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Chomsky: More on the Draft
Blog Post, December, 27 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
One is the system that the military preferred after the debacle with a citizen's army in Vietnam, the first time an imperial power used a citizen's army to fight a colonial war: what's called a "volunteer army," which in effect amounts mostly to a...
Chomsky: Freedom: a moral hypothesis
Blog Post, December, 27 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Is it a claim, or a thesis that is put forth as a kind of null hypothesis -- something that it is morally right to accept unless there is evidence against it? I think the latter. Thus take a debate about slavery, or women's rights. If Jones c...
Chomsky: Public Expense & Private Profit
Blog Post, December, 27 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
For computers, the period from development to commercially viable sales was about 30 years (depending on how you count). For the internet, it was also about 30 years within the state system before it was handed over, by a process that remains obs...
Chomsky: Civilization Versus Barbarism?
Znet Article, December, 27 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
On December 17th Left Hook co-editor M. Junaid Alam met with Professor Noam Chomsky at his MIT office to get his thoughts on the ideological justifications and historical realities behind America's "war on terror." Professor Chomsky spent a half-h...
Chomsky: Bakunin, the death penalty & seeds of the future
Blog Post, December, 20 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Bakunin's point was, I think, pretty simple. Within the larger society, it is possible to build structures that capture hopes for the future. For example, free schools, or self-managed cooperatives (like South End press, or worker-run factories ...
Chomsky: Vietnam then, Iraq today
Blog Post, December, 20 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
We can learn a lot from what happened in Vietnam. Protest was very slow in developing. By the time it reached a significant scale in 1967, the highly respected (and rather hawkish) military historian and Vietnam specialist Bernard Fall was won...
Chomsky: Imperial Presidency
Znet Article, December, 17 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
It goes without saying that what happens in the US has an enormous impact on the rest of the world – and conversely: what happens in the rest of the...
Chomsky: US-UK relations
Blog Post, December, 16 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
The general contours are pretty clear. The US effectively displaced Britain as world-dominant power during World War II, quite consciously -- there were mini-wars going on right through the conflict, and they continued afterwards, often in ugly w...
Chomsky: The Draft
Blog Post, December, 16 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
My guess is that the Bush administration planners will not call for a draft. The military command, and the civilian leadership, learned an important lesson in Vietnam: you can't expect a citizen's army to fight a vicious, brutal colonial war. ...
Chomsky: State Terror v.s. Resistance
Blog Post, December, 06 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Of course, the sentiment will seem outlandish to those who take it for granted that we are entirely justified in grinding people under our jackboot, using violence to impose conditions in which the resources of a country are freely open to exploit...
Chomsky: Speculation on Occupation
Blog Post, December, 06 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Will the effort succeed? I certainly have no basis for predicting, if only because I've been wrong about this all along. My guess was that the "war" would take a few days. To my surprise, it lasted much longer, so much so that in the first few...
Chomsky: Capitalism, an innovative and viable system?
Blog Post, December, 06 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
First, nothing remotely like capitalism exists. Is the US economy, relying crucially on the dynamic state sector, a capitalist economy? But putting that aside, was it an argument in the 18th century to say that feudalism, absolutism, rule by King...
Chomsky: Anarchism Interview
Znet Article, December, 06 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
July 14, 2004 in Cambridge, MA. Ziga Vodovnik: When somebody declares himself as an anarchist, he basically tells very little about his inspirations and aspirations – about the question of means and ends. This only confirms an old truth ...
Chomsky: Striking Iran
Blog Post, December, 01 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
My guess is that the US will not attack Iran, either directly or via Israeli mercenary pilots flying US aircraft (which would be called an Israeli attack). We do know that in the past year the US has provided over 100 advanced jet bombers to Is...
Chomsky: 2004 Elections
Znet Article, November, 29 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
The elections of November 2004 have received a great deal of discussion, with exultation in some quarters, despair in others, and general lamentation about a "divided nation." They are likely to have policy consequences, particularly harmful to th...
Chomsky: Some election comments...
Blog Post, November, 09 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
We have a fairly clear idea of what [Bush's] planners want, but what we can expect depends on circumstances, including those we create. That's what should concern us, not speculating about what we cannot know. The outcome was a disappointment...
Chomsky: The U.S., Brazil, & the Security Council
Blog Post, October, 28 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
The question why the US has been mildly supportive of Brazil as a new permanent member of the Security Council, despite its left-leaning government, is a good one. We can only speculate, of course. My speculation is along these lines. It is no...
Chomsky: How to Fight Terrorists
Blog Post, October, 28 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
In the case of crimes, the first steps are (1) determining who was probably guilty, apprehending them, and bringing them to a fair trial; and (2) attending to the background circumstances, and where there are legitimate grievances in the backgroun...
Chomsky: Myth of the Liberal Media
Blog Post, October, 28 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
The media delight in being portrayed as "adversarial," sometimes even going overboard in their efforts to subvert power. There are some remarkable examples, e.g., the Freedom House study of how the liberal crusading press lost the Vietnam war by ...
Chomsky: The Oil for Food Scandal
Blog Post, October, 28 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Long-time New York Times and Wall St Journal Middle East correspondent Youssef Ibrahim, who is quite knowledgeable, recently wrote that a large part of current revenues from oil are being siphoned off by the Allawi government and other Iraqi offic...
