Show threadbsmall2Dec 17
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> Journalist and friend Alexander Cockburn emphasized Chomsky’s provision of a coherent “big picture” about politics, “buttressed by the data of a thousand smaller pictures and discrete theaters of conflict, struggle and oppression,” all the product of his extraordinary responsiveness to injustice. “Chomsky feels the abuses, cruelty and hypocrisies of power more than anyone,” wrote Cockburn. “It’s a state of continual alertness.”
#CockburnOnChomsky #AlexanderCockburn #NoamChomsky
Show threadbsmall2Sep 24, 2025

> Alexander Cockburn used to quip that the two greatest disasters to befall the United States [Empire] in the 20th century both happened to be on December 7th: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Noam Chomsky’s birth in Philadelphia.

https://www.alternativeradio.org/products/chon245/

#ChomskyDay #NoamChomskyDay #AlexanderCockburn #PearlHarborDay #PearlHarborColonyBase

Chomsky 87th Birthday Interview — Alternative Radio

The latest in the historic series of Chomsky-Barsamian interviews. Alexander Cockburn used to quip that the two greatest disasters to befall the United States in the 20th century both happened to be on December 7th: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Noam Chomsky’s birth in Philadelphia. In this exclusive birthday interview, Chomsky reveals his…

Alternative Radio
Brian SmallJun 27, 2023

.> I don’t mean to equate a Vietnamese villager to Vaclav Havel. For one thing, I doubt that the former would have had the supreme hypocrisy and audacity to clothe his praise for the defenders of freedom with gushing about responsibility for the human race. It’s also unnecessary to point out to the half a dozen or so sane people who remain that in comparison to the conditions imposed by US tyranny and violence, East Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise. Furthermore, one can easily understand why an oppressed Third World victim would have little access to any information (or would care little about anything) beyond the narrow struggle for survival against a terrorist superpower and its clients. And the Pravda hack, unlike his US clones, would have faced a harsh response if he told the obvious truths. So by every conceivable standard, the performance of Havel, Congress, the media, and (we may safely predict, without what will soon appear) the Western intellectual community at large are on a moral and intellectual level that is vastly below that of Third World peasants and Stalinist hacks — not an unusual discovery. - https://chomsky.info/19900301/

#NoamChomsky in a letter to #AlexanderCockburn writes about #VaclavHavel and #ElSalvador, how #TheColdWar #TheInvasionOfVietnam and #JesuitPriests like #IgnacioEllacuria expose the level of #WesternIntellectuals to be that of #StalinistHacks...

On Vaclav Havel Speech

The Noam Chomsky Website.

bs2Mar 3, 2022
'... there’s a saying that NATO exists to deal with the instability that its own existence creates... it’s a horrible tragedy of the — you know, all these refugees, I mean, and as I’m glad you pointed out, in sharp contrast to the way people from the Middle East and, you know, nonwhite or, what have you, non-European refugees have been treated by the Poles and the EU generally.' https://www.democracynow.org/2022/3/1/nato_expansion_ukraine_russia_crisis
#AlexanderCockburn #JuanGonzalez #DemocracyNow #Ukraine #Poland #EU #NATO #refugees #racism
Andrew Cockburn & Timothy Snyder on Ukraine, Russia & NATO Expansion

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, veteran journalist Andrew Cockburn and Yale historian Timothy Snyder discuss the history of the region and what role NATO’s expansion played in the current crisis. Cockburn says the United States and its allies broke promises made in the 1990s not to expand the military alliance into Eastern Europe, setting the stage for an eventual confrontation. “What Putin has done is absolutely disgraceful, but it’s kind of easy to understand. There has been sustained efforts to push NATO forward,” he says. But Snyder says the focus on NATO ignores the agency of leaders in Ukraine and elsewhere who have the right to seek their own arrangements. “It’s very important to remember that the world isn’t just about Washington and Moscow. It’s also about other sovereign states and other peoples who can express their desires and have their own foreign policies,” says Snyder.

Democracy Now!
bs2Mar 2, 2022
"... it took three weeks for the U.S. and British to reach Baghdad, and most of the time they were advancing across desert. But this looks like a sort of — really like a lighting blitzkrieg in comparison. And, obviously, it’s also correct, as you say, that the Russians, Putin didn’t really — didn’t want to sort of permanently alienate the Ukrainian population..."
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/3/1/nato_expansion_ukraine_russia_crisis
#invasion of #Iraq and #Ukraine #AlexanderCockburn #JuanGonzalez #DN! #democracynow
Andrew Cockburn & Timothy Snyder on Ukraine, Russia & NATO Expansion

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, veteran journalist Andrew Cockburn and Yale historian Timothy Snyder discuss the history of the region and what role NATO’s expansion played in the current crisis. Cockburn says the United States and its allies broke promises made in the 1990s not to expand the military alliance into Eastern Europe, setting the stage for an eventual confrontation. “What Putin has done is absolutely disgraceful, but it’s kind of easy to understand. There has been sustained efforts to push NATO forward,” he says. But Snyder says the focus on NATO ignores the agency of leaders in Ukraine and elsewhere who have the right to seek their own arrangements. “It’s very important to remember that the world isn’t just about Washington and Moscow. It’s also about other sovereign states and other peoples who can express their desires and have their own foreign policies,” says Snyder.

Democracy Now!