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Radio Free Maine presents Chomsky on Gaza What a day. Receiving one day’s notice of the Chomsky talk, I hopped on a bus from Augusta, Maine to Boston at 10:00 am on Tuesday. The 3½ hour trip took over four hours because of a three car pile-up at the Biddeford I-95 exit. Arriving in Boston, the bus first went to Logan Airport where it got stuck on the overhang at one of the terminals. Jumped off the bus with all my recording equipment, got a city bus to South Station, where I caught the subway to Kendall Square and walked to the Wong Auditorium at the Tang Center. Speaking to a full audience with A/V feeds into adjacent rooms for the overflow crowd, and with less than two days notice of the talk during a student vacation at M.I.T., Noam Chomsky was at his best. Chomsky began, "As you know, on Saturday, December 27th, the latest U.S./Israeli attack on hopeless Palestinians was launched. It had been meticulously prepared. We know from the Israeli press that both aspects of the campaign had long been carefully prepared, both the military aspect and the propaganda aspect, learning from the lessons of the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, which it was argued that it was not planned well to a military point of view and was not advertised properly. So this time, both of those aspects were under control with extensive programs. That means we can be reasonably confident that anything that is happening or that is said, is purposeful, it's planned that way, maybe not everything, but most of it. One thing that was planned carefully was the time of the launching of the war, carefully chosen. It was shortly before noon on Saturday, when children are returning from school and crowds are milling around in the streets of densely populated Gaza City. And it took only a few minutes to kill well over 200 people and to wound around 700, which is an auspicious opening to the mass slaughter of defenseless civilians trapped in a tiny cage with nowhere to flee." Chomsky ended his talk "If I may quote myself again, several decades ago, 30 years ago, I wrote that those who call themselves supporters of Israel are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and its probable ultimate destruction, and regrettably that judgement looks more and more plausible. Meanwhile, we're observing a very rare moment in history, that's what the late Israeli sociologist, Baruch Kimmerling, called 'Politicide' that's the murder of a nation at our hands." Chomsky addressed the crisis in Gaza for 53 minutes followed by a 10 question/55 minute question and answer session with the audience. Sponsored by The M.I.T. Center for International Studies and its Program on Human Rights and Justice. Recorded by Roger Leisner on January 13, 2009 at M.I.T. in Cambridge, MA ************************************************************************* Available on DVD and VHS video For information on how to order this recording, please contact Roger Leisner at Radio Free Maine P.O. Box 2705 Augusta, Maine 04338 (207) 242-0643 Cell Phone
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