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“[The corporate mass-media] serve to divert the unwashed masses and reinforce the basic social values: passivity, submissiveness to authority, the overriding virtue of greed and personal gain, lack of concern for others, fear of real or imagined enemies, etc.

“The goal is to keep the bewildered herd bewildered. It’s unnecessary for them to trouble themselves with what’s happening in the world. In fact, it’s undesirable — if they see too much of reality they may set themselves to change it.”

— Noam Chomsky


What Uncle $ham
ReallyAmerican flag - swastika and stripes Wants

page  1   2   3


What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky
Odonian Press 1992; ISBN 1-878825-01-1


 
Table of Contents


The main goals of U.S. foreign policy


Devastation abroad


Brainwashing at home


The future


Notes



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Brainwashing at home


War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.


The terms of political discourse typically have two meanings. One is the dictionary meaning, and the other is a meaning that is useful for serving power — the doctrinal meaning.

Take democracy. According to the common-sense meaning, a society is democratic to the extent that people can participate in a meaningful way in managing their affairs. But the doctrinal meaning of democracy is different — it refers to a system in which decisions are made by sectors of the business community and related elites. The public are to be only “spectators of action,” not “participants,” as leading democratic theorists (in this case, Walter Lippmann) have explained. They are permitted to ratify the decisions of their betters and to lend their support to one or another of them, but not to interfere with matters — like public policy — that are none of their business.

If segments of the public depart from their apathy and begin to organize and enter the public arena, that’s not democracy. Rather, it’s a crisis of democracy in proper technical usage, a threat that has to be overcome in one or another way: in El Salvador, by death squads — at home, by more subtle and indirect means.

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Or take free enterprise, a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich. In fact, in acceptable usage, just about any phrase containing the word “free” is likely to mean something like the opposite of its actual meaning.

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Or take defense against aggression, a phrase that’s used — predictably — to refer to aggression. When the US attacked South Vietnam in the early 1960s, the liberal hero Adlai Stevenson (among others) explained that we were defending South Vietnam against “internal aggression” — that is, the aggression of South Vietnamese peasants against the US air force and a US-run mercenary army, which were driving them out of their homes and into concentration camps where they could be “protected” from the southern guerrillas. In fact, these peasants willingly supported the guerillas, while the US client regime was an empty shell, as was agreed on all sides.

So magnificently has the doctrinal system risen to its task that to this day, 30 years later, the idea that the US attacked South Vietnam is unmentionable, even unthinkable, in the mainstream. The essential issues of the war are, correspondingly, beyond any possibility of discussion now. The guardians of political correctness (the real PC) can be quite proud of an achievement that would be hard to duplicate in a well-run totalitarian state.

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Or take the term peace process. The naive might think that it refers to efforts to seek peace. Under this meaning, we would say that the peace process in the Middle East includes, for example, the offer of a full peace treaty to Israel by President Sadat of Egypt in 1971, along lines advocated by virtually the entire world, including official US policy; the Security Council resolution of January 1976 introduced by the major Arab states with the backing of the PLO, which called for a two-state settlement of the Arab-Israel conflict in the terms of a near-universal international consensus; PLO offers through the 1980s to negotiate with Israel for mutual recognition; and annual votes at the UN General Assembly, most recently in December 1990 (voted 144-2), calling for an international conference on the Israel-Arab problem, etc.

But the sophisticated understand that these efforts do not form part of the peace process. The reason is that in the PC meaning, the term peace process refers to what the US government is doing — in the cases mentioned, this is to block international efforts to seek peace. The cases cited do not fall within the peace process, because the US backed Israel’s rejection of Sadat’s offer, vetoed the Security Council resolution, opposed negotiations and mutual recognition of the PLO and Israel, and regularly joins with Israel in opposing — thereby, in effect, vetoing — any attempt to move towards a peaceful diplomatic settlement at the UN or elsewhere.

The peace process is restricted to US initiatives, which call for a unilateral US-determined settlement with no recognition of Palestinian national rights. That’s the way it works. Those who cannot master these skills must seek another profession.

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There are many other examples. Take the term special interest. The well-oiled Republican PR systems of the 1980s regularly accused the Democrats of being the party of the special interests: women, labor, the elderly, the young, farmers — in short, the general population. There was only one sector of the population never listed as a special interest: corporations and business generally. That makes sense. In PC discourse their (special) interests are the national interest, to which all must bow.

The Democrats plaintively retorted that they were not the party of the special interests: they served the national interest too. That was correct, but their problem has been that they lack the single-minded class consciousness of their Republican opponents. The latter are not confused about their role as representatives of the owners and managers of the society, who are fighting a bitter class war against the general population — often adopting vulgar Marxist rhetoric and concepts, resorting to jingoist hysteria, fear and terror, awe of great leaders and the other standard devices of population control. The Democrats are less clear about their allegiances, hence less effective in the propaganda wars.

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Finally, take the term conservative, which has come to refer to advocates of a powerful state, which interferes massively in the economy and in social life. They advocate huge state expenditures and a postwar peak of protectionist measures and insurance against market risk, narrowing individual liberties through legislation and court-packing, protecting the Holy State from unwarranted inspection by the irrelevant citizenry — in short, those programs that are the precise opposite of traditional conservatism. Their allegiance is to “the people who own the country” and therefore “ought to govern it,” in the words of Founding Father John Jay.

It’s really not that hard, once one understands the rules.

To make sense of political discourse, it’s necessary to give a running translation into English, decoding the doublespeak of the media, academic social scientists and the secular priesthood generally. Its function is not obscure: the effect is to make it impossible to find words to talk about matters of human significance in a coherent way. We can then be sure that little will be understood about how our society works and what is happening in the world — a major contribution to democracy, in the PC sense of the word.


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Socialism, real and fake


One can debate the meaning of the term “socialism,” but if it means anything, it means control of production by the workers themselves, not owners and managers who rule them and control all decisions, whether in capitalist enterprises or an absolutist state.

To refer to the Soviet Union as socialist is an interesting case of doctrinal doublespeak. The Bolshevik coup of October 1917 placed state power in the hands of Lenin and Trotsky, who moved quickly to dismantle the incipient socialist institutions that had grown up during the popular revolution of the preceding months — the factory councils, the Soviets, in fact any organ of popular control — and to convert the workforce into what they called a “labor army” under the command of the leader. In any meaningful sense of the term “socialism,” the Bolsheviks moved at once to destroy its existing elements. No socialist deviation has been permitted since.

These developments came as no surprise to leading Marxist intellectuals, who had criticized Lenin’s doctrines for years (as had Trotsky) because they would centralize authority in the hands of the vanguard Party and its leaders. In fact, decades earlier, the anarchist thinker Bakunin had predicted that the emerging intellectual class would follow one of two paths: either they would try to exploit popular struggles to take state power themselves, becoming a brutal and oppressive Red bureaucracy; or they would become the managers and ideologists of the state capitalist societies, if popular revolution failed. It was a perceptive insight, on both counts.

The world’s two major propaganda systems did not agree on much, but they did agree on using the term socialism to refer to the immediate destruction of every element of socialism by the Bolsheviks. That’s not too surprising. The Bolsheviks called their system socialist so as to exploit the moral prestige of socialism.

The West adopted the same usage for the opposite reason: to defame the feared libertarian ideals by associating them with the Bolshevik dungeon, to undermine the popular belief that there really might be progress towards a more just society with democratic control over its basic institutions and concern for human needs and rights.

If socialism is the tyranny of Lenin and Stalin, then sane people will say: not for me. And if that’s the only alternative to corporate state capitalism, then many will submit to its authoritarian structures as the only reasonable choice.

With the collapse of the Soviet system, there’s an opportunity to revive the lively and vigorous libertarian socialist thought that was not able to withstand the doctrinal and repressive assaults of the major systems of power. How large a hope that is, we cannot know. But at least one roadblock has been removed. In that sense, the disappearance of the Soviet Union is a small victory for socialism, much as the defeat of the fascist powers was.


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The media


Whether they’re called “liberal” or “conservative,” the major media are large corporations, owned by and interlinked with even larger conglomerates. Like other corporations, they sell a product to a market. The market is advertisers — that is, other businesses. The product is audiences. For the elite media that set the basic agenda to which others adapt, the product is, furthermore, relatively privileged audiences.

So we have major corporations selling fairly wealthy and privileged audiences to other businesses. Not surprisingly, the picture of the world presented reflects the narrow and biased interests and values of the sellers, the buyers and the product.

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Other factors reinforce the same distortion. The cultural managers (editors, leading columnists, etc.) share class interests and associations with state and business managers and other privileged sectors. There is, in fact, a regular flow of high-level people among corporations, government and media. Access to state authorities is important to maintain a competitive position; “leaks,” for example, are often fabrications and deceit produced by the authorities with the cooperation of the media, who pretend they don’t know.

In return, state authorities demand cooperation and submissiveness. Other power centers also have devices to punish departures from orthodoxy, ranging from the stock market to an effective vilification and defamation apparatus.

The outcome is not, of course, entirely uniform. To serve the interests of the powerful, the media must present a tolerably realistic picture of the world. And professional integrity and honesty sometimes interfere with the overriding mission. The best journalists are, typically, quite aware of the factors that shape the media product, and seek to use such openings as are provided. The result is that one can learn a lot by a critical and skeptical reading of what the media produce.

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The media are only one part of a larger doctrinal system; other parts are journals of opinion, the schools and universities, academic scholarship and so on. We’re much more aware of the media, particularly the prestige media, because those who critically analyze ideology have focused on them. The larger system hasn’t been studied as much because it’s harder to investigate systematically. But there’s good reason to believe that it represents the same interests as the media, just as one would anticipate.

The doctrinal system, which produces what we call “propaganda” when discussing enemies, has two distinct targets. One target is what’s sometimes called the “political class,” the roughly 20% of the population that’s relatively educated, more or less articulate, playing some role in decision-making. Their acceptance of doctrine is crucial, because they’re in a position to design and implement policy.

Then there’s the other 80% or so of the population. These are Lippmann’s “spectators of action,” whom he referred to as the “bewildered herd.” They are supposed to follow orders and keep out of the way of the important people. They’re the target of the real mass media: the tabloids, the sitcoms, the Super Bowl and so on.

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These sectors of the doctrinal system serve to divert the unwashed masses and reinforce the basic social values: passivity, submissiveness to authority, the overriding virtue of greed and personal gain, lack of concern for others, fear of real or imagined enemies, etc. The goal is to keep the bewildered herd bewildered. It’s unnecessary for them to trouble themselves with what’s happening in the world. In fact, it’s undesirable — if they see too much of reality they may set themselves to change it.

That’s not to say that the media can’t be influenced by the general population. The dominant institutions — whether political, economic or doctrinal — are not immune to public pressures. Independent (alternative) media can also play an important role. Though they lack resources, almost by definition, they gain significance in the same way that popular organizations do: by bringing together people with limited resources who can multiply their effectiveness, and their own understanding, through their interactions — precisely the democratic threat that’s so feared by dominant elites.


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The future


Things have changed


It’s important to recognize how much the scene has changed in the past 30 years as a result of the popular movements that organized in a loose and chaotic way around such issues as civil rights, peace, feminism, the environment and other issues of human concern.

Take the Kennedy and Reagan administrations, which were similar in a number of ways in their basic policies and commitments. When Kennedy launched a huge international terrorist campaign against Cuba after his invasion failed, and then escalated the murderous state terror in South Vietnam to outright aggression, there was no detectable protest.

It wasn’t until hundreds of thousands of American troops were deployed and all of Indochina was under devastating attack, with hundreds of thousands slaughtered, that protest became more than marginally significant. In contrast, as soon as the Reagan administration hinted that they intended to intervene directly in Central America, spontaneous protest erupted at a scale sufficient to compel the state terrorists to turn to other means.

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Leaders may crow about the end of the “Vietnam syndrome,” but they know better. A National Security Policy Review of the Bush administration, leaked at the moment of the ground attack in the Gulf, noted that, “In cases where the US confronts much weaker enemies” — the only ones that the true statesman will agree to fight — “our challenge will be not simply to defeat them, but to defeat them decisively and rapidly.” Any other outcome would be “embarrassing” and might “undercut political support,” understood to be very thin.

By now, classical intervention is not even considered an option. The means are limited to clandestine terror, kept secret from the domestic population, or “decisive and rapid” demolition of “much weaker enemies” — after huge propaganda campaigns depicting them as monsters of indescribable power.

Much the same is true across the board. Take 1992. If the Columbus quincentenary had been in 1962, it would have been a celebration of the liberation of the continent. In 1992, that response no longer has a monopoly, a fact that has aroused much hysteria among the cultural managers who are used to near-totalitarian control. They now rant about the “fascist excesses” of those who urge respect for other people and other cultures.

In other areas too, there’s more openness and understanding, more skepticism and questioning of authority. Of course, the latter tendencies are double-edged. They may lead to independent thought, popular organizing and pressures for much-needed institutional change. Or they may provide a mass base of frightened people for new authoritarian leaders. These possible outcomes are not a matter for speculation, but for action, with stakes that are very large.


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What you can do


In any country, there’s some group that has the real power. It’s not a big secret where power is in the United States. It basically lies in the hands of the people who determine investment decisions — what’s produced, what’s distributed. They staff the government, by and large, choose the planners, and set the general conditions for the doctrinal system.

One of the things they want is a passive, quiescent population. So one of the things that you can do to make life uncomfortable for them is not be passive and quiescent. There are lots of ways of doing that. Even just asking questions can have an important effect.

Demonstrations, writing letters and voting can all be meaningful — it depends on the situation. But the main point is — it’s got to be sustained and organized.

If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that’s something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can’t live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organizations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.

Any system of power, even a fascist dictatorship, is responsive to public dissidence. It’s certainly true in a country like this, where — fortunately — the state doesn’t have a lot of force to coerce people. During the Vietnam War, direct resistance to the war was quite significant, and it was a cost that the government had to pay.

If elections are just something in which some portion of the population goes and pushes a button every couple of years, they don’t matter. But if the citizens organize to press a position, and pressure their representatives about it, elections can matter.

Members of the House of Representatives can be influenced much more easily than senators, and senators somewhat more easily than the president, who is usually immune. When you get to that level, policy is decided almost totally by the wealthy and powerful people who own and manage the country.

But you can organize on a scale that will influence representatives. You can get them to come to your homes to be yelled at by a group of neighbors, or you can sit in at their offices — whatever works in the circumstances. It can make a difference — often an important one.

You can also do your own research. Don’t just rely on the conventional history books and political science texts — go back to specialists’ monographs and to original sources: national security memoranda and similar documents. Most good libraries have reference departments where you can find them.

It does require a bit of effort. Most of the material is junk, and you have to read a ton of stuff before you find anything good. There are guides that give you hints about where to look, and sometimes you’ll find references in secondary sources that look intriguing. Often they’re misinterpreted, but they suggest places to search.

It’s no big mystery, and it’s not intellectually difficult. It involves some work, but anybody can do it as a spare-time job. And the results of that research can change people’s minds. Real research is always a collective activity, and its results can make a large contribution to changing consciousness, increasing insight and understanding, and leading to constructive action.


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The struggle continues


The struggle for freedom is never over. The people of the Third World need our sympathetic understanding and, much more than that, they need our help. We can provide them with a margin of survival by internal disruption in the United States. Whether they can succeed against the kind of brutality we impose on them depends in large part on what happens here.

The courage they show is quite amazing. I’ve personally had the privilege — and it is a privilege — of catching a glimpse of that courage at first hand in Southeast Asia, in Central America and on the occupied West Bank. It’s a very moving and inspiring experience, and invariably brings to my mind some contemptuous remarks of Rousseau’s on Europeans who have abandoned freedom and justice for the peace and repose “they enjoy in their chains.” He goes on to say:

“When I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword and death to preserve only their independence, I feel that it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom.”

People who think that these are mere words understand very little about the world.

And that’s just a part of the task that lies before us. There’s a growing Third World at home. There are systems of illegitimate authority in every corner of the social, political, economic and cultural worlds. For the first time in human history, we have to face the problem of protecting an environment that can sustain a decent human existence. We don’t know that honest and dedicated effort will be enough to solve or even mitigate such problems as these. We can be quite confident, however, that the lack of such efforts will spell disaster.


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Notes

Sources for the facts in this book are listed below by page numbers and relevant chapter titles, and by brief subject descriptions. Full publication data is given the first time a work is cited.


Protecting our turf/Grand Area

7-8. On “Grand Area” planning for the postwar period by the State Department and the CFR, see Laurence Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust, Monthly Review, 1977.
• There is extensive literature on the development and execution of these plans. An early work, of great insight, is Gabriel Kolko, Politics of War, Random House, 1968.
• One valuable recent study is Melvyn Leffler, Preponderance of Power, Stanford University Press, 1992.
• For further sources and discussion, specifically on NSC 68, see Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1991; Verso, 1991, Chapter 1.
• NSC 68 and many other declassified documents can be found in the official State Department history, Foreign Relations of the United States, generally published with about 30 years delay.

8-9. “Secret army.” See Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA, Knopf, 1979; and Mary Ellen Reese, General Reinhard Gehlen: the CIA Connection, George Mason University Press, 1990.
• For further details, see Chomsky, Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace, South End Press, 1985; and sources cited; and Christopher Simpson, Blowback, Grove, Weidenfeld, 1987.


The liberal extreme

10. William Yandell Elliot, ed., The Political Economy of American Foreign Policy, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1955.
• For further discussion, see Chomsky, At War with Asia, Pantheon, 1988, Introduction.

10-11. Kennan, Latin America. See Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: the United States in Central America, Norton, 1983.


The Grand Area/Restoring the traditional order

11-18. Postwar planning. Chomsky, Turning the Tide, Chapters 2, 4; and Deterring Democracy, Chapters 1, 11 and sources cited.

15. Marshall Plan. See Michael J. Hogan, The Marshall Plan, Cambridge University Press, 1987.

18. Kolb. Letter, New York Times, July 26, 1983.


Our commitment to democracy

19. Ultranationalism quote. National Security Council Memorandum 5432, 1954.

19-20. US policy planners, Kennedy planners. See Chomsky, On Power and Ideology: the Managua Lectures, South End Press, 1987, Lecture 1.

20-21. Costa Rica, Dulles. Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, South End Press, 1989, Appendix 5.1;
Gordon Connell-Smith, The Inter-American System, Oxford University Press and Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1966.


The three-sided world

25. “Stability.” Peiro Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, Princeton University Press, 1991, 125, 365.

26-27. Japan, Kennan. Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, Volume II, Princeton University Press, 1990.

28. Stimson. Kolko, Politics of War, 471.


Our Good Neighbor policy

29. Schoultz, Herman studies. Chomsky, Turning the Tide, 157f.

30. “Economic miracle.” Chomsky, Turning the Tide, 1.8 and sources cited;
Robert Williams, Export Agriculture and the Crisis in Central America, University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

30. Adams. Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, 34f.

31. Relations with the military. Chomsky, On Power and Ideology, Lecture 1 and Turning the Tide, 216.

31. US arms to Iran. Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: the United States, Israel and the Palestinians, South End Press, 1983, 475f; Turning the Tide, 130-31; and Culture of Terrorism, South End Press, 1988, Chapter 8.

33. Brazil and the situation throughout the Third World. Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, Chapter 7; and South Commission, The Challenge to the South, Oxford University Press, 1990.


The crucifixion of El Salvador
Teaching Nicaragua a lesson
Making Guatemala a killing field

34-50. Central America. See Chomsky, Turning the Tide; Culture of Terrorism; Necessary Illusions; Deterring Democracy; Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon, 1988
• See also John Hassett and Hugh Lacey, Towards a Society that Serves its People: the Intellectual Contributions of El Salvador’s Murdered Jesuits, Georgetown University Press, 1992.

42. Oxfam’s explanation. Dianna Melrose, Nicaragua: the Threat of a Good Example, Oxfam, 1985.


The invasion of Panama

50-56. Panama. See Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, Chapter 5.

54. Bush’s administration. Chomsky, “‘What We Say Goes’: The Middle East in the New World Order,” in Cynthia Peters, ed., Collateral Damage, South End Press, 1992, 49-92.

56. Drugs. Chomsky, “Year 501: World Orders, Old and New, Part 1,” Z magazine, March 1992, 24-36.


Inoculating Southeast Asia

56-60. Southeast Asia and media coverage 1950s through mid-80s. Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent.

58. Media reaction to the Indonesia coup. Chomsky, “‘A Gleam of Light in Asia,’”Z magazine, September 1990, 15-23.


The Gulf War

60-68. Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, Chapter 6 and Afterword (1991 edition); and Chomsky, in Peters, Collateral Damage.


The Iran/contra cover-up

68-69. Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, 475f; Turning the Tide, 130-131; and Culture of Terrorism, Chapter 8.


The prospects for Eastern Europe

70. Salvadoran Jesuit journal. Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, 354-55.

72-73. Eastern Europe and Latin America; Africa. Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, Chapter 7.


The world’s rent-a-thug

75. Chicago Tribune quote. William Neikirk, “We are the World’s Guardian Angels,” Chicago Tribune business section, September 9, 1990. Cited in Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, 5.


How the Cold War worked

78-82. Chomsky, Turning the Tide, Chapter 4; and Deterring Democracy.

79. Dulles quote. John Foster Dulles telephone call to Allen Dulles, June 19, 1958, “Minutes of Telephone Conversations of John Foster Dulles and Christian Herter,” Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene Kansas. Cited in “A View from Below,” Diplomatic History, Winter 1992.


The war on (certain) drugs

82-86. Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, Chapter 4.


War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.

86-91. Political discourse. Edward S. Herman, Beyond Hypocrisy, South End Press, 1992.

87. Lipmann (and the evolution of these notions from 17th century England to today). Chomsky, Deterring Democracy. Chapter 12.

87. Stevenson; the concept “defense against aggression.” Chomsky, For Reasons of State, Pantheon, 1973, Chapter 1, section 6.

88. “Peace process.” Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War: Essays on the Current Crisis and How We Got There, Pantheon, 1982, Chapter 9; Fateful Triangle, Chapter 3; Necessary Illusions, Appendix 5.4; and Deterring Democracy, Afterword (1991 edition).

90. John Jay. Frank Monaghan, John Jay. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1935, p. 323.


Socialism, real and fake

91-92. Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent.


Things have changed

96-97. National Security Policy Review. Maureen Dowd, New York Times, February 23, 1992.




About the Author


Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky is a major figure in twentieth-century linguistics. He has taught since 1955 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he became a full professor at the age of 32. His 1957 work Syntactic Structures revolutionized the field of linguistics, fundamentally changing the current understanding of language and mind. In 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. Currently he is also the Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics.

Chomsky has received honorary degrees from the University of London, University of Chicago, Georgetown University and Cambridge University. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. His work in linguistics, which has been internationally acclaimed, has earned Chomsky the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences and the Helmholtz Medal.

Born in Philadelphia on December 7, 1928, Chomsky became politically conscious at a very young age, writing his first political article, on the fight against fascism in Spain, when he was only ten years old.

Chomsky has written many books on contemporary issues and is an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy and corporate power. His political talks have been heard, typically by standing-room only audiences, all over the country and the globe.

In a saner world, his tireless efforts to promote justice would have long since won him the Nobel Peace Prize. But no, the committee prefers to give it to sleazy war-criminals like Henry Kissinger.



Books by Noam Chomsky




Audio books:



Other works:




Related sites


What Uncle Sam Really Wants
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-contents.html

Zmag.org provides the complete text of the book.


The Noam Chomsky Archive
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/

“This archive is hosted by ZNet, the web site of Z Magazine. It contains the full text to many of Chomsky’s major works, the complete audio to several important lectures, and numerous articles, interviews and speeches.”



School of the Americas Watch
http://www.soaw.org/index.html

The United States Army “School of the Americas”, in Fort Benning, Georgia, teaches its students how to torture human beings.

Graduates of the U.S. Army School of the Americas have been responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America.

Among the SOA’s nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia.

Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the torture of countless people throughout Central and South America and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 human beings.



The US Army School of Assassins
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/soa/

Exposes the dirty deeds of the U.S. Army School of “the Americas” (Assassins) throughout Latin America. Special sections on Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Grenada, Colombia, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.




Related books


Pirates and Emperors, Old and New:
International Terrorism in the Real World
by Noam Chomsky


Body of Secrets:
Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency
by James Bamford

In 1962, U.S. military leaders had a top-secret plan for committing terrorist attacks on Americans in Miami and Washington D.C., while blaming Cuba. Codenamed “Operation Northwoods”, the plan was intended to provide the propaganda necessary to create popular support for an invasion of Cuba.


The Culture of Terrorism
by Noam Chomsky


Terrorizing the Neighborhood:
American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era
by Noam Chomsky
Pressure Drop Press, 1991


Western State Terrorism
Alexander George, editor; essays by Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Gerry O’Sullivan and others


The Real Terror Network:
Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda
by Edward S. Herman


Rogue State:
A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
by William Blum


Killing Hope:
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WWII
by William Blum


The Fire This Time:
U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf
by Ramsey Clark


Desert Slaughter:
The Imperialist War Against Iraq
by the Workers League


To Kill A Nation:
The Attack on Yugoslavia
by Michael Parenti


Apocalypse 1945:
The Destruction of Dresden
by David Irving


The Beast Reawakens
by Martin A. Lee


Against Empire
by Michael Parenti


The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
by Gore Vidal


The Sword and the Dollar:
Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race
by Michael Parenti


Blackshirts and Reds:
Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
by Michael Parenti


A People’s History of the United States:
1492 — Present
by Howard Zinn


The Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine


Colombia:
The Genocidal Democracy
by Javier Giraldo


I Was Never Alone:
A Prison Diary from El Salvador
by Nidia Diaz


Cuban Liberation:
Castro, Che Guevara and Jose Marti
(bibliography)


Living Like the Saints:
A Novel of Nicaragua
by Liston Pope Jr.


Dying For Growth:
Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor
Edited by Jim Yong Kim, Joyce V. Millen, Alec Irwin and John Gershman


Eyes of the Heart:
Seeking a path for the poor in the age of globalization
by Jean-Bertrand Aristide


Corporate Predators:
The Hunt for Mega-Profits and the Attack on Democracy
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman


Derailing Democracy:
The America the Media Don’t Want You to See
by David McGowan


Deadly Deceits:
My 25 years in the CIA
by Ralph W. McGehee


The Hidden Persuaders:
What makes us buy, believe – and even vote – the way we do?
by Vance Packard


Toxic Sludge is Good for You!:
Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry
by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton


Inventing Reality:
The Politics of News Media
by Michael Parenti


Manufacturing Consent:
The Political Economy of the Mass Media
by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky


The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media:
Decoding Spin and Lies in Mainstream News
by Norman Solomon


War, Lies & Videotape:
How media monopoly stifles truth
edited by Lenora Foerstel; multiple authors


War At Home:
Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It
by Brian Glick




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