[R-G] Chomsky Packs Irish Room

[Suzanne de Kuyper]

   Chomsky is nor cynical enough!  The United States has been destroying
Democrasy as if promoting it since the time of Roosevelt, more than two
generations.   This financial tradgedy was as planned as any goverment coup
could be planned.The U S War Empire emerges.   Wars to the Right of Us, Wars
to the Left of Us, right in the middle U S managed troops. planes, bombs,
all the war games toys the U S so prooudly manufacture and training all
nations in the use of.  Read "Global War on Liberty" by Paye.

Suzanne


On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 6:50 PM, Anthony Fenton <fentona at shaw.ca> wrote:

>
> http://media.www.bcheights.com/media/storage/paper144/news/2009/02/12/News/Chomsky.Packs.Irish.Room-3626701.shtml
> Chomsky Packs Irish Room
> By: David Kete
> Posted: 2/12/09
> "The United States has been committed, for a long time, to undermining
> democracy, while calling it 'promoting democracy.' This is the age of
> Orwell, so the U.S. calls it 'promoting democracy,'" Noam Chomsky said
> at the beginning of his lecture about the Obama administration's
> affect on U.S. politics. These few sentences were the first of many
> critical points Chomsky made throughout his lecture in the Irish Room.
>
> Noam Chomsky, linguist, philosopher, and scientist, came to campus
> Tuesday afternoon to address the issue of Obama's election and its
> impacts on this nation and the world. While Chomsky is notable for his
> accomplishments in linguistics and philosophy, he is also known for
> his unconventional political views, and he used this lecture to focus
> on the current political and economic situation.
>
> Larissa Jones, president of Psi Chi, the national psychology honors
> society and A&S '09, was the driving force behind the effort to bring
> Chomsky to campus. The event was sponsored by Psi Chi, and is their
> first major campus-wide event as an organization at BC. "Not many
> people know about our organization, so we wanted to bring a speaker
> that many people would enjoy to put our name out there," Jones said.
> She noted the importance Chomsky has had in the field of psychology
> and said that this work was a large part of the reason for bringing
> him to campus. However, he kept mainly to political issues, at Jones's
> request, because she believed that this would attract more people.
> "This topic will relate to a wider audience, so that more of the BC
> community can enjoy the event," she said.
>
> The crowd at the event flowed out the doors of the Irish Room. Chomsky
> began by congratulating President Obama on his election that was, he
> said, "inconceivable 30 or 40 years ago." Then he began an analysis of
> Obama's campaign, selection of Cabinet, and early presidential
> policies from a different perspective than most political analysts.
>
> He spent the remainder of the lecture discussing topics ranging from
> the political situation in Bolivia to an offhand comment about
> toothpaste to remarks about the impact of the Internet to definitive
> statements about the foundations of the U.S. economy. At the end of
> the brief lecture, Chomsky took a few questions, and then concluded
> his lecture, leaving all those in the audience pondering his atypical
> political thoughts.
>
> Chomsky's main comments concerned the current economic crisis, why he
> thinks it developed, and what he thinks Obama has begun doing about
> it. Chomsky described Hans Ferguson's investment theory of politics
> and said, "Elections are occasions in which groups of investors
> coalesce to invest and control the state, and you can predict from the
> investments what the policy is going to be. This is a remarkably good
> predictor..."
>
> Chomsky said that Obama's record as president, with his cabinet
> selection and first few policies, has been consistent with this
> theory. "The massive contributions to the Obama campaign were from the
> financial industries, which much preferred Obama to McCain." Chomsky
> said, "Everything that has happened since just accords with this. The
> first thing Obama did was select his cabinet … Rahm Emmanuel, his
> chief of staff, was … probably the recipient of more funding from the
> financial services industry than anybody in the House, and he himself
> has a background as an investment banker."
>
> Chomsky said that Obama's leading economic adviser, Robert Rubin,
> served Bill Clinton as Secretary of Treasury and had as his main
> accomplishment the undermining of the Glass-Steagall Act, "which was
> new deal legislation that protected commercial banks from risky
> investments, separating them from investment firms." He said that the
> undermining of this law led directly to the coalescence of Citigroup,
> which Rubin immediately joined upon leaving office with Clinton.
>
> Chomsky said that Citigroup was allowed to take part in risky
> investments because of the ending of this legislation, which allowed
> Rubin to make a windfall upon taking his position with Citigroup and
> also led to its demise and bankruptcy.
>
> Chomsky said that by appointing Rahm Emmanual and Robert Rubin, both
> of whom have strong ties to the investment banking industry, to top
> advisory positions, Obama will not be fundamentally different in his
> handling of the economic situation. Chomsky said that Obama will most
> likely do what needs to be done get through the crisis but end up
> leaving the economy in the hands of the same people who brought it
> down in the first place.
>
> "The people who destroyed the economy are the ones being called upon
> to do something about it," he said. "When you are put into office by
> the financial services industry, that is your constituency, so you
> have got to do what you can for them."
>
> Aside from this particularly relevant talk about Obama's presidency
> thus far, Chomsky deviated into some other areas such as the recent
> political situation in Bolivia, a country that he said, "elected a
> poor peasant, one of their own, to implement policies that they
> designed. That's democracy." Chomsky said the small, Bolivian version
> of democracy is an example of the true practice of democracy. He
> described Bolivia as the polar opposite of the better-known American
> brand.
>
> At the end of the lecture, several students raised questions regarding
> Obama, the U.S. economy, and the Israel- Palestine conflict. Chomsky,
> after giving his responses on these topics, left to another round of
> thunderous applause. "Chomsky sounded too much like a conspiracy
> theorist," Jason Goode, A&S '11, said. "He offered a lot of good
> insights into contradictions between what we see and what is actually
> happening in the world. But at the same time he seemed a little overly
> cynical."
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