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Interventions (City Lights Open Media) By Noam Chomsky ( City Lights Publishers )
Release Date: 2007-07-01
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List Price: $15.95
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Product Description
"Chomsky is a global phenomenon . . . perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet."-The New York Times Book Review Interventions is Noam Chomsky at his best. Not since his all-time best-selling title, 9/11, published in the Open Media series in 2001, have readers had a timely, short, easy-to-read, affordable Chomsky. Unlike 9/11, Interventions is a writerly work-a series of more than thirty tightly argued essays aimed at various aspects of US power and politics in the post-9/11 world. While critical of US military interventions around the globe, each piece in the book is in itself an intellectual intervention aimed at raising public ire about the consequences of US use of power at home and abroad. Interventions' subjects span from 9/11 and the Iraq war to Social Security and Intelligent Design, South America and Asia, the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the election of Hamas, Hurricane Katrina, and the US concept of "just war." According to BusinessWeek, "With relentless logic, Chomsky bids us to listen closely to what our leaders tell us-and to discern what they are leaving out. . . . Agree with him or not, we lose out by not listening." Chomsky's Interventions delivers what readers want: an accessible set of skeleton keys for opening up a wide range of global issues dominating today's political landscape. Noam Chomsky is the critically acclaimed author of many books, including Hegemony or Survival, Imperial Ambitions, Failed States, Manufacturing Consent, and Media Control.
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 NO MORE: NPR,CNN,FOX,TIMES,GLOBE ANYMORE AND MY DAYS ARE HAPPIER: READ MORE, ESPECIALLY CHOMSKY,CARTER,CORRIE,WALT,MEARSHEIMER,. ( seniorsojourner )
Chomsky is the fountain of hope and truth. He will wake you up and tells the true story of our, 90%, laughable and joke of a Murdock/Puremock media. Stay hopeful and positive, as thing are finally changing. Wake up with Chomsky!!!
REMEMBER AND READ ABOUT RACHEL CORRIE - ANOTHER MEDIA VICTIM - MAY RACHEL CORRIE REST IN PEACE. A deafening silence: in Israel, is it now okay to kill Americans? (Peacemaking).(implications of recent death and injuries of peace activists in Israel): An article from: Sojourners, + My Name Is Rachel Corrie and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
!Paz!
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Interventions by Noam Chomsky ( billwhelan781 )
A must read. A series of Prof. Chomsky's op-ed's that were never published in the US press. As always, the depth and detail of his research and documentation is unsurpassed. His efforts raise inescapable questions and it's up to you to draw your own conclusions...
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Excellent Chomsky ( agentgraves )
I read a good deal of Chomsky's material and this is up there with the "Essential Chomsky." Concise and informative.
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 Clear-headed analysis (and what's with Jonathan Rauch?) ( herodotus9 )
Interventions is a set of editorials written by Noam Chomsky for the New York Times syndication service. The editorials were not actually published in the Times, of course, nor were they published in US newspapers, with rare exceptions. They were, however, picked up by the international press. This is unsurprising: Chomsky talks about a reality that the US corporate media strives very hard to ignore or misrepresent. He has been consistently right about the reasons and results of the war in Iraq, and about the goals and accomplishments of US foreign policy generally.
The editorials in this collection focus primarily on the Middle East, but also include a few commentaries on Latin America, particularly Venezuela. The main themes of the book are: 1) US foreign policy has as its primary aim the expansion and consolidation of US corporate power, especially in the realm of energy resources; 2) in pursuit of that foreign policy agenda the US has been the largest and most effective terrorist organization in the world in the post WWII era; 3) the rest of the world actually perceives the US as the most dangerous and erratic nation on earth; 4) US actions are a major determinant in the policies of other governments and organizations, and if we want to see those governments and organizations adopt different policies, then we need to change our own policies. As is usual with Chomsky's books, he supports these themes with well-documented facts and clear argument and analysis.
One of the two editorial reviews of Interventions on Amazon is by Jonathan Rauch. It is worthwhile to analyze Rauch's review in some detail.
Rauch says, 'the Iraq War... , however, does not fit well into Chomsky's template. "The United States cannot tolerate a sovereign, more or less democratic Iraq," Chomsky claims. Just imagine, he says, the policies that such an Iraq would be likely to pursue: "The Shiite population in the south, where most of Iraq's oil is, would have a predominant influence." ... The United States tolerates a sovereign, more or less democratic Iraq whose Shiite government is friendly toward Iran. If Bush is pursuing imperialism in Baghdad, it is of a very curious sort.'
A very curious sort, indeed. Chomsky points out in at least 2 of the editorials that the US 'toleration' was forced upon it by the mass protests that led to the elections. The US and Britain had been working tirelessly to prevent elections from occurring, and had to make an abrupt about-face only when it became clear that further delays would provoke even more chaos and violence.
As for sovereignty, it was recently reported (following a Friday-night State Department press conference) that the US is threatening to withhold $50 billion of Iraqi assets if the Iraqi parliament does not accede to the US demand for up to 50 permanent military bases in Iraq. Continued presence of the foreign occupiers in Iraq is consistently opposed by 80% of the Iraqi population, and less than 10% believe that the US forces contribute to stability. So the US 'tolerates' the Iraq puppet government by use of blackmail and by insisting that the elected government ignore the wishes of the people - a position that is also adopted here in the US, where a large majority of the people do not want permanent bases in Iraq.
Of course, the US has not allowed the Iraqi government to be sovereign. A sovereign government would as a matter of course prosecute crimes committed within its borders. But the Iraqi government is not allowed to prosecute even murder, if the murder is committed by the US military or its mercenary forces.
The US continues to exert continuous pressure on the Iraqi parliament to pass the US-written oil resources law - a law that would effectively hand over Iraqi oil wealth to US corporations. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis oppose this bill, naturally, and a majority of the Iraqi parliament opposes it. Presumably the political and financial blackmail being applied to gain permanent military bases has also been applied for the oil bill - a 'prerequisite' for further withdrawal of US forces from the country.
In addition, Chomsky's prediction from 2003 that a democratic Iraq would seek ties with Iran is being borne out. Despite the enormous pressure from the US, the Iraqi Shiite leadership understands perfectly well that their future lies with Iran, and are willing to endure US wrath by pursuing economic and, perhaps, military ties with the Iranian government.
So it is unclear in what way Chomsky's 'template' 'does not fit well' with the Iraq war.
On the subject of Afghanistan, Rauch says 'In Chomsky's universe, the 2001 U.S. attack on Afghanistan's Taliban "was undertaken with the expectation that it might drive several million people over the edge of starvation."'. Rauch characterizes this as '(Chomsky's flight) to a separate reality'. But in the editorial in question, Chomsky cites the pre-war information that was available to the US government that would give rise to that expectation. And in the event, millions of people were driven to near-starvation by the US bombing in Afghanistan. Where is the 'separate reality'?
He says 'For all his celebrity on the academic and activist left, Noam Chomsky, the linguist turned gadfly, goes all but unnoticed inside the Capital Beltway.' This, in a review in the Washington Post, one of the leading mouthpieces for the war in Iraq, before the war, and, along with the Times, the leading proponent of the very US imperialist policies that Chomsky decries. No surprises there.
To gain a better appreciation of Rauch's own views of the Iraq war, to compare those views with Chomsky's during the relevant period of 2002-2006 I visited his website. But although he wrote many articles, the Iraq war did not seem to be a subject of interest to him. This may explain his misunderstandings of the reality in Iraq.
Rauch is not the right person to take on Chomsky. He is far too ill-informed and, apparently, mis-informed to do more than make a fool of himself. I would hope that Amazon would pull the review and replace it with one written by somebody with actual knowledge of the events and history that Chomsky was writing about.
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Very informative, as ever ( willyvan )
This is the complete collection of Chomsky's opinion pieces written between 2002 and 2007 and distributed by the New York Times Syndicate. Chomsky is one of the world's best-informed and most astute commentators on current affairs. His consistent theme is the need for real democracy.
He examines Israel's invasion of Lebanon, the US-British invasion and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, the US-Israeli rejection of a Palestinian state, the growing democracy and independence of the countries of Latin and Central America, the increasing nuclear threat and the relationship between democracy and national sovereignty.
He notes that the US National Intelligence Estimate of 2006 said that the Iraq war has worsened terrorism. Since 2003, there has been a sevenfold rise in the yearly rate of jihadist attacks, and not just in Iraq and Afghanistan; in the rest of the world it has risen by a third. The Iraq war removed an enemy, not an ally, of al-Qaeda. Contradicting Bush, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board reported, "Muslims do not `hate our freedom', but rather they hate our policy." When the Royal Institute of International Affairs reported that "the UK is at particular risk because it is the closest ally of the United States ... a pillion passenger", the government furiously denied this obvious truth.
On the root cause of the crisis in the Middle East, Chomsky cites a former head of Israeli military intelligence, "To offer an honorable solution to the Palestinians respecting their right to self-determination: That is the solution of the problem of terrorism. When the swamp disappears, there will be no more mosquitos."
In November 2004, the UN Committee on Disarmament voted 147 to 1 for a verifiable Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which would block the production of yet more nuclear bomb material. The USA voted against, Britain and Israel abstained.
Chomsky writes, "decline of sovereignty entails decline of democracy, and decline in ability to conduct social and economic policy. That in turn harms development." He argues that public opinion doesn't matter to the US and British states. Polls show that 80% of Iraqis want the US occupiers to leave. So what? The USA is bringing Iraqis democracy, so it doesn't matter what they think. 70% of us in Britain want a referendum on any treaty which transfers further powers to the EU. So what? We can't have one, the Lisbon Treaty/EU Constitution is good for us, so it doesn't matter what we think.
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