CBC Noam Chomsky 03/30/10

Chomsky on TV? Have somebody hit themselves on the head? Surely sensible and rational voices have no place there...

I, surprisingly, hadn't heard about this. Our media isn't much than the States is, honestly, but we do treat Chomsky a lot better, so this doesn't surprise me *too* much.

Can the uploader please re-label this to the "Chomsky" section for easier searching/locating.

Thanks for the upload!

Found the ironic laughter by the interviewer to be funny, when he said Chomsky would be welcome back.

Yeah, I'm sure that will happen anytime very soon... Noam was able to talk quite freely though, which was nice too see for once.

Maybe I'm naive, but I suspect quite a few newspeople agree to much of what he says, but they'd rather have a career, so they choose not to go down that path.

Amazing to see a man of his age still run circles around all the traps laid for him. He's had a bit of experience of that over the years

Tbh, I think just about all 'news' channels have been CNN-ized. It is very rare I see good and honest pieces of journalism in the usual sources. Even documentary channels are affected. I used to watch the Discovery Channel a lot. But nowadays it's futile. They just have wars and silly 'reality' programs. Before they had science, history and other interesting things. Much the same with National Geographic.

CBC has definitely gone down the drain the last couple of years. They used to have decent documentaries even just a couple of years back but budget cuts and a right-wing drift in Canada has really made CBC go down hill. Now they have short, stupid, sensationalist documentaries that are low on information but high on CGI and just stupid, far-fetched, future predictions. The only decent thing on the CBC right now is David Suzuki's long-running science/documentary show, The Nature of Things. A few years ago, Avi Lewis had a great, subversive, left-leaning show called the "On The Map" where he challenged a lot of the official, standard doctrines and conventional wisdoms on mainstream CBC news programs that idiot pundits and right-wing leaning assholes like Andrew Coyne regurgitate regularly, but "On the Map" didn't last long and got cancelled.. probably because Avi Lewis was making too much trouble by challenging Canada's role in Afghanistan, and challenging the doctrine of "benevolent American empire".

Canada used to have a reputation for being left-wing or at least, pretty liberal compared to the US, and to a certain extent, that is still true when it comes to social/cultural policies like abortion and gay-marriage. But when it comes to sucking up to America, and to Israel, Canada can't be trusted. It is part and parcel of the same, American-led, white Western world-order that is out to retain the West's power and top perch in international affairs. Canadians like to be smug about their country in comparison to the US, but the only things separating Canada, or in that case, any other European or Western nation from the US is economic success and military power. The same structural problems, ideological biases and deep racism are all operational in Canada as they are in the US, for example. Take a look at our right-wing government in power at the moment with Stephen Harper, for example, and the moves by our Conservative government to become even more pro-Israeli .. and this even as Israel behaves even more barbarically, criminally and viciously.

Sure, the left in every country is going to a minority because sadly, given human nature, the people with a social conscience who are able to understand perspectives of people outside their race, nation and "tribe", and with the wisdom and ability to see the problems of a country and understand the systems of power will are always a minority. But at least in the US there is a strong tradition of dissent and a history of popular struggle that has improved democratic structures and pushed for government transparency as a result of their country's imperial operations. Canada's democratic systems are very poor and the amount of power our Prime Minister has, as well as the ability of our government to operate in secrecy, is far worse than the US. Can you imagine what would happen in the US if the President shut down Congress like our Prime Minister shut down Parliament here? There would be complete outrage and it would never last. In Canada, most people don't give a fuck and we don't have the channels of dissent and democratic, civic society to create the same level of dissent and noise as the American left do.

Chomsky had a story he told a while back about how Canada used to invite him to speak as long as he only criticized the US. But one day he was feeling a little cranky and he started criticizing Canada's foreign policy and tried to burst Canada's smug, pompous view of itself.. to which the interviewer responded by getting angry and ending the interview. Here's the link where Chomsky describes that incident:

http://www.zcommunications.org/interview-with-noam-chomsky-by-noam-chomsky

Hey thanks for the link to the znet site, they have transcripts of Chomsky's lectures which is just what I was looking for )

http://www.zcommunications.org/the-center-cannot-hold-rekindling-the-radical-imagination-by-noam-chomsky

If you're looking for Chomsky transcripts etc, check out chomsky.info

I went to the chomsky.info site before finding this onebigtorrent site, they didn't have this most recent lecture. I was glad to find it here and then in another torrent's comments found the above znet site with the transcript

Yeah, for some reason they don't have everything on there any more. Not sure why. Maybe the guy running it has become busy with other stuff. It rarely gets updated these days.