Anarchism
26 creative works found
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REVOLUTION IS THE SOLUTION! / / /
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LIBERTY+ SOCIALISM=ANARCHISM: Digitization {2008}. I really admire this particular piece for several reasons. One being that I just adore the Statue of Liberty since I read about and seen photos of it. This is so symbolic of not what Amerikkka IS but what America SHOULD BE-true liberty of what was and has always been apart of the American ideology. To me, Anarchism is basically libertarian socialism or socialist libertarianism. It is extremely utilitarian in the Benthamian sensibility: The greatest happiness for the greatest amount of people. Liberty in all affairs-live and let live. Socialized political economy, decentralized institutions, bottom-up democracy. No need for illegitimate authorities. Accountability through collective decision making tasks. WE DON’T NEED LEADERS BECAUSE WE LEADERS. “IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF INTELLECTUALS TO SPEAK THE TRUTH AND TO / EXPOSE LIES.”-Noam Chomsky [M.I.T.]
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This is part of the “Concept for a Morecambe Bay Sculpture” series
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LONG LIVES NOAM CHOMSKY! [2008] NOAM CHOMSKY AND HIS REVOLUTION Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is credited with the creation of the theory of generative grammar, considered to be one of the most significant contributions to the field of linguistics made in the 20th century. He also helped spark the cognitive revolution in psychology through his review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior, in which he challenged the behaviorist approach to the study of behavior and language dominant in the 1950s. His naturalistic approach to the study of language has affected the philosophy of language and mind. He is also credited with the establishment of the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages in terms of their generative power. Beginning with his critique of the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Chomsky has become more widely known for his media criticism and political activism, and for his criticism of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments. According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar during the 1980–1992 time period, and was the eighth most-cited scholar in any time period. Chomsky was born to Jewish parents in the East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Hebrew scholar and IWW member William Chomsky (1896–1977), who was from a town in Ukraine. His mother, Elsie Chomsky (born Simonofsky), came from what is now Belarus, but unlike her husband she grew up in the United States and spoke “ordinary New York English”. Their first language was Yiddish, but Chomsky says it was “taboo” in his family to speak it. He describes his family as living in a sort of “Jewish ghetto”, split into a “Yiddish side” and “Hebrew side”, with his family aligning with the latter and bringing him up “immersed in Hebrew culture and literature”. Chomsky also describes tensions he personally experienced with Irish Catholics and anti-semitism in the mid-1930s, stating, “I don’t like to say it but I grew up with a kind of visceral fear of Catholics. I knew it was irrational and got over it but it was just the street experience.”[5] Chomsky remembers the first article he wrote was at the age of ten while a student at Oak Lane Country Day School about the threat of the spread of fascism, following the fall of Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War. From the age of twelve or thirteen, he identified more fully with anarchist politics.[6] A graduate of Central High School of Philadelphia, in 1945 Chomsky began studying philosophy and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, learning from philosophers C. West Churchman and Nelson Goodman and linguist Zellig Harris. Harris’s teaching included his discovery of transformations as a mathematical analysis of language structure (mappings from one subset to another in the set of sentences). Chomsky subsequently reinterpreted these as operations on the productions of a context-free grammar (derived from Post production systems). Harris’s political views were instrumental in shaping those of Chomsky. In 1949, Chomsky married linguist Carol Schatz. They have two daughters, Aviva (b. 1957) and Diane (b. 1960), and a son, Harry (b. 1967). Chomsky received his PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955. He conducted part of his doctoral research during four years at Harvard University as a Harvard Junior Fellow. In his doctoral thesis, he began to develop some of his linguistic ideas, elaborating on them in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures, his best-known work in linguistics. Young Chomsky with parentsChomsky joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (now the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy). From 1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship of Modern Languages and Linguistics, and in 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor. As of 2008, Chomsky has taught at MIT continuously for 53 years. In February 1967, Chomsky became one of the leading opponents of the Vietnam War with the publication of his essay, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals”,[7] in The New York Review of Books. This was followed by his 1969 book, American Power and the New Mandarins, a collection of essays which established him at the forefront of American dissent. His far-reaching criticisms of US foreign policy and the legitimacy of US power have made him a controversial figure: largely shunned by the mainstream media in the United States,810 he is frequently sought out for his views by publications and news outlets worldwide. Chomsky has in the past received death threats because of his criticisms of U.S foreign policy.[12] In addition, he was on a list of planned targets created by Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber; during the period that Kaczynski was at large, Chomsky had all of his mail checked for explosives.[13] Chomsky states that he frequently receives undercover police protection, in particular while on the MIT campus, although he does not agree with the police protection.[14] Chomsky resides in Lexington, Massachusetts and travels frequently, giving lectures on politics. Contributions to linguistics Chomskyan linguistics, beginning with his Syntactic Structures, a distillation of his Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (1955, 75), challenges structural linguistics and introduces transformational grammar. This theory takes utterances (sequences of words) to have a syntax which can be characterized by a formal grammar; in particular, a context-free grammar extended with transformational rules. Children are hypothesized to have an innate knowledge of the basic grammatical structure common to all human languages (i.e. they assume that any language which they encounter is of a certain restricted kind). This innate knowledge is often referred to as universal grammar. It is argued that modeling knowledge of language using a formal grammar accounts for the “productivity” of language: with a limited set of grammar rules and a finite set of terms, humans are able to produce an infinite number of sentences, including sentences no one has previously said. He has always acknowledged his debt to Pāṇini for his modern notion of an explicit generative grammar. This is related to Rationalist ideas of a priori knowledge, in that it is not due to experience. The Principles and Parameters approach (P&P)—developed in his Pisa 1979 Lectures, later published as Lectures on Government and Binding (LGB)—make strong claims regarding universal grammar: that the grammatical principles underlying languages are innate and fixed, and the differences among the world’s languages can be characterized in terms of parameter settings in the brain (such as the pro-drop parameter, which indicates whether an explicit subject is always required, as in English, or can be optionally dropped, as in Spanish), which are often likened to switches. (Hence the term principles and parameters, often given to this approach.) In this view, a child learning a language need only acquire the necessary lexical items (words, grammatical morphemes, and idioms), and determine the appropriate parameter settings, which can be done based on a few key examples. Proponents of this view argue that the pace at which children learn languages is inexplicably rapid, unless children have an innate ability to learn languages. The similar steps followed by children all across the world when learning languages, and the fact that children make certain characteristic errors as they learn their first language, whereas other seemingly logical kinds of errors never occur (and, according to Chomsky, should be attested if a purely general, rather than language-specific, learning mechanism were being employed), are also pointed to as motivation for innateness. More recently, in his Minimalist Program (1995), while retaining the core concept of “principles and parameters”, Chomsky attempts a major overhaul of the linguistic machinery involved in the LGB model, stripping from it all but the barest necessary elements, while advocating a general approach to the architecture of the human language faculty that emphasizes principles of economy and optimal design, reverting to a derivational approach to generation, in contrast with the largely representational approach of classic P&P. Chomsky’s ideas have had a strong influence on researchers investigating the acquisition of language in children, though some[specify] researchers who work in this area today do not support Chomsky’s theories, instead advocating emergentist or connectionist theories reducing language to an instance of general processing mechanisms in the brain. He also theorizes that unlimited extension of a language such as English is possible only by the recursive device of embedding sentences in sentences. Linguistics professors Paul M. Postal and Robert D. Levine argue that “Much of the lavish praise heaped on his work is, we believe, driven by uncritical acceptance (often by nonlinguists) of claims and promises made during the early years of his academic activity; the claims have by now largely proved wrong or without real content, and the promises have gone unfilled.”[15] His best-known work in phonology is The Sound Pattern of English, written with Morris Halle (and often known as simply SPE). Though extremely influential in its day, this work is considered outdated (though it has recently been reprinted), and Chomsky does not publish on phonology anymore. Generative grammar The Chomskyan approach towards syntax, often termed generative grammar, studies grammar as a body of knowledge possessed by language users. Since the 1960s, Chomsky has maintained that much of this knowledge is innate, implying that children need only learn certain parochial features of their native languages.[16] The innate body of linguistic knowledge is often termed Universal Grammar. From Chomsky’s perspective, the strongest evidence for the existence of Universal Grammar is simply the fact that children successfully acquire their native languages in so little time. He argues that the linguistic data to which children have access radically underdetermine the rich linguistic knowledge which they attain by adulthood (the “poverty of the stimulus” argument). Chomsky’s theories are still popular, particularly in the United States, but they have never been free from controversy. Criticism has come from a number of different directions. Chomskyan linguists rely heavily on the intuitions of native speakers regarding which sentences of their languages are well-formed. This practice has been criticized both on general methodological grounds, and because it has (some argue) led to an overemphasis on the study of English. As of now, hundreds of different languages have received at least some attention in the generative grammar literature,1719[21] but some critics nonetheless perceive this overemphasis, and a tendency to base claims about Universal Grammar on an overly small sample of languages. Some psychologists and psycholinguists, though sympathetic to Chomsky’s overall program, have argued that Chomskyan linguists pay insufficient attention to experimental data from language processing, with the consequence that their theories are not psychologically plausible. More radical critics have questioned whether it is necessary to posit Universal Grammar in order to explain child language acquisition, arguing that domain-general learning mechanisms are sufficient. Today there are many different branches of generative grammar; one can view grammatical frameworks such as head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical functional grammar and combinatory categorial grammar as broadly Chomskian and generative in orientation, but with significant differences in execution. Cultural anthropologist and linguist Daniel Everett of Illinois State University has proposed that the language of the Pirahã people of the northwestern rainforest of Brazil resists Chomsky’s theories of generative grammar. Everett asserts that the Pirahã language does not have any evidence of recursion, one of the key properties of generative grammar. Additionally, it is claimed that the Pirahan have no fixed words for colors or numbers, speak in single phonemes, and often speak in prosody.[22] However, Everett’s claims have themselves been criticized. David Pesetsky of MIT, Andrew Nevins of Harvard, and Cilene Rodrigues of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil have argued in a joint paper that all of Everett’s major claims contain serious deficiencies.[23] The dispute continues, pending further field research and analysis.[24] Contributions to psychology / Chomsky’s work in linguistics has had major implications for modern psychology.[25] For Chomsky, linguistics is a branch of cognitive psychology; genuine insights in linguistics imply concomitant understandings of aspects of mental processing and human nature. His theory of a universal grammar was seen by many as a direct challenge to the established behaviorist theories of the time and had major consequences for understanding how language is learned by children and what, exactly, the ability to use language is. Many of the more basic principles of this theory (though not necessarily the stronger claims made by the principles and parameters approach described above) are now generally accepted in some circles.[dubious – discuss] In 1959, Chomsky published an influential critique of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior, a book in which Skinner offered a speculative explanation of language in behavioral terms. “Verbal behavior” he defined as learned behavior which has its characteristic consequences being delivered through the learned behavior of others; this makes for a view of communicative behaviors much larger than that usually addressed by linguists. Skinner’s approach focused on the circumstances in which language was used; for example, asking for water was functionally a different response than labeling something as water, responding to someone asking for water, etc. These functionally different kinds of responses, which required in turn separate explanations, sharply contrasted both with traditional notions of language and Chomsky’s psycholinguistic approach. Chomsky thought that a functionalist explanation restricting itself to questions of communicative performance ignored important questions. (Chomsky-Language and Mind, 1968). He focused on questions concerning the operation and development of innate structures for syntax capable of creatively organizing, cohering, adapting and combining words and phrases into intelligible utterances. In the review Chomsky emphasized that the scientific application of behavioral principles from animal research is severely lacking in explanatory adequacy and is furthermore particularly superficial as an account of human verbal behavior because a theory restricting itself to external conditions, to “what is learned”, cannot adequately account for generative grammar. Chomsky raised the examples of rapid language acquisition of children, including their quickly developing ability to form grammatical sentences, and the universally creative language use of competent native speakers to highlight the ways in which Skinner’s view exemplified under-determination of theory by evidence. He argued that to understand human verbal behavior such as the creative aspects of language use and language development, one must first postulate a genetic linguistic endowment. The assumption that important aspects of language are the product of universal innate ability runs counter to Skinner’s radical behaviorism. Chomsky’s 1959 review has drawn fire from a number of critics, the most famous criticism being that of Kenneth MacCorquodale’s 1970 paper On Chomsky’s Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, volume 13, pages 83–99). This and similar critiques have raised certain points not generally acknowledged outside of behavioral psychology, such as the claim that Chomsky did not possess an adequate understanding of either behavioral psychology in general, or the differences between Skinner’s behaviorism and other varieties; consequently, it is argued that he made several serious errors. On account of these perceived problems, the critics maintain that the review failed to demonstrate what it has often been cited as doing. As such, it is averred that those most influenced by Chomsky’s paper probably either already substantially agreed with Chomsky or never actually read it. Chomsky has maintained that the review was directed at the way Skinner’s variant of behavioral psychology “was being used in Quinean empiricism and naturalization of philosophy”.[26] It has been claimed that Chomsky’s critique of Skinner’s methodology and basic assumptions paved the way for the “cognitive revolution”, the shift in American psychology between the 1950s through the 1970s from being primarily behavioral to being primarily cognitive. In his 1966 Cartesian Linguistics and subsequent works, Chomsky laid out an explanation of human language faculties that has become the model for investigation in some areas of psychology. Much of the present conception of how the mind works draws directly from ideas that found their first persuasive author of modern times in Chomsky. There are three key ideas. First is that the mind is “cognitive”, or that the mind actually contains mental states, beliefs, doubts, and so on. Second, he argued that most of the important properties of language and mind are innate. The acquisition and development of a language is a result of the unfolding of innate propensities triggered by the experiential input of the external environment. The link between human innate aptitude to language and heredity has been at the core of the debate opposing Noam Chomsky to Jean Piaget at the Abbaye de Royaumont in 1975 (Language and Learning. The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky, Harvard University Press, 1980). Although links between the genetic setup of humans and aptitude to language have been suggested at that time and in later discussions, we are still far from understanding the genetic bases of human language. Work derived from the model of selective stabilization of synapses set up by Jean-Pierre Changeux, Philippe Courrège and Antoine Danchin,[27] and more recently developed experimentally and theoretically by Jacques Mehler and Stanislas Dehaene in particular in the domain of numerical cognition lend support to the Chomskyan “nativism”. It does not, however, provide clues about the type of rules that would organize neuronal connections to permit language competence. Subsequent psychologists have extended this general “nativist” thesis beyond language. Lastly, Chomsky made the concept of “modularity” a critical feature of the mind’s cognitive architecture. The mind is composed of an array of interacting, specialized subsystems with limited flows of inter-communication. This model contrasts sharply with the old idea that any piece of information in the mind could be accessed by any other cognitive process (optical illusions, for example, cannot be “turned off” even when they are known to be illusions). He is also not fond of psychoanalysis. In an interview with the New York Times he stated, “I do not think psychoanalysis has a scientific basis. If we can’t explain why a cockroach decides to turn left, how can we explain why a human being decides to do something?” Opinion on cultural criticism of science Chomsky strongly disagrees with post-structuralist and postmodern criticisms of science: “I have spent a lot of my life working on questions such as these, using the only methods I know of; those condemned here as “science”, “rationality”, “logic” and so on. I therefore read the papers with some hope that they would help me “transcend” these limitations, or perhaps suggest an entirely different course. I’m afraid I was disappointed. Admittedly, that may be my own limitation. Quite regularly, “my eyes glaze over” when I read polysyllabic discourse on the themes of poststructuralism and postmodernism; what I understand is largely truism or error, but that is only a fraction of the total word count. True, there are lots of other things I don’t understand: the articles in the current issues of math and physics journals, for example. But there is a difference. In the latter case, I know how to get to understand them, and have done so, in cases of particular interest to me; and I also know that people in these fields can explain the contents to me at my level, so that I can gain what (partial) understanding I may want. In contrast, no one seems to be able to explain to me why the latest post-this-and-that is (for the most part) other than truism, error, or gibberish, and I do not know how to proceed.” Chomsky believes that science is a good way to start understanding history and human affairs: “I think studying science is a good way to get into fields like history. The reason is, you learn what an argument means, you learn what evidence is, you learn what makes sense to postulate and when, what’s going to be convincing. You internalize the modes of rational inquiry, which happen to be much more advanced in the sciences than anywhere else. On the other hand, applying relativity theory to history isn’t going to get you anywhere. So it’s a mode of thinking.” Chomsky has also commented on critiques of “white male science”, stating that they are much like the antisemitic and politically motivated attacks against “Jewish physics” used by the Nazis to denigrate research done by Jewish scientists during the Deutsche Physik movement: “In fact, the entire idea of “white male science” reminds me, I’m afraid, of “Jewish physics”. Perhaps it is another inadequacy of mine, but when I read a scientific paper, I can’t tell whether the author is white or is male. The same is true of discussion of work in class, the office, or somewhere else. I rather doubt that the non-white, non-male students, friends, and colleagues with whom I work would be much impressed with the doctrine that their thinking and understanding differ from “white male science” because of their “culture or gender and race.” I suspect that “surprise” would not be quite the proper word for their reaction.” / —-—-—-—-—-—-—-— Politics of Noam Chomsky / / Chomsky has stated that his “personal visions are fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in The Enlightenment and classical liberalism”[32] and he has praised libertarian socialism.[33] He is a sympathizer of anarcho-syndicalism34 and a member of the IWW union.[35] He has published a book on anarchism titled, “Chomsky on Anarchism”, which was published by the anarchist book collective, AK Press, in 2006. Noam Chomsky has been engaged in political activism all of his adult life and expressed opinions on politics and world events which are widely cited, publicized and discussed. Chomsky has in turn argued that his views are those which the powerful do not want to hear, and for this reason he is considered an American political dissident. Some highlights of his political views: “Power, unless justified, is inherently illegitimate. The burden of proof is on those in authority to demonstrate why their elevated position is justified. If this burden can’t be met, the authority in question should be dismantled. Authority for its own sake is inherently unjustified. An example of a legitimate authority is that exerted by an adult to prevent a young child from wandering into traffic. / That there isn’t much difference between slavery, and renting one’s self to an owner, or “wage slavery.” He feels that it is an attack on personal integrity that destroys and undermines our freedoms. He holds that those that work in the mills should run them, a view held (as he notes) by the Lowell Mill Girls. / Very strong criticisms of the foreign policy of the United States. Specifically, he claims double standards (which he labels “single standard”) in a foreign policy preaching democracy and freedom for all, while promoting, supporting and allying itself with non-democratic and repressive organizations and states, and argues that this results in massive human rights violations. He often argues that America’s intervention in foreign nations, including the secret aid given to the Contras in Nicaragua, an event of which he has been very critical, fits any standard description of terrorism. He has argued that the mass media in the United States largely serve as a propaganda arm and “bought priesthood” of the U.S. government and U.S. corporations, with the three parties all largely intertwined through common interests. In a famous reference to Walter Lippmann, Chomsky along with his coauthor, Edward S. Herman has written that the American media manufactures consent among the public. He has opposed the U.S. global “war on drugs”, claiming its language to be misleading, and referring to it as “the war on certain drugs.” He favors education and prevention rather than military or police action as a means of reducing drug use.[39] In an interview in 1999, Chomsky argued that, whereas crops such as tobacco receive no mention in governmental exposition, other non-profitable crops, such as marijuana, are specifically targeted due to the effect achieved by persecuting the poor. “US domestic drug policy does not carry out its stated goals, and policymakers are well aware of that. If it isn’t about reducing substance abuse, what is it about? It is reasonably clear, both from current actions and the historical record, that substances tend to be criminalized when they are associated with the so-called dangerous classes, that the criminalization of certain substances is a technique of social control.” Critical of the American capitalist system and big business, he describes himself as a libertarian socialist who sympathizes with anarcho-syndicalism and is critical of Leninist branches of socialism. He also believes that libertarian socialist values exemplify the rational and morally consistent extension of original unreconstructed classical liberal and radical humanist ideas to an industrial context. Specifically he believes that society should be highly organized and based on democratic control of communities and work places. He believes that the radical humanist ideas of his two major influences, Bertrand Russell and John Dewey, were “rooted in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, and retain their revolutionary character.” Chomsky has stated that he believes the United States remains the “greatest country in the world” a comment that he later clarified by saying, “Evaluating countries is senseless and I would never put things in those terms, but that some of America’s advances, particularly in the area of free speech, that have been achieved by centuries of popular struggle, are to be admired.” He has also said “In many respects, the United States is the freest country in the world. I don’t just mean in terms of limits on state coercion, though that’s true too, but also in terms of individual relations. The United States comes closer to classlessness in terms of interpersonal relations than virtually any society.” According to Chomsky: “I’m a boring speaker and I like it that way…. I doubt that people are attracted to whatever the persona is…. People are interested in the issues, and they’re interested in the issues because they are important.”[46] “We don’t want to be swayed by superficial eloquence, by emotion and so on.” He holds views that can be summarized as anti-war but not strictly pacifist. He prominently opposed the Vietnam War and most other wars in his lifetime. However, he maintains that U.S. involvement in World War II was probably justified, with the caveat that a preferable outcome would have been to end or prevent the war through earlier diplomacy. In particular, he believes that the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were “among the most unspeakable crimes in history”. He has a broad view of free-speech rights, especially in the mass media; he opposes censorship and refuses to take legal action against those who may have libeled him. Chomsky has frequently stated that there is no connection between his work in linguistics and his political views, and is generally critical of the idea that competent discussion of political topics requires expert knowledge in academic fields. In a 1969 interview, he said regarding the connection between his politics and his work in linguistics: “I still feel myself that there is a kind of tenuous connection. I would not want to overstate it but I think it means something to me at least. I think that anyone’s political ideas or their ideas of social organization must be rooted ultimately in some concept of human nature and human needs.” (New Left Review, 57, Sept. – Oct. 1969, p. 21) —-—-—-—-—-—-—— Chomsky’s influence in other fields Chomskyan models have been used as a theoretical basis in several other fields. The Chomsky hierarchy is often taught in fundamental computer science courses as it confers insight into the various types of formal languages. This hierarchy can also be discussed in mathematical terms50 and has generated interest among mathematicians, particularly combinatorialists. Some arguments in evolutionary psychology are derived from his research results. The 1984 Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine and Physiology, Niels K. Jerne, used Chomsky’s generative model to explain the human immune system, equating “components of a generative grammar … with various features of protein structures”. The title of Jerne’s Stockholm Nobel lecture was “The Generative Grammar of the Immune System”. Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of a study in animal language acquisition at Columbia University, was named after Chomsky in reference to his view of language acquisition as a uniquely human ability. Famous computer scientist Donald Knuth admits to reading Syntactic Structures during his honeymoon and being greatly influenced by it. “…I must admit to taking a copy of Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures along with me on my honeymoon in 1961 … Here was a marvelous thing: a mathematical theory of language in which I could use a computer programmer’s intuition!”. Another focus of Chomsky’s political work has been an analysis of mainstream mass media (especially in the United States), its structures and constraints, and its perceived role in supporting big business and government interests. Edward S. Herman and Chomsky’s book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) explores this topic in depth, presenting their “propaganda model” of the news media with numerous detailed case studies demonstrating it. According to this propaganda model, more democratic societies like the U.S. use subtle, non-violent means of control, unlike totalitarian systems, where physical force can readily be used to coerce the general population. In an often-quoted remark, Chomsky states that “propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” (Media Control) The model attempts to explain this perceived systemic bias of the mass media in terms of structural economic causes rather than a conspiracy of people. It argues the bias derives from five “filters” that all published news must “pass through” which combine to systematically distort news coverage. The first filter, ownership, notes that most major media outlets are owned by large corporations. The second, funding, notes that the outlets derive the majority of their funding from advertising, not readers. Thus, since they are profit-oriented businesses selling a product—readers and audiences—to other businesses (advertisers), the model would expect them to publish news which would reflect the desires and values of those businesses. In addition, the news media are dependent on government institutions and major businesses with strong biases as sources (the third filter) for much of their information. Flak, the fourth filter, refers to the various pressure groups which attack the media for supposed bias. Norms, the fifth filter, refer to the common conceptions shared by those in the profession of journalism. (Note: in the original text, published in 1988, the fifth filter was “anticommunism”. However, with the fall of the Soviet Union, it has been broadened to allow for shifts in public opinion.) The model describes how the media form a decentralized and non-conspiratorial but nonetheless very powerful propaganda system, that is able to mobilize an élite consensus, frame public debate within élite perspectives and at the same time give the appearance of democratic consent. Chomsky and Herman test their model empirically by picking “paired examples”—pairs of events that were objectively similar except for the alignment of domestic elite interests. They use a number of such examples to attempt to show that in cases where an “official enemy” does something (like murder of a religious official), the press investigates thoroughly and devotes a great amount of coverage to the matter, thus victims of “enemy” states are considered “worthy”. But when the domestic government or an ally does the same thing (or worse), the press downplays the story, thus victims of US or US client states are considered “unworthy.” They also test their model against the case that is often held up as the best example of a free and aggressively independent press, the media coverage of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. Even in this case, they argue that the press was behaving subserviently to élite interests. ______
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ON THE JUSTICE OF WARD CHURCHILL VIA POP [2008] Some Questions We Should Be Asking About the Attacks on / WARD CHURCHILL For the past two months University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill’s scholarship and personal life have been put under a microscope. The University is under intense pressure to fire him. Nearly every day the Denver-area media has featured negative allegations as if they were fact. Responses from Professor Churchill and those who support him are rarely printed. What’s really going on here? WHO IS WARD CHURCHILL? / Ward Churchill has written more than twenty books, dozens of book chapters and over one hundred journal articles. As of 2001 he was the most cited scholar in his field. He was hired with tenure in 1991 because he had already published six books, more than most academics ever publish. Prof. Churchill has received numerous teaching awards, four prestigious awards for writing, and was inducted into the Martin Luther King Collegium of Scholars in 2004. Students flock to his classes – which are always oversubscribed – and his public lectures are uniformly well received. His department unanimously voted him chair in 2002. More than 1000 academics and over 5000 others have weighed in to protest CU’s current “investigation.” Such accomplishments don’t happen by accident, or because of a “false claim” of American Indian identity. Why are they being ignored? WHY IS HE CONTROVERSIAL? / What Prof. Churchill says – and how he says it – often forces people to confront issues they would rather avoid. His research focuses on the government’s failure to comply with the Constitution and with international law, raising troubling questions about the treatment of American Indians and the consequences of U.S. foreign policy. The current controversy was triggered by his suggestion that the best way to ensure American security is to prevent our government from engaging in illegal military interventions which destroy other people’s families and communities. Why has public discussion moved from these substantive issues of U.S. policy to a microscopic examination of Prof. Churchill’s life and work? WHAT ABOUT ALL THESE ALLEGATIONS? / The media has repeated, ad nauseum, allegations of “academic fraud” from a handful of relatively unknown academics, without investigating the underlying facts, while the praise of Prof. Churchill’s work by dozens of eminent scholars such as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, David Stannard, Haunani-Kay Trask, Richard Falk and Robert A. Williams, Jr., has been ignored. Why are the accusers’ credentials and motivations not scrutinized? Why hasn’t the support of the experts in these fields received at least as much exposure? Prof. Churchill has provided evidence of his associate (not honorary) membership in the Keetoowah Band of Cherokee, his long-term participation in the local American Indian community, and his support from American Indian organizations nationally. The denials of his identity all stem from a small, self-appointed group calling itself “National AIM” that has spent many years engaging in politically motivated attacks on Prof. Churchill and the Colorado AIM chapter. What makes these individuals the authority on Prof. Churchill’s identity? Why hasn’t the local media bothered to investigate them? Or talked to American Indians who have worked with Prof. Churchill for decades? Initially Ward Churchill was accused of “advocating” the 9/11 attacks rather than trying to explain their causes; then of criminally “inciting” others to violence. As it became clear that these charges were false, these morphed into claims of personal threats of violence – all years (or decades) old, none ever reported to the police, all denied by Prof. Churchill. Why is the media so determined to paint Prof. Churchill as an advocate of violence? Could it be because he has been such a consistent critic of violence perpetrated by the U.S. government? what’s behind this relentless campaign to discredit ward churchill? This is not just about Ward Churchill. The CU Board of Regents is now refusing to stand by its own rules on academic freedom; established tenure and review processes have been discarded; race and gender studies programs, a wide range of professors and the institution of tenure are under attack both here and around the country. Freedom of speech is meaningless if those who express “unpopular” positions are subjected to onslaughts of unsubstantiated personal and professional attacks. Ward Churchill will not be silenced, but who knows how many others will be? Are we simply going to sit back and watch? Press Release – Ward Churchill / January 31, 2005 In the last few days there has been widespread and grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning my analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, coverage that has resulted in defamation of my character and threats against my life. What I actually said has been lost, indeed turned into the opposite of itself, and I hope the following facts will be reported at least to the same extent that the fabrications have been. The piece circulating on the internet was developed into a book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. Most of the book is a detailed chronology of U.S. military interventions since 1776 and U.S. violations of international law since World War II. My point is that we cannot allow the U.S. government, acting in our name, to engage in massive violations of international law and fundamental human rights and not expect to reap the consequences. I am not a “defender”of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have never said that people “should” engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting John F. Kennedy, said, “Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.” This is not to say that I advocate violence; as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam I witnessed and participated in more violence than I ever wish to see. What I am saying is that if we want an end to violence, especially that perpetrated against civilians, we must take the responsibility for halting the slaughter perpetrated by the United States around the world. My feelings are reflected in Dr. King’s April 1967 Riverside speech, where, when asked about the wave of urban rebellions in U.S. cities, he said, “I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed . . . without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.” In 1996 Madeleine Albright, then Ambassador to the UN and soon to be U.S. Secretary of State, did not dispute that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of economic sanctions, but stated on national television that “we” had decided it was “worth the cost.” I mourn the victims of the September 11 attacks, just as I mourn the deaths of those Iraqi children, the more than 3 million people killed in the war in Indochina, those who died in the U.S. invasions of Grenada, Panama and elsewhere in Central America, the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, and the indigenous peoples still subjected to genocidal policies. If we respond with callous disregard to the deaths of others, we can only expect equal callousness to American deaths. Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as “Nazis.” What I said was that the “technocrats of empire” working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of “little Eichmanns.” Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies. It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following the logic by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have consistently sought to justify target selection in places like Baghdad, this placement of an element of the American “command and control infrastructure” in an ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a “legitimate” target. Again following U.S. military doctrine, as announced in briefing after briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but were nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to no more than “collateral damage.” If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these “standards” when the are routinely applied to other people, they should be not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them. It should be emphasized that I applied the “little Eichmanns” characterization only to those described as “technicians.” Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack. According to Pentagon logic, were simply collateral damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And that’s my point. It’s no less ugly, painful or dehumanizing a description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone else. If we ourselves do not want to be treated in this fashion, we must refuse to allow others to be similarly devalued and dehumanized in our name. The bottom line of my argument is that the best and perhaps only way to prevent 9-1-1-style attacks on the U.S. is for American citizens to compel their government to comply with the rule of law. The lesson of Nuremberg is that this is not only our right, but our obligation. To the extent we shirk this responsibility, we, like the “Good Germans” of the 1930s and ’40s, are complicit in its actions and have no legitimate basis for complaint when we suffer the consequences. This, of course, includes me, personally, as well as my family, no less than anyone else. These points are clearly stated and documented in my book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, which recently won Honorary Mention for the Gustavus Myer Human Rights Award. for best writing on human rights. Some people will, of course, disagree with my analysis, but it presents questions that must be addressed in academic and public debate if we are to find a real solution to the violence that pervades today’s world. The gross distortions of what I actually said can only be viewed as an attempt to distract the public from the real issues at hand and to further stifle freedom of speech and academic debate in this country. [This statement represents the views of Ward Churchill, not the University of Colorado at Boulder.]
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Dada, amateurism and the anarchic in British Culture.
by Andy MercerMuscular Teeth is a big fan of an anarchic British comedian from the 50-60-70-80’s…called Spike Milligan. So am I.
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“LESS HOPE” is created after the 2008 Shepard Farey “Obey” images, and street art, for the Barack Obama US Presidential Election. It aims to generate an ironic, critical, and slightly ambiguous reading on political participation, and social transformations. Part of a push to enable a call to question the conformity with the existing political apparatus, and a much needed critique of the official progressive left and its cultural projection.
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“LESS HOPE” is created after the 2008 Shepard Farey “Obey” images, and street art, for the Barack Obama US Presidential Election. It aims to generate an ironic, critical, and slightly ambiguous reading on political participation, and social transformations. Part of a push to enable a call to question the conformity with the existing political apparatus, and a much needed critique of the official progressive left and its cultural projection.
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“LESS HOPE” is created after the 2008 Shepard Farey “Obey” images, and street art, for the Barack Obama US Presidential Election. It aims to generate an ironic, critical, and slightly ambiguous reading on political participation, and social transformations. Part of a push to enable a call to question the conformity with the existing political apparatus, and a much needed critique of the official progressive left and its cultural projection.
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“LESS HOPE” is created after the 2008 Shepard Farey “Obey” images, and street art, for the Barack Obama US Presidential Election. It aims to generate an ironic, critical, and slightly ambiguous reading on political participation, and social transformations. Part of a push to enable a call to question the conformity with the existing political apparatus, and a much needed critique of the official progressive left and its cultural projection.
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Anarchism: what it IS and what it is NOT
by [l1|\|70|\| 7\|r33 KMAAnarchism may be one of the English language’s least understood and most abused words. The misconceptions are numerous, so I’ll leap stra…
Anarchism may be one of the English language’s least understood and most abused words. The misconceptions are numerous, so I’ll leap straight in. Anarchism does NOT mean ‘no rules’, it is a compound from ancient Greek of the words no and ruler. So, basically the word, the term the concept that unites all anarchists is: NO RULERS/LEADERS/OPPRESSORS. Or as the old saying goes: No gods; no masters. That explains what anarchism is against. What anarchism is FOR is non-hierarchical structures of organisation. What that means in plain language is, that anarchism rejects tradition power structures based on authority , unelected power, majority rule and any other form coercion or disempowerment in favour of making decisions based on consensus. So, in anarchist organised society decisions would be made by everyone, or at the very least people who were given very narrow parameters for making decision for them. Unlike, in Western Democracy, where governmental/company decisions are generally totally undemocratic, and the more responsible/powerful a position the less accountable the decider is. So, basically we still have a system today where the rich are telling the majority poor what to do and how to do it. The tail is still wagging the dog. Most anarchists naturally reject the current forms of economics too. They are normally libertarian socialist or anarcho-communist or both or neither but something approximately the same… Which means that almost all anarchist believe that the workers should own their own means of production (companies and businesses) and that workers should receive a proportionate share of the profits generated from the business- unlike the current situation where most of the wealth is owned by a tiny minority and workers see very little of the profits they generate. Being non-hierarchical/anti-authoritarian means that anarchism opposes government as we know it= The State. Which at first will probably sound completely insane, but anarchism is not simply saying remove the state and let chaos reign, but rather remove the state and replace it with a truly democratic system of organisation. And as for those who always carp: ‘It’ll never work!” Well, it was doing quite well in Catalonia before it got crushed. And there are many successful worker’s collectives ( John Lewis being the most notable) and there are many progressive schools that incorporate elements of consensus democracy into their structures. No there is no such thing as a perfect system and anyone who believes in Utopia has lost the plot… But, hey. Capitalism doesn’t work either, but we still push ahead with it regardless. So why not push ahead with an incomplete system that favours the majority rather than the minority. Another rather annoying inaccuracy is the image that the media and politicians have only been too keen to project for the last few decades. Most anarchists are NOT violent, and do not to advocate violence as a means of protest. The Black Bloc that media seems to love are the exception rather than the rule. Most anarchist protest and activism is carried out under the NVDA ethos of Non-Violent Direct-action where normally great care is taken to ensure that no-one is harmed or endangered by the action. But hey, hey headlines about rioting mobs who believe in nothing were/are easier to deal with than headlines about global warming or about how the WTO is effectively enslaving and starving people in the 3rd World or how our ally Israel is committing genocide and ethnic cleansing or genetically modified crops are a potential eco-disaster… Yup, a boy in a black hoodie chucking a petrol bomb is much easier to deal with. More form the horses’ mouths
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Chalks and shallac. Created as a response to Mike Parr’s “Launguage and Chaos” Text reads / “Surrealism as a political force was ultra-left wing communist or Anarchist.” / The text is designed to highlight problems with the English written language.
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“LESS HOPE” is created after the 2008 Shepard Farey “Obey” images, and street art, for the Barack Obama US Presidential Election. It aims to generate an ironic, critical, and slightly ambiguous reading on political participation, and social transformations. Part of a push to enable a call to question the conformity with the existing political apparatus, and a much needed critique of the official progressive left and its cultural projection.
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Enjoy.
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Anarchist street art. The text on the door reads: / “Welcome” / “Cultural relics are irretrievable, please be careful when viewing them.”
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Black stencil on white background of Joe Strummer (The Clash) with ‘I FOUGHT THE LAW’ written below.
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None.
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The Queen of England does not directly contribute to our (the British) society and is therefore a 2nd class citizen. STAMP OUT THE ROYAL FAMILY!
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