Chomsky

1990-1991: The Gulf War

Noam Chomsky on the 1991 US and UK war with Iraq following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the United Nations Security Council immediately condemned Iraq and imposed severe sanctions on it. Why was the UN response so prompt and so unprecedently firm? The US government-media alliance had a standard answer.

1989-today: The War on Drugs

Noam Chomsky on the 'war' on drugs that Western governments have been allegedly pursuing since 1989. In reality, their response to the drug trade has depended very much on who is doing it...

The war on (certain) drugs

1948-1991: US intervention and war in South East Asia

Noam Chomsky's very brief account of US military, economic and "diplomatic" action in Indochina in the last half of the 20th century

The US wars in Indochina fall into the same general pattern

1940-1989: The Cold War

Noam Chomsky explains the nature of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union before its collapse in 1989.

How the Cold War worked

1986: The Iran-Contra Affair

Chomsky's brief account of the US selling arms to Iran via Israel in order to fund far-right paramilitary contras in Nicaragua.

The major elements of the Iran/contra story were well known long before the 1986 exposures, apart from one fact: that the sale of arms to Iran via Israel and the illegal contra war run out of Colonel Oliver North's White House office were connected.

1970-1987: The contra war in Nicaragua

Noam Chomsky's account of the US-backed “contra” counter-insurgency in Nicaragua against the left-wing government brought to power on the back of a popular mass movement from below.

It wasn't just the events in El Salvador that were ignored by the mainstream US media during the 1970s. In the ten years prior to the overthrow of the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, US television - all networks - devoted exactly one hour to Nicaragua, and that was entirely on the Managua earthquake of 1972.

1944-1989: The coup and US intervention in Guatemala

Noam Chomsky on the US intervention and coup following the 1944 revolution which overthrew Guatemala's brutal dictator.

Making Guatemala a killing field

Guardian withdraws Chomsky interview

The Guardian has withdrawn its recent interview with Noam Chomsky from its website, after their media editor admitted it was "misrepresenting... wrong... unjustified..." and has retracted the misrepresentations made in the interview with an "unreserved apology".

The Guardian published this statement on its website:

Smearing Chomsky - The Guardian in the gutter

On October 31, the Guardian published an interview with Noam Chomsky by Emma Brockes, 'The greatest intellectual?' (The Guardian, October 31, 2005).

Introduction

The article was ostensibly in response to the fact that Chomsky had been voted the world's top public intellectual by Prospect magazine the previous week. Chomsky describes his treatment by the paper as "one of the most dishonest and cowardly performances I recall ever having seen in the media". (Email copied to Media Lens, November 2, 2005)

Chomsky answers Guardian

This is an open letter to a few of the people with whom I had discussed the Guardian interview of 31 October, on the basis of the electronic version, which is all that I had seen.

A response to the Guardian's smears:
http://libcom.org/news/article.php/chomsky-guardian-greatest-intellectual

Someone has just sent me a copy of the printed version, and I now understand why friends in England who wrote me were so outraged.