Showing all posts tagged Noam Chomsky
Murdoch logic; backers of war should receive a peace prize
Noam Chomsky has won the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize over his legendary support for human rights and challenging power it all its forms. That makes him an enemy of a Murdoch empire that spends its entire time wanting to be intimate with government and business. The poor dears can’t understand why a man who opposes…
Who knew I was a nihilist leftist who loathes Western civilisation?
So I wrote an article for the ABC last week on the murder of Osama Bin Laden. I asked questions about his death, the significance of his assassination, the role of Al-Qaeda in making the US an insanely paranoid security state post 9/11 and the terror leader’s relevance (or otherwise) during the Arab Spring. But…
Chomsky’s clarity on Bin Laden death
The man still has it: It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards…
Wikileaks is noble art in tradition of information sharing
Julian Assange is damn right: WikiLeaks is part of an honourable tradition that expands the scope of freedom by trying to lay ‘all the mysteries and secrets of government’ before the public. We are, in a sense, a pure expression of what the media should be: an intelligence agency of the people, casting pearls before…
Was Goldstone so desperate to be loved again by the Zionist community?
A Forward investigation suggests maybe so: When Richard Goldstone returned home to South Africa last May for his grandson’s bar mitzvah — an event that he was almost unable to paticipate in because of protests planned against him — he also attended a separate meeting whose details were kept secret until now. In the wake…
Memo to Jews; your job in life isn’t to back Israeli apartheid 24/7
Another day and yet another column by a Zionist in Israel’s largest daily who simply can’t tolerate any Jewish dissent on Israel/Palestine. Here we are in 2011 and still so much of mainstream Zionism attempts to enforce an unquestioning version of the ideology: Every day, more celebrated Jewish personalities – writers, artists, academics – are…
What statement on Sri Lankan crimes does; Tamil victims not forgotten
The recent public campaign against the Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka – I signed a statement alongside Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Ken Loach and others – was aimed to highlight Colombo’s gross human rights abuses and lack of accountability after the end of the civil war in 2009. PEN is currently holding a series…
WSJ: our autocrats are nice thugs
The Middle East has spent decades in social and political “stability” because Washington and Israel have backed brutes to torture and demean the people. Not to worry, writes Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, ignore all those deeply undemocratic states; the real issue is the Islamic Republic: The regime in Tehran—aptly described by Secretary of State Hillary…