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Friday, April 29, 2011

Chomsky On Democracy

A recent interview with Chomsky where he discusses a wide range of issues affecting the globe. He gets into how the future might very well look given the present set of political, military, and economic dynamics

ZNET: Discussing the State and Future of Democracy
The (American)infrastructure is in very poor shape. Anyone who travels from Europe or even Asia to the United States often think they are coming to a third-world country! This is increasing. It is not a problem for the small-sector of wealth and power that off-shore's production and engages in financial manipulations -- for them it doesn't really matter if the country declines. It is declining, and it is under attack internally. The United States does have a financial crisis -- deficit and debt problem -- that is due to two things. One, the enormously bloated military budget which is approximately the same as the rest of the world combined and secondly, a highly dysfunctional privatised unregulated healthcare system. Those two elements are being protected and that, along with the vicious cycle that I mentioned, is leading to severe internal problems which will continue the decline. In addition, the environmental problem is very serious. If the United States does not take the lead, the rest of the world is not going to do very much. If the United States undermine efforts deal with environmental problems- as is now happening- that is going to be even more serious and that's exactly what we see in front of us for the institutional reasons that I mentioned. Thirty years from now, that will be much more significant.

2 comments:

Glynn Kalara said...

Democracy is DEAD on delivery as long as our voting system is electronic and easily manipulated. 1st priority of any meaningful change or Rebellion is to destroy the electronic voting systems everywhere and seize back control of the ballot. Only a paper ballot with a verifiable chain of command and disclosure is acceptable in a truly democratic republic these days. America right now is a Bananarepublican country because we allow electronic voting and don't question it. We need to start here and from here rebuild the country. The Corps. right now and the two attached at the hip to them so called parties own the ballot and you can bet they aren't about to allow real verifiable paper ballot elections in this country ever again. Unless we demand them or else.

Glynn Kalara said...

Democracy is DEAD on delivery as long as our voting system is electronic and easily manipulated. 1st priority of any meaningful change or Rebellion is to destroy the electronic voting systems everywhere and seize back control of the ballot. Only a paper ballot with a verifiable chain of command and disclosure is acceptable in a truly democratic republic these days. America right now is a Bananarepublican country because we allow electronic voting and don't question it. We need to start here and from here rebuild the country. The Corps. right now and the two attached at the hip to them so called parties own the ballot and you can bet they aren't about to allow real verifiable paper ballot elections in this country ever again. Unless we demand them or else.