“Mandate for Change,” or Business as Usual
by Noam Chomsky…..Feb. 1993

As the victors were recovering from the celebration of
their electoral triumph in November, the front-page
headlines read: “The Economy:  Aides plan a scaled-back
early agenda.” “A group of aides to President-elect
Bill Clinton is preparing an economic plan for the
Democrat’s early days in office that would postpone action
on some of his more sweeping proposals in favor of a
moderate increase in infrastructure spending, preliminary
steps to control rising health care costs and series of business tax breaks that rated little mention during the
campaignm,” political corrispondent Peter Gosselin reported.  In the following days, Clinton’s advisers,
including those on the progressive fringe, reiterated the
message, which had been understood all along by corporate
financial sectors…...”

DO DAY DA Chomsky, like me, had Clinton’s number before
hand…....................

It’s really funny how the more things change the more
they stay the same.  I just found a stack of my old
Z Magazines up in the attic that avoided the burn pile.
The ones that I have left date from 1987 till 1994 with
articles by
Andrew Kopkind, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich,
Michael Albert, Christian Parenti, John Stockwell, and
the list goes on. About every one of these articles could
be transferred now twenty years later to cover stories
that are still relevent and battles still being fought
today.  There is even one about the Chicago Police chief
and his getting aquitted for torture that again made the
news today. (finally a victory, the only one I found).

  This just the reason why Dems and Pubs have to go,
otherwise, todays headlines will still be the same headlines twenty more years down the road.

John,  great post,

You are so much better when you leave that truth light
business alone.

This final sentence in Chomsky’s commentary on Z caused questions about what he means—which is unusual because Chomsky usually write clearly, though at times uses long, involved sentences.
  In this commentary he has previously been advocating the establishment of nuclear free zones in the Middle East. Here is the questionable sentence:
  “Instead of taking practical steps towards reducing the truly dire threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, the US must take major steps towards reinforcing US control of the vital Middle East oil-producing regions, by violence if other means do not succeed. That is understandable and even reasonable, under prevailing imperial doctrine.”
  Because of the (relatively rare) use of “must” in this sentence, he comes off as approving the U.S.
“taking major steps toward reinforcing US control etc. etc.” 
  Knowing Chomsky’s prevailing interests in peace-making, I read that “must” as tied to the idea that, if US is to be consistent in its actions, it has to respond “by violence if other means do not succeed.”
  Here’s a parallel construction:  If you are to live up to your stated policy, you will have to (do so-and-so) in order to be consistent. (The question of whether your action will be moral or immoral is not addressed in this construction, which is what causes the confusion.)

A correction: Chomsky equates initial violence with retaliatory violence. So, he’s not forgetting this as i said in above post.tnx

So, chomsky thinks he can pull one over on us by saying that military resistance to the occupation is as he says: “no doubt criminal”.
He ‘forgot’ [did he?] to say, that to him only, a resistance by pal’ns is criminal.

He also ‘forgets’ [means socalled forgetting] that violence begets violence and begotten violence being an equivalent to the initial violence; such as illegal and immoral european invasion of palestine; followed by their warfare and terror against a weaker and an indigenous pop.

he suggest also, tacitly tho, that an attack is ok but not defense.
We might, on basis of such rationalization, conclude that germany had been right and french, norwegian, croatian, slovene, bosnian, monte negrin, albanian and greek resistance were criminal.

Or does chomsky think that partizani wld have not attacked german ‘settlers’ on their lands?
Chomsky is proffering us quite a shallow landrobbing rational.

Uncle sam loves chomsky now; now that he has declared he’s against ROR and is for untouching counties for pal’ns and an unlimited state for ‘jews’ only or with pal’ns as second class people! tnx

Wow, so professor goes back and reads lots of ancient documents, apparently in their original languages, and because his research contradicts what someone was taught by some neighbor in sunday school, the professor is immediately attacked and derided as ‘nutty’.

Yep, that sounds like what passes for thought in America these days.