Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Noam Chomsky sull'America Latina

http://www.walterlippmann.com/chomsky-02-08-2006.html
Noam Chomsky talks to Radio Havana Cuba
about the hopeful signs surrounding the current
moves towards Latin American integration
Bernie Dwyer (RHC): I am reminded of a great Irish song called "The
West's Awake" written by Thomas Davis in remembrance of the Fenian
Uprising of 1798. It is about the west of Ireland asleep under British
rule for hundreds of years and how it awoke from its slumbers and rose
up against the oppressor.
Could we now begin to hope that the South is awake?
Noam Chomsky: What's happening is something completely new in the
history of the hemisphere. Since the Spanish conquest the countries of
Latin America have been pretty much separated from one another and
oriented toward the imperial power. There are also very sharp splits
between the tiny wealthy elite and the huge suffering population. The
elites sent their capital, took their trips, had their second homes,
sent their children to study in whatever European country their country
was closely connected with. I mean, even their transportation systems
were oriented toward the outside for export of resources and so on.
For the first time, they are beginning to integrate and in quite a few
different ways. Venezuela and Cuba is one case. MERCOSUR, which is
still not functioning very much, is another case. Venezuela, of course,
just joined MERCOSUR, which is a big step forward for it and it was
greatly welcomed by the presidents of Argentina, Brazil.
For the first time the Indian population is becoming politically quite
active. They just won an election in Bolivia which is pretty
remarkable. There is a huge Indian population in Ecuador, even in Peru,
and some of them are calling for an Indian nation. Now they want to
control their own resources. In fact, many don't even want their
resources developed. Many don't see any particular point in having
their culture and lifestyle destroyed so that people can sit in traffic
jams in New York.
Furthermore, they are beginning to throw out the International Monetary
Fund (IMF). In the past, the US could prevent unwelcome developments
such as independence in Latin America, by violence; supporting military
coups, subversion, invasion and so on. That doesn't work so well any
more. The last time they tried in 2002 in Venezuela, the US had to back
down because of enormous protests from Latin America, and of course the
coup was overthrown from within. That's very new.
If the United States loses the economic weapons of control, it is very
much weakened. Argentina is just essentially ridding itself of the IMF,
as they say. They are paying off the debts to the IMF. The IMF rules
that they followed had totally disastrous effects. They are being
helped in that by Venezuela, which is buying up part of the Argentine
debt.
Bolivia will probably do the same. Bolivia's had 25 years of rigorous
adherence to IMF rules. Per capita income now is less than it was 25
years ago. They want to get rid of it. The other countries are doing
the same. The IMF is essentially the US Treasury Department. It is the
economic weapon that's alongside the military weapon for maintaining
control. That's being dismantled.
All of this is happening against the background of very substantial
popular movements, which, to the extent that they existed in the past,
were crushed by violence, state terror, Operation Condor, one
monstrosity after another. That weapon is no longer available.
Furthermore, there is South-South integration going on, so Brazil, and
South Africa and India are establishing relations.
And again, the forces below the surface in pressing all of this are
international popular organizations of a kind that never existed
before; the ones that meet annually in the world social forums. By now
several world social forums have spawned lots of regional ones;
there's one right here in Boston and many other places. These are
very powerful mass movements of a kind without any precedent in
history: the first real internationals. Everyone's always talked
about internationals on the left but there's never been one. This is
the beginning of one.
These developments are extremely significant. For US planners, they are
a nightmare. I mean, the Monroe Doctrine is about 180 years old now,
and the US wasn't powerful enough to implement it until after the 2nd
World War, except for the nearby region.
After the 2nd World War it was able to kick out the British and the
French and implement it, but now it is collapsing. These countries are
also diversifying their international relations including commercial
relations. So there's a lot of export to China, and accepting of
investment from China. That's particularly true of Venezuela, but
also the other big exporters like Brazil and Chile. And China is eager
to gain access to other resources of Latin America.
Unlike Europe, China can't be intimidated. Europe backs down if the
United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they've been
there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and
don't see any need to. The United States is afraid of China; it is
not a military threat to anyone; and is the least aggressive of all the
major military powers. But it's not easy to intimidate it. In fact,
you can't intimidate it at all. So China's interactions with Latin
America are frightening the United States. Latin America is also
improving economic interactions with Europe. China and Europe now are
each other largest trading partners, or pretty close to it.
These developments are eroding the means of domination of the US world
system. And the US is pretty naturally playing its strong card which is
military and in military force the US is supreme. Military expenditures
in the US are about half of the total world expenditures,
technologically much more advanced. In Latin America, just keeping to
that, the number of the US military personnel is probably higher than
it ever was during the Cold War. There sharply increasing training of
Latin American officers.
The training of military officers has been shifted from the State
Department to the Pentagon, which is not insignificant. The State
department is under some weak congressional supervision. I mean, there
is legislation requiring human rights conditionalities and so on. They
are not very much enforced, but they are at least there. And the
Pentagon is free to do anything they want. Furthermore, the training is
shifting to local control. So one of the main targets is what's
called radical populism, we know what that means, and the US is
establishing military bases throughout the region.
RHC: It appears, from what you are saying, that the US is losing the
ideological war and compensating by upping their military presence in
the region. Would you see Cuba as being a key player in encouraging and
perhaps influencing what's coming out of Latin America right now?
Noam Chomsky: Fidel Castro, whatever people may think of him, is a hero
in Latin America, primarily because he stood up to the United States.
It's the first time in the history of the hemisphere that anybody
stood up to the United States. Nobody likes to be under the jackboot
but they may not be able to do anything about it. So for that reason
alone, he's a Latin American hero. Chavez: the same.
The ideological issue that you rightly bring up is the impact of
neoliberalism. It's pretty striking over the last twenty-five years,
overwhelmingly it's true, that the countries that have adhered to the
neo-liberal rules have had an economic catastrophe and the countries
that didn't pay any intention to the rules grew and developed. East
Asia developed rapidly pretty much by totally ignoring the rules. Chile
is claimed as being a market economy but that's highly misleading:
its main export is a very efficient state owned copper company
nationalized under Allende. You don't get correlations like this in
economics very often. Adherence to the neoliberal rules has been
associated with economic failure and violation of them with economic
success: it's very hard to miss that. Maybe some economists can miss
it but people don't: they live it. Yes, there is an uprising against
it. Cuba is a symbol. Venezuela is another, Argentina, where they
recovered from the IMF catastrophe by violating the rules and sharply
violating them, and then throwing out the IMF. Well, this is the
ideological issue. The IMF is just a name for the economic weapon of
domination, which is eroding.
RHC: Why do you think that this present movement is different from the
struggle that went before, in Chile for instance where they succeeded
in overthrowing the military dictatorship? What gives us more hope
about this particular stage of liberation for Latin America?
Noam Chomsky: First of all, there was hope in Latin America in the
1960s but it was crushed by violence. Chile was moving on a path
towards some form of democratic socialism but we know what happened.
That's the first 9/11 in 1973, which was an utter catastrophe. The
dictatorship in Chile, which is a horror story also led to an economic
disaster in Chile bringing about its worst recession in its history.
The military then turned over power to civilians. Its still there so
Chile didn't yet completely liberate itself. It has partially
liberated itself from the military dictatorship; and in the other
countries even more so.
So for example, I remember traveling in Argentina and Chile a couple of
years ago and the standard joke in both countries was that people said
that they wish the Chilean military had been stupid enough to get into
a war with France or some major power so they could have been crushed
and discredited and then people would be free the way they were in
Argentina, where the military was discredited by its military defeat.
But there has been a slow process in every one of the countries,
Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, all the way through, there's been a
process of overthrowing the dominant dictatorships - the military
dictatorships - which have been almost always supported, and
sometimes instituted, by the United States
Now they are supporting one another and the US cannot resort to the
same policies. Take Brazil; if Lula had been running in 1963, the US
would have done just what it did when Goulart was president in 1963.
The Kennedy administration just planned a military dictatorship. A
military coup took place and that got rid of that. And that was
happening right through the hemisphere.
Now, there's much more hope because that cannot be done and there is
also cooperation.
There is also a move towards a degree of independence: political,
economic and social policies, access to their own resources,
instituting social changes of the kind that could overcome the
tremendous internal problems of Latin America, which are awful. And a
large part of the problems in Latin America are simply internal. In
Latin America, the wealthy have never had any responsibilities. They do
what they want.
RHC: Do you think that the recent growth and strength of broad-based
social movements in several Latin America countries have played a
significant role in bringing progressive governments into power in the
region?
Noam Chomsky: There can be no serious doubt of this. Latin America has,
I think, the most important popular movements anywhere: the MST
(Landless Workers Movement) in Brazil, the indigenous movements in
Bolivia, others. That accounts for the vibrancy and vitality of
democracy in much of Latin America today -- denounced in the West as
"populism," a term that translates as "threat to elite rule with
marginalization of the public in systems with democratic forms but with
only limited substance," those naturally preferred by concentrated
private and state power.

Il contesto, Torrieri. Non scordartelo.
E' che ha tantissimo materiale, cerca di capire che organizzarlo č un
problema?
Come iniziare con "Abbraccia il  Dhimmi" ?
Oppure "Gay e Islam: un circolo virtuoso"?
Son problemi
MMAX
-- 
E' in discussione su it.news.gruppi la RFD 
di it.politica.internazionale moderato

 
http://www.walterlippmann.com/chomsky-02-08-2006.html
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bell'articolo, grazie
-- 
 
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 bell'articolo, grazie
Bel quoting, prego.
-- 
Chaos A.D.		|	Raging crowd
Tanks on the streets	|	Burning cars
Confronting police	|	Bloodshed starts
Bleeding the Plebs	|	Who'll be alive?

 bell'articolo, grazie
( trad : ) "nun c'ho capito 'n cazzo, ma mò me lo faccio spiegà...."
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 Bel quoting, prego.
fai come tonibaruch adesso ? 
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 fai come tonibaruch adesso ?
Sergio, consentimi.
Sei su usenet da anni ed anni: è mai possibile che per aggiungere
un commento del genere tu debba riquotare più di 200 righe?
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 un commento del genere tu debba riquotare più di 200 righe?
si, il quote era necessario visto che il tonigoebbels aveva al solito
"oscurato" il msg contenente l'intervista a Chomsky con le sue solite
cretinissime cazzate.
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