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Wolfovicz liked a video
(3 hours ago)

The hypocrisy of the U.S. government is powerfully scrutinized in Distor...
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The hypocrisy of the U.S. government is powerfully scrutinized in Distorted Morality, a scathing thesis presented by renowned scholar Noam Chomsky. Speaking before an intimate audience at Harvard University on February 6, 2002, Chomsky sets fair and logical parameters to his thesis (namely, we are all hypocrites and, for the purposes of debate, the U.S. government should always be given benefit of the doubt) before outlining, with academic precision and citation of real history (as opposed to biased written history), the reasons why America's post-9/11 war on terror is a logical impossibility. This, according to Chomsky's carefully supported analysis, is because the U.S. government has been, and continues to be, a major supporter of state-supported terrorism, favoring retaliatory or preemptive aggression over mediation in the world court, and avoiding accountability by excluding itself from the globally accepted definition of terrorism. (To underscore his point, Chomsky repeatedly volunteers his sources, inviting scrutiny at every turn.) With an additional hour-long Q&A session (in some ways more compelling, since it offers Chomsky's response to opposing viewpoints), Distorted Morality deserves the widest possible audience. In the short period between Chomsky's Harvard speech and the start of America's war against Iraq in March 2003, Chomsky's thesis has attained the chilling status of prophesy. Inevitably, Chomsky will be labeled anti-American, but at least his morality is crystal clear, immune to the obfuscation of politics and mainstream news. --Jeff Shannon
Complete text: http://www.chomsk...
Quotes: "The idea of the reason why the world is so disorderly is 'cause, you know, now with the cold war gone, you've got all these ethnic groups killing each other and so on. Well, as usual, it's always a good idea to start by asking about the facts. Whenever you hear anything said very confidently, the first thing that should come to mind is whether or not that's true."
"The US is a powerful state, it's not like Libya. If Libya wants to carry out terrorist acts they hire, you know, some jackals or something. The US hires terrorist *states*. We are big guys!"
"There is an operational definition of "terrorism", the one that's actually used. It means "terror that *they* carry out *against us*". That's terror, and nothing else passes through the filter."
"State terror is far worse than individual terror; for the obvious reason that states have means of violence that individuals don't have, or groups."
"It's commonly said that terrorism is a weapon of the weak. That's completely false, at least if you accept the official US definition of terror. If you do that then terrorism is overwhelmingly the weapon of the strong, like most other weapons."
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Wolfovicz liked a video
(23 hours ago)
Noam Chomsky talks of the political, social, and economic impact of US w...
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Noam Chomsky talks of the political, social, and economic impact of US wars. Bikes not Bombs benefit at Roxbury Community College in Boston, January 31, 2008 Camera: Joe Friendly
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Above is a video in which S. I. Hayakawa, a renowned semanticist and a pioneer of the civil rights movement, is interviewed. I sincerely hope Hayakawa's ingenuity will not become mere history - he was a great politician and a great intellectual, often misrepresented too.