Sunday, October 12, 2008
A blue moon moment: In which I agree with Noam Chomsky
An Iranian journalist interviews Noam Chomsky, and I actually found myself in complete agreement with his response to, well, one question:
Press TV: We've had politicians in Europe and Russia talking about the end of US hegemony. Even if the US cannot pay its bills it still has the largest military on earth. You have written about the power of that military. Doesn't that military in itself confer power?
Chomsky: Oh sure, and I don't agree with the conclusions about loss of US hegemony. I mean, first of all this financial crisis is very likely going to hit Europe even harder than the United States. Several European countries have already declared official recession, which the US has not.
Banks are collapsing rapidly in Europe. The immediate problem, not the deep problem, the immediate one is toxic assets and mortgage-based securities.
We do not have the details, it's all not very transparent, but the general estimate is that about half of them are held in European banks. One country, Iceland, is practically on the verge of declaring bankruptcy because of its enormous exposure to the tides of financial globalization.
Of course, without "US hegemony" Noam Chomsky has to find another gig, but that does not make him wrong in his answer.
3 Comments:
By 
K. Pablo, at
Sun Oct 12, 06:26:00 PM:
Here's one other classic Chomsky statement with which you can agree. On post-modernism:
It's entirely possible that I'm simply missing something, or that I just lack the intellectual capacity to understand the profundities that have been unearthed in the past 20 years or so by Paris intellectuals and their followers. I'm perfectly open-minded about it, and have been for years, when similar charges have been made -- but without any answer to my questions. Again, they are simple and should be easy to answer, if there is an answer: if I'm missing something, then show me what it is, in terms I can understand. Of course, if it's all beyond my comprehension, which is possible, then I'm just a lost cause, and will be compelled to keep to things I do seem to be able to understand, and keep to association with the kinds of people who also seem to be interested in them and seem to understand them (which I'm perfectly happy to do, having no interest, now or ever, in the sectors of the intellectual culture that engage in these things, but apparently little else).
Since no one has succeeded in showing me what I'm missing, we're left with the second option: I'm just incapable of understanding. I'm certainly willing to grant that it may be true, though I'm afraid I'll have to remain suspicious, for what seem good reasons. There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of "theory" that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b) ... I won't spell it out.
By davod, at
Sun Oct 12, 10:26:00 PM:
"One country, Iceland, is practically on the verge of declaring bankruptcy because of its enormous exposure to the tides of financial globalization"
The Russians have offered Iceland $4.6 billion to help out.
Should the US trump the offer?
By TigerHawk, at
Sun Oct 12, 10:56:00 PM:
No. But perhaps the Europeans should. After all, Iceland sits on their sea lanes, not ours. Their flank, their bailout. That's how I see it.
