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| Culture of Terrorism
ISBN: 9781608464395
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Haymarket Books
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Political Science; History;
"Perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet" breaks down the Iran-Contra Affair and the scourge of clandestine terrorism ( The New York Times Book Review on Theory and Practice).
This classic text provides a scathing critique of US political culture through a brilliant analysis of the Iran-Contra scandal. Chomsky irrefutably shows how the United States has opposed human rights and democratization to advance its economic interests.
"The Culture of Terrorism follows an earlier study, Turning the Tide, but with the new insights provided by the flawed Congressional inquiry into the Irangate scandal. [Chomsky's] thesis is that United States elites are dedicated to the rule of force, and that their commitment to violence and lawlessness has to be masked by an ideological system which attempts to control and limit the domestic damage done when the mask occasionally slips. Clandestine programs are not a secret to their victims, as he points out. It is the domestic population in the USA which needs to be protected from knowledge of them . . . The record, he argues, shows a continual pattern of violence and disregard for democracy." ―Manchester Guardian Weekly
"Chomsky's documentation neatly supports his logic. Leftist adherents will applaud, while the majority--depicted as perpetrators or dupes of military-based state capitalism--will ignore the book or dismiss it as rhetoric. But Chomsky has a point of view not frequently encountered in the press." --Library Journal
"Closely argued, heavily documented . . . will shake liberals and conservatives alike." ―Publishers Weekly
Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 7, 1928. Son of a Russian emigrant who was a Hebrew scholar, Chomsky was exposed at a young age to the study of language and principles of grammar. During the 1940s, he began developing socialist political leanings through his encounters with the New York Jewish intellectual community. Chomsky received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy. He conducted much of his research at Harvard University. In 1955, he began teaching at MIT, eventually holding the Ferrari P. Ward Chair of Modern Language and Linguistics. Today Chomsky is highly regarded as both one of America's most prominent linguists and most notorious social critics and political activists. His academic reputation began with the publication of Syntactic Structures in 1957. Within a decade, he became known as an outspoken intellectual opponent of the Vietnam War. Chomsky has written many books on the links between language, human creativity, and intelligence, including Language and Mind (1967) and Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use (1985). He also has written dozens of political analyses, including Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), Chronicles of Dissent (1992), and The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many (1993). (Bowker Author Biography) |
