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Interview Assange, Noam Chomsky, Tarrik Ali, on Democracy etc...

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  • Interview Assange, Noam Chomsky, Tarrik Ali, on Democracy etc...

    Its not a bad interview on changes in democratic norms and the centralist perspective of today. I find that the world went from extremely right to extreme left to being Extremely Center (as of now) somewhat poignant. If we consider the amount of consensus seeking and comprimisation of various aspects that are then zealously pushed forth its a good angle to think through.

    Originally from Sochi, Russia.

  • #2
    This is one-sided and jaded intellectualism at its best. World events are controlled by distinct and conscious entities. The US is invariably the evil imperialist. People must throw off the shackles of the oppressors (presumably to don the shackles of new oppressors).

    Bright and well-read, they see only gloom around them. But they are part of the larger dialogue and merit a fair hearing.
    To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education - Plato

    Comment


    • #3
      Here is some background on JA's show which started in Apr of this year.

      Mr. Assange says the theme of his half-hour show on RT is “the world tomorrow.”

      But there is something almost atavistic about the outlet he chose. RT, first known as Russia Today, is an English-language news network created by the Russian leader Vladimir V. Putin in 2005 to promote the Kremlin line abroad. (It also broadcasts in Spanish and Arabic.) It’s like the Voice of America, only with more money and a zesty anti-American slant. Basically, it’s an improbable platform for a man who poses as a radical left-wing whistleblower and free-speech frondeur battling the superpowers that be.

      The show is unlikely to win high ratings or change many minds, but it may serve Mr. Assange’s other agenda: damage control.

      His reputation has taken a deep plunge since he shook the world in 2010 by releasing, in cooperation with The New York Times and several other news organizations, masses of secret government documents, including battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan. Most news organizations edited and redacted the papers to protect lives. Mr. Assange put everything on his Web site. To some he was a hero, to others a spy, but nowadays he is most often portrayed as a nut job.

      In a preshow promotional interview with an RT reporter, Mr. Assange said he chose that network because it has greater penetration in the United States than Al Jazeera and because no other networks would have him. He isn’t looking forward to the reviews of his show. He predicted that The Times, among others, would dismiss him as “an enemy combatant and traitor getting into bed with the Kremlin.”

      Of course, practically speaking, Mr. Assange is in bed with the Kremlin, but on Tuesday’s show he didn’t put out.
      WikiLeaks World Tomorrow has transcripts too.

      From the episodes list he interviewed Correa in May, maybe that's how he got the invitation.

      Assange offers suggestions on how to 'properly' smear him

      sample

      Assange is a Kremlim patsy, employed by the Kremlin, the show is propaganda, editorially controlled by Putin and filmed by the FSB!

      Putin is a WikiLeaks patsy, allowing his television channel to be manipulated by Julian Assange to become a propaganda network for WikiLeaks!

      Assange is desperate, marginalized pariah, rightly rejected by the Western media. The only people who will work with him are US-hating Russians!

      Assange has gone hopelessly mainstream and boring. He has lost all his edge, and is forced to make TV shows with a bunch of British squares!

      Comment


      • #4
        About this particular show there were a few things mentioned that got my attention.

        TA - "what we have in Western politics is neither the extreme Left nor the extreme Right but an extreme centre. And this extreme centre encompasses both centre-Right and centre-Left, which agree on fundamentals – waging wars abroad, occupying countries and punishing the poor, pushing through austerity measures. It doesn’t matter which party’s in power either in the United States or in the Western world… things, you know, carry on like before."
        I think this is a direct result of the fall of communism. The extreme left pole went away so the extreme right must consequently wither away as well. Isn't this a good thing, there is now more room to compromise on view points instead of yanking the system out perpetually and starting from scratch. Enter the pendulum. Swings one way for a few years and then in the opposite direction after. More stable for everybody concerned.

        Does more people subscribing to either centre-left or right make it more extreme ?

        About Egypt, Libya & Tunisia..
        TA - it went out of control very rapidly and the United States and the French in Tunisia and Egypt, for instance, couldn’t control it. I mean, they were taken by surprise too. I mean, they only got their act together to try and subvert the process when they had a six-month bombing of Libya by a NATO thing so they could exercise some control on the entire(!) Arab world again.
        I don't understand why he says bombing Libya is subverting the process when they got rid of the oppressor and let the people take over. Intervening in Libya as a way to control the entire Arab world makes no sense.

        TA - That’s why they invaded Libya, Noam, I have no doubt about it. It was to re-establish control.
        Jury's still out on that one here.

        What is the nature of this 'control' he speaks so much about ?

        Noam : So, for example, if you take a look at what’s happened in the Arab Spring, the countries that are crucial to Western imperial power – the oil producers – they have been under a very tough hand. In Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates, the major oil producing regions, it never got off the ground. The intimidation of the security forces, backed by the West, was so enormous that people were literally afraid to go into the streets in Riyadh.
        The underlined bit is a load of rubbish, the three countries concerned started offering subsidies and that quelled most of the protests. They could afford to do it because they have oil. Their general MO is to throw money at all of their problems.

        The West – mainly France in Tunisia, the United States and Britain in Egypt – are following a very traditional pattern. There’s a playbook that you pursue… that gives you a kind of a game plan when some favourite dictators lose the capacity to rule. What you do is support them until the last possible minute, when it’s impossible any longer – maybe the army turns against them – you get your intellectual class to issue ringing declarations about democracy, and then you try to restore the old system, as much as possible – as was done with Samosa, Marcos, Duvalier, Mobutu, Suharto. I mean, it’s routine. It takes genius not to see it.
        The old system as far as Egypt is concerned never went away its just in the background. And this 'being afraid' business happened in Bahrain only.

        Tariq:
        But I think the real problem to him is that democracy itself is in very serious trouble, because of the corporations. When you have two European countries, when you have Greece and Italy, the politicians abdicating and saying ‘Let bankers run it’…
        When countries go over their eyeballs in debt, it does not matter what system they have in place, they are in trouble. But then we have cases like Iceland that were declared bankrupt and rebounding.

        Greece and Italy are in a union and cannot leave, their room to manouver is less than Iceland.

        14.15
        JA
        And… do you… do you think it’s… you know, this problem, is it the media, is it structural, is it … is it the increased ability of the centre to control the periphery as a result of more sophisticated telecommunications…?

        14.36
        Tariq:
        What’s driving it is… a democracy that has become petrified. But the media has become a pillar, a central pillar, now of the Establishment – much more than it was during the Cold War. At that time, they were proving to the Russians and the Chinese ‘Our system is better than yours’…
        Generalises the problems of Greece & Italy for everybody

        Comment


        • #5
          Three blind mice... :slap:
          To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

          Comment


          • #6
            You are taking everything they say too literally. I try to gain insight from a different perspective. Zealous Centralism and Consensus building is the norm and ideology of today. This is very blatant and stares us right in the face yet most of use do not see it. It becomes wrong for nations to lobby their self-interest in the face of communal socialistic realities. Ergo if you are part of the EU and part of your drive is to gain something that upsets the centralism of ideals it is extremely stifling in both pressure and outlook for the country and individual.

            Their points about slow erosion of power and transfer from judicial review to rubber stamped executive is a very valid point. Chomsky criticizes US but always mentions that it is the best deal out there and by far the most free even though the amount of money floating to sway popular ideals is enormous.
            Originally from Sochi, Russia.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by cyppok View Post
              You are taking everything they say too literally. I try to gain insight from a different perspective.
              Nothing wrong with that but they are not entirely speaking in the abstract. When they tie in recent events that we've already gone over here the cracks start to show.

              That's the problem with coming up with a theory and trying to shoe horn it selectively every where you can

              Originally posted by cyppok View Post
              Zealous Centralism and Consensus building is the norm and ideology of today. This is very blatant and stares us right in the face yet most of use do not see it.
              What's wrong with consensus building ? how else are we to move forward.

              Even with a contracted political spectrum, people still find it very difficult to do so. Witness the shutdowns in Congress recently. This sort of nonsense happens regularly in my country.

              Did that happen because of zealous centralism or other ?

              Originally posted by cyppok View Post
              It becomes wrong for nations to lobby their self-interest in the face of communal socialistic realities. Ergo if you are part of the EU and part of your drive is to gain something that upsets the centralism of ideals it is extremely stifling in both pressure and outlook for the country and individual.
              Take any -ism of the 20th century, see it as a bunch of ideals to strive for, get buy in democratically or not. Now how does that differ from this zealous centralism.

              The difference is there are fewer isms and more agreement on which isms to follow. That does not mean others are dead, they are always present in the background, they are just not in fashion any more. Memory is short they can always come back once the older generations that knew better pass on. History can repeat itself.

              Originally posted by cyppok View Post
              Their points about slow erosion of power and transfer from judicial review to rubber stamped executive is a very valid point
              Are you speaking about executive overreach. If so which country are you referring to.
              Last edited by Double Edge; 25 Aug 12,, 01:36.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by cyppok View Post
                ...Zealous Centralism and Consensus building is the norm and ideology of today. This is very blatant and stares us right in the face yet most of use do not see it.
                NO offense, but so what?

                It becomes wrong for nations to lobby their self-interest in the face of communal socialistic realities. Ergo if you are part of the EU and part of your drive is to gain something that upsets the centralism of ideals it is extremely stifling in both pressure and outlook for the country and individual.
                Just so I can understand, what do you mean by 'lobby? What are "socialistic realities". And who is 'you' in the second sentence.


                Their points about slow erosion of power and transfer from judicial review to rubber stamped executive is a very valid point. Chomsky criticizes US but always mentions that it is the best deal out there and by far the most free even though the amount of money floating to sway popular ideals is enormous.
                Huh?
                To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education - Plato

                Comment


                • #9
                  A rapist who acts as a shill for Putin/Correa to keep out of prison, a Khmer Rouge apologist and some other dude - yeah they have zero to add to any discussion.
                  To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    They are people with swollen and undeserved reputations. Noam is a linguist and a damned good one, too, but he has showed little competence in other fields. Assange is a fugitive wanted for sexual assault. And there's some other dude...
                    All those who are merciful with the cruel will come to be cruel to the merciful.
                    -Talmud Kohelet Rabbah, 7:16.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      I thought you guys gonna dispute or not dispute over what they said in the interview, not about their CVs.

                      Don't kill the messenger, yeah right,
                      No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

                      To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Doktor View Post
                        I thought you guys gonna dispute or not dispute over what they said in the interview, not about their CVs.

                        Don't kill the messenger, yeah right,
                        Dok:

                        What's to dispute? They're flying around in the rarefied air of intellectual abstraction. You win the argument, you lose it, as the Sophists proved and disproved. As for the facts, well...you could use them in any context. This is the kind of discussion that's fun over Sunday brunch, but the next day you gotta go to work and deal with the world as you find it. Changes nothing.

                        Nothing stopping you from disputing it.:)
                        To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education - Plato

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          JAD,

                          I wont go in a polemics over Chomsky, Assange or Tarrik, simply because they spread too much paranoia.

                          The governments this, the corporations that, people are stupid and don't realize, but now they do... it's too much venom in their remarks and even if true I can't change it from over here so its better to waste my time with witty comments and doing something productive in the mean time ;)

                          My remark was only to the discussion going into the trio's CVs instead of what they say.

                          P.S. I haven't even watched the video
                          Last edited by Doktor; 25 Aug 12,, 17:47. Reason: P.S.
                          No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

                          To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            I thought you guys gonna dispute or not dispute over what they said in the interview, not about their CVs.
                            A rapist and a supporter of mass murder talking with some third dude using fancy leftist speak words to hide the fact they ain't got a damn thing to say worth hearing.

                            Three douche bags (the third dude looks and sounds like one but I'm still not sure who he is) trying to sit and pretend to look smart... while speaking on Russian propaganda TV...
                            Last edited by troung; 25 Aug 12,, 18:35.
                            To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by troung View Post
                              Three douche bags (the third dude looks and sounds like one but I'm still not sure who he is) trying to sit and pretend to look smart... while speaking on Russian propaganda TV...
                              Tariq Ali - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

                              If you don't follow that side then you will never have heard of him, i did not.

                              His idea of extreme centre went over my head. It sounds interesting, maybe he has developed it but this program could not even begin to scratch the surface of what he said.
                              Last edited by Double Edge; 25 Aug 12,, 19:00.

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