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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNoam Chomsky | Security and State Power
Noam Chomsky | Security and State Power
Monday, 03 March 2014 13:40
By Noam Chomsky, Truthout | Op-Ed
This article, the first of two parts, is adapted from a lecture by Noam Chomsky on Feb. 28 sponsored by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara, Calif.
A leading principle of international relations theory is that the state's highest priority is to ensure security. As Cold War strategist George F. Kennan formulated the standard view, government is created "to assure order and justice internally and to provide for the common defense."
The proposition seems plausible, almost self-evident, until we look more closely and ask: Security for whom? For the general population? For state power itself? For dominant domestic constituencies?
Depending on what we mean, the credibility of the proposition ranges from negligible to very high.
.....(snip).....
Often the attempt to maintain secrecy is motivated by the need to guarantee the security of powerful domestic sectors. One persistent example is the mislabeled "free trade agreements" - mislabeled because they radically violate free trade principles and are substantially not about trade at all, but rather about investor rights.
These instruments are regularly negotiated in secret, like the current Trans-Pacific Partnership - not entirely in secret, of course. They aren't secret from the hundreds of corporate lobbyists and lawyers who are writing the detailed provisions, with an impact revealed by the few parts that have reached the public through WikiLeaks. .......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/22221-noam-chomsky-security-and-state-power
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Noam Chomsky | Security and State Power (Original Post)
marmar
Mar 2014
OP
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)1. k&r for chomsky.
bobduca
(1,763 posts)2. "Security for whom?"
for the investor class.
These corporate-citizens are negotiating rules that will accelerate the raping of the commons, and continue to erode states sovereignty. All according to plan.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)3. Indeed ...security for whom? National defence for whom? NSA for whom?
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)4. K&R
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)5. Free Trade indeed...more like Free Reign.
K&R for Noam Chomsky.