Rating: 
Summary: Been There, Done That...
Review: Chomsky's 9-11, rushed into print after September 11, was a badly
conceived and often embarassingly flawed book. The newer POWER AND TERROR continues this rush to mediocrity. A collection of interviews and lecture Q&A sessions, the same tedious ramblings are continued here. It's taking on the status of shtick. The book is not only redundant in and of itself, but redundant to 9-11, which was itself annoyingly redundant. Thus, it is appropriate for the reader to begin to feel a bit abused after a while. 9-11's only real distinction was how little it talked about September 11th, beside the half-hearted caveat that it was a "terrible atrocity" (but understandable, in Chomsky's eyes). Instead, September 11 was just instrumental for him to once again ramble ad nauseum about some article he read which obviously validates everything he then dubiously concludes from it, or about a certain reprehensible U.S. policy that nevertheless has no direct bearing on the topic, etc. Folks, we've been there, done that; while much of it can be agreed with or sympathized with, that shouldn't make us susceptible to Chomsky's often manipulative analogical and correlative tactics unless: (1) we're reading this for self-validation, rather than to learn anything; and (2) we're so misinformed about world events that we confuse Chomsky's exausted repetoire as synonymous with information. Most people immediately see this smokescreen for what it is, which is the marginalization of the attacks on the U.S., and their subordination to Chomsky's increasingly archaic political agenda. Now, Chomsky likes it when people call him an apologist, which he is, but he is ambiguous enough about it that he can dodge the issue and try and paint his critics as irrational. In POWER AND TERROR he tries to draw an analogy between his views and some Wall Street Journal piece in a disingenuous argument that his critique is moderate common sense. Don't be taken in by these dodgy attempts to establish credibility. What makes Chomsky's discussions of terrorism so arguably apologistic is both the absence of any serious discussion on religious fundamentalism, beyond the glib and patronizing idea that America created it, and his tendency to discuss human suffering in arithmetic terms. Thus we see him trotting out dubious and self-serving statistics of past atrocities on the part of the "West," universalized as a singular personality for his convenience, to help us "understand" why the U.S. is the determining, singular-cause of suffering in the world, blah blah blah. Sure, 3000 Americans died in a heinous suicide attack by religious zealots whose object is to release a wave of nihilism-cum-religion on the poor and helpless, but gosh since Vietnam was a dirty, vile war we had it coming, and lots more people died then, so there. The implicit lesson, never courageously made explicit, is that Americans are ignorant imbeciles since they don't swallow Chomsky's correlations, and capitulation and masochism is the surest way for the world to become safely filled with sane people, like all those nice folks in Boulder, Cambridge, and Berkley. You'll read lots of hand-wringing about Turkey and the Kurds, but this ignores the fact that Kurds are about the most pro-America people on the planet besides the Marines. Chomsky's monomania is telling, and predictable. The contradictions he wraps himself in are funny in their own right. Based on his answers in the first interview, its clear he has begun to believe the mythology that has been built around him. That is the problem when you surround yourself with sycophants for interviewers and supplicants for audiences; no criticality is introduced into the discourse, and a self-affirming feedback loop is set up that has obviously atrophied into the incoherent and barely readable books he is putting out nowadays. Chomsky's supposed challenge to the orthodoxy is increasingly ridiculed because it is itself so limited by its own orthodoxy. One questioner asked Chomsky whether he was guilty of oversimplification, which prompted some self-righteous rant on the British Empire or something. It's not that Chomsky is guilty of simplification, which can be a useful tool as an entryway to increasingly complex awareness. Instead, Chomsky's problem is superficiality, which allows him to selectively use 'x'-event to validate his worldview as consistent, ignore 'y'-event, and distort anything else through dubious correlation-as-cause arguments. The problem is not simplicity, it is insubstantiality. Here one will also find the same sanctimonious ramblings about how the mainstream media ignores him. This is rote in the Chomsky Mythology. However, to sell the book positive comments about it from corporate lackeys like the NYTimes, Variety, and the New York Daily are included. Chomskyites want it both ways: credibility from being ignored and marginalized, and credibility from being noticed and significant. The man has published in the Carnegie Foundation's "Foreign Policy" for crying out loud, which is about as Establishment as you can get. People turning to Chomsky for an understanding of terrorism and world dynamics are being shortchanged. POWER AND TERROR is a badly constructed, barely coherent book that undermines, rather than elucidates, understanding of violent religious ideologies and their opposition to the United States. Don't be satisfied with Chomsky's tired two-dimensionality. While U.S. policy has miserably contributed to the level of violence in the world, "blowback" is not the simple, paint-by-numbers explanation many are searching for. Anyone trotting out mono-causal explanations ought to be immediately suspect, whether its Bush's "They hate freedom," or Chomsky's "It's just a matter of
sanity." One would be better off with serious scholarship about fundamentalist ideologies like Karen Armstrong's THE BATTLE FOR GOD, or Juergenmeyer's THE MIND OF TERROR. These kinds of books address terrorism seriously, as part of the mindset of thinking, intelligent and ruthless people with sophisticated religious ideologies who are not just inconveniences for Chomsky's shallow, deterministic worldview.
Rating: 
Summary: A Little More Needed
Review: I have to admit that I both agreed with the authors overall stance of the war and many of his views on how America should use its power in the world. I also tend to fall a little left of the mainstream so with all these factors I should have loved this book - right? Well to my amazement I did not love the book and can just barley say with a straight face that I enjoyed it. First off this was not a well thought out book but a bunch of second run speeches and some interviews. I would image that the editor spent more time putting the bits together then the author did in even thinking about what should go in the book. Overall it just came off to me as a money grab. Again I agreed with a number of the points, or the points that were not way over the top. What I found was that the author would make some well thought out comments and then at the end of the section trough in some kind of off the deep end comment that made me want to discount all the valid points. These are the type of comments that are probably not that well thought out that give this author a less then stellar name. Overall the book was average and the most lasting impression it left with me is that I probably will not buy another one of his works.
Rating: 
Summary: Same good stuff
Review: I would have given this book 5 stars but I was hoping for a little more direct discussion on Afghanistan and Iraq. Still a great book. Anyone who thinks this book was a "rushed" effort to capitalize on current events does not know Chomsky and also dosen't realize that he didn't really write the book. The book is a collection of lectures and discussions that he has given in the past two years. Chomsky does not waste his time making fun of all of his detractors like so many other liberal and conservative writers. He is not out to write the next NY Times best seller. Let the Ann Coulters and Al Frankens of the world have their spats. Meanwhile, Chomsky is constantly reading and writing and talking and putting out little books whose conclusions are grounded in extensive research and common sense. Do you really care about the people who died on September 11th?? Or was it just so spectacularly horrible that you can't see or think straight anymore? Do you honestly want terrorism to stop?? If so then start reading this book. All the baggage screenings, roaming warrants and "precision" bombing of poor, thirld world countries is not going to stop terrorism. The first step that Americans need to take to stop terrorism is to stop sponsoring it all over the world. Read Chomsky and then start looking things up on your own. It's all there for you to find...Colombia, Nicaragua, Palestine, Turkey, Korea, Bosnia, Russia, Cuba, Vietnam (I'll leave US atrocities in Japan off the list since we were "at war"). Remember that evil begets evil. What it really boils down to though is this question: Do you value human life? Based on the current state of things in the world today I would venture to say that most Americans don't. We value our own lives, but are not too concerned about the lives' of others. Or maybe we only care about HOW people die. Are we angered more when we see a human instantly vaporized in a fiery explosion than slowly starve to death of hunger? Does it sadden us more to see a mother wail in English over the death of her son than a mother grieving in Arabic or Spanish? If you don't care that much about other people dying in the world that's OK with me. We all have our own priorities and struggles. Just as long as you realize that hundreds of people all over the world die every day so that we can live the way we do in this country. If that dosen't bother you then that's also fine. It actually doesn't bother me too much. I love living the way we do. It's tons of fun. Just don't go around waving the American flag and thinking that people sit around waiting to blow themselves up because they are so angry that we have strip clubs, fast food, SUV's and are the "brightest beacon of freedom in the world." If you believe that then you are just as fanatical as the a@#holes that committed the crimes of September 11th.
Rating:
Summary: Short Discussions with Questions and Answers
Review: If you cannot approach his writing with an open mind, do not read the book. If you can the truth is depressing. This is a small book, and it is not really a book so I am giving it 3 stars - and that is not a reflection of his arguments or the merits of the contents - but rather it is more or less just transcripts of his talks and the contents reflect his other longer books. Still it is a good read and I would recommend buying and reading. One always learns something new in each of his books. It is a collection of three talks, i.e.: an interview by a Japan based film maker, a talk at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, a talk in Palo Alto at a hotel, plus questions and answers from the talk plus a talk in Berkeley all over a short time in the spring of 2002. Chomsky repeats and expands on his themes that the US has adopted a policy of force to solve problems in a way that simply is in the short term interest of solely the US and at the expense of other peoples and countries. The UN is used as a tool as needed and other peoples are expendable and of little consequence (such as the millions of Vietnamese killed or many in central America) unless they hold power or resources. The US has supported dictators and suppressive regimes that in the longer term breed hostilities against the US by their citizens - including Saudi Arabia - hence breeding the current stock of Jihad fighters against the US. People that help the US are given the most support. For example Israel holds power, it has abundant trained human resources, and can act as an extension of US military power in the Middle East. So it and Turkey are important while other groups such as the Palestinians are of little consequence. The "Peace Process" is to maintain a status quo in the region. The "goals" of the US advanced peace process are in fact is not nearly as equitable or humane as say South Africa during the worst years of apartheid, and in fact fall short of what South Africa was advocating prior to the Mandela democratic revolution. Mandela incidentally advocated a democratic South Africa and was branded as a dangerous terrorist by the USA. He repeats his arguments and draws parallels between Japan and Germany in the 1930's and the US now in that all three used propaganda themes that they were "liberating" or being benevolent or bringing civilization to the people that they conquered by military force - as internal justifications for military actions. The arguments are excellent and for the most part he is 100% right but remains a small voice in a sea of mindless patriotic fervor and support of military power as opposed to international law and the concept of all peoples being subjected to equal justice, a democratic ideal of the "founding fathers" that has long since been abandoned. Jack in Toronto
Rating:
Summary: A psychic helps the FBI and the Victims Go to the Light -
Review: If you have ever wondered about people who die quickly - if they "go to the light" or wait around as ghosts for a while, and how we can help them transition, you may want to read Tiffany Snow's Psychic Gifts in the Christian Life - Tools to Connect. She has a personal experience in her book about 9-11, and how she ended up out-of-body to help 5 people on the plane transition successfully. She explains that victims who die quickly are often in shock, and don't really know that they are dead - they think "the angel and relatives that show up to escort them, are the dream, and not the reality." During her time of "reliving and relieving" the last few moments before impact with each of the five, she was able to see the terrorists, what they were wearing and doing, etc, and the next day sent sketches and information to the FBI...and their unexpected, positive response. Much good is in this book about "the other side," and I just wanted to pass on the info, it was interesting to me, and comforting, and especially for the victim's families, might fill in a few of the gaps.
Rating: 
Summary: A Look From the Other Side
Review: Noam Chomsky, a well-known political thinker and activist, puts forth his ideas on the problem of terrorism. He doesn't defend the terrorists of 9-11, but he does say that there is cause and effect at work here. According to his belief, he states that the United States has been one of the biggest terror states in it's support of dictators and repressive regimes throughout the world. One such example is Turkey. Turkey is executing a program to destroy the culture of the Kurds. Chomsky insists that this is done with the knowledge and support of the U.S. government. Also he puts forth the repression of the Palestinians in Israel and the farmland destruction in Columbia as other prime cases in which the U.S. in involved in terror. I thought one of the most interesting points made in this book is that Saddam was made by the Bush family. All throughout the 1980's, Saddam was the U.S. pet to defend against a supposedly dangerous Iran. During this time, he used poison gas on the Kurds. The Republican administration then in power said nothing about it at all. It's so ironic that the current Bush keeps bringing up the point of gas attacks against the Kurds, when it was an American supported and supplied Saddam who did it, and at the time it wasn't considered worth mentioning. It only got brought up after Saddam refused to play the game. It's ironic that our worst enemies are our own creations. I found this book to be very insightful. As some of the negative reviews have said, this is not really Chomsky's book, but edited together from various speeches and interviews that he has done. Even though this is the case, I think it is very readable, and it contains a lot of information that is useful and thought-provoking. Check it out.
Rating:
Summary: A Look From the Other Side
Review: Noam Chomsky, a well-known political thinker and activist, puts forth his ideas on the problem of terrorism. He doesn't defend the terrorists of 9-11, but he does say that there is cause and effect at work here. According to his belief, he states that the United States has been one of the biggest terror states in it's support of dictators and repressive regimes throughout the world. One such example is Turkey. Turkey is executing a program to destroy the culture of the Kurds. Chomsky insists that this is done with the knowledge and support of the U.S. government. Also he puts forth the repression of the Palestinians in Israel and the farmland destruction in Columbia as other prime cases in which the U.S. in involved in terror. I thought one of the most interesting points made in this book is that Saddam was made by the Bush family. All throughout the 1980's, Saddam was the U.S. pet to defend against a supposedly dangerous Iran. During this time, he used poison gas on the Kurds. The Republican administration then in power said nothing about it at all. It's so ironic that the current Bush keeps bringing up the point of gas attacks against the Kurds, when it was an American supported and supplied Saddam who did it, and at the time it wasn't considered worth mentioning. It only got brought up after Saddam refused to play the game. It's ironic that our worst enemies are our own creations. I found this book to be very insightful. As some of the negative reviews have said, this is not really Chomsky's book, but edited together from various speeches and interviews that he has done. Even though this is the case, I think it is very readable, and it contains a lot of information that is useful and thought-provoking. Check it out.
Rating:
Summary: Noam Chomsky: Common Sense for Our Times
Review: Power and Terror is a brief, but packed overview of U.S. and world power politics. Once again, Chomsky highlights the major issues and struggles of our times, referencing official sources, bringing out historical trends and applying massive amounts of common sense to cut through the rhetoric and the false dichotomies that so often pass for official debate. This is no holds barred classic Chomsky, an especially important contribution to the literature of the anti-war movement at this time. I consider this book to be much more detailed and better organized and more cohesive than "9-11." If you know who Noam Chomsky is, you don't need me to explain his politics here. If you have not yet read Noam Chomsky, there is no better place to start than with this book.
Rating:
Summary: "Why do they hate us, when we're so good?"
Review: The book is worth reading just for the one chapter whose title I've mentioned above. There are dozens of books out which mindlessly repeat George W. Bush's absurd view that 9/11 happened because Muslims "hate the freedoms" of the West. Chomsky points out that the real reason for anti-US emotion is its corporate-interest led foreign policy, which has propped up the world's most awful dictators and despots (including Saddam Hussein, the Taliban and the Saudi royal family) whenever it has suited US companies and their need for cheap oil.
Rating:
Summary: "Why do they hate us, when we're so good?"
Review: The book is worth reading just for the one chapter whose title I've mentioned above. There are dozens of books out which mindlessly repeat George W. Bush's absurd view that 9/11 happened because Muslims "hate the freedoms" of the West. Chomsky points out that the real reason for anti-US emotion is its corporate-interest led foreign policy, which has propped up the world's most awful dictators and despots (including Saddam Hussein, the Taliban and the Saudi royal family) whenever it has suited US companies and their need for cheap oil.
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