Tag Archives: current events

Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession with Russia —the Stories Not Being Covered in the Trump Era | Democracy Now!

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Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession with Russia & thestories Not Being Covered in the Trump Era | Democracy Now!
“— Read on www.democracynow.org/2018/7/27/noam_chomsky_on_mass_media_obsession

“Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that’s almost a joke. First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done…”

Chomsky has such a clear take on all this. Sure, the Russians may have interfered- they routinely do that everywhere. Trumps collusion may be an issue but surely there are larger concerns.

He’s also great on the immigration issue, which they address in the beginning of the same interview. He points out that it’s our meddling in Central American countries that has created the problems in the first place.

Another larger concern which never makes it into the media or the national political dialog: the Empire is at the root of most of the international issues that the media skims over the top of, pitching sound bites that don’t make the power structure mad.

Boycott professional sports

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If you know what’s going on in the professional sporting world, you just can’t support any of it in any way. It’s apparently among the most racist of the cultural institutions in America.

I confess I’ve never been a big fan of professional sports anyway, so it’s not a great sacrifice on my part to decide to boycott them, but lots of folks who are big fans should start to speak up and stay away, because they’re folks who don’t really believe in what’s happening there, the exploitation of black people by rich white guys.

There’s not much excuse for it really. Blatant racism, blatant political and financial corruption, total violation of all of the basic values that America supposedly stands for, including most recently freedom of speech.

Shaun King lays it out pretty clearly in a recent Medium article (The Unbearable Whiteness of NFL Ownership): 31 of the 32 NFL owners completely caved in to Trump and banned free speech on their fields, under the treat of firing players, etc. In addition, King points out the lily-whiteness of professional ownership:

Of the 92 major professional sports teams in the U.S. — between the NFL, NBA, and MLB — there are only six teams with people of color as majority owners, and just one of them is an African-American.

One.

This is intolerable for me. It is the consequence, as King explains, of the process of integration into the dominant capitalist system. There’s big money made in professional sports, so the big money boys flock to it. Ain’t free market economics wonderful?

In round terms, the top one-tenth owns 20% of the wealth, and the top 10% owns 90%. That’s the root of the problem, along with the racism at the heart of all our institutions, which is a holdover from slavery and Jim Crow of the past. Combined with the recent fascist/white supremacy surge, we have an intolerable social and economic situation, of which the professional sports issue is just a slice.

 

How the Emperor rules

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consistent theme here is the course of Empire. The US military domination of the world at the service of the international oligarchy is, for me, a self-evident truth that needs little demonstration, so it’s often hard for me to understand how so many of our citizens are seemingly oblivious to this state of affairs.

Friday’s postfrom Caitlin Johnstone, the Australian writer I’ve been reading for a year or so now, contains one of the best explanations of how people are lulled into the illusory view of the US and its allies as the champions of freedom and democracy. It also is an excellent summary of historical and current events that illustrate just how accurate the notion of Empire is for characterizing our world.

Occasioned by the installation of the torturer-in-chief as CIA head, the article is not an easy read, as it catalogs CIA’s techniques in stomach-turning detail, but it lays out the case for understanding all that’s happening these days as the course of Empire, the consolidation of power in the hands of the oligarchy, and the refining of the narrative that keeps our folks cheering on their own enslavement.

It really couldn’t be more fitting that the US now has an actual, literal torturer as the head of the CIA. It also couldn’t be more fitting that it has a reality TV star billionaire President, an Iraq-raping Bush-era neoconservative psychopathas National Security Advisor, a former defense industry directoras Secretary of Defense, a former Goldman Sachs executiveas Secretary Treasurer, and a former Rothschild, Inc. executiveas Secretary of Commerce. These positions have always facilitated torture, oppression, war profiteering and Wall Street greed; the only thing that has changed is that they now have a more honest face on them.

And — which makes it worth slogging through the horrors — she manages to find a way to see all this as an encouraging development, in that it signifies the loss of control of the narrative, which makes it possible that eventually our folks will wake up!

We can only hope that it’s not too late when it comes.

[If that link doesn’t work, as Medium is a big churlish sometimes, search for her title “The Friendly Mask of the Orwellian Oligarchy Is Slipping Off” by Caitlin Johnstone. I highly recommend her writing on the political machinations of the current regime, as she seems to have a brave and unbiased approach to the whole thing, partly perhaps on account of living in Australia where the shenanigans are obvious but there’s a little less danger in speaking your mind.

Too much.

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I think the idiot in the white house has stepped over the line with his latest comments about “shit-hole” countries.

Even though there is no longer a line, or at least we thought there was no longer a line to step over because he had obliterated all expectation of decency or even rationality from the person who supposedly represents our country.

But, for me there is a line. He has stepped over my line.

I can no longer sit and remain silent in the presence of anyone — anyone — who countenances him as worthy of respect or even as worthy of being given the benefit of the doubt. I will say, and repeat, to anyone who may still be in that state of delusion — are there still people that stupid and deluded? — I will say to them, he is an idiot and a crass, ignorant asshole of the highest degree.

I suppose this is particularly offensive to me because I have friends from Haiti, wonderful people who I know are hurt by such ignorant comments.

I think it may be over lots of people’s lines as well, since several mainstream commentators are calling him on it.

For one, Anderson Cooper said, “Not racial. Not racially charged. Racist… The sentiment the President expressed today is a racist sentiment.”

Cooper also called the president “woefully ignorant” about the contributions of Haitians and Africans and other non-white countries of the world.

Esquire’s Jack Holmes also sees the comment as “a crystalizing moment for observers.” He laments the “continued damage this disgrace of a presidency is doing to the image and reputation of the United States…” and points to comments from other world leaders to support this.

Cooper also quotes my recent favorite writer, James Baldwin, as saying that “ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”

And Holmes says this quote has never been more prescient.

Yes, Mr. Holmes, Baldwin is our most profound critic and prophet.

Holmes also indicts the president for his idiocy.

Holmes said, “The president is profoundly ignorant in any number of ways. He is almost completely incurious about the world. He has no real knowledge or expertise, and often disdains those who do. He does not read books—or newspapers, or much of anything else—and before he became president, he rarely traveled abroad despite his substantial means. He is wary of the world outside of own properties, and possibly afraid of it.”

Which sums it up nicely. In fact, perhaps too nicely.

There’s ignorant and there’s willfully ignorant.

I think the president falls into the latter group.

As Holmes says, it’s the president’s racism that leads him to these conclusions and allows him to “dismiss the contributions of people who come to America from these countries and their children. Just take Haiti: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roxane Gay, Wyclef Jean, and Mia Love (the first black female Republican elected to Congress) are all Haitian-Americans. Do their stories and accomplishments count for nothing because we have elected a president who simply doesn’t know anything, and cares less?”

In an even more detailed and explicit exposure of the extent of the ignorance of the president and his defenders, Jonathan Katz, who has written a book about Haiti, lays out the history and the complicity of the “white” nations in creating the poverty that plagues Haiti today.

Katz, who tweets as #KatzOnEarth, laid it out in a thread Jan. 11:

“In order to do a victory lap around the GDP difference between, say, Norway and Haiti, you have to know nothing about the history of the world. That includes, especially, knowing nothing real about the history of the United States.

You have to not understand anything about the systematic theft of African bodies and lives. And you have to not understand how that theft built the wealth we have today in Europe and the US.

You’d have to not know that the French colony that became Haiti provided the wealth that fueled the French Empire — and 2/3 of the sugar and 3/4 of the coffee that Europe consumed.

You’d have to not know how rich slave traders got off their system of kidnapping, rape, and murder.

You’d have to not realize that Haiti was founded in a revolution against that system, and that European countries and the United States punished them for their temerity by refusing to recognize or trade with them for decades.

You’d have to not know that Haiti got recognition by agreeing to pay 150 million gold francs to French landowners in compensation for their own freedom.

You’d have to not know that Haiti paid it, and that it took them almost all of the 19th century to do so.

You’d then have to not know that Haiti was forced to borrow some money to pay back that ridiculous debt, some of it from banks in the United States. And you’d have to not know that in 1914 those banks got President Wilson to send the US Marines to empty the Haitian gold reserve.

.@RichLowry would have to not know about the chaos that ensued, and the 19-year US military occupation of Haiti that followed (at a time when the US was invading and occupying much of Central America and the Caribbean).

He and others have to not know about the rest of the 20th century either—the systematic theft and oppression, US support for dictators and coups, the US invasions of Haiti in 1994-95 and 2004 … the use of the IMF and World Bank to impose new loans and destructive trade policies, including the now-famous rice tariff gutting that Bill Clinton apologized for but had been a policy since Reagan, and on and on …

And you’d have to understand nothing about why the US (under George W. Bush) pushed for and paid a quarter of the UN “stabilization mission” that did little but keep Haiti’s presidents from being overthrown and kill 10,000 people by dumping cholera in its rivers. Etc.

In short, you’d have to know nothing about WHY Haiti is poor (or El Salvador in kind), and WHY the United States (and Norway) are wealthy. But far worse than that, you’d have to not even be interested in asking the question.

And that’s where they really tell on themselves …

Because what they are showing is that they ASSUME that Haiti is just naturally poor, that it’s an inherent state borne of the corruption of the people there, in all senses of the word.  And let’s just say out loud why that is: It’s because Haitians are black.”

I think this pretty well indicts as racist anyone who defends the president to any degree.

Katz nails the argument:

“If Haiti is a shithole, then they can say that black freedom and sovereignty are bad. They can hold it up as proof that white countries—and what’s whiter than Norway—are better, because white people are better.

They wanted that in 1804, and in 1915, and they want it now.

So if anyone tonight tries to trap you in a contest of “where would you rather live”—or “what about cholera” or “yeah but isn’t poverty bad?”—ask them what they know about how things got that way.

And then ask them why they’re ok with it.

Which is what I’m committing to do.