Making the Future: Occupations, Interventions, Empire and Resistance

by Noam Chomsky

Overview

Taken together, Chomsky's essays present a powerful counter-narrative to official accounts of the major political events of the past four years: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. presidential race, the ascendancy of China, Latin America's leftward turn, the threat of nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, Israel's invasion of Gaza and expansion of settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank, developments in climate change, the world financial crisis, the Arab Spring, the assassination of Osama bin Laden and the Occupy protests. Laced throughout his critiques are expressions of commitment to democracy and the power of popular struggles. "Progressive legislation and social welfare," writes Chomsky, "have been won by popular struggles, not gifts from above. Those struggles follow a cycle of success and setback. They must be waged every day, not just once every four years, always with the goal of creating a genuinely responsive democratic society, from the voting booth to the workplace."

Making the Future is a follow-up to Interventions, published by City Lights in 2007 and banned from Guantánamo Bay by U.S. military censors. Both books are drawn from articles Chomsky has been writing regularly for the New York Times Syndicate, but which go largely ignored by newspapers in the United States. Making the Future offers fierce, accessible, timely, gloves-off political writing by one of America's foremost intellectual and political dissidents.

Making the Future presents more than fifty concise and persuasively argued commentaries on U.S. politics and policies, written between 2007 and 2011.

Noam Chomsky is a world-renowned author, linguist and advocate for democracy. He is the critically acclaimed author of many books, including Hegemony or Survival, Imperial Ambitions, Failed States, Manufacturing Consent and Media Control. He lives in Massachusetts where he is Institute Professor Emeritus in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780872865372
Publisher:	City Lights Books
Publication date:	03/13/2012
Series:	City Lights Open Media
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	612,600
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 7, 1928. He studied linguistics, mathematics and philosophy at the Universityof Pennsylvania. In 1955, he received his Ph.D. from the Universityof Pennsylvania and began teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is Institute Professor Emeritus in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.

During the years 1951 to 1955, Chomsky was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard UniversitySociety of Fellows. While a Junior Fellow he completed his doctoral dissertation entitled, “Transformational Analysis.” The major theoretical viewpoints of the dissertation appeared in the monograph Syntactic Structure, which was published in 1957 and is widely credited with having revolutionized the field of modern linguistics. This formed part of a more extensive work, The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, circulated in mimeograph in 1955. Most of a 1956 version was published in 1975.

In 1961, Chomsky was appointed full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (now the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy) at MIT. From 1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship of Modern Languages and Linguistics. In 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor, a position he held until 2002.

Chomsky is the author of numerous influential political works, including Failed States (Metropolitan Books), Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (Metropolitan Books), 9/11 (Open Media Series/ Seven Stories Press), Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media with Ed Herman (Pantheon), Necessary Illusions (South End Press), Understanding Power (New Press), Interventions (Open Media Series/ City Lights), Hopes and Prospects (Haymarket) and many other titles.

In 1988, Chomsky received the Kyoto Prize in Basic Science, given "to honor those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural and spiritual development of mankind." The prize noted that "Dr. Chomsky’s theoretical system remains an outstanding monument of 20th century science and thought. He can certainly be said to be one of the great academicians and scientists of this century."

Table of Contents

Making The Future
The Unipolar Imperial Moment

By Noam Chomsky

Contents

Introduction

1. Threats, Talks and a Hoped-for Accord with North Korea
April 2, 2007

2. Tortilla Wars
May 9, 2007

3. We Own The World
June 6, 2007

4. Gaza and the Future of a Palestinian-Israeli Peace
July 16, 2007

5. Containing Iran
August 20, 2007

6. Hypocrisies and Hopes in Annapolis
November 8, 2007

7. The Somalia Syndrome
December 17, 2007

8. “News” from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
January 22, 2008

9. In the Campaign, The Unspeakable War
February 28, 2008

10. Would a Democrat Change U.S. Middle East Policy
March 28, 2008

11. Delaying Doomsday: This Century’s Challenges
April 24, 2008

12. Middle East Road Trip
May 29, 2008

13. Iraq Oil: A Deal With The Devil
July 6, 2008

14. Nuclear Threats: All Options Are on the Table
July 31, 2008

15. Georgia and the Neo-con Cold Warriors
September 9, 2008

16. The Campaign and the Financial Crisis
October 5, 2008

17. Challenges for Barack Obama: The Election and the Economy – Part I
November 25, 2008

18. The Legacy of 1989 in Two Hemispheres
December 1, 2009

19. Challenges for Barack Obama: Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan – Part II
December 18, 2008

20. Nightmare in Gaza
January 14, 2009

21. Barack Obama and Israel-Palestine
January 3, 2009

22. Latin America, Defiant
March 8, 2009

23. Down with the Durand Line!
April 1, 2009

24. A Tradition of Torture
May 5, 2009

25. Obama on Israel-Palestine
June 4, 2009

26. A Season of Travesties
July 7, 2009

27. Making War to Bring Peace
July 29, 2009

28. Militarizing Latin America
September 20, 2009

29. War, Peace and Obama’s Nobel
October 26, 2009

30. The Legacy of 1989 in Two Hemispheres
December 1, 2009

31. Presidential “Peacekeeping” in Latin America
December 30, 2009

32. The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Democracy
February 1, 2010

Index

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Chomsky's (Understanding Power) latest collection of commentary focuses on a familiar theme: the perils of American hegemony abroad and the inexorable growth of the American corporate military industrial complex. While studying issues ranging from Iran's nuclear capabilities to the recent financial meltdown to the dubious results of the Honduras election, Chomsky keeps pointing the finger in the same direction-at highly suspect conspiracies of power to perpetuate, by force if necessary, American (i.e. corporate) interests. The consequences will be catastrophic, in Chomsky's view, and his latest is typically full of insightful analysis and a harsh viewpoint that may be problematic for anyone who doesn't share his cynicism of American power. Likewise, his interdisciplinary approach may be helpful for people who are not adept at drawing conclusions about policy, specifically how decisions can be informed by a variety of factors and interests and result in myriad consequences. However, Chomsky's latest is but another variation on a theme and readers who accept his premises might be frustrated by repetition and a lack of solutions. Is it important to get this information out? Absolutely. Will Chomsky convert anyone new to his beliefs with this latest? Probably not.
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Publishers Weekly

"Unwavering political contrarian Noam Chomsky smart-bombs the U.S. military's global Interventions (City Lights). Shock and awe!"—Vanity Fair

" . . . he has emerged as one of the left's most implacable voices, challenging the often hidden structures that lie behind the abuse of power."—Paul V. Griffith, Chapter 16

"Making the Future is an impressive collection of articles shedding light on and challen- ging the current political, economic, and military world order. To make sense of the complex mechanisms at play, Chomsky adopts a fundamentally interdisciplinary approach: he juggles with history, sociology of the media, critical theory, and political philosophy."—Juliana Bidadanure, Global Discourse, 2013

From the Publisher