Is there essentially any difference between Barack Obama and John McCain? Or, as Noam Chomsky argues, are they simply different factions of the one party, the business party?
Showing all posts tagged Noam Chomsky
The calculating chameleon
My following book review appears in today’s Weekend Australian newspaper: The Man Who Pushed America to War By Aram Roston Nation Books, 400pp, $49.95 Ahmed Chalabi, the chameleon-like Iraqi exile who fed bogus intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to the Bush administration and to willing media, told Britain’s The Daily Telegraph in 2004 that…
Out of the ivory tower
A classic 1967 essay by Noam Chomsky on the proper role of intellectuals: It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies. This, at least, may seem enough of a truism to pass over without comment. Not so, however. For the modern intellectual, it is not at all obvious. Thus…
Keep moving, nothing to see here
Noam Chomsky explains why US presidential elections leave the “public irrelevant”:
Our brave boys and girls
Noam Chomsky, on Iran’s Press TV last week, talks about Iraq and the role of foreign forces in the country: It is interesting, the way everything is blamed on Iran. And that’s a rather striking reflection of how deep-seated the imperial mentality is in the West, so for example when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice…
No such thing as humanitarian intervention
My latest New Matilda column is about the myth of “humanitarian intervention”: Last week’s Australian withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq saw a flurry of establishment commentary on the rights and wrongs of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision. Former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer wrote that, “despite the problems” in the war-torn country, “Australians should be…
How to reach “peace”
Noam Chomsky, Counterpunch, June 5: A one-state solution makes little sense, in my opinion, but a bi-national state does. It was possible to advocate such a settlement from 1967 to the mid-1970s, and in fact I did, in many writings and talks, including a book. The reaction was mostly fury. After Palestinian national rights entered…
The 1968 legacy
Noam Chomsky, New Statesman, May 8: But democracy is even stronger now than it was in 1968. You have to remember that, during Vietnam, there was no opposition at the beginning of the war…The Iraq War was the first conflict in western history in which an imperialist war was massively protested against before it had…
History does repeat itself
Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts, February: Not very long ago, as you all recall, it was taken for granted that the Iraq war would be the central issue in the 2008 election, as it was in the midterm election two years ago. However, it’s virtually disappeared off the radar screen, which has solicited some puzzlement among the…
Ignoring the occupied
Noam Chomsky, February 23: Amid the outpouring of good news from across the region, there is now much earnest debate among political candidates, government officials and commentators concerning the options available to the US in Iraq. One voice is consistently missing: that of Iraqis. Their “shared beliefs” are well known, as in the past. But…