Customer Reviews

Acts of Aggression

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After listening to Chomsky lecture 'in the flesh', free of editors and media butchers, I came to appreciate his expansive mind, his love of humanity and, surprisingly, his guarded optimism regarding human possibility even in the face of institutional monstrosities. For some reason, many Americans have come to believe that there is something inherently 'negative' or 'bad' in critical interpretation. Chomsky goes to the heart of this matter, and though he likes to minimize his linguistic soul, it is by his natural ability to sift through mediated language that he is able to render, clear as day, something that, finally, approximates some truth about the world we have created, the forces that are continually struggling for control and the casualties of the commodification of 'the individual' in a world proliferated by free market gobblygook. My only worry is, what after Chomsky? So far, many have tried to 'follow', but I have yet to encounter anyone who is brave enough to use their positions to speak the truth, as Chomsky has. After reading this work in particular, one is reminded that there are only two types of people in the 'first world', those who are activists and those who are complicit. Only a monster can sit idly by while the horror of U.S. policy (funded with public monies) is allowed to be 'disappeared' by our media, as the plight of the E. Timorese was for so many years. How many times are we going to let this record replay? Is access to cheap petro-chemical resin garden chairs really worth half a million children's lives?

This is just a comment on the writer from Toronto, CA about his feelings of the acceptance of Chomsky's ideas and theories in the intellectual community and also a comment on Chomsky's literature in general.

I have found that Chomsky's ideas are very real, but there are many critics and authors who refuse to accept Chomsky's views because, well, his readings go directly against all literature of the established political scientists and contradict the content of the literature. I think that Chomsky has a lot to offer, but it is important and interesting to consider who disagrees with Chomsky or refuses to cite his works. Chomsky is the most widely cited living author, making him "the most important intellectual alive". His writings are eye-opening and frank, easy to read. This and anything by Odonian Press are great for starters (What Uncle Sam Really Wants, on the subject of U.S. Foreign Policy, for example) Happy reading!

I am writing in response to the first review here. I just want to say that every intellectual person in the world takes Professor Chomsky seriously. I live in Canada and I remember that in each of his lectures in Toronto there was enormous attendance to listen to him. He is the conscience of the West. He is a person who did not sell himself to the corporations. You can read this book and learn a lot about U.S. foreign policy and its impacts in the lives of people around the world and especially Middle East. After reading this book without any bias you can demand that US foreign policy makers and their suppurates should be charged for crimes against humanity.

You COULD read a book by the war criminal Henry Kissinger. You COULD listen to Pentagon thugs on PBS, the "public" broadcasting system. But this is the best introduction to the real world of US foreign and military policy. It's not a matter of "paranoia" to point out the truth: i.e., arms policy is meant to enrich the military industrial complex (concept courtesy of paranoid Eisenhower); Israel is just an off-shore military base for the US (pretty much universally recognized in the Israeli press); and the US sponsors death and destruction on a truly heroic scale throughout the world. These are simply the facts - you can even collect the data from The New York Times. But what some willfully ignorant folks won't acknowledge: all these sorts of conclusions are available in the European press. Chomsky is only as radical as reality, no more than the center-left in Europe. Read and see what everyone else has known for two generations!

This small 65-page paperback is part of The Open Media Pamphlet Series. In three separate articles by internationally-recognized humanists, it makes three important points: first, that U.S. policies toward "rogue states" comprised largely of embargoes that result in infant mortality, local epidemics, starvation, infertility, and so on, are a direct violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; second, that the U.S. appears to have been both an active practitioner of bio-chemical warfare resulting in the deaths and deformation of hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians (Agent Orange) as well as a passive practitioner in biological warfare qua disease promulgation through embargo and non-intervention; and third, that the U.S. has consistently refused to abide by international arbitration and other means for settling disputes, but instead generally utilized force as its preferred vehicle for getting its own way, regardless of international agreements to which it has been a signatory. Too few write credibly in this vein, and this pamphlet is therefore a helpful off-set to the more conventional wisdom that comes from the military-industrial complex and the politicians this complex supports.

I read this book for my Political Science course... Excellent reading of facts that obviously won't make the corporate propaganda newspapers... How can anyone ignore the hundreds of thousands of the innocent Iraqis that have died as a result of the inhumane sanctions? And the reasons for the sanctions - violation of UN resolutions... resolutions in which the main offenders, United States and Israel, go unpunished.... Such crimes against humanity are enough to make an athiest into a beleiver in an Ultimate Judgement...

Chomsky and Clark deserve credit for risking their reputations that'll undoubtedly be smeared by propaganda slanderers....

As for the commenter below... Of course the Holocaust is "the most heavily documented event in history"... Its been the subject of the grossest revisions in history.. 50 years from now, people will still be documenting their experiences in the Holocaust...

This book is a great intro to the media-obscured arab-american relations. The major topic here is u$-Iraq, but Chomsky also gives relevant examples from other areas to support his arguments. The parts by Clark and Said are also well written but rather short. They serve mainly as an introduction and a short recap of the book. The language is very clear and concise (except for Said, who displays furious poetry in an elegant manner). Appropriate for all ages as a general introduction to Chomsky's style and also to "america and it's junior partner britain's" flagrant violations of laws that they ironically claim to strive for. One can also appreciate how he points out various contradictions in the words of various us government officials (including the presidents). An amazingly razor-sharp analysis, his intellectualism is rather impressive. The us-Iraq relations are covered in fair detail, and one can come out with a strong case for ending sanctions and also with a rage against the system of a down.

From the time I read Chomsky's devastating demolition of B.F. Skinner, I have been impressed by his low tolerance for sophistry and Orwellian double-speak. This book is no exception. Chomsky's arguments are exceptionally rigourous and detailed. His contention that the U.S.A is a terrorist state may sound strange to paid servants of state or corporate power, but is, sadly and simply, a matter of fact. As Chomsky points out, the U.S. stands condemned by the World Court for its terrible terrorist atrocities in Nicaragua. As in Nicaragua, so in country after country, the U.S. has pursued its own economic and strategic interest to the detriment of democracy and human rights. Israel and the U.S. may be "constitutional democracies" but that has no bearing whatever on questions concerning the legality of their foreign policy. If you have your house bulldozed, your infrastructure ruined etc, then it it is scant consolation to be told that the perpetrator had a certain electoral system . Israel's occupation of the West BAnk and Gaza, as Edward Said points out, is an outrage and an illegality regardless of Israel's internal political system...

For somebody who is looking for a short summary or brief information then this book worth to read. It touches the core politics and decision making of Capitol Hill on Middle East Issues based on unbalanced approach. I like the essays.

This book helped me to try to answer some questions that were at the back of my mind