Letter: ‘Furious charges, stunning irrationality and utter nonsense’ – Noam Chomsky responds to John Gray’s book review | Books | The Guardian

Ed: This is Chomsky’s response to the review of his latest book in The Guardian.

John Gray (Delusions of grandeur, Review, 11 February) writes that “it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that, for Chomsky, America is virtually the sole obstacle to peace in the world”. This and other furious charges (eg that I think the US is uniquely evil, can solve every problem in the world, etc) is based entirely on the fact that the collection of op-eds that he reviews (Making the Future) focuses on US and British policies and commentary, a natural and entirely appropriate concern. The stunning irrationality of his inferences renders comment superfluous.

Gray fulminates that I do not bring up “intractable conflicts” such as Iran-Saudi Arabia. Actually I do, repeatedly. Thus I discuss the standard interpretation that Saudi Arabia and other Arab states are calling on the US for defence against Iran, noting that it keeps strictly to the alleged views of the ruling dictators, ignoring the US-run polls that reveal that by overwhelming margins, the public regard the US and Israel as the serious threats, with Iran barely listed. Opposition to US policies is so strong that a large majority feel that the region would be more secure if Iran had nuclear weapons. It is instructive that Gray cannot even perceive the deep contempt for democracy revealed by these practices.

via Letter: ‘Furious charges, stunning irrationality and utter nonsense’ – Noam Chomsky responds to John Gray’s book review | Books | The Guardian.

The Ethics of Protest – YouTube

Noam Chomsky recounts how his anti-Vietnam War activities nearly jeopardized his family.

via The Ethics of Protest – YouTube.

The Sonic Cannon, the Pain Ray and the Irony of the American Revolution | The Indypendent

But the prohibition on such repression enforced by those traditions has had an ironically negative and authoritarian aspect in the context of concentrated capitalist and imperial power. It has provided a great incentive for corporate and state authorities to invest heavily in the deadly arts and sciences of propaganda and manipulation. It has encouraged “the 1%”and its servants to develop quieter methods of “taking the risk out of democracy” (Alex Carey) by “manufacturing [mass] consent” (Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky) through public relations, propaganda, media control, education control, highly controlled and personalized election spectacles, among other “soft” forms of population management. At the same time, the proscriptions against sheer repression have also incentivized American authorities to develop more subtle, technically sophisticated forms of repression that operate behind the scenes (the surveillance cameras that are ubiquitous in England and ever more prevalent in the U.S. are a key example) and to deploy forms of coercion that prevent or discourage citizens from assembling and protesting without creating provocative images of state brutality.

via The Sonic Cannon, the Pain Ray and the Irony of the American Revolution | The Indypendent.

PressTV – US in state of self-inflicted decline: Chomsky

Renowned American academic Noam Chomsky condemns the concentration of wealth in the United States in the hands of the 1 percent, which he refers to as the “self-inflicted” American decline.

“The (US) policies are a failure for the large majority, the 99% in the imagery of the Occupy movements – and for the country, which has declined and will continue to do so under these policies,” Chomsky wrote in his article titled ‘Losing’ the world: American decline in perspective, part 1.

From the 1970s, there has been a significant change in the US economy, as planners, whether private or state, shifted production off shores, partly due to the “declining rate of profit in domestic manufacturing,” the 83-year-old senior academic noted.

He went on to say, “these decisions initiated a vicious cycle in which wealth became highly concentrated (dramatically so in the top 0.1% of the population), yielding concentration of political power, hence legislation to carry the cycle further: taxation and other fiscal policies, deregulation, changes in the rules of corporate governance allowing huge gains for executives, and so on.”

via PressTV – US in state of self-inflicted decline: Chomsky.

The imperial way: American decline in perspective, part 2 | Noam Chomsky | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Ed: Part 2 of Chomsky’s article that was syndicated in The Guardian:

In the years of conscious, self-inflicted decline at home, “losses” continued to mount elsewhere. In the past decade, for the first time in 500 years, South America has taken successful steps to free itself from western domination, another serious loss. The region has moved towards integration, and has begun to address some of the terrible internal problems of societies ruled by mostly Europeanized elites, tiny islands of extreme wealth in a sea of misery. They have also rid themselves of all US military bases and of IMF controls. A newly formed organization, CELAC, includes all countries of the hemisphere apart from the US and Canada. If it actually functions, that would be another step in American decline, in this case in what has always been regarded as “the backyard”.

Even more serious would be the loss of the MENA countries – Middle East/North Africa – which have been regarded by planners since the 1940s as “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history”. Control of MENA energy reserves would yield “substantial control of the world”, in the words of the influential Roosevelt advisor AA Berle.

To be sure, if the projections of a century of US energy independence based on North American energy resources turn out to be realistic, the significance of controlling MENA would decline somewhat, though probably not by much: the main concern has always been control more than access. However, the likely consequences to the planet’s equilibrium are so ominous that discussion may be largely an academic exercise.

via The imperial way: American decline in perspective, part 2 | Noam Chomsky | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Cold steel in the hours of chaos (with apologies to Public Enemy) – The Argus | theargus.ca

Having worked in the corrections system for five years, I can tell you that a large percentage of the incarcerated population in this country are not criminals in the traditional sense. They are people suffering from mental disorders who never received proper treatment, they are drug addicts who never received help, they are the poor, they are disenfranchised, and they are everything that those in the Conservative government abhor.

This discussion brings to mind another quotation. This time a somewhat famous one from one of my heroes, Noam Chomsky: “the criminal system is simply being used as a war against – literally – a war against an unwanted part of the population.”

So who are these new jail cells for?

If you’re poor, if you’re indigenous, if you’re an immigrant, if you’re mentally ill, or whoever else the Harper government chooses to deem “unwanted,” one could very well be opening up for you.

via Cold steel in the hours of chaos (with apologies to Public Enemy) – The Argus | theargus.ca.

Transformational Politics: Awakening an American Society and the Global Community – Salem-News.Com

“Julian Assange” said Noam Chomsky “should be congratulated for carrying out the responsibilities of a citizen in democratic societies, where the population should be aware of what their selected representatives are doing and planning.” Assange is perhaps to pay a heavy price for disclosure, as simultaneously, Bradley Manning, a soldier of conscience, is to pay the ultimate one.

The effectiveness of these two men’s actions should be taken to heart, and into our collective activism “For those that have the privilege to know have the privilege to act (Einstein). Also we must understand that we are not just standing in quiet or rowdy resolution and solidarity with an Assange or Manning just because our conscience dictates but because we are connected at the very substance of our being and in an evolutionary reality.

We have a constituent understanding of these two, and other men and women of conscience, because we are not in any way separate in time and space from them or their suffering. We are individuated, distinct, but never apart. The 1% would rule, the 99% would move.

It is why the “occupy movement” is coherent, growing, and in tune with a universal melody soon to become symphonic, expressed through a rising chorus of intelligent and persistent voices. We gather nimbus around our feet and grow wings on our back, and would like the Sirin, close to Eden, symbols of “world harmony” and ready to fly, swoop, our songs “going into the soul of man”. For, “Truth and Love is the only thing that counts. Where this is present, everything rights itself in the end. This is a law to which there is no exception.” (Mahatma Gandhi, Young India 1927).

via Transformational Politics: Awakening an American Society and the Global Community – Salem-News.Com.

‘Losing’ the world: American decline in perspective, part 1 | Noam Chomsky | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Ed: This is a rare front page article by Chomsky in The Guardian newspaper.

Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated – Japan’s attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example. Others are ignored, and we can often learn valuable lessons from them about what is likely to lie ahead. Right now, in fact.

At the moment, we are failing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of President John F Kennedy’s decision to launch the most destructive and murderous act of aggression of the post-second world war period: the invasion of South Vietnam, later all of Indochina, leaving millions dead and four countries devastated, with casualties still mounting from the long-term effects of drenching South Vietnam with some of the most lethal carcinogens known, undertaken to destroy ground cover and food crops.

The prime target was South Vietnam. The aggression later spread to the North, then to the remote peasant society of northern Laos, and finally to rural Cambodia, which was bombed at the stunning level of all allied air operations in the Pacific region during second world war, including the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this, Henry Kissinger’s orders were being carried out – “anything that flies on anything that moves” – a call for genocide that is rare in the historical record. Little of this is remembered. Most was scarcely known beyond narrow circles of activists.

via ‘Losing’ the world: American decline in perspective, part 1 | Noam Chomsky | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Noam Chomsky on “America Beyond Capitalism”

Q: I was wondering if you’d read Gar Alperovitz’s book, America Beyond Capitalism, and if you have, what you thought of his ideas in the book?

Noam Chomsky: That’s a very important book, and the work that he’s doing that’s described there is extremely important. I mean, that’s one of the things that can be done — it’s very feasible. Now, the book reviews work that Alperovitz has mainly been involved in for some years, in trying to develop worker-owned enterprises, mostly in Ohio. It took off in Ohio for very interesting reasons.

via Noam Chomsky on “America Beyond Capitalism”.

Occupy Harvard Unites Boston Student Movements | News | The Harvard Crimson

Other issues raised during the summit included discussions on student debt and education inequality, causes that Occupy hopes to address.

“We wanted to talk about different issues that students are affected by and figure out how we’ll organize ourselves to get reform, whether it’s student debt forgiveness or addressing the privatization of education,” said Chris Morrill, a student from the University of Massachusetts Boston.

MIT professor Noam Chomsky led a panel discussion on the problems with the current education system, as well as how the student Occupy groups fit into the Occupy movement as a whole.

via Occupy Harvard Unites Boston Student Movements | News | The Harvard Crimson.