Good article by Noam Chomsky. I'm gratified and VERY surprised that the New York Times news service is circulating an article by Chomsky, who has been banned from the pages of the New York Review of Books since the late 1970's. (In the late 1960's and early 1970's Chomsky wrote some of the most famous articles in the NYR of B, but then the political tides shifted.)
All 22 comments by...
Nevada_Ned
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For years, James Randi has sponsored a prize of one million dollars for anyone who can prove that psychic phenomena are real. George Kenney might have asked Stacy Horn, "why don't you go and get the $1M prize?" The only conditions that Randi places are reasonable ones: scientific controls to avoid cheating. Nobody has collected the $1M prize. Several alleged psychics have tried, and been embarrassed when they failed. It's not that scientists are closed-minded. It's that the advocates of parapsychology have no convincing proof that parapsychology is even a real fie.d, even after a century or two of claims and …
Posted to The Frontier of Consciousness
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An excellent article by David Simon. He mentions the decline of labor reporting in modern journalism. At the end of the Second World War, US newspapers employed a thousand labor journalists. Now there are hardly any at all. This is a loss, even though the newspapers that once employed 1000 labor journalists were often strongly anti-labor.
Posted to Death of the Newspaperman
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My pay has not yet been cut, but it will be within months.
Posted to The U.S. unemployment rate is now 8.1% – 3.2% higher than when the recession began in Dec. 200
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Ken Brociner takes it to be a "fact that the current Israeli government has demonstrated a clear desire to reach a two-state settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." He offers no argument in support of this alleged "fact". It is not a fact. One Israeli government after another - Labor, Likud, or Kadima - has acted to stop a viable Palestinian state. Israel's policy used to be openly based on "The Three No's: No to a Palestinian State, No to a return to the 1967 borders, and No to negotiations with the PLO". Nowadays, they sometimes give verbal assent to a Palestinian …
Posted to Israel, Gaza and the Left
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Excellent article, but does Gordon have any realistic expectation that Obama will put pressure on Israel? His appointments so far - Rahm Israel Emmanual, (coming soon) Dennis Ross - say no. And Congress continues to be Israeli-occupied territory.
Posted to Gaza in the Crosshairs
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David Moberg writes that union members are voting their economic interest by supporting the Obama-Biden ticket. One important factor hurting workers has been the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and similar free-trade agreements. It encourages outsourcing of jobs to low-wage countries. Moberg knows that both Obama and Biden support free trade. Joe Biden has been in Washington for three decades. What has he ever done to help workers? Read the excellent article by Michael Yates "Obama and the working class: what exactly does he have to say to them?" at http://www.counterpunch.org/yates08262008.html Obama's first appointment was Rahm Emmanuel, who led Bill …
Posted to Obama and the Union Vote
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Obama is a great speaker. But has anybody at ITT actually looked as his positoins on the issues? Obama doesn't deviate from standard Democratic Party positions. David Moberg mentioned the appointment of Rahm Emmanuel as the ultimate political insider. That's true as far as it goes. Rahm Emmanuel is also a big hawk, and fought antiwar Democrats. And he's very close to the Israel Lobby. Quite likely Obama will appoint more former Clinton people. And nobody seriously called Bill Clinton a "visionary". Neither Moberg nor any of the other ITT editors mentioned that Obama was able to raise a ton of …
Posted to A Stunning Victory. Now What?
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Moberg's excellent article poses the question of how to "pressure" Obama. But the groups that Moberg is talking about are not pressuring Obama. They're supporting Obama. The only real way to pressure Obama is to threaten to withhold support, and nobody that Moberg interviewed is planning to do that. What will likely happen is that Obama will win, and then do whatever he wants to do, no matter what people on the Left think or want. If you look at who is advising Obama, it's hard to be optimistic.
Posted to Moving Obama Left
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An excellent article about the continual gradual ethnic cleansing that Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians. Most articles in the US mainstream media bend over backwards to avoid offending the Israel Lobby, and too often limit themselves to official statements from official sources. The mainstream media neglect what is really happening on the ground. Melinda Tuhus's article shines as an antidote to the mainstream media. And this is not the worst of it. Bad as the Palestinian predictament is on the West Bank, it's far far worse in Gaza. Congratulations to ITT for publishing the article.
Posted to Bulldozed in Bethlehem
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Congratulations to ITT for running the Chomsky interview. Too many articles, in both the alternative and mainstream press, are based on a merely tactical critique of the war ("is it working?") instead of a fundamental critique: we have no right to invade and occupy Iraq.
Posted to Gunning for the Prize
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Thanks for an excellent article!
Posted to Earth to Ken Brociner
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Paul Hockenos supported the US war against Yugoslavia at the time, and he continues to support it today. For an alternative viewpoint, see the excellent work by Diana Johnstone, for example her piece on CounterPunch in February this year. http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone02182008.html Diana Johnstone used to write for In These Times. Clinton's Kosovo war, quite popular at the time among the Mainstream Media, paved the way for George Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq. And the popularity of the wars against Yugoslavia and Iraq (at least until Iraq started to unravel) is not limited to the Mainstream Media, but includes some leftists as …
Posted to 'The Kosovo Dilemma' goes astray
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Dear Ken Brociner: Your lesson from the Obama campaign is that we should act as if everybody is acting in good faith, and assume that politicians genuinely believe the things they are saying. I respectfully disagree. For example: why are we invading and occupying Iraq? The mainstream media and nearly all Senators and Congressional Reps said: because of Iraq's nuclear weapons, and because Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks. These two purported reasons have been exposed as lies. But the war continues, and now the reason is "for democracy"! Another example: Does Barack Obama believe in public financing of political campaigns? …
Posted to What Progressives Can Learn from Obama
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Thanks to David Sirota for an excellent column. If we take the column seriously, what does this say about the usual liberal strategy of supporting Democrats - any Democrats, including pro-war Democrats - against the Republicans? It's a waste of precious time and money, isn't it?
Posted to Why Democrats Won’t Stop the War
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Ralph Seliger has nothing but praise for J Street. If you want a more critical perspective, check out Rannie Amiri on CounterPunch. http://www.counterpunch.org/amiri04182008.html Amiri asks some important questions, that Seliger evades. On its website, J Street says the following about The Two-State Solution "The outlines of an agreement are by now well-known and widely accepted: Borders based on the 1967 lines with agreed reciprocal land swaps allowing Israeli incorporation of a majority of settlers as well as Palestinian viability and contiguity; a division of Jerusalem that is based on demographic realities, establishes the capitals of the two states, and allows freedom …
Posted to New Jewish Lobby Counters Neocons
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Excellent article. Unfortunately, the war was supported at the time by a distressing number of liberals and leftists. Good to have some clarity at this point. Mr. Anderson has done his homework! -Nevada Ned
Posted to The Kosovo Dilemma
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Let's get an important issue out on the table: the war in Iraq. Participants at The Left Forum are opposed to the war. Participants at the Take Back America conference are placing all their bets on the Democratic Party, believing that replacing pro-war Republicans with Democrats (any Democrats, even pro-war Democrats) is a great step forward. I don't know Brociner, but I am familiar with the writers at Dissent. Many of them are hawks on the Iraq war (e.g., Marty Peretz). No wonder Brociner attacks the Left Forum for their "shrill ideological pronouncements." Pronouncements like "stop the war!" for example. The …
Posted to A Tale of Two Conferences
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To many (perhaps most) ITT readers, the US invasion and occupation of Iraq is a war of aggression, an attempt by the US to seize control of the oil of the Persian Gulf. However, Ken Brociner belongs politically with Dissent magazine. The editors of Dissent (Michael Walzer and Mitchell Cohen) signed the Euston Manifesto (http://eustonmanifesto.org/?page_id=132) which proclaims that liberals and leftists ought to support the US occupation of Iraq. Here's the key paragraph of the manifesto: "the proper concern of genuine liberals and members of the Left should have been the battle to put in place in Iraq a democratic political …
Posted to A Tale of Two Conferences
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Dear Ken Brociner: Here's the thrust of the Euston Manifesto: not every signatory supported the US invasion of Iraq before it started, but after the war started, they appeal to support the US occupation now. Take the case of Michael Walzer. As war loomed in spring 2003, he wrote an article in the April 22, 2003 New York Times "What A Little War in Iraq Could Do." Instead of the Big War that Bush waged, Walzer proposed instead "to intensify the little war that the United States is already fighting": to extend the no-fly zone to the entire country of Iraq, …
Posted to A Tale of Two Conferences
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Susan Douglas makes an important point, that someone with a lot of clout may be able to get away with plagiarism, suffering only minimal consequences. Douglas cites her own case when she was a victim of plagiarism. Another example is Alan Dershowitz, who researched his book ,The Case for Israel, by "borrowing" (without attribution) from Joan Peters' book, From Time Immemorial. Norman Finkelstein, a harsh critic of Israel, accused Dershowitz of plagiarism. Dershowitz aggressively denied everything, brazened it out, and emerged unscathed, except for his reputation. Meanwhile, two other Harvard law professors were caught in lesser cases of plagiarism and admitted …
Posted to Plagiarists: Catch Your Own Clue
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Aaron writes "The Standard’s 1997 cover story, 'Saddam Must Go,' by Kristol and Robert Kagan, is widely credited with planting the seeds for the invasion and occupation of Iraq." Undoubtedly that cover story stepped up the campaign for war against Iraq, but the seed was planted long before 1997. Commentary magazine, edited by John Podhoretz' father Norman, ran a piece in 1980 advocating a US invasion and occupation of the fields of the Persian Gulf. The neoconservatives have been clamoring for war for a very long time, and they've finally gotten what they wanted.
Posted to Standard Issues
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