Power and Terror

Noam Chomsky Post 9/11 Talks and Interviews

 

Power and Terror Noam Chomsky post 9/11 TalksRepresentative Press Editorial Review

Noam Chomsky's new book, "Power and Terror, Post 9/11 Talks and Interviews" was released with the film "Power and Terror". Terrorism is a very serious topic and it is important to learn everything you can to keep America safe. Noam Chomsky gives powerful evidence of what the problems are and the crimes that go unreported that contibute to terrorism. These post 9-11 talks are after the talks which were published in his book before this one called 9-11. This book is based on public talks that Chomsky gave during the spring of 2002, as well as a lengthy unpublished interview. It presents Chomsky's latest thinking on terrorism, U.S. foreign policy, and alternatives to militarism and violence as solutions to the world's problems. Chomsky challenges the United States to apply to its own actions the moral standards it demands of others, and arrives at a surprisingly optimistic conclusion rooted in his faith in the power of an informed electorate. Only by reading these facts can the public become informed.

 

Power and Terror: Post 9-11 Talks and Interviews by Noam Chomsky

Paperback: 144 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.39 x 7.64 x 5.04

Reviewer: Chris Green (see more about me) from Edgewood, WA USA Chomsky notes that in the December 2002 issue of "Current History", distinguished academics praise the US war on Nicaragua as an example of successful defense against terror. He notes how the U.S. rejected the 1986 ruling of the world court to stop terrorising Nicaragua and veoted a UN resolution calling on all countries to observe international law and then officially authorized the Contra's to start hitting "soft targets" like hospitals and farms until the Nicaraguan people threw the Sandansitas out. The Current History historians list the biggest terrorist atrocities in 1985, the peak of the terror plague, as one the killing, of a US military officer in a hijacking and the killing of Leon Klinghoffer. This while Israel was slaugtering people in Lebanon and massacring Tunisans and a CIA car bomb killed 80 people in Beirut. Chomsky says the atrocities mentioned by Current History were indeed abominable things, though quite comparable with atrocities witnessed in early 2002 such as an Israeli tank, subsidised as they all are by the U.S. taxpayer, crushing a man in a wheel chair in Jenin or a young woman dying in the occupied territories because Israeli soldiers blocked her at the checkpoints from getting to a dialysis treatment at a hospital. He notes that the U.S. did order Sharon to remove Israeli tanks from Palestinian population centers in early 2002, because that was interfering with Dick Cheney's unsuccessful mission to the Arab world to try to get its Arab allies to support war on Iraq.

 

Maybe the most interesting section of the book is an account of his visit to Turkey in early 2002. He quotes Osman Baydemir as saying that by early 2002 three million Kurds were internal refugees with 50,000 slaughtered by the Turkish security.... He discusses several incidents: Baydemir getting hauled before the state security court for using the Kurdish word for a New Year's celebration instead of the Turkish word in article, getting presented with a Kurdish-English dictionary after one of his talks, a really staggeringly subversive act in Turkey, a leading dissident .spending years in jail for writing about Turkish ethnic cleansing of Kurds, but refusing an offer from the U.S government's International fund for free expression, because he would not take support from the government that was so heavily funding his oppressors.

 

After he went to Turkey, he went to Colombia where U.S. military aid is funding 80 percent of the atrocities in that war, committed by the Colombian military and their paramilitary proxies. He notes that Colombian human rights is improving: recently a commander was removed from his post after his unit chain-sawed some peasants into pieces. He notes that Colombia does indeed go one better than our enemy in Cuba for it allowed an independent political party years ago, even though a couple thousand of its elected officials were assassinated by the paramilitaries. This fumigation he says has led to the widespread detruction of crops and farm animals. "Children are dying, you can see them with scabs all over their bodies and things like that." A side benefit of all this, he writes is that these peasants will flee into the big city and now the land will be cleared for strip mining, monoculture for agro-export, and other acitivities of benefit to the rich and powerful. He also notes our current embargo against blocking half a billion dollars in International American development bank loans that are designed to try to repair Haiti's health system and reverse the decline in life expectancy, all the while Haiti is forced to pay interest on these loans. In the meantime death squad leader Emanuel Constant is protected from extradition by the U.S....

 

He notes that Clinton plan for a Palestinian state in 2000 was actually a plan for 4 divided cantons in the West Bank, worse than anything apartheid self Africa planned for its blacks. Clinton started selling huge numbers of helicopters to Israel after it started firing on Palestinian apartment houses at the beginning of the Intifada. Clinton began the process of the U.S. "abstaining" on the issue of the applicability of the Geneva convention to the occupied territories. Bush Jr.'s regime has vetoed UN resoultions on having international monitors in the territories and did not attend a December 2001 conference on the Geneva conventions/territories that was even attended by its loyal lapdog Britain.

 

About Saddam, he notes what a difficult thing it is for intellectuals to address past U.S. support for him when he was gassing his own people. He suspects that the U.S. will not lean towards establishing a democratic facade in Iraq because that would have to give voice to the Shiite majority in the South who would lean toward Iran and the Kurds will want autonomy that Turkey will not stand for. He remembers the time Bob Dole led a Senate delegation to visit Saddam in early 1990 and gave him warm greetings from Bush Sr. and told him not to pay attention to occasional criticisms of him in the U.S. media and assured him that an anti-Saddam Voice of America commentator was being removed.

 

In a kind of funny remark, he wonders why people call him an apologist for Bin Laden and don't say the same about the Wall Street Journal or the National Security council from 1958..

 

On the Kosovo war, he notes that it documents from Western governments allege that the Kosovo Liberation army was conducting most of the atrocities at the point of January 2001 and things did not change much over the next few months. And that atrocities and refugee flight sharply escalated after the verification monitors were withdrawn and the U.S. started bombing. He notes that in the trials of the Serb criminals at the Hague, keep to atrocities that started after the U.S. bombing.

 

Reviewer: A reader from Madison, Wi I just want to comment on the cover of the book. The picture used is brilliant! It says everything about US foreign policy. The arrogance of the US military. We barge around and push people out of our way. Notice the solder completely ignore the poor starving children behind him. Notice the contrast between the expensively outfited GI Joe and the rags of the children. Tells you a lot about who we really care about. The poor are pushed aside in our military conquests.

Noam Chomsky: Common Sense for Our Times, March 4, 2003

Reviewer: mlarsony (see more about me) from Toledo, OH United States Power and Terror is a brief, but packed overview of U.S. and world power politics. Once again, Chomsky highlights the major issues and struggles of our times, referencing official sources, bringing out historical trends and applying massive amounts of common sense to cut through the rhetoric and the false dichotomies that so often pass for official debate. This is no holds barred classic Chomsky, an especially important contribution to the literature of the anti-war movement at this time. I consider this book to be much more detailed and better organized and more cohesive than "9-11." If you know who Noam Chomsky is, you don't need me to explain his politics here. If you have not yet read Noam Chomsky, there is no better place to start than with this book.

 

 


 

 

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