Professor Noam Chomsky's Forum Lecture, "What is Language and Why Does It Matter" from the 2013 Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute at the University of Michigan.
Operation Menu was the codename of a covert United States Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombing campaign conducted in eastern Cambodia and Laos from 18 March 1969 until 26 May 1970, during the Vietnam War. The targets of these attacks were sanctuaries and Base Areas of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and forces of the Viet Cong, which utilized them for resupply, training, and resting between campaigns across the border in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). The effects of the bombing campaign are disputed by historians.
An official United States Air Force record of US bombing activity over Indochina from 1964 to 1973 was declassified by US president Bill Clinton in 2000. The report gives details of the extent of the bombing of Cambodia, as well as of Laos and Vietnam. According to the data, the Air Force began bombing the rural regions of Cambodia along its South Vietnam border in 1965 under the Johnson administration. This was four years earlier than previously believed. The Menu bombings were an escalation of these air attacks. Nixon authorized the use of long-range B-52 bombers to carpet bomb the region.
Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher,[8][9] cognitive scientist, logician,[10][11] historian, political critic, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years.[12] In addition to his work in linguistics, he has written on war, politics, and mass media, and is the author of over 100 books.[13] According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall.[14][15][16][17] He has been described as a prominent cultural figure, and he was voted the "world's top public intellectual" in a 2005 poll.[18][19]
Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics"[20][21] and a major figure of analytic philosophy.[8] His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.[22][23] He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky--Schützenberger theorem.
After the publication of his first books on linguistics, Chomsky became a prominent critic of the Vietnam War, and since then has continued to publish books of political criticism. He has become well known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy,[24] state capitalism[25][26] and the mainstream news media. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media. He describes his views as "fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism",[27] and often identifies with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
Published on 4 May 2013
Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies is a 1989 book by US academic Noam Chomsky concerning political power using propaganda to distort and distract from major issues to maintain confusion and complicity, preventing real democracy from becoming effective. The title of this book borrows a phrase from the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr.
Nearly the entire first half of the book is based on Chomsky's five 1988 Massey Lectures on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio from November 1988 and extends his and Edward S. Herman's propaganda model to a variety of new situations. The remaining appendices address criticisms of the work and provide additional detail.
As a genre of political thought, parallels exist between Niebuhr's "necessary illusions" and the "noble lies" of Leo Strauss, "public relations" of Edward Bernays and "myth making" of Niccolò Machiavelli. Likewise, Chomsky's analyses in Necessary Illusions represent a refocus on the use of these patterns of power, which he implies to underscore the failure of populations - particularly in a representative democracy - to learn from history in this regard.
Contents Democracy and the Media Containing the Enemy The Bounds of the Expressible Adjuncts of Government The Utility of Interpretations
Appendix I The Propaganda Model: Some Methodological Considerations On Critical Balance
Appendix II The Containment Doctrine The Red Scare
Appendix III The Sanctity of Borders
Appendix IV The Craft of "Historical Engineering" The Obligation of Silence The Summits The Media and International Opinion Demolishing the Accords
Appendix V The US and Costa Rican Democracy "The Evil Scourge of Terrorism" Hereos and Devils The "Peace Process" in the Middle East The Best Defense La Prensa and its Colleagues "The Courage to Preserve Civil Liberties" The Continuing Struggle
See also John Taylor Gatto The Underground History of American Education Adam Curtis Century of the Self