Professor Chomsky on "Tips for dealing with information overload"

"I wish I could answer sensibly. I just can't. You should see the room in which I'm working. Piles of books, clippings, manuscripts, notes ... All sorts of lost treasures buried in them."

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-05-09-n27.html

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Chomsky on 1968

Noam Chomsky on 1968. New Statesman. May 8, 2008.

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KPFK interview (MP3 audio) with Professor Chomsky

World Focus (Office of the Americas), with Noam Chomsky. KPFK. February 24, 2008.

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Two more new Chomsky videos:

The Middle East in the Context of the Presidential Elections and the "Surge" in Iraq. Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Arab Student Organization at Boston University. April 5, 2008.

Noam Chomsky and Omar Baddar Debate the Israel Lobby. Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Arab Student Organization at Boston University. April 12, 2008.

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New Chomsky video:

Authors@Google: Noam Chomsky. M.I.T., Cambridge, MA. April 25, 2008.

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Noam Chomsky named one of the world's top 100 "public intellectuals" http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4262

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Noam Chomsky's opposition to missile defense in Eastern Europe, and a petition

"The installation of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe is, virtually, a declaration of war" - Noam Chomsky

For Professor Chomsky's views on "missile defense" see:

http://www.nenasili.cz/en/832_noam-chomsky

The petition can be found at:

http://petice.nenasili.cz/?lang=en

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Noam Chomsky on Humanism -- audio

Chomsky on Humanism. Equal Time For Freethought. May 27, 2007.

Chomsky on Humanism II. Equal Time For Freethought. June 3, 2007.

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Recent Chomsky interview

The US-Kurdish Relations and the Kurdish Question in Iraq. With Peshawa Abdulkhaliq Muhammed. February 17, 2008.

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Three new articles and and interview

Why is Iraq Missing from 2008 Presidential Race?. With Amy Goodman. February 26, 2008.
The Most Wanted List, International Terrorism. Tom Dispatch. February 26, 2008.
"Good News," Iraq and Beyond. ZNet. February 16, 2008.
Where's the Iraqi voice?. Khaleej Times. February 1, 2008.

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Noam Chomsky on the www.rabble.ca site

"It should be no secret that we are living in an era of ever more intensive efforts to 'engineer consent,' as the PR industry describes its task. Narrow sectors of power and privilege are devoting intensive efforts to marginalize the public so as to facilitate policies designed to benefit their own interests, whatever the cost -- often severe -- to the general population and future generations. The need for independent channels of information and interaction is always critical for a free society, but particularly so at times like these. It is no exaggeration to say that the hopes for a decent world rest substantially on the success of the kind of work that http://www.rabble.ca/ has been carrying out with such distinction and dedication."

--Noam Chomsky

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A Personal Message From Noam Chomsky
February 13, 2008

http://www.zcommunications.org

We live in an era of media concentration, vast efforts on many fronts (political, economic, military, ideological) to insulate state and private power from critical discussion or even popular awareness, and to reduce citizens to isolated atomized creatures restricted to satisfying personal 'created wants.' This massive and coordinated campaign has been partially successful, but only in a limited way.

The range and scope and dedication of popular activism has also increased, all over the world, reaching a level of international solidarity and mutual support that has never been seen before. The basic conflicts are very old, but they have taken quite dramatic and significant new forms, and the stakes are far higher than ever before. It is, regrettably, no exaggeration to say that the survival of the species is at risk -- and many others with it. We all know why.

The popular movements are the hope for a decent future. They of course have to have access to information and modes of interaction. In addition to alternative print and video, to a very large extent they have relied on the internet, which allows people to escape from the constraints of the doctrinal systems, to explore and investigate and discuss crucial issues with one another, to plan and organize.

Z Magazine and ZNet have played a crucial role in serving all of these functions. I see that every day. I travel and speak constantly, in the U.S. and abroad, and spend many hours a day just responding to inquiries and comments. I constantly discover that the people and organizations I come in contact with are relying very substantially on Z projects for information, discussion, and opportunities for interaction and organizing, to an extent that is quite remarkable.

Z is also an invaluable resource for me personally, in all of these respects, and also in my case for providing a forum for intense and very constructive discussion, the only one I regularly participate in. And for posting articles, interviews, commentaries, etc., of mine. I know that many others have very much the same experience.

It is of inestimable importance, in my judgment, that Z and ZNet, now composing the new ZCom with their various other projects such as their growing video efforts and incomparable summer school, arguably the most exciting and instructive I have ever encountered.

Again, I do not think it is possible to exaggerate the stakes. I hope that all of us who are committed to resisting and reversing the powerful currents of reaction and oppression and violence, and showing that another world is indeed possible, will contribute as best we can to ensure that the remarkable achievements of Z and ZNet will be carried forward.

Noam Chomsky
U.S.

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Interview: Chomsky on the Rise of the South

Chomsky on the Rise of the South. With Michael Shank. January 23, 2008.

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New Chomsky content

A recent video:
Interventions. Back Pages Books, Waltham, MA. January, 2008. (Requires RealPlayer)

Transcription of a previous talk:
Free Market Fantasies: Capitalism in the Real World. Harvard University. April 13, 1996. (Many thanks to William Greene for the transcription.)

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Important new collection of Chomsky writings

The Essential Chomsky
Edited by Anthony Arnove

In a single volume, the seminal writings of the world's leading philosopher, linguist, and critic, published to coincide with his eightieth birthday.

For the past forty years Noam Chomsky's writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and social critics of our time. Among the seminal figures in linguistic theory over the past century, since the 1960s Chomsky has also secured a place as perhaps the leading dissident voice in the United States.

Chomsky's many bestselling works -- including Manufacturing Consent, Hegemony or Survival, Understanding Power, and Failed States -- have served as essential touchstones for dissidents, activists, scholars, and concerned citizens on subjects ranging from the media to human rights to intellectual freedom. In particular, Chomsky's scathing critiques of the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East have furnished a widely accepted intellectual inspiration for antiwar movements over nearly four decades.

The Essential Chomsky assembles the core of his most important writings, including excerpts from his most influential texts over the past forty years. Here is an unprecedented, comprehensive overview of Chomsky's thought.

Buy from: Amazon|Powells|Publisher

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New article in 'On Chomsky' section:

Chomsky Draws a Crowd. By Eric Athas. January 18, 2008.

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A new Chomsky interview, with Foreign Policy in Focus:

Chomsky on World Ownership, with Michael Shank, January 23, 2008.

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Two recent articles by Professor Chomsky

We Own the World, January 1, 2008.

Symposium on Margaret Boden, Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science, October 11, 2007.

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Transcript of 1988 Perle-Chomsky debate now available.

http://chomsky.info/debates/1988----.htm

Many thanks to Jerome Henin for the transcription.

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Professor Chomsky Q&A

For interested readers of chomsky.info, Professor Chomsky ocassionally answers questions posted to ZCommunications by "Z Sustainers" at:

http://www.zcommunications.org/blog/noamchomsky

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We Own the World, new Noam Chomsky lecture DVD

In a new DVD from this summer, Noam Chomsky looks at government and corporate elite policies over the years. These policies, Chomsky argues in We Own the World, violate international and domestic laws, and involve imperialist designs that depend on targeted assassinations and the killing of innocent civilians on a mass scale.

Yet, US elites still lay claim to being just, democratic, and humane.

How can they do this? As Chomsky refrains over and over, to the delight of the ZMI audience, they can do it only if we accept the basic assumption that "We own the world"--and therefore have the right to do whatever we want.

Filmed June 2007 at Z Media Institute. 1 hour 30 minutes: talk 60 minutes; Q&A 25 minutes.

Price: $22.00

https://www.zmag.org/store/Details.cfm?ProdID=169

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New collection of Chomsky interviews with David Barsamian
From the publisher:

An indispensable set of interviews on foreign and domestic issues with the bestselling author of Hegemony or Survival, "America's most useful citizen." (The Boston Globe)

In this new collection of conversations, conducted in 2006 and 2007, Noam Chomsky explores the most immediate and urgent concerns: Iran's challenge to the United States, the deterioration of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise of China, and the growing power of the left in Latin America, as well as the Democratic victory in the 2006 U.S. midterm elections and the upcoming presidential race. As always, Chomsky presents his ideas vividly and accessibly, with uncompromising principle and clarifying insight.

The latest volume from a long-established, trusted partnership, What We Say Goes shows once again that no interlocutor engages with Chomsky more effectively than David Barsamian. These interviews will inspire a new generation of readers, as well as longtime Chomsky fans eager for his latest thinking on the many crises we now confront, both at home and abroad. They confirm that Chomsky is an unparalleled resource for anyone seeking to understand our world today.

http://www.americanempireproject.com/bookpage.asp?ISBN=0805086714

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A note to readers: the Atom (Live Bookmarks) feed has not been recently updated due to some technical difficulties. There has been, however, new material added to the site. Please visit:

http://www.chomsky.info/articles.htm

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews.htm

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[Note that the Washington Post finally published Professor Chomsky's letter, albeit in abridged form, after some pressure from chomsky.info readers; see "The Department of Defense" in the Letters section of this site.] The letter to the Washington Post that follows was written as an experiment, to see just how low the editors would sink in their efforts to block a book containing evidence and analysis that they do not want to reach the public. The letter is a response to a crude and vulgar diatribe, in the form of a review of my collection Interventions. In response, I wrote a point-by-point refutation of each charge, a straightforward matter, as the editors doubtless understand. The letter was sent to the Post immediately, altogether four times, with a request for acknowledgment of receipt. Unpublished, no acknowledgment of receipt. Two weeks after the review appeared, Sept. 16, the Post did publish two letters responding to it. The letters were critical of the review, but acceptable by the standards of the editors, because they left the lies and slanders standing -- the authors could have had no way to refute them without a research project.

I think it is fair to take the editors' silence to demonstrate that they know precisely what they are doing, and are too cowardly even to acknowledge receipt.

-- Noam Chomsky

Editor

Washington Post

Jonathan Rauch's review of my Interventions (WP, Sept. 2) brings to mind Orwell's famous observations on the "indifference to reality" of the nationalist, who "not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but ... has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."

Rauch runs through a series of what he regards as "flights into a separate reality" and "tendentious whimsy." When exposed, a straightforward matter, his charges may appear to be conscious deceit, but are more charitably understood as a textbook illustration of Orwell's observations.

Rauch is appalled that I should charge Washington with bombing Serbia in 1999 "not to prevent ethnic cleansing but to impose Washington's neoliberal economic agenda." I neither made nor endorsed the statement. Rather, I quoted it -- accurately, not in his words. The source is a high official of the Clinton administration directly involved in the Kosovo events, describing how events were perceived at the highest level. See p. 179.

Another bit of "tendentious whimsy" is the statement that "North Korea's counterfeiting racket may actually be a CIA operation." I neither made nor endorsed the statement, but cited it, accurately, from the respected Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Rauch finds equally appalling the fact that "In Chomsky's universe, the 2001 U.S. attack on Afghanistan was undertaken with the expectation that it might drive several million people over the edge of starvation." The statement is precisely accurate. That is why aid agencies bitterly condemned the bombing, joined by leading Afghan opponents of the Taliban, including US favorites. It is also why many months after the bombing ended, Harvard's leading specialist on Afghanistan, Samina Ahmed, wrote in the Harvard journal International Security that "millions of Afghans are at grave risk of starvation." That and more is in the book under review, but in these op-eds I did not provide full details that would be familiar to readers of the mainstream press, for example, the increase in estimate of those at the edge of starvation by 50%, to 7.5 million, when the bombing was announced and initiated. If Rauch is indeed unfamiliar with the mainstream press, he can find precise references in books of mine cited here.

Particularly amazing in Rauch's universe is the idea, in his words, that "President Bush -- the first and only U.S. president to declare formal American support for a Palestinian state -- is the obstacle to a two-state solution that Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran are all prepared to accept (I am not making that up)." The tiny particle of truth here is that Bush announced his "vision" of a Palestinian state -- somewhere, some day, a pale reflection of the long-standing international consensus on a two-state settlement. Bush did indeed innovate: he is the first president to officially endorse Israeli annexation of the major illegal settlements in the West Bank, a long step backwards from Clinton's "parameters," and a death blow to any hope for a viable Palestinian state, as minimal familiarity with the region demonstrates.

In contrast, Iran's "supreme leader" Ayatollah Khamenei formally announced that Iran "shares a common view with Arab countries on ... the issue of Palestine," meaning that Iran accepts the Arab League position: full normalization of relations in terms of the international consensus. "Khamenei has said Iran would agree to whatever the Palestinians decide," the prominent Iran scholar Ervand Abrahamian observes. If Rauch reads the journal in which he writes, he knows that Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniye called for "statehood for the West Bank and Gaza..." (Washington Post, July 11, 2006) There are innumerable other examples, perhaps most important among them the statement of the most militant Hamas leader Khalid Mish'al, in exile in Damascus, calling for "the establishment of a truly sovereign and independent Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in June 1967" (Guardian, Feb. 23, 2007). Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly stated that as a Lebanese organization, Hezbollah will not disrupt anything agreed to by the Palestinians.

Much as it may distress the nationalist, on this matter the positions of Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah are more moderate -- that is, closer to the long-standing international consensus – than those of the US and Israel.

In Rauch's universe, Washington "tolerates a sovereign, more or less democratic Iraq whose Shiite government is friendly toward Iran." No comment should be necessary for readers of the daily press.

That exhausts Rauch's charges. Orwell triumphs again.

It is perhaps not surprising that Rauch's furious exertions did not unearth even a misplaced comma. As he knows, the op-eds passed through New York Times fact checking. There might be a lesson there for the journal in which he is a senior writer.

Noam Chomsky

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Just released: Targeting Iran David Barsamian, with Ervand Abrahamian, Noam Chomsky, Nahid Mozaffari Buy from Amazon|Powells|Publisher

Iran and the United States are on a collision course. David Barsamian presents the perspectives of three experts on Iran who discuss the 1953 CIA coup and the rise of the Islamic regime; Iran’s internal dynamics and competing forces; relations with Iraq and Afghanistan; and the consequences of U.S. policy.

"Insightful, timely, and laced with rich historical perspective, Targeting Iran presents a bracing exploration of Iran's current place in the world, and its tangled relationship with the West. These fascinating interviews capture Iran's complexity and illuminate the morning's headlines."
Azadeh Moaveni, author of Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America And American in Iran

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Linguistics and Brain Science, in A. Marantz, Y. Miyashita and W. O'Neil (eds.) Image, Language and Brain (MIT Press, 2000).

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Noam Chomsky Voices Support for the Responsibility to Iraqi Refugees Act of 2007 (June 15, 2007). An excerpt:

Mandaean Crisis International, an organization dedicated to ending persecution of the Mandaean community, today announced that Professor Noam Chomsky has publicly lent his support to the passage of House Resolution 2265. Called the Responsibility to Iraqi Refugees Act of 2007, the bill would confer immigration status to the U.S. for many religious minorities, including the Mandaean community in Iraq. The Mandaeans, also known as Sabian Mandaeans, are an ethnic and religious group of great but uncertain antiquity who revere John the Baptist as their last great teacher, but are not Christian.

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Just released:

Interventions by Noam Chomsky Buy from Amazon|Powells 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.

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Imagine there's No Future, by Tracey Prisk The Daily Telegraph (June 3, 2007). An excerpt:

Whether you're a fan of John Lennon's music or not, this enthralling film tells the real-life story of a man who was so driven by his own convictions that he was willing to risk his artistic reputation and the alienation of his enormous fan-base in order to uphold his beliefs. A collection of some of the most high-profile intellectuals and writers, including Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Ron Kovic, talk to camera about the important role that Lennon played in trying to "give peace a chance''.

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Match Point, letter to The New Republic (June 1, 2007). An excerpt:

It is always intriguing to see just how far Alan Dershowitz will go in his efforts to conceal the fact that Norman Finkelstein exposed him as a vulgar and fraudulent apologist for Israeli human rights violations -carefully, judiciously, with extensive documentation. Knowing that he cannot respond, Dershowitz is reduced to a torrent of slanders and deceit about Finkelstein's alleged misdeeds - which would, transparently, be irrelevant if there were a particle of truth to his easily-refuted charges. The latest chapter in Dershowitz's efforts at self-protection is a campaign to undermine Finkelstein's tenure appointment, actions that are utterly without precedent, even reaching to an op-ed in the Wall St. Journal.. In an attempt to obscure what he is up to, along with other little fibs that I'll ignore, Dershowitz has now invented a new fairy tale: that he is following my course when I "led [my] own jihad" to deny Kissinger a faculty position at Columbia ("Cambridge Diarist," TNR, May 21).

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On Recent Developments in Venezuela, interview with Kabir Joshi-Vijayan and Matthew Skogstad-Stubbs, Venezuelanalysis.com (May 18, 2007). An excerpt:

There have been some changes. I don't think they're dramatic. This is probably the first time in Venezuelan history that there's a government that's making more than gestures towards using its huge resources to help the poorer parts of the population. This is mostly towards health, education, cooperatives and so on. Just how great the impact is it's pretty hard to say. But certainly we know the popular reaction to them, which is after all the most important question. What's important is not what we think about it, but what Venezuelans think about it. And that's pretty well known. There are pretty good polling agencies in Latin America, the main one is Latinobarometro, which is in Chile. Very respected organization. There are similar polls in the United States in less detail. They monitor attitudes throughout Latin America on all sorts of crucial issues. The most recent one in Chile, in December, found--as earlier ones have--support for democracy and support for the government have been rising very sharply in Venezuela since 1998. Venezuela is now essentially tied with Uruguay at the top in support for the government and support for democracy. It's well ahead of the other Latin American countries in support for the economic policies of the government and also well ahead in the belief that the policies help the poor, meaning the huge majority, instead of elites. And there are similar judgments on other issues, and as I say it has been rising rather sharply... Despite the obstacles there has been a degree of progress that has been considered by the population as very meaningful, and that's the best measure.

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On Religion and Politics, interview with Amina Chaudary, Islamica Magazine (April-May, 2007). An excerpt:

The attitude toward Islam is quite complex. The U.S. has always supported the most extreme fundamentalist Islamic movements and still does. The oldest and most valued ally of the U.S. in the Arab world is Saudi Arabia, which is also the most extremist fundamentalist state. By comparison, Iran looks like a free democratic society--but Saudi Arabia was doing its job. The enemy for most of this period has been secular nationalism. U.S.-Israeli relations, for example, really firmed up in 1967 when Israel performed a real service for the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Namely, it smashed the main center of secular nationalism, (Gamal Abdul) Nasser's Egypt, which was considered a threat and more or less at war with Saudi Arabia at the time. It was threatening to use the huge resources of the region for the benefit of the population of the countries of the region, and not to fill the pockets of some rich tyrant while vast profits flowed to Western corporations.

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On India-Pakistan Relations, interview with Michael Shank, Foreign Policy in Focus (May 22, 2007). An excerpt:

One has to be a little cautious when talking about terrorism. From the U.S. point of view, there's good terrorism and bad terrorism. And Pakistan has its own problems. The Baloochi areas are very antagonistic to central rule for good reasons. Pakistan also has complex relations with the Northwest Territories and the tribal areas. It's held together in a very fragile fashion, Pakistan. The United States supports the central government and is claiming that it's not acting as militantly as the United States would like to control its sub-populations. And if it tried to, the country might blow up. Musharraf has to walk a very delicate line, also with regard to allowing some democratic opening in the country, which is not easy.

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Academics May Boycott Iran Over Scholar's Detainment, by Robin Wright, Washington Post (May 20, 2007). An excerpt:

MIT professor Noam Chomsky also issued a statement yesterday calling Esfandiari's detention "deplorable" and warned that the action by Iran's intelligence ministry was "a gift" to American policymakers trying to organize support for military action against Iran. "Now is a time for diplomacy, negotiations, and relaxation of tensions, in accordance with the will of the overwhelming majority of Americans and Iranians, as recent polls reveal," Chomsky said. "The intolerable treatment of this highly respected scholar and human rights activist severely undermines the efforts of those who are seeking peace, justice and freedom in the region and the world."

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Making Sense of What Doesn't Make the News, by Antonia Zerbisias, The Toronto Star (May 18, 2007). An excerpt:

Here at the University of Windsor, where some 300 scholars, students and media guerrillas are revisiting Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's groundbreaking "propaganda model" on the eve of its 20th anniversary, the talk is of how to take back the public agenda and make it serve the public interest instead of the corporate bottom line.

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Chomsky Takes on the World (Bank), interview with Michael Shank, Foreign Policy in Focus (May 16, 2007). Abstract:

Noam Chomsky is a noted linguist, author, and foreign policy expert. On April 26, Michael Shank interviewed him about the conflict between Congress and the U.S. president over Iraq and Syria, the scandal enveloping World Bank head Paul Wolfowitz, and the nature of foreign debt.

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Starving the Poor, Khaleej Times (May 15, 2007). An excerpt:

The connection between instability in the Middle East and the cost of feeding a family in the Americas isn’t direct, of course. But as with all international trade, power tilts the balance. A leading goal of US foreign policy has long been to create a global order in which US corporations have free access to markets, resources and investment opportunities. The objective is commonly called "free trade," a posture that collapses quickly on examination.

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South America Rising, audio talk, Wake Up Call Radio (May 7, 2007). (Talk begins at 16:17.)

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Jamia Names Road after Arjun, The Hindu (May 5, 2007). An excerpt:

Before Mr. Singh inaugurated the brand new Noam Chomsky Complex on Friday evening, Jamia Teachers' Association president M. Rais Khan opened "Shahrah-i Arjun Singh" -- the road leading to Mujeeb Bagh Teachers' Housing Complex on the campus. After opening the new Complex, Mr. Singh said: "It is indeed appropriate that this complex has been named after the leading linguist, writer and activist Noam Chomsky, whose commitment to critical enquiry, we wish our centres of learning and research to imbibe and propagate."

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On Alan Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein, video interview with Amy Goodman Democracy Now (April 17, 2007). An excerpt:

The whole thing is outrageous. I mean, he's an outstanding scholar. He has produced book after book. He's got recommendations from some of the leading scholars in the many areas in which he has worked. The faculty -- the departmental committee unanimously recommended him for tenure. It's amazing that he hasn't had full professorship a long time ago. And, as you were saying, there was a huge campaign led by a Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, to try in a desperate effort to defame him and vilify him, so as to prevent him from getting tenure. The details of it are utterly shocking, and, as you said, it got to the point where the DePaul administration called on Harvard to put an end to this.

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On Iraq, Vietnam, Activism and History, video interview with Amy Goodman and Howard Zinn, Democracy Now (April 16, 2007). An excerpt:

It's worth stressing that aggressors do not have any rights. This is a clear-cut case of aggression and violation of the U.N. Charter, a supreme international crime and in the words of the Nuremburg Tribunal, aggressors simply have no rights to make any decisions. They have responsibilities. The responsibilities are, first of all to pay enormous reparations and that includes for the sanctions-- the effect of the sanctions, in fact it ought to include the support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980's, which was torture for Iraqis and worse for Iranians.

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What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico?, TomDispatch (April 5, 2007). An excerpt:

The debate over Iranian interference in Iraq proceeds without ridicule on the assumption that the United States owns the world. We did not, for example, engage in a similar debate in the 1980s about whether the U.S. was interfering in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, and I doubt that Pravda, probably recognizing the absurdity of the situation, sank to outrage about that fact (which American officials and our media, in any case, made no effort to conceal). Perhaps the official Nazi press also featured solemn debates about whether the Allies were interfering in sovereign Vichy France, though if so, sane people would then have collapsed in ridicule.

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Beware of State Power, interview with George McLeod, Bangkok Post (April 1, 2007). An excerpt:

China does not pose a military threat. In fact, of all the major powers, China has probably been the most restrained in building up its military forces. China poses a very serious threat to US power because it cannot be intimidated by the US. Take for example Iran and Iraq. The US wants the world to boycott Iran in pursuit of US policies. Europe sort of shakes its fist, but then Europe pretty much backs off. So when the US warns countries not to invest in Iran, European investors --banks and so on-- tend to pull out.

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On Capitalism, Europe, and the World Bank, interview with Dennis Ott, ZNet (April 2, 2007). An excerpt:

Henry Ford famously tried to pay his workers a higher wage than the going wage, because partly on this reasoning --he was not a theoretical economist, but partly on the grounds that if he doesn't pay his workers enough and other people won't pay their workers enough, there's going to be nobody around to buy his model-T Fords. Actually that issue came to court in the United States, around 1916 or so, and led to a fundamental principle of Anglo-American corporate law, which is part of the reason why the Anglo-American system is slightly different from the European social market system. There was a famous case called "Dodge v. Ford." Some of the stockholders of the Ford motor company, the Dodge brothers, brought Henry Ford to court, claiming that by paying the workers a higher wage, and by making cars better than they had to be made, he was depriving them of their profits --because it's true: dividends would be lower. They went to the courts, and they won. The courts decided that the management of the corporation has the legal responsibility to maximize the yield of the profit to its stockholders, that's its job. The corporations had already been granted the right of persons, and this basically says they have to be a certain type of pathological person, a person that does nothing except try to maximize his own gain --that's the legal requirement on a corporation, and that's a core principle of Anglo-American corporate law.

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In Memory of Tanya Reinhart (March 18, 2007). An excerpt:

It is painful, and hard, to write about the loss of an old and cherished friend. Tanya Reinhart was just that.

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Noam Chomsky Connects the Dots, interview with Sameer Dossani, CounterPunch (March 9 / 11, 2007). An excerpt:

As far as the U.S. economic interests I think we have to make a distinction. The primary interest, and that's true throughout the Middle East, even in Saudi Arabia, the major energy producer, has always been control, not access, and not profit. Profit is a secondary interest and access is a tertiary interest.

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Mariko from Japan provides transcripts of Chomsky's talks in a useful blog devoted solely to this purpose. We will include complete transcripts here at chomsky.info as they become available, but you may want to visit the site regularly for daily updates.

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A predator becomes more dangerous when wounded, The Guardian (March 9, 2007). An excerpt:

In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington's basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important. As was the norm during the cold war, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq--a country otherwise free from any foreign interference--on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world.

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The Radical Intellectual, by Wolfgang B. Sperlich, Resurgence, Issue 240 (January-February, 2007). An excerpt:

People who care about the world and its inhabitants have long recognised Chomsky as a visionary and a man of the people. As an eminent scientist with a social conscience he embodies the tireless academic worker --with a vast output of high-quality work-- who reluctantly sacrificed his private life for a public one in order to make the world a better place. In that sense he is also a committed conservationist, and this is expressed in his deep concern for the natural environment, especially in his more recent work. That he is vilified as public enemy number one by political and economic reactionaries comes as no surprise, but it is a heavy price to pay. His good-humoured acceptance of such a fate should inspire us all.

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On Iran, Iraq, and the Rest of the World, interview with Michael Shank, Foreign Policy in Focus (February 16, 2007). An excerpt:

I presume part of the reason for the U.S.--Israel invasion of Lebanon in July--and it is US-Israeli, the Lebanese are correct in calling it that--part of the reason I suppose was that Hezbollah is considered a deterrent to a potential U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran. It had a deterrent capacity, i.e. rockets. And the goal I presume was to wipe out the deterrent so as to free up the United States and Israel for an eventual attack on Iran. That's at least part of the reason. The official reason given for the invasion can't be taken seriously for a moment. That's the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of a couple others. For decades Israel has been capturing, and kidnapping Lebanese and Palestinian refugees on the high seas, from Cyprus to Lebanon, killing them in Lebanon, bringing them to Israel, holding them as hostages. It's been going on for decades, has anybody called for an invasion of Israel?

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