Martin Wisse

What We Say Goes — Noam Chomsky

books and books review, Imperialism, US foreign policy
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Cover of What We Say Goes


What We Say Goes
Noam Chomsky
223 pages including index
published in 2007

Noam Chomsky has been one of the most consistent critics of American hegemony and empire of the past four decades, maintaining a prodigious rate of output over the years as one of the few socalled public intellectuals who does not see his role as parroting received wisdom. His books, articles and interviews have always managed to explain in clear, understandable language how America and its ruling class keeps its power both domestically and abroad and particularly how it dictactes the boundaries of acceptable discourse. A measure of his importance as a critic of American power can be found in the vehemence of the criticism aimed at him by both conservative and liberal commentators. Despite their differences, both groups believe in American exceptionalism, the idea that America has a right, or even a duty to shape the rest of the world according to its own desires. What Chomsky has done for so long has been to show the reality behind “defending democracy” and “humanitarian intervention” and neither liberals nor conservatives like this.

What We Say Goes is his latest book, a collection of interviews he gave to David Barsamian about “U.S. power in a changing world”. It’s fair to say that there are few surprises here for those who’ve read his previous books, with the interview format used here precluding much indepth analysis. However, if you look at this book as an introduction to Chomsky and his concerns, What We Say Goes works fine. It’s short and to the point and as per usual Chomsky manages to cut to the heart of things quickly. He talks about all his usual obsessions — the way in which democracy and human rights are used against official enemies, the role of the US in the Middle East and South America, the role of the socalled free press in determining the boundaries of criticism allowed — and ties them together, with the interview format helping in keeping things rolling along.

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A new ICE age

Space and space exploration
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Old spaceships don’t die, they just get parked in very long stable orbits to fade away, but sometimes what’s assumed to be dead is still there ready to serve us again, as seems to be the case with the International Cometary Explorer:

ISEE-3 was originally launched on August 12, 1978, as the International Sun-Earth Explorer to a halo orbit about one of the Earth-Moon libration points to study Earth’s magnetosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. Then, in 1983, it employed several lunar gravity assist flybys to send it on a new journey, for which it was rechristened the International Cometary Explorer, through the tail of comet Giacobini-Zinner. ICE approached within 7,800 kilometers of the comet on September 11, 1985. In 1986, it turned its instruments toward Halley’s comet, participating in the international observation campaign, and becoming the first spacecraft to investigate two comets.

[…]

ICE is actually on a return trip to Earth now; it’s in an orbit similar to, but slightly faster than, Earth’s, so measured relative to us, it’s taking a long, slow trip around the Sun. It will return to our neighborhood on August 10, 2014, targeted to return to the Moon, which is what originally launched it on this journey. A lunar flyby can recapture it back into Earth orbit, after which, Farquhar said, they are thinking of parking it in its original halo orbit again, from which they could launch it back out to explore more cometary targets.

So it returns home on my birthday, which is nice. There’s so much interesting stuff going unexplored in our solar system for lack of spacecraft, so it’s great to see a new purpose for an old soldier like this.

Found via Sore Eyes.

Some unanswered questions

economic crisis
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In its infinite generosity, Washington came to the rescue. Of course it had no choice; no modern government would dare let a financial crisis turn into a general collapse. Yet the situation is rich with irony. In the early 1990s, Greenspan would craft the Federal Reserve’s bailout of the 1980s mania. And the braindead caretaker administration of George Bush crafted the greatest socialization of private loss in history, the S&L bailout. And, remarkably, almost nobody has suffered serious criminal penalties or political disgrace for this rampant abuse of trust. Huge quantities of public money — some $200 billion, though definitive accountings are hard to come by — were spent with little discussion or analysis, and the affair is now largely forgotten. The chance to use the industry’s partial liquidation as an opportunity to develop new public and cooperative financial institutions was blown. Within a couple of years of the crisis’ passing, no one paid it any mind any longer. It’s as if it never happened.

Wall Street, page 90, Doug Henwood.

One question I haven’t seen answered so far, or even asked yet, is how the various governments around the world are paying for their bailout schemes. The US government doesn’t just have 700 billion dollars lying around, or the British government fifty billion pounds, nor even the Dutch government the 17 billion euros needed to bail out Fortis. So where do they get it from? That’s right, they borrow it on the international money markets.

So two questions: 1) if the banks are in trouble because they can’t get anybody to lend them money, where do the governments get their money from and 2) if there is money in the system, and if governments can get money for bailouts there obviously is, why isn’t this money loaned to the banks directly?

Obviously the answer to the second question is that the people with the money don’t trust the banks but do trust governments enough to think their investment is safe with them, even if their bailouts fail. Private profits, socialised risk.

Another de Menezes tragedy could happen again

Jean Charles de Menezes, Policing
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Cressida Dick. Picture by Paul Grover

Because I haven’t been fired or prosecuted yet, says Cressida Dick (not really):

Facing cross-examination about the shooting for the first time, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick admitted: “I am afraid that I do believe that this or something like this could happen again”.

She added: “The nature of these operations is that they are immediately high risk to all concerned and that is because of the nature of the threat we face from suicide terrorists.

“Our job is to reduce the risk to everybody as best as possible. But I do fear that, in the future, a bomber might not be prevented from setting off a bomb. And equally, I pray it doesn’t happen, but it is possible an innocent member of the public might die like this.”

No responsibility taken by Dick than, who was the person in charge when de Menezes was murdered, but instead the Met’s standard Barbie defense “policing is hard”. No recognition either of the simple fact that these police tactics have not prevented any of the London suicide bombings but do have a hundred percent track record of killing innocent bystanders. Even on its own terms the police tactics did not work, yet the Met still insists they were the right tactics for the circumstances.

What’s more, the first response by the Metropolitian Police when their momentous error became know was to smear de Menezes, even though it was clear immediately after his murder he was not a suicide bomber. Who smeared de Menezes? And why did Dick not protest against this? Are we supposed to just accept the idea that the London police every now and again will murder one of us just because they think it’s necessary?

In olden days, senior commanders who screwed up like Dick or her superior, Ian Blair, did would be given a bottle of whisky and a loaded pistol. Instead one denies all wrongdoing, was even promoted afterwards, while the other was finally forced to resign by Boris Johnson, of all people.