Crisis and Hope - Theirs and ours Noam Chomsky

Here are the pull quotes from an interesting article
in the BOSTON REVIEW.

Bailing out banks is not uppermost in the minds of the billion people now facing starvation.

Where neoliberal rules have been observed since the ’70s, economic performance has generally deteriorated and social democratic programs have weakened.

People cannot be told that the advanced economy relies heavily on their risk-taking, while eventual profit is privatized, and ‘eventual’ can be a long time.

Obama is following General Petraeus’s strategy to drive the Taliban into Pakistan, with potentially serious consequences for this unstable state.

‘The crisis’—the financial crisis—will presumably be patched up somehow, while leaving the institutions that created it pretty much in place.

If I want to get home from work, the market offers me a choice between a Ford and a Toyota, but not between a car and a subway. That is a social decision.

We must overcome the marginalization and atomization of the public so that they can become ‘participants,’ not mere ‘spectators of action.’

This article is based on a talk delivered June 12, 2009, at an event sponsored by the Brecht Forum.

Please read the whole thing here.