Chomsky.info: Friday, June 15, 200714 Jun 2007Noam Chomsky Voices Support for the Responsibility to Iraqi Refugees Act of 2007 (June 15, 2007). An excerpt: Mandaean Crisis International, an organization dedicated to ending persecution of the Mandaean community, today announced that Professor Noam Chomsky has publicly lent his support to the passage of House Resolution 2265. Called the Responsibility to Iraqi Refugees Act of 2007, the bill would confer immigration status to the U.S. for many religious minorities, including the Mandaean community in Iraq. The Mandaeans, also known as Sabian Mandaeans, are an ethnic and religious group of great but uncertain antiquity who revere John the Baptist as their last great teacher, but are not Christian.
Chomsky.info: Thursday, June 07, 20076 Jun 2007Just released:Interventionsby Noam ChomskyNot since his all-time best-selling title, 9/11, published in the Open Media series in 2001, have readers had a timely, short, easy-to-read, affordable Chomsky. Unlike 9/11, Interventions is a writerly work-a series of more than thirty tightly argued essays aimed at various aspects of US power and politics in the post-9/11 world. While critical of US military interventions around the globe, each piece in the book is in itself an intellectual intervention aimed at raising public ire about the consequences of US use of power at home and abroad.Interventions’ subjects span from 9/11 and the Iraq war to Social Security and Intelligent Design, South America and Asia, the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the election of Hamas, Hurricane Katrina, and the US concept of “just war.”According to BusinessWeek, “With relentless logic, Chomsky bids us to listen closely to what our leaders tell us-and to discern what they are leaving out. . . . Agree with him or not, we lose out by not listening.” Chomsky’s Interventions delivers what readers want: an accessible set of skeleton keys for opening up a wide range of global issues dominating today’s political landscape.
Chomsky.info: Sunday, June 03, 20072 Jun 2007Imagine there’s No Future, by Tracey Prisk The Daily Telegraph (June 3, 2007). An excerpt: Whether you’re a fan of John Lennon’s music or not, this enthralling film tells the real-life story of a man who was so driven by his own convictions that he was willing to risk his artistic reputation and the alienation of his enormous fan-base in order to uphold his beliefs.A collection of some of the most high-profile intellectuals and writers, including Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Ron Kovic, talk to camera about the important role that Lennon played in trying to “give peace a chance’’.
Chomsky.info: Wednesday, May 30, 200729 May 2007“Cambridge Diarist”, letter to The New Republic (May 31, 2007). An excerpt:It is always intriguing to see just how far Alan Dershowitz will go in his efforts to conceal the fact that Norman Finkelstein exposed him as a vulgar and fraudulent apologist for Israeli human rights violations -carefully, judiciously, with extensive documentation. Knowing that he cannot respond, Dershowitz is reduced to a torrent of slanders and deceit about Finkelstein’s alleged misdeeds – which would, transparently, be irrelevant if there were a particle of truth to his easily-refuted charges. The latest chapter in Dershowitz’s efforts at self-protection is a campaign to undermine Finkelstein’s tenure appointment, actions that are utterly without precedent, even reaching to an op-ed in the Wall St. Journal.. In an attempt to obscure what he is up to, along with other little fibs that I’ll ignore, Dershowitz has now invented a new fairy tale: that he is following my course when I “led [my] own jihad” to deny Kissinger a faculty position at Columbia (“Cambridge Diarist,” TNR, May 21).
Chomsky.info: Sunday, May 27, 200726 May 2007On Recent Developments in Venezuela, interview with Kabir Joshi-Vijayan and Matthew Skogstad-Stubbs, Venezuelanalysis.com (May 18, 2007). An excerpt:There have been some changes. I don’t think they’re dramatic. This is probably the first time in Venezuelan history that there’s a government that’s making more than gestures towards using its huge resources to help the poorer parts of the population. This is mostly towards health, education, cooperatives and so on. Just how great the impact is it’s pretty hard to say. But certainly we know the popular reaction to them, which is after all the most important question. What’s important is not what we think about it, but what Venezuelans think about it. And that’s pretty well known. There are pretty good polling agencies in Latin America, the main one is Latinobarometro, which is in Chile. Very respected organization. There are similar polls in the United States in less detail. They monitor attitudes throughout Latin America on all sorts of crucial issues. The most recent one in Chile, in December, found-as earlier ones have-support for democracy and support for the government have been rising very sharply in Venezuela since 1998. Venezuela is now essentially tied with Uruguay at the top in support for the government and support for democracy. It’s well ahead of the other Latin American countries in support for the economic policies of the government and also well ahead in the belief that the policies help the poor, meaning the huge majority, instead of elites. And there are similar judgments on other issues, and as I say it has been rising rather sharply… Despite the obstacles there has been a degree of progress that has been considered by the population as very meaningful, and that’s the best measure.
Chomsky.info