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Systems of Power and their Human Costs

By Noam Chomsky at Oct 12, 2004

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In dealing with enemies (say, Pol Pot, or Maoist China), we properly attribute to them deaths caused by starvation, disease, overwork, etc., insofar as these result from institutional structures and political choices. That's quite independent of intention. Thus in the Black Book of Communism, compiled to demonstrate the evil of our enemies and very highly praised in the West (here too), they estimate 100 million deaths from 1917 to the end of the century, the largest component being the famine in China in the late 1950s, maybe 25 million. No one claims that it was intended or planned. The most serious studies do regard it as criminal, attributing it to the sociopolitical system that prevented information from reaching the center in time to do anything -- studies by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, notably. The very same studies, in the same books, conclude that democratic capitalist India alone was responsible for 100 million deaths that were avoided in China from independence in 1947 to 1979, attributing the difference to sociopolitical structures. That half of the studies is ignored in the West. If we were to apply the standards we use for enemies, the toll would be colossal. If we keep to killings, it's a complicated calculation. How do we decide how many of the killings in our Latin American dependencies are the direct responsibility of the US -- including not only the government but the institutions and culture that support or tolerate them?

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Re: Systems of Power and their Human Costs

By Maahaadave, Gurudave at Oct 13, 2004 05:37 AM
Here is some history on the rise of [url=http://husky1.stmarys.ca/~wmills/course203/8Racism.html]social darwinism[/url] http://www.trufax.org/avoid/manifold.html http://www.trufax.org/avoid/scienus.html http://www.trufax.org/avoid/scieng.html http://www.trufax.org/avoid/scienger.html http://www.trufax.org/avoid/scienrus.html http://www.trufax.org/avoid/nazi.html http://www.trufax.org/avoid/neodarw.html

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Re: Systems of Power and their Human Costs

By Johnson, Walter at Oct 13, 2004 05:24 AM
In response to Nitish,Americans may or may not be willing to accept the facts, once informed of their government's machinations. However, one thing is certain. The government is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to convince possibly reluctant populations to support policies that they might oppose if they were aware of the facts. The most recent example being the elaborate public relations campaign that both the governments of the United States and Great Britain mounted to convince their populations that Iraq posed an imminent threat to world security through its possession of "weapons of mass destruction". The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (not exactly a hotbed of "radicalism")concluded that intelligence reports had been "systematically misrepresented" by government officials in an effort to garner public support for the invasion.

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Re: Systems of Power and their Human Costs

By Maahaadave, Gurudave at Oct 13, 2004 05:22 AM
By knowing the mentality of some of the uber elites, then we can understand the promotion directly by action, or indirectly by inaction, for the high amount of preventable deaths in the last century. Population reduction of the third world is a de facto plan of certain elites. Ever wonder why, in a god fearing nation like the U.S, that Darwinism is taught in schools and propagated by mainstream media ? Darwinism is not simply about evolution, it's original teaching was specifically hatched to give scientific credibility to the colonial ambitions of racist elites. Christian activists had forced the abolition of slavery. Which was scary to the oligarchs of the time. Malthusian dogma was a pillar of Darwins theory. It's a combo of propaganda that is still held close to the heart of more then a few oligarchs. [url=http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f00/web1/hossain.html]Read here[/url]

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By Nnair2, Nitish at Oct 12, 2004 23:53 PM
apart from not knowing about the central american affair, i wonder how many americans, once informed of their government's machinations, will be willing to accept the facts.

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Re: Systems of Power and their Human Costs

By Johnson, Walter at Oct 12, 2004 20:04 PM
Every year I ask my students if they know how many people died as a consequence of the Central American "civil wars" in the 1980s. Very few, unless they are from the region, are aware that these conflicts actually occurred,let alone how many died. Some are aware of the Cambodian genocide and, of course, the Holocaust. The fact is that the killing in Central America, like the slaughter in Rwanda, has little ideological utility for the powerful in our society and thus can quickly be relegated to the "Memory Hole".

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Re: Systems of Power and their Human Costs

By Nnair2, Nitish at Oct 12, 2004 17:02 PM
why is it that successive american governments find it necessary to interfere in some way or the other in the affairs of another country? this means that there's no difference between the democrats and the republicans, ideology-wise, which is similar the the situation in israel.

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