“Impressions of Gaza”

On Iran, Iraq, and the Rest of the World, interview with Michael Shank, Foreign Policy in Focus (February 16, 2007). An excerpt:

I presume part of the reason for the U.S.--Israel invasion of Lebanon in July--and it is US-Israeli, the Lebanese are correct in calling it that--part of the reason I suppose was that Hezbollah is considered a deterrent to a potential U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran. It had a deterrent capacity, i.e. rockets. And the goal I presume was to wipe out the deterrent so as to free up the United States and Israel for an eventual attack on Iran. That's at least part of the reason. The official reason given for the invasion can't be taken seriously for a moment. That's the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of a couple others. For decades Israel has been capturing, and kidnapping Lebanese and Palestinian refugees on the high seas, from Cyprus to Lebanon, killing them in Lebanon, bringing them to Israel, holding them as hostages. It's been going on for decades, has anybody called for an invasion of Israel?

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20 Years of Propaganda? Critical Discussions & Evidence on the Ongoing Relevance of the Herman & Chomsky Propaganda Model, University of Windsor Communication Studies (May 15-17, 2007). Conference overview:

The year 2008 will mark the 20th Anniversary of the publishing of the book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Communication (Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Pantheon, 1988). In this book, the authors (both of whom will be attending/participating in this conference) put forth a model, the Propaganda Model (PM), as a way of understanding the way our mass media system interrelates with our economy, political system, and society in general. Since putting forth their propaganda model, there have been both praise and criticism of this model, and there have also been many changes and technological advances in our entire communication and media landscape. This May 2007 conference and Spring 2008 publication (of an edited scholarly collection inspired by the conference) will, through vigorous debate/discussion and fresh insight, make great strides in critically analyzing (revising/updating) the ongoing relevance of the Herman/Chomsky Propaganda Model as a useful conceptualization for understanding 21st century media and society.

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Stop, Noam, by Dennis Perrin, Red State Son (February 7, 2006). An excerpt:

As you know, I've spent more than my fair share of personal time with Noam Chomsky. His influence on me, on how I read a newspaper, watch the news, assess politicos and ideologues, is indelible and deeply cherished. I've disagreed with him, and in darker moments resented and mocked his belief in essential human goodness, but my respect and admiration for him outweighs any petty feelings I may have held. Noam is simply one of the finest people I've ever met or gotten to know.

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Chomsky Calls for Review of MIT Professor's Case. The Boston Globe (February 5, 2007). An excerpt:

Noam Chomsky and 10 other professors at MIT are circulating a letter calling for an examination of the process that denied tenure to African-American stem cell scientist James L. Sherley, who began a hunger strike today.

UPDATE: To bypass mandatory free registration, try BugMeNot (firefox extension).

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Five Minutes with Noam Chomsky, interview with Niral Shah, CampusProgress.org (February 1, 2007). An excerpt:

Activism is much higher than it was in the '60s. You hear the opposite. People say, "Well how come we don't have a 1960s style anti-war movement," [but] people have completely forgotten that antiwar protest was so limited in the '60s. Most people don't even know that John F. Kennedy attacked South Vietnam outright in 1962. That was war, but there was no protest. You could barely get three people in a room to talk about it. It was years before a protest developed. In October 1965, when there were already hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in South Vietnam and the country had been destroyed, we had the first national day of protest in Boston. It was broken up by counter protests, and to the applause of liberal press.

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