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Title: What Uncle Sam Really Wants by Noam Chomsky, Arthur Naiman, David Barsamian ISBN: 1-878825-01-1 Publisher: Odonian Press Pub. Date: October, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $8.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.44 (25 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Introduces Chomsky's critique of foreign affairs
Comment: This little book, published in 1992, is one hundred and one pages and is of small dimensions, phamphlet like, and is of the type that can be read pretty quickly, and intends to introduce the critique of foreign affairs (and society in general) of the leading dissident left wing intellectual Noam Chomsky. Taken from excerpts from Chomsky's writings and speeches, Chomsky presents his analysis, more or less of the cold war, how U.S. planners during and after World War Two basically decided that the United States owned the world, and that the economic and political system of the world should cater to the needs of American capitalism. The Soviet Union gobbled up East Europe, the original third world, long exploited by the West, one of main reasons of the cold war, which had nothing to do with Stalinist totalitarianism. One of the original goals of the cold war was also to carry over the massive government involvement in the economy from World War two, that is massive government subsidy to private corporations, especially through the Pentagon system, and later NASA, the energy department,commerce department etc. a system which is mainly responsible today for the success of the computer industry and the internet(not Bill Gates), electronics, pharmaceuticals, and just about every other viable sector of the economy. The taxpayers fund the research and development, corporations reap the profit if there is any to be made.
Chomsky says that the primary concern of U.S. elites in their policy towards the third world was not really economic, such as securing cheap access to raw materials and labor, or at least it was not their primary concern. Their primary concern was that certain third world nations would take primary control of their own resources, and direct what wealth they had towards the benefit of their people and not transnational corporations and investors, and most importantly serve as an example for other poor nations to follow. Nicaragua, Chile, Vietnam, Grenada, etc. could all disapear off the face of the earth tommorow, and U.S. corporations and investors would probably not be too disturbed; it is the example that they set for other nations that provoked (and provokes) U.S. hostility.
U.S. leaders have at various times called this "the domino theory," the targeted third world nations have been described as "viruses" or "rotten apples" that will "infect" their other countries. U.S. leaders ingrained in their own minds that any change of the status quo, no matter how mild, wheather it be secular or religous, right wing or left wing, for the direct benefit of the general population of a third world country is by definition a movement being sponsored by the Soviet Union to overthrow human civilization, and so on, no matter how lacking the evidence is for this thesis.
Chomsky gives several examples. One is the case of the Jacabo Arebenz government in Guatemala which the U.S. overthrew in 1954. Arbenz was no more a communist than Franklin Roosevelt was, but his fight against the power of the United Fruit corporation in his country, to go along with his succesful land redistribution program in this desperately poor country, made him a threatening "good example" to the other miserable countries of the region, and that made him an agent of Moscow in the eyes of the U.S. government. The morons in the CIA also had additional evidence that Arbenz government. His government had allegedly given three hundred thousand dollars to Costa Rican president Jose Figueres. Figueres, was a great friend of U.S. corporations and suppressed union activity and was much admired by the George Kennan-Arthur Schlesinger Jr. type liberals, but he had also instituted an extensive social welfare program for Costa Rica and had an independent streak, a real no-no for a third world leader, so that made him a communist, of course. And so if Arbenz, a communist was (allegedly) giving money to Figueres, a communist too, then that meant it was all part of a plot by Moscow to cooridinate subversion in the hemisphere, or something like that, quite standard reasoning for U.S. policy makers. So Arbenz was overthrown and at least 160,000 people have since been killed by the various tin-pot Hitlers, like Rios Montt and Lucas Garcia, that the United States has heavily supported to make sure that populist forces in Guatemala are beaten back sufficiently.
A similar situation existed in El Salvador, Chomsky says, in the late 1970's, when led by the Catholic church, pesant self-help organizations and unions began to work towards gaining a voice for the poor majority. The response was a decade of sadistic terror in which perhaps 60,000 people perished, begun in the Carter administration (which also supported Somoza to his bloody end, contrary to much illusion) and extended by the Reaganites, on the excuse that the guerillas were being directed by the Soviets and Cubans, and so on.
Then there are other odd cases like Manuel Noriega. He was on the payroll of the CIA for years. He stole an election with great fraud and violence in 1984, but was praised extravegently by the Reagan administration for bringing about a triumph of Jeffersonian democracy, and George Schultz went down to attend the inaguration of Noriega's man, Nicos Barletta. As the years went by though, Noriega developed an independent streak, he became lukewarm about the U.S. war against Nicaragua. He started to fight with Panama's business elites, thus threatening the "stability" which the U.S. government cherishes. So he had to go. The U.S. government suddenly discovered that Noriega was a thug and a drug dealer. He was indicted in Miami in 1988. All but one of the charges against him were for actions before 1984, when he was a U.S. friend. So the U.S. invaded and killed perhaps thousands of civilians and installed a regime of even worse drug dealers who made sure that the Panama canal would be in good hands once the U.S. had to give it up.
Or there is the case of East Timor. In 1965, the excessively nationalist president Sukarno of Indonesia was overthrown with U.S. support, initiating a bloodbath that killed hundreds of thousands of landless peasants and destroyed the party that most of them supported the communist PKI. General Suharto took over, to the great jubilation of the New York Times liberals, and proceeded to blunder the country in cooperation with multinational corporations. In December 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor and began conducting the worst genocide relative to population since the holocaust using mostly U.S. arms and with such diplomatic support as provided by the great liberal Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in December 1975 the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who related with great pride in his 1978 memoir how he had helped block effective international action to counter Indonesia's aggression...
Rating: 5
Summary: "War Is Peace"...? all US citizens should read this
Comment: It can be daunting to try to understand the big picture. Chomsky has done a lot of work to get us started on the road toward being informed citizens, gathering an astounding body of evidence indicting 'state capitalism', as practiced predominantly by the United States. His presentation is concise and down-to-earth. Being a distillation of his other books, this booklet borrows their formidable scholarship, which draws largely upon publicly available references (e.g., those released under the Freedom of Information Act). The basic premise is that the US government has engaged since WWII in a coldly calculated campaign of maintaining its position as the preeminent economic power in the world. To do so, it has supported murderous, repressive regimes and/or actively encouraged chaos in order to destroy any successful examples of socialism in the Third World. Examples in the book include Chile, Indonesia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, Grenada, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, among many others. It then describes propaganda campaigns waged to keep US citizens uninformed and accepting. It is a classic political maneuver to invoke a foreign threat to consolidate power at home and deflect attention from the real issues. According to the book, the government did this in invoking the "Evil Empire" and declaring a "War on Drugs". The bitter irony, of course, is that our own empire-building has been at least as evil (in terms of violence against citizens and repression of human rights) as the Soviet Union's, and that we are the world's largest exporter of addictive drugs (our tobacco has killed tens of millions worldwide), while abetting known drug dealers as long as they help us maintain regional control. "What Uncle Sam Really Wants" might change your understanding of what the power brokers in our society mean when they deploy terms such as 'democracy', 'socialism', 'communism', 'free enterprise', et cetera. The book should not be dismissed as simplistic just because of its abbreviated format. Especially if you haven't encountered Chomsky before, this quick little read might well significantly alter your worldview. Chomsky concludes the book with the hope that it will engage you further in the struggle to maintain a democracy guided at least as much by ethics as it is by economics.
Rating: 5
Summary: the new world order for dummies
Comment: a truly indispensible book, chomsky's "what uncle sam really wants" is easy to read and understand. it's a must have for people who are tired of arguing their position with well-intentioned but uninformed friends and relatives. if you really want to sway your people towards the right (left) way of thinking, get them to read this book. claims are backed by massive evidence and recently declassified documents, making it hard for even the most conservative flag-waver to get a word in edgewise.
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Title: Secrets, Lies, and Democracy by Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian ISBN: 1878825046 Publisher: Odonian Press Pub. Date: October, 1994 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
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Title: Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda by Noam Chomsky ISBN: 1583225366 Publisher: Seven Stories Press Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: 9-11 by Noam Chomsky ISBN: 1583224890 Publisher: Seven Stories Press Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Cia's Greatest Hits by Mark Zepezauer, Arthur Naiman ISBN: 1878825305 Publisher: Odonian Press Pub. Date: September, 1994 List Price(USD): $8.00 |
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Title: Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky by Noam Chomsky, John Schoeffel, Peter R. Mitchell, Peter Mitchell ISBN: 1565847032 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: February, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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