LOCALDEV (alonovolabs)

Yawn 2008-09-15

Reviewer: Cosmoetica

Despite having known people who are either great fans of Noam Chomsky, or think he's a tired relic from the 1960s, I really had no opinion of the man, save that I knew he gained fame as a linguist, although I could not elucidate any of his theories, and that he was a liberal socialist with Marxist leanings. So, stumbling across the DVD of the 2003 documentary Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without A Pause, in a used video store, a film which followed him on a 2002 book tour for his book 9-11, I decided to get it, just so I could have a little bit of knowledge about the man the next time a person, pro or con, spoke of him. While glad I got the film, my initial reaction to this dull and ill edited hagiography was, so what's all the fuss about?
For a man with so many degrees, lauded as `the most important intellectual alive', by the New York Times, according to the DVD's case, there sure was not alot there, intellectually speaking. I know I would chew him up and spit him out in a debate, and I wouldn't even want to watch what a William F. Buckley could do to him. Granted, the whole film was seemingly about Chomsky seeing conspiracies everywhere, and having glazed eyed coeds nod in bewildering approval of the most inane and outrageous things he'd say, rather than being on linguistics, so maybe that's the reason he came off so badly. But, again, if he is a linguist, and tops in his field, why in the world would anyone care what he has to say on anything outside his field of expertise?.... Even worse are his acolytes, who seem to further insulate the man from reality, by fostering delusions that Chomsky is a target for Zionist assassins. What little I knew of Chomsky before watching this film, this much I knew: he was generally considered a has been, and pretty much irrelevant intellectually, since the fall of the Soviet Empire. The film is so poorly structured, and without a narrative thread, that it's difficult to separate all of the jumble. His wife, Carol, as example, apparently gave one interview, which was chopped up and dropped wherever in the film. She seems a nice enough woman, but wholly out of her element answering anything but the most basic questions about their life. The lone interesting thing she says is that 9/11 was a great thing for the Chomskys, for he has reaped a great deal of money in speaking fees since then.
Not surprisingly, this sort of film gives almost no biographical background. It's assumed that all viewers must know all the plaudits this `great man' bears. Chomsky is rarely interviewed one on one. Stylistically, there are no camera movements, no interesting edits, nor any signature touches, and most of the film is disjunct rambles by Chomsky, videotaped huzzahs of Chomsky declaiming on this or that, and slack-jawed and awed students looking at him as if he were immaterial, that is when dimwitted coeds are not asking barely audible and ridiculously simplistic questions to him. This is really poor filmmaking by director and editor Will Pascoe, who in the DVD's Filmmaker Statement, shows he's yet another uncritical acolyte of Chomsky's. Other than that, one of the surest signs that this is not an objective documentary, but mere agitprop, and a vanity piece of agitprop, at that, is that not a single time is Chomsky shown struggling with an answer. He seems to be a font of knowledge that has no bounds.
Given that much of this dreck was filmed during Chomsky's lectures at McMaster University, in Ontario, Canada, prior to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, much of what Chomsky says seems as remote as things from the Vietnam War era. Yes, he makes some good points, here and there, on American media complicity before the war, but he follows them up with sheer lunacy, for he seems to not realize that most conspiracies are ad hoc, and not fully plotted out cabals. As example, he claims that the advertising industry is a cabal that mercilessly controls the populace, but says not a word about the zombied populace that lets itself be so controlled. Similarly, he claims Trilateralists run the world and that people's fear of crime is yet another cabal's result. Of course, that claim so fully explains away rape crisis centers, and all that wasted time and money district attorneys' offices consume. He also makes the absurd claim that Cuba has been the victim of terrorism for decades, when Castro and company were great sponsors of it, in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, until the Soviet Union fell. I can only guess that the UFO conspiracists are just waiting for Chomsky to proclaim that gray aliens have set up species-mixing impregnation centers up in Idaho.
In his simpleminded world without grays, Chomsky is frighteningly as dense as the members of Bushco, whom he reviles, are; even more so since they lay no claim to being intellectuals. In short, Chomsky is a man living in the past, in over his head on most issues, and out of his depth intellectually. Near this film's end he warns, `Be cautious when you hear about intellectuals being fighters for justice,' yet one can only laugh, as the man seemingly has never met a revolutionary person nor idea that he didn't like, no matter how barbarous their crimes, and anti-intellectual their posit. Please, pause before you waste your time and money on this silly, and already irrelevant, DVD.

Excellent Chomsky, as Always 2007-10-04

Reviewer: C. G. Mayell

Chomsky is a brilliant man who is dedicated to understanding how corporate interests use the media to mold people's beliefs. He cares about the common person, and wants to help liberate all of us from an oppressive government that does not serve our best interests. His research has convinced him that our government has become a government for corporations instead of its people. His analysis is honest, factual, and is based on thorough research that only a person of great scholarship can achieve. We are fortunate to have him. His findings about the use of media to control public views is not a pretty picture. He is on the side of the underdog, which at this point in our nation's history, includes most of the U.S. population, save a small elite class of billionaires. If anyone doubts his brilliance and his accuracy, consider this -- he has no commercial affiliations and nothing to gain by sacrificing his life to helping people to understand the truth of our government's efforts to make us subservient to corporate interests. He is a full tenured professor at M.I.T. and could have just as easily taught linguistics his whole life, spent his days reading and researching, as most intellectuals love to do, and stayed at home with his family. But he has spent most of his life traveling around the country and the world patiently explaining to people (with facts to back up every point he makes) how the mainstream media programs us to support corporate interests. The New York Times declared Chomsky to be the most important intellectual in the world today.

Totalitarian Saint. 2007-08-11

Reviewer: Bernard Chapin

This film is a compilation of Chomsky lecture snippets which mostly appear to be from his trip to McMaster University in Canada. In each segment, Chomsky speaks with an omniscient voice and with phrases of total authority. The director of this film interviews a professor along with Chomsky's wife who both attest to the fact that he reads everything all day long. Presumably, that is why he seems to know everything even though most of the stuff he speaks of could never be known by a private citizen. He has no access to the President, the State Department or the Department of Defense so is in no position to be reporting on most of the things he claims. What he refers to here is inside information that could not be obtained from perusing newspapers and magazines.

He is more than happy to share a score of flawed and fallacious claims with his listeners, indeed, the lies abound. The worst argument of all made here concerns the role of the press during the Cold War. Derek Rasmussen is quoted as saying that our journalists were cowardly for criticizing the Russians as we should have let their media do that and just focused on our own government. I guess this is evidence of the common leftist notion of "alternative patriotism"--which basically means systematically attacking your own country outside a frame of reference. With the Soviets, as we know, they had no journalists capable of criticism. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian country. There was no free speech and no free press; talking out meant going to the Gulag and/or death. One would hope that a realization of this might have caused some leftists to juxtapose the USSR with America, and then to develop an appreciation for their own country. But, as we all know, this never happened during the Cold War.

Chomsky claims that the 2001 Tax Cuts were "for the rich," but, of course, they were not. The cuts were given to anyone who paid taxes. The rich, just as with the poor, got paid back a set percentage of what they paid in. That the rich paid more in taxes, and therefore got a higher amount back is a reflection of progressive taxation (something which the left is devoted to). Had the poor got more back than the rich would have meant that they were unfairly taxed--which they were not.

He also claims that we once supplied Iraq with Weapons of Mass Destruction but we never did. In fact, throughout the seventies and eighties, we gave them very little, and practically nothing aside from a few helicopters. Most of his other claims are risible. He states that George W. Bush wants to phase out education when he has done the exact opposite with No Child Left Behind. The Bill has spent far more money on education than any other Bill in history. Bush has thrown more cash to Educrats than any other President.

Chomsky's defense of public schooling and social security showcase that, with leftists, emotion always trumps reason. Rather than acknowledge that the people are sick of spending more and more money on low grade educational institutions, this great sage morphs the argument into it being those who care versus those who do not. He does the same thing with Social Security. The question, "are we supposed to care about the old lady down the street?", becomes his justification for endless Social Security at any level of taxpayer proposed indemnity. His is not a serious mind. Talking about government programs in an emotional manner is never the recipe for fixing them or making sense of them. No service delivery can improve when bureaucracies are described in moralistic terms. When the extent of one's analysis is, "don't you care about the old lady down the street?", you fail to have anything meaningful to say about government.

The filmmakers try to portray Chomsky as a Saint. Two sympathizers are interviewed who imply that his life has been endangered by right-wingers due to his dissent. I guess that applies to me because I'm a right-winger who is not a Chomsky fan. In fact, I think he's a disgrace and laughingstock, but why would anyone want to hurt him? The guy is a joy to refute and ridicule. Making fun of him is a righteous experience. Besides, it is the emotion-addled left who are the sources of violence in our society--see anti-globalist actions and protests. This is only to be expected because violence is the predictable result when people are so deluded that they regard America as being a racist, sexist, state. Why wouldn't they be violent when they hate the land into which they were born? Chomsky is a lost cause, but all sensible people should join together as one to rebuke this anti-American scourge.

Promotional film about a smart but opinionated man 2006-10-14

Reviewer: Mark T. Sorna

This film gives one a good sense of what Noam Chomsky stands for. Its clear that it is intended to promote Chomsky kinda like an infomercial. The box that the DVD is packaged in states that it "Features candid interviews with his wife and tour manager, Carol Chomsky, as well as activists, fans, and critics,...". I watched the entire video including the extra features and did not see an interview with a critic. All the people interviewed in the film adored Chomsky like he was some sort of saint or the prophet of social justice. Nobody in the film attempted to challenge any of his positions...even his more contraversial opinions.

Its a good film because it makes clear what Chomsky stands for. He is a very erudite person who is very opinionated. He seems to stand for the socialist ideal (you get the impression that he just abhors capitalism)and he is one who constantly attacks America and elevates communist tyrants and terrorist organizations....all under the guise of moral elitism. He makes some pretty wild statements. For example, about 38 minutes into the video Chomsky insinuates that the modivation behind privatizing social security is that the government doesn't want people to care about the old people and the downtrodden. He also states that it is intended to make people act against their best interests because they would be investing in the stock market which is this evil system that doesn't care about people and sends all the jobs to the chinese sweat shops. I'm not kidding...I am paraphrasing, but he said it in the video. Its clear that he does not fully understand the issue (at least the pro-privatizing side of it). He thinks that social security is some sacred cow that no one should dare try to improve or make more efficient. The current system will become too expensive if something does not change. The benefits have already been cut eight years ago when the government decided to raise the age when someone could draw from social security and also the social security tax rate was increased. If something is not changed with social security, it will be very expensive and the benefit will be small. Chomsky seems to forget this in the video and instead decides to make his soft spoken jabs at this evil government of ours. He even states that advertising is a ploy to keep us interested in materialistic things and not pay attention to our evil government. It may be true that many Americans are absorbed by materialism, but somehow I think that advertising has more to do with selling product than some structured system intended to distract us from our corrupt government.

Chomsky makes some other statements that I don't quite agree with. He says that basically terrorism is not really a significant threat...its just the government trying to scare us. He also says that crime is really not a problem either...again its the government trying to scare us. He also says that twenty years ago under the Reagan administration the government was doing the same thing. He insinuates that there really was no threat from communism. I bet if he made that statement twenty years ago in Czechoslovakia, China, or Korea the people would have disagreed. He also insinuates that Kennedy made too much of the Cuban missile crisis. As if having a nuclear first strike capability against us in our own back yard would not be a big deal.

Chomsky is also a huge appologist for ruthless dictatorships. He has defended Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and has tried to make excuses for their murder of two million Cambodian people. He tries to justify Bin Laden's claim that the US in Saudi Arabia is like the Russian Invasion of Afghanistan except in Chomsky's words "Saudi Arabia is way more
important. That's the home of the holiest sites of Islam." The comparison is ridiculous. The US did not invade Saudi Arabia and kill hundreds of thousands of people. The Saudis asked us to be there to defend them against Saddam. Its no big mystery....pick up any book about the history of the Gulf War (well except maybe Chomsky's history).

In a speach he made on Oct 18, 2001, Chomsky claimed that the US was planning a "Silent Genocide" in Afghanistan by supposedly cutting off aid convoys. He twisted all kinds of articles in the New York Times and other sources to come up with this nonsense. Two days before the speach, another article in the New York Times was totally contrary to Chomsky's statements. It turns out that the US actually increased aid shipments to levels much higher that that during the reign of the Taliban. The US stopped attacks by the Taliban on aid convoys and opened bridges that were closed by Tajikstan (out of fear of the Taliban). The Bush Administration in fact provided 320 million dollars in food aid to the Afghan people and actually saved them from a humanitarian crisis that was imminent under the Taliban. This is far from the "silent genocide" that Chomsky was propagandizing to not only the American public but also in Pakistan and India. I am sure he got some Muslims riled up about his fabricated genocide. I wonder what his intent was? Its clear that Chomsky is not interested in espousing truth...He is only interested in anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda.

Chomsky is a smart man with a radical left wing agenda. This film makes it pretty clear. For that I give it 3 stars. I least I know where he stands. It would have been nice to see someone challenge his assertions though. It would be good to see an interesting debate. His assertians are easily challenged with real facts and when the whole story is given.

Excellent views expressed with utmost simplicity! 2006-03-25

Reviewer: Edgardo J. Fernandez

Noam Chomsky is clearly one of the few independent minds of our time. It is particularly incredible that been him both an American and of Jewish descent, he has a clear, simple, down-to-facts view on international events involving the USA and Israel.