The system isn't working and the public knows it: Chomsky on OWS

I don't know if anyone has seen this.
The video is dated today Sunday November 6th 2011,
I searched but didn't find any other threads on OWS and Chomsky,
so here it is. I appologize if it is a dupe are already being discussed.

"If you look at the 2008 election
what swung Obama
what gave him the election
primarily financial institutions
uh, contributions
they preferred him to McCain
and they expected to be paid back
and they were
and the next one will be worse."

I asked a friend last night,
"What should we do next?"

He looked at me kind of panicky
like I had just sprung a pop quiz and he hadn't studied,
or maybe it was just concern that that I wasn't being sarcastic and actually wanted to talk about it.

I told him about the amazing things I had seen happen on ATS beating the news, 650,000 people opening new credit union accounts, the massive discussion on the occupy movements.
What should we do next.

He gets thoughtful for a couple of seconds then quickly says
"If we could end corruption in politics."

I processed this while we continued nursing our drinks.
After a couple of minutes I said
"What if we publish all bribes, but not only
do we NOT prosecute anyone but the one who scored the highest
gets nominated for president. We put a positive feed back on the publication of total bribes taken."

He put his drink down and looked at me.
"We just accept that this is the way things are done."

I can see he's kind of shaking his head.
"Well ending corruption means fighting the civil war again. Industry wanted politicians who stay bought. After the civil war that's what they got. I mean that's asking a lot. Fighting the civil war again seems like a lot of effort. But publishing the contributions at least brings it in the open."

He says "The lobbyists have to publish their contributions already." He looks depressed.

"I think if America could learn that the phrase 'ethics committee' doesn't mean what they think it means that might make a difference. What happens with these ethics committees is all gifts and such have to be reported so the committee can review, but they never act on the contributions received by their own camp. If they ever do act it's because some opposition person is persistently trying to do the right thing and messing up all the graft. So they find out that his daughter ate a bowl of cereal given to him by the wife of a major contributor but the politician didn't report the 3$ gift."





Anyway, that was last night.
This morning through my hang over I would like to add...

An ethics committee makes these kinds of maneuvers possible.
They were implemented in every state in the Union in direct reaction to people calling for an end to corruption.
I think we got the opposite result.
It seems to make sense that rewarding the taking of bribes
will actually result in more openess and less corruption.

Thoughts?


David Grouchy

in many ways I like Chomsky
But he barely spoke about OWS in this video

You may disagree and say the entire video was about it
I disagree though

Originally posted by ModernAcademia
in many ways I like Chomsky
But he barely spoke about OWS in this video

That's Chomsky in a nut shell.
Did he just say everything, or did he just say nothing.



I've seen several interviews with him in his Academic office
given by various and sundry amateur actavists. Most of
them ask "what can we do", "what should we do" and his
resposes are always frustratingly vague and contain verbs
like organize or coordinate and nothing more specific. He
doesn't give a catch phrase or a slogan of any kind.

Now that someone has finally organized some action, and
actually asked him about it, I get a paternal vibe from him.
I think he feels that OWS is aligned with his way of think-
ing. And he'd be right. Vague, rambling, and unfocused.
But then again so was my opening post.

You may disagree and say the entire video was about it
I disagree though

Well the key sentence that I extracted
of him speaking about OWS in the video is the thread title.
"The system isn't working and the public knows it"
is not substantiated by him or elaborated on specifically
in any way, so I find your assesment fair enough.
And it is very easy to read meaning into his analysis,
so honestly he may have barely said anything about OWS.

I do get the sense that he is strongly engaged though.


David Grouchy

That's entirely what all these protests are about, a failed political system backed by a manipulative economic system. In the short run everyone is effected differently, but in the end we all want the same thing, a new way of doing things, because the old way isn't working.