{"id":2547,"date":"2013-05-22T10:29:42","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T16:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=2547"},"modified":"2013-05-22T13:05:37","modified_gmt":"2013-05-22T19:05:37","slug":"noam-chomsky-hegemony-or-survival-americas-quest-for-global-dominance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=2547","title":{"rendered":"Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or survival: America’s quest for global dominance, but why boycott Israel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Childhood: 1928\u201345<\/h3>\n

Avram Noam Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928, in the affluent East Oak Lane<\/a> neighborhood of Philadelphia<\/a>, Pennsylvania<\/a>.[29]<\/a><\/sup>[30]<\/a><\/sup> His father, Dr. William “Zev” Chomsky<\/a> (1896\u20131977) had been born in Ukraine<\/a>, then a part of the Russian Empire<\/a>, and had fled to the United States in 1913 to avoid conscription into the army. Here, he began work in sweatshops in Baltimore<\/a>, Maryland<\/a>, before getting teaching work at the city’s Hebrew elementary schools, using his money to fund his studies at Johns Hopkins University<\/a>. He married Elsie Simonofsky \u2013 a native of what is now Belarus<\/a> who grew up in the United States \u2013 and they moved to Philadelphia, where they both began teaching at the Mikveh Israel religious school. William eventually rose to the position of school principal. In 1924 he was appointed to the faculty at the country’s oldest teacher training institution, Gratz College<\/a>, where he became faculty president in 1932. In 1955, he also began teaching courses at Dropsie College<\/a>. Independently, he was involved in researching Medieval Hebrew, eventually authoring a series of books on the language: How to Teach Hebrew in the Elementary Grades<\/em> (1946), Hebrew, the Story of a Living Language<\/em> (1947), Hebrew, the Eternal Language<\/em> (1957) and Teaching and Learning<\/em> (1959), as well as an edited version of David Kimhi’s Hebrew Grammar<\/em> (1952).[31]<\/a><\/sup> Described as a “very warm, gentle, and engaging” individual, William Chomsky placed a great emphasis on educating people so that they would be “well integrated, free and independent in their thinking, and eager to participate in making life more meaningful and worthwhile for all”, a view that would be subsequently be adopted by his son.[32]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Wikipedia<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contents of the book:<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
1. Priorities and Prospects<\/div>\n
2. Imperial Grand Strategy<\/div>\n
3. The New Era of Enlightenment<\/div>\n
4. Dangerous Times<\/div>\n
5. The Iraq Connection<\/div>\n
6. Dilemmas of Dominance<\/div>\n
7. Cauldron of Animosities<\/div>\n
8. Terrorism and Justice: Some Useful Truisms<\/div>\n
9. A Passing Nightmare?<\/div>\n
Notes Index<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n
Chapter 1<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Priorities and Prospects<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
A few years ago, one of the great figures of contemporary biology, Ernst Mayr, published<\/div>\n
some reflections on the likelihood of success in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
1<\/div>\n
He considered the prospects very low. His reasoning had to do with the adaptive value of what we call “higher intelligence,” meaning the particular human formof intellectual organization. Mayr estimated thenumber of species since the origin of lifeat about fifty billion, only one of which “achieved the kind of intelligence needed toestablish a civilization.” It did so very recently, perhaps 100,000 years ago. It is generallyassumed that only one small breeding group surv<\/div>\n
ived, of which we are all descendants.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Mayr speculated that the human form of intellectual organization may not be favored by<\/div>\n
selection. The history of life on Earth, he wrote, refutes the claim that “it is better to be<\/div>\n
smart than to be stupid,” at least judging by biological success: beetles and bacteria, for<\/div>\n
example, are vastly more successful than humans in terms of survival. He also made the<\/div>\n
rather somber observation that “the average life expectancy of aspecies is about 100,000<\/div>\n
years.”<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of<\/div>\n
whether it is better to be smart than stupid. The most hopeful prospect is that the question<\/div>\n
will not be answered: if it receives a definite answer, that answer can only be that humans<\/div>\n
were a kind of “biological error,” using their allotted 100,000 years to destroy themselves<\/div>\n
and, in the process, much else. The species has surely developed the capacity to do just<\/div>\n
that, and a hypothetical extraterrestrial observer might well conclude that humans have<\/div>\n
demonstrated that capacity throughout their history, dramatically in the past few hundred<\/div>\n
years, with an assault on the environment that sustains life, on the diversity of more<\/div>\n
complex organisms, and with cold and calculated savagery, on each other as well.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
TWO SUPERPOWERS<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The year 2003 opened with many indications that concerns about human survival are all<\/div>\n
too realistic. To mention just a few examples, in the early fall of 2002 it was learned that<\/div>\n
a possibly terminal nuclear war was barely avoided forty years earlier. Immediately after<\/div>\n
this startling discovery, the Bush administration blocked UN efforts to ban the<\/div>\n
militarization of space, a serious threat to survival. The administration also terminated<\/div>\n
international negotiations to prevent biological warfare and moved to ensure the inevitability of an attack on Iraq, despite popular opposition that was without historical precedent.<\/div>\n
Aid organizations with extensive experience in Iraq and studies by respected medical organizations warned that the planned invasion might precipitate a humanitarian<\/div>\n
catastrophe. The warnings were ignored by Washington and evoked little media interest.<\/div>\n
A high-level US task force concluded that attacks with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) within the United States are “likely,” and would become more so in the event of<\/p>\n
\n
war with Iraq. Numerous specialists and intelligence agencies issued similar warnings,<\/div>\n
adding that Washington’s belligerence, not only with regard to Iraq, was increasing the<\/div>\n
long-term threat of international terrorism and proliferation of WMD. These warnings too<\/div>\n
were dismissed.<\/div>\n
In September 2002 the Bush administration announced its National Security Strategy,<\/div>\n
which declared the right to resort to force to eliminate any perceived challenge to US global hegemony, which is to be permanent. The new grand strategy aroused deep concern worldwide, even within the foreign policy elite at home. Also in September, a propaganda campaign was launched to depict Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat to the United States and to insinuate that he was responsible for the 9-11 atrocities and was planning others. The campaign, timed to the on set of the midterm congressional elections, was highly successful in shifting attitudes. It<\/div>\n
soon drove American public opinion off the global spectrum and helped the administration<\/div>\n
achieve electoral aims and establish Iraq as a proper test case for the newly announced doctrine of resort to force at will.<\/div>\n
President Bush and his associates also persisted in undermining international efforts to reduce threats to the environment that are recognized to be severe, with pretexts that barely concealed their devotion to narrow sectors of private power. The administration’s Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), wrote Science magazine editor Donald Kennedy, is a travesty that “included no recommendations for emission limitation or other forms of mitigation,” contenting itself with “voluntary reduction targets, which, even if met, would allow US emission rates to continue to grow at around 14% per decade.” The CCSP did not even consider the likelihood, suggested by “a growing body of evidence,” that the short-term warming changes it ignores “will trigger an abrupt nonlinear process,” producing dramatic temperature changes that could carry extreme<\/div>\n
risks for the United States, Europe, and other temperate zones. The Bush administration’s<\/div>\n
“contemptuous pass on multilateral engagement with the global warming problem,”<\/div>\n
Kennedy continued, is the “stance that began the long continuing process of eroding its<\/div>\n
friendships in Europe,” leading to “smoldering resentment.”<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
2 By October 2002 it was becoming hard to ignore the fact that the world was “more concerned about the unbridled use of American power than . . . about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein,” and “as intent on limiting the giant’s power as … in taking away the despot’s weapons.”<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
3 World concerns mounted in the months that followed, as the giant made clear its intent to attack Iraq even if the UN inspections it reluctantly tolerated failed to unearth weapons that would provide a pretext. By December, support for Washington’s war plans scarcely reached 10<\/div>\n
percent almost anywhere outside the US, according to international polls. Two months later, after enormous worldwide protests, the press reported that “there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion” (“the United States” here<\/div>\n
meaning state power, not the public or even elite opinion).<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
4 By early 2003, studies revealed that fear of the United States had reached remarkable heights throughout the world, along with distrust of the political leadership. Dismissal of elementary human rights and needs was matched by a display of contempt for democracy …<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Read more:<\/p>\n
Hegemony or survival : America’s quest for global dominance by Noam Chomsky.<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Childhood: 1928\u201345 Avram Noam Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928, in the affluent East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[29][30] His father, Dr. William “Zev” Chomsky (1896\u20131977) had been born in Ukraine, then a part of the Russian Empire, and had fled to the United States in 1913 to avoid conscription into the army. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[97,104],"tags":[332,331,1221,333],"class_list":["post-2547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-democracy","category-featured","tag-hegemony","tag-noam-chomsky","tag-usa","tag-vietnam"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Noam-Chomsky.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2SfUR-F5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2547"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2551,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547\/revisions\/2551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}