[Peace-discuss] Obama's Goons

Tue Nov 4 07:48:17 CST 2008

One way in which the Obama campaign has been able to attain such record levels of popularity is by stifling dissent.

Obama's goon squads first came to fruition back during his senate campaign, when he successfully forced open the divorce records of Republican opponent Jack Ryan, thus assuring his easy election to the Senate.

He now continues to refuse to allow anyone to show up at a public forum and question his tyrannous positions on the greater Middle East conflict, or on his close relationship to Wall St. funders, who have made his campaign the richest of all time.

I attended the Senator's final rally last night in Manassas, VA, on the outskirts of the dc-metro sprawl (currently residing in dc as a freelance translator), and was told that I could not enter with my anti-war sign, but was free to bring an Obama placard into the event. I then asked the officer if this was police policy or campaign policy, and he informed me that this was campaign policy.

This was infamously the policy at Obama's rally in Berlin, where he told the people of that city who have suffered so much for their freedoms that he had no respect for their right to free speech. And appearantly this has been the norm throughout all of his rallies.

Can we trust a president who doesn't trust us to express ourselves freely? I think not.

More about Obama's goons here:
http://sooshisoo.wordpress.com/2008/09/26/obama-censoring-free-speech/

-
Matt
> Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 02:51:23 -0600
> From: galliher at uiuc.edu
> To: jencart13 at yahoo.com
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Why Obama has to do that...
> CC: peace-discuss at anti-war.net
> 
> Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
> > ...Chomsky's vote isn't the issue here, but rather his intelligent,
> > thoughtful, appropriately nuanced and civilized way of presenting information
> > and opinions. I am sure we would all be honored to have him posting to
> > Peace-discuss.
> 
> [Chomsky is always worth attending to.  Here's a basic and rather flat-footed 
> review of a collection of his work, from an unusual source -- "Epoch Times," a 
> Falun Gong-connected newspaper based in NY.  --CGE]
> 
> 
> 	Book Review: ‘The Essential Chomsky’
> 	By Du Won Kang, Epoch Times Washington, D.C. Staff
> 	Nov 3, 2008
> 
> Many people have heard of Noam Chomsky, but few understand him. Chomsky 
> dominates the field of linguistics and made major contributions to psychology, 
> cognitive science, and computer science. For decades, he has been a strong and 
> sustained critic of U.S. military intervention, domestic politics, and the 
> corporate media.
> 
> He cannot be adequately categorized simply as a “far left” intellectual, nor can 
> his arguments be fairly labeled and dismissed as “conspiracy theory.”
> 
> His recent book, The Essential Chomsky, is a collection of over 400 pages of 25 
> essays and chapter excerpts from a wide range of his writings in philosophy, 
> linguistics, and politics that spans half a century. It is packed with 
> fascinating and important materials.
> 
> The Essential Chomsky jumps between diverse topics in chronological order, while 
> mentioning important concepts in just a few words and leaving obvious questions 
> unanswered. The Essential Chomsky cannot be a substitute for many of his other 
> books, which present his theories more thoroughly and convincingly.
> 
> This book review attempts to shed some light on a few of the major themes of The 
> Essential Chomsky, which covers complex and controversial topics that are as 
> relevant today as when Chomsky first started writing about them decades ago.
> 
> Chomsky: U.S. Foreign Policy and State Propaganda
> 
> Most of the essays in The Essential Chomsky are about Chomsky’s analysis and 
> strong critique of the U.S. government’s use of force abroad, the U.S. political 
> system that tends to constrain democratic participation of the majority of 
> Americans, and the corporate media that does not serve the public interest. 
> Chomsky offers surprising clarity and perspectives on these topics, and backs 
> them up with the same kind of rigor, intensity, and persistence that made him 
> enormously successful in linguistics.
> 
> According to Chomsky, Americans have been indoctrinated since childhood to 
> believe that the U.S. government is “for the people and by the people” and its 
> purposes are benevolent and noble. He says that this is largely a myth.
> 
> In “Foreign Policy and the Intelligentsia” of The Essential Chomsky, he presents 
> one of his main themes: “The United States, in fact, is no more engaged in 
> programs of international goodwill than any other state has been.”
> 
> Chomsky says, “The effective ‘national purpose’ will be articulated, by and 
> large, by those who control the central economic institutions, while the 
> rhetoric to disguise it is the province of the intelligentsia.”
> 
> In “Imperial Grand Strategy” of The Essential Chomsky, he says that it is 
> standard operating procedure to scare Americans into supporting a war.
> 
> He draws examples from the Reagan-Bush years. In 1985, President Reagan declared 
> a national emergency, because “The policies and actions of the government of 
> Nicaragua constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national 
> security and foreign policy of the United States,” and now the pattern seems to 
> repeat with Iraq, according to Chomsky.
> 
> “National security” is a technical term referring to the “special interests” of 
> those who control the domestic economic institutions, according to Chomsky.
> 
> Referring to the war on Iraq, Chomsky quotes political analyst Anatol Lieven: 
> that most Americans had been “duped… by a propaganda programme which for 
> systematic mendacity has few parallels in peacetime democracies.”
> 
> According to Chomsky, a global agenda of the U.S., “the most powerful state in 
> history,” has been to “maintain hegemony through the threat or use of military 
> force, the dimensions of power in which it reigns supreme.”
> 
> The Essential Chomsky includes many examples of decades of what Chomsky regards 
> as “lawlessness” and “atrocities” committed by the U.S., which pretends to be 
> acting defensively for national security and noble purposes about promoting 
> freedom and democracy abroad, while the U.S. corporate media systematically 
> produce biased reports and “remained properly subservient to the basic 
> principles of the state propaganda system, with a few exceptions...”
> 
> Chomsky singles out the New York Times in many of his examples.
> 
> Chomsky: 'Thought Control' in Democratic Societies
> 
> According to Chomsky, “thought control” in the U.S. is actually more effective 
> than in totalitarian states where obedience is secured by force because thought 
> control in the U.S. combines effective indoctrination while giving the 
> impression that our society is free and open.
> 
> The essays and chapter long excerpts of The Essential Chomsky mention the 
> “propaganda model” only briefly and do not explain convincingly how it is 
> possible that propaganda and thought control in the U.S. can be very effective 
> in our free and open society. For a more thorough explanation, we need to 
> examine some of Chomsky’s other works.
> 
> The “propaganda model” is a central concept in an earlier book, Manufacturing 
> Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, which Chomsky coauthored with 
> Edward S. Herman.
> 
> The propaganda model is a framework based on how the structure of the mainstream 
> media explains the general pattern of its biased performance.
> 
> According to Herman and Chomsky, some of the major factors that contribute to 
> the structure of the mainstream media include: concentration of ownership by 
> corporations and conglomerates such as General Electric that are driven by 
> profit; funding by profit seeking advertisers that influence shaping of contents 
> and distribution to more affluent segments of society; and sources for news that 
> rely heavily on the government and major businesses for information.
> 
> Herman and Chomsky write, “in contrast to the standard conception of the media 
> as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and their 
> independent authority…” the real purpose of the corporate media is to “inculcate 
> and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of the privileged groups 
> that dominate the domestic society and the state.”
> 
> According to Herman and Chomsky, the media serves this purpose in many ways: 
> through selection of topics, framing of issues, filtering of information, 
> emphasis and tone, and “by keeping debate within bounds of acceptable premises.”
> 
> Even in the cases of media involvement in the Vietnam War and Watergate, which 
> are widely regarded by the public as prime examples of an independent authority 
> of the media, the propaganda model performs well in predicting the general 
> pattern of media behavior, according to Herman and Chomsky. They argue that the 
> widely held beliefs about these events are misleading. Some of the details are 
> explained in The Essential Chomsky, for example in “Watergate: A Skeptical View.”
> 
> In Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Chomsky 
> explains that in a democratic society, independent thought can develop into 
> political action, and it is important for those in power to eliminate the threat 
> at its root by “necessary illusions” when it cannot be imposed by force.
> 
> According to the “propaganda model,” when considering the spectrum of opinion 
> that are allowed to be expressed, the model predicts well that the “spectrum 
> will be bounded by the consensus of the powerful elites while encouraging 
> tactical debate within it,” he says.
> 
> Chomsky explains: “The media do contest and raise questions about government 
> policy, but they do so almost exclusively within the framework determined by the 
> essentially shared interests of state-corporate power. Divisions among elites 
> are reflected in media debate, but departure from their narrow consensus is rare.”
> 
> Concentration of ownership of the media is high and increasing, and the elite 
> media set the agenda that others generally follow, according to Chomsky.
> 
> Chomsky explains that many journalists may believe that they are being objective 
> and truthful in providing information to help the public understand the world, 
> and sometimes they are successful.
> 
> However, “Journalists entering the system are unlikely to make their way unless 
> they conform to these ideological pressures, generally by internalizing the 
> values; it is not easy to say one thing and believe another, and those who fail 
> to conform will tend to be weeded out…”  he says.
> 
> Chomsky says, “The very structure of the media is designed to induce conformity 
> to established doctrine.”
> 
> In Profit Over People, Chomsky outlines some of the early developments of 
> systematic propaganda in the U.S. He says that the doctrines of modern political 
> democracy has been accurately expressed by Edward Bernays, one of the leading 
> figures of the public relations industry and member of the Woodrow Wilson’s 
> Committee on Public Information, the first U.S. state propaganda agency.
> 
> Chomsky quotes Bernays: “The intelligent minorities must make use of propaganda 
> continuously and systematically;” this process of “engineering consent” is the 
> very “essence of the democratic process.”
> 
> Walter Lippman, one of the most respected figures in journalism, is another 
> veteran of Wilson’s propaganda committee, according to Chomsky. “Manufacturing 
> Consent” is a term borrowed from Lippman who said that the intelligent minority 
> are responsible for setting policy and for “the formation of a sound public 
> opinion,” and the public’s “function” is to be “spectators of action,” not 
> participants, apart from periodic electoral exercises when they vote among the 
> specialized class.
> 
> Chomsky quotes Harold Lasswell, one of the founders of modern political science: 
> the masses must be controlled for their own good, and in more democratic 
> societies, where force is unavailable, social managers must turn to “a whole new 
> technique of control, largely through propaganda.”
> 
> ‘Conspiracy Theory’ as a Reflex
> 
> Almost as a reflex, this kind of analysis is often summarily dismissed as 
> “conspiracy theory.”
> 
> In the Manufacturing Consent, Herman and Chomsky say that they do not use any 
> kind of “conspiracy” hypothesis in their propaganda model.
> 
> In “Foreign Policy and the Intelligentsia” of The Essential Chomsky, Chomsky 
> says, “a standard and effective device for obscuring social reality” is the 
> pretense “that those who pursue the rational approach are invoking a ‘conspiracy 
> theory’…”
> 
> Labeling such analysis as a “conspiracy theory” can relegate it “to the domain 
> of flat-earth enthusiasts and other cranks, and the actual system of power, 
> decision-making, and global planning is safely protected from scrutiny,” says 
> Chomsky.
> 
> Chomsky’s Focus on the U.S.
> 
> Here is a revealing excerpt from “Foreign Policy and the Intelligentsia” of The 
> Essential Chomsky, which summarizes Chomsky’s view of an important aspect of the 
> nature of power in the U.S. and other powerful nations throughout human history:
> 
> “In every society there will emerge a caste of propagandists who labor to 
> disguise the obvious, to conceal the actual workings of power, and to spin a web 
> of mythical goals and purposes, utterly benign, that allegedly guide national 
> policy… that the nation is guided by certain ideals and principles, all of them 
> noble… that the nation is not an active agent, but rather responds to threats 
> posed to its security, or to order and stability, by awesome and evil outside 
> forces.”
> 
> Both totalitarian and democratic nations do this, says Chomsky, although they 
> differ in the manner in which they do them. Among the democratic nations, the 
> U.S. leads in terms of its achievements in propaganda and thought control, 
> according to Chomsky.
> 
> Why does Chomsky focus much of his analysis and criticism on the U.S.?
> 
> In various interviews, Chomsky explains that, as a U.S. citizen and with the 
> freedom that he has, he is partially responsible for the actions of the U.S., 
> the most powerful nation on earth.
> 
> This sentiment has persisted since the 1960s, if not earlier. Chomsky explains 
> why he feels such a responsibility in “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” an 
> essay published in 1966, and reproduced in The Essential Chomsky.
> 
> In a touching essay, “On Resistance” of The Essential Chomsky, he writes in 1967 
> as a young man about his participation in civil disobedience against the Vietnam 
> War and about “a moral responsibility that cannot be shirked.”
> 
> Linguistics and Philosophy of Human Nature
> 
> There are over half dozen chapters in The Essential Chomsky that clarify the 
> development of Chomsky’s thoughts on linguistics and philosophy of human nature, 
>   related to important aspects of psychology and cognitive science.
> 
> The first chapter, “A Review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior,” written in 
> 1959, is a classic. Here, Chomsky delivers a sharp criticism of the behaviorist 
> approach to “accommodate human behavior involving higher mental faculties,” and 
> how that approach must inevitably fail to account for major aspects of complex 
> human verbal behavior.
> 
> He argues that, while Skinner’s approach fails to account for complex verbal 
> behavior, the study of linguistic structure and language acquisition of a child, 
> who learns a lot more than what is taught, could lead to important insights into 
> the inner nature of the human mind. This work contributed to the end of the 
> dominance of the behaviorist program in psychology and the beginning of a 
> multidisciplinary field that is now known as cognitive science.
> 
> The Essential Chomsky also includes more recent works on related topics in 
> linguistics and philosophy, for example, in “New Horizons in the Study of 
> Language and Mind,” first published in 2000. Chomsky discusses how human faculty 
> of language is unique to humans, distinct from animals, and “enters crucially 
> into every aspect of human life, thought, and interaction.” He explains that 
> this faculty of language is largely responsible for the fact that only humans 
> have a history and culture.
> 
> Connections between Linguistics and Political Activism
> 
> Over the years, Chomsky has been asked the question repeatedly: Is there a 
> connection between his intense research in linguistics and his political 
> activism? His answers have varied between “virtually no connection” to a 
> “tenuous connection.”
> 
> “Language and Freedom” in The Essential Chomsky, an essay written in 1970, 
> explains the “tenuous connection” in some depth.
> 
> Chomsky writes, “A vision of a future social order is in turn based on a concept 
> of human nature. If in fact man is indefinitely malleable, completely plastic 
> being, with no innate structures of mind and no intrinsic needs of a cultural or 
> social character, then he is a fit subject for the ‘shaping of behavior’ by the 
> state authority, the corporate manager, the technocrat, or the central committee.”
> 
> Chomsky disagrees with this premise: humans are not indefinitely malleable and 
> they have innate structures of mind. Human languages share common structures at 
> deep levels, and they “reflect intrinsic properties of human mental 
> organization,” according to Chomsky.
> 
> Chomsky also makes interesting connections from seventeenth and 
> eighteenth-century philosophy and linguistics to his conception of human nature 
> and dignity. He describes the developments in the modern field of linguistics, 
> to which he has contributed greatly, as a kind of return to Wilhelm von 
> Humboldt, an eighteenth-century theoretical linguist and advocate of libertarian 
> and anarchist values.
> 
> According to Chomsky, “predatory capitalism” was successful in creating advanced 
> technology and permitting some limited freedom. However, he writes, “It is 
> incapable of meeting human needs… and its concept of competitive man who seeks 
> only to maximize wealth and power… is anti-human and intolerable in the deepest 
> sense.”
> 
> Chomsky concludes: “Social action cannot await a firmly established theory of 
> man and society… The two – speculation and action – must progress as best they 
> can, looking forward to the day when theoretical inquiry will provide a firm 
> guide to the unending, often grim, but never hopeless struggle for freedom and 
> social justice.”
> 
> The DVD, Manufacturing Consent (Noam Chomsky and the Media), shows how Chomsky 
> was introduced to linguistics by his father (who was a world renown Hebrew 
> grammarian) and that he grew up in a radical Jewish community in New York City 
> where he was regularly exposed to anarchist literature with a sense of 
> solidarity with the working class community. Hence, Chomsky was exposed to both 
> linguistics and social activism since early childhood, and it is hard to say 
> which influenced the other more strongly.
> 
> Chomsky’s writings appear to be entirely secular. His theories about the 
> uniqueness of humans and their innate creativity are also entirely secular. He 
> understands that the connection he draws between his conceptions of human nature 
> and his social activism is speculative.
> 
> The connection remains tenuous. Nothing in Chomsky’s works can fully explain the 
> certainty of his moral convictions that have impelled him to help others for 
> half a century.
> 
> Optimism and Limitations
> 
> Independent thinking and research is Chomsky’s strength. He is a social critic 
> who tries to break through the illusions and to raise the consciousness of 
> others so that more people may decide on their own to participate in democracy 
> more freely. He is neither a policy maker nor a leader or manager of large-scale 
> social movements.
> 
> The Essential Chomsky suddenly ends with a brief and surprising tone of 
> optimism, advice about promoting democracy, and a warning for the world and 
> future generations if people do not act together. His other books follow a 
> similar pattern.
> 
> In his other works, Chomsky explains the reasons for his optimism in greater 
> detail. For example, he explains that the powerful forces that work to limit 
> freedom and democracy have not been completely successful and the freedom that 
> we now enjoy in the U.S. is thanks to the sacrifices of thousands of courageous 
> people in the past, many of whose names have long been forgotten.
> 
> He explains that along with greater freedom, people have a greater 
> responsibility, and they have to make the effort and not be passive.
> 
> Manufacturing Consent, the DVD (not the book), which is surprisingly easy to 
> follow given the range of topics it covers, presents a good introduction about 
> Chomsky’s life and includes some entertaining video clips of his lectures. The 
> DVD includes a fuller presentation of Chomsky’s optimism and warning.
> 
> Given the controversial nature of the things that Chomsky discusses, it is no 
> surprise that there are many who are highly critical of him.
> 
> For example, in The Anti-Chomsky Reader, essays by linguists, a sociologist, and 
> conservative writers attack Chomsky’s various works on linguistics, political 
> theories, and the mass media.
> 
> One of the more interesting criticisms of Chomsky discussed on the Internet is 
> about his apparent avoidance of discussing the Bilderberg Group in his publications.
> 
> The criticisms and Chomsky’s responses to them are far beyond the scope of this 
> book review.
> 
> In spite of some possible shortcomings of Chomsky, he provides very important 
> and useful insights for further investigations. Whether you agree or disagree 
> with Chomsky, his works are challenging and stimulating in deepening and 
> broadening our perspectives on matters that are very important to our future.
> 
> The Essential Chomsky brings together much of the essentials of Chomsky’s 
> numerous and wide range of writings in a single volume, and it should serve as a 
> valuable reference for the important points he has been trying to make for the 
> past half century.
> 
> References
> 
> Noam Chomsky. 2008. The Essential Chomsky. The New Press, New York. ISBN: 
> 978-1-59558-189-1
> 
> Directed by Peter Wintonick. 2002. Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky and the 
> Media (DVD). Zeitgeist Films. Ltd.
> 
> Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. 1988, 2002. Manufacturing Consent, The 
> Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon. ISBN: 0-375-71449-9
> 
> Noam Chomsky. 1989. Necessary Illusions, Thought Control in Democratic 
> Societies. South End Press. ISBN: 0-89608-367-5
> 
> Noam Chomsky. 1998, 1999. Profit Over People, Neoliberalism and Global Order. 
> Seven Stories Press. ISBN: 978-1-888363-82-1
> 
> Edited by Peter Collier and David Horowitz. 2004. The Anti-Chomsky Reader. 
> Encounter Books. ISBN: 1-893554-97-X
> 
> Last Updated Nov 3, 2008
> 
> http://en.epochtimes.com/n2/arts-entertainment/noam-chomsky-6579.html
> _______________________________________________
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> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
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