As MIT activist philosopher Noam Chomsky points out in his book "Failed States"(Metropolitan), "Opportunities for education and organizing abound. As in the past, rights are not likely to be granted by benevolent authorities, or won by intermittent actions---attending a few demonstrations or pushing a lever in the personalized quadrennial extravaganzas that are depicted as 'democratic politics.' …These tasks require dedicated day-by-day engagement…" Failure to grasp these opportunities "is likely to have ominous repercussions: for the country, for the world, and for future generations."
The major goal, as Chalmers Johnson writes in "The Sorrows of Empire"(Henry Holt), is for Americans to "retake control of Congress, reform it along with the corrupted election laws that have made it into a forum for special interests, turn it into a genuine assembly of democratic representatives, and cut off the supply of money to the Pentagon and the secret intelligence agencies."
He's right, of course. America today is a warfare state, the most powerful ever, and its leaders lie when they claim that small countries half way around the world with $5 billion annual military budgets represent a threat to Washington, which spends roughly $800 billion a year for war.
