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"A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us."
Power and Terror: Post 9-11 Talks and Interviews
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Power and Terror: Post 9-11 Talks and Interviews
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15 journalers for this copy...
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 Book DescriptionPower and Terror, Noam Chomsky's highly anticipated follow-up to 9-11, is drawn from a series of public talks that Chomsky gave during the spring of 2002, as well as a lengthy unpublished interview.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 public. From a review at Amazon.com: This is a quick read and one that is worth the few hours or so that it takes to read the entire book. Mr Chomsky gets his points across directly and clearly. He is able to show why we are having problems in the Middle east, why the people there do not trust us and why we are taking the action that we have taken. I would have liked a few more footnotes. He mentions a few things that he assumes the read is already aware of; however, it would have been nice to have a few more details. This is a very good book in setting the record straight. Once you have finished this book please get another one of his and go through it. Everything that he writes (or says since most of this one is from various talks that he has given in 2002) is very "matter of fact" and to the point. It really makes you think. |
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I think I'll start a bookring on this one, with Munich and Erfurt in Germany as the first stops along the line. Interested? Write an entry in my guestbook or write a PM.Ich werde hier wohl einen bookring machen, mit München und Erfurt als erste Stationen. Interesse? Eintragen ins Gästebuch oder PM.
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Was lang verjährt wird doch noch Wut?Trotz Postamt: Auf dem Weg zu GFI, und damit wieder InTheWild... |
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Mallick, Heather. "Where have all our heroes gone?" The Globe and Mail. July 24, 2004: F2 "So lowered are our expectations that the Rosa Luxemburg of our time is now Linda Ronstadt, 58, who was thoroughly booed at the Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas for dedicating a second encore, the song Desperado, to Michael Moore, whom she called "a great patriot who's just trying to get the truth out." The Aladdin says it won't have her back. When Michael Moore wrote to the theatre to defend freedom of speech and offered to sing America the Beautiful onstage with Ms. Ronstadt, casino president Bill Timmins responded with a misspelled, illiterate letter that twinned Jesus and George W. Bush and insulted his own famously fat customers by saying Las Vegas has thousands of all-you-can-eat buffets that Mr. Moore might like. Still, it shouldn't surprise me that the woman whose version of Long Long Time used to make adults cry has been reduced to singing to gambled-out golfers and their wifettes who throw drinks and steaks at the stage and shout "We wanna hear White Rhythm and Blues! Where's J.D. Souther? Were you sleeping with him? Was it great? We wanna be young again." We're all whores, but some of us are more enthusiastic than others. In the '80s Ms. Ronstadt made an exclusive Toronto appearance for Ford dealers. I forgave her, assuming that only Ford had the cash to assemble an orchestra for her to do her Nelson Riddle renditions of soppy songs and still have ticket prices low enough for an audience that placed music fourth after parking, a bang-up dinner and a nymphette babysitter. She was happily performing at Sun City, that giant engine generating money for South African apartheid, when Steve van Zandt had a 1985 hit with Sun City and Nelson Mandela was still in jail. Now she thinks she's a political activist because she reproachfully dedicates Straighten Up and Fly Right to Enron? I suppose I'm sarcastic because I was late for the party. Too young to protestVietnam and too Canadian for Greenham Common, when the U.S. tested cruise missiles in Canada, I stepped out the door of my parents' house and gave the clear blue Alberta sky a glare it won't soon forget, but such has been the extent of my militancy. Where have all the radicals gone? Skip the next paragraph if you're easily nauseated. Martha Stewart, talking to Barbara Walters after receiving a five-month jail sentence, said that even good people go to prison. Like Nelson Mandela, she said. Ah, breaking rocks in the hot sun for 27 years so the dust permanently harms your eyes and the stones cut your skin while your people are torn apart by whips and the jaws of police dogs and Dick Cheney rejoices in your suffering . . . Martha Stewart can't even make a moral dishtowel in a Shenzhen sweatshop. She said later that she wasn't comparing herself to Mr. Mandela. "I am not a Nobel prize winner." For some reason, shame's black bile didn't eat her alive right there in the TV studio, leaving a pile of wet cinders on her little confessional couchy. Ms. Ronstadt admits she has nothing to lose. She is semi-retired, Clear Channel isn't going to play her songs anyway, and she just wants Americans "to get their heads out of their mashed potatoes." At least she's honest. I object when Diana Krall makes a CD with a cover that is identical to her simultaneous Chrysler ad, but no one else minds. I'm not surprised she married Elvis Costello, the man who once referred to the late Ray Charles as a "blind ignorant nigger." He did apologize, saying he had been drunk at the time, but couldn't he just have thrown up on himself or drowned in the swimming pool like a normal rock star? I still wince when I hear his women-hating songs. This is the sum total of American entertainment opposition to the war. The Dixie Chicks say "darn that Bush." Bruce Springsteen plans a free concert in Central Park. You're really going all out there, aren't you, Brucie? I don't know that music ever genuinely meant anything, but people thought it did. Now we have a Coldplay marrying a Paltrow and talentless actors becoming billionaires because their dad was Kirk Douglas. Jon Stewart makes superfine jokes about President Bush, but his audience is still small by American standards. Where are the public figures, aside from Chomsky and Sontag and the great Steve Earle, making a genuine protest? In this era, anyone attempting any kind of genuine artistry in the United States should be writing in their own blood. Instead they write in crayon. To paraphrase that song lyric by the original rebel Tom Waits, Bush is the man who sold Americans "a rat's asshole" and told them it was a wedding ring. I wish someone would just say it out loud." |
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Like Lisa-B, I think I was expecting a little more from this book. So far, I've read the first section, "Interview With Noam Chomsky for the Film Power and Terror", a movie made by John Junkerman, an American living in Japan. I may have chosen the wrong book to serve as an introduction to Noam Chomsky. I guess the justification for putting this at the beginning of the book is that the interviewer asks Chomsky about how he started out as an activist. I'm sure it's fine for someone familiar with Chomsky's themes, but for a new reader, it's pretty baffling, since it's like walking in during the middle of a conversation you're not privy to. Essentially, starting with 9-11, Chomsky talks about how there's a "dual standard" for terrorism: when someone else commits it, it's terrorism, but when we commit it, it's just countermeasures or warfare. Several incidents with which I'm not really familiar are cited, but unfortunately the only footnote that's included in this section is a reference to the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway, with which I was familiar. |
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Well, I've finished the rest of the book. Like Lisa-B mentioned earlier, I feel that for me, it's the right book at the wrong time. I'm not familiar with Chomsky's other work, but in this book, there is a single theme, the United States' role in terrorism (which is given its, I feel, proper definition of attacks on civilians, rather than being limited to organizations attacking civilians, as opposed to countries attacking civilians). Several arenas are mentioned, such as Iraq, Iran, Colombia, Palestine, etc., but the theme is the same. Unfortunately, as the book is taken from talks and question and answer sessions, there is little in the way of background information, so unless you're familiar with his examples, the book can be confusing in parts. I've certainly learned a lot from the book. For the first time, I've understood why the US media appears to be largely uncritical of the Government. It's not that the Government controls the media, but that the big media conglomerates are driven by the same economic goals as the Government. What benefits the Government benefits these huge corporations. What I found frustrating about reading this was that Chomsky didn't really give any advice on what I or someone similarly motivated could do about the problems he outlines. He presents this as historical information, without giving us the tools to make a difference. I think his audience is academics. Contrast this with someone like Michael Moore, who presents things in a simple to understand manner, then gives you ideas about things the average person can do if they want to make a difference. Above all, however, I would like to read a Chomsky book with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Reserved and waiting to be mailed to Herschelian. |
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Released 7 yrs ago (2/9/2005 UTC) at postal system (Barth) in -- Per Post geschickt/ Persönlich weitergegeben --, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Germany WILD RELEASE NOTES:
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Released 5 yrs ago (5/18/2007 UTC) at BC Meetup FFM 07 in Frankfurt am Main, Hessen Germany WILD RELEASE NOTES:
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Journal Entry 31 by
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Journal Entry 32 by
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Released 3 yrs ago (9/20/2008 UTC) at Manchester, Greater Manchester United Kingdom CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:
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