The Noam Chomsky Dozen
6
Nov
The Noam Chomsky Collection (Haymarket Books)
In some way, everyday is like that so-called Christian holiday which
drives the consumer economy to new heights of frenzied greed and
status-seeking and is marked by the ominous sounding Black Friday (which
as a godless Jew, I don’t celebrate).Parcels arrive daily with rich
fruits from domestic publishers and, occasionally, from far flung
places. This long winded lead-in is for me to glory in the great
pleasure and privilege of having received Haymarket Books’s “Noam
Chomsky Collection,” updated editions of twelve of his classic books”:
Rogue States
The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism
On Power and Ideology
After the Cataclysm
The Fateful Triangle
Year 501
Turning the Tide
Pirates and Emperors, Old and New
Propaganda and the Public Mind
Rethinking Camelot
Culture of Terrorism
Powers and Prospects
NOAM CHOMSKY,MIT linguist and progressive critic of, among other
things, US foreign policy, along with his compatriot Howard Zinn, has
long been a whipping boy of US reactionaries. And they have labored to
marginalize him, tarring him as a disloyal and wild-eyed radical.
Clearly, a good number of Americans and the rest of the world do not
agree. The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest (2009) observes:
For the past five decades, Chomsky has offered a searing
critical indictment of US foreign policy and its many military
interventions across the globe, pointing out that the US’s continued
support for undemocratic regimes, and hostility to popular or democratic
movements, is at odds with its professed claim to be spreading
democracy and freedom and support for tendencies aiming toward that end.
Indeed, as Chomsky argues, the current concern from Washington with
so-called “Rogue States,” as much as the stated goal of aiding
democratic movements in other countries, is not supported by successive
administrations’ support (either direct or indirect) for political and
military dictatorships across Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia.
As Chomsky stated: “As the most powerful state, the US makes its own
laws, using force and conducting economic warfare at will.” It also
threatens sanctions against countries that do not abide by its
conveniently flexible notions of “free trade.”
