SLATE: Chomsky's Follies: The professor's pronouncements about Osama Bin Laden are stupid and ignorant.

joshsternberg:

Christopher Hitchens isn’t too impressed with Noam Chomky’s recent (and not so recent) diatribes.

In short, we do not know who organized the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or any other related assaults, though it would be a credulous fool who swallowed the (unsupported) word of Osama Bin Laden that his group was the one responsible. An attempt to kidnap or murder an ex-president of the United States (and presumably, by extension, the sitting one) would be as legally justified as the hit on Abbottabad. And America is an incarnation of the Third Reich that doesn’t even conceal its genocidal methods and aspirations. This is the sum total of what has been learned, by the guru of the left, in the last decade.

vruz:

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Paul Jay, November 2010. (29:19)
Transcript available at The Real News page.

“People call themselves ‘Libertarians’ and say, ‘We don’t want to be run by others.’ They’re saying ‘We want to be run by private tyrannies. They should be free to do what they like.’ … What’s called the ‘Left’ in the media is what used to be called ‘moderate Republicans.’”

Paul Jay has been doing some of the best video journalism work available on the internet, especially on current economic issues, challenging experts to explain their jargon and speak simply and clearly for common audiences.

—via highsee: titusandtheraindrops: intheshadowofyggdrasil: tumblrpigeon:4si4

“One commonly hears that carping critics complain about what is wrong, but do not present solutions. There is an accurate translation for that charge: “They present solutions, but I don’t like them.” In addition to the proposals that should be familiar about dealing with the crises that reach to the level of survival, a few simple suggestions for the United States have already been mentioned: (1) accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the World Court; (2) sign and carry forward the Kyoto protocols; (3) let the UN take the lead in international crises; (4) rely on diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones in confronting terror; (5) keep to the traditional interpretation of the UN charter; (6) give up the Security Council veto and have “a decent respect for the opinion of mankind”; as the Declaration of Independence advises, even if the power centers disagree; (7) cut back sharply on military spending and sharply increase social spending. For people who believe in democracy, these are very conservative suggestions: they appear to be the opinions of the majority of the US population, in most cases the overwhelming majority. They are in radical opposition to public policy. To be sure, we cannot be very confident about the state of public opinion on such matters because of another feature of the democratic deficit: the topics scarcely enter into public discussion and the basic facts are little known. In a highly atomized society, the public is therefore largely deprived of the opportunity to form considered opinions.”

Noam Chomsky, “Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy” afterword, page 262 (published 2006) (via savagemike)

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“Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error…“The financial industry preferred Obama to McCain,” he said. “They expected to be rewarded and they were. Then Obama began to criticize greedy bankers and proposed measures to regulate them. And the punishment for this was very swift: They were going to shift their money to the Republicans. So Obama said bankers are “fine guys”…People see that and are not happy about it.”

“People want some answers,” Chomsky said. “They are hearing answers from only one place: Fox, talk radio, and Sarah Palin.”

“In 1928 the Nazis had less than 2 percent of the vote,” he said. “Two years later, millions supported them. The public got tired of the incessant wrangling, and the service to the powerful, and the failure of those in power to deal with their grievances.”

When farmers, the petit bourgeoisie, and Christian organizations joined forces with the Nazis, “the center very quickly collapsed,” Chomsky said.

No analogy is perfect, he said, but the echoes of fascism are “reverberating” today, he said.

“These are lessons to keep in mind.”

”

Chomsky Warns of Risk of Fascism in America -The Progressive

Why Do We Talk?  - BBC Horizon pt 1

“Talking is something that is unique to humans, yet it still remains a mystery. Horizon meets the scientists beginning to unlock the secrets of speech - including a father who is filming every second of his son’s first three years in order to discover how we learn to talk, the autistic savant who can speak more than 20 languages, and the first scientist to identify a gene that makes speech possible.

Horizon also hears from the godfather of linguistics, Noam Chomsky, the first to suggest that our ability to talk is innate. A unique experiment shows how a new alien language can emerge in just one afternoon, in a bid to understand where language comes from and why it is the way it is.”

pt2 pt3 pt4 pt5 pt6

Noam Chomsky at the Riverside Church Part 1,2

On the forty-year anniversary of the publishing of his classic American Power & the New Mandarins, Noam Chomsky comes to the historic Riverside Church in Harlem, New York City, to address a wide range of issues from the global economic crisis, US military intervention in the Middle East and South Asia, left electoral and social movement upsurges in places like El-Salvador, Bolivia and Venezuela, and the election of Barack Obama.

Chomsky, whom The New York Times Book Review has called “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” is the author of over 100 books including in the last few years; What We Say Goes: Conversations on U.S. Power in a Changing World, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and Hegemony or Survival.