The title of Noam Chomsky's latest compendium of thoughts ranging from human nature to world politics...I have found some interesting quotes in this book. Comment on them if you please.

1)."The basic goal of the US is to prevent independence, regardless of ideology. Remember we are the global power, so we have to make sure that all the various parts of the world continue serving their functions. And the assigned function of the 3rd World countries are to be markets for the American businesses...the internal documentary record of the USA goes way back- a quote: "the main commitment of the USA , internationally in the Third World is to prevent rise of nationalist regimes which are responsive to the pressure of the masses for improvement in low living standards and diversification of production; the reason is , we have to maintain a climate that is conducive to investment, and to ensure conditions which allow repatriation of profits to the West."

2)."Remember, any state has its primary enemy: its population...social spending increases the danger for real democracy.."

3).the Pentagon is for: "ensuring a particular form of domination and control- not to give people a better life- but to ensure a "good economy(ensuring corporate profits)"

4) "I think there is less intellectual work going on in a lot of university departments than there is in figuring out what's the matter with my car, which requires some creativity".

5).Sports: "engages a lot intelligence and keeps people away from other things"

6) Soap Operas: "teaches passivity and absurdity- it is away from diverting people from things that really matter"

7)."The history of treaty violations by the USA is just grostesque: treaties with the Indian nations by law have the same status as any other sovereign states,...but as soon as you wanted more land, you just forgot the treaty and robbed it; it's a very ugly and vicious history. Hitler in fact used the treatment of the Native Indians as a model..."we are going to with the Jews"..

8)."Our economic systems works in the interest of the masters"..

9)."In Latin America, there is plenty of kidnapping of children. In the USA domains: Thailand, Brazil, practically everywhere you go- there are young children being kidnapped for sex-slavery, or just plain slavery. And there is strong evidence - I don't think any one doubt it very much- that in these regions people are killed for organ transplants"

10)."The Pentagon has never have been about defense- the Pentagon is about that fact rich people can have their computers, after decades of development paid for by the public sector- and it's is a fact IBM and other private corporations and investors are making huge profits off them".

[ 03-31-2002, 02:32 PM: Message edited by: profchallenger1 ]

Very interesting... I wonder how many Americans would agree,,

I haven't read this one, but did read an earlier volume of his in this vein a few years ago and I appreciate your notes. Noam Chomsky is beyond any shadow of a doubt the greatest linguist of our age and possibly of all time. His work on transformations and Universal Grammer was groundbreaking (even if he doesn't believe in sociolinguistics). However I do think that his social commentaries and political writings aren't anywhere near the calibre of his scientific work. First, some of the observations listed are disappointing - it doesn't take a genius like Chomsky to figure out that soap operas are mind-numbing, sports events are distracting or that a lot of work done in university departments is less than intellectual.
Further,the thing that worries me about his political work here and elsewhere is that it seems to hover on the edge of paranoia. Certainly the government of the United States of America has been and is responsible for countless vicious, unjust and mercenary acts that resulted in human misery all over the globe and the motivation behind those acts has been largely financial. However, everything that I have ever read of his in this vein seems to point to his great fear: overwhelming and secret global control. For a systems man like Chomsky, I suspect this is rather comforting in a strange way. Like many advocates of conspiracy theories, maybe (and I mean MAYBE - he's a great man and I hesitate to second guess him here) it is safer to assume that everything that happens in the world - be it child prostitution in Brazil, As The World Turns, Saddam Hussein, or free computers for the rich - is the result of one cohesive plan, malignant though it may be. The idea that there is chaos out there; that events happen at random and things are out of control and disconnected, is a lot scarier. However the great sociolinguist Basil Bernstein was of the view that 'embracing the chaos' was a necessary final step in human intellectual development. Accepting that there is not One Big Problem, be it the US government or the New World Order or whatever, and that humans are a lot less capable of organizing and controlling events than they think they are, would be to Bernstein a healthy, if upsetting way of looking at things.
Chomsky see the patterns, Bernstein see the chaos. Both are interesting, but I'll go with Bernstein here.