A painting of me

Necessary Illusion

   16 May 2007, early morning

I’m working my way through Necessary Illusion, by Noam Chomsky. It’s one of the Massey Lectures books the CBC has been putting out recently. It’s quite good. It’s also a very frustrating read. I can’t get through 2 paragraphs without having to stop to take a few deep breaths: the book makes me so damn angry. Necessary Illusion is all about thought control and propaganda in a democratic society. Chomsky focuses on how the US media contorts the news to push an agenda that the state approves of. Much of his examples comes from the news coverage in the US of the war in Nicaragua: the US was terrorizing the civilian population there because they were so brazen as to support a communist/socialist party, and not another puppet leader from the US. (I need to read more about South Americas history.) It seems like every single country has been personally fucked by the US.) What the US was getting up to was bad, but the way it all was covered makes it all the worse. I am left wondering if there is any point reading the traditional press for coverage of any news of consequence.

 

Comments

  1. He’s in Windsor for a 2-day conference starting today…tickets to his 2 hr speech on Thursday are probably still available.

    by haran on May 16 2007, 9:53 am   #

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