“– Noam Chomsky’s description of the dangers posed by U.S. elites’ “Imperial Mentality†was recently given a boost in credibility by a surprising source—Bill Clinton.
As America’s economy, foreign policy and politics continue to unravel …
… it is clear that this mentality and the system it has created will produce an increasing number of victims in the years to come.
Clinton startlingly testified to that effect on March 10 to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
‘..Since 1981 the United States has followed a policy until the last year or so … when we started rethinking it …
… that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries … and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food …
… so thank goodness they can lead directly into the industrial era.
It has not worked.
It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas … but it has not worked.
It was a mistake.
It was a mistake that I was a party to.
I am not pointing the finger at anybody.
I did that.
I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people…
… because of what I did … nobody else..’
Clinton is to be praised for being the first U.S. president to take personal responsibility for impoverishing an entire nation …
… rather than ignoring his misdeeds …. or falsely blaming local U.S.-imposed regimes.
But his confession also means that his embrace of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and NAFTA “neo-liberalization†…
… destroyed the lives of many more millions well beyond Haiti …
… as U.S. support for heavily subsidized U.S. agribusiness damaged local agricultural economies throughout Latin America and beyond.
This led to mass migration into urban slums and destitution … as well as increased emigration to the U.S.—
- which then led Clinton to militarize the border in 1994—
- and thus accelerated the “illegal immigration†issue that so poisons U.S. politics today.
Clinton might also have added that he and other U.S. leaders imposed such policies by force …
… installing military dictators and vicious police and paramilitary forces.
Chomsky reports in “Hopes and Prospects†that in Haiti …
… semiofficial thugs empowered by a U.S.-supported coup murdered 8,000 people … and raped 35,000 women in 2004 and 2005 alone …
… while a tiny local elite reaps most of the benefits from U.S. policies.
Clinton’s testimony reminded me of one of my visits with Chomsky, back in 1988, when, after talking for an hour or so …
… he smiled and said he had to stop to get back to writing about the children of Haiti…”
go to source/story>>>A Warning From Noam Chomsky on the Threat of Elites : Information Clearing House – ICH
