Noam Chomsky

[Dissident Heart]

I have read a good number of Chomsky's books, essays, letters, interviews, letters and transcripts...they number into the hundreds- and there hundreds more which I've not read.On one occasion I've suggested we explore a recent book, not authored by Chomsky but a selection of many informal conversations, "Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky". I think the title of this book gives the key to understanding the importance and value of Noam Chomsky as an intellectual force for freedom and justice. Chomsky is essential in understanding Power and the way humans use and abuse it. Thus, saying "Chomsky doesn't know anything about politics" is sheer nonsense placed in this context of humanity and power. Whether it be the power of the Corporate Military State, the Academy, the complex Media Industries, or the power of organized citizens struggling to keep their air, soil, and water clean, their workplaces safe and self-managed, or their bodies out of imperial conflict...there are few in all of recorded history who have kept their finger on this pulse as Chomsky has.We shall be all the poorer when he leaves the stage of citizen dissent.Key to the comment, "Chomsky should stick to his field of expertise, and leave Politics to the experts" is the dogma that only experts can understand Politics, and that the mass of people should stay quiet on the subject, wait for instructions, and confirm the choices of the experts in periodic fetishes called "elections".Chomsky's consistent thread in all of his discourse concerning Politics is the fact that anybody can do Politics, understand Politics, and engage the Political system...there are no experts, no field of elite managers best suited for the task of managing communities and states. Chomsky, being a die-hard child of the Enlightenment of Descartes and Spinoza and Rosseau, accepts that human intelligence is universal and not regimented to special castes, classes and races...their are NO EXPERTS in human behavior.But, there are liars and scoundrels and abusers of power. And it is precisely these folks who want us to leave the business of politics and power in the hands of the "experts".And, this is why Chomsky is essential.

[Dissident Heart]

Chomsky is a hard catch for any interview and discussion, considering his schedule is already filled for the next three years...and this is someone who can count on one hand the number of times he has been on PBS, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, CSPAN, or CNBC.I recommend we consider Michael Albert of ZNet and Z Magazine www.zmag.org/. Albert is a former student of Chomsky, but an activist, organizer, radical thinker of the first rank in his own right. He is a visionary, and has offered a careful vision of what he sees the "Good Society" should be. He calls it PARECON, or Participatory Economics. His latest book, "PARECON: Life After Capitalism" www.parecon.org/pelac.htm is a tour de force of political, economic, philosophical, and moral intellectual insight and vision towards a just and sustainable world.More information about PARECON: Participatory Economics can be found at www.parecon.org/.

[Dissident Heart]

Here are a few Noam Chomsky resources on the Web:The Noam Chomsky Archive www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfmThe Bad News: Noam Chomsky Archive monkeyfist.com/ChomskyArchiveThird World Traveller: Noam Chomsky Page www.thirdworldtraveler.co...omsky.html

[Dissident Heart]

Dominance and its Dilemmas*By Noam ChomskyThe past year has been a momentous one in world affairs. In the normal rhythm, the pattern was set in September, a month marked by several important and closely related events. The most powerful state in history announced a new National Security Strategy asserting that it will maintain global hegemony permanently: any challenge will be blocked by force, the dimension in which the US reigns supreme. At the same time, the war drums began to beat to mobilize the population for an invasion of Iraq, which would be "the first test [of the doctrine], not the last," the New York Times observed after the invasion, "the petri dish in which this experiment in pre-emptive policy grew." And the campaign opened for the mid-term congressional elections, which would determine whether the administration would be able to carry forward its radical international and domestic agenda.The new "imperial grand strategy," as it was aptly termed at once by John Ikenberry, presents the US as "a revisionist state seeking to parlay its momentary advantages into a world order in which it runs the show," a "unipolar world" in which "no state or coalition could ever challenge" it as "global leader, protector, and enforcer. These policies are fraught with danger even for the US itself, he warned, joining many others in the foreign policy elite....What is to be "protected" is US power and the interests it represents, not the world, which vigorously opposed the conception. Violence is a powerful instrument of control, as history demonstrates. But the dilemmas of dominance are not slight. Edited by: Dissident Heart at: 11/4/03 11:42 pm

[Dissident Heart]

"The Myth of the Liberal Media:The Propaganda Model of News" Featuring Noam Chomsky and Edward HermanEdward Herman and Noam Chomsky demolish one of the central tenets of our political culture, the idea of the "liberal media." Instead, utilizing a systematic model based on massive empirical research, they reveal the manner in which the news media are so subordinated to corporate and conservative interests that their function can only be described as that of "elite propaganda.""If you want to understand the way a system works, you look at its institutional structure. How it is organized, how it is controlled, how it is funded."-Noam Chomsky"The Mainstream media really represent elite interests, and what the propaganda model tries to do is stipulate a set of institutional variables, reflecting this elite power, that very powerfully influence the media."-Edward Hermanwww.mediaed.org/videos/Co...beralMedia

[Dissident Heart]

Noam Chomsky video interview:"Beyond the Frame: Alternative Views of the September 11th Atrocities."I. The Afghan Trap II. How Should We Respond? III. What Are The Broader Motivations Behind The Attack? IV. How Do We Remedy Root Causes? V. What Is The Immediate Effect Of The Atrocities? www.mediaed.org/btf/Chomsky/index_html

[Dissident Heart]

Noam Chomsky on Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest For Global Dominancewww.democracynow.org/arti...transcript

[Dissident Heart]

The Professorial ProvocateurNoam Chomsky interviewed by Deborah SolomonNovember 2, 2003 Your new book on American foreign policy, ''Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance,'' includes a blurb on the jacket that calls you ''arguably the most important intellectual alive.''I don't like the intellectual label. In the academic world, most of the work that is done is clerical. A lot of the work done by professors is routine.I assume you are not referring to your own efforts as a professor emeritus at M.I.T. and world-renowned linguist.I have known people who are working class or craftsmen, who happen to be more intellectual than professors. If you are working 50 hours a week in a factory, you don't have time to read 10 newspapers a day and go back to declassified government archives. But such people may have far-reaching insights into the way the world works.Your critiques of U.S. foreign policy have brought you a new following in the wake of 9/11 -- you haven't been this revered since the sit-ins and teach-ins during the Vietnam War. Do you see any connection between your work in linguistics and your work in radical politics?I see virtually no connection.But you must admit that politicians, much like you, earn their living with words and see language as the ultimate reality.Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.True. I've often wondered why there are more slang words for death and genitals than any other words.Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense.Do you ever doubt your own ideas?All the time. You should read what happens in linguistics. I keep changing what I said. Any person who is intellectually alive changes his ideas. If anyone at a university is teaching the same thing they were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead, or they haven't been thinking.But, unlike many reconstructed leftists, you have not changed your political views one iota since the 60's. For instance, you have remained a vocal critic of Israel.I objected to the founding of Israel as a Jewish state. I don't think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state.Your father was a respected Hebraic scholar, and sometimes you sound like a self-hating Jew.It is a shame that critics of Israeli policies are seen as either anti-Semites or self-hating Jews. It's grotesque. If an Italian criticized Italian policies, would he be seen as a self-hating Italian?Have you ever been psychoanalyzed?I do not think psychoanalysis has a scientific basis. If we can't explain why a cockroach decides to turn left, how can we explain why a human being decides to do something?How would you explain your large ambition?I am driven by many things. I know what some of them are. The misery that people suffer and the misery for which I share responsibility. That is agonizing. We live in a free society, and privilege confers responsibility.If you feel so guilty, how can you justify living a bourgeois life and driving a nice car?If I gave away my car, I would feel even more guilty. When I go to visit peasants in southern Colombia, they don't want me to give up my car. They want me to help them. Suppose I gave up material things -- my computer, my car and so on -- and went to live on a hill in Montana where I grew my own food. Would that help anyone? No.Have you considered leaving the United States permanently?No. This is the best country in the world. www.chomsky.info/interviews/20031102.htm

[Dissident Heart]

Noam Chomsky interviewRadio Havana Cubawww.walterlippmann.com/Ch...-2003.html

[Dissident Heart]

Hegemony or Survival America's Quest for Global DominanceBy Noam ChomskyPublished by Metropolitan Bookshardcover | 288 pages11/1/2003 | US$22.00ISBN: 0805074007About the book:For more than half a century, the United States has been pursuing a grand imperial strategy with the aim of staking out the globe. Our leaders have shown themselves willing -- as in the Cuban missile crisis -- to follow the dream of dominance no matter how high the risks. Now the Bush administration is intensifying this process, driving us toward a choice between the prerogatives of power and livable Earth. In Hegemony or Survival, Noam Chomsky investigates how we came to this moment, what kind of peril we find ourselves in, and why our rulers are willing to jeopardize the future of our species. With the striking logic that is his trademark, Chomsky dissects America's quest for global supremacy, tracking the US government's aggressive pursuit of policies intended to achieve "full spectrum dominance" at any cost. He vividly lays out how the most recent manifestations of the politics of global control -- from unilateralism and the dismantling of international agreements to state terrorism and the militarization of space -- cohere in a drive for hegemony that ultimately threatens our survival. In our era he argues, empire is a recipe for an earthly wasteland.Lucid, rigorous, and thoroughly documented, Hegemony or Survival is Chomsky's most urgent and sweeping work in years. Certain to spark widespread debate, it is a definitive statement from one of the world's most influential political thinkers.www.americanempireproject...0805074007