http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/06/361012.shtmlIn-depth review of Noam Chomsky's new book.
Reviewing Noam Chomsky's New Book: "Interventions" - by Stephen Lendman Noam Chomsky is MIT Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics and has been a leading political and social critic of US imperial policy for over 40 years. He's also one of the world's most influential and widely cited intellectuals on the Left. He's the author of many hundreds of articles and publications as well as dozens of books including his latest one and subject of this review - "Interventions." The introductory editor's note explains that post-9/11 Chomsky began writing short, roughly 1000 word, concise articles distributed by The New York Times Syndicate as op-eds. They were widely picked up overseas but rarely in the US and only in smaller regional or local papers. They never appeared in the New York Times that circulated them worldwide but not to its own readers. It shows how the Times and all the corporate media suppress views contrary to dominant mainstream thinking. They're verboten in a nation where A.J Liebling once said "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."
Imperfect as the European press is, Chomsky's essays appeared in the International Herald Tribune and London Guardian and Independent among others. Even one of Mexico's leading national newspapers, La Jornada in Mexico City, frequently publishes Chomsky's articles.
"Interventions" is a collection of 44 op-ed pieces, post-9/11, from September, 2002 through March, 2007. Included is one written specifically for the New York Times in February, 2004 titled "A Wall is a Weapon." Chomsky added notes at the end of each one briefly expanding on and updating what he wrote earlier up to the book's recent publication. In all his political writings, including the op-eds in "Interventions," Chomsky has always been a fierce critic of US foreign and domestic policy and the dominant US media's practice of "manufacturing consent" for it assuring criticism never exceeds what political elites allow. It means there's never enough of it, what's most needed, or anything diverging from general consensus views corporate America and Washington-based rulers of the world agree on.
Chomsky confronts these rulers in "Interventions" as he's always done in his writings and public appearances. As the Editor's Note says: "Chomsky believes that the freedom to challenge power is not just an opportunity, it's a responsibility." He does it as effectively in concise essays on selected issues as in expanded versions in more extended articles and books. Chomsky is also an optimist believing people can change things saying "One of the clearest lessons of history....is that rights are not granted; they are won" but not by being passive or timid. On the broad range of issues in "Interventions," Chomsky isn't timid, and that's why his views aren't allowed in the dominant corporate-controlled media because speaking truth to power and the public just might catch on.
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