Irish Blog: CHRIS HEDGES INTERVIEWS NOAM CHOMSKY AS NEWRY PROTESTS

Noam Chomsky is a renowned professor of linguistics at MIT. He has authored over 30 political books dissecting U.S. interventionism in the developing world, the political economy of human rights and the propaganda role of corporate media.

Transcript

Chris Hedges Interviews Noam Chomsky (1/3)

CHRIS HEDGES, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Let's begin with a classic paradigm which is throughout the Industrial Revolution, which has been cited by theorists from Marx to Kropotkin to Proudhon and to yourself, that you build a consciousness among workers within the manufacturing class, and eventually you lead to a kind of autonomous position where workers can control their own production.

We now live in a system, a globalized system, where most of the working class in industrial countries like the United States are service workers. We have reverted to a Dickensian system where those who actually produced live in conditions that begin to replicate almost slave labor--and, I think, as you have written, in places like southern China in fact are slave [labor]. What's the new paradigm for resistance? You know, how do we learn from the old and confront the new?

NOAM CHOMSKY, LINGUIST AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think we can draw many very good lessons from the early period of the Industrial Revolution. It was, of course, earlier in England, but let's take here in the United States. The Industrial Revolution took off right around here, eastern Massachusetts, mid 19th century. This was a period when independent farmers were being driven into the industrial system--men and women, incidentally, women from the farms, so-called factory girls--and they bitterly resented it. It was a period of a very free press, the most in the history of the country. There was a wide variety of journals, ethnic, labor, or others. And when you read them, they're pretty fascinating.

The people driven into the industrial system regarded it as an attack on their personal dignity, on their rights as human beings. They were free human beings who were being forced into what they called wage slavery, which they regarded as not very different from chattel slavery. In fact, this was such a popular view that it was actually a slogan of the Republican Party, that the only difference between working for a wage and being a slave is that working for a wage is supposedly temporary--pretty soon you'll be free. Other than that, they're not different.

And they bitterly resented the fact that the industrial system was even taking away their rich cultural life. And the cultural life was rich. You know, there are by now studies of the British working class and the American working class, and they were part of high culture of the day. Actually, I remembered this as late as the 1930s with my own family, you know, sort of unemployed working-class, and they said, this is being taken away from us, we're being forced to be something like slaves. They argued that if you're, say, a journeyman, a craftsman, and you sell your product, you're selling what you produced. If you're a wage earner, you're selling yourself, which is deeply offensive. They condemned what they called the new spirit of the age: gain wealth, forgetting all but self. Sounds familiar.

And it was extremely radical. It was combined with the most radical democratic movement in American history, the early populist movement--radical farmers. It began in Texas, spread into the Midwest--enormous movement of farmers who wanted to free themselves from the domination by the Northeastern bankers and capitalists, guys that ran the markets, you know, sort of forced them to sell what they produced on credit and squeeze them with credit and so on. They went on to develop their own banks, their own cooperatives. They started to link up with the Knights of Labor--major labor movement which held that, as they put it, those who work in the mills ought to own them, that it should be a free, democratic society.

These were very powerful movements. By the 1890s, you know, workers were taking over towns and running them in Western Pennsylvania. Homestead was a famous case. Well, they were crushed by force. It took some time. Sort of the final blow was Woodrow Wilson's red scare right after the First World War, which virtually crushed the labor movement.

At the same time, in the early 19th century, the business world recognized, both in England and the United States, that sufficient freedom had been won so that they could no longer control people just by violence. They had to turn to new means of control. The obvious ones were control of opinions and attitudes. That's the origins of the massive public relations industry, which is explicitly dedicated to controlling minds and attitudes.

The first--it partly was government. The first government commission was the British Ministry of Information. This is long before Orwell--he didn't have to invent it. So the Ministry of Information had as its goal to control the minds of the people of the world, but particularly the minds of American intellectuals, for a very good reason: they knew that if they can delude American intellectuals into supporting British policy, they could be very effective in imposing that on the population of the United States. The British, of course, were desperate to get the Americans into the war with a pacifist population. Woodrow Wilson won the 1916 election with the slogan "Peace without Victory". And they had to drive a pacifist population into a population that bitterly hated all things German, wanted to tear the Germans apart. The Boston Symphony Orchestra couldn't play Beethoven. You know. And they succeeded.

Wilson set up a counterpart to the Ministry of Information called the Committee on Public Information. You know, again, you can guess what it was. And they've at least felt, probably correctly, that they had succeeded in carrying out this massive change of opinion on the part of the population and driving the pacifist population into, you know, warmongering fanatics.

And the people on the commission learned a lesson. One of them was Edward Bernays, who went on to found--the main guru of the public relations industry. Another one was Walter Lippman, who was the leading progressive intellectual of the 20th century. And they both drew the same lessons, and said so.

The lessons were that we have what Lippmann called a "new art" in democracy, "manufacturing consent". That's where Ed Herman and I took the phrase from. For Bernays it was "engineering of consent". The conception was that the intelligent minority, who of course is us, have to make sure that we can run the affairs of public affairs, affairs of state, the economy, and so on. We're the only ones capable of doing it, of course. And we have to be--I'm quoting--"free of the trampling and the roar of the bewildered herd", the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders"--the general public. They have a role. Their role is to be "spectators", not participants. And every couple of years they're permitted to choose among one of the "responsible men", us.

And the John Dewey circle took the same view. Dewey changed his mind a couple of years later, to his credit, but at that time, Dewey and his circle were writing that--speaking of the First World War, that this was the first war in history that was not organized and manipulated by the military and the political figures and so on, but rather it was carefully planned by rational calculation of "the intelligent men of the community", namely us, and we thought it through carefully and decided that this is the reasonable thing to do, for all kind of benevolent reasons.

And they were very proud of themselves.

There were people who disagreed. Like, Randolph Bourne disagreed. He was kicked out. He couldn't write in the Deweyite journals. He wasn't killed, you know, but he was just excluded.

And if you take a look around the world, it was pretty much the same. The intellectuals on all sides were passionately dedicated to the national cause--all sides, Germans, British, everywhere.

There were a few, a fringe of dissenters, like Bertrand Russell, who was in jail; Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, in jail; Randolph Bourne, marginalized; Eugene Debs, in jail for daring to question the magnificence of the war. In fact, Wilson hated him with such passion that when he finally declared an amnesty, Debs was left out, you know, had to wait for Warren Harding to release him. And he was the leading labor figure in the country. He was a candidate for president, Socialist Party, and so on.

But the lesson that came out is we believe you can and of course ought to control the public, and if we can't do it by force, we'll do it by manufacturing consent, by engineering of consent. Out of that comes the huge public relations industry, massive industry dedicated to this.

Incidentally, it's also dedicated to undermining markets, a fact that's rarely noticed but is quite obvious. Business hates markets. They don't want to--and you can see it very clearly. Markets, if you take an economics course, are based on rational, informed consumers making rational choices. Turn on the television set and look at the first ad you see. It's trying to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices. That's the whole point of the huge advertising industry. But also to try to control and manipulate thought. And it takes various forms in different institutions. The media do it one way, the academic institutions do it another way, and the educational system is a crucial part of it.

This is not a new observation. There's actually an interesting essay by--Orwell's, which is not very well known because it wasn't published. It's the introduction toAnimal Farm. In the introduction, he addresses himself to the people of England and he says, you shouldn't feel too self-righteous reading this satire of the totalitarian enemy, because in free England, ideas can be suppressed without the use of force. And he doesn't say much about it. He actually has two sentences. He says one reason is the press "is owned by wealthy men" who have every reason not to want certain ideas to be expressed.

But the second reason, and the more important one in my view, is a good education, so that if you've gone to all the good schools, you know, Oxford, Cambridge, and so on, you have instilled into you the understanding that there are certain things it wouldn't do to say--and I don't think he went far enough: wouldn't do to think. And that's very broad among the educated classes. That's why overwhelmingly they tend to support state power and state violence, and maybe with some qualifications, like, say, Obama is regarded as a critic of the invasion of Iraq. Why? Because he thought it was a strategic blunder. That puts him on the same moral level as some Nazi general who thought that the second front was a strategic blunder--you should knock off England first. That's called criticism.

And sometimes it's kind of outlandish. For example, there was just a review inThe New York Times Book Review of Glenn Greenwald's new book by Michael Kinsley, and which bitterly condemned him as--mostly character assassination. Didn't say anything substantive. But Kinsley did say that it's ridiculous to think that there's any repression in the media in the United States, 'cause we can write quite clearly and criticize anything. And he can, but then you have to look at what he says, and it's quite interesting.

In the 1980s, when the major local news story was the massive U.S. atrocities in Central America--they were horrendous; I mean, it wasn't presented that way, but that's what was happening--Kinsley was the voice of the left on television. And there were interesting incidents. At one point, the U.S. Southern Command, which ran--you know, it was the overseer of these actions--gave instructions to the terrorist force that they were running in Nicaragua, called the Contras--and they were a terrorist force--they gave them orders to--they said "not to (...) duke it out with the Sandinistas", meaning avoid the Nicaraguan army, and attack undefended targets like agricultural cooperatives and, you know, health clinics and so on. And they could do it, because they were the first guerrillas in history to have high-level communications equipment, you know, computers and so on. The U.S., the CIA, just controlled the air totally, so they could send instructions to the terrorist forces telling them how to avoid the Nicaraguan army detachments and attack undefended civilian targets.

Well, this was mentioned; you know, it wasn't publicized, but it was mentioned. And Americas Watch, which later became part of Human Rights Watch, made some protests. And Michael Kinsley responded. He condemned Americas Watch for their emotionalism. He said, we have to recognize that we have to accept a pragmatic criterion. We have to ask--something like this--he said, we have to compare the amount of blood and misery poured in with the success of the outcome in producing democracy--what we'll call democracy. And if it meets the pragmatic criterion, then terrorist attacks against civilian targets are perfectly legitimate--which is not a surprising view in his case. He's the editor ofThe New Republic. The New Republic, supposedly a liberal journal, was arguing that we should support Latin American fascists because there are more important things than human rights in El Salvador, where they were murdering tens of thousands of people.

That's the liberals. And, yeah, they can get in the media no problem. And they're praised for it, regarded with praise. All of this is part of the massive system of--you know, it's not that anybody sits at the top and plans at all; it's just exactly as Orwell said: it's instilled into you. It's part of a deep indoctrination system which leads to a certain way of looking at the world and looking at authority, which says, yes, we have to be subordinate to authority, we have to believe we're very independent and free and proud of it. As long as we keep within the limits, we are. Try to go beyond those limits, you're out.

Tommy Lee 2 days ago
interesting question from hedges. interesting history from chomsky. answer to the question would have been interesting.
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Jacob Solace 2 days ago
One of the things that makes me suspicious of people like Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, Thom Hartmann, etc, is that they rarely if ever name the names of the plutocratic families, the corporate oligarchs and the international banksters that are wreaking havoc upon the People, both here in the USA and around the world and upon our beloved Mother Earth.

And they rarely if ever connect the dots and present the Big Picture and what is coming down the pike.

Moreover, they spend little to no time presenting well-thought-out viable step-by-step plans of action with strategies and tactics that each and every one of us must take if we are to get to a place where it will be easier to usher in a Whole New Way of Living rooted in Love and Wisdom.
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- totalspin Jacob Solace a day ago
  There seems to be a lot of empty chariots around. lots of complaining, no revolution in the works. The only way to beat moneyed power is a long term movement(8-12 years) planned to overthrow the government. I see no plan in the works.
  To see how complaint the mainstream media has become watch NPR News., now a vassal of the oligarchs.
  Paul Craig Roberts is a truth teller The USA is entrenched in its madness.. particularly the powerful. No mention of breaking out of war cycle or improving quality of life . Entrenched. Empty suits running the world.
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  - Jacob Solace totalspin 20 hours ago
    
    We have the capability of providing food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare, to the most excellent degree, for each and every man, woman and child on the face of the earth, and to do it in such a way that was in Harmony with Nature rather than against Nature. We already have a gazillion creative solutions.
    
    Here is a rough draft of my proposal. Please feel free to critique it and tear it apart if you must. Let us learn together and come up with a step-by-step outline of how we go from the current state of affairs to a Whole New Way of Living rooted in Love and Wisdom.
    
    At the moment, the Presidency is pretty much out of reach.
    
    The system is rigged and at this level it is difficult to overcome.
    
    We need to change the laws.
    
    We must work from the bottom up.
    
    We start from where we live.
    
    We take charge of our own city/town/village and we show the world what is possible.
    
    For instance, here in NYC, about 72% of eligible voters don't vote in the NYC Mayoral election. And at least 2/3 of them are progressive.
    
    5 million New Yorkers are eligible to vote.
    
    Only 1 million usually vote (20% of eligible voters).
    
    The mayorship is usually won with less than 800,000 votes.
    
    We start by creating a Majority Voting Bloc.
    
    This means that all we have to do is to inspire just 1 million individuals from the 4 million to vote together for the candidates who are best for the People. This Voting Bloc will enable us to win the Mayorship and the City Council and members of the House.
    
    Then we will be able to repeal laws that do not serve the People and enact laws that do.
    
    Then we will be in a better position to finally implement the gazillion wonderful creative solutions we already have without impediment.
    
    Other cities/towns/villages of the world will be inspired to do the same.
    
    In time, we will be in a position to win the Governorships, the State Senate and the State Assembly. Then later the US Senate and the Presidency.
    
    Then from there we can more easily usher in a Whole New Way of Living rooted in True Love and Wisdom.
    
    i am turning around and mentoring on average about 10 new uninformed/misinformed people every week.
    
    It is imperative that each and every one of us, without exception, does the same.
    
    https://www.facebook.com/group...
    
    https://www.facebook.com/pages...
    
    A Bug's Life - ''Then they ALL might stand up to us'': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
    
    see more
    
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- virgil Jacob Solace 2 days ago
  you have passed the nine circles of hell in your western education. you do not have to spell right to speak the truth. In fact deceivers speak relatively well but any classic westerner grounded in the priceless knowledge of the west knows of shadow of truths and half truths
  (language is a abstract system that bridges to true systems e.g. math). You have to ask the right questions. it is akin to the relationship of kant and the deceptive language of Hegel. The orgin of truth is in the blank pallet of the mind, the mystical intersecting yoke of waves of energy collapsing into into probability of a chess player using prescience to guess an outcome. I call it a fluid mosaic model adding the function of time to see us grow organically as cells dividing fractal.The primordial western dark subconsciousness vs. truth light of western culture. It is archetypal battle between good and evil
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- WarrenMetzler Jacob Solace 2 days ago
  Jacob, I suggest they rarely are aware of a viable solution. The are in essence political gadflies. Full of facts about atrocities, know nothing about how to succeed. Ralph Nader was the first I saw with this tendencies.
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  - virgil WarrenMetzler 2 days ago
    
    I sense a disturbance in the force almost as if a shadow has sprung up.
    
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  - ridgewalker1 WarrenMetzler 2 days ago
    
    yes, another particularly appropriate conditioned response
    
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    - lupusposse ridgewalker1 2 days ago
      
      You understand that every billionaire who supports the reduction of social programs and education, and the growth of "defense" programs, is at fault. Since there are 492 in the USA alone, only a few who disagree with information collection, and fewer who might disagree with privatisation, would be easier to list, IF we knew who they were, IF there are any at all.
      Over 300 went to the Koch Bros thing in Dana Point, and if you lust to learn names , you can just visit information on that gathering to find 300 of those who push feudalism.
      
      As Chomsky said, wage slavery is slavery. Get that straight - that THOSE SLAVES WORK WILLINGLY FOR THOSE WHO CREATE THE OLIGARCHY. So you must add EVERYONE who works for wages to your list. All the whining about social injustice by anyone who shops at WalMart or such places, is equal to lying politicians.
      
      As those very unhappy people who work for the oligarchs become more unhappy, perhaps they will become as violent as those who support them. Such a civil war seems somewhere in the offing, once the ridiculous focus of the USA on Southwest Asia ends.
      
      Who will suffer? Not the short list of wealthy or their politicians. Those who grasp at life under their heel, and those who grasp for a life free of their control, although pretty much the same - lower class, calling themselves middle class - it is they who will suffer, THEY who will kill one another, just as always in war. The privileged will grow on to become warhog senators, or warhog industrial management.
      Other innocents will be raped, starved, their lives made into suffering by those who pretend that they choose sides, but in reality, just want to replace one name with their own. Since so few can be lord, boss, CEO, prez, most will convince themselves that it is somehow courageous to extend war, killing, suffering forever, violently desperately trying to perpetrate suffering while avoiding it themselves, claiming they are patriots or some such vile label.
      
      You say you want their names, those whose fault it is. What will you do with them? strip them of wealth? assassinate? You are fools.
      
      All you need to know is whether you want to live in the slave/stratified society. Then either make your decision to cease supporting it, or grovel for your worshipped leaders.
      
      see more
      
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      - totalspin lupusposse a day ago
        
        Very hard not to shop at Walmart when you live in a small city and are broke. They want people broke. That is the only way to go back and shop at such a staid place. There is no enjoyment shopping there. It is a necessity.
        
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- virgil Jacob Solace 2 days ago
  Remember even the house of Pericles became corrupt.
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  - Jacob Solace virgil 20 hours ago
    
    They who are Enlightened can never ever be corrupted.
    
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- virgil Jacob Solace 2 days ago
  hey are demagogues in a global game of risk and are the oracles of delphi.
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- juda Jacob Solace 2 days ago
  usa....By golly you have the page why don't you drop all the names for us. Be sure you have the credible proof to save yourself from a law suit. And by the way. Why do we need names? We step outside the political model and form 'community cooperative models' and create rules where whomever they are can't operate. I love the critics that have no solutions themselves.
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  - Jacob Solace juda 2 days ago
    
    We have the capability of providing food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare, to the most excellent degree, for each and every man, woman and child on the face of the earth, and to do it in such a way that was in Harmony with Nature rather than against Nature. We already have a gazillion creative solutions.
    
    Here is a rough draft of my proposal. Please feel free to critique it and tear it apart if you must. Let us learn together and come up with a step-by-step outline of how we go from the current state of affairs to a Whole New Way of Living rooted in Love and Wisdom.
    
    At the moment, the Presidency is pretty much out of reach.
    
    The system is rigged and at this level it is difficult to overcome.
    
    We need to change the laws.
    
    We must work from the bottom up.
    
    We start from where we live.
    
    We take charge of our own city/town/village and we show the world what is possible.
    
    For instance, here in NYC, about 72% of eligible voters don't vote in the NYC Mayoral election. And at least 2/3 of them are progressive.
    
    5 million New Yorkers are eligible to vote.
    
    Only 1 million usually vote (20% of eligible voters).
    
    The mayorship is usually won with less than 800,000 votes.
    
    We start by creating a Majority Voting Bloc.
    
    This means that all we have to do is to inspire just 1 million individuals from the 4 million to vote together for the candidates who are best for the People. This Voting Bloc will enable us to win the Mayorship and the City Council and members of the House.
    
    Then we will be able to repeal laws that do not serve the People and enact laws that do.
    
    Then we will be in a better position to finally implement the gazillion wonderful creative solutions we already have without impediment.
    
    Other cities/towns/villages of the world will be inspired to do the same.
    
    In time, we will be in a position to win the Governorships, the State Senate and the State Assembly. Then later the US Senate and the Presidency.
    
    Then from there we can more easily usher in a Whole New Way of Living rooted in True Love and Wisdom.
    
    i am turning around and mentoring on average about 10 new uninformed/misinformed people every week.
    
    It is imperative that each and every one of us, without exception, does the same.
    
    https://www.facebook.com/group...
    
    https://www.facebook.com/pages...
    
    A Bug's Life - ''Then they ALL might stand up to us'': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
    
    see more
    
    Reply
    
    Share ›
  - Jacob Solace juda 2 days ago
    
    And what will you do when the the plutocratic families, the corporate oligarchs and the international banksters use cointelpro tactics and send in the police? What will you do when they use the mainstream media, the legal system and the financial system to neutralize your good work as they have done so many times before throughout history?
    
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    - juda Jacob Solace 2 days ago
      
      usa....Your remark about NYC being '...at least 2/3 progressive...' is ridiculous out of your so called stats with no reference given. And what does 'progressive' mean to you anyway? Anyone not on the far right?
      
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      - Jacob Solace juda 20 hours ago
        
        That is a fact. The problem is they are not involved in the political process. i am here to get them engaged.
        
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        juda Jacob Solace 19 hours ago
        
        usa.....Sorry Jacob you give no credible reference to 2/3 being progressive --whatever that means and to whom.
        
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    - juda Jacob Solace 2 days ago
      
      usa...and what does all of your discourse have to do with your criticism of Noam Chomsky not dropping names? CommunityRightsPDX. org.
      
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      - Jacob Solace juda 20 hours ago
        
        Then please present his well-thought-out viable step-by-step plans of action with strategies and tactics that each and every one of us must take if we are to get to a place where it will be easier to usher in a Whole New Way of Living rooted in Love and Wisdom.
        
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- Lavina Jacob Solace 2 days ago
  It's in the narrative. Read it.
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  - Jacob Solace Lavina 2 days ago
    
    If you see it, then share it with me here.
    
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bressler 2 days ago
ALL VERY TRUE.
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Doug Latimer 2 days ago
The exploitocracy is devoted to the eradication of two saliently subversive impulses

To think for yourself

And act for others
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- lingum Doug Latimer 2 days ago
  And when did such a time exist?
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  - Kevin R. lingum a day ago
    
    Just because there was no time in history when murders didn't occur doesn't mean we should find murdering acceptable, troll.
    
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lingum 2 days ago
The good professor and his wife had absolutely no problem living on a kibbutz in "Israel"--the Squatter State occupying land that belongs to the Palestinians.
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- juda lingum 2 days ago
  usa......Many young USA Jewish people did this up at least until through the 80s. Many were going to college in Israel on an exchange program for a year. Many were pre or post college trying to learn their Jewish Culture. This was long before mainstream Jews or Christians had any idea what the fascist regime was doing. I had a young Jewish friend who did this and actually came home with very little respect for the regime.
  Your remark is immature and very very outdated. Mr. Chomsky is one of the greatest intellectuals and thinkers in the world and this is all you can pull off? Shameful.
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- useless eater lingum a day ago
  It must have had an effect on him. He's been very generous in his criticism of the Israeli regime. Particularly in regard to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and their (Israel's) sabotaging of the peace talks.
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Dave 17 hours ago
The working sheep are to blame for the demise of Occupy! If you had all stopped working for a week, the .01% would start listening. That was the power of Unions. Wake up sheep and smell your cheap starbucks coffee grinds!
BDS!israelNOW!
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Dave 17 hours ago
Any jew willing to go against the grain is a hero in my eyes! Chomsky throws out the puzzle pieces, but it's up to the sheep to take it and run! It's easy for everybody to sit around and judge the messengers. What are you doing to find where the pieces go? BDS!israelNOW!
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Jmontalvo 18 hours ago
Maybe the Elites are all aliens sent to mine the world for resources, but instead of going to war and conquering humanity which even for a advanced alien species would take a large amount of resources they just take our form and subvert our politics. I mean what other explanation can there be for these people lack of humanity, they are not human.
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Byard Pidgeon a day ago
Something nasty happening...within the past hour, I attempted to watch this interview, but was redirected to it on YouTube...where there are several comments posted regarding an article in The New Republic branding Hedges a plagiarist.
I read the article, and find the accusations hard to take very seriously...however, I believe a primary reason for what appears to be the attempt to smear Hedges is his very vocal and persistent support for Palestinian justice, which Chomsky is also perhaps even more vocal...and which is anathema in the pages of TNR.
So, be aware...those commenters, very adamant, will probably be showing up here.
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virgil 2 days ago
its all western madness
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Michael Wilk 2 days ago
I wouldn't call filth like Kinsley liberal by any stretch of the definition. They're fascists through and through, and we need to be willing to define what a liberal or a progressive or a socialist is, define who is not, and identify by actions, rather than only words.
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WarrenMetzler 2 days ago
Chomsky is full of facts about wrong doing, but nary a word about what would succeed. He is the epitome of a political gadfly: always going on with what is wrong, never telling us what is right. But undoubtably more and more miserable the more he does this.

Every person intrinsically knows that she can be nourished in every activity she does. But only after pursuing a long time and much trial and error. Nourished being the experience that what just unfolded in the activity you just did was as good as it gets, gave you a sense of satiety. So in every activity, you either do it in a way that you are not nourished, or do it in a way you are nourished. And nothing the government does has any bearing on this. So it is good to have a good government, But the idea that bad governments can stop people from learning how to be nourished is sheer nonsense.

By the way, any time you an activity and note something is missing, that is the universe telling you were not nourished by your involvement in that activity. And you have to make major changes in your approach to that activity to become nourished when you do it.

And incidentally, no one who pursues authentic nourishment ever gets fooled by government propaganda.
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- ridgewalker1 WarrenMetzler 2 days ago
  particularly appropriate conditioned response
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- useless eater WarrenMetzler a day ago
  Chomsky has made a similar criticism of himself. He's said words to the effect - He's good at recognizing what's wrong, but the few times he's tried prescribing solutions - things didn't turn out so well.
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  - WarrenMetzler useless eater a day ago
    
    The problem with this approach useless, is that almost every time what is presented as wrong is just a symptom of the real deeper problem. Besides every human knows that talking about wrong never leads to success. And success only comes from hard work, with lots of adjustments over time. So if he admits to doing this, he is admitting to posturing for fame and fortune; he sure as heck can't claim he promoting a viable solution.
    
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    - useless eater WarrenMetzler 5 hours ago
      
      It's a little hard for me to see how Chomsky could have foreseen, taking the positions he's adopted would lead to him becoming famous. He had a much more lucrative career as a linguist, and in the field of cognition. Branching out to cultural criticism and criticism of government and its policies sounds far too risky (to me) as a means to fame and acclaim.
      
      And i don't think Chomsky the work Chomsky has put into trying to root out the underlying causes contributing to the ills he has identified has been insignificant. I don't agree with your dismissal of his criticisms - Unless the "wrongs" are analyzed they will likely be repeated. And they will likely be repeated with all the vigor and which you attribute to leading to success. The 'adjustments' to which you refer are a result of recognizing error, and analyzing it.
      
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juda 2 days ago
usa.....Great there is script because Professor Chomsky is difficult to hear. I enjoyed the interview very much. I am looking forward to the next two.
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HansSuter 2 days ago
it is all so obvious but I haven't seen it for 70 years.
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virgil HansSuter 2 days ago

thank you, history is repeating itself as swollen shores reseed to bring another season of sowing seeds and massive herd of animals once fed us have now disappeared by an idea a group of immoral men once devised to kill all the meat so the people would be subordinate to immorality and is repeating once again like Dante s allegory of circles of hell.

Thursday 19 June 2014

CHRIS HEDGES INTERVIEWS NOAM CHOMSKY AS NEWRY PROTESTS

Transcript

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