Noam Chomsky: Boston and Beyond

[marmar]

Boston and Beyond

Thursday, 02 May 2013 13:21
By Noam Chomsky, Truthout | Op-Ed


April is usually a cheerful month in New England, with the first signs of spring, and the harsh winter at last receding. Not this year.

There are few in Boston who were not touched in some way by the marathon bombings on April 15 and the tense week that followed. Several friends of mine were at the finish line when the bombs went off. Others live close to where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the second suspect, was captured. The young police officer Sean Collier was murdered right outside my office building.

It's rare for privileged Westerners to see, graphically, what many others experience daily - for example, in a remote village in Yemen, the same week as the marathon bombings.

On April 23, Yemeni activist and journalist Farea Al-Muslimi, who had studied at an American high school, testified before a US Senate committee that right after the marathon bombings, a drone strike in his home village in Yemen killed its target.

The strike terrorized the villagers, turning them into enemies of the United States - something that years of jihadi propaganda had failed to accomplish. ........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16138-boston-and-beyond

[libodem]

1. The point about the polio in the link

Is especially sad.

[jimmyolsenblues]

2. The "defense" budget.

I wish we could bring all the troops home.
I wish we stopped building tanks, planes, air craft carriers.
Its amazing to me how we describe as defense.
If we enter another country its not defense, its offense.
http://costofwar.com/

1.4 trillion spent on the war in iraq and afganistan.
1.4 trillion dollars and everyone wants to talk about reese witherspoon today at my office.

A country gets a government they deserve.

[Myrina]

3. "... it's rare for privileged Westerners to see ... what many others experience daily ..."

I think about that often, especially when there are military flyovers at local sporting events.
Would the crowd be so yay-rah if they were on the recieving end of those types of flyovers - with accompanying explosions, rubble, smoke and random death - on a regular basis?

IMO it would cause alot of people to rethink our position of military "occupation" around the world.