MIT professor of Linguistics and staunch critic of U.S foreign policy Noam Chomsky has for the past two days begun to update his first web log: Turning the Tide (titled after his 1985 book). The site is hosted by Zmag, a progressive magazine wherein much of Chomsky's political work has been published. According to the site description,"Welcome to Turning the Tide", the "blog will include brief comments on diverse topics of concern in our time." The entries will come from online forums that Chomsky has contributed to, occasional direct submissions to the blog itself, "culled mail", and other sources--"always from Noam Chomsky".
UPDATE: Here is a recent, timely example of the fierce moral indictment in which Noam, through Turning the Tide, engages his readers on a regular basis. It is an excerpt of his latest entry, titled "The Invasion of Iraq".
The invasion of Iraq brought two murderous regimes to an end: the sanctions regime, and the rule of Saddam Hussein. Orders from on high are that we are to ignore the first, on the usual grounds: we are responsible for those crimes, and therefore they must be dispatched deep down the memory hole. But we are not obliged to subject ourselves to the commands of state authority and doctrinal managers.I'm never paid or otherwise compensated for anything I publish here; nor am I in any way affiliated with anyone whose blog has or will ever have the honor of receiving my praise and recommendation. With that said, if you're reading this, please try to set aside some time each week, log on to Turning the Tide, and read what that man has to say. I agree with the NY Times reporter who characterized Chomsky as "arguably the most important intellectual alive".
Every decent person should welcome these two outcomes, and all serious opponents of the war have always done so, though advocates of state violence labor to suppress this fact. The sanctions regime killed hundreds of thousands of people, by conservative estimates. It devastated the civilian society, strengthened the tyrant, and compelled the population to rely on him for mere survival. It's because of these hideous consequences that the highly respected international diplomats who administered the programs, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, resigned in protest at what Halliday called the "genocidal" sanctions regime. Recall that they are the Westerners who knew Iraq best, having access to regular information from a great many investigators in all parts of the country. The sanctions regime was administered by the UN, but everyone understood that its cruel and savage character was dictated by the US and its British subordinate. Ending this regime is certainly a very positive aspect of the invasion, and a cause for gratification. But of course that could have been done, and sanctions could have been directed to weapons programs instead, without an invasion. So this beneficial consequence, doubtless greatly welcomed by Iraqis, provides no justification for the invasion.
There is reason to believe -- as Halliday and von Sponeck had argued -- that if the vicious sanctions regime had been ended the population of Iraq would have been able to send Saddam Hussein to the same fate as other murderous gangsters supported by the US and UK: Ceausescu, Suharto, Marcos, Duvalier, Chun, Mobutu.... -- quite a rogue's gallery, some of them easily comparable to Saddam, to which new names are being added daily by the same Western leaders, whose values are unchanged. If so, both murderous regimes could have been ended without invasion. Postwar inquiries, such as David Kay's, add weight to these beliefs by revealing how shaky Saddam's control of the country was in the last few years.
...more.
