I was just looking at thetruthseeker.co.uk and was surprised to see that they have recently written some articles knocking Noam Chomsky off his pedestal.
After 911 he wrote books, articles, and made speeches, and was well reported on by the Japanese media.
He advocated listening to the terrorists. It seemed enough to make you want to throw a brick at him in those heady days when the Twin Towers had collapsed and thousands of innocent people had died, including babies on planes. But such an outlandish idea was just what the left needed. They could see that their rights were being stripped under Bush, just as much as the 'suspected terrorists' rights were being abolished.
It was both comforting to have someone seem to speak sanely for once and educative to listen to the very things we want to hear. In 'Plan Columbia' he attackes the American Imperialism and shows that the Bushes make money from narcotics. He has a lot of inside knowledge of the intelligence agencies, so he knows what he is talking about.
Being a liberation theologist myself (a kind of Communist Catholic) I was one of those who jumped onto this seeming answer to the mass-mindedness of patriotism. But I was foolish.
I spoke to an extremely intelligent American priest who is relatively young in priest circles. He told me that he had interviewed Chomsky and did not like him because of his ideology. He explained that Chomsky had ignored the warnings of priests about the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge.
It is my opinion that we should be wary of Chomsky. He blames American imperialism but he does not go into things deeply. He has the contacts but he has missed a lot of what is quite obviously going on in the media. They way they have controlled the election. Last time CNN built up a strong case that the democrats were winning the election, it gave us a false sense of security, and yet they hardly if ever picked up the potentially damming evidence of the devise photographed on Bush's back during his most successful debate. He lost the other debate, or was it two others?
In our search for truth we should not assume anything. Sometimes people who have stood up against BushCo have been very vocal, given lots of attention, and then discreditted. We anti-Bush people take two steps forward and three back when we rely heavily on one person.
At the moment the newspapers are wondering why the democrats are in disarray. This is probably the only reason that Bush is clinging on to power and has not been brought down by his anxious republican peers.
But wait a minute. We are not in disarray are we? We all hold strongly to our beliefs, which are diverse. Somehow, though, we still know that there is a worse enemy out there and that to give up now would be like leaving the cinema before the end of the film.
The anti-war movement was given little coverage but it represented a rainbow of opinions all united against Bush. The fact that the media didn't cover up does not matter. The fact that people of all kinds went to jail happily to make a stand against war shows something about the human race. No matter how evil the other side plays, the good people will win even if it takes years and years. But we might hurry it along a bit by each of us seeking the truth, following up on the links we are given , know that even if our opinion is wrong, unless we voice it, and are then duly corrected by fellow posters, we will end up keeping our wrong opinion.
Here is to blogging. And to free-thinking. And open-mindedness that is not afraid to speak out, and if necessary change your ideas.