Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 P...

Very timely. Very interesting. It's the companion book to the documentary by the same name. I liked that he went back 50 years to put what is happening today in our government and society in prospective and giving us the history of what has led up to today. He gives examples as well as excerpts of his source materials. This is written so it can be understood by everyone. I learned a lot. There is a lot to think about in these pages.

An excellent little book, quickly read. Chomsky has been arguing the same points so routinely for so long that, even in these unrehearsed and lightly edited interviews, he is fluent in listing off the detailed evidence on which he builds his arguments. Indeed, because they are interview notes, they read fluently and effectively in a way that more laborious and more academic writing would not match.

Chomsk'y concern is that the USA is an imperfect democracy. "It has democratic institutions but they barely function... The genius of American politics has been to marginalise and isolate people." [p198]It operates for the benefit of a small elite, and of the corporations which the elite have successfully but quite illegitimately made into their selfish empires. Popular institutions that might enable true democratic influence,and especially trades unions, are repressed in the USA.

In order to pull off this stunt, it is essential to control the way people think and what they believe and the mechanisms for this were devised during the First World War, initially in Britain with the Ministry of Information, then in the U.S with the Committee on Public Information; these innovations were later built upon by the early gurus of public relations, not least Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann. A trip to Wikipedia to read more about Bernays really does repay the effort and reinforce what Chomsky has to say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
and not least this line:
"Bernays felt that the public's democratic judgment was "not to be relied upon" and he feared that "they [the American public] could very easily vote for the wrong man or want the wrong thing, so that they had to be guided from above." This "guidance" was interpreted by" [his daughter] "Anne to mean that her father believed in a sort of "enlightened despotism" ideology"

It is quite important to understand the extent to which the methods of totalitarian government were developed in the western democracies as much as, and before, the more notorious cases of fascist and communist regimes. Chomsky does not pursue this point very far, though he does note that the Nazis modelled their ideas on Britain and the USA. This issue is developed in another book I reviewed this year, War and Revolution: Rethinking the Twentieth Century by Domenico Losurdo. It is a hard idea to accept at first, so I certainly have needed to see it raised in quite a few different places for it to sink home.

The detailed accounts of events in this book, although certainly they belong to their time (2005), bear endless repetition, but the real value of Chomsky's work is to alert readers to the way in which political opinion is manipulated and political power abused. In a telling passage, he observes how easily the American (and the World's) public understood that "Chemical Ali," Iraq's Defence Minister, was prepared to persist in telling outright lies in the face of blatant counter evidence, yet the same behaviour by American and British Governments was allowed to pass with minimal serious challenge within those two great bastions of free speech. Asked how we might protect against being lied to, Chomsky suggests that we try using our common sense more. He makes repeated reference to the amazing claims that some tiny and unimportant little country (Florida under the Spanish, Haiti, Guatamala, Nicaragua, Cuba) has the power to endanger the most astonishing military and economic power on the planet. He points out the absurdity of believing that a country like Iraq would ever be allowed (not only by the USA, but by Israel, by Saudi Arabia) to enjoy democratic government. Such claims are just too incredible to be believed, yet they are the claims used to justify all sorts of American actions.

He is right to argue that it is terribly easy, in the comfortable conditions of our western democracies, for any citizen taking a little trouble to establish a better grasp on reality and there is no excuse for being so routinely seduced by propoganda. He is right to observe that the common people in other countries, supposedly less developed and less democratic, have absolutely no difficulty seeing that they are being lied to. But I think this also highlights the power of propaganda, the ability of the elite to manage popular opinion, and the extent to which people in a democracy will vote for politicians and policies that are utterly harmful to their own interests. It also highlights for me the poverty of leadership in opposition to those politicians and policies and the importance of Chomsky as a voice crying in the wilderness.

الكتاب عبارة عن الثلاث فصول الاولى من كتاب ارهاب القراصنة وارهاب الأباطرة وكنت قراءت الكتاب من فترة فقلت فرصة اعيد قراءته مرة ثانية والترجمة المرة ده احسن الصراحة مضافا اليها هوامش مهمة .

كعادة تشومسكي كتاب مهم ومن مميزات اشومسكي عندما تقرأ له كانك بتقرأ قصة سياسية اسلوب سهل لايصال المعلومة.

الكتاب مقسم الى ثلاث فصول

الفصل الأول :

يتكلم ان المنظرون الديمقراطيون لاحظوا منذ زمن طويل أنه فى المجتمع المتحرر الذي يكون للشعب فيه صوت مسموع وتكون الحكومة لا تقدر على استخدام وسائل العنف فى الدفاع عن مصالح النخبة التي تسيطر على شئون البلاد , يتعين على النخبة ضمان ألا ينطق هذا الصوت إلا بأشياء الملائمة , وابتكار اساليب لصناعة الموافقة , وطبعا اهم ابتكار هو الاعلام الذى يصنع ما يسمى بهندسة الموافقة. لكن فى الدول الاخري يتم استخدام العنف حتى لا يتم النطق الا بأشياء ملائمة.

ومن ضمن الاساليب لعمل غسيل مخ للشعب عمل مناظرات سياسية فيفرح الشعب ويتغنى بالحرية لكنه لا يعلم ان المناظرة تكون داخل افتراضات سياسية مسبقة تضم مذاهب اساسية لتضمن الالتزام بالخط السائد .

واعطى مثال على ذلك موقف امريكا واسرائيل فى عملية السلام وحرب فيتنام .

الفصل الثانى :

بدأ الفصل بزيارة من شيمون بيريز لريجان عام 1985 لمناقشة عملية السلام فى منطقة الشرق الاوسط , وتعجب من كيف يتم الحديث بين اثنين من أكبر قادة ارهاب فى العالم على السلام , وذلك لأنهم يتحدثوا عن السلام من وجهة نظر أمريكا الذى لا يهدد الوجود الفلسطيني بل يلغيه , وحتى عندما طرح عرفات حل لاعتراف متبادل بين الدولتين عام 1984 رفضته اسرائيل ولم ترد عليه امريكا اساسا , ولم يقوم الاعلام الامريكي حتى بنشر الخبر , بل عام 1985 قصفت اسرائيل جواً مدينة حمام بتونس للقضاء على منظمة التحرير وعلى عرفات وقتلت مدنيين ولم تلام من احد .

فيديو عن القصف الاسرائيلي


وتكلم عن غزو لبنان وان منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية التزمت بوقف اطلاق النار لمدة عام وكان ذلك كارثة لاسرائيل لانها يهدد سياسة التهرب من اقرار تسوية اسرائيلية, فأخذت تقوم بأعمال عدائية حتى ترد المنظمة وتتخذ اسرائيل اى سبب للقيام بغزو لبنان , وقال ان الذى سهل غزو لبنان اتفاقية السلام التى قامت بين اسرائيل ومصر لأن اسرائيل صعب جدا انها تقوم بغزو لبنان وليست مؤمنة حدودها مع مصر .

وتكلم مؤرخ عسكري اسرئيلي ان من اهداف الغزو عمل نظام جديد موالى لاسرائيل في لبنان والشرق الاوسط , ودفع مسيرة التحول الساداتى لبقية الدول العربية

"عشان بس يارب الناس تعرف ان الكلام ان اتفاقية السلام مع اسرائيل كانت ضد اسرائيل وان السادات ضحك عليهم والكلام ده كله اى كلام الصراحة , لما يكونوا مش عايزين سلام مش هيتعمل سلام وهيستمروا فى اشعال المنطقة واتخاذ اى اسباب للعدوان ولما يكونوا عايزين سلام هيتعمل بشروطهم وبمباركة امريكية طالما احنا اصلا ورئيسنا بنقول ان الحل فى يد امريكا الى هيا اصلا اكبر حليف لاسرائيل فى الدنيا كلها "

الفصل الثالث :

تكلم عن معمر القذافى وكيف اتهمت امريكا ليبيا بالقيام بعمل ارهابى فى مطاري روما وفيينا وذلك السبب فى ضرب أمريكا لخليج سرت , ومع ان وزيري الداخلية النمساوي والايطالى قالوا انه امريكا لم تقدم دليل لإدانة ليبيا الا ان امريكا قامت بالهجوم.
وامريكا ايضا اتهمت ليبيا بتفجير ملهى ليلي ببرلين وبدون ايضا اى دليل , قامت امريكا بقصف بنى غازي وطرابلس .

فامريكا تقوم باستخدام كلمة ارهاب لاى عمل تقوم به اى دولة او منظمة ضد مصلحة أمريكا لكن عندما تقوم امريكا واسرائيل باعمال اكثر ارهابا وحتى ابادة جماعية يسمى انتقاما او دفاع عن النفس وليس ارهابا .

كتاب جيد انصح به .

Very interesting. It is nice to know that I'm not the only one that holds some of these views.