Andy Heintz is a freelance writer based in the American Midwest. His work has been published in progressive media outlets in the United States, Europe, India and the Middle East, including Foreign Policy in Focus, the New Internationalist, Muftah, The Wire, Common Dreams, Secularism is a Women's Issue, Balkan Witness, Culture Project, Europe-Solidaire, and CounterVortex. Heintz specializes in writing about foreign policy issues, social movements, universal rights and international solidarity. He has written opinion columns that have appeared in a number of Midwestern newspapers and magazines. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in journalism/mass communication from Kansas State University, in Manhattan, KS, USA. Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic and political activist. Sometimes described as the father of modern linguistics , Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He holds a joint appointment as Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and laureate professor at the University of Arizona and is the author of over 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Alex de Waal a British writer and researcher on African issues, is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Previously, he was a fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at Harvard University, as well as program director at the Social Science Research Council on AIDS in New York City. He is author of over a dozen books. John Feffer is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC.