Directed by John Junkerman • Documentary • 2002 • 74 minutes

“Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: Stop participating in it.”
- Noam Chomsky

Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in our Times gives the public a rare opportunity to see and listen to one of the most articulate, committed and hard-working political dissidents of our time, retired MIT linguist and political philosopher Noam Chomsky.

Chomsky has been called “the most important intellectual alive” by the New York Times, yet he has generally been ignored by the mainstream in America. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, Chomsky found himself called upon to provide much-needed analysis and historical perspective regarding this moment in American history. In the months following 9/11, Chomsky gave dozens of talks on four continents, conducted scores of media interviews, and published a book called 9-11 - a surprise bestseller in some of the 22 countries in which it was published.

Chomsky places the terrorist attacks of 9/11 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, Chomsky - in stark and uncompromising terms - challenges the United States to apply to its own actions the moral standards it demands of others.