Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World

by Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian

Overview

In this first collection of interviews since the bestselling 9-11, our foremost intellectual activist examines crucial new questions of U.S. foreign policy

Timely, urgent, and powerfully elucidating, this important volume of previously unpublished interviews conducted by award-winning radio journalist David Barsamian features Noam Chomsky discussing America’s policies in an increasingly unstable world. With his famous insight, lucidity, and redoubtable grasp of history, Chomsky offers his views on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the doctrine of “preemptive” strikes against so-called rogue states, and the prospects of the second Bush administration, warning of the growing threat to international peace posed by the U.S. drive for domination. In his inimitable style, Chomsky also dissects the propaganda system that fabricates a mythic past and airbrushes inconvenient facts out of history.

Barsamian, recipient of the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, has conducted more interviews and radio broadcasts with Chomsky than has any other journalist. Enriched by their unique rapport, Imperial Ambitions explores topics Chomsky has never before discussed, among them the 2004 presidential campaign and election, the future of Social Security, and the increasing threat, including devastating weather patterns, of global warming. The result is an illuminating dialogue with one of the leading thinkers of our time—and a startling picture of the turbulent times in which we live.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429980814
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/01/2010
Series:	American Empire Project
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Noam Chomsky is the author of numerous bestselling political works, from American Power and the New Mandarins in the 1960s to Hegemony or Survival in 2003. A professor of linguistics and philosophy at MIT, he is widely credited with having revolutionized modern linguistics. He lives outside Boston, Massachusetts.

David Barsamian, founder and director of the award-winning and widely syndicated weekly show Alternative Radio, has authored several books of interviews with leading political thinkers, including Arundhati Roy, Howard Zinn, Edward Said, and especially Noam Chomsky. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Read an Excerpt

AEP: Imperial Ambitions

Conversations on the Post-9/11 World

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By Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian

Henry Holt and Co.

Copyright © 2010 Noam Chomsky
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-8081-4

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“America has formal democratic institutions, but they barely function. So it doesn’t matter if, say, 80 percent of the population thinks we should have some kind of national health-care system. It doesn’t even matter if the large majority regards this as a moral value. When commentators rave on about “moral values,” they’re talking about gay marriage, not the fact that decent health care for everyone is part of people’s moral values. And the reason those commentators don’t care is that it’s not their interest. They’re like me. They get fine health care. So it’s not an issue for them. But for the large majority of the population, it’s a serous issue, and it’s becoming even more so. When Medicaid is destroyed, as it probably will be, that’s going to really harm people. But people are unorganized: they’re not in unions, they’re not in political associations, there are no political parties in which they participate. They’re isolated. The genius of American politics has been to marginalize and isolate the population so it can’t act in its collective interest.”


(Continues...)

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Excerpted from AEP: Imperial Ambitions by Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian. Copyright © 2010 Noam Chomsky. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Co..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

If, for reasons of chance, or circumstance, (or sloth), you have to pick just one book on the subject of the American Empire, I'd say pick this one. It's the Full Monty. It's Chomsky at his best . . . necessary reading.” —Arundhati Roy

“How did we ever get to be an empire? The writings of Noam Chomsky—America's most useful citizen—are the best answer to that question.” —The Boston Globe

“Unique insight into Chomsky's decades of penetrating analyses, drawn together . . . by a brilliant radio interviewer, David Barsamian.” —Ben Bagdikian, winner of the Pulitzer Prize on Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky

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