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Distorted Morality: America

by Noam Chomsky - £20.00  AK Press (2003)
DVD    ISBN 13: 9781902593760 | ISBN 10: 1902593766

In this remarkable 3-hour DVD, Chomsky offers a riveting but devastating critique of America's current War on Terror - arguing, in fact, that it is a logical impossibility for such a war to be taking place. Using the official U.S. definition of 'terrorism' as "the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious or ideological in nature", the USA must either admit its own hypocrisy in foreign policy, or be forced to declare war upon themselves!

"In the whole range of terror, state terror is far worse than individual terror, for the obvious reason that states have means of violence that individuals don't have. It is commonly said that terrorism is a weapon of the weak. That's completely false - at least if you accept the official U.S. definition of terror. Terror is overwhelmingly the weapon of the strong, like most other weapons. From all of this an obvious conclusion follows: there is an operational definition of terrorism, the one that is actually used. It means terror that they carry out against us - that's terrorism, nothing else passes through the filter. That's a historical universal. So, for example, the Japanese in China and Manchuria were defending the population against Chinese terrorists and gong to create an earthly paradise for them if they could control the terrorists. The Nazis in occupied Europe were defending the legitimate governments like Vichy, and the population, from the terrorist partisans who were supported from abroad, as indeed they were. They were run from London, Poland, France and so on."
(Noam Chomsky)

As well as the "Distorted Morality" lecture recorded at Harvard University, this DVD contains: searchable Q&A session; an exclusive second lecture "Washington's Imperial Grand Strategy" recorded at MIT; Chomsky biography, bibliography and CV.

(Price & availability last checked: April 2018)

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In booklists: Noam Chomsky, Terrorism,
In categories: World - North America, Anti-Capitalism & Global Inequality,