In a 1962 article Chomsky wrote that those with knowledge and influence must use their intellect to challenge falsehoods and reveal the truth. Intellectuals, whether scholars, journalists or thinkers, have a duty to question power structures and educate the public. Silence in the face of deception allows misinformation to spread.

Intellectuals are in a position to expose lies of governments: in the western world intellectuals have the power coming from political liberty, access to information and freedom of expression. They can unravel the truth from the veil of falsehood, deception and class under which the present is depicted.

The responsibility of the intellectual is far greater than the common man lacking the facilities and leisure to delve into questions of truth and lies.

We can hardly ask ourselves to what extent the American people bear responsibility for the savage assault on a rural Vietnamese people and the Israel inflictions upon the hapless, unarmed population of Gaza. Not only is the Israel assault overwhelming but indiscriminate and genocidal.

The realpotick viewpoint of US intellectuals is reflected in the suggestion of Yale University's Prof Rowe that with a view to quell communist threat in Vietnam and other South Asian countries, all the surplus wheat of Canada and the US be buried in order to cause starvation in China not as a weapon of extermination of people, which it will result in, but as a weapon against government, as the internal stability of the country cannot be maintained in the face of general starvation. Rowe........

© The Express Tribune