Noam Chomsky

Chomsky Defends WikiLeaks, Declassifying Information

April 20, 2016 Alexandra Rosenmann, www.alternet.org Resist! Noam Chomsky

By Alexandra Rosenmann for AlterNet - Assange and others established WikiLeaks in 2006. Since the release of the Chelsea Manning material, U.S. authorities began a long-term investigation of WikiLeaks and Assange, aiming to prosecute them under the Espionage Act of 1917. However, classification is nothing new. "Long before the technology revolution there was declassficifation of documents and ... anybody who’s worked through the declassified record can see very clearly that the reason for classification is very rarely to protect the state or society from enemies.

Chomsky The Desire for Transformation Is Bubbling Below the Surface

April 17, 2016 Noam Chomsky, www.thenextsystem.org Educate! Capitalism, Next System Project, Noam Chomsky, Transformation

By Noam Chomsky for the Next System Project. Philosopher, linguist, and social critic Noam Chomsky recently spoke about his experiences in campus activism and his vision of a just society to help inaugurate the Next System Project’s ambitious new teach-ins initiative taking place across the country. An initial signatory to the Next System statement, Chomsky explores the connections between culture, mass movements, and economic experiments—which in “mutually reinforcing” interaction, may build toward a next system more quickly than you may think. Chomsky: "The political system was never really responsive to the mass of the population, but it’s now changed to the point where it’s a virtual plutocracy. . . Capitalism responded to the system-changing ambitions of the 19th century labor movement with state and paramilitary violence."

Newsletter – Chipping Away At The System

October 25, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Newsletter Acronym TV, Climate Change, climate crisis, COP21, Empire Files, Environmental racism, Fracking, Mass Incarceration, New Economy, Noam Chomsky, Police violence, Racism, TPP, TTIP

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese for Popular Resistance - The weekly newsletter: The forces that work to maintain the status quo, to protect the oppressors and the profiteers, are powerful, but everywhere there are people chipping away at the pillars that prop up the current systems, exposing truths and forcing changes. This week, we highlight some of these struggles with the hope that we will learn from them. Issues covered include (1) The tide is shifting on mass incarceration; (2) Fighting back when public services under attack; (3) The climate crisis will not be solved by corporate lobbyists and (3) New Video Tools: Acronym TV, Empire Files and Act Out! It is essential that we use the tools we have - our own media, the legal system and organized and mobilized resistance - to continue to expose truth, fight injustice and create new systems that build the world we need. Together, can build a powerful force.

Empire Files: Noam Chomsky On Electing The President Of An Empire

October 25, 2015 AbMartin, www.videos.telesurtv.net Resistance Report Afghanistan, Capitalism, Democracy, Empire Files, Iran, Kunduz, Noam Chomsky, US elections

By Abby Martin for the Empire Files - At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., Abby Martin interviews world-renowned philosopher and linguist Professor Noam Chomsky. Prof. Chomsky comments on the presidential primary "extravaganza," the movement for Bernie Sanders, the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal, the bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, modern-day libertarianism and the reality of "democracy" under capitalism.

A Promise To Noam Chomsky For His Birthday

December 7, 2014 Stephen Da Sung Wallace, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Noam Chomsky

I have written you many times before -- birthday wishes, letters of thanks, and many questions which you have provided many insightful answers to over the years. Last year, during a brief stint at Popular Resistance, my introduction to the readership was in the form of a birthday wish to you -- an-all-too-brief personal account of what you have done for me, and how your work has made this world a better place. It was a sentimental and, for what it's worth, honest piece. I look back on that piece now as a marker of progress in my growth as a writer. I would like to, again, send my letter of thanks to you -- and I would like to also, make a promise to you, Professor. . . I remember sitting in your office, laughing at myself, and comically dismissing that dismal feeling -- the all-consuming despair we are always having to resist. I remember that, in effect, what you told me -- this has made me smile to look back on -- was that the choice really is between these episodes of all-consuming despair and complacency, conformity and surrender. You shrugged and told me "It's that or a quiet life," before I was summoned out of your office by an apologetic Bev Stohl -- Noam is a very busy man, after all, sorry Stephen! Ah, well, until next time, my friend.

Chomsky: America Is the World’s Leading Terrorist Nation

November 4, 2014 Noam Chomsky, www.inthesetimes.com Educate! CIA, Cuba, ISIS, Noam Chomsky, Syria, Terrorism, usa

“It's official: The U.S. is the world's leading terrorist state, and proud of it.” That should have been the headline for the lead story in the New York Times on October 15, which was more politely titled “CIA Study of Covert Aid Fueled Skepticism About Helping Syrian Rebels.” The article reports on a CIA review of recent U.S. covert operations to determine their effectiveness. The White House concluded that unfortunately successes were so rare that some rethinking of the policy was in order. The article quoted President Barack Obama as saying that he had asked the CIA to conduct the review to find cases of “financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn't come up with much.” So Obama has some reluctance about continuing such efforts.

Chomsky At The UN: Blasts US And Israel

October 26, 2014 Amy Goodman, www.democracynow.org Educate! Israel, Noam Chomsky, Palestine

The basic outlines were presented here in a resolution brought to the U.N. Security Council in January 1976. It called for a two-state settlement on the internationally recognized border—and now I’m quoting—"with guarantees for the rights of both states to exist in peace and security within secure and recognized borders." The resolution was brought by the three major Arab states: Egypt, Jordan, Syria—sometimes called the "confrontation states." Israel refused to attend the session. The resolution was vetoed by the United States. A U.S. veto typically is a double veto: The veto, the resolution is not implemented, and the event is vetoed from history, so you have to look hard to find the record, but it is there. That has set the pattern that has continued since. The most recent U.S. veto was in February 2011—that’s President Obama—when his administration vetoed a resolution calling for implementation of official U.S. policy opposition to expansion of settlements. And it’s worth bearing in mind that expansion of settlements is not really the issue; it’s the settlements, unquestionably illegal, along with the infrastructure projects supporting them.

Chris Hedges Interviews Noam Chomsky (2/3)

June 20, 2014 The Real News, www.therealnews.com Educate! Capitalism, Chris Hedges, Interview, Labor, Manufacturing, Mass Movement, Noam Chomsky

The idea still should be that of the Knights of Labor: those who work in the mills should own them. And there's plenty of manufacturing going on in the country, and probably there will be more, for unpleasant reasons. One thing that's happening right now which is quite interesting is that energy prices are going down in the United States because of the massive exploitation of fossil fuels, which is going to destroy our grandchildren, but under the, you know, capitalist morality, the calculus is that profits tomorrow outweigh the existence of your grandchildren. It's institutionally-based, so, yes, we're getting lower energy prices. And if you look at the business press, they're, you know, very enthusiastic about the fact that we can undercut manufacturing in Europe because we'll have lower energy prices, and therefore manufacturing will come back here, and we can even undermine European efforts at developing sustainable energy because we'll have this advantage. Britain is saying the same thing. I was just in England recently. As I left the airport, I read The Daily Telegraph, you know, I mean, newspaper. Big headline: England is going to begin fracking all of the country, even fracking under people's homes without their permission. And that'll allow us to destroy the environment even more quickly and will bring manufacturing back here.

Chris Hedges Interviews Noam Chomsky

June 18, 2014 The Real News, www.therealnews.com Educate! Chris Hedges, History, Noam Chomsky, Wars and Militarism

Well, I think we can draw many very good lessons from the early period of the Industrial Revolution. It was, of course, earlier in England, but let's take here in the United States. The Industrial Revolution took off right around here, eastern Massachusetts, mid 19th century. This was a period when independent farmers were being driven into the industrial system--men and women, incidentally, women from the farms, so-called factory girls--and they bitterly resented it. It was a period of a very free press, the most in the history of the country. There was a wide variety of journals, ethnic, labor, or others. And when you read them, they're pretty fascinating. The people driven into the industrial system regarded it as an attack on their personal dignity, on their rights as human beings. They were free human beings who were being forced into what they called wage slavery, which they regarded as not very different from chattel slavery. In fact, this was such a popular view that it was actually a slogan of the Republican Party, that the only difference between working for a wage and being a slave is that working for a wage is supposedly temporary--pretty soon you'll be free. Other than that, they're not different.

Noam Chomsky: American Socrates

June 17, 2014 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Climate Change, Noam Chomsky, Populism, Wars and Militarism

Noam Chomsky, whom I interviewed last Thursday at his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has influenced intellectuals in the United States and abroad in incalculable ways. His explications of empire, mass propaganda, the hypocrisy and pliability of the liberal class and the failings of academics, as well as the way language is used as a mask by the power elite to prevent us from seeing reality, make him the most important intellectual in the country. The force of his intellect, which is combined with a ferocious independence, terrifies the corporate state—which is why the commercial media and much of the academic establishment treat him as a pariah. He is the Socrates of our time. We live in a bleak moment in human history. And Chomsky begins from this reality. He quoted the late Ernst Mayr, a leading evolutionary biologist of the 20th century who argued that we probably will never encounter intelligent extraterrestrials because higher life forms render themselves extinct in a relatively short time. “Mayr argued that the adaptive value of what is called ‘higher intelligence’ is very low,” Chomsky said. “Beetles and bacteria are much more adaptive than humans. We will find out if it is better to be smart than stupid. We may be a biological error, using the 100,000 years which Mayr gives [as] the life expectancy of a species to destroy ourselves and many other life forms on the planet.”

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