THREE FROM NOAM CHOMSKY

First a couple from his blog, via ZNet:

Oil for Food Farce

I presume the main motivation is to make sure that no one pays attention to the real scandal: that the US-imposed sanctions slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people, devastated the society, compelled the population to rely on Saddam Hussein for survival, and probably saved him from the fate of comparable monsters supported by Washington and London, including those now in office, all overthrown from within despite US-UK support to the very end in some of the worst cases.

That’s definitely not something that can be allowed to enter public discussion. Another motive could well be to divert attention from the fact that whatever corruption there may have been at the UN is scarcely a toothpick on the mountain of the vast corruption of the occupying authorities.

Click here for the rest.

I haven’t really posted on this oil-for-food corruption scandal because it struck me superficially as just another excuse for right-wing UN haters to beat their chests and point their fingers. According to Chomsky, when you look at the scandal relative to American actions concerning Iraq overall and the oil-for-food program specifically, I was pretty much right for not taking the story too seriously. Granted, corruption of this sort really shouldn’t be tolerated, but the people raising the biggest stink about it really have absolutely no moral authority to do so. I’m reminded of a good Bible verse. From the book of Matthew, chapter 7, verse 3:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Yeah, yeah, I know. Everybody says that, but nobody actually believes it.

Iraq’s Election

That is a real triumph of non-violent resistance, for which Sistani has been the symbol. The US sought in every possible way to avoid elections, but has been compelled to back down, step-by-step. First, it tried to ram through a US-written constitution. That was barred by a Sistani fatwa. Then it tried to impose one or another device (caucuses, etc.) that could be controlled completely. Also blocked by non-violent resistance. It continued until finally the US (and UK, trailing obediently behind) had no recourse but to allow an election—and of course, the doctrinal system went into high gear to present it as a US initiative, once it could no longer be avoided. The US also sought to undermine it as much as possible, e.g., by driving independent media out of the country (notably al-Jazeera, the most important), by ensuring that its own candidates, particularly Allawi, would be the only ones to have access to state resources to reach the public (most candidates had to remain unidentified), etc. But the US-UK couldn’t block the elections, greatly to the distress of Washington and London. The question now is whether they can be compelled to accept the outcome. There’s little doubt, even from the more serious mainstream press as well as from polls and from properly hawkish experts (like Anthony Cordesman) that people voted with the hope that it would end the occupation. Blair announced at once, loud and clear, that the prospect is not even being contemplated, clearly articulating his usual contempt for democracy.

Click here for more.

This is different from what I’ve been saying about the elections, that they are ultimately meaningless as long as US forces occupy Iraq. However, Chomsky makes a good point in that having elections at all represents something of a triumph for the Iraqi people: it means that the US does not exercise absolute control over Iraq's politics, and that there is bound to be tension between the newly elected government and American policy in the region. In this sense, the elections are not meaningless. On the other hand, I just cannot accept that our government is going to let their government do whatever it wants, like nationalizing Iraq’s vast oil resources, or insisting that the US military gets the hell out. Indeed, my prediction is that we’ll still have troops permanently stationed in Iraq twenty years from now, if not more.

Finally, getting away from his blogging quickies, Democracy Now presents about forty five minutes of a recent Chomsky speech in Santa Fe. Overall, the speech is on Iraq, but, as usual, Chomsky, ever the intellectual, is all over the place, incorporating ideas from several of his recent essays and articles. The excerpt I’m posting is a bit of a diversion from his overall topic, but well worth posting here. It’s a fairly big Chomsky meme, PR and politics, that I haven’t paid enough attention to here at Real Art:

U.S. Might Face "Ultimate Nightmare" in Middle
East Where Shiites Control Most of World's Oil

For many years, elections here, election campaigns, have been run by the public relations industry and each time it's with increasing sophistication. And quite naturally, the industry uses the same technique to sell candidates that it uses to sell toothpaste or lifestyle drugs. The point is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information, and similarly, to undermine democracy by same method, projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information. The candidates are trained, carefully trained, to project a certain image. Intellectuals like to make fun of George Bush's use of phrases like “misunderestimate,” and so on, but my strong suspicion is that he's trained to do that. He's carefully trained to efface the fact that he's a spoiled frat boy from Yale, and to look like a Texas roughneck kind of ordinary guy just like you, just waiting to get back to the ranch that they created for him to, you know, throw a cow over his shoulder or whatever you’re supposed to do on a ranch, but, all of this is careful training. Ordinary guy. Meanwhile, Kerry is trained to be a goose hunter and a motorcycle rider and so on and so forth. The other imagery seemed to work marginally better, but the important thing to do is to keep people from knowing the stands and positions of the candidates on any issue or the parties. And it sort of works. Take a look at the last election. Right before the election people were asked -- potential voters were asked, on what -- what are the grounds for your vote going to be? About 10% said they were voting on the basis of the candidate's stands on issues, agendas, policies and ideas. 6% for Bush voters, 13% for Kerry voters. The rest are voting for what are called qualities or values in the P.R. industry, which is, of course, all meaningless.

Click here to read the transcript of, watch, or listen to the speech.

Of course, this PR industry dominance within the American political sphere is why most Americans have such deluded views about what’s going on in Iraq: the aim of PR is to obscure the truth, not enlighten it. Consequently, we’re bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq rather than securing control of a vital global security interest. That is, their oil.

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