What I’ve learned from Noam Chomsky-‘he paid the price for his support of the Palestinians’

As news of Noam Chomsky’s failing health makes the rounds, I share some learnings from my interactions with a trailblazing public intellectual whose moral compass has impacted the world

from thefreeonline on 21/6/24 by Beena Sarwar at Sapan News – The Free is now on Telegram: t.me/thefreeonline

***Noam Chomsky in Pakistan, 2001. Screenshot from VPRO news report by Beena Sarwar.***

I once asked Noam Chomsky how he manages to remember so many facts and figures and hold audience attention.

He replied that he didn’t convey any new information, that his talks are based on materials already in the public domain, and that he simply joins the dots – providing context – and repeats the information consistently and in different ways.

His response was typical of his humility as well as his courtesy towards a much younger person to whom he owed nothing.

News of Chomsky’s ill health prompts Outpouring of Gratitude for ‘Lion of the Left’ Noam Chomsky is hospitalized in Brazil following a stroke

Chomsky teaches us that it is not necessary to be loud and sensationalist in order to be heard. This, together with the clear and courageous moral compass he has provided over decades, is a most valuable lesson.

The best way we can pay tribute to Noam Chomsky is by following his example: Stand firm, keep calm, keep speaking out, put information in context, and keep doing our work.

Noam Chomsky was already a legend when I first met him over two decades ago in December 2001 when he visited Pakistan for the inaugural Eqbal Ahmad Memorial lecture series.

Dr Eqbal Ahmad had been an anti-Vietnam War activist in the USA in the 1960s. He later taught at Hampshire College and was among Chomsky’s circle of friends, which included other intellectual giants and legendary figures like Howard Zinn and Edward Said.

52,961 views Premiered on 7 Dec 2020 #NOAMCHOMSKY
A Conversation with NOAM CHOMSKY “Bullet dodged or merely delayed: Reflections on the future of democracy, nuclear threat and the looming environmental catastrophe in a post-Trumpian world,»

He had returned to Pakistan after the death of Gen. Ziaul Haq in 1988 and was prominent in the peace and anti-nuclear weapons movements in the region. He passed away in May 1999, on the first anniversary of India’s nuclear test, that Pakistan had followed.

Confronting empire

In November 2001, Chomsky did a lecture series in India. Another fellow-traveller, the well-known physics professor and activist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, piggy-backed on that to invite Chomsky to Pakistan for the Eqbal Ahmad Memorial lecture series. These events were organised months earlier, and Pervez was initially worried about whether there would be an audience.

Then the 11 September 2001 attacks in the USA took place. Chomsky cut through America’s outrage to point out that these attacks were historic not for their scale but because of where they took place, mainland America, which had not been attacked before.

Also, this was not the first, but “the second 9/11”. The earlier, “far more serious” 9/11 was the one in 1973, the violent coup against the elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile.

Many in America were uncomfortable with his thoughts but in progressive circles here and around the world, his popularity soared.

I had just returned to Pakistan from London after doing an MA in TV Documentary and wanted to document Chomsky’s visit to Pakistan for an international audience. Pervez agreed to let me record the series, and my Dutch friend Babette Niemel, then at VPRO Television in Holland, fought to get it approved for their ‘Seven Days’ video diary series.

Needing some B-roll, casual footage for the documentary, I had asked the organisers if I could follow Chomsky. They agreed to let me tag along to his room at the Avari Hotel in Lahore with cameraperson Mariam Pasha to escort him to the talk.

Noam Chomsky and his wife Carol had arrived in Pakistan to a celebrity welcome that discomfited them. Now, Chomsky politely conveyed that we were welcome to film his public events but that he and Carol were uncomfortable being followed by the camera.

Noam Chomsky: My Visit to Gaza, the World’s Largest Open Air Prison… – Truthout– November 9, 2012– «A defenseless civilian population, trapped, was subjected to relentless attack by one of the world’s most advanced military systems, reliant on U.S. arms and protected by U.S. diplomacy».

We put our equipment away until he entered the venue where he was speaking. He walked through the packed hall to a standing ovation. A few days later, he addressed a larger audience at another packed venue, an indoor stadium in Islamabad.

Everything in Our Civilization Is Stacked To Keep Us Believing Propaganda- Caitlin Johnstone

The coming years will decide whether humanity remains trapped in its ancient animal conditioning, or transcends into a conscious species.

from thefreeonline on 21/6/24 By Caitlin Johnstone, comics by The Oatmeal via Der Friedensstifter (The Free now on Telegram: t.me/thefreeonline)

It’s not so much that people buy into the mainstream propaganda worldview because humans are dumb, or because humans are selfish. Primarily, people buy into the mainstream propaganda worldview because humans are lazy..

By this I don’t mean to say that people don’t work hard enough or don’t stay busy enough; humans sleep less than any other primate on earth, and if anything the world would probably be better off if our species chilled out a bit.

When I say people are lazy, I mean we are lazy thinkers. And we are lazy thinkers for reasons that aren’t really our fault.

The human brain is wired to select for cognitive ease, which means we tend to favor pathways of thought which require less mental strain in order to conserve energy — probably because our evolutionary ancestors needed all their mental energy for important stuff like finding food and avoiding saber-toothed tigers.

comics by The Oatmeal

If that wasn’t bad enough, our minds are also wired to preserve our existing worldview, so that the perspectives we form from our lazy preference for cognitive ease are held in place, and evidence which contradicts them will often be rejected. This is why facts don’t tend to change people’s minds.

This lazy tendency to select for cognitive ease and defend the worldviews we construct as a result of that tendency is what gives rise to confirmation bias, because believing things which confirm our preexisting ideas about the world is easier than believing things which would blow our worldview apart.

Why NATO Weapons Are Way Overpriced- and How the US spends half its Income on War –

The U.S. Government alone spends annually over $1.5 trillion on its military but hides much of that spending…

from thefreeonline on 20/6/ 2024 by Eric Zuesse at Eric’s Substack — (The Free on Telegram: t.me/thefreeonline

The war in Ukraine is being fought on NATO’s (the U.S.) side with NATO weapons and ammunition, and on Russia’s side with Russian weapons and ammunition.
The majority of commentators say that, thus far, Russia has the advantage.
No one is blaming Ukraine’s soldiers for this.
On the NATO side, there is silence about whether its weaponry and ammunition are performing less effectively than Russia’s weaponry and ammunition — which cost far less.

The U.S. Government alone spends annually over $1.5 trillion on its military but hides much of that spending by paying for it in other federal Departments than the “Defense Department” so that the public won’t know that over half of all spending that the U.S. Government (President and Congress) authorize each year goes actually to its military —

Only less than half of it goes to pay for education, healthcare, and the other necessary goods and services to the benefit of the nation’s domestic population, America’s citizenry.

It is a military operation, even more than it is an operation to serve the citizenry. That’s a fact, not an opinion, about the U.S. Government — but it is a hidden fact (as that link above documents to be true).

The official U.S. Government spending on its military is only what is being paid out of its Defense Department, which is now around $900 billion per year (vastly more than any other nation’s).

However, over $600 billion more per year is spent, each year, on America’s military, that’s not being counted in the official ‘defense’ (actually aggression) figure (over and above that $900B amount).

No other country except possibly China now (in order to prepare for war with the U.S. so as to prevent a U.S. take-over of China’s Taiwan Province) hides its excessive military spending this way, because none needs to — none is so fat with sheer corruption in its military.

Even America’s colonies, such as England, Germany, France, Italy and the rest of NATO, aren’t that corrupt.

The U.S. population are gifted with a perfect national-security situation of more than 3,000 miles of ocean separating them from potential attack by a foreign power, plus only two bordering nations, both of which (Mexico and Canada) are on friendly terms with the U.S. Government.

On any rational consideration, therefore, America’s need for national-security expenditures isn’t $1.5T per year but at most only $100B ($100 billion) per year.

All the rest, above that sum, is imperial expense, in order to control the entire world for the benefit of its billionaires who control international corporations and who own controlling interests in the giant ‘defense’ firms (which receive the profits from this $1.5T+ of governmental spending each year.

New fiasco: US Astronauts stuck in space as Boeing’s Starliner fails on 1st crewed flight, after 7 yr delay

Suni and Butch to spend at least a week stuck on the Space Station as NASA struggles to fix the thrusters and leaks on their Starliner.

from thefreeonline 20 Jun, 2024 11:37 from Agencies

Suni and Butch in blue, Floating about. The Space Station is packed , with at least 9 astronauts in one photo

The two NASA astronauts are stranded aboard the International Space Station as their spacecraft, a Boeing Starliner, continues to ‘experience multiple technical difficulties’.

Now the US may have to suffer more space humiliation and ask their Russian enemies to return Suni and Butch to Earth on their reliable Soyuz craft or else on the Space X, also now docked on the ICC, if the Starliner cannot be remotely repaired.

September 2022.. Disaster: New Boeing Starliner failure! It was a frustrating disappointment in 2022 for commander “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams, who were in the process of strapping in for launch when the scrub was announced. The moment brought to mind one of Wilmore’s favorite sayings: “You’d rather be on the ground wishing you were in space than in space and wishing you were on the ground.” Now in 2024 he’s really Trapped in Space

There is some justifiable doubt whether NASA can fix the craft remotely, as they have been unable to make it flight-worthy on Earth during 7 years! The 2 astronauts were meant to stay for only one week on the 1st crewed flight..

During a press conference on Tuesday, NASA and Boeing announced that the two Americans – Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore – will not be coming back to Earth before June 26 at least, as experts are struggling to fix the spacecraft.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams The long, thorny history of Boeing’s Starliner spaceship – MSN – Way back in 2014 Boeing got $4.2 BILLION to develop a “commercial crew” transportation system. It was too embarrassing to have to always depend on the Russians.

10 years later, after unbelievable farcical delays and a $1.4 billion cost overrun the maiden trip set off, only to have at least 4 helium leaks and thruster problems, and leave its 2 US astronauts STRANDED on the Space Station awaiting repairs.

Incredibly Starliner’s first flight carrying astronauts was actually targeted for a launch seven years ago. About two years later, in December 2019, Boeing was at last ready to send an empty Starliner up to the Space station but new faults set back the date again and again until 2024.

Why the legacy company has struggled endlessly with the spacecraft isn’t all that clear. Comparisons have surged with the ongoing safety plague on Boeing Jets with various whistleblowers denouncing a culture of safety shortcuts to boost profits.

However in the ongoing Starliner debacle saving money can hardly be the reason. Answers from Boeing leaders have been at times stunningly opaque.

Suni enjoys waving to home from the Space Station

It’s been quite a scenario starting in 2019 with software failures that caused the thrusters to fire so long it didn’t have enough gas to get to the space station.

The Boeing CST-100 Starliner initially registered several mechanical issues during its maiden manned launch on June 6.

En route to the station, the crew reported problems with five thrusters and four helium leaks, and another leak was revealed soon thereafter.

Prior to the flight, the company also stated that the spacecraft already had a “small helium leak” but insisted it was not a critical “safety of flight issue” and could be managed.

“A little bit more time” – but they’re already 7 years late!

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich explained on Tuesday that the reason for the hold up was the agency’s desire “to give our teams a little bit more time to look at the data, do some analysis, and make sure we’re really ready to come home.”

Stitch also insisted that NASA doesn’t currently foresee a scenario in which the two astronauts would not be able to come home on the Starliner. The return trip is currently scheduled for June 26, when the crew will attempt to land in the White Sands area of New Mexico. If that proves impossible, then the next “prime opportunity” would be a week later on July 2.

Despite the extended delay, NASA’s Dana Weigel, who manages the agency’s ISS program, said the crew is feeling positive. Boeing’s vice president and program manager for the Commercial Crew Program, Mark Nappi, has also said the crew was taking advantage of the extra time and saw the situation as an “opportunity” to do more work.

Reclaim the Streets..Carnival against Capitalism..Our Inspiration – CrimethInc.

We celebrated June 18 – 25 years after the the historic Street Carnivals from below against Capitalist Predator Globalization

from thefreeonline on 18 June 2024 by CrimethInc. – —NEW- The Free on Telegram: -t.me/thefreeonline)

We revisit Reclaim the Streets, a viral model for the joyous transformation of urban space.

“I will dance!” I declared; “I will dance myself to death!” My flesh felt hot, my heart beat violently… To dance to death—what more glorious end!

-Emma Goldman, Living My Life

Party as Protest <—> Protest as Party

“Mom, can I go to a protest?”

“No… I’m sorry, but no.”

She was worried. A month earlier, a plane had slammed into the side of a pentagon-shaped building just down the road from our house.

“OK. Uh, can I go to the homecoming game?”

“Well, sure!”

“But like, I’m new at school so… can I just go by myself? So I can make friends?”

“Of course, honey.”

I couldn’t believe it worked. My high school was right next to a metro station—I was obviously just going to hop on the train and go to the protest.

“I hope we win.”

“Me too! I’ll pick you up at 8.”

When I got off at the Dupont Circle stop, my punk rock role model older-sister-figure who always tempted me to skip school for cool shit was already waiting for me.

“So…what are we protesting? Bush? The World Bank? The war?” I asked, not caring too much as long as we got to fuck shit up.

“Cars.”

“Cars?”

“Yeah, we’re taking over a street.”

“What do you mean ‘taking over’?”

“Like, with couches and DJs and stuff.”

“DJs?!”

The Reclaim the Streets action in Washington, DC in October 2001. A photograph by the author, aged 14 at the time, digitally restored for this publication. Note the white van to the right.

That did not clarify things for me, especially because people in the march that scooped us up were carrying placards decrying all the evil institutions and people I had mentioned.

But once we hit 21st and P, a black-masked affinity group, moving with purpose and apparent planning, ran out of the crowd to a nearby alleyway and pulled out orange cones stenciled with an image of bellbottomed dancers inside a diamond-shaped traffic symbol.

They lined up the orange cones on either end of the block. Unlike other marches I had been on—in which the point was to keep moving so that an affinity group could break out, quickly destroy the windows of a bank or Starbucks, then disappear among the mass again—the point of this demo seemed to be just to be here.

Someone handed out flyers with the same bellbottomed dancers traffic symbol, saying something about streets not belonging exclusively to cars, about reinventing public space as a wonderland of joyous community instead of an artery for capital.

Another affinity group quickly established good relations with the workers at a local café, who let us use the bathroom and get water throughout the afternoon. This happened so quickly that there must have been some prior, behind-the-scenes organizing with the workers. A bunch of them did have piercings and funny hair.

As I stared at the café, marveling at all the moving parts in this troublemakers’ Rube Goldberg machine, a cheer erupted behind me, drawing my attention back to the crowd. A junker car—presumably acquired especially for the occasion—was rolled out of its parking spot, tagged up with “Reclaim the Streets!” and a circle A, and flipped over.

Some genius found a pole to lay inside its wheel well and people pulled couches all around it so that anyone could chill and watch the skaters grind the spectacle of destruction.

That’s when the final party favor opened its doors: in the middle of the block, a white work van in an alley became a DJ booth playing techno. BOOM BOOM. And loud! Vibing my body down to its core.

I live chasing that feeling: the loss of control, the impossibility of remaining unmoved, the need to get down. I had a Fatboy Slim CD at home, but I had never heard techno this loud, or around this many other people. I scanned the crowd once more—it wasn’t just bigger now, it was transformed.

The protestors with their placards and the anarchists with their black masks were still there, but out of nowhere there were way more party freaks: JNCOs, goggles, candy necklaces, frost-tipped hair.

I overheard a couple of the ravers talking.

“Yo, I’ve never been to something like this.”

“I know bro. I’ve heard of outlaw parties before, but this is wild.”

Just as this departure from traditional protest tenor mesmerized me, it was also a captivating deviation from the routine techno party. The alchemy of underground scenes kept cooking gold—the sun was setting and the party was just getting bigger and bigger.