Noam Chomsky interviewed by Al Jazeera

I agree with most of Chomsky’s points, but differ on at least one.* It’s true that Hitler was a true ideologue while Trump appears to have no core positions or values. The resulting lack of predictability is indeed a cause for great concern. But it’s a mistake to leave it at that, suggesting that we can’t really know which of Trump’s changing stances would come to dominate on any issue.

Trump’s psychology has been consistent for decades. His boundless greed, his constant craving for attention and approval, his vindictiveness, his sadism, his desire to dominate, his contempt for perceived weakness and admiration of repressive and autocratic regimes, his ready calls for violence, his racism and misogyny, his disregard of domestic and international law – these are all inherent facets of his authoritarianism (I’ll have much more to say about this soon). Despite his intellectual vacuity and impressionability, authoritarianism, which structures his entire personality and worldview, makes his choices and responses more predictable.

* Another: I’m not nearly as sanguine about the strength of institutions such as the media, and even if press freedoms are more powerfully enshrined now than they were in the past, they won’t survive by default, but will require organized resistance and action.

Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now!

“We should recognize—if we were honest, we would say something that sounds utterly shocking and no doubt will be taken out of context and lead to hysteria on the part of the usual suspects, but the fact of the matter is that today’s Republican Party qualify as candidates for the most dangerous organization in human history.”

If you prefer, you can read the transcripts here and here.

Has Erdoğan learned nothing from the sad example of Sam Harris?

Never get involved in a land war in Asia, and never attempt a battle of wits with Noam Chomsky.

For the record, here’s the petition by Academics for Peace:

As academics and researchers of this country, we will not be a party to this crime!

The Turkish state has effectively condemned its citizens in Sur, Silvan, Nusaybin, Cizre, Silopi, and many other towns and neighborhoods in the Kurdish provinces to hunger through its use of curfews that have been ongoing for weeks. It has attacked these settlements with heavy weapons and equipment that would only be mobilized in wartime. As a result, the right to life, liberty, and security, and in particular the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment protected by the constitution and international conventions have been violated.

This deliberate and planned massacre is in serious violation of Turkey’s own laws and international treaties to which Turkey is a party. These actions are in serious violation of international law.

We demand the state to abandon its deliberate massacre and deportation of Kurdish and other peoples in the region. We also demand the state to lift the curfew, punish those who are responsible for human rights violations, and compensate those citizens who have experienced material and psychological damage. For this purpose we demand that independent national and international observers to be given access to the region and that they be allowed to monitor and report on the incidents.

We demand the government to prepare the conditions for negotiations and create a road map that would lead to a lasting peace which includes the demands of the Kurdish political movement. We demand inclusion of independent observers from broad sections of society in these negotiations. We also declare our willingness to volunteer as observers. We oppose suppression of any kind of the opposition.

We, as academics and researchers working on and/or in Turkey, declare that we will not be a party to this massacre by remaining silent and demand an immediate end to the violence perpetrated by the state. We will continue advocacy with political parties, the parliament, and international public opinion until our demands are met.

Repression continues (although it appears the academics detained initially have now been released), but solidarity grows:

• from students

• from journalists

• from the legal profession

• from theater workers

• from filmmakers

• from psychologists

• from writers…

Chomsky on the real threat

“Rogue States and Nuclear Dangers”

“Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship” and the Spanish Civil War

In connection to my last post… I’ve been meaning to mention that Noam Chomsky’s incisive analysis of liberal histories of the Spanish Civil War – part of the essay on “Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship” in his 1969 American Power and the New Mandarins - is included as a chapter in the recent On Anarchism:



I have problems with some of the arguments in the book, but if you’re interested in the Spanish Civil War and/or in how intellectual work is subtly shaped by politics and ideology, it would probably be worth buying for this chapter alone.

“The American standard” – arrogance and contempt in the CRPD ratification debate

Yesterday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on ratifying the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. 138 parties have ratified, but the US refused to do so again last year. There’s a major push right now for ratification from a broad spectrum of groups. This is largely heartening, but the arguments with which ratification is being promoted in the US reflect an arrogance and contempt that will undoubtedly undermine it if it does happen.

I was first alerted to this framing by a post by Tina Minkowitz at Mad in America. (I’ve been writing about her reports from the UN for a while now.) Minkowitz, one of the drafters of the CRPD and who supports full ratification of the convention, pointed out recently that many of those urging ratification are using rhetoric and promoting measures (such as reservations, understandings, or declarations, or RUDs) that basically entail the homeopathization of the treaty in the US. They’re also employing a false and damaging narrative about how ratification, while having no effect on domestic practices, will provide an opportunity for the US to export its so-called gold standard of disability policies to other countries. To make matters worse, advocacy communities – those who are being listened to, at any event – are going along with this narrative:

All the proponents of CRPD ratification who are allowed a voice in these discussions are in agreement that the US ratification is aimed ONLY at giving the US greater influence over other countries and over the development of customary international law, and NOT at improving the enjoyment of human rights by persons with disabilities in the US itself. This is astounding. It is hard to imagine any self-respecting group of people that would work so hard for a treaty about their own rights, and yet argue that it won’t apply to themselves but instead is only meant to help their government promote the national ‘brand’ (as per Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge).

Minkowitz’s post describes some of the arrogant and contemptuous arguments from the politicians involved. Sadly, you see these arguments discussed uncritically and even supportively in “progressive” media outlets. This series of remarks from an article yesterday at ThinkProgress, for example:

• “The CRPD’s failure on the Senate floor then was a ‘rough day for a lot of us who support the treaty’, Kerry said during his testimony, noting that he heard regret afterwards — even from those who had voted against the treaty — about the message it sent to the disabled around the world.”

• “The executive branch, Kerry promised, is ‘100 percent prepared, as we have been’ to work with Congress on various proposed reservations, understandings, and declarations (RUDs) that could be added onto the treaty.

Kerry’s promise was in response to the concerns Ranking Member Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) put forward in his opening remarks. ‘I think the ratification of this treaty really rests solely on the administration’s willingness to ensure that this treaty has no effect on domestic law’, Corker said.”

• “‘I am still convinced that we give up nothing, but get everything in return’, Kerry said. ‘Our ratification does not require a single change in American law and isn’t going to add a penny to our budget’. Instead, he said, it would provide leverage to get other countries to raise themselves to the standards the United States set forward in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which the CRPD is based on.

• “‘There are countries where children with disabilities are warehoused from birth, denied even birth certificates, treated as second class citizens every day of their lives’, Kerry said, adding, ‘Moments like this clarify for me the work we must do to export our gold standard – the American standard. I hate seeing us squander our credibility on this issue around the world’.”

• “A slew of officials have been making the rounds in recent weeks, each insisting on the need for the treaty to help raise other countries to the standards the United States prides itself on when it comes to supporting people with disabilities.”

• “‘You know, if the ADA and the protections afforded to persons here were extended internationally, then these disabled vets or other Americans with disabilities would have, again, the same horizon, unlimited horizon, that their able-bodied American counterparts would have’, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power told Politico on Wednesday. ‘So there’s a real core interest here for our people’.” [I have no idea how this is supposed to make sense – SC]

• “Advocates disagree with the notion that the CRPD strips any measure of sovereignty from the United States. ‘This treaty is empowering people with disabilities around the world, and asserts that the family is the central unit of society, and that it’s in the best interest of children with disabilities that society protect and support families’, Morrissey told ThinkProgress. ‘So I think this treaty actually advances our sovereignty by bringing U.S. leadership to the world table. We’ve done so much on disability in this country and we really can be a world leader.’”

• “‘This treaty is not about changing America’, Kerry told the committee, summing up the administration’s pitch. ‘This treaty is about America changing the world’.”

Or this, from Ted Kaufman at HuffPo:

• “You don't have to listen to one Democratic voice to make the strongest possible case for ratification of CRPD. Former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last year, said, ‘Ratification is an opportunity to export to the world the very best we have to offer. This is a chance to use our rich national experience in disability rights -- which has gained us the respect of the world community -- to extend the principles embodied in the ADA to the hundreds of millions of people with disabilities worldwide who today have no domestic protection. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose by playing the role the world expects of us’.

These ideas are completely contrary to the purpose of international instruments, as Minkowitz argues in her statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

The United States has been admired as a leader in the field of disability rights because of the ADA. However, the ADA is not the gold standard for comprehensive protection of human rights of persons with disabilities without discrimination in all aspects of life. That mantle belongs to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

…It is…disturbing to witness not only the numerous RUDs of unprecedented number and scope, but the intent of the RUDs as apparent from their content and from the statements of both Senators and witnesses in the Foreign Relations Committee hearings. It appears that the intent and effect of the RUDs taken as a whole is to preclude any necessity for action by the US to bring its own law into compliance with international standards that it would claim to ratify. Ratification on these terms violates the core principle of international law that domestic law does not excuse a government from complying with its international obligations1, and its corollary that states parties are expected to conform their domestic law to the requirements of a ratified treaty2. The United States cannot escape this obligation by declaring that its law fulfills or exceeds the requirements of the treaty.

…To reject this central obligation or seek loopholes to avoid it does a sad disservice to persons with disabilities, and is not in keeping with the purpose or principles of the CRPD.

It’s bad enough to refuse to ratify, but to “ratify” in this manner and with this obvious agenda is to display not just arrogance but contempt. (The cheering acquiescence of so many independent advocacy groups to this imperialistic rhetoric parallels that of some international human rights organizations responding to US foreign intervention.)

Reading about this debate brings to mind a recent article by Noam Chomsky, “Why the Rest of the World No Longer Wants to be Like U.S.” Chomsky describes:

In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, the leading establishment journal, David Kaye reviews one aspect of Washington's departure from the world: rejection of multilateral treaties ‘as if it were sport’.

He explains that some treaties are rejected outright, as when the U.S. Senate ‘voted against the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2012 and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1999’.

Others are dismissed by inaction, including ‘such subjects as labor, economic and cultural rights, endangered species, pollution, armed conflict, peacekeeping, nuclear weapons, the law of the sea, and discrimination against women’.

Rejection of international obligations ‘has grown so entrenched’, Kaye writes, ‘that foreign governments no longer expect Washington's ratification or its full participation in the institutions treaties create. The world is moving on; laws get made elsewhere, with limited (if any) American involvement’.

While not new, the practice has indeed become more entrenched in recent years, along with quiet acceptance at home of the doctrine that the U.S. has every right to act as a rogue state.

…Whatever the world may think, U.S. actions are legitimate because we say so. The principle was enunciated by the eminent statesman Dean Acheson in 1962, when he instructed the American Society of International Law that no legal issue arises when the United States responds to a challenge to its ‘power, position, and prestige’.

Mano Singham posted this morning about the possible effects of the Snowden revelations in impeding the US government’s ability to behave with this sort of hypocritical arrogance and contempt on the international stage.

Chomsky on libertarianism

Quoting Chomsky in my previous post reminded me that I’d wanted to mention this section of a recent interview*:

MS: With the apparent ongoing demise of the capitalist state, many people are looking at other ways to be successful, to run their lives, and I’m wondering what you would say anarchy and syndicalism have to offer, things that others ideas — say, for example, state-run socialism — have failed to offer? Why should we choose anarchy, as opposed to, say, libertarianism?

NC: Well what’s called libertarian in the United States, which is a special U. S. phenomenon, it doesn’t really exist anywhere else — a little bit in England — permits a very high level of authority and domination but in the hands of private power: so private power should be unleashed to do whatever it likes. The assumption is that by some kind of magic, concentrated private power will lead to a more free and just society. Actually that has been believed in the past. Adam Smith for example, one of his main arguments for markets was the claim that under conditions of perfect liberty, markets would lead to perfect equality. Well, we don’t have to talk about that! That kind of —

MS: It seems to be a continuing contention today …

NC: Yes, and so well that kind of libertarianism, in my view, in the current world, is just a call for some of the worst kinds of tyranny, namely unaccountable private tyranny. Anarchism is quite different from that. It calls for an elimination to tyranny, all kinds of tyranny. Including the kind of tyranny that’s internal to private power concentrations. So why should we prefer it? Well I think because freedom is better than subordination. It’s better to be free than to be a slave. Its’ better to be able to make your own decisions than to have someone else make decisions and force you to observe them. I mean, I don’t think you really need an argument for that. It seems like … transparent.

The thing you need an argument for, and should give an argument for, is, How can we best proceed in that direction? And there are lots of ways within the current society. One way, incidentally, is through use of the state, to the extent that it is democratically controlled. I mean in the long run, anarchists would like to see the state eliminated. But it exists, alongside of private power, and the state is, at least to a certain extent, under public influence and control — could be much more so. And it provides devices to constrain the much more dangerous forces of private power. Rules for safety and health in the workplace for example. Or insuring that people have decent health care, let’s say. Many other things like that. They’re not going to come about through private power. Quite the contrary. But they can come about through the use of the state system under limited democratic control … to carry forward reformist measures. I think those are fine things to do. they should be looking forward to something much more, much beyond, — namely actual, much larger-scale democratization. And that’s possible to not only think about, but to work on. So one of the leading anarchist thinkers, Bakunin in the 19th cent, pointed out that it’s quite possible to build the institutions of a future society within the present one. And he was thinking about far more autocratic societies than ours. And that’s being done….

* Have I mentioned how much I hate the rote introduction “People have [stereotyped image of anarchists]. Here’s this anarchist who, you’ll be surprised to learn, isn’t [stereotyped image]”? It’s especially silly when referring to the most famous anarchist alive. Otherwise, worthwhile.

Defending the lie

“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies. This, at least, may seem enough of a truism to pass over without comment. Not so, however. For the modern intellectual, it is not at all obvious.” – Noam Chomsky

I was writing a post about David Brooks’ latest opinionating, but that’s been preempted by a shocking piece I saw at Slate – “Is Psychiatry Dishonest? (And if so, is it a noble lie?),” by Benjamin Nugent.

What’s shocking is, well, first, that Nugent would even ask the second question, and, next, that after he pretty much answers Yes to the first,* he leans toward Yes in response to the second. I hope I don’t even have to spell out why this is a terrible position. The idea of the “Noble Lie” is inherently authoritarian, contrary to every standard of epistemic and democratic ethics. When it comes to biopsychiatry specifically, the suggestion that there’s anything positive about the promotion of this scientifically invalid model is laughable. Nugent provides an autobiographical note, but fails utterly to address the extensive evidence of biopsychiatry’s real harms. In fact, I’m astonished that he could move so breezily from the first to the second question.

His concluding remarks left me nearly speechless:

It seems to me—and I am a novelist, not a mental health professional, and so have no dog in this fight, no drug company consulting gig, no claim on insurance payments to protect— that the DSM’s great purpose should be to curb the exuberance with which enterprising doctors and laymen invent, buy, and sell diagnoses for fun and profit. To be sure, this is a Kissingerian stance: Let’s prop up the dictator with the medals on his chest so long as he keeps the guerillas at bay. But if the DSM ceases to be the sourcebook doctors and patients use to determine the parameters of diagnoses, other sourcebooks will proliferate. Like those websites spreading the good news that Nabokov and Dickinson had Asperger’s.

In other words, we should support this brand of authoritarian pseudoscience, even though we know it’s dishonest, to prevent scientific anarchy (gasp).** It’s strange on so many levels: The DSM’s purpose in reality is precisely not to curb the invention and marketing of diagnoses, but to lend those invented and sold by drug companies and enterprising psychiatrists – and the project of biopsychiatry itself – a false air of scientific authority. Nugent just ignores this completely. Second, he isn’t even able to come up with a credible hypothetical threat – just a metaphor. Who are these diagnostic guerrillas and why should we fear them more than the politically and economically powerful corporate psychiatry we have now? (His one example makes his argument even more bizarre: the sites speculating that these famous people had Asperger’s are the outgrowth of biopsychiatry, not alternatives to it.)

But most important, even if we assumed – contrary to the facts - that there were no reasonable, humanistic, evidence-based alternatives, how could anyone possibly think that condoning and promoting dishonest, self-interested, profit-driven pseudoscience is a good idea? Over the past few years, I’ve been perplexed by people’s reluctance to examine the evidence about biopsychiatry. I’ve been surprised by their lack of outrage when they do recognize serious problems. But I never thought I’d see a writer basically acknowledge that biopsychiatry is and has long been a lie, placidly accept this fact, and then proceed to defend the lie. Kissingerian, indeed.

* There are several problems with Nugent’s attempt to answer the first question, beginning with his narrowed focus, typical of many recent articles, on the books by Greenberg and Frances (both apparently interested in saving psychiatry from itself) and his failure to cite the wave of articles and books over the past few years fundamentally challenging the model. Nugent, like so many others, doesn’t really seem to care very deeply about whether or not these diagnoses and this model are false, about whether psychiatry is dishonest. Even when he discusses probably the most obvious and obviously harmful example of corruption – Joseph Biederman - he breezes right past it with little evident concern.

** Nugent doesn’t appear to appreciate that he’s not actually sympathetic to Frances’ position here, because what he’s describing isn’t Frances’ position. I haven’t read his book, but it’s plain from Frances’ other public writings and statements that he believes that at the core of biopsychiatry is truth – he thinks that about 5% of the population (of the US or the entire world, I’m not sure) has a “real” mental “disorder.” He opposes “diagnostic expansion,” but this isn’t the same as an admission that biopsychiatry is based on a false model. But only if you recognize that it is can you talk about the benefits, drawbacks, and ethics of deception, as Nugent does.

(Frances is an interesting case. In this recent Al Jazeera interview, he seems to dodge the questions about the scientific basis for psychiatric diagnoses. He refers to them here and elsewhere as “constructs,” but leaves the implication hanging that the constructs capture a physical pathology, which is precisely the point in contention. It’s just impossible to tell how much of this is evasiveness and how much self-delusion.)

Noam Chomsky and other scholars petition New York Times to examine its biased coverage of Honduras and Venezuela

Yesterday, Noam Chomsky and a group Latin America and media experts sent a letter to Margaret Sullivan, Times Public Editor. Here’s the full text without embedded hyperlinks (the text including evidentiary hyperlinks, a list of the relevant Times articles with links and quotations, and information about how to add your name to the petition are available here):

May 14, 2013

Dear Margaret Sullivan,

In a recent column (4/12/13), you observed:

Although individual words and phrases may not amount to very much in the great flow produced each day, language matters. When news organizations accept the government’s way of speaking, they seem to accept the government’s way of thinking. In The Times, these decisions carry even more weight.

In light of this comment we encourage you to compare The New York Times’s characterization of the leadership of the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and that of Roberto Micheletti and Porfirio Lobo in Honduras.

In the past four years, the Times has referred to Chávez as an "autocrat," "despot," "authoritarian ruler" and a "caudillo" in its news coverage. When opinion pieces are included, the Times has published at least fifteen separate articles employing such language, depicting Chávez as a "dictator" or "strongman." Over the same period—since the June 28, 2009 military overthrow of elected president Manuel Zelaya of Honduras—Times contributors have never used such terms to describe Micheletti, who presided over the coup regime after Zelaya’s removal, or Porfirio Lobo, who succeeded him. Instead, the paper has variously described them in its news coverage as "interim," "de facto,” and "new."

Porfirio Lobo assumed the presidency after winning an election held under Micheletti's coup government. The elections were marked by repression and censorship, and international monitors, like the Carter Center, boycotted them. Since the coup, Honduras's military and police have routinely killed civilians.

Over the past 14 years Venezuela has had 16 elections or referenda deemed free and fair by leading international authorities. Jimmy Carter praised Venezuela’s elections, among the 92 the Carter Center has monitored, as having "a very wonderful voting system." He concluded that "the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world." While some human rights groups have criticized the Chávez government, Venezuela has had no pattern of state security forces murdering civilians, as is the case in Honduras.

Whatever one thinks of the democratic credentials of Chávez’s presidency—and we recognize that reasonable people can disagree about it—there is nothing in the record, when compared with that of his Honduran counterparts, to warrant the discrepancies in the Times’s coverage of the two governments.

We urge you to examine this disparity in coverage and language use, particularly as it may appear to your readers to track all too closely the U.S. government’s positions regarding the Honduran government (which it supports) and the Venezuelan government (which it opposes)—precisely the syndrome you describe and warn against in your column.

Sincerely,

Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus, MIT
Edward Herman, Professor Emeritus of Finance, Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
Greg Grandin, Professor of History, New York University
Sujatha Fernandes, Professor of Sociology, Queens College, CUNY Graduate Center
Corey Robin, Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College, CUNY Graduate Center
Adrienne Pine, Professor of Anthropology, American University
Mark Weisbrot, Ph.D, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Miguel Tinker Salas, Professor of History and Latin American Studies, Pomona College
Katherine Hite, Professor of Political Science, Vassar College
Steve Ellner, Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, Universidad de Oriente
George Ciccariello-Maher, Professor of Political Science, Drexel University
Daniel Kovalik, Professor of International Human Rights, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Gregory Wilpert, Ph.D, author of "Changing Venezuela by Taking Power"
Joseph Nevins, Professor of Geography, Vassar College
Nazih Richani, Director of Latin American Studies, Kean University
Steven Volk, Professor of History, Oberlin College
Aviva Chomsky, Professor of History, Salem State University
Keane Bhatt, North American Congress on Latin America
Chris Spannos, New York Times eXaminer
Michael Albert, ZNet
Oliver Stone, Filmmaker, "South of the Border"
Michael Moore, Filmmaker, "Capitalism: A Love Story"

Perhaps they could also work on their biased coverage of psychiatry. And think tanks….

Social Science, the Right, and the AAA

The Right’s relationship with academics, and social scientists in particular, has two sides: trying to make use of them (the Human Terrain System, encouraging psychologists’ participation in torture, “security” centers, efforts to use scholarly credibility to burnish propaganda efforts, and corporate influence on the functioning of universities in general) and attacking them (seeking to withdraw funding to Middle Eastern Studies programs or social science funding by the NSF, generally rejecting social scientific research other than that viewed as useful). This week’s news has highlighted both prongs, neither of them good, of course, for the social sciences, and both of which continue to be resisted. Unfortunately, it’s also brought to light some confused social scientists who seem to be playing into this strategy while apparently believing they’re doing the opposite.

The attempts to utilize academic credibility for propaganda purposes have been revealed by Adrienne Pine in her work on FIU’s “Strategic Culture” Initiative, in which “anthropology's analysis and cultural capital are appropriated in order to facilitate and legitimize military violence.” As she argues:

The concept of "culture" is being used to justify the violent actions of the U.S. military throughout the hemisphere. Culture is also used to justify U.S. training of and funding for Latin American military forces that engage in torture, targeted assassinations of dissidents, and carry out coups d'etats. But the abuse of the culture concept in the service of empire is neither new, nor unique to the militarized university. In the case of Honduras, groups like the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) have promoted the idea that Honduras suffers from a culture of violence—rather than a neoliberal policy of state violence in which poverty is criminalized and the victims of structural violence are blamed. This difference is crucial; if violence is cultural, then "security"—in the form of increased U.S. military aid and training—is a logical solution for disciplining an unruly, uncivilized population. However, if violence is the explicit policy of a militarized client state protecting corporate profits from falling into the hands of the Honduran people, then democracy—however the Honduran people should choose to approach it—is the solution.

I’ve read quickly through the Bolivia report, and it’s astonishing. It would be hilarious if I didn’t fear its potential effectiveness. In this attack on the Bolivian Left, the entire history (and present) of exploitation, oppression, terror, greed, and destruction is purported to be – I said it was astonishing – essentially a set of notions concocted by an authoritarian “culture of victimization.” It’s pure propaganda. There is, in fact, no science here. The author, making several patently ridiculous suggestions, offers a handful of citations, of a quality people can judge for themselves. This isn’t scholarship.

The other side of the blade is the outright attack, represented most recently by the efforts of Eric Cantor. As PZ describes:

He wants people to search NSF and report back to him with grant numbers that they don't like.

...And then he gives hints on searching the database, listing words that might yield boondoggles: "success, culture, media, games, social norm, lawyers, museum, leisure, stimulus, etc."

What’s important to recognize is that this has nothing to do with spending or waste. These attacks are, in some cases, mere posturing, and in many based on a genuine fear of the production and dissemination of real scholarly work contrary to their interests.

In this ongoing context of active efforts by those on the Right to derail the social sciences by co-opting or eliminating them, I found the reports of the past few days concerning intended changes to the American Anthropological Association’s mission statement troubling. This appears to be an effort to distance anthropology from science. (I’m unimpressed by Hugh Gusterson’s suggestions (in the comments here) that the changes aren’t significant and that the process has been democratic because, well, “The Executive Board is elected by the membership to make these kinds of decisions” and the document was sent to the section heads.

Sadly, science has for many people come to be conflated with imperialism and oppression, state and corporate power. It’s one thing to say that anthropology as a discipline has been used for statist, imperialist, and corporate ends (and this includes not only the content of anthropological works but, as Foucault made clear long ago, the practice of anthropology itself). It’s quite another to suggest, as these changes would, that this is somehow inherent in science.

I’m most distressed that the terms central to the discussion are not being defined, leading to unintentional misrepresentations. Science is a means of building knowledge about the world through reasoned and systematic empirical investigation and analysis. It’s the only valid or reliable means we have to assess fact claims. I’d like to think – realizing this would be naïve – that anthropologists wouldn’t seriously reject this as a description of their discipline, but I fear I might be wrong. I was recently watching an interview with Derrick Jensen (not an anthropologist, it should be noted) on Democracy Now!*, which contained this exchange:

AMY GOODMAN: Derrick, what is the influence of Native Americans in your writing, in your work, in your activism?

DERRICK JENSEN: It’s another great question. And I have tried not to romanticize them, which is another form of objectification. And what I do know is I know that the Tolowa Indians, on whose land I now live up in way northern California, they lived there for at least 12,500 years, if you believe the myths of science. And if you believe the myths of the Tolowa, they lived there since the beginning of time, using a myth as stories that we tell ourselves that make the world fit together. So, in any case, the Tolowa lived there for at least 12,500 years....

No. Science is not simply a “story we tell ourselves to make the world fit together.” It’s a method of discovering reality. The Tolowa have been there for an amount of time, and that is a fact. If you want to say that whenever “they” arrived there was, for them, the beginning of time, OK, but you’re merely poeticizing that fact. And seriously, you’re first sentences offered empirical claims about environmental changes (which I haven’t confirmed) that are the products of science.

On the other side, what are the “ways of knowing” these anthropologists wish to place alongside science? Concretely, as a method – what are they? Personal revelation? The interpretation of ancient texts? As much as “science” needs to be defined in this discussion, so does “ancient wisdom.” Is this term being used to refer to sets of ideas or to the “method” of referring to elders or texts? I think that in contexts in which practices that have allowed people to live sustainably in the world for tens, hundreds, or thousands of years, ecological ideas or practices should be taken and investigated very seriously. There’s a great deal that’s unknown about ecosystems and our role in them, and practical knowledge that’s been developed in essence scientifically over generations is potentially highly valuable. That does not mean that we should accept any fact claims wearing the mantle of “ancient wisdom.”

Nor do I understand the line some people seem to want to draw between advocacy and science (in which I include history). The idea that advocacy is in essence un- or anti-scientific is simply wrong. Advocacy, to be effective and to be ethical, needs to be based on an accurate assessment of reality, and for this we need science. I understand (and frequently make) the argument that scientific practice is generally organized to serve corporations and governments; I understand that corporations and governments have effectively worked to claim “science” for themselves. But we need to distinguish between the current, transitory, situation and the meaning of science. We should criticize scientific work on its questions, methods, data, and analysis, and promote good science. It’s sad that those who are buying the “culture/activism = anti-science” line don’t seem to grasp that the conception of science on which this is based is fundamentally flawed, and that accepting it contributes – intentionally or not - to a right-wing political project.

I think – and I’m in the good company of Sokal, Chomsky, and Mills here – that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that science, as the means of establishing knowledge about reality (including social reality), is a tool of liberation, and ignorance and anti-science means of oppression. It’s a catastrophic error to allow others to define science in such a way that people are led to reject it, and it plays Right into the hands of the (corporate, political, religious) oppressors.

*(Which I otherwise found quite interesting, particularly his challenge to the “Gandhi shield,” though I have problems with some of his arguments.)

HONDURAS UPDATE 10-25-10

Bill Quigley and Laura Raymond of the Center for Constitutional Rights have a Counterpunch piece, ostensibly on “artist resistance in Honduras,” which provides an update on the Obama administration’s continuing sell-out of democracy:

Meanwhile, in the United States, 29 members of Congress took a bold step, especially given the lead-up to midterm elections, in issuing a strongly worded condemnation of the “deplorable human rights record” in Honduras listing several recent cases of political violence.

The members of Congress registered their “serious concern that the rule of law is directly threatened by members of the Honduran police and armed forces” and called on the Obama Administration to end all direct assistance to Honduran authorities, especially the police and military. They also called on the US to cease its lobbying for the re-admittance of Honduras into the Organization of American States (OAS).

While most member countries of the OAS have stood firm in their rejection of Honduras as a member of the OAS, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton has made Honduras’s reinstatement a US priority in the region, raising it in her meetings with Latin American heads of state and lobbying for it at various regional meetings. For reasons that the Center for Constitutional Rights laid out in our Open Letter to Secretary of State Clinton, the Obama Administration must stop and the OAS should remain firm in rejecting Honduras as a member.

Those committed to working in solidarity with ordinary people organizing for democracy, equality and social justice in the Americas are outraged that the Obama Administration has become the Lobo regime’s most important ally. Without US support, the Lobo regime would not have been able to hold its illegitimate elections or hold on to power for as long as it has.
But history shows that anti-democratic regimes in Latin America and elsewhere can be overcome, even when they have the backing of the US, by campaigns for democracy and human rights. The FNRP is working to show the way in Honduras. Those of us in solidarity from afar watch in admiration as they work to transform their country and salute their efforts to celebrate while doing so!

Adrienne Pine has more. She also provides links to a two-part article by Edward S. Herman (co-author with Chomsky of Manufacturing Consent) and David Peterson contrasting media coverage of repression, elections, resistance, and social media in Iran and Honduras. Highly recommended analysis (though I take issue, as with similar comparative analyses in the past, with the unnecessary and misleading downplaying of abuses by the Iranian regime).

Imperial PR

My last update on Honduras mentioned this analysis comparing US media coverage of Honduras to coverage of Iran over the past year. One accusation Chomsky has been at pains to contest is the simplistic characterization of the propaganda model as a conspiracy theory. The notion is of course wrong, and I can’t believe anyone with the slightest knowledge of the model could honestly hold such a view, particularly in this era of capitalist consolidation.

That said, I think it’s important to look into key moments in the history of the development of media filters as they’ve been shaped by conscious human action. What we find are PR and control strategies of increasing sophistication extending and expanding from the nineteenth century to the present. The story of media manipulation and complicity in the course of imperial conquest and consolidation in the US is very much one of intent and coordinated action. Here I’ll discuss in some depth the work of the Office of Public Diplomacy in the 1980s, drawing extensively from Greg Grandin’s Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism.



I’ll then mention a lesser-known episode from the early days of US imperialism.
In Chapter Four, “Bringing It All Back Home: The Politics of the New Imperialism,” Grandin investigates the means by which the Reagan administration, in the context of its Central American adventures, sought to build support for – and weaken resistance to – imperialist policy. This they did, as Grandin describes, through a three-pronged program:

First, to confront an adversarial press, tame a presumptuous congress, and make inroads on college campuses, the administration orchestrated a sophisticated and centralized ‘public diplomacy’ campaign that deployed techniques drawn from both the PR world and the intelligence community. Second, the White House either loosened or circumvented restrictions placed on domestic law-and-order surveillance operations against political dissidents, reviving tactics that the FBI and other intelligence agencies had used to intimidate the antiwar movement in the 1960s, tactics that were thought to have been repudiated by the Rockefeller Committee and other congressional investigations into domestic covert actions in the mid-1970s. Finally, and most consequentially, the administration built countervailing grassroots support to counter what seemed a permanently entrenched anti-imperialist opposition, mobilizing militarists and evangelicals on behalf of a hard-line foreign policy (p. 123).

Grandin describes the creation of the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean in 1983 under Otto Reich, serving the White House and the CIA. Both in order to circumvent the law and to better propagandize, the Office, employing advertising agencies and front groups, “implemented…a ‘public-private strategy’, coordinating the work of the NSC with PR firms, psychological warfare specialists, and New Right activists, intellectuals, and pressure groups” (p. 124).

The focus at this time was Nicaragua and the need to present an image of the Sandinistas and the Contras. Working to expand the perceived threat from a narrower Communism to a pervasive terrorism, the Office simplified “foreign policy to a series of emotionally laden talking points that linked the Sandinistas to any number of world evils” (p. 129):

The Sandinistas were ‘evil’, Soviet ‘puppets’, ‘racist and repress human rights’, ‘involved in U.S. drug problems’. The Contras were ‘freedom fighters’, ‘good guys’, ‘underdogs’, ‘religious’ and ‘poor’ (p. 125).

But in addition to the rhetorical tropes, familiar in such propaganda, was the establishment of a coordinated action plan and complex and lasting structure of organizations. “Over just a two month period in early 1985,” Grandin offers, “the office laid out a chronology of seventy-nine tasks to accomplish” (p. 126). He provides a partial list, from which I’ll draw a selection of those focused directly at the media and public:

-Encourage U.S. reporters to meet individual Contra fighters;…

-Supervise preparation and assignment of articles directed to special interest groups at rate of one per week (examples: article on Nicaraguan educational system* for National Educational Association, article by retired military for Retired Officers Association, etc.);

-Draft one op-ed per week for signature by Administration officials. Specify themes for the op-eds and retain final editorial rights;

-Conduct public opinion poll of American attitudes toward Sandinistas, freedom fighters;…

-Prepare list of key media outlets interested in Central American issues; identify specific editors, commentators, talk shows, and columnists;

-Call/visit newspaper editorial boards and give them background on the Nicaraguan freedom fighters;…

-Review and restate themes based on results of public opinion poll;

-Prepare document on Nicaraguan narcotics involvement;

-Publish and distribute “Nicaragua’s development as a Marxist-Leninist state”;

-Sponsor media events for Central American resistance leaders;

-Administration and prominent non-government spokesman on network shows regarding Soviet, Cuban, East German, Libyan, and Iranian connection with Sandinistas;…

-Release paper on Nicaraguan drug involvement;…

-Organize nationally coordinated sermons about aid to the freedom fighters;

-Organize Washington conference “Central America: Resistance or Surrender?” (Presidential drop-by?);…

…and [with no irony]:

-Release paper on Nicaraguan media manipulation.

Far from content to allow the independent development of interpretations and positions, the OPD

published a steady flow of white papers, briefings, talking points, pamphlets, and books on El Salvador and Nicaragua. For El Salvador, the job was primarily proving Cuban and Sandinista ties and rapidly refuting charges of atrocities committed by the Salvadoran military. For Nicaragua, when the White House was not fabricating facts wholesale it was amplifying every statement and action made by the Sandinistas to prove their malfeasance. Documents with the titles “Mothers of Political Prisoners,” “Religious Repression in Nicaragua,” “Nicaragua and Cuba – Drugs,” “In Their Own Words – Former Sandinistas Tell Their Story,” “Human Costs of Communism,” “Nicaragua in Quotes,” “Inside the Sandinista Regime,” and “Christians Under Fire” were distributed either directly by the administration or by allied think tanks, ad hoc committees such as Citizens for America, CIA-front publishing houses, college organizations such as Young Americans for Freedom and Campus Crusade for Christ, the newly created National Endowment for Democracy, and an emerging network of alternative conservative news outlets, the most important at the time being the Christian Broadcasting Network and the Moon-owned Washington Times.

The administration distributed its literature not just to New Right organizations but to ‘church groups, human rights organizations, lawyers, political scientists, journalists, etc.’, each receiving ‘cover letters tailored to their specific interests’. The Office of Public Diplomacy organized conferences on Central America and invited ‘leaders of special interest and public policy groups (think tanks, foundations, church groups, labor organizations, Indian and Black organizations, academics) with special interest in Latin America. In its first year of operations, the office arranged more that [sic] 1,500 speaking engagements and distributed material to ‘1,600 libraries, 520 political science faculties, 122 editorial writers and 107 religious organizations’. It complied [sic] a comprehensive list of moral and political objections to Contra funding and drafted appropriate responses to each one, briefed the press and Congress on a regular basis, and wrote, or helped write, op-eds that were published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal under the bylines of administration officials, retired military officers, Contra leaders, foreign policy experts, and sympathetic scholars” (pp. 128-9).

The other prong in this campaign was the organized effort to “prevent an oppositional consensus from forming” (p. 130). According to Grandin, OPD generally “helped shift the debate in favor of the White House not by winning over domestic hearts and minds but by making it too costly for mainstream journalists and politicians to challenge policy” (p. 131). As is clear in the Honduras case, the tactics involved have become standard in imperial PR. First, OPD used unsubstantiated but provocative claims to distract journalists and edge the media as a whole toward the administration’s preferred frame:

By flooding the media with questionable facts and allegations, the Office of Public Diplomacy forced Reagan’s opponents to dissipate their energies disproving allegations rather than making their own positive case for nonintervention. Confronted by government spokespeople and sympathetic experts ready to rebut unfavorable coverage, no matter how slight the criticism or how marginal the source, reporters came to dread the amount of fact checking it took to cover Central America.

…By offering alternative interpretations, no matter how far-fetched, to discredit charges of atrocities committed by U.S. allies, Public Diplomacy muddied the waters and made it difficult, if not impossible, for human rights organizations to establish the facts of the case (p. 131).

Otto Reich bullied journalists and news organizations. His activities included

visits to reporters whom he felt to be too sympathetic to either the Sandinistas or the Salvadoran rebels. At an NPR studio, Reich let journalists know that his office had contracted a ‘special consultant service [to listen] to all NPR programs on Central America – a serious threat to an agency that operated by government largesse. Reich later boasted that he had succeeded in getting reporters who he felt were too easy on the Sandinistas reassigned. Following his visit, NPR hired conservative commentator Linda Chavez to provide ‘balance’ (p. 132).

Some resisted: “It was [Raymond] Bonner who broke the story of the El Mozote massacre, which Washington vigorously denied for over a decade. Bonner’s reporting met with a firestorm of criticism from the State Department and the Wall Street Journal, leading the New York Times to pull him out of El Salvador. ‘We finally got rid of that sonuvabitch’, said one officer delighted to see him go” (p. 135).

They watched organizations like CISPES - “Activists who traveled to Central America had their official documents and personal papers seized, their mail tampered with, and their landlords and employers questioned” (p. 140). Activists and dissenting organizations were subject to rumor mongering, harassment, intimidation, and break-ins (for which there was apparent impunity).

But critical reports from the regular media were not the norm. With a few exceptions, the press was soft on or silent about (the importance of silence shouldn’t be underestimated) the Reagan administration’s policies in Central America. The “return to deference” that Grandin describes on the part of the media following more penetrating reporting during the Vietnam War was due in part to conscious efforts on behalf of the Pentagon and the CIA, who, understanding that a more independent stance likely resulted in part from greater functional autonomy in source and story development, began to supply a select group of reporters with special access. This led these privileged journalists and organizations (and by extension the public) to become further accustomed to viewing government representatives as knowledgeable and reliable sources and to be wary of losing access by challenging their framing of the issues or seeking out hostile voices. More generally, it “created a bonding experience in which privilege was transformed into sympathy for the institution granting the access” (p. 135).

But this was far from the first such propaganda push. James Bradley’s The Imperial Cruise (a popular rather than a scholarly work)



describes how Teddy Roosevelt used propaganda to build support for imperial projects at the turn of the last century. The PR of expansion and exploitation in that era played openly on the ideologies of male and “Aryan” superiority and racial destiny. Roosevelt styled his public persona after the popular Buffalo Bill,** “the embodiment of the blond Aryan who sowed civilization as he race-cleansed his way west” (p. 51). (Following a visit to South Dakota just three years after the Wounded Knee Massacre, Roosevelt wrote that the U.S. government had treated the Indians “with great justice and fairness,” p. 67). With regard to Rooselvelt's expansionist policy, the newspapers largely hewed to the official line, ready to portray the Cuban and Filipino people as freedom fighters one minute and “lazy, thieving, murderous bands” (p. 81) of non-whites incapable of self-government and in need of Aryan “wards” the next.

The administration sought to place the occupation of the Philippines within a narrative of US virility, heroism, and democratic nation building. According to Bradley,

Teddy’s most prominent enunciation of his Big Stick philosophy was the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. President Monroe’s goal had essentially defensive; now Roosevelt took the offense, asserting that the U.S. military was an ‘international police’ and that he had the right to order invasions to enforce American foreign policy. The world could trust such a policy, he argued, because the goal of U.S. foreign policy was ‘the peace of justice’. Roosevelt posed as reluctant to deploy his international police force but warned barbarian countries that if they ‘violated the rights of the United States,’ or if he observed a general loosing of the ties of civilized society’, the United States could exercise its ‘international police power’. Roosevelt informed Congress that American police powers extended to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, as well as to North Asia (Korea and Manchuria) and to enforcing the Open Door policy in China (p. 204).

Roosevelt made use of photo ops and celebrity distractions (in the form of his daughter Alice) while his administration and – very significantly - organized pro-interventionist groups sought to do imperial damage control and to spread the message of American benevolence by way of a largely compliant press.
Mark Twain’s anti-imperialist 1906 “Comments on the Moro Massacre” called attention to the massacre by the US military of hundreds of people trapped in the crater of a dormant volcano in the Philippines and to the larger exercise in brutality and torture (including waterboarding) that was the US occupation and “pacification” project:

General Wood was present and looking on. His order had been. "Kill or capture those savages." Apparently our little army considered that the "or" left them authorized to kill or capture according to taste, and that their taste had remained what it has been for eight years, in our army out there - the taste of Christian butchers.

But Twain’s comments weren’t limited to the military’s actions, extending to the role of the newspapers both in ignoring the event and its implications and in allowing the government to present these events through the administration’s and military’s lens.

There, with six hundred engaged on each side, we lost fifteen men killed outright, and we had thirty-two wounded-counting that nose and that elbow. The enemy numbered six hundred -- including women and children -- and we abolished them utterly, leaving not even a baby alive to cry for its dead mother. This is incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved by the Christian soldiers of the United States.

Now then, how has it been received? The splendid news appeared with splendid display-heads in every newspaper in this city of four million and thirteen thousand inhabitants, on Friday morning. But there was not a single reference to it in the editorial columns of any one of those newspapers. The news appeared again in all the evening papers of Friday, and again those papers were editorially silent upon our vast achievement. Next day's additional statistics and particulars appeared in all the morning papers, and still without a line of editorial rejoicing or a mention of the matter in any way. These additions appeared in the evening papers of that same day (Saturday) and again without a word of comment. In the columns devoted to correspondence, in the morning and evening papers of Friday and Saturday, nobody said a word about the "battle." Ordinarily those columns are teeming with the passions of the citizen; he lets no incident go by, whether it be large or small, without pouring out his praise or blame, his joy or his indignation about the matter in the correspondence column. But, as I have said, during those two days he was as silent as the editors themselves….

The next day, Sunday, -- which was yesterday -- the cable brought us additional news - still more splendid news -- still more honor for the flag. The first display-head shouts this information at us in the stentorian capitals: "WOMEN SLAIN MORO SLAUGHTER."

"Slaughter" is a good word. Certainly there is not a better one in the Unabridged Dictionary for this occasion.

The next display line says:

"With Children They Mixed in Mob in Crater, and All Died Together."

They were mere naked savages, and yet there is a sort of pathos about it when that word children falls under your eye, for it always brings before us our perfectest symbol of innocence and helplessness; and by help of its deathless eloquence color, creed and nationality vanish away and we see only that they are children -- merely children. And if they are frightened and crying and in trouble, our pity goes out to them by natural impulse. We see a picture. We see the small forms. We see the terrified faces. We see the tears. We see the small hands clinging in supplication to the mother; but we do not see those children that we are speaking about. We see in their places the little creatures whom we know and love.
The next heading blazes with American and Christian glory like to the sun in the zenith:

"Death List is Now 900."

I was never so enthusiastically proud of the flag till now!

A few examples of newspaper coverage can be read here. Note the reliance exclusively on military sources and repetition of the military line.

As shown in my posts about Honduras over the past year, the tactics described above have, in one version or another, become common and ever more developed. I think it’s useful to be aware of the history in order to better recognize the characteristic markings of imperialist – and corporate - PR (part of a propaganda baloney detector kit, I suppose), and, perhaps, to better understand the situation of journalists. In short, these examples can help us to appreciate not only the seriousness with which governments and corporations approach their project of manufacturing consent but the tools they’ve used to do it.


*It’s interesting to note one US scientist who was part of this educational system.

**Galeano:

SHOWBIZ CULTURE

Offscreen, the world is a shadow unworthy of confidence.

Before television, before the movies, it was already so. When Buffalo Bill seized some unsuspecting Indian and managed to kill him, he immediately proceeded to tear off his hairy scalp, feathers, and other trophies, and in a single gallop hurtled from the Wild West to the theaters of New York, where he repeated the heroic deed he had just performed. Then, as the curtain rose and Buffalo Bill raised his bloody knife onstage, reality occurred for the very first time there in the footlights.

And so it goes.

HONDURAS UPDATE 8-18-10

The news from Honduras, difficult to come by, has not been good. There continues to be pressure, led by the US administration, for the OAS to recognize the Honduran regime, and they are making headway despite the Honduran reality. It’s a joke. Here’s the statement of the Honduran resistance coalition, the FNRP, to the OAS, and here’s a statement concerning the continuing human rights violations in Honduras from COFADEH (according to a statement issued today, three more activists in Aguan have just been killed).

One of the more striking aspects of the coup and its aftermath is how journalists – but not only journalists - have been restricted, intimidated, terrorized, and murdered with impunity. This has received appallingly little attention from the US media. Even the repression of journalists hasn’t led them to tell the truth. This article by Kevin Young – “Honduras, Iran, and the Propaganda Model” – offers a Chomskian analysis of US press coverage of Honduras and Iran. Well worth reading.

My next substantive post will expand on this topic by looking at some of the history of imperialist propaganda in the US.

More Chomsky

Here’s a recent interview from Guernica:

“Chomsky Half Full”

My favorite part:

Guernica: So what are you recommending?

Noam Chomsky: I think decisions should be made in an entirely different manner for entirely different ends. Should producing more goods and consuming more goods be the highest value in life? That’s not obvious, by any means.

Guernica: And what would be?

Noam Chomsky: Living decent lives, in an environment that provides for people’s essential needs, offers them opportunities to become creative, active, to work together in solidarity, [and lead] more happy, creative lives. That’s a more important goal, I think.

Simple and true. More generally, I enjoy how he conducts himself in an interview. He simply doesn’t allow it to be a one-way process in which the interviewer asks him questions and he responds. He asks for clarification. He requires context before he responds to quotations. He asks questions himself. Best of all, he turns the questions around on the interviewer – “but I think you might ask yourself why you are asking this question…” In short, he conducts interviews as a real political dialogue in a way that doesn’t allow the interviewer to stand apart. I like that.

50 Smart Atheists, Chomsky and Nonbelief in the Incoherent, and the US as Mafia Don

Someone recently linked to this list over at Pharyngula: “The 50 Most Brilliant Atheists of All Time.” For some reason, I can’t get the page to display at the moment, but PZ made it, right on top of Jodie Foster (to his apparent delight). Not enough women and not enough anarchists. No Emma Goldman? No Voltairine de Cleyre? No Peter Kropotkin? To that I say Harumph. But Chomsky made the list, and I liked the quotation from him. I think I’ve found the longer version:

Do I believe in God? Can't answer, I'm afraid. I'm not being flippant, but I don't understand the question. What is it that I am supposed to believe or not believe in? Are you asking whether I believe there is something not in the universe (or the universes, if there are (maybe infinitely) many of them), and that somehow stands above them? I've never heard of any reason for believing that. Something else? What. There are many concepts of spirituality, among them, various notions of divinity developed in the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic religions. Within these the concepts vary greatly. St. Augustine and others, for example, argued that one should not take seriously the Biblical account of God as an exaggerated human, and other Biblical accounts, because they were crafted so as to make the intended message intelligible to humans -- and on such grounds, he argued, organized religion ought to accept persuasive conclusions of science, a conception that Galileo appealed to (in vain) when he faced Papal censure.

Anyway, without clarification of a kind I have never seen, I don't know whether I believe or don't believe in whatever a questioner has in mind.

Exactly. This has long been a source of annoyance to me. I’m bothered by these “God is beyond science” and “God is an untestable hypothesis” claims. No. If you can’t describe clearly the nature of something, it isn’t beyond science. It’s beneath it. It isn’t a hypothesis. It’s incoherent rubbish. The clarification Chomsky notes as lacking concerning “God” is the responsibility of the person speaking or asking about belief. If it can’t be provided, the question isn’t worth answering (and indeed cannot be answered due to its unintelligibility).

Since I’m talking about Chomsky, I’ll put up the recent video here that I linked to at Pharyngula a while back, in which he situates the current situation in Honduras within the longer history of US policy in the Americas, characterizing the US as a mafia don:



I’ll have more to say about Honduras when I’m up to it. Lobo sworn in, more people killed, more repression, World Bank funds,... It’s depressing. But it’s far from over.

Noam Chomsky NYC Speech on BookTV

Noam Chomsky appears on C-Span2's BookTV* this weekend**, giving a talk sponsored by the Brecht Forum at the Riverside Church in New York last month. For some reason, their YouTube channel has just a small fragment of Chomsky's speech (and none of Amy Goodman's introduction), and even that can't be embedded - not that I can see why anyone would want to - but the entire thing can be watched here.

In terms of content, it seems largely a compilation of his talks and writings over many years, which is fitting as the occasion is the 40th anniversary of American Power and the New Mandarins.



Though it feels a bit disjointed at moments, Chomsky touches on many important points, and I plan to post one or two related items shortly.

The best part, I believe, is the end - the last 30 minutes or so. In this section (*SPOILER ALERT* :)) he talks about democratic worker and community control and the need to rediscover and revive these alternative ideas and futures that the powerful have done their best to make us forget. He argues that of all of the crises that beset us today, perhaps the most serious is the democratic deficit.

*A post about their airing of a Chomsky speech may seem an odd moment to do this, but there's something I'd like to mention that's been bothering me about BookTV for some time now. I've been receiving the weekend schedule for years, and it's always seemed in general heavily weighted toward conservatives, including denialists of all stripes. (Not to mention its rather martial and male-dominated flavor.) During the previous administration I didn't find this especially surprising, but I kind of expected a shift, for that ideological lock to loosen, under the new administration. So far, I haven't seen any perceptible change. I don't know who is reponsible for selecting the talks that are featured, but there definitely appears to be something going on there.

**Oh, by the way this weekend with also feature a talk by Peter Laufer about his new book, The Dangerous World of Butterflies: The Startling Subculture of Criminals, Collectors, and Conservationists.



I haven't yet read it, but I did see him interviewed on The Daily Show recently and thought it sounded fascinating.

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