Chomsky on terror, Snowden, and why “security” is usually an excuse for government repression.
In a recent media appearance Noam Chomsky said that whistleblower Edward Snowden, who remains in Russia after releasing a trove of documents about secret NSA surveillance, should be honored.
“He was doing what every citizen ought to do,” Chomsky says in the video below. “He was telling Americans what the government is doing.”
Chomsky goes on to explain that governments always claim security as their justification for civil liberties abuses, but that overwhelmingly the security in question is that of the state … from its own population. To smatterings of applause, Chomsky goes on to explain how America’s drone campaign abroad is a far bigger threat to our security than leaked information about surveillance.
Watch Chomsky discuss the relationship between the state, the people, and “security” below. Courtesy Alter Net
S.R.H. Hoole / August 3, 2013
Hear, hear! What is sad is that a liberal president is vindictively pursuing a hero. MIT’s Prof. Chomsky giving his voice to the Snowden cause, hopefully, will make people stop and think.
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Amarasiri / August 3, 2013
Hoole,
Thank you Professor Chomsky.
“Chomsky goes on to explain that governments always claim security as their justification for civil liberties abuses, but that overwhelmingly the security in question is that of the state … from its own population.”
1. What the govt is doing is against the constitution. However, what we have is a military-industrial establishment. The people exist to serve them, but sugar coated with “democracy”.
2. Citizens, soldiers, civilians are disposable. True in USA, Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Perhaps only the Scandinavian countries are most safe and most egalitarian.
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Chinta / August 5, 2013
Bravo Prof. Chomsky.
Sri Lanka is following the US national security state model.
Gota the paranoid white van goon is a US citizen – surprise surprise
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gamini / August 3, 2013
What more clear evidence required than this speech of Noam Chomsky’s revealing the true position of the American system where Barak Obama is only a puppet and the Illuminati headed by the Zionists running with the hare and hunting with the hound. It is about time the real Law Enforcement of America purged the miscreants from the system and not only save the world but their own citizens, the GIs from being made pawns to be killed in war fronts across the globe bu the thousand, created by this Illuminati Syndicate, brain washing the American public as if the GIs are making a worthy sacrifice on behalf of their country America. Why are people so blind??????? not to see the reality???? I thought only the Sri lankans are gullible, but to see there is no exception to the whole world community. Sad indeed!
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Jim softy / August 5, 2013
In the USA, system over rides every thing. therefore, always the president is a puppet of the system.
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Maghribi / August 4, 2013
Edward Snowden knows what it means to speak the truth in a jurisdiction that is not immediately obedient to Obomber. America’s despotism has turned the world upside down so that China and Russia are the protectors of free speech and transparency. Their motives are self-interested, of course, but this is true of any government. Further a society drifts away from the truth, the more it will hate those who expose it.
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len / August 4, 2013
In the case of Cambodia, it is Chomsky and his co-author Edward S. Herman themselves who try to shed doubt on the extent of the horrors that took place. In their After the Cataclysm we read, “The apparent uniformity of refugee testimony is in part at least an artifact reflecting media bias.” And to think that we used to believe that independent reports confirmed each other.And Chomskey never denied Holocaust he but he did sign a petition in defense of Robert Faurisson, a Holocaust denier, saying that Faurisson has been conducting extensive research into the ‘Holocaust” question. Since he began making his findings public, Professor Faurisson has been subject to a vicious campaign of harassment, intimidation, slander, and physical violence in a crude attempt to silence him.
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gonbella / August 6, 2013
The military-industrial juggernaut that is USA have littel tolerance to people who will rock their boat. Edward Snowden should have known better.
Having said that I must admit that Naom Chomsky has been able to express his opinion agianst the US State on numerous occasions and still is alive.
Let anyone try to express similar sentiments against the ruling class in Sri Lanka today and see how long the ‘white van’ will leave him alive.
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Senguttuvan / August 6, 2013
Chomsky came from the freezing political cold of a futureless Leninist-Stalinist Russia to the warmth of liberal USA. He benefitted from a virtual free education and realised the full potential of his congenital brilliant intelligence post-graduation. But by nature remains anti-establishment – untouched and unharmed by the tolerant culture of the USA. People like him and Arundathi Roy love to wallow in perpetual controversy. If he lived in this Miracle of Asia, he would have been dead meat long ago.
Senguttuvan
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