Tag: Noam Chomsky

‘Follow Your Bliss’ – The Tweet That Brought Corporate Journalism To The Brink Of A Nervous Breakthrough

Because the corporate press is about selling products and services to billions of consumers, it is loath to discuss the claim that an authentic, incomparable bliss is located within the human heart, and can be experienced by directing some attention away from external sources of ‘happiness’ to internal feelings in meditation. And yet this has been the assertion of every great spiritual master for thousands of years.

Untouchable – The Uses And Misuses Of ‘Genocide Denial’

One of the wonders of contemporary propaganda is the extent to which corporate commentators are in denial about their use of the term ‘genocide denial’. Clearly, they believe they are using a neutral, objective term to describe indisputable facts of genocidal killing and ugly refusals to recognise those facts.

A Response To George Monbiot’s ‘Disavowal’

Our point is that if journalists like Monbiot are serious about establishing the truth, they will test the French government and other claims against the arguments and evidence offered by dissidents. They will consider the different claims, and come to some kind of informed conclusion. What is not acceptable is that journalists should simply accept as Truth arguments made by Western governments openly seeking regime change in Syria and that have a spectacular track record of lying about claims supposedly justifying war.

What Is Propaganda? Noam Chomsky on Media, Manipulation, and Democracy

When you hear the word “intellectual,” who is the first person that comes to mind? For me, that person is Professor Noam Chomsky: linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, political activist, and author of over 100 books. In this article, I will be dissecting Noam Chomsky’s book Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, in an attempt to […]

The Costs of Violence

Obama’s global drone assassination campaign, a remarkable innovation in global terrorism, exhibits the same patterns. By most accounts, it is generating terrorists more rapidly than it is murdering those suspected of someday intending to harm us — an impressive contribution by a constitutional lawyer on the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, which established the basis for the principle of presumption of innocence that is the foundation of civilized law.

American Power Under Challenge

When we ask “Who rules the world?” we commonly adopt the standard convention that the actors in world affairs are states, primarily the great powers, and we consider their decisions and the relations among them. That is not wrong. But we would do well to keep in mind that this level of abstraction can also be highly misleading.

Unbalanced reporting is feeding our ignorance

I overheard one of my colleagues at work the other day. He was listening to a news report about the prospect of British jets bombing Isis targets in Syria. “Let’s bomb them,” he said. I often hear him saying such things. He’s not a right wing bigot or a racist, although he might be Islamophobic. Many people are Islamophobic these […]

Noam Chomsky on Institutional Stupidity

Individual stupidity can be remedied, but institutional stupidity is much more resistant to change. At this stage of human society, it truly endangers our survival. That’s why I think institutional stupidity should be a prime concern.

Official: The US is a Leading Terrorist State

An international poll released a year ago by the Worldwide Independent Network/Gallup International Association (WIN/GIA) found that the United States is ranked far in the lead as “the biggest threat to world peace today,” far ahead of second-place Pakistan (doubtless inflated by the Indian vote), with no one else even close.

Fortunately, Americans were spared this insignificant information.