I am so old that I can remember how, in the early seventies, people accused Noam Chomsky of working for the C.I.A.
I was reminded of those rumors when I read Marcus Day and George Gallanis's report for W.S.W.S.:
Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and prominent critic of US foreign policy, gave a talk on September 26 at the University of Chicago. The lecture, titled, “On Power and Ideology,” was organized under the aegis of Haymarket Books, the publishing house of the pseudo-left International Socialist Organization (ISO).
While the event attracted considerable interest, anyone who came looking for answers to the great problems facing humanity—above all, the threat of world war between nuclear-armed powers—was offered nothing more than the thoroughly bankrupt strategy of supporting the “lesser of two evils,” i.e. the Democratic Party.
The meeting, held on the same night as the first of the presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, drew large numbers of young people. Tickets for the event sold out within hours. Eighteen hundred were reportedly in attendance, and over 1,000 more watched the livestream online.
Anthony Arnove, a member of the ISO who sits on the editorial boards of the group’s International Socialist Review and Haymarket Books, introduced Chomsky, saying, “He embodies, more than any other person alive, the meaning of solidarity.” The question of solidarity with whom, or with what class, was not elaborated on.
Chomsky, beginning his lecture, stated, “For the first time in human history, it’s necessary to make a crucial decision: Will organized human life continue to exist on this earth, or will it not. And that’s not in the indefinite future; it’s in the near future.”
The two major threats to “decent human survival,” Chomsky said, were those of nuclear war and environmental catastrophe. However, while criticizing certain features of US foreign and environmental policy, Chomsky continuously sought to portray the Republican Party in general and Trump in particular as a far greater menace than Clinton and the Democratic Party, stating, “Considering the stakes, it’s a fair question to ask whether there’s ever been a more dangerous organization than today’s Republican Party.”
Under conditions in which there is growing disillusionment with the Democratic Party, with millions of workers and young people having undergone eight years of perpetual war and declining living standards overseen by the Obama administration, Chomsky is seeking to deploy his “left-wing” credentials in order to prevent at all costs a break from the Democrats. In this endeavor, he finds common cause with Senator Bernie Sanders, who is currently touring the country to drum up support among his former followers for Clinton who is broadly and justifiably despised for her pro-Wall Street and warmongering record.
Mr. Chomsky is very often not the hero he purports to be -- and that has been true for many, many decades.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:
Wednesday, October 12, 2016. Chaos and violence continues as the US media covers for Hillary Clinton.
Starting with War Hawk Hillary Clinton.
Starting with War Hawk Hillary Clinton.
Ray Downs
"Foreign Policy" endorsement of HRC doesn't mention Iraq Syria Libya or Honduras. Does say she'll be 1st woman POTUS
Of course they can't mention her foreign policy -- it's destroyed the world.
RT DrJillStein: ISIS grew out of the chaos in Iraq and Libya - two disastrous wars supported by HillaryClinton. #NoMoreWar #GreenTownHall
Judgement?
Hillary didn't read the intelligence briefing before voting to authorize war in Iraq
Ben Norton
Also: "It's time for the United States to start thinking of Iraq as a business opportunity"
-Hillary Clinton, 2011
So instead FOREIGN POLICY focuses on her being Madam Token, President Token, The Token In Chief.
And she focuses on demonstrating that she's the best defender of girls and women by . . . bring Al Gore out on the campaign trail. As Jeffrey St. Clair (COUNTERPUNCH) pointed out:
+ This week HRC sends Al Gore out on the campaign trail as her personal envoy to millennials, despite three allegations against the former VP for sexual assault. Why no outrage from feminists or Nation magazine editors?
+ Josh and I interviewed Al Gore’s Portland accuser for a couple of hours. She sounded very credible to us.
+I thought it was now incumbent upon liberal minded people to believe the stories of victims of sexual assault? But apparently liberal politicians are exempt from this rule.
+ Indeed, liberals habitually dismiss these sorts of allegations against their own kind–JFK (worshipped as a national demi-god, even after his sexual relationship with a 19-year-old intern named Mimi Alford), Bill Clinton (sexual assault allegations by Paula Jones, Kathrine Willey and Juanita Brodderick), Joe Biden (who had a notorious reputation for “hitting on” senate staffers, including the wife of a longtime CounterPunch writer), Ted Kennedy, who killed one woman and was allegedly involved in a 3-way with another Democratic senator (and one-time presidential candidate), an encounter known among DC insiders as “the waitress sandwich.” All still viewed as Heroes by the Left.
When feminists stand up to the Democratic Party, they tend to get trashed -- especially by the media. Witness what was done to Molly Yard when she was president of NOW and floated the notion that a third party was needed. Please note, THE NATION, et al, did not rush to Molly's defense as editorials and columns appeared with headlines like "Molly Yard Needs To Shut Up."
While feminists (non)leaders have worked the corner for their pimps, honest feminist voices have called Hillary out. That includes feminist Jill Stein (Green Party presidential candidate). That includes Liza Featherstone whose new book is FALSE CHOICES: THE FAUX FEMINISM OF HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON.
Liza Featherstone
Center for American Progress advised Clinton team against $15 minimum wage, leaked emails show interc.pt/2dGvZGt by @ZaidJilani
Neera Tanden is not a feminist. She's a woman.
She's a woman hungry for power.
That doesn't make her a feminist.
She's another corporate whore out to protect corporations.
In fairness to Jeffrey St. Clair, he doesn't know real feminists.
He knows, for example, his old buddy's niece Laura Flanders.
Remember Laura?
Hillary's worst critic ever.
Until now.
Now she urges you not just to vote for Hillary but to get out in the street for her.
She could be against Hillary when Hillary didn't have the nomination.
Which is why she wrote everything she did in 2008.
Now she's just another whore on the street corner -- but her streets get seedier and seedier.
Al Gore's return has prompted not talk of his harassment but instead of 2000.
A Basement Dweller
This Hillary supporter is actually defending Hillary's Iraq war vote.
Unbelievable.
#JillNotHill
How stupid is this strain of liars?
"Did Nader even vote in the election?"
Does idiot shannon1196 think that Iraq War vote was an election?
The idiots are out in full force and you saw them on MSNBC -- as usual -- yesterday.
'Nader stole the election from Gore! If it wasn't for Florida . . .'
No, you miserable liars.
Elections are not football games -- but I get that you're too stupid to grasp politics.
A 50 state election is politics.
And Florida captures the liars attention because its results were in dispute.
Reality, Florida's vote wouldn't have mattered at all if Al Gore could have won Tennessee -- his home state.
How do you lose your home state?
By being deeply unpopular.
Al Gore was a repeat failure long before the world knew he was a serial cheater -- I knew he was a cheater in 1992 when I met his mistress (her claim to fame? picking his tie for the v.p. debate -- and Ava and I reported on her three years before the women came forward with their charges that Al sexually harassed them -- perfectly believable since his mistress told me it started with jacking off because Al didn't consider a woman masturbating him to be "cheating" -- then, as the attraction grew on his part, he would move into penetration. So, yes, these women saying Al was demanding they masturbate him certainly fit the pattern his mistress described to me in 1992).
But long before he was a serial cheater, Al was a failed presidential candidate -- repeatedly.
And if he had carried his home state -- regardless of Florida's final tally -- he would have become president.
That's on Al Gore.
Hillary's getting plenty of attention in Iraq.
Trending Iraq News
#HillaryClinton’s Actions Are Worse Than #DonaldTrump’s Words #CreatorsSyndicateInc. #SupremeCourt...
Yes, the Donald Trump tape. Absolutely meaningless to foreign policy or a domestic agenda and not really that shocking.
How did it surface again?
Glen Ford (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) explains:
Clinton has long been the favorite of the corporate media, and her best TV friends are at NBC. The network had known for months about the 11-year-old tape in which its current employee, Billy Bush, a cousin and nephew of two presidents, joined with Trump in piggish banter degrading women. NBC chose to release the tape at precisely the right moment to suck the air out of a new batch of Wikileaks documents that could have been catastrophic for the Clinton campaign. As a result, everybody and their mother knows that Trump brags about grabbing women’s private parts, but far fewer folks learned what Clinton said to those bankers and other One Percenters that have paid her $26 million for private speeches. If the contents of her bankster speeches had been divulged at the height of her primary race against Bernie Sanders, Clinton would never have won the nomination, because they reveal her as a methodical, cynical liar who wants to cut Social Security and send millions more jobs overseas.
Clinton told the bankers at Morgan Stanley that she agreed with the co-chairs of President Obama’s Deficit Reduction Commission, who proposed cutting Social Security and making Americans wait longer to collect their benefits. She called that “the right framework” to “restrain spending” and “incentivize growth”
To earn her $200,000-plus check, Clinton confided to Brazilian bankers that her “dream” is "a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders” -- that is, a kind of super-NAFTA agreement that stretches from the North Pole to the South Pole. Even Santa Claus would get outsourced in Hillary’s vision of “free trade.”
And Margaret Kimberley (BAR) adds:
Of course the press had to work up outrage over the Trump tape. Wikileaks revealed the contents of Hillary’s speeches before corporate audiences. She and her husband have gotten rich by doing the business of the 1% and simultaneously got their buy in for her campaign. Of course, Republicans also bow down to the ruling classes. When the unpredictable Trump made noises about the trade deals beloved by both parties he wrote his political obituary.
Trump supporters like their guy, warts and all. They are very unhappy with the Republican leadership who are pushing him under the bus. This ginned up frenzy is meant to keep Democrats from staying home on election day or voting for the Green Party instead of for corrupt Hillary. The only way to pull the awful Hillary over the finish line is to raise the level of disgust directed at Donald.
No stone is being left unturned. In their herculean the effort to make the unlikeable Hillary likeable, the Democrats also resurrected the canard of Russian involvement in the damning email leaks. In the next four weeks we can expect to hear more filthy talk and claims of Putinite conspiracy. The nonsense is all in the service of keeping both wings of the duopoly happy with the result.
Any media not telling you about those e-mails is not a media interested in serving the public. That includes the laughable NATION magazine. They are whores, all of the media, covering up the exposures from WikiLeaks as they rush to go to the well on a tape of two blow hards only revealing (a) they don't know women and (b) they don't have satisfying sex lives.
This morning has seen even more e-mails released by WikiLeaks:
WikiLeaks
RELEASE: The Podesta Emails Part 4 (1193 new emails) #HillaryClinton #PodestaEmails #PodestaEmails4 wlsearch.tk
The American media is no longer trusted because of the whoring they did for the Iraq War.
Guess what?
The American media didn't get better.
It's still whoring.
How Democrat aligned journalists threw the facts out the window to make a Russian conspiracy about WikiLeaks & Trump
Hillary Clinton secretly received debate question in advance from CNN
And there's always MSNBC:
Hillary Clinton reads from script during interview #PodestaEmails
Paul Joseph Watson
Stop pretending we have a fre press in the United States, we don't.
New York Times Caught Providing Bill Clinton Questions Before ‘Interview’
breitbart.com/2016-president…
See also:
This is the media that sold the war.
They have completely destroyed American's faith in the press.
And why?
Because they're not about reporting. They're about lying. They're about manufacturing consent.
And just as they want to sell wars -- Martha Raddatz should grab a gun and head to Syria already -- they want to sell Hillary (who will provide more wars).
David Sirota
REVEALED: In paid speech, Clinton said enviro groups opposing her effort to expand fracking are Russian front groups
She's a liar and she's the media's poster girl, their it girl.
That didn't happen by accident.
Nor did Iraq.
The Economist
To ensure a post-IS peace, Iraq's Sunnis must play a role in the country's future econ.st/2dqinJX
The American media has spent 8 years -- Barack's two terms as president -- ignoring that belief. And that belief has grown and grown as US-installed leaders of Iraq have persecuted the Sunnis.
It's what prompted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq -- but the press and the White House ignored it.
It has become the most deeply held political belief in the Arab world -- but most Americans have no idea of that because US media doesn't cover it.
The Sunnis are persecuted in Iraq.
And that persecution is going to result in years of struggle -- most likely global struggle -- if it is not addressed and addressed quickly.
