Noam Chomsky — The State Fears Its Own People

Chomsky on terror, Snowden, and why "security" is usually an excuse for government repression.

AlterNet
Noam Chomsky: The State Fears Its Own People
Noam Chomsky

Interesting summary of Lenin's "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" (1916):

This thesis posited that the merging of banks and industrial cartels gave rise to finance capital—the basis of imperialism, the zenith of capitalism. To wit, in pursuing greater profits than the home market can offer, business exports capital, which, in turn, leads to the division of the world, among international, monopolist firms, and to European states colonising large parts of the world, in support of their businesses. Imperialism, thus, is an advanced stage of capitalism based upon the establishment of monopolies, and upon the exportation of capital (rather than goods), managed with a global financial system, of which colonialism is one feature.

Hmmm.

BTW, Lenin's later justification of the necessity for a national security state in Russia is pretty similar to the rationale we are hearing now from recent administrations and leaders of both parties.