Hitchens Photo: Trockennasenaffe (CC) / Chomsky Photo: Duncan Rawlinson (CC)

Christopher Hitchens takes issue with Noam Chomsky’s recent Guernica article in Slate:

Anybody visiting the Middle East in the last decade has had the experience: meeting the hoarse and aggressive person who first denies that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center and then proceeds to describe the attack as a justified vengeance for decades of American imperialism.

This cognitive dissonance — to give it a polite designation — does not always take that precise form. Sometimes the same person who hails the bravery of al-Qaida’s martyrs also believes that the Jews planned the “operation.” As far as I know, only leading British “Truther” David Shayler, a former intelligence agent who also announced his own divinity, has denied that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, took place at all. (It was apparently by means of a hologram that the widespread delusion was created on television.)

In his recent article for Guernica magazine, however, professor Noam Chomsky decides to leave that central question open. We have no more reason to credit Osama Bin Laden’s claim of responsibility, he states, than we would have to believe Chomsky’s own claim to have won the Boston Marathon.

Read: Noam Chomsky’s recent Guernica article

Read: Christopher Hitchens’ recent Slate article

Support for democracy is the province of ideologists and propagandists. In the real world, elite dislike of democracy is the norm. The evidence is overwhelming that democracy is supported insofar as it contributes to social and economic objectives, a conclusion reluctantly conceded by the more serious scholarship.

Elections have become a charade, run by the public relations industry. After his 2008 victory, Obama won an award from the industry for the best marketing campaign of the year. Executives were euphoric. In the business press they explained that they had been marketing candidates like other commodities since Ronald Reagan, but 2008 was their greatest achievement and would change the style in corporate boardrooms. The 2012 election is expected to cost $2 billion, mostly in corporate funding. Small wonder that Obama is selecting business leaders for top positions. The public is angry and frustrated, but as long as the Muasher principle prevails, that doesn’t matter.

The Muasher doctrine is rational and venerable. To mention just one case that is highly relevant today, in internal discussion in 1958, president Eisenhower expressed concern about “the campaign of hatred” against us in the Arab world, not by governments, but by the people. The National Security Council (NSC) explained that there is a perception in the Arab world that the U.S. supports dictatorships and blocks democracy and development so as to ensure control over the resources of the region. Furthermore, the perception is basically accurate, the NSC concluded, and that is what we should be doing, relying on the Muasher doctrine. Pentagon studies conducted after 9/11 confirmed that the same holds today.

Read the rest at the Huffington Post.

Metadeniz presents a quick, amusing, and insightful primer on what Noam Chomsky calls “words with a technical meaning.” Including:

Promoting Democracy verb installing a government friendly to our interests in another country.

Freedom Fighters noun a proxy terrorist army that we support

National Interest noun the interests of the ultra-rich, particularly those in the U.S.A.

Stability noun (used referring to other countries) subordination to US power interests  -> Usually achieved through war against the population.

Example: “We should promote democracy by supporting the freedom fighters in Nicaragua because it is in America’s national interest to promote stability in Central America.”
Translation: “We should send weapons to a proxy terrorist army that murders civilians to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicaragua, for the benefit of U.S investors and to intimidate other countries into doing what we say.”

More on Metadeniz

Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6.

Full interview transcript at Democracy Now!

Renowned scholar Noam Chomsky says US invasion of Afghanistan was illegal since to date there is no evidence that al-Qaeda has carried out the 9/11 attacks.

“The explicit and declared motive of the [Afghanistan] war was to compel the Taliban to turn over to the United States, the people who they accused of having been involved in World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist acts. The Taliban…they requested evidence…and the Bush administration refused to provide any,” the 81-year-old senior academic made the remarks on Press TV’s program A Simple Question.

“We later discovered one of the reasons why they did not bring evidence: they did not have any.”

The political analyst also said that nonexistence of such evidence was confirmed by FBI eight months later.

“The head of FBI, after the most intense international investigation in history, informed the press that the FBI believed that the plot may have been hatched in Afghanistan, but was probably implemented in the United Arab Emirates and Germany.”

[continues at PressTV]

The New World Order is a catch-all phrase that is used by fear mongering propagandists to captivate people with dread. Too many people for too long have been put under a spell with feelings of hopelessness and despair by this fairy tale concept that there is a secret society or race of reptiles out there to get them and their children, and that they are succeeding at doing it. Please show this video to anyone you can to help break the spell of fear placed over those who wish to make this world a better place.

Chomsky argues in this video that “if you go back to the Constitutional debates, they are all very clear: Madison, the framer of the Constitution, makes clear that the prime responsibility of government is to protect the minority, the opulent, against the majority.”

“Madison warned of what he called ‘the danger of the leveling spirit among the growing number of people who labor under all the hardships of life and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings’.”  Chomsky thus argued that the primary principle of our Constitution was that “democracy is unacceptable.”

“Madison’s thought carried the day.  James Wilson was the only dissenting voice.  Jefferson, a real democrat, was not part of it. [He was on some assignment to Europe during the Constitutional Convention]…This satisfied the Madisonian principle that wealth must rule.  The wealthy are a better class of men.  They must rule.  They own the country anyhow, so therefore, they must be responsible.”

Noam Chomsky says he is a Libertarian Socialist, which only appears to be a contradiction of terms here in the United States.  He argues that the term “libertarian” in the United States means the opposite of what it meant to everyone else throughout history.  The real Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson were anti-capitalists and called for equality.  They did not believe that people should be subject to wage labor because that is a destruction of their humanity.

Chomsky stated that “Adam Smith [in his book The Wealth of Nations] said that in any civilized society something has to be done to prevent the division of labor because it will turn the people into creatures who are as ignorant as it is possible to be.  Adam Smith advocated markets only on the grounds that “perfect liberty leads to perfect equality.”  That is the traditional libertarian position.

“The US stance on libertarianism is quite different,” according to Noam Chomsky. “It means extreme advocacy of total tyranny, and private unaccountable tyranny is worse than state tyranny because the public has some control over state tyranny.  The corporate system, as it has evolved in the twentieth century, is pure tyranny, completely unaccountable.  You are inside one of these institutions and you take orders from above and hand it down below [this is hierarchy].”

One commentator of this Youtube video wrote “Anarcho-capitalists and Libertarians are anti-government but not anti-governance.  They never talk about the destruction of [private corporate] hierarchies or the shareholder/stakeholder divide. That is why it is a pseudoanarchy.”

Chomsky also said that “unsubsidized capitalism has existed in a good part of the Third World, which is why the Third World countries look the way they do.  Unsubsidized capitalism has never existed in any developed society for a simple reason: the wealthy and powerful won’t allow it just as Adam Smith understood.  They will use the levers of power to make sure that state power subsidizes them.”  Chomsky then concludes that he “would only subscribe to the free market as it was advocated by Adam Smith, the person who wrote Wealth of Nations, not the person that most people worship today.”

In another Youtube video entitled, “Noam Chomsky on Ron Paul supporters,” Chomsky acknowledged how libertarians are against a foreign policy of interventionism (I would say Chomsky agrees with Ron Paul supporters on foreign policy), but Chomsky also said Ron Paul supporters unleash “their anger on the government (which potentially can be democratic), not against the Fortune 500 companies that make dazzling profits.  Libertarians hate bureaucrats in Washington but not the ones in the insurance offices.  “They are fearful of the Council on Foreign Relations, the UN, and the Federal Reserve, but are not fearful of private power or corporate tyrannies.”

I agree with much of what Noam Chomsky says in the above paragraphs.  However, unlike Noam Chomsky, I think the Federal Reserve is very dangerous.  I personally have not heard Chomsky say he was worried too much about fractional reserve banking and Keynesian economics, which have caused great harm to our nation.  And in defense of Ron Paul, I would point out that Ron Paul also is very much against corporatism, or crony capitalism. For more information about the Federal Reserve, go to Youtube.com and type the name “G. Edward Griffin” or the title “The Money Masters.”

The reason I have written a new US Constitution (called The Third Constitution of the United States) is that in the course of our nation’s history, several Amendments and federal laws (like giving women and blacks the right to vote) were passed that express the idea that our government is a democracy (a word that is not found in the Constitution because our founding fathers feared it).  The Greens today even talk about the ideal of a participatory and consensus democracy achievable at local, small scale levels (in small groups it is better than representative democracy).  But our founding fathers, and many libertarians today, argue that our government is a Constitutional Republic that guarantees our inherent individual rights (rights that a mob democracy cannot take away).  I believe we need a new constitution that better reconciles these two forces of individualism and collectivism, a constitution that gives more power to common, working people.  I recommend that we maximize local community self-determination, with a system in which decision-making power flows (from the bottom-up, not from the top-down) from the precinct to the township, then from the township to the county, and from the county to the state level, while having the smallest possible federal government.

I do not care for corruption and top-down hierarchy in government.   But I also do not want to work in a tyrannical and hierarchical private corporation, which may be my only choice in a free market (based on competition, scarcity, and profit) as the rich get richer, and the poor, poorer.  Therefore, I believe cities and counties should be able to revoke corporate charters.  Also, there should be guaranteed workplace democracy in private companies when they reach a certain size.

We also need more intentional communities that show the world, by example, how small cooperative groups of people, sharing similar values, can live simply in ecologically, self-sufficient, sustainable ways, using consensus decision-making, permaculture landscaping, organic fertilizers, composting, vegetarianism, geodesic domes, and alternative energies (that make it possible to get off the electrical grid).

If Ron Paul, with his Austrian economics, became President for the next 20 years, things would be much better.  Some libertarians even advocate a stateless, free market society, as advocated by some writers at www.LewRockwell.com such as Murray Rothbard and Stefan Molyneux.   I would be willing to try this for 20 years.  But the reason why I am excited by the Venus Project (described below) right now is this: Even if we eliminate a corrupt government altogether, wouldn’t it still be possible for 1% of the population to own 40% of the world’s resources, as it does now?   Such economic disparity creates animosity between the haves and the have-nots of the world.

Eventually our survival on the planet may depend upon whether we adopt the ideas expressed in the Zeitgeist Movie and the Venus Project, which would neither be an implementation of the United Nation’s Agenda 21, socialism, nor communism (these models have elitist control, social stratification, and monetary systems of one form or another–all three conditions we should abolish at that point).  We can easily feed and house all the people on the planet in sustainable ways, and it is unconscionable that we don’t.  The Venus Project is also about creating a world without lawyers, politicians, advertisers, insurance agents, or the need for prisons.  Go to www.theVenusProject.com or www.theZeitgeistMovement.com and watch some of their videos or read some of their articles.  For information about all types of intentional communities, go to www.ic.org.

Our mainstream television media is owned by about six big corporations. Think of it as an arm of the government and the industrial-military complex, and maybe the pharmaceutical industry as well.  It is all about perception management.  When you see animated political debates on Fox News, CNN, or others, do not expect to see and hear any radical opinions such as from Michael Parenti, a thought-provoking socialist (I agree with his analysis but not his solution), or Noam Chomsky (considered by many of the progressive left as our country’s greatest intellectual).  These people have dangerous ideas not fit for public consumption, in the eyes of our corporate masters.  Professor and theologian David Ray Griffin has done incredible research into 9/11.  Don’t expect the major media to allow him to talk about Building 7, which was not even hit by an airplane, and yet it collapsed into its footprints at the speed of gravity!  I dare you to read Internet articles or watch Youtube video lectures by David Ray Griffin, the foremost authority on 9/11.  And did you know when the Republican and Democratic National Parties had their televised presidential debates in 2008, they agreed to not include Ralph Nader, who was an independent presidential candidate?  That is democracy at work in our “free” country.  If corporate-owned, politicians become successful in putting controls on Internet websites (the ones they consider dangerous), we are in big trouble.

The wealthiest people and the most powerful organizations (many of them are international bankers and military defense contractors) finance both of the major two parties; they also finance and empower many of our incumbent federal legislators.  The bailouts, which started with Bush, were for the very companies who profited from us and hurt us the most.  Under Obama, Homeland Security and foreign policy are still pretty much the same.  I say, keep the so-called “change.” Is anyone in government really concerned about the enormous national debt which we will never, ever pay off?   Murray Rothbard at www.LewRockwell.com has discussed in an article how the national debt could be repudiated by giving away government assets.   If the Federal Reserve keeps printing money out of thin air, we eventually will be paying just for the interest on the debt, not for government programs.  We truly need real change soon, but it is a change the Democrats and Republicans, the identical

twins, are not capable of providing.  For now on if I vote, it will be for a third party candidate.  Voting for the lesser of two evils is not a wise approach.  When we vote for a third party, we publicly register our dissent, which lawmakers and other citizens need to see.  Of course, all of this is true as long as the electronic ballots are not tampered.

Many people believe our country was actually hijacked starting with the Kennedy assassination.  The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has long been involved in the drug trade, which is how it gets money to do illegal operations that it does not want the American people or lawmakers to know about (it is like a government within a government).  Essentially it is all about controlling the Middle East and the whole world for that matter to increase the profits of transnational (or mega-) corporations, many of which are more powerful than entire countries.  It is unethical that our CIA covertly interferes in the affairs of democratically elected, sovereign countries by financing corrupt opponents, providing disinformation and smear campaigns, arming paramilitary counter-forces, and overtly sending in American troops, when the above measures do not work. We are told that various terrorists hate us because of our democratic freedoms.  The truth is they hate us because of our policies, our actions toward them, actions about which the American people, living inside a matrix, are utterly clueless.

The hemp plant, which marijuana comes from, just happens to be the most versatile plant on the Earth, the very best source for rope and paper and over 50,000 other household uses such as nylons and plastics.  Marijuana is the best treatment for glaucoma.  When the hemp plant is grown for food, its seeds have the highest number of amino-acid proteins, higher than any other plant.  Birds will always choose hemp seeds over any other type of seed.  Hemp could also be an excellent source of biomass energy.  Unlike the growth or corn and cotton, hemp does not need toxic chemicals or a lot of fertilizers to make it grow.  It would truly be a Green alternative.  The real reason it was made illegal in 1937 (through yellow journalism) was that it cut into the profits of the Dupont and Hurst Corporations.  No one has ever died exclusively from long-term marijuana smoking.  Can we say that about the use of alcohol, tobacco, aspirin, and many other legal drugs? The original Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were printed on hemp paper!   And several of our founding fathers grew it. Much more could be said.  To learn more about hemp, you can go to www.norml.org or do a search on “Jack Herer,” the foremost authority on hemp.

Don’t expect high school students in our public schools to read The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.  Public schools are government schools.  How honest and critical can teachers, bureaucrats, history and government textbook publishers be when their livelihoods depend on sharing innocuous, or noncontroversial, opinions?  I recommend that we eliminate federal, state, and even township control of our public schools.  Parents could use the money they spend on property taxes to hire their own tutors. Teaching parents to be educated homeschoolers would be even better.  Now that I am retired from the public schools, I can be more honest.

I have found that the best way to learn about a topic is to find the very best arguments for and against it.  I was an evangelical Christian for most of my life, believing that accepting Jesus is the only way, but when I looked at atheistic websites, run by former pastors, Bible scholars, and conservative theologians, it caused me to doubt my faith.  Then when I reread the amazing book Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, which I had explored during my college days, I became interested again in Hinduism, Buddhism, and meditation.  But I have to admit, I still pray to Jesus.  Supposedly when one attains the superconscious state of awareness through meditation and unselfish love, the person gains insight into previous lifetimes.  In Eastern thought, you do not find salvation through accepting certain beliefs by faith.  You only have to believe what you have actually experienced.  Maybe those yogis and zen masters who claim they have insight into previous lifetimes have been deceived.   But meditation, Hatha yoga postures and exercises have proven health benefits.  I frequently told my son, who is now 24, when he was growing up, that even more important than being smart and educated is to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul and thy neighbor as thyself.   I still believe that, and he does too.

Today the world is outraged at Israel’s blockade of Gaza and its attack on the flotilla of ships loaded with supplies heading for Gaza.  I got similar opinions when I went to favorite websites such as www.Dprogram.net, www.GlobalResearch.ca , www.infowars.com or www.BrasscheckTV.com.  But when I forced myself to go to www.JewishWorldReview.com, which also is in my computer’s Favorites List of websites, I got an entirely different perspective.

When I was in the Green movement, I did not doubt global warming, but when I became a libertarian, I started to doubt.  I have always thought that organic foods are best, though expensive.  But now I am finding books and experts on TV who argue that there is no proof that they are better for you.  If we are truly honest seekers of truth, we have to think critically about everything, including ourselves.

Many believe there is a New World Order that is emerging—that is being influenced by the world’s wealthiest people, especially international bankers.   They are upper-echelon members of elitist groups like the Bilderberg Group, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, who control the Federal Reserve and probably the CIA.  September 11, 2001 has been the pretext to expand the stupid wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Patriot Act, warrantless spying on Americans, the Real ID, and imprisonment without due process.  Our rights are being taken under the guise that we need more Homeland Security, presidential Executive Orders, and proposed Enemy Combatant laws.  The neo-conservative, shadow government elites who control our lawmakers, the President, and the corporate-owned, mainstream media, would love for all of us to have a microchip, implanted under our skin.  Then if we exercise our Constitutional rights, and share opinions that do not harmonize with their sinister designs, they can just label us “political dissidents” or “enemy combatants.”

Then all they have to do is turn off our chip, so that we cannot buy or sell.  We, the outspoken Americans, will be put in prisons like Guantanamo without a public trial when they classify us as the terrorists. This is how things gradually evolved in Hitler’s Germany. We must always remember that to have “freedom of speech” means we have freedom to engage in unpopular speech.

People may have to experience a world catastrophe before they become receptive to the need for having a truly free and fair world order (but it may be too late then), one that implements the goals and values of the Venus Project.

Some people say the Venus Project is just too idealistic or pie-in-the-sky, defying the so-called laws of human nature. But you could also argue that it is foolishly idealistic to believe that following our current course will not end in disaster.

No doubt there are terrorists in the world, but Al-Qaida and Bin Laden were first created and empowered by the CIA back when our government was supporting the Afghanistan “freedom fighters” against the Soviet Union.  I believe a new, independent investigation into 9/11 (not one done by government insiders) will shed much light on the way the world really works.  Not even counting the money our CIA gets illegally, our government spends more on the military than all the governments of the world combined, using money printed out of thin air, which causes inflation, a hidden tax on everyday people.

The real reason our government does not legalize marijuana and other drugs for adults to consume in the privacy of their own homes is the CIA would not get the enormous profits it gets by keeping such drugs illegal.  Legalizing drugs would make the prices go way down, and that would make drug cartels and the CIA very unhappy.  It was the criminal mobsters who were most upset when the prohibition on alcohol was uplifted.  For information about the CIA, do searches on Peter Dale Scott, a high level retired CIA Officer; historian Chalmers Johnson; Michael C. Ruppert, a former LAPD narcotics investigator; author James Bamford; and Terry Reed and John Cummings, authors of the book Compromised: Clinton, Bush, and the CIA.

Now to keep my argument consistent, you should also study the foreign policy viewpoints of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, which I am forcing myself to do.   But right now I say, let us reduce military spending by about 90 percent.  We have American troops and bases in about 130 countries.  Let us find a way to reunite the anti-war, nonviolent, Peace Movement.  It disappeared when the military draft was cancelled after the Vietnam War ended.  If we did these things we would truly feel safer, resting in our beds at night, than we do now.  Our country could have a new image in the world, and peace on Earth would not be considered pie-in-the-sky.

Roger Copple retired this year (May 2010) from teaching third grade in a public school in Indianapolis.  He turned 60 on June 3.  Roger became a libertarian supporting Ron Paul after identifying with the Green movement.  Now he is trying to reconcile the two third party political theories.  He has a Master’s degree in Special Education, and a Bachelor’s in Elementary Education.

The Israeli Interior Ministry on Sunday denied entry to Jewish American linguist Prof. Noam Chomsky turning him back from the Allenby Bridge border crossing in the Jordan Valley. Seemingly, the moral ash cloud that is pouring out of the morbid Jewish ghetto known as Israel is not going to clear. It is there to stay.

On the face of it, Chomsky’s border incident shouldn’t take us by surprise. Israel is the Jewish state and as such it operates as a synagogue of great magnitude. The synagogue is an exclusive entity, it only allows in those who fit. The synagogue is neither democratic nor liberal, it is actually subject to tribal judgments that have very little to do with ethics or universalism.

In the Jewish State, Prof Noam Chomsky is apparently a persona non grata, however, Alan Dershowitz, a shallow intellect is seemingly the hero of Tel Aviv University.

A week ago, during a University symposium, Dershowitz said that Israel’s biggest problem is Israel-bashing ‘Jews’ like Norman Finkelstein and Gilad Atzmon. He said some people live on what he calls “Planet Chomsky”. Dershowitz didn’t do his homework. Clearly I myself share very little with Chomsky. As if this is not enough, I am not a Jew for more than a while…

[continues at Gilad Atzmon's blog]

Photo: Stevertigo (CC)

From the Onion. Yeah, that Onion, so progressives please try to remember where you left your sense of humor:

LEXINGTON, MA — Describing himself as “terribly exhausted,” famed linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky said Monday that he was taking a break from combating the hegemony of the American imperialist machine to try and take it easy for once.

“I just want to lie in a hammock and have a nice relaxing morning,” said the outspoken anarcho-syndicalist academic, who first came to public attention with his breakthrough 1957 book Syntactic Structures. “The systems of control designed to manufacture consent among a largely ignorant public will still be there for me to worry about tomorrow. Today, I’m just going to kick back and enjoy some much-needed Noam Time.”

“No fighting against institutional racism, no exposing the legacies of colonialist ideologies still persistent today, no standing up to the widespread dissemination of misinformation and state-sanctioned propaganda,” Chomsky added. “Just a nice, cool breeze through an open window on a warm spring day.”

Sources reported that the 81-year-old Chomsky, a vociferous, longtime critic of U.S. foreign policy and the political economy of the mass media, was planning to use Monday to tidy up around the house a bit, take a leisurely walk in the park, and possibly attend an afternoon showing of Date Night at the local megaplex.

Sitting down to a nice oatmeal breakfast, Chomsky picked up a copy of Time, a deceitful, pro-corporate publication that he said would normally infuriate him.

[continues at the Onion]

Chomsky says U.S. leaders would have had to be certifiably insane in order to commit 911 as an inside job…