. Tremendous shock.
[tape distortion]
... would use it as an opportunity to intensify repressive and somewhat violent actions, and that's just what's happened.
[skip]
Interviewer:
You make quite a lot in the book on the fact that there is freedom of expression in America. But what you do point to is something more insidious, because you suggest that there is actually -- although there may be freedom of expression -- there's a control of freedom of thought.
Now, how does that happen?
Noam Chomsky:
It was understood, back in the time of the First World War that it's becoming much more difficult to control people by force.
The popular struggles have led to the development of unions, the parliamentary Labour party, franchise extended and so on, and coercion is just not going to work by force. So, therefore, you have to control thought.
It's very striking that the contemporary systems of thought control, which are highly developed, very self-conscious, you know, leaders talk all about it. They come from England and the United States.
So the British Ministry of Information, which the reader of any Orwell knows what it was, that's from the First World War.
It was aimed primarily to convert a pacifist population into raving anti-German fanatics, and it worked. And it impressed people.
It impressed the business world. That's the origins of the modern public relations industry.
It impressed American intellectuals who developed the conception of what they call the 'manufacture of consent', control of thought.
It impressed Hitler, who blamed the German defeat on superior Anglo-American propaganda and vowed that next time Germany would be prepared.
And it has led in the United States primarily, and in England secondarily, to huge industries devoted to control of attitudes, because you cannot control people by force.
Interviewer:
But dissent has been growing since the 1960s in the Western world. I mean, people are far more sophisticated now. Even popular culture reflects the fact that anything from the X-Files to the film, The Insider, that the idea of people discussing things of trying to manipulate public opinion; I mean, that's highly developed now.
Noam Chomsky:
Sure. But when people were under the lash they knew about it, too.
People are so aware of it, that it has led to tremendous cynicism about almost anything.
I mean, nobody believes what government officials say, nobody believes what they read in the press, people don't believe professions. It's led to enormous cynicism and tremendous opposition. In fact, in my view, the more crucial things than the things you mentioned, are opposition to aggression.
Just take a look at the current war in Iraq and compare it with, say, the Vietnam War.
It's a comparison which is often made about the protest, but the comparison is completely false.
The opposition to the war in Iraq is far greater than it ever was to the war in Vietnam at any remotely comparable stage, and this is the first war, I think in European history, Europe and the United States -- the first one I can think of -- where there was massive protests before the war. It's never happened.
I mean, in the case of Vietnam War, there was no protest until years after the war.
Just in the last 30 or 40 years, in say the united States, the level of civilisation among the general public -- not intellectuals, that's a separate category, but among the general public -- it's advanced enormously.
Interviewer:
So, do you think that intellectuals are not sufficiently engaged? Do you think that they have become cynical?
Noam Chomsky
Intellectuals are a separate category.
Intellectuals are mostly servants of power.
I'm talking about the general public, not the intellectual world.
They remain pretty constant, I don't think they are subject to these changes -- except marginally, of course, to some extent.
But they are quite different and quite generally -- it goes right through history -- intellectuals have been servants of power.
Take, say, the First World War.
On all sides -- Germany, England, United States, France -- intellectuals were extremely enthusiastic about the war.
There were a few dissenters and the best known of them ended up in gaol, like Bertrand Russell, for example -- or, Eugene Debs, in the United States, or Rosa Luxemburg, in Germany.
Very small group of critics. Some of them best known in prison.
But most intellectuals were enthusiasts for their own country, and that's common and it remains common.
Intellectuals write history, so you have to be a little cautious about what they say about themselves. And it looks prettier when it's written in books.