Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. A member of the American Academy of Science, he has published widely in both linguistics and current affairs. His books include At War with Asia, Towards a New Cold War, Fateful Triangle: The U. S., Israel and the Palestinians, Necessary Illusions, Hegemony or Survival, Deterring Democracy, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. From the dark history of the US and Cuba to China's global rise, from torture memos to sanctions on Iran, this book investigates the defining issues of our times and exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of America's policies and actions. The world's political and financial elite are now operating almost totally unconstrained by the so-called democratic structure. With climate change and nuclear proliferation threatening our very survival, dissenting voices have never been more necessary. The essential account of geopolitics right now, from one of our greatest living intellectuals - including a new afterword on President Donald Trump Bits of the book were repetitive. Its arguments were strongly stated - which I understand, but the result was a metaphorical bludgeoning which I kept waiting to be equally balanced with a "Next Steps, what you can do" section. That wasn't part of this book and, for me, that lessened it. If there was no path forward at the end, then I think the earlier bits that hammered the point of failure and evil, needed to include what the alternative, non-evil (sorry for the clumsy wording) actions might have been.

It is often argued that the enormous public opposition to the invasion of Iraq had no effect. That seems incorrect to me. The program may also, China and Pakistan hope, spur industrial development in Pakistan, which the United States has not undertaken despite massive military aid, and might also provide an incentive for Pakistan to clamp down on domestic terrorism, a serious issue for China in western Xinjiang province. Gwadar will be part of China’s “string of pearls”, bases being constructed in the Indian Ocean for commercial purposes but potentially also for military use, with the expectation that China might someday be able to project power as far as the Persian Gulf for the first time in the modern era. In recent times one expression of this contempt is the call for passivity and obedience (“moderation in democracy”) by liberal internationalists reacting to the dangerous democratizing effects of the popular movements of the 1960s.At least temporarily the threat of democracy in neighbouring Egypt have diminished and the brutal Egyptian military dictator would be a welcome ally for Isreal in maintaining control over Gaza. But Isreal doesn't seem to be interested in such a proposal and continues to remain persistent in its dealings with Palestinians due to US constant military, economic, diplomatic and ideological support.

The European Union (EU), one of the more promising developments of the post-world war II period, has been tottering because of the harsh effect of the policies of austerity during recession, condemned even by the economists of the International Monetary Fund (if not the IMF’s political actors). How serious these offers were we do not know, since the possibility of exploring them was never entertained. Or perhaps the US was just intent on “trying to show its muscle, score a victory and scare everyone in the world. They don’t care about the suffering of the Afghans or how many people we will lose”.Mr. Chomsky keeps giving the readers so many examples of the atrocities committed by “the world”. Some of them I knew about and others I had no idea about. An example, three Israelis get killed in Cyprus. Israel retaliates by bombing Tunis. Israel conceded that the killers had nothing to do with Tunis. But because Tunis is a more preferable target as it is defenseless and because of the extra benefit that it has more exiled Palestinians who could be killed there! Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

By 1967, when the antiwar movement was becoming a significant force, military historian and Vietnam specialist Bernard Fall warned that “Vietnam as a cultural and historic entity … is threatened with extinction … [as] the countryside literally dies under the blows of the largest military machine ever unleashed on an area of this size”. The fundamental question of international relations, then, is whether the US should “accept that other major powers should have some kind of zone of influence in their neighborhoods”. Rachman thinks it should, for reasons of “diffusion of economic power around the world – combined with simple common sense”.

Customer reviews

We need not ask how the United States would have reacted had the countries of Latin America joined the Warsaw Pact, with plans for Mexico and Canada to join as well. The merest hint of the first tentative steps in that direction would have been “terminated with extreme prejudice”, to adopt CIA lingo. It's a testament to the professor that despite having a chapter in this book titled One Day in the Life of a Reader of The New York Times - a systematic annihilation of the hypocrisy of what is put out in just one single day of a mainstream paper - he can still yet provide an answer like the above one. An answer that very much suggests that despite understanding how the world is run , Chomsky is someone who stills believes in taking in all sources available on current affairs. Even the mainstream ones. Sometimes states do choose to follow public opinion, eliciting much fury in centers of power. One dramatic case was in 2003, when the Bush administration called on Turkey to join its invasion of Iraq.