Directed by John Junkerman Produced by Tetsujiro Yamagami
"Everyone's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: Stop participating in it." - Noam Chomsky
Whether Noam Chomsky, the MIT linguist and political philosopher, is "the most important intellectual alive," as the New York Times once famously called him, is open for debate. But without a doubt, Chomsky, now 73, is one of the most straight-talking and committed dissidents of our time. A longtime critic of United States foreign policy, his public profile took a quantum leap after the terrorist attacks of September 11, as he provided much-needed analysis and historical perspective to concerned citizens throughout the world. In the months that followed, he gave dozens of talks on four continents, conducted scores of interviews, and published a book - 9-11 - that was published in 22 countries and became a surprise bestseller all over the world.
Chomsky's voice may be unpopular (he is almost totally ignored by the mainstream American press) but his incisive arguments, based on decades of research and analysis, deserve to be heard and considered. POWER AND TERROR presents the latest in Noam Chomsky's thinking, through a lengthy interview and a series of public talks that he gave in New York and California during the spring of 2002. As he has done countless times since September 11, he places the terrorist attacks in the context of American foreign intervention throughout the postwar decades - in Vietnam, Central America, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Beginning with the fundamental principle that the exercise of violence against civilian populations is terror, regardless of whether the perpetrator is a well-organized band of Muslim extremists or a powerful state, Chomsky - in stark and uncompromising terms - challenges the United States to apply to its own actions the moral standards it demands of others.
What emerges from the footage is a compelling portrait of the activist intellectual, who has been called the "rebel without a pause" by Bono, lead singer of the band U2. His is arguably the most important voice of dissent in the United States today.
74 minutes / Color / 2002 Sale/video: $248 Rental/video: $100
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* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>