Is the World Too Big to Fail? By Noam Chomsky

Portrait, Noam Chomsky, 06/15/09. (photo: Sam Lahoz)

By Noam Chomsky, Al Jazeera English

30 September 11

ff the coast of China, that is; it has yet to be proposed that the US should eliminate military forces that deny the Caribbean to Chinese warships. China's lack of understanding of rules of international civility is illustrated further by its objections to plans for the advanced nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington to join naval exercises a few miles off China's coast, with alleged capacity to strike Beijing.

In contrast, the West understands that such US operations are all undertaken to defend stability and its own security. The liberal New Republic expresses its concern that "China sent ten warships through international waters just off the Japanese island of Okinawa." That is indeed a provocation - unlike the fact, unmentioned, that Washington has converted the island into a major military base in defiance of vehement protests by the people of Okinawa. That is not a provocation, on the standard principle that we own the world.

Deep-seated imperial doctrine aside, there is good reason for China's neighbours to be concerned about its growing military and commercial power. And though Arab opinion supports an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, we certainly should not do so. The foreign policy literature is full of proposals as to how to counter the threat. One obvious way is rarely discussed: work to establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the region. The issue arose (again) at the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference at United Nations headquarters last May. Egypt, as chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, called for negotiations on a Middle East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the US, at the 1995 review conference on the NPT.

International support is so overwhelming that Obama formally agreed. It is a fine idea, Washington informed the conference, but not now. Furthermore, the US made clear that Israel must be exempted: no proposal can call for Israel's nuclear programme to be placed under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency or for the release of information about "Israeli nuclear facilities and activities." So much for this method of dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat.

Privatising the planet

While Grand Area doctrine still prevails, the capacity to implement it has declined. The peak of US power was after World War II, when it had literally half the world's wealth. But that naturally declined, as other industrial economies recovered from the devastation of the war and decolonisation took its agonising course. By the early 1970s, the US share of global wealth had declined to about 25 per cent, and the industrial world had become tripolar: North America, Europe, and East Asia (then Japan-based).

There was also a sharp change in the US economy in the 1970s, towards financialisation and export of production. A variety of factors converged to create a vicious cycle of radical concentration of wealth, primarily in the top fraction of 1 per cent of the population - mostly CEOs, hedge-fund managers, and the like. That leads to the concentration of political power, hence state policies to increase economic concentration: fiscal policies, rules of corporate governance, deregulation, and much more. Meanwhile the costs of electoral campaigns skyrocketed, driving the parties into the pockets of concentrated capital, increasingly financial: the Republicans reflexively, the Democrats - by now what used to be moderate Republicans - not far behind.

Elections have become a charade, run by the public relations industry. After his 2008 victory, Obama won an award from the industry for the best marketing campaign of the year. Executives were euphoric. In the business press they explained that they had been marketing candidates like other commodities since Ronald Reagan, but 2008 was their greatest achievement and would change the style in corporate boardrooms. The 2012 election is expected to cost $2bn, mostly in corporate funding. Small wonder that Obama is selecting business leaders for top positions. The public is angry and frustrated, but as long as the Muasher principle prevails, that doesn't matter.

While wealth and power have narrowly concentrated, for most of the population real incomes have stagnated and people have been getting by with increased work hours, debt, and asset inflation, regularly destroyed by the financial crises that began as the regulatory apparatus was dismantled starting in the 1980s.

None of this is problematic for the very wealthy, who benefit from a government insurance policy called "too big to fail." The banks and investment firms can make risky transactions, with rich rewards, and when the system inevitably crashes, they can run to the nanny state for a taxpayer bailout, clutching their copies of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.

That has been the regular process since the Reagan years, each crisis more extreme than the last - for the public population, that is. Right now, real unemployment is at Depression levels for much of the population, while Goldman Sachs, one of the main architects of the current crisis, is richer than ever. It has just quietly announced $17.5bn in compensation for last year, with CEO Lloyd Blankfein receiving a $12.6m bonus while his base salary more than triples.

It wouldn't do to focus attention on such facts as these. Accordingly, propaganda must seek to blame others, in the past few months, public sector workers, their fat salaries, exorbitant pensions, and so on: all fantasy, on the model of Reaganite imagery of black mothers being driven in their limousines to pick up welfare checks - and other models that need not be mentioned. We all must tighten our belts; almost all, that is.

Teachers are a particularly good target, as part of the deliberate effort to destroy the public education system from kindergarten through the universities by privatisation - again, good for the wealthy, but a disaster for the population, as well as the long-term health of the economy, but that is one of the externalities that is put to the side insofar as market principles prevail.

Another fine target, always, is immigrants. That has been true throughout US history, even more so at times of economic crisis, exacerbated now by a sense that our country is being taken away from us: the white population will soon become a minority. One can understand the anger of aggrieved individuals, but the cruelty of the policy is shocking.

Targeting immigrants

Who are the immigrants targeted? In Eastern Massachusetts, where I live, many are Mayans fleeing genocide in the Guatemalan highlands carried out by Reagan's favourite killers. Others are Mexican victims of Clinton's NAFTA, one of those rare government agreements that managed to harm working people in all three of the participating countries. As NAFTA was rammed through Congress over popular objection in 1994, Clinton also initiated the militarisation of the US-Mexican border, previously fairly open. It was understood that Mexican campesinos cannot compete with highly subsidised US agribusiness, and that Mexican businesses would not survive competition with US multinationals, which must be granted "national treatment" under the mislabeled free trade agreements, a privilege granted only to corporate persons, not those of flesh and blood. Not surprisingly, these measures led to a flood of desperate refugees, and to rising anti-immigrant hysteria by the victims of state-corporate policies at home.

Much the same appears to be happening in Europe, where racism is probably more rampant than in the US One can only watch with wonder as Italy complains about the flow of refugees from Libya, the scene of the first post-World War I genocide, in the now-liberated East, at the hands of Italy's Fascist government. Or when France, still today the main protector of the brutal dictatorships in its former colonies, manages to overlook its hideous atrocities in Africa, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy warns grimly of the "flood of immigrants" and Marine Le Pen objects that he is doing nothing to prevent it. I need not mention Belgium, which may win the prize for what Adam Smith called "the savage injustice of the Europeans."

The rise of neo-fascist parties in much of Europe would be a frightening phenomenon even if we were not to recall what happened on the continent in the recent past. Just imagine the reaction if Jews were being expelled from France to misery and oppression, and then witness the non-reaction when that is happening to Roma, also victims of the Holocaust and Europe's most brutalised population.

In Hungary, the neo-fascist party Jobbik gained 17 per cent of the vote in national elections, perhaps unsurprising when three-quarters of the population feels that they are worse off than under Communist rule. We might be relieved that in Austria the ultra-right Jörg Haider won only 10 per cent of the vote in 2008 - were it not for the fact that the new Freedom Party, outflanking him from the far right, won more than 17 per cent. It is chilling to recall that, in 1928, the Nazis won less than 3 per cent of the vote in Germany.

In England the British National Party and the English Defence League, on the ultra-racist right, are major forces. (What is happening in Holland you know all too well.) In Germany, Thilo Sarrazin's lament that immigrants are destroying the country was a runaway best-seller, while Chancellor Angela Merkel, though condemning the book, declared that multiculturalism had "utterly failed": the Turks imported to do the dirty work in Germany are failing to become blond and blue-eyed, true Aryans.

Those with a sense of irony may recall that Benjamin Franklin, one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment, warned that the newly liberated colonies should be wary of allowing Germans to immigrate, because they were too swarthy; Swedes as well. Into the twentieth century, ludicrous myths of Anglo-Saxon purity were common in the US, including among presidents and other leading figures. Racism in the literary culture has been a rank obscenity; far worse in practice, needless to say. It is much easier to eradicate polio than this horrifying plague, which regularly becomes more virulent in times of economic distress.

I do not want to end without mentioning another externality that is dismissed in market systems: the fate of the species. Systemic risk in the financial system can be remedied by the taxpayer, but no one will come to the rescue if the environment is destroyed. That it must be destroyed is close to an institutional imperative. Business leaders who are conducting propaganda campaigns to convince the population that anthropogenic global warming is a liberal hoax understand full well how grave is the threat, but they must maximize short-term profit and market share. If they don't, someone else will.

This vicious cycle could well turn out to be lethal. To see how grave the danger is, simply have a look at the new Congress in the US, propelled into power by business funding and propaganda. Almost all are climate deniers. They have already begun to cut funding for measures that might mitigate environmental catastrophe. Worse, some are true believers; for example, the new head of a subcommittee on the environment who explained that global warming cannot be a problem because God promised Noah that there will not be another flood.

If such things were happening in some small and remote country, we might laugh. Not when they are happening in the richest and most powerful country in the world. And before we laugh, we might also bear in mind that the current economic crisis is traceable in no small measure to the fanatic faith in such dogmas as the efficient market hypothesis, and in general to what Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, 15 years ago, called the "religion" that markets know best - which prevented the central bank and the economics profession from taking notice of an $8tn housing bubble that had no basis at all in economic fundamentals, and that devastated the economy when it burst.

All of this, and much more, can proceed as long as the Muashar doctrine prevails. As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. He is the author of numerous bestselling political works, including 9-11: Was There an Alternative? (Seven Stories Press), an updated version of his classic account, just being published this week with a major new essay - from which this post was adapted - considering the 10 years since the 9/11 attacks.


A version of this piece was originally published on TomDispatch.com.

Cate Woodruff Reporting From Wall Street: Day 11

An activist works at the information desk of the OccupyWallStreet encampment at Liberty Plaza, 09/27/11. (photo: Cate Woodruff/Reader Supported News)

By Cate Woodruff, Reader Supported News

29 September 11

Reader Supported News | Report

ith much of the media focused on pepper-spraying police officers rather than what the protesters have to say, perhaps the best way to understand the motives and the people of OccupyWallStreet is to go down there and find out for yourself.

I first visited Liberty Plaza and OccupyWallStreet on the 4th day of the protest. At that time, it was new and vibrating with energy and peaceful determination. The protest was still taking shape.

My second visit was on Tuesday, September 27th - Day 11 of the protest - and the change is striking. Now there is a marked difference in the occupiers - they are more focused and they work in a highly organized way on a myriad of tasks. It feels like a well-run camp, with an outdoor office and a community living area.

They are determined and their efforts prove it. Good examples of this growing sense of commitment come from Patrick Bruner, one of the OccupyWallStreet organizers. I spoke with Patrick in Liberty Plaza.

Despite 11 days of occupation, Patrick remained upbeat and impressed by what has evolved all around him. For example, protesters started out sleeping on cardboard, but now have mattresses and bedding. A de facto media center popped up in the center of the camp, complete with computers, ongoing social networking and video live stream. They have set up information desks, a makeshift cafeteria filled with food donations delivered from both Manhattan restaurants and individual supporters, a small library, suggestion and donation boxes, a sign-making shop, and a communal area where they hold General Assembly meetings. During those meetings, they employ the "human microphone" technique in which every sentence is repeated by the group so those in the back can hear every word. This happens every morning when they plan the day's schedule, share ideas, and voice and hear concerns.

It sounds a lot like democracy.

After surveying the growing encampment, I also had the opportunity to march uptown from Liberty Plaza with OccupyWallStreet participants on Tuesday. The police quickly followed us, calling immediately for reinforcements and carrying a supply of orange nets and handcuffs. They frequently barked out orders, demanding that we get out of the street and back on the sidewalk. Yet, even as paddy wagons rolled along nearby, most cops were good-natured, polite and sometimes even smiled back!

At one point, though, a few senior officers stopped the march. It was a tense moment, as their blaring bullhorns demanded that we turn around and go back. Despite the sudden halt and growing police presence, demonstrators took the opportunity to hold a civil discussion - right there in the middle of the street - about their intentions, aspirations and commitment to human rights. Protesters voiced some concerns, but also declared to the assembled police officers, "We are so thankful for what you do to keep us safe," and "We are all in this together, we are all part of the 99%."

One lieutenant paused, but eventually let the protesters pass by and the procession moved forward again, chanting "The people united will never be defeated."

Unlike the ubiquitous pepper-spray video, there was no violence and no use of force. The OccupyWallStreet march ended at the Postal Service with hundreds of US postal workers joining in with the crowd. At that moment, OccupyWallStreet stood united with the often-embattled Postal Union.

Patrick says that the primary focus now is to grow the movement. Computer-savvy organizers are reaching out to various unions, organizations, individuals and groups in New York and around the country. They communicate with other organizers around the globe. And more events and marches are planned. They are dedicated to giving voice to the American people - the 99% - and demand an end to corruption on Wall Street. It is clear that the greed of Wall Street, which has permeated our government, its policy-making and our federal spending on many levels, has convinced many of these "occupiers" that America needs a new direction.

The more people hear what they have to say, the more Americans will begin to understand and to care about what is being stolen from them. At least, that's the hope. Patrick says he can see the positive effect they are already having and hopes that many more will join them over the coming days. Key to their success is getting out the message. So far, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Cornel West, Democracy Now!, Waging Nonviolence and Reader Supported News have all been in Liberty Plaza to help raise the profile of the protest and talk with the protesters. Getting the media to focus on their common cause with the 99% is crucial. Ultimately, if people stand together, we can make a difference. It's a simple but powerful message.

And if the Occupy movement comes to a city in your area, the best thing you can do is go on down and check it out.

Occupy Wall Street's Information Desk.


Daily General Assembly


General Assembly and Communal Area


Communal Area


Computer Area


Computer Networking


Suggestion Box


Occupy Wall Street March Meets Up with US Postal Union

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Cate is an artist, photographer and a Senior Editor with Reader Supported News.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

 

Why I Was Maced at the Wall Street Protests

Kelly Schomburg, 18, receiving medical treatment after being pepper-sprayed by police, and mere moments before being arrested, 09/24/11. (photo: Occupy Wall Street)

FOCUS: Why I Was Maced at the Wall Street Protests

By Jeanne Mansfield, Boston Review

17 August 10

Video by Jeanne Mansfield

y boyfriend Frank and I are heading toward Liberty Square to check out what's going on at the Occupy Wall Street protest, when we stumble upon the afternoon march toward Union Square. So we join up and walk along behind. The crowd looks like maybe 300 people, mostly punk-styled kids and folks carrying their computers (for live streaming, we found out later) and some aging-hippie types. People are beating drums, blowing whistles, carrying signs, and chanting: "Banks got bailed out, you got sold out!" and "We are the 99 percent!" and "All day, all week, occupy Wall Street!" and of course the classic "This is what democracy looks like!"

All in all, it starts out as a pretty good time. There are police, but for the most part they are walking behind the group casually, just beat cops bantering and laughing, keeping an eye on things. There are around 30 of them. We reach Union Square, circle it a couple times, and join the human microphone. The human microphone consists of one person speaking or shouting, and then everyone within earshot repeating, thus, a human amplifier, albeit with some delay. After about fifteen minutes, we are on the move again, the crowd spurred toward the United Nations by the messages transmitted from the human microphone.

As we circle Union Square, about twenty NYPD officers haul out orange plastic nets (the kind used to fence off construction sites) and close off the road, diverting the crowd. But the detour, too, is closed, leaving us only one option: straight down Broadway. The lighthearted carnival air begins to get very heavy as it becomes clear that we are being corralled. The main group, about 150 protesters, keeps on down the street, but the police are running behind with the orange nets, siphoning off groups of fifteen to twenty people at a time, classic crowd control.

A new group of police officers arrives in white shirts, as opposed to dark blue. These guys are completely undiscerning in their aggression. If someone gets in their way, they shove them headfirst into the nearest parked car, at which point the officers are immediately surrounded by camera phones and shouts of "Shame! Shame!"

Up until this point, Frank and I have managed to stay ahead of the nets, but as we hit what I think is 12th Street, they've caught up. The blue-shirts aren't being too forceful, so we manage to run free, but stay behind to see what happens. Then things go nuts.

The white-shirted cops are shouting at us to get off the street as they corral us onto the sidewalk. One African American man gets on the curb but refuses to be pushed up against the wall of the building; they throw him into the street, and five cops tackle him. As he's being cuffed, a white kid with a video camera asks him "What's your name?! What's your name?!" One of the blue-shirted cops thinks he's too close and gives him a little shove. A white-shirt sees this, grabs the kid and without hesitation billy-clubs him in the stomach.

At this point, the crowd of twenty or so caught in the orange fence is shouting "Shame! Shame! Who are you protecting?! YOU are the 99 percent! You're fighting your own people!" A white-shirt, now known to be NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, comes from the left, walks straight up to the three young girls at the front of the crowd, and pepper-sprays them in the face for a few seconds, continuing as they scream "No! Why are you doing that?!" The rest of us in the crowd turn away from the spray, but it's unavoidable. My left eye burns and goes blind and tears start streaming down my face. Frank grabs my arm and shoves us through the small gap between the orange fence and the brick wall while everyone stares in shock and horror at the two girls on the ground and two more doubled over screaming as their eyes ooze. In the street I shout for water to rinse my eyes or give to the girls on the ground, but no one responds. One of the blue-shirts, tall and bald, stares in disbelief and says, "I can't believe he just fuckin' maced her." And it becomes clear that the white-shirts are a different species. We need to get out of there.

The other end of the street is also closed off, and we are trapped on this one block along with about twenty frustrated pedestrians. My eye is killing me and I'm crying, partially from the pain and partially from the shock of the violence displayed by these police. A shirtless young "medic" with ripped cargo shorts, matted brown hair, and two plastic bottles slung around his neck runs up to me and says, "Did you get pepper sprayed? Okay here, tilt your head to the side, this isn't going to feel great," at which point he squirts one of the plastic bottles of white liquid into my left eye, then tilts my head the other way and does the other eye, then repeats with water. Then he unties the white bandanna from his wrist and wipes my eyes with it saying, "You'll be okay, this is my grandfather's bandanna, he got through Korea with it, and if he got through that, then you're going to get through this. Just keep blinking." Thanks to the treatment - liquid antacid, pepper-spray antidote - the burning behind my eyes subsides.

A woman with two little girls in tow walks up to a cop at the end of the block and explains that they just need to get to ballet, but he won't let them through. The woman seems to accept this, turns to the girls, thinks for a second, then marches straight to the edge of the fence at the corner of the building. A different officer sees them coming and, understanding their situation, lets them through. So Frank and I bolt for the same opening and escape.

The farther away we get, the more normal everyone starts to look. People have no clue about what's happening just five or six blocks down. Frank and I say maybe two words to each other the whole five-hour bus ride home.

Just for the record, I love cops. I do, my mother worked in the justice system for 30 years, and I've known a lot of really good cops, really good honorable people just doing their jobs. I've never agreed with the sentiment, "Fuck the Po-lice," and I still don't. But these guys are fucked up. There was an anger in those white-shirt's eyes that said, "You don't matter." And whether they were just scared or irrational or looking for a target for their rage, there was no excuse for their abuse of authority. I had always thought that people who complained about police brutality must have done something to provoke it, that surely cops wouldn't hurt people without a really good reason. But they do. We were on the curb, we were contained, we were unarmed. Pepper spray hurts like hell, and the experience only makes me wish I'd done something more to deserve it.