Customer Reviews

Power and Terror: Post-9/11 Talks and Interviews

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

Power and Terror is a brief, but packed overview of U.S. and world power politics. Once again, Chomsky highlights the major issues and struggles of our times, referencing official sources, bringing out historical trends and applying massive amounts of common sense to cut through the rhetoric and the false dichotomies that so often pass for official debate. This is no holds barred classic Chomsky, an especially important contribution to the literature of the anti-war movement at this time. I consider this book to be much more detailed and better organized and more cohesive than "9-11." If you know who Noam Chomsky is, you don't need me to explain his politics here. If you have not yet read Noam Chomsky, there is no better place to start than with this book.

I received this book from a friend of mine in the US. It is a thoughtful critical collection of interviews and public lecture snippets that conveys again the great challenges that good men face when they confront hypocrisy. Chomsky is the quintessential Aristotelian moralist. All behaviour, all choices have moral implications.

In this collection, put together for the eponymous documentary, he presents an analysis, sometimes light admittedly, of the extraordinary moral dualism of the West, in particular the US. The division of good from bad is performed by acts of simple econonomic expediency. Foreign policy is no more than translocated domestic economic policies.

This is a bruising book for those clinging to naive assumptions about the civilising influences of Western democracy. The troubling question is: how can things be made different? As an aside after I finished this book, I bought Derrick Bell's testament to the importance of living an examined life. That certainly answers the question above.

I would have given this book 5 stars but I was hoping for a little more direct discussion on Afghanistan and Iraq. Still a great book. Anyone who thinks this book was a "rushed" effort to capitalize on current events does not know Chomsky and also dosen't realize that he didn't really write the book. The book is a collection of lectures and discussions that he has given in the past two years. Chomsky does not waste his time making fun of all of his detractors like so many other liberal and conservative writers. He is not out to write the next NY Times best seller. Let the Ann Coulters and Al Frankens of the world have their spats. Meanwhile, Chomsky is constantly reading and writing and talking and putting out little books whose conclusions are grounded in extensive research and common sense. Do you really care about the people who died on September 11th?? Or was it just so spectacularly horrible that you can't see or think straight anymore? Do you honestly want terrorism to stop?? If so then start reading this book. All the baggage screenings, roaming warrants and "precision" bombing of poor, thirld world countries is not going to stop terrorism. The first step that Americans need to take to stop terrorism is to stop sponsoring it all over the world. Read Chomsky and then start looking things up on your own. It's all there for you to find...Colombia, Nicaragua, Palestine, Turkey, Korea, Bosnia, Russia, Cuba, Vietnam (I'll leave US atrocities in Japan off the list since we were "at war"). Remember that evil begets evil.

What it really boils down to though is this question: Do you value human life? Based on the current state of things in the world today I would venture to say that most Americans don't. We value our own lives, but are not too concerned about the lives' of others. Or maybe we only care about HOW people die. Are we angered more when we see a human instantly vaporized in a fiery explosion than slowly starve to death of hunger? Does it sadden us more to see a mother wail in English over the death of her son than a mother grieving in Arabic or Spanish?

If you don't care that much about other people dying in the world that's OK with me. We all have our own priorities and struggles. Just as long as you realize that hundreds of people all over the world die every day so that we can live the way we do in this country. If that dosen't bother you then that's also fine. It actually doesn't bother me too much. I love living the way we do. It's tons of fun. Just don't go around waving the American flag and thinking that people sit around waiting to blow themselves up because they are so angry that we have strip clubs, fast food, SUV's and are the "brightest beacon of freedom in the world." If you believe that then you are just as fanatical as the a@#holes that committed the crimes of September 11th.

This book is NOT for those that the truth makes them uneasy.
Nor for the ones that deceiving themselves is easier .Perhaps, more comfortable . Noam Chomsky will stir your soul into righteous indignation .
This book is for those that are totally ready to see the truth,
not only of how and when we've been lied to ; but how we're continued to be fooled.
Not one, can come out feeling pure and victorious after reading this book . Something will be ripped from you.And that something is the MYTH . In my case the

"admiration and awe" I had of one time President Jimmy Carter,was totally demolished.
I had put him in the line of Saints.
In either case, read this book if you want to see the real face, behind the mask that is made of centuries and centuries of layers of lies.After reading this book you'll know the truth, but victorious you will never feel again when you hear of "rumors of wars" , or of ongoing wars.You will learn that there's not one government in the face of Earth that is benevolent.And they will do anything to keep their power.And of course the most powerful ones will fight even harder .

Another short book by Chomsky. He makes it hard to come up with excuses to avoid his work. You don't think you can get through 130 pages on foreign policy? Of course you can. Put down that remote...

Anyway, these transcripts of talks and interviews are a better response to the terrorist attacks than his "9-11" book. There are very few footnotes, unfortunately --- you'll have to read his other 50+ books for that --- but he lays it all out fast and furious here. The pages are *packed* with information.

Noam Chomsky, a well-known political thinker and activist, puts forth his ideas on the problem of terrorism. He doesn't defend the terrorists of 9-11, but he does say that there is cause and effect at work here. According to his belief, he states that the United States has been one of the biggest terror states in it's support of dictators and repressive regimes throughout the world. One such example is Turkey. Turkey is executing a program to destroy the culture of the Kurds. Chomsky insists that this is done with the knowledge and support of the U.S. government. Also he puts forth the repression of the Palestinians in Israel and the farmland destruction in Columbia as other prime cases in which the U.S. in involved in terror.

I thought one of the most interesting points made in this book is that Saddam was made by the Bush family. All throughout the 1980's, Saddam was the U.S. pet to defend against a supposedly dangerous Iran. During this time, he used poison gas on the Kurds. The Republican administration then in power said nothing about it at all. It's so ironic that the current Bush keeps bringing up the point of gas attacks against the Kurds, when it was an American supported and supplied Saddam who did it, and at the time it wasn't considered worth mentioning. It only got brought up after Saddam refused to play the game. It's ironic that our worst enemies are our own creations.

I found this book to be very insightful. As some of the negative reviews have said, this is not really Chomsky's book, but edited together from various speeches and interviews that he has done. Even though this is the case, I think it is very readable, and it contains a lot of information that is useful and thought-provoking. Check it out.

This is a good little book. It seems like one of these comes out every few months. This kind of stuff should be free or really [inexpensive] because everyone should read it... open your mind.

In the current environment of fear and duct tape it's essential to have a grasp of the larger context of American foreign policy that has fed the fire of resentment for many years now. Some from the right-wing will try and paint me as an `America hater" and that's a shame. I love America, but don't confuse our good people with our Government's draconian foreign policy.

Prof. Chomsky gives us context and a depth of understanding not generally available in the corporate media.

The book is worth reading just for the one chapter whose title I've mentioned above. There are dozens of books out which mindlessly repeat George W. Bush's absurd view that 9/11 happened because Muslims "hate the freedoms" of the West. Chomsky points out that the real reason for anti-US emotion is its corporate-interest led foreign policy, which has propped up the world's most awful dictators and despots (including Saddam Hussein, the Taliban and the Saudi royal family) whenever it has suited US companies and their need for cheap oil.