Who Rules the World? Reframings

by Noam Chomsky

Martin Wolf,

savage class war,

Marx must have his class war.

industrial societies,

Italy, Spain, Greece perhaps?

truth. American power in the world is, indeed, continuing its decline from its early post–World War II peak.

About time.

many

In proportion, how many.

Is America Over?

undermine Israel’s expansionist goals.

What expansionist goals? To where will they expand? I've never heard or seen expansionist goals?

Denialism

We call this the kind of excrement from bulls. Please see the facts, https://youtu.be/fundAMEnTAl

reconquer its former colony of Indochina,

This is revisionist. The idea, rightly or wrongly, was to stem the tide of communist expansion. 60 million killed by Mau. We knew, through our Stalin experience, these were brutal regimes on a Nazi scale.

one of the worst human rights records

Alongside .....

near-genocidal

Like the near genocidal behaviour of Ghandi and Nero to Muslims. Or Rwandans, or Turks to Armenian but these dont fit his leftist anti US narrative.

socialist democracy in

That's an oxymoron. Socialism properly understood as a Marxist classless ideology, is anything but democratic.

fundamentalism

I guess you're speaking of Saudi, and Turkey.

behind.

I remember visiting US in 81 and it was booming.

by the Economic Policy Institute,

29% of its income is from unions! No bias there then 😁

international monitors.

Hamas and Hezbollah have Gaza and the West Bank sown up like a kipper. That statement is untenable without reliable references.

Palestinians

No mention of the Palestinians in the Kneset, of the humanitarian work of Israel, of the commitment to destroy Israel by Palestinian popular militants.

mainstream scholarship:

Mainstream scholarship is often wrong especially in matters of politics.

illegal

Certainly not illegal under Israeli law. It's a claim they're illegal. Just because the UN may have called for settlements to stop. Who are they+ these are ancient Jewish homelands.

Council

Who sit in New York making pronouncements

wealth or power.

Hezbollah are Iran's proxy warriors in Syria. Hamas has billionaires and a number of millionaires in its leadership.

Richard the Lion-Hearted,

So what? It wasn't asked for or acknowledged

all signs, in this view, that End Times and the Second Coming are approaching.

Unfortunately that is true

servicing a tiny percentage of the superrich

Political rhetoric

polls show that Israel is regarded as the leading threat to peace.

Hardly surprising given the media bias

nuclear war and environmental catastrophe, both literally threatening the decent survival of the species. Quite the contrary: both threats are ominous and increasing.

Okay, let's agree. Now the question is why does it matter? Ultimately, who cares? Why bother future generations with trouble of struggling and suffering? Because there's something deep in your being that says there is ultimate purpose, a beginning and a teleology.

Magna Carta, Its Fate, and Ours

not least because the Great Charter is being shredded before our eyes.

By people like you who abandon its precepts.

“the charter of every self-respecting man at any time in any land.”

And he was a man who loved a scrap. An avowed enemy of socialism. Yet a serious drunk and gambling addict bailed out by wealthy powerful people

founding the modern doctrine of separation of church and state—still

Oh God help me, such ignorance. The reason Thomas a Beckett and Cromwell were executed because of the state and church have separate functions. One to govern the other to speak truth to power.

commodity economy and capitalist practice and morality.

Well mankind's greed may well have driven enterprise, wealth creation, and a value economy. Let's give thanks we are not in hessian clothing and living in wattle and dawb homes. Or maybe we'd be in a better place spiritually if death were more imminent.

ample profits.

I'm not denying it but these enterprises are meeting demand.

imposed upon them,

I know how they feel and there seems nothing I can do. I've no political representation. Babies are willfully killed and two mainstream political parties are openly promoting it. That's how deeply depraved we've become.

Major industries are devoted to the task: public relations, advertising, and marketing generally, all of which add up to a very large component of the gross domestic product. They are dedicated to what the great political economist Thorstein Veblen called “fabricating wants.”14 In the words of business leaders themselves, the task is to direct people to “the superficial things” of life, like “fashionable consumption.” That way people can be atomized, separated from one another, seeking personal gain alone, diverted from dangerous efforts to think for themselves

challenge authority.

That's a paragraph with which I can fervently agree.

Bolshevik

They used brutality instead

device does, however, trap and control young people through debt,

I can see that. But things have to be paid for.

Women were scarcely persons;

Cow dung. Women were treated with high regard. Protected and respected in a way we have forgotten

principles held that “the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage,

More cow dung. The two are one flesh

property

Cow dung. The woman is strong and noble and the family bonded through her love.

They were not peers.

Equal but different roles. Men didn't have the right to be matriarch. Mind you Debra was a judge over Israel. We needed to have women on juries

vagrancy, or for attempted rape if accused of looking at a white woman the wrong way. And once imprisoned, he had few chances of ever escaping the system of

It was awful and showed the depravity of men's hearts

Week the World Stood Still

These were surely aimed at China at a moment of elevated regional tensions. To this day, Okinawa remains a major offensive U.S. military base over the bitter objections of its inhabitants.

The US have not been well behaved guests by all accounts

the Cubans

The brutal revolutionary leadership to be precise. Let's not forget Cubans had no say.

Ronald Reagan’s vicious terror

However, clumsy and ill-advised these were actions in response to a threat. Like the Mexican wars of the 1850s US is most arrogant about its offer of democracy. Bringing freedom and democracy through mayhem

“Russian

Soviet actually. Just because you can't zee them doesn't mean they're not around. Ask the Crimeans

defensive move

Notwithstanding the best form of defence is attack.

“counterinsurgency”—a standard term for terrorism

That's not true of tve Rhodesians fighting the Mau Mau or Brits the IRA. He's making stuff up

fundamental principle that the United States has the unilateral right to deploy nuclear missiles anywhere,

He's right. It's like saying we've the only true democracy so that allows us, with our Welsh to govern the world. It seems to kinda work.