Chomsky.info: Monday, May 07, 20076 May 2007Jamia Names Road after Arjun, The Hindu (May 5, 2007). An excerpt: Before Mr. Singh inaugurated the brand new Noam Chomsky Complex on Friday evening, Jamia Teachers’ Association president M. Rais Khan opened “Shahrah-i Arjun Singh”—the road leading to Mujeeb Bagh Teachers’ Housing Complex on the campus.After opening the new Complex, Mr. Singh said: “It is indeed appropriate that this complex has been named after the leading linguist, writer and activist Noam Chomsky, whose commitment to critical enquiry, we wish our centres of learning and research to imbibe and propagate.”
Chomsky.info: Tuesday, April 17, 200716 Apr 2007On Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein, video interview with Amy Goodman Democracy Now (April 17, 2007). An excerpt:The whole thing is outrageous. I mean, he’s an outstanding scholar. He has produced book after book. He’s got recommendations from some of the leading scholars in the many areas in which he has worked. The faculty—the departmental committee unanimously recommended him for tenure. It’s amazing that he hasn’t had full professorship a long time ago.And, as you were saying, there was a huge campaign led by a Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, to try in a desperate effort to defame him and vilify him, so as to prevent him from getting tenure. The details of it are utterly shocking, and, as you said, it got to the point where the DePaul administration called on Harvard to put an end to this.
Chomsky.info: Tuesday, April 17, 200716 Apr 2007On Iraq, Vietnam, Activism and History, video interview with Amy Goodman and Howard Zinn, Democracy Now (April 16, 2007). An excerpt:It’s worth stressing that aggressors do not have any rights. This is a clear-cut case of aggression and violation of the U.N. Charter, a supreme international crime and in the words of the Nuremburg Tribunal, aggressors simply have no rights to make any decisions. They have responsibilities. The responsibilities are, first of all to pay enormous reparations and that includes for the sanctions—the effect of the sanctions, in fact it ought to include the support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980’s, which was torture for Iraqis and worse for Iranians.
Chomsky.info: Friday, April 06, 20075 Apr 2007What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico?, TomDispatch (April 5, 2007). An excerpt:The debate over Iranian interference in Iraq proceeds without ridicule on the assumption that the United States owns the world. We did not, for example, engage in a similar debate in the 1980s about whether the U.S. was interfering in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, and I doubt that Pravda, probably recognizing the absurdity of the situation, sank to outrage about that fact (which American officials and our media, in any case, made no effort to conceal). Perhaps the official Nazi press also featured solemn debates about whether the Allies were interfering in sovereign Vichy France, though if so, sane people would then have collapsed in ridicule.
Chomsky.info: Tuesday, April 03, 20072 Apr 2007Beware of State Power, interview with George McLeod, Bangkok Post (April 1, 2007). An excerpt:China does not pose a military threat. In fact, of all the major powers, China has probably been the most restrained in building up its military forces. China poses a very serious threat to US power because it cannot be intimidated by the US.Take for example Iran and Iraq. The US wants the world to boycott Iran in pursuit of US policies. Europe sort of shakes its fist, but then Europe pretty much backs off. So when the US warns countries not to invest in Iran, European investors -banks and so on- tend to pull out.
Chomsky.info: Monday, April 02, 20071 Apr 2007On Capitalism, Europe, and the World Bank, interview with Dennis Ott, ZNet (April 2, 2007). An excerpt:Henry Ford famously tried to pay his workers a higher wage than the going wage, because partly on this reasoning—he was not a theoretical economist, but partly on the grounds that if he doesn’t pay his workers enough and other people won’t pay their workers enough, there’s going to be nobody around to buy his model-T Fords. Actually that issue came to court in the United States, around 1916 or so, and led to a fundamental principle of Anglo-American corporate law, which is part of the reason why the Anglo-American system is slightly different from the European social market system. There was a famous case called “Dodge v. Ford.” Some of the stockholders of the Ford motor company, the Dodge brothers, brought Henry Ford to court, claiming that by paying the workers a higher wage, and by making cars better than they had to be made, he was depriving them of their profits—because it’s true: dividends would be lower. They went to the courts, and they won.The courts decided that the management of the corporation has the legal responsibility to maximize the yield of the profit to its stockholders, that’s its job. The corporations had already been granted the right of persons, and this basically says they have to be a certain type of pathological person, a person that does nothing except try to maximize his own gain—that’s the legal requirement on a corporation, and that’s a core principle of Anglo-American corporate law.
Chomsky.info: Tuesday, March 20, 200719 Mar 2007In Memory of Tanya Reinhart (March 18, 2007). An excerpt:It is painful, and hard, to write about the loss of an old and cherished friend. Tanya Reinhart was just that.
Chomsky.info: Wednesday, March 14, 200713 Mar 2007Noam Chomsky Connects the Dots, interview with Sameer Dossani, CounterPunch (March 9 / 11, 2007). An excerpt:As far as the U.S. economic interests I think we have to make a distinction. The primary interest, and that’s true throughout the Middle East, even in Saudi Arabia, the major energy producer, has always been control, not access, and not profit. Profit is a secondary interest and access is a tertiary interest.
Chomsky.info: Monday, March 12, 200711 Mar 2007Mariko from Japan provides transcripts of Chomsky’s talks in a useful blog devoted solely to this purpose. We will include complete transcripts here at chomsky.info as they become available, but you may want to visit the site regularly for daily updates.
Chomsky.info: Friday, March 09, 20078 Mar 2007A predator becomes more dangerous when wounded, The Guardian (March 9, 2007). An excerpt:In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington’s basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important. As was the norm during the cold war, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq-a country otherwise free from any foreign interference-on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world.
Chomsky.info: Thursday, March 08, 20077 Mar 2007The Radical Intellectual, by Wolfgang B. Sperlich, Resurgence, Issue 240 (January-February, 2007). An excerpt:People who care about the world and its inhabitants have long recognised Chomsky as a visionary and a man of the people. As an eminent scientist with a social conscience he embodies the tireless academic worker -with a vast output of high-quality work- who reluctantly sacrificed his private life for a public one in order to make the world a better place. In that sense he is also a committed conservationist, and this is expressed in his deep concern for the natural environment, especially in his more recent work. That he is vilified as public enemy number one by political and economic reactionaries comes as no surprise, but it is a heavy price to pay. His good-humoured acceptance of such a fate should inspire us all.
Chomsky.info: Sunday, February 18, 200717 Feb 2007On Iran, Iraq, and the Rest of the World, interview with Michael Shank, Foreign Policy in Focus (February 16, 2007). An excerpt:I presume part of the reason for the U.S.-Israel invasion of Lebanon in Julyand it is US-Israeli, the Lebanese are correct in calling it that-part of the reason I suppose was that Hezbollah is considered a deterrent to a potential U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran. It had a deterrent capacity, i.e. rockets. And the goal I presume was to wipe out the deterrent so as to free up the United States and Israel for an eventual attack on Iran. That’s at least part of the reason. The official reason given for the invasion can’t be taken seriously for a moment. That’s the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of a couple others. For decades Israel has been capturing, and kidnapping Lebanese and Palestinian refugees on the high seas, from Cyprus to Lebanon, killing them in Lebanon, bringing them to Israel, holding them as hostages. It’s been going on for decades, has anybody called for an invasion of Israel?
Chomsky.info: Saturday, February 10, 20079 Feb 200720 Years of Propaganda? Critical Discussions & Evidence on the Ongoing Relevance of the Herman & Chomsky Propaganda Model, University of Windsor Communication Studies (May 15-17, 2007). Conference overview:The year 2008 will mark the 20th Anniversary of the publishing of the book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Communication (Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Pantheon, 1988). In this book, the authors (both of whom will be attending/participating in this conference) put forth a model, the Propaganda Model (PM), as a way of understanding the way our mass media system interrelates with our economy, political system, and society in general. Since putting forth their propaganda model, there have been both praise and criticism of this model, and there have also been many changes and technological advances in our entire communication and media landscape. This May 2007 conference and Spring 2008 publication (of an edited scholarly collection inspired by the conference) will, through vigorous debate/discussion and fresh insight, make great strides in critically analyzing (revising/updating) the ongoing relevance of the Herman/Chomsky Propaganda Model as a useful conceptualization for understanding 21st century media and society.
Chomsky.info: Wednesday, February 07, 20076 Feb 2007Stop, Noam, by Dennis Perrin, Red State Son (February 7, 2006). An excerpt:As you know, I’ve spent more than my fair share of personal time with Noam Chomsky. His influence on me, on how I read a newspaper, watch the news, assess politicos and ideologues, is indelible and deeply cherished. I’ve disagreed with him, and in darker moments resented and mocked his belief in essential human goodness, but my respect and admiration for him outweighs any petty feelings I may have held. Noam is simply one of the finest people I’ve ever met or gotten to know.
Chomsky.info: Tuesday, February 06, 20075 Feb 2007Chomsky Calls for Review of MIT Professor’s Case. The Boston Globe (February 5, 2007). An excerpt:Noam Chomsky and 10 other professors at MIT are circulating a letter calling for an examination of the process that denied tenure to African-American stem cell scientist James L. Sherley, who began a hunger strike today.UPDATE: To bypass mandatory free registration, try BugMeNot (firefox extension).
Chomsky.info: Friday, February 02, 20071 Feb 2007Five Minutes with Noam Chomsky, interview with Niral Shah, CampusProgress.org (February 1, 2007). An excerpt:Activism is much higher than it was in the ‘60s. You hear the opposite. People say, “Well how come we don’t have a 1960s style anti-war movement,” [but] people have completely forgotten that antiwar protest was so limited in the ‘60s. Most people don’t even know that John F. Kennedy attacked South Vietnam outright in 1962. That was war, but there was no protest. You could barely get three people in a room to talk about it. It was years before a protest developed. In October 1965, when there were already hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in South Vietnam and the country had been destroyed, we had the first national day of protest in Boston. It was broken up by counter protests, and to the applause of liberal press.
Chomsky.info: Sunday, January 21, 200720 Jan 2007Iraq and US Foreign Policy, interview with Peshawa Abdulkhaliq Muhammed, Kurdistani Nwe Newspaper (December 25, 2006). An excerpt:The primary issue is not access but rather control. That is clear both from internal documentation and from the historical record. The US followed the same Middle East policies for decades when it was not using a drop of Middle East oil, and even now, intelligence projects that while controlling the Middle East for the traditional reasons, the US should rely on more secure Atlantic Basin reserves: West Africa and the Western hemisphere.
Chomsky.info: Saturday, January 20, 200719 Jan 2007On Just War Theory and the Invasion of Iraq, recording of a talk delivered at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, (April 20, 2006). Thanks to the generosity of a visitor, this video is now available again. A brief description of the event:From the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Noam Chomsky talks to West Point cadets about just war theory and the invasion of Iraq. During the talk, Professor Chomsky criticizes the work of Michael Walzer, an influential proponent of just war theory and the author of the popular “Just and Unjust Wars.” Following his remarks, Professor Chomsky takes questions from the cadets about international law and the Bush administration’s foreign policy.
Chomsky.info: Monday, January 15, 200714 Jan 2007Iraq: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, interview with Michael Albert, ZNet (December 27, 2006). An excerpt:The real reason for the invasion, surely, is that Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world, very cheap to exploit, and lies right at the heart of the world’s major hydrocarbon resources, what the State Department 60 years ago described as “a stupendous source of strategic power.” The issue is not access, but rather control (and for the energy corporations, profit). Control over these resources gives the US “critical leverage” over industrial rivals, to borrow Zbigniew Brezinski’s phrase, echoing George Kennan when he was a leading planner and recognized that such control would give the US “veto power” over others. Dick Cheney observed that control over energy resources provides “tools of intimidation or blackmail”—when in the hands of others, that is. We are too pure and noble for those considerations to apply to us, so true believers declare—or more accurately, just presuppose, taking the point to be too obvious to articulate.
Chomsky.info: Wednesday, January 10, 20079 Jan 2007Just released: updated paperback edition of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawalby Anthony ArnoveWith a foreword by Howard Zinn”An urgent book.”-Arundhati Roy”A powerful and compelling argument on behalf of withdrawal from Iraq.”Ron Kovic “Anthony Arnove’s analysis of the reasons for U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraq is brilliant.”Cindy Sheehan”A book that every American, regardless of political viewpoint, should read.”Richard Falk”A compelling brief against America’s new imperial venture.”Frances Fox Piven”Conventional wisdom keeps saying there are no good options, but Arnove’s analysis suggests a way out of the misery.”Chicago Reader”A rigorous analysis of the American occupation.”Mahmood Mamdani”An impassioned, unflinching case for immediate U.S. withdrawal. Read this book and bring the troops home now.”-Eve EnslerCatch the author at the following events:January 17, 7 pm, New York, NY (with Michael Schwartz)16 Beaverhttp://www.16beavergroup.org/monday/January 20, 7 pm, Chicago, IL (with Jeff Engelhardt) University of Illinois-ChicagoContact: Adam Turl, 773-567-0936, adamcturl@yahoo.comJanuary 27, 5 pm, Washington, DC (with Kelly Dougherty) Busboys and Poets http://www.busboysandpoets.com/blog_events.htmFebruary 1, 7:30 pm, Pasadena, CAVoices of a People’s History of the United States with Mark Ruffalo, Q’Orianka Kilcher, Benjamin Bratt, Marisa Tomei, Josh Brolin, and Alfre Woodard.All Saints Episcopal Churchhttp://www.icujp.orgPublished by Metropolitan Books / American Empire Project Series Paperback US$13.00ISBN: 0805082727208 pageshttp://www.americanempireproject.com/bookpage.asp?ISBN=0805082727Available from bookstores and online fromHaymarket Bookshttp://www.haymarketbooks.org/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=Haymarket&Product_Code=UHPILOWPPowell’shttp://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-0805082727-0BookSense.comhttp://www.booksense.com/Amazon.comhttp://www.amazon.com/Iraq-Withdrawal-American-Empire-Project/dp/0805082727Barnes and Noble.comhttp://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0805082727
Chomsky.info: Saturday, January 06, 20075 Jan 2007South America: Toward an Alternative Future, International Herald Tribune (January 5, 2007). An excerpt:Last month a coincidence of birth and death signaled a transition for South America and indeed for the world.The former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died even as leaders of South American nations concluded a two-day summit meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia, hosted by President Evo Morales, at which the participants and the agenda represented the antithesis of Pinochet and his era.
Chomsky.info: Thursday, December 28, 200627 Dec 2006Translator, Editors of Chomsky’s Book Acquitted, Turkish Daily News (December 22, 2006). An excerpt:The Istanbul Second Criminal Court on Wednesday acquitted the publisher, translator and two editors of the Turkish edition of a book by prominent U.S. leftist Noam Chomsky, the Anatolia news agency reported.
Chomsky.info: Wednesday, December 20, 200619 Dec 2006Historical Perspectives on Latin American and East Asian Regional Development, talk delivered to a Boston meeting of Mass Global Action (December 15, 2006). An excerpt:There was a meeting on the weekend of December 9-10 in Cochabamba in Bolivia of major South American leaders. It was a very important meeting. One index of its importance is that it was unreported, virtually unreported apart from the wire services. So every editor knew about it. Since I suspect you didn’t read that wire service report, I’ll read a few things from it to indicate why it was so important.
Chomsky.info