Category: Power and Ideology

1967

Today’s Email:  “Thank you for signing up for the [New York Times]  Vietnam ’67 newsletter. Over the course of the next year, we’ll examine the participation of the United States in the long war in…

The Usefulness of Human Rights

Reading the odd, short book Things That Can and Cannot Be Said, I was reminded of the gripping 1979 study by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky on “the political economy of human rights.” The…

A Witness to Power’s Mendacity

A while back I reread David Barsamian’s first collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky, entitled Chronicles of Dissent.  Actually, I first heard the material starting in the mid-1980s, listening to Barsamian’s cassette tapes of interviews…

Mistake

Liberal filmmaker  Michael Moore infuriated some Vietnam veterans with his early May tweet that the U.S. should have national holiday on the date of the fall of Saigon, which should lead to  “a commitment to…

Mistake

Liberal filmmaker  Michael Moore infuriated some Vietnam veterans with his early May tweet that the U.S. should have national holiday on the date of the fall of Saigon, which should lead to  “a commitment to…

US Subversion of Free Elections

In early November 1989, the Bush Administration brought the US candidate Violeta Chamorro to Washington for some publicity. President Bush promised “to lift the trade embargo and assist in Nicaragua’s reconstruction” if Chamorro won the…

Know Thyself

There are many intellectuals who call the world into question, but there are very few intellectuals who call the intellectual world into question. –Pierre Bourdieu,  Sketch for a Self-Analysis

Elie Wiesel and Worthy Remembrance

See, Wiesel has often made this claim quite explicit:  I am above politics, my message is so precious and pure it cannot afford to be sullied by compromise. Such is the transcendent dignity of the…