Not So Random Entries, Commonplace Moleskine /2
40. The principal truth is this: latent in every act of complete reading is the compulsion to write a book in reply. The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in…
Tag: Noam Chomsky
Three Views: Lévy, Golan, Chomsky
1. Bernard-Henri Lévy wrote a “Love Letter to Israel in Seventy Lines,” published in The Tablet under 70 REASONS TO CELEBRATE ISRAEL. He is a philosopher who lives in Paris, France. Here are a…
The World according to Chomsky: Winter Reading Group 2018
In recent years, I’ve known many people who ask themselves, “What can I do, given the state of the world?” In the past year, this question has been especially urgent, given the toxicity of…
A Beautiful Kaddish by Andrew Wimmer
I was writing in my Naikan notebook this morning, reflecting on some of what I’ve received from Andrew Wimmer. I remembered his “review” of The Book of Mev, and am happy to share it here….
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…
The Good News of Resistance, 4.22.2017
1. A while back, I was sitting outside at RISE with a young Irish-Jewish American friend who asked me, when I showed her a particular chapter in Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine, “Who is Abbie Hoffman?” …
The Good News of Resistance, 4.22.2017
1. A while back, I was sitting outside at RISE with a young Irish-Jewish American friend who asked me, when I showed her a particular chapter in Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine, “Who is Abbie Hoffman?” …
Average
It’s a practice I’m pretty average at it But compared to what Or to whom? Take Chomsky, for instance: In the 1990s He said that he spent 20-25 hours a week Writing letters This was…
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