In Defense of Academic Freedom (12 October 2007)

In Defense of Academic Freedom
12 October 2007

Rockefeller Chapel, University of Chicago

Noam Chomsky spoke in the video. He could not attend the conference because of his wife Carol's illness. Best wishes to her.
(The background of the denial of tenure to Norman Finkelstein explained by Chomsky)

NC: I’m sorry that I can’t join you for this discussion on Academic Freedom. Difficult personal circumstances make it impossible for me, to my regret.

The immediate reason for this conference, as we all know, is the decision by the De Paul administration to deny tenure to Norman Finkelstein, a remarkable teacher and outstanding scholar whose work has received the highest praise by some of the most distinguished scholars in many fields in which he has worked, notably the founder of Holocaust studies and its most respected figure, the late Raul Hilberg, and also the denial to tenure to another fine scholar, Mehrene E. Larudee, whose crime appears to have been her honorable support for Finkelstein.
I’m not going to review this sordid affair. Basic facts are clear enough and easily accessible sources. Instead, what I’d like to do is say a few words about the general background for the ongoing assault on academic freedom.

Perhaps a good place to start is with an observation by a prominent University of Chicago professor, Hans Morgenthau. He’s one of the founders of the realist school of international relations. He condemned the intellectual classes for what he called “our conformist subservience to those in power.” Power comes in many forms, typically it’s a state or economic power, although one should not ignore the power of the defamation industries and depraved individuals associated with them, who can lie and slander and vilify with impunity, thanks to the media that tolerate and even encourage such behavior.

The assault on academic freedom is broad. But it has specifically targeted the Middle East departments and Peace Studies programs. That makes sense. State power is focused on war in the Middle East. So impediments, after you’re removed, and “conformist subservience to those in power” must be assured in these areas.
The matter goes far beyond purifying academic institutions, a faculty who revealed unwanted truths.

Subordination to power can take many other forms.
Just to illustrate, I’d like to take one recent case that has elicited a huge public outcry (…) the appearance of Iranian President Ahmadinejad at Columbia University. In the background, there’s the frenzied government media campaign to demonize Iran and its relatively powerless president “the new Hitler, if not worse.” In fact “the new Hitler” has been a familiar refrain in the doctrinal system for many years with changes in a cast of characters, depending on current plans for subversion and aggression.
The propaganda campaign about alleged Iranian inequity is accompanied by threats of war that resound across the political spectrum including every viable democratic candidate. The threats are a serious violation of the UN Charter, if anyone still cares about these marginalia. The campaign may also lay the basis for future US aggression in the region, probably even more catastrophic consequences than the invasion of Iraq.

Demonization is a conventional preliminary to aggression. So therefore it is not to be regarded lightly, particularly when it’s carried out in the academic setting, which in a free society should be as untainted as possible by “the conformist subservience to power,” that once Morgenthau deplored.

Before turning to Columbia University’s instructive contribution, maybe a few more words about the context would be useful.
Wars are almost always defensive wars in the eyes of the perpetrators, at least in their words, as when the original Hitler invaded Poland in self-defense against what he called “the wild terror” of the Poles. And right now, the ground has been prepared for war of self-defense against Iran in a manner which tells quite a lot about the dominant intellectual and moral culture.
So speaking for a very large segment of articulated opinion, the editors of the Washington Post thundered that Iran is waging war against the United States and trying to kill as many American soldiers as possible, so we must fight back. What’s Iran’s aggression? Iran’s aggression is its alleged support for Iraqis resisting US invasion, occupation, and virtual destruction of the country right on Iran’s borders.

The propaganda campaign illustrates an important difference between totalitarian and democratic propaganda systems. In totalitarian societies, typically, the party line is openly declared:“Obey it. Or else, the mailed fist takes care of the rest.” In more democratic societies, that won’t work and accordingly the party line is not articulated. Therefore it is protected from easy refutation. Rather, it is insinuated or presupposed as the framework for debate. And lively debate is then encouraged within that framework. That has a double advantage. First, it makes it appear that the society is free and open; simply look at the lively debate. But it also instills the party line even more deeply as the precondition for responsible discussion. It’s accepted as unchangeable, unchallengeable reality that it is something like the air to breathe.

Well, truth from the current charges about Iran’s crimes do elicit a lively debate between the hawks and the doves. The hawks say we have to bomb them as self-defense in response to their aggression. And the doves respond that the evidence is not yet entirely clear, so we should delay before we obliterate them.

By the prevailing logic, Russia would have been justified in bombing the United States in the 1980s, when Washington was quite publicly supporting resistance to the Russian invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
The CIA Station Chief in Pakistan, Howard Hart reported that “I was the first Chief of Station ever sent abroad with this wonderful order: ‘Go kill Soviet soldiers’. Imagine, I loved it.” “The mission was not to liberate Afghanistan,” so Tim Weiner writes in his recent History of The CIA, repeating the obvious. But “it was noble anyway,” he says. Presumably, the novelty included support for Reagan’s favorites who amused themselves by such acts as throwing acid in the faces of the women in Kabul that they regard as too liberated. And after the withdrawal of the Russian forces, they turned to tearing the country in shreds, creating such havoc and terror that the population actually welcomed the Taliban. So, killing Russian invaders and supporting crazed Islamic fundamentalist murderers, that was noble. But providing aid to forces resisting a US invasion would be a shocking crime which justifies military action and self-defense.
And that stand is unarguable on the tacit assumption that the US owns the world. So, a US invasion is by definition right and just. It may be costly, it may be a mistake, it may be a quagmire but it cannot be criminal, like comparable acts by enemies. Withdraw the assumption that the US owns the world, and the entire debate about Iranian interference in occupied Iraq is simply ludicrous.
Demonization as preliminary violence is a standard operating procedure for good reasons. The primary reason is that the population is generally opposed to war. And it has to be whipped into hysteria about the ultimate evil that is threatening our existence. In this case, that is not so easy. So, the propaganda efforts must be fierce.

75% of Americans are opposed even to threats against Iran and prefer entering into normal relations. Roughly, the same percentage believe that Iran has the right to nuclear energy and call for a nuclear weapons free zone in the entire region that would include Iran and Israel.
That’s an idea that is virtually unmentionable in a respectable society. Probably few of the respondents are told what you are likely to know it, but they are actually endorsing the UN Security Council resolution 687, April 1991, to which Washington regularly appealed selectively, in their efforts to justify the invasion of Iraq. The resolution calls for “establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery.”
Rather interestingly, Iranians and Americans are almost in complete agreement on these matters and in radical opposition to the government and articulated opinion in the United States. OK, the background.

Let’s turn to Columbia University’s contribution. Columbia University president Lee Bollinger introduced Ahmadinejad with the tirade that has no precedence that I can think of. Bollinger adopted without question the charge that Iran has committed the shocking crime of supporting resistance to US aggression on its borders. And therefore he accepted routinely the tacit premise that the United States owns the world. And he went on with the familiar refrain that’s been trumpeted through the loyal media, which I won’t repeat.

The most apt comments on the scene on this performance was in Asia. The Journal Asia Times, said “An even more appalling measure of western arrogance” is “the diatribe with which the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, chose to greet his guest, a head of state.” “Were President Bush to be greeted in the same manner in any university in the developing world,” “the Pentagon would have instantly switched to let’s-bomb-them-with-democracy mode.” To which we may add, that Bush’s crimes vastly exceed anything attributed to Ahmadinejad by a huge margin in fact.

The hysteria has its comical aspects or what would be comical if we were not so serious. Since Ahmadinejad kept from being too offensive, the media and commentators leaped on his silly statement about homosexuality in Iran. That deeply offended Westerners who have such a stellar record in defending gay rights ever since gaining independence centuries ago. So, who can imagine, for example, that President Bush would have been the governor of a state that outlawed sodomy?

Actually there’s a lot more to say since we’re concentrated on universities, we might recall the murder of the very distinguished mathematician and computer scientist, Allan Turing, by the British government which forced him to undergo hormone therapy to cure his “disease,” homosexuality, leading to suicide. That year was 1953, which has a certain significance in US-British-Iranian relations, not forgotten in Iran.

It’s worth remembering the reaction in the media and Columbia University to the events to that important year in which the United States and Britain instigated coup to overthrow the Iranian parliamentary system, imposing the iron rule of the brutal tyrant and torture of the Shah.

The NY Times editors were full praise for the achievement. In their words, “Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism” of seeking the control of their own resources. Columbia University played its part by inviting the Shah to deliver the university’s 1955 Gabriel Silver Lecture Dedicated to International Peace and also granting him an honorary degree.
In his lecture, the Shah urged that “we must be strong enough internally and externally so that the temptation of subversion from within, supported from without, can be obliterated.” The New York Times reported the lecture of “an honorary degree” but without embarrassment. Now the headline reads, “Shah praises US for Peace Policy;Iran’s ruler calls on West to bolster independent nations” as the US and Britain had just done with such grace and nobility in Shah’s country.

Columbia’s delicate taste with regard to visiting dignitaries was revealed again when Pakistan’s military dictator, Pervez Musharraf visited recently. His country, of course, not only developed nuclear weapons and refused to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty but also provides refuge to the world’s champion proliferator, Abdul Qadeer Kahn, who “did more damage in ten years than any country did in the first 50 years of nuclear age.” I’m quoting James Walsh, executive director of Harvard’s managing the Atom Project.

President Bollinger opened his fulsome welcome by saying “Rarely do we have an opportunity such as this to greet a great figure of such central and global importance. It is with great gratitude and excitement that I welcome President Musharaf and his wife to Columbia University.” “Mr. President, as you share your thoughts and insights, you will give our students, the leaders of tomorrow, first-hand knowledge of the world their generation will inherit.” Maybe true or intended. “President Musharaf, we thank you for being with us today, and we welcome you to Columbia University.”

To enhance the imagery, while Bollinger was once again confirming the state doctrine by berating Ahmadinejad, Musharraf’s riot police of firing tear gas and beating lawyers and human rights activists protesting Musharraf’s plans to have himself reelected while serving as chief of the military by blocking any viable, alternative candidate.

A few hours before Ahmadinejad arrived at Columbia, the university welcomed another distinguished figure, the president of Turkmenistan, another vibrant democracy with a stellar human rights record, and plenty of natural gas which the US covets.
That’s just a sample but perhaps enough to remind us that “conformist subservience to power” takes many forms in the academic world. Denial or withdrawal of tenures is only one.

The current assault on academic freedom traces back to the activism of the 1960s and the elite reaction to it. This “time of troubles,” just as it is called, “had a dangerous civilizing effect on American society and culture,” in quite a few domains: civil and human rights, opposition to criminal aggression, concern for the environment, critical analysis of dominant institutions and ideology, and plenty more. That aroused deep concern and elicited a backlash that is taken many forms and continues today.

A good indication of how the problems were perceived is given in the 1975 publication of the Trilateral Commission called “the Crisis of Democracy,” should inform and remind that this is the view from the liberal internationalist end of the political spectrum.
So, the Carter administration was largely drawn from the Commission. The “crisis of democracy” that troubled the liberal internationalist commentators, was that the 1960’s activism was making the country too democratic. It was mobilizing formerly the passive "special interests" to enter the political arena to advance their concerns. These dangerous special interests were women, the young, the elderly, working people, minorities and majorities, the simple term is the population. The commission called for more moderation in democracy overcoming the “excess of democracy” in the 60s. The reason was that so that national rulers would not be disturbed by “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders”: the population, borrowing the phrase used earlier by Walter Lippman, the leading public intellectual of 20th century expressing the same rather conventional thoughts.

One specific concern of the commission was what they called “the institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young”: schools, universities, churches and the like. They were not carrying out its task with sufficient rigor, therefore they must act rigorously to inhibit the freedom and opportunity they were providing for independent thought. That’s a liberal end of the spectrum. The other end, we have today  the attack by statist reactionaries who are outraged by what they call “the liberal bias” that “subjects conservative students to punishment and it instills anti-American, pro-Palestinian and other left liberal dogma,” --quoting the press commentary. The Press also reports that Congress is taking the first steps towards pressuring colleges to maintain “ideological balance” in the classroom which are the claims that scarcely merit ridicule in the light of the realities of the academic world.
The attacks are, however, quite real. The press also reports that the House of Representatives unanimously passed the bill that would require university international studies departments to show more support for American foreign policy or risk their federal funding. The unanimous resolution was aimed particularly at Middle East Programs, which I mentioned are the main targets along with Peace Studies programs.

The late Baruch Kimmerling, one of Israel’s leading scholars, warned of the dangerous consequences what he called “this assault on academic freedom by a coalition of neo-cons and thus zealous Jewish students supported by some Jewish mainstream organizations, inspired by David Horowitz Crusade.”

The title of the essay was “Can a patriotic mob take over the universities?” The article by this distinguished Israeli scholar was rejected by the Chronicle Higher Education. Writing in the London Review of Books, a Harvard University Middle East scholar, Sara Roy, “Horowitz’ attack on “250 Peace Studies Programs in the United States,” which she quotes Horowitz, “teach students to identify with America’s terrorist enemies and to identify America as a Great Stan, oppressing the world’s poor and causing them to go hungry. The question is, how long can a nation at a war with ruthless enemies like bin Laden and Zarqawi, survive with if it’s educational institutions continue to be suborned in this way?”

Well, it’s pointless to debate such lunacy, but it’s wrong to disregard. The good goal of the statist reactionaries is not to tell the truth---this is perfect nonsense, as well as we do---but the goal is to extend the range of omissible options, extend towards the repressive, authoritarian end of the spectrum.
And it’s entirely understandable that the Middle East departments and Peace Studies Programs should be the primary targets. Peace Studies are inherently subversive if they are all serious. And the Middle East departments might expose the truth about the region and about the US policies there as Norman Finkelstein has done with scrupulous documentation and penetrating analysis.

Truth poses a serious barrier to the policies carried out by the state power, and supported by all too many among the educated classes, whether it’s invading Iraq to establishing a client state, and in order to give us power in the region, or restoring Iran to the happy days under the Shah, or destroying Palestine under the pretext of defense and democracy promotion, or a long series of other crimes.

These crimes are likely to extend into the future in the region that President Eisenhower described as the “strategically most important area of the world,” which contains about two thirds of the world’s energy resources. 60 years ago, the State Department recognized that these resources constitute “a stupendous source of strategic power,” and “one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” What is more, there are—a lever of world control. That’s a matter that has been understood by planners from the early post war period until the present day.

For example, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wasn’t a particular supporter of the Iraq war, nevertheless wrote at its outset as “successful conquest of the Iraq,” would provide the United States with a critical “leverage” over industrial rivals. He was in fact echoing remakes of George Kennan when he was a leading planner right after World War Two. And it explained that the control of the Middle East oil, which the US was using, the control over the Middle East oil would provide Washington with “veto power” over allies.
The Bush administration understands the point very well. Control over pipelines can provide “tools of intimidation and blackmail.” Dick Cheney warned. It’s control by others, that is. Control by us is for benefit of the world. It’s true by definition, and another tacit presupposition that provides the framework for discussion in polite society.

The assault on academic freedom has deep roots and ominous portent. It should be resisted with the steadfastness and the courage that has been shown by students of De Paul University who have courageously and honorably protested its manifestation at their own university. In a free society, there should be zero tolerance for “institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young,” or for the rest of the attacks on democracy under the cynical pretext of defending freedom.

BOOK TV C-SPAN2 January 17, 2008

BOOK TV C-SPAN2 January 17, 2008

Noam Chomsky talks about U.S. foreign policy and other matters at an event hosted by Back Pages Books in Waltham, Massachusetts. Professor Chomsky talked to Back Pages owner Alex Green and then took questions from audience members.

Alex Greene: It seems like the world leadership, I think most recently, of course, here about Benazir Bhutto having been educated in this area and Harvard. And so many of the world leaders seem to come here to be educated for better or worse.

NC: You remember how recently that is. (Definitely) I mean look, up until the Second World War, the United States was kind of culturally backward. If you wanted to study philosophy or physics, you’d go to England or Germany. If you wanted to be a writer, you’d go to Paris. The United States at that time in its relation with the rest of the world was kind of like, I don’t want to assault anybody, but maybe central Indiana to Boston today. It’s a place you try to get out of if you wanted to be a creative writer or thinker or something. That changed during the Second World War. In fact, a whole relationship between the United States and the world changed. And part of it was, much the rest of the industrial world was seriously harmed or destroyed. And the United States gained enormously during the war. In fact, it already was by far the richest country in the world, but industrial production more than tripled during the Second World War. And it just ended up—the United States ended up owning, having half the wealth of the world. There’s not anything like that in history. And it affected the mentality, the institutions and so on. It was just a radical shift. So what we see today is not the traditional United States.

AG: Certainly, certainly. Now, are there any commonalities in these people who come out of this sort of modern education system and who are becoming world leaders around? Do they seem to be sort of a similar foundational approach? Are they taking anything out of this American system or this American ideal?

NC: If that is true, it does not reflect very well on the education system here. Take a look at the world. Is this what we want to train people to create? Now I suppose it’s true.

AG: I guess it ties into a question I’ve been thinking about and sort of obsessively rereading a poem called The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot. And it begins this, “We are the Hollow Men. We are the Stuffed Men,” but it ends with a lullaby, sort of “This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper.”
And it strikes me that---I look to education very often as a root of how people comport themselves, even in the political sphere where maybe we perhaps shouldn’t be expecting that to be a relevant sort of part of your resume. But that it seems to me that for all of the bombastic things that are happening around the world, it seems to be occurring here almost as a whimper. As the end of this poem, it seems to be incredibly muted here. (in Boston?) In Boston, and in America and in general. And while there are definitely large movements, you know, there’s a level of obfuscation that seems to be preventing that from being a general sentiment that you feel day to day walking around. I wonder if, are there other places like this in the world where people feel muted? Do they feel almost--although things are, for how large the scale there are in what’s happening-- that it oddly has this sort of played-down sense to your, maybe your sensibility of what you can do about it but maybe your sensibility of even how to grasp the concept of what’s happening in the first place?

NC: I guess I just don’t see it that way really. In fact, it seems to me more exciting now than it was 30 years ago, much more than it was 50 years ago.

AG: In what ways? Why, because I guess----.

NC: Well, let’s just take this room. (Absolutely)When I started giving talks on general topics--it was originally the Vietnam War-- back in the early 60s, talk would be in somebody’s living room with two neighbors or in a church with four people: the minister, the organizer, somebody who wanted to kill me, and a drunk who walked out in the streets. That was the level of concern for the outside world. In fact, horrible things were going on all of the world that the United States was involved in, and nobody cared.
For example—I don’t want to take a poll but— try with your friends. Very few people even know when the United States attacked South Vietnam. I mean that was one of the major events of modern history. Ask people “When did the United States attack South Vietnam?” I mean it did have a client state there, which killed about maybe 60~70,000 people during the 50s. But when did the invasion take place? It turns out it was 1962. Nobody cared. I mean it wasn’t a secret. You could read in the back pages in the NY Times that John F. Kennedy had sent the US Air Force to start bombing South Vietnam under South Vietnamese markings, planes with South Vietnamese markings so they wouldn’t know that the huge jet there was the US Air Force. When they started the programs of chemical warfare to destroy crops and ground cover, they started rounding people up and driving them into what amounted to concentration camps, ultimately millions of people into strategic hamlets in urban slums, authorized Napalm. Really, a big attack. Nobody even cared. It was years before things really became vitalized. And the 60s just changed the place enormously.

So for example, a meeting like this would have been inconceivable. In fact, the latest, the late 60s, politically active groups like SDS(Students for a Democratic Society), you could barely mention a word like capitalism. You know people would shrink and “God, that’s really a frightening concept, talk about that." I mean things were just taken granted now. We considered it outlandish then in many areas.
In fact, it’s striking to compare the beginning of the Vietnam War with the beginning of the Iraq War. In case of the Iraq War, there were huge protests before the war started. In the case of Vietnam, you didn’t get protests that scale until South Vietnam was essentially destroyed and much of the rest of the region as well.

AG: I think there is a remaking of that goes on now, so that the sense of people who weren’t alive or aware during that period, is often that "yeah, you know, the 60s are this decade, they start in 1960 and they end in 1969."

NC: See, but it didn’t end. It has picked up since then. (Absolutely) I mean the major popular movements that had a real effect on the society are from a later period. Take, say the women’s movement which just changed the society enormously. I mean, take say MIT again, since all want to talk about Boston. If you walk down the halls in MIT when I got there in 1955, you’d see white, well-dressed, differential males. Take a walk down the halls now, you know what you are going to see. It’s about a half women, a third minorities, casual dress, informal relations, it’s just political activisms were unheard at this time. It just changed tremendously. That’s changed all over the country but the women’s movement is primarily a product of the 60s. I mean this is the germs in the 70s. The germs were there in the 60s but barely. And it picked up and changed things enormously.
Or take say the environmental movement. I mean that’s speaking of the end of the earth, that’s going to be important. There was almost nothing in the 60s. It began and developed in the 70s. The solidarity movement, Central American solidarity movement is now worldwide, that’s the 80s. And that’s something new in western history. I mean no one, say in France, ever thought of going to live in Algeria or Vietnamese villages in order to help the people who were under attack from French violence. You know, nobody thought of going to live in a Vietnamese village. But in the 1980s, thousands of people did it. And now it’s all over the world.

AG: I guess it begs almost a simple definition question that is, sort of what is contemporary liberalism. My sense is that there are not--you say platforms--there are not necessarily the same kinds of platforms and movements especially where you can say “I’m liberal and I’m a communist. I’m liberal and a socialist. I’m an anarchist.” You know, you don’t hear that as often in these discussions as now. There seems to be a different kind of solidarity and different kind of definition of liberalism. Now I wonder what you see that is being now….

NC: One reason is that the words have simply lost meaning. So, what does it mean to be a liberal or communist or anything else? The point that Orwell made, I mean the--of one way of trying to undermine independent thought and creative approaches to the world is to simply destroy the way of talking about things so the words literally almost have no meaning. In fact by now, just about every word that is used in political discourse has at least two meanings: a literal meaning and its opposite. And it’s the opposite that is normally used.
So, take a contemporary debate that’s going on right now. You see headlines in newspapers about our report on “foreign fighters in Iraq.” Condoleezza Rice announces that she’s got a—that it’s easy to ask a question about how can we settle the problem in Iraq. She says it’s quite easy: just keep the foreign fighters out, keep the foreign weapons out, and it all will be settled. Yeah, nobody bats an eyelash. Are there 150,000 US troops there? Are they bringing weapons? They aren’t foreign. Because anything we do is not foreign. If we invaded Canada, they would be enemy combatants. And we would be there by right. So concept like aggression and invasion, terror, anything you mention doesn’t exist—I mean take democracy. George Bush was in Egypt yesterday, praising President Mubarak. The Egyptians are writhing at that. At the same time he’s giving talks about how we have to promote democracy and so on. He had just come from Saudi Arabia, one of the most extreme fundamentalist tyrannies in the world. See a picture of him with King Abdullah watching a horse show, so on and so forth. Why do we make up all of this? The terms for discussing things have been almost evacuated from content. That’s why you don’t hear these words. But on the other hand, people’s instincts and commitments and engagement I think are significantly improved over the 60s.
I mean take your own field, which you were telling me about. Archeology. You can go back to the 1960s. The general assumption even in the academic world, was that there was nobody living in this hemisphere, just a couple of savages wandering around. The idea that what has been discovered about the precontact history is just kind of mind-boggling when you go back, look at what was even in the scholarly literature at that time, let alone people’s ordinary mentality. I mean like when I was growing up as a kid, you know, I consider myself pretty a leftist but we played Cowboys and Indians, where we were the cowboys killing the Indians. Maybe it still happens somewhere but it wouldn’t be my children, they wouldn’t have done that. These are just changes that took place in our consciousness and our conception of what the past was, what we have done, who we are, how we relate to one another. It just changed enormously. A lot of sparks were lit in the 60s but much of it took off later.
For example, the beginnings of the rediscovery actually of what happened, the original scene of this country, what happened to the native population, it just began in the 70s from outside the academic world incidentally. People like Francis Jennings and others.

AG: Where these words have lost so much of but not all of their meaning, and you look at the—a sort of— there’s a rhetorical sub tactic of this government in particular, which is sort of the broad blitz of you send out, the top ten people you have and you reiterate the lie on ten news programs at once, in a sense, sort of quasi-double speak sort of way, so that it becomes a truth. I wonder is that- if you look at the rhetoric being used by other world leaders around the world, whether it’s Vladimir Putin or whether it’s Sarkozy or whether it’s Hugo Chavez, are there drastically different tactics of the same sort of the approach being used right now? Or are they sort of all following this model, just sort of blitzing the same idea over and over until people don’t particularly listen, I think?

NC: Well, it’s a mistake to expect anything from leaders other than attempts to expand their power and control and domination. They differ, you know. But as soon as you mention the word “leader,” you should shutter and look somewhere else. In a free society you might have representatives but you wouldn’t have leaders.
So, let’s imagine that this was really functioning: we are in the primary season. What would a democratic primary be? Say, take New Hampshire. It wouldn’t be (that) a candidate comes into a town and says…tells you lies about themselves. What would happen if the people in the town would get together and say look, we worked out the programs they want the next president to follow, and then if somebody wants to come in to be elected and they’d say OK, you can come, here’s what we want you to do. If you are willing to do that, maybe we will vote for you. If you are not, we’re not willing to vote for you. And there should be mechanisms to ensure that they do it or else you throw them out. But the way we do is quite different. The leaders come, they tell you what they present themselves usually falsely, and you’re then to decide whether you want him or you don’t want him. But that’s completely backwards from what a functioning democratic society would be. So when you talk about leaders, you have to shiver.
On the other hand, there are differences. So, take say Chavez you mentioned. I don’t know how many people know this but on December 31st, the end of last year, Chavez announced an amnesty for participants in the military coup in 2002 April, not for all of them, for many of them. This is the military coup backed by the United States probably, with US participation, certainly with support, which overthrew the government, kidnapped the President, disbanded the parliament, the Supreme Court, the other democratic institutions, applauded in the United States and denounced in Latin America almost entirely. It was overturned a couple of days later. But suppose it happened here. Suppose there was a military coup here which overthrew the government, kidnapped George Bush, disbanded the Congress. Incidentally there was a popular uprising and overturned the coup, would there be an amnesty to people who took part of it? They’d get death sentence. There wouldn’t be any question about amnesty. Well, I don’t know if it was out of embarrassment or lack of interest, but actually I had a friend do a data base search on coverage of the amnesty. Well, a couple of lines, scattered lines here and there. I’m sure you know that Chavez is like a demon in the western press.
One of his worst crimes which just elicited a taunt of abuse, was canceling the license of station, RCTV. Actually he didn’t close the station contrary to what he had said. He cancelled their license to take up a large part of the publicly owned frequencies. They still go on cable. That was considered utterly horrendous. The press denounced and said it was a kind of thing that could never happen here. It’s perfectly true, it couldn’t happen here but very few pointed out the reason.
You have to think of an analogy. Let’s go back to the imagined military coup in the United States. Suppose CBS helped instigate the coup, supported it openly. As the popular uprising took place that overthrew the coup leaders, CBS started playing comedies so that people wouldn’t know what’s going on in the streets. What would happen to CBS afterwards? To their managers and owners? Would they be allowed to keep broadcasting for five years, and to have their license to public broadcasting removed? (They would be) Immediately sent to jail and probably get to death sentence. So it’s true it wouldn’t happen here. But not for exactly the reasons we mentioned. You know, go on and on like this.
Take one last example to illustrate just our difficulty of applying to ourselves the standards we do to others. Take 9/11. A terrible atrocity. A huge outpouring of sympathy and support all over the world including incidentally from the Jihadi movements. They later turned, because of our reaction to it but in the beginning they highly condemned it pretty strongly. And it was a terrible atrocity undoubtedly. But it could have been worse.

So, let’s imagine how it could have been worse for example. Suppose that on September 11th, Al-Qaeda had bombed the White House and killed the President, instituted a murderous, brutal regime which killed maybe 50,000 to 100,000 people and tortured about 700,000, set up a major international terrorist center in Washington, which was overthrowing governments all over the world, and installing brutal vicious neo-Nazi dictatorships, assassinating people. Suppose he called in a bunch of economists, let’s called them “Kandahar Boys” to run the American economy, who within a couple of years had driven the economy into one of the worst collapses of its history. Suppose this had happened. That would have been worse than 9/11, right?
But it did happen. And it happened on 9/11. That happened on September 11th, 1973 in Chile. The only thing you have to change is this per capita equivalence, which is the right way to look at it. Well, did that change the world? Yeah, it did but not from our point of view, in fact, who even knows about it?

AG: Because just in terms of your comment on their report..

NC: --- incidentally, just to finish, because we were responsible for that one.

AG: Definitely. But because as you said the amnesty on December 31st what you see is no coverage and you look at Chile during that period and when you look at the NY Times, the majority of the articles are being filed from Argentina. They were not even filed from Chile. So, where is that, the magnitude of the event was immediately I think muted by the fact that nobody… who was reporting for the American media wasn’t even there.

NC: Well, it’s not the case. All of our services covered it, which means that every editorial office knew it. I mean every editorial office picks up Reuters and AP and AFP and so on. Yeah, every desk at every editorial office knew about it and decided not to print it. The main reason is that it just doesn’t fit the image that is supposed to be presented.
Actually, I was even involved in that inadvertently. When Chavez was at the UN a couple of years ago, he gave a press conference in which he allegedly said that he was very sorry that he hadn’t been able to meet me before I died. That was a big story all over the country. You know, actually I was interviewed by the NY Times, they thought it was very funny, what would I have to say about it and so on. That was a big issue because they needed to show how crazy, idiot he is. There was only one problem. That’s not what he said. What he said is that--it was very explicit and unambiguous--he said he was sorry that he hadn’t been able to meet John Kenneth Galbraith before he died. Well, evidently the editorial offices decided that it wouldn’t do to present the image of Chavez as somebody who admires a liberal icon. So, they changed it. It was pointed out right away. FAIR--media monitoring organization, a very good one--immediately looked at the transcript and wrote to the NY Times, and others saying it’s not what it was. And the NY Times did issue a correction 17 days later at the bottom of wherever at page of advertisements. Yeah, it was a correction. You can’t imagine that the American press didn’t understand the Spanish. It's hard to imagine how John Kenneth Galbraith and Noam Chomsky would be confused, but let’s imagine it. Did Le Mond not understand the Spanish? Did El Mercurio in Chile not understand the Spanish? This is just a way of demonizing a figure who the state orders you must demonize. It was independent whether you like him or not, totally independent.

AG: I think it strikes me more often that while all this was sort of an extraordinary moment of baffling– sort of rewriting. That they did it often seems like, your articles that you find and the reporters that you see is just diversion-oriented. So that I remember reading an article about the coup in Chile where the entire--it was the front page NY Times article from just after September 11th 1973-- where the entire article was about bank runs in Argentina. (Yeah, that’s right.) And nothing about Chile, there was no sense even that “Who was Pinochet?” “What was going on?”, “What was at that point the junta that was in control?”

NC: Bear in mind that that’s a much worse atrocity than our 9/11, which is often called in South America the second 9/11 for good reasons. Actually, personally, I had a teenage son who my wife and I decided to take, Lexington where we live. The Lexington movie theatre was playing “Missing,” you know what the film is about. So we took our son, figuring he’d learn something about it. He thought that was kind of an interesting adventure story but as we were walking out of the theatre, I was listening to people talking about it. I don’t think much of the audience knew that it was about Chile. They knew that the American government had done some bad thing and they had to rescue this nice American guy, but that’s about the level of them. It’s true that the film didn’t spell out in detail--this is Chile in 1973, the United States helped instigate the coup which had utterly horrible effects--but it takes a remarkable degree of insularity not to know enough about the world to appreciate what this is. I should say that the second 9/11, ours, one of its consequences was to introduce many cracks in that insularity. It opened a lot of people’s minds. You could see that in all sorts of ways. I mean I can just see personally like the number of invitations from around the country to give talks just escalated radically. Audiences are much bigger, much more engaged. Small book stores, like little left book stores which were barely struggling along had to suddenly reprint books from the 1980s and 70s that were never sold because people weren’t interested. A lot of people- one of the consequences of it was to shatter some of the -- kind of internal focus of a highly insular society and may get people feel that they got to learn something about the world.

AG: Even now perhaps this sort of platforms or identifiable movements attached on issue may have sort of –dropped often certainly is the old sorts of polemical identification way, that now perhaps it is this seeking of information that drives this more than anything because it’s-- I think it’s abundantly clear that people, you can’t just turn on the CBS evening news, this clip emerged. Last week of Katie Couric, clips between her segments from New Hampshire where she, it’s clear that she has no sense whatsoever what even she’s reporting on. So that people, perhaps it is the seeking it in of itself that might be engendering a larger, active sense that people have.

NC: Well, it’s hard to generalize about a diverse and complex society like this one. But there are tendencies that you can identify. One tendency is to certain level of skepticism, of certain level of interest and independent inquiry trying to find out what happened. I mean it can lead it in crazy directions too. It can lead to wild conspiracy theories, so on and so forth. The Internet kind of tends to engender that kind of phenomenon but it’s also just much healthier concern with things that are happening in the world.

AG: The Internet also brings in, I think, tremendous amount you can’t find anywhere else. It does, perhaps maybe what makes it better is the sense that you have to be more discerning with what you’re reading, but you are prepared to be discerning. It’s not the case perhaps with the older media up on that cusp when the Internet is sort of really arising. A lot of folks I think weren’t as able to be as rapidly critical of….

NC: No, because you got one picture: the morning newspaper, local television station. Now if you want, at least you can get quite a wide variety of information.
For example, the things I just mentioned, you can find out about. It takes, as you say, discernment. First of all, commitment and discernment. Not much different from sciences in that respect. You can’t just take a look at all the data that exists and come up with a theory. You have to know what makes sense to look at, what doesn’t make sense, you have to framework the interpretation. I mean the best scientist is not the one who can list all the papers that have been written on the topic he’s working on. It’s the one who knows what to look at.
Actually I had a friend at MIT who is a Nobel Prize laureate in biology once described me how he taught his classes. He said he goes in and gives a lecture about the way he thinks these things ought to be just in principle. And the task for the students is to check the literature and find if he’s right. That’s kind of the way you have to look at the world, too. You’ll get overwhelmed with meaningless data. You have to pick out what matters, which does take discernment and training and so on. If we had a kind of educational systems that you and I and the rest of us would like to have, that’s what children would be trained to do, encouraged to do, figure out how to do it. It’s very different than No Child Left Behind, where you train to pass the test.

The Press Conference at the United Nations June, 2006

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The Press Conference at the United Nations June, 2006 (continued)
 
On Hamas, Israel-Palestine

Q: You spoke about terror. There is really terror everywhere at this moment especially in the Middle East. Do you think Hamas finally will survive? And the other question is that in the Middle East, one country threatens the other one by nuclear and other things. And at this moment, I wonder if you can tell us, the Quartet, our active support to do something, is dead or what? The threat you spoke about with the countries in the Middle East one after the other, and if the Quartet actually could do anything, is going to do anything finally, or just dead?

NC: Well, as far as Hamas is concerned, I mean my own feeling is that the policies, its announced policies are completely unacceptable. However, we should be honest enough to recognize that Hamas’ policies are more acceptable than those of the United States and Israel. We should be honest enough to recognize that.

So, just consider the three demands that are made on Hamas. One demand is that they recognize Israel. Did the US and Israel recognize Palestine? No, of course not. In fact, they’ve completely refused for 30 years to respond to an overwhelming international consensus backed by the PLO, the Palestinian National Committee for two state settlement. They’ve rejected it. So they’re more extreme than Hamas. The Second demand is that they renounce violence. Do the US and Israel renounce violence? No. Read the newspapers. Of course they carry out violence as freely, as much as they like. The third demand is that Hamas live up to international obligations. OK, the crucial one is the so-called Saudi Plan, the Arab League decision in 2002 to establish a two-state settlement with full normalization on the international border. The demand on Hamas they accept that. In fact, referendum that’s coming along, it’s just a repetition of that, if it comes along. Did the US and Israel accept it? No! They flatly rejected it.

And this is not just a rhetoric, they rejected in acts, which is a lot more important than rhetoric. The current annexation program --in a propaganda system here described as the “withdraw program”-- the current annexation program is a radical violation of those international agreements. Now, that one didn’t happen to have the force of law with the Arab League. But the similar proposals have been coming to the Security Council and the General Assembly since 1976.
1976 is the first time when the resolution came to the Security Council, January 1976 initiated by Syria, backed by the other major Arab states, calling for two-state settlement on the international border incorporating the wording of UN 242 but adding a Palestinian state. Well, that’s not a Security Council resolution because the US vetoed it. The US vetoed another one in 1980, a similar one. It’s been blocking General Assembly resolutions to the same effect ever since. Not only—there’s almost no break in this—it’s not only votes in rhetoric, again it’s also actions.

So the settlement programs are all illegal. As I said, the World Court unanimously agreed they are in violation of international law and that any portion of separation wall that is built to defend this settlement is ipso facto illegal in the words of the US justice. But they’re developing that and that’s very serious. Take a look at the map of what they’re imposing, it’s very serious.

So, can the Quartet do anything? You know, if the US agrees. It’s like the UN. The Quartet can’t do anything unless the US agrees. What the US is now agreeing to is the Israeli annexation of the valuable parts of the territories, water resources breaking them up and so on.
In fact Bush is the first president who officially authorized it. I mean it was going on anyway but it came official, official authorization under Bush. So, yes, as long as that proceeds, they can’t do anything.

Going back to Hamas, as I say I don’ t like their positions, but they’re more forthcoming and moderate than those of the United States and Israel. And it goes on.
Hamas has called for truce, in fact has been living up to a truce for the last year. And they’re calling, their position is calling for a long-term truce maybe an indefinite truce on the international border, which happens to be in accord with the overwhelming international consensus since 1976 for a political settlement on the international border with maybe minor and mutual modifications, which was the official US position until it departed from the rest of the world on this.

They’ve been calling for a truce on that border and once a truce is established, for further negotiations for permanent settlement. OK, it’s not an unreasonable position. I mean they continue to claim that the Palestinians have a historical right to the entire former Palestine. But so did Ehud Olmert. He says the Jews have a historic right to the entire land of Palestine and nothing can ever cause as to abandon that right. His foreign minister Tzipi Livni, comes from a sector of Israel politics, far as the Likud as background. As far as I know, they have never abandoned their official position that Israel has the right to the both sides of the Jordan meaning two former Palestine and Jordan. Maybe they’ve abandoned but I’ve never seen it. So if that is what they want to say, fine. I think it would be plausible for Mexicans to say that they’re not abandoning their right to the roughly half of Mexico that was conquered by the United States in the US-Mexican War. Why should they abandon their right? Of course they’re not going to implement it, but if they want it to be part of their historical right, OK, say it. So that part, I don’t think is very interesting.

The actual programs of Hamas, I think has a lot to object to, but the programs of the United States and Israel are much worse and furthermore they’re being implemented. And finally those are the ones we can do something about. I can’t do anything about what Hamas decides. I can do a lot or we should do a lot about what the major countries decide. So fine, let’s try to shift US-Israeli policy towards the long-standing international consensus repeated in the Arab League proposals of 2002 accepted by the Palestinians back in December 1988 formally and continued right till today.

And there are serious proposals right on the table which are not perfect but a basis for settlement. The most well-known is the Geneva accord released in Geneva in December 2002. This was an informal but quite a high level agreement between the Palestinian and Israeli negotiators with a detailed plan for how to reach a settlement based on the international border with mutual modifications. Not an unreasonable plan. A lot of support in both Israel and Palestine. Israel rejected it. The US simply dismissed it. And since the US dismissed it,--you take a look at US press coverage they just ridiculed it.　So Elaine Sciolino had a report in the New York Times about it, in which she something like, these unelected people made a derisory report or something like that. Yeah the reason is because the US dismissed it. Well, if the US dismisses it, nothing is going to happen.

Actually going back to the Road Map, if you take a look, try Google you’ll find it quickly. The Israeli government accepted the Road Map with 14 reservations. Take a look at the 14 reservations. I mean they eviscerated it. And the US backed them on that. So Israel never accepted the Road Map. But the US backed it so therefore they go ahead and do what you want, the press doesn’t report it. But again, those are decisions and choices that can be made right here and should be.

What will happen to Hamas in the long run, I don’t know. I mean they have a lot of popular support undoubtedly, but there’s overwhelming popular support within the Palestinian territories for something like international consensus, two-state settlement on the international border of the kind that the PLO formally accepted in December 1988.

We might remember what happened then. The people who hold the clubs dislike history. For them, history is bunk, you know, it’s antiquated, boring, let’s go on. The people beaten by the clubs generally think that history is important. And it is. And the people who want to understand the world should be with the victims on this, yes history is important. You can understand why the powerful want to kick it in the dust bin but we shouldn’t.

So what happened when the Palestinian National Council accepted a two-state settlement, basically the international consensus, the overwhelming international consensus, in December 1988? Well, there was a coalition government in Israel, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir, a coalition government. They came out a few months later, I think it was in May, 1989, with an official statement in which they said “there can be no additional Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan.” The word “additional” means Jordan is a Palestinian state, so there can be no additional Palestinian state between them. And the fate of the territories will be settled in accord with the guidelines of the state of Israel. That was their official response to the Palestinian acceptance of the international consensus.

What did the US do? This is the Bush No1 administration. The Bush No.1 administration reacted by accepting it completely in what’s called the Baker Plan. The State Department’s Baker Plan of December 1989, which endorsed the Israeli government proposal completely. The only reporting of this here that I get find was that they said, the State Department said there can be, there should be free elections. There should be free elections in Palestine with most of the educated sectors in jail and elections should take place only within, the only topic that can come up in elections is the Israeli plan. That’s what to be free elections. So that shows interest in democracy promotion, there was a lot of applause to the Bush administration for promoting democracy. See if you can find something else.
I mean as I wrote it at that time, now and I’ll repeat it now. It’s as if someone were to propose that there can be no additional Jewish state in a former Palestine because there already is a Jewish state, namely New York City with a Jewish mayor, a lot of rich Jews, so on and so forth. I mean when somebody were to say that, we think it’s reversion to Nazism. But when we say it, it’s very forthcoming and shows our love of democracy and so on.

The Press Conference at the United Nations on June 5, 2006

The Press Conference at the United Nations on June 5, 2006

This is an excerpt of a two-hour press conference Chomsky gave at the United Nations about a month before the 2006 US-Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The transcript on its Latin America part is available here.

On Hizbullah

Q: You seem to talk a lot about international law in this book and in other books. There is a Security Council resolution 1559 on Lebanon, which calls on all militias to be disarmed. You recently visited Hizbullah, can you tell us what you think of Hizbullah in that light, and does it violate the Security Council resolution and international law?

NC: Hizbullah doesn’t violate it but the government of Lebanon does. The government of Lebanon has been unwilling to implement that component of the Security Council resolution. Should they implement it? Well, you know, that’s up to the Lebanese. Hizbullah is a major political party in Lebanon. In the south, it has allegedly about 80% support and the rest of the support is mostly to Amal, which has very similar programs. The polls indicate that a majority of the population does not think that they should disarm. But that’s for them to decide. It’s for the government of Lebanon, not-- (Q: --- international law?) If you think that the government of Lebanon is violating international law, then convince the Security Council to sanction them.

Q: (hard to hear because the questioner was without a microphone, but he says something like all the militias to disarm)

NC: Yes, but militias are not responsive to ... any more than I am. If the Security Council says that-- (Q: renounce ….) If the Security Council passes a resolution saying that I should move to some other part of the city, I don’t have to do it. That’s up to… (Q: international law?) No, because an individual doesn’t violate international law. International law is imposed on states. OK? And states can observe international law, or like the United States and Britain and others, it can radically violate international law. It’s up to the people of Lebanon and the government of Lebanon to decide whether they want Hizbullah to disarm.

Q: (inaudible)

NC: The states might, if you have credible evidence just as the United States radically violates international law by providing massive arms to… (Q: inaudible) Yes, I understand what you want. (note: Chomsky now talking directly to the questioner.) You want to concentrate on some minor footnote in the whole story. And I suggest that we look at the whole story.
All right, turning to your minor footnote-yes, which is natural for someone who accepts and adopts and wants to pursue the policies of powerful states-turning to that minor footnote, whether Hizbullah should disarm is a matter for the people of Lebanon to decide. They have a semi-democratic government, very sectarian but it’s got democratic forms. And if they decide that Hizbullah should disarm, yes, then it should disarm.

Why aren’t they doing it? Well, there is a reason. You may not want to think about it, but the Lebanese think about it. The reason is that they know very well that a guerrilla formation in southern Lebanon is the only potential deterrent to yet another US-backed Israeli invasion. There have been four US-backed Israeli invasions since 1978, violent and brutal ones. They were finally driven out after 22 years of occupying southern Lebanon in violation of Security Council resolutions. And they were driven out by guerrilla warfare. And the retaining, remaining potential for guerrilla warfare is the only deterrent for another invasion.
Well, should Lebanon decide that they need a deterrent? Yeah, it’s up to them to decide. It’s up to them to decide. (Q: --- international law?) If they are violating Security Council resolution, then they should be treated exactly the way the US and Israel are treated when they radically violates Security Council resolutions. So, for example, if you really think that the Security Council resolution should be enforced, then, yeah, I’m with you. But let’s take the big cases first.

So, for example, start with the UN Charter, which is the foundation of modern international law. It calls aggressive war the supreme crime. That’s the Nuremburg principle accepted by the United Nations. Aggression is the supreme international crime. Gross violation of the UN Charter. So fine, let’s..... And remember supreme international crime “encompasses all the evil that follows,” right? That’s the Nuremburg decision accepted by the UN-- so fine, let’s start punishing the serious violators of international law, like the countries, the people sitting in the White House. Yeah, I think that international law should be enforced. And we can go down for a whole series of other violations.

So, for example, I thought the UN resolutions calling for, Security Council resolutions calling for Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon should have been enforced for 22 years. But they weren’t. And I’m sure you didn’t care about it. Or if you did, let me know. That should have been enforced. They finally did withdraw under guerrilla warfare.
The separation wall, which is part of the annexation program of the West Bank, has been declared illegal by a unanimous judgment of the World Court including the US justice, contrary to what you may believe-- if you read his independent declaration, you’ll say that he agrees with that-- so that’s a unanimous declaration of the World Court. Yeah, that’s binding in international law. That should be enforced. Instead, people like us are helping to violate that law by supporting the annexation program and the US and tacitly European Union support for it.

So sure, I would like to see all international law enforced but if we’re going to be serious about it, we don’t just take some toothpick on a mountain which happens to conform to power interests in the powerful states, and say "OK, let’s focus on that."
What we do is look at the whole picture. Start with the serious cases. Then when we get down to the toothpicks on the mountain, we can pay some attention to them, also paying some attention to the reasons why probably a majority of the population of Lebanon thinks they need a deterrent.

Q and A at University of Sussex part3 ( June, 2007)

3a
On Climate Change

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnI3evvPdcQ&mode=related&search=

Q: I’d like you to comment on the issue of climate change which some people saying is changing very rapidly into climate disaster not in a hundred years but in maybe a few decades. What kind of impact that’s going to have on our capitalism, on our late western capitalism, and all the things that are linked to it, like the war on terror and issues that come out of it, like the terrible competition that will be for dwindling resources and energy as climate change bites? Thank you.

Chomsky: Well, of course that’s a major issue right now even at the G8 meeting. By now, I think, there is very little doubt that human activity is significantly impacting the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of certain other particle matter and so on, which is heating the earth probably to dangerous levels, maybe the catastrophic levels. These are called non-renewal processes, a small change can lead to a massive effect. And it could happen suddenly. It could be delayed but it’s likely to be significant and severe. As usual, the major victims will be the poorest, the poorest people. It’s expected that the worst effects will be in places like sub-Saharan Africa or Bangladesh or arable areas of Pakistan and so on. They are near the-- many small countries might just disappear, go under water. The richer countries will as usual find certain ways to adapt, may even partially benefit. So Canada is looking forward to opening the Northwest Passage, and declaring sovereignty which it never cared about before because of its ice field. But the effects will certainly be significant and one thing we can be confident about is the longer we delay doing something about it, the worse it is going to be.

Well, right now the US alone is dragging its feet on doing something about it. This is incidentally another one of those cases and there are many, where – when we talk about the US, it’s kind of misleading, the US government is dragging its feet, the US population for years has been strongly in favor of taking aggressive action about this. For example, the Kyoto Protocol was strongly supported by the population, rejected by the government-- both executive and Congress bipartisan-- rejected by the government, strongly approved by the population. In fact so strongly approved by the population that at the time of the 2004 presidential election, a majority of Bush voters thought that he supported the Kyoto Protocols. The reason, well, such an obvious thing to support that our man, this nice guy who you want to meet in a bar, then he must support them too.

Well, that tells you something about American democracy. For one thing about the elections, the public relations firms that run the elections are very careful to marginalize the issues, keep them off the table and to focus on what are called “qualities.” “Is he a nice guy?” “Would you like to meet him in a bar?” “Is he sort of friendly?“ so on and so forth, “Does he look straight in the eye?” that kind of thing. “Is he religious enough?” but not whether they stand on the issues. That’s too dangerous because the public disagrees on a host of major issues, mentioned a couple, with the elite consensus. So therefore you got to keep the public marginalized, and they are. This is one example.

What would the effects be? You know, we can’t predict in detail but we can anticipate that it will be severe. Will this lead to wars? Well, it’s already happening so we don’t have to predict that. The struggle and the conflict in Darfur for example, which is horrendous, is in certain respects, a global warming war. Regions that had been shared by farmers and nomadic groups are now declining, disappearing. There is struggle over territories and that’s leading to a lot of issues of atrocities. It’s not the only factor, others are, but it’s exacerbating the conflict in significant ways.

Take resources wars. One of them, we’re now-- right now in fact, it happens to be the 40th anniversary of one major resource war, namely Israel-Palestine. That’s a pretty arid area. In one of the major water resources is the Jordan River, or what used to be the Jordan River. There isn’t much of Jordan River left anymore, it’s kind of a trickle, but it used to be a river. What happened? Israel intentionally hijacked the river. It took the weather waters fall down in a big rift into the river. They are simply picked up by the Israeli- which is called the National water carrier, a big pipeline goes down into Negev, and if you want to find the waters in Jordan, you look into the pipeline. The 1967 war, to significant extent, had to do with control of water resources. That includes both the headwaters to the Jordan, and also the aquifer, a big aquifer which is under the West Bank and it’s sort of near the official border and Israel wants to use the aquifer. It had already been tapping into it before the 67 war, but after the 67 war controlled it. By now Israel controls the West Bank aquifer and you look at figures, I don’t have them in my head right now but the overwhelming majority of that water goes to Israeli Jews, not Palestinians.
In West Bank settlements, you find illegal settlements in the West Bank, you find nice long swimming pools, so on and so forth, plenty of water. In a neighboring Arab village, people may have to either get the water brought in in trucks which is prohibitively expensive or walk through three hours to a well somewhere up on the hills where you can get some water to bring it back home, is right next door. The same is going on in Gaza.

The current Israeli plans, and I should really be, to be accurate, they are US-Israeli plans. Israel can do nothing without the massive, diplomatic, military, economic and ideological support from the United States and the tacit agreement, silence of Europe, which goes along more or less, apart from a couple of words. So the US-Israeli plans, the current ones, are to annex the regions which happen to control the West Bank aquifer. What’s called the separation wall, which is now an annexation wall officially, is intended to annex regions behind the wall which include much of the arable land in the West Bank and also are the kind of nice suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, but also happen to control the water, the West Bank aquifer. You know, essentially, that’s only one piece of the annexation proposals. Israel is also planning to annex the Jordan Valley, in arable land in what’s left the water. So yeah, there was a water war 40 years ago, it’s now the 40th anniversary. We can expect a good deal more of such things.

Take the invasion of Iraq for example. Except for fanatics like Tony Blair, a lot of the press, it’s pretty obvious that A major goal, if not THE major goal was to control, to increase US control over the oil resources of the region. I mean that’s transparent. But it’s more than that. Iraq also has water resources which are scarce in the region. That’s why Iraq was the great root of western civilization, Mesopotamia. It had ample water resources. And they are precious resource, are going to become even more precious resource in the future. Some of the things that are happening in Indian-Pakistan and elsewhere, it’s worldwide phenomena and that’s a serious problem.


3b

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA7z_QXVAuA&mode=related&search=

The problem of utilization of water resources in the future is very serious. And one of the anticipated environmental effects of global warming is to heighten these dangers to reduce them so we can expect, we already have had the water wars in addition to other resource wars. These things in -- exactly how avoidable this is, we don’t know. I mean some scientists argue that we’ve maybe even passed the critical point where there’s not too much we can do about it. But we can once again be confident that the longer the delay, the worse the effects are going to be primarily for the poor, as usual.

Q: Professor Chomsky, following up on what you said about Palestine, now Jimmy Carter, the former USA president recently in his book, he described this situation in Palestine as “Apartheid” system. To what extent do you agree on that?

Chomsky: There was a huge furor about Carter’s use of the word “Apartheid,” which is again pure cynicism. The term is used regularly in Israel. You can read it in the editorials of Israel’s leading newspapers and commentary by leading analysts and so on, referring to the West Bank. Actually there are things to be said about Israel, proper but put that aside. The occupied territories are commonly described as a system of Apartheid. In fact some describe it as much worse than Apartheid. Including Ronnie Kasrils, one of the leading Jewish incidentally, south African opponents of Apartheid, a courageous man, minister of the government traveling in the West Bank and he says it was worse than Apartheid ever was. The use of the word Apartheid for the West Bank is at least appropriate and not controversial. And the hysterical reaction to it in the United States is a sign of the decline of democracy. In a functioning democratic society people ought to know that but it’s the kind of part of ideological sign of it.

What about the rest of the book? Actually he gave pretty an accurate description of what it’s like in the occupied territories, which is rare, that’s sometimes done but rare. The book actually had, there were hordes of people trying to find some error in the book to discredit it. There was article after article finding some trivial phrase you can misinterpret. There is actually one serious error in the book. But that’s been totally ignored. One serious error in the book is Carter’s reference to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. What he says is the invasion was taken in response to Palestinian terrorism in the north of Israel. Well, that’s the conventional line and it’s a total fabrication. All the documentation is fully available, was available in 1982 and 1983. There was a ceasefire, initiated by the United States incidentally. The Palestinians lived up to it. Israel didn’t. They continued regular attacks in Lebanon often killing lots of people in an obvious effort to elicit some PLO response, Palestinian response which could be used as a pretext for the invasion. If you want precision, there were two very light and symbolic retaliations period. The rest of it was all Israeli attacks. Lots of it were reported in fact. Again, killing people, bombing and so on. While they couldn’t get pretext for the invasion, they just invaded anyway with US support, killed maybe 15, 20 thousand people, destroyed a large part of southern Lebanon, all way up to parts of Beirut. Well, Carter repeats the conventional falsification about this, and that’s the one serious error in the book. But nobody has ever mentioned it because it’s considered appropriate to fabricate in support of state policy. So it’s very important principle, it has to be preserved, you have to have right to lie in support of state crimes. So that error is ignored.

There is also one major contribution of the book, which is also ignored. Carter I think is the first person in the mainstream, it’s been discussed in dissident circles but the first person in the mainstream to report and give the evidence for the fact that Israel instantly rejected The Road Map of the Quartet. The Quartet is US, UN, European Union and Soviet Union, who established the so called Road Map, which is politely described as George Bush’s vision, as to how to proceed to resolve the conflict. The standard line is that terrible Arab didn’t live up to the Road Map. In fact Israel instantly rejected the Road Map. And that’s quite important. One of the pretexts for strangling Palestinians, Britain and West Europe were involved in this too, punishing them for voting the wrong way in a free election in January 2006, severely punished them. One of the pretexts is that the party with a plurarity of votes, Hamas doesn’t accept the Road Map. Well it’s rather important that was Israel that rejected it instantly. How did they reject it? By… in a usual deceitful way that the government use, formally accepted it and it immediately added 14 reservations which completely eviscerated it. You can read them in the appendix to Carter’s book. Actually they have been available for years, and people like me talk about it but never entered in the mainstream. Ok, it entered the mainstream with Carter’s book, that’s very significant. Right for today, I haven’t seen it mentioned of that. So the two the most important parts of this book, as far as I’m aware, aren’t mentioned.
One, what it revealed about this crucial matter of the Road Map-- when I say Israel rejected it, I again, mean the United States and Israel rejected it—Israel’s rejection was approved by the United States. So yes, the US undermined the Road Map that’s supposed to be Bush’s vision.

Those two, the most important contribution of the book and one serious error in the book passed without comment, which tell us something about our own intellectual culture, about our universities for example where intellectual culture is formed and developed. There’s a principle which says it’s appropriate and in fact even noble to lie in support of state crimes. It’s criminal to tell the truth that would reveal the nature of state crimes. I’m purposefully exaggerating but not too much. And this is a clear example of it. So, yes apart from this, Carter’s book was good, reporting things that ought to be known but that aren’t known. So it was therefore contribution. Speaking about public opinion again, it’s notable that though the book was bitterly lambasted in commentary in the press and editorials and so on, it was the top of best sellers.

Q and A at University of Sussex part2 ( June, 2007)

One of my children has been sick and as the result, I'm overwhelmed with a monstrous amount of time, too much time to cry through. So naturally, I transcribe and read, which gives me hope.

2 On Iran

2a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NzB39sVSgs&mode=related&search=

2b http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O5_nA3PStI&mode=related&search=


2a Q: Just to refer back to your “Iran effect,” there’s been recent speculation both politically and in the media about Iran. Given its status in the Middle East and the power that it yields compared to Afghanistan or Iraq for example, how honestly realistic do you think a military strike against Iran by the US is likely to happen?

Chomsky: Well, we have no idea what planning is going on within the small one--by now pretty desperate--clique that is barely holing onto power in Washington. And if history is any guide, they have not informed British intelligence or their favorite allies about　what they’re planning if they even know. We really don’t know. I mean one of the reasons for government-- its main reasons for government secrecy: you look through studied declassified documents and you do learn that there is a security interest all the way through. But primarily, it’s security against the domestic enemy. They don’t want their own population to know what they are up to because if people did know what they were up to, the chances are that they’d act and act in a dedicated fashion to prevent it. So, therefore you have to keep planning secret from the population, the domestic enemy. And that’s what’s happening now: we do not know the plans.

They are certainly issuing threats very publicly and openly, not only the words but even the actions. So, for example, the last couple of years, the United States has provided to Israel over a hundred advanced jet bombers openly advertised as capable of bombing Iran and returning. I don’t think a word about that has been published in the United States. But it’s public information, you can read it in the Israeli press and you can read it in military journals. Certainly Iranian intelligence knows it. Israel already has, according to its own estimate, air and armored forces that are larger and technologically more advanced than any NATO power other than the United States. It’s not because Israel is capable of doing that but it’s because by now it’s virtually the offshoot of the United States, particularly a military and high tech offshoot. That’s a serious warning to Iran. Furthermore, deploying major naval forces in the Gulf, right off shore from Iran is an obvious threat. I mean if Iran was deploying major naval forces in the English Channel or the Caribbean, you can bet that the United States and London would be pretty upset about it. In fact they’d go to war.

Capturing Iranian officials in northern Iraq, now that’s provocation. The United States is almost certainly --- we can’t prove it but the evidence is pretty strong --- carrying out, is supporting secessionist groups, the terrorist groups, in fact. In Iran recently, there was an attack from Baluchi based, Pakistani-based terrorists (…) groups are being supported and others, all that is very provocative. That’s all over and above the overt threat. I should say, if anyone cares, the overt threats to Iran are a crime. They are a major violation of the United Nations Charter, which outlaws the threat or use of force in international affairs. Threat of force is a violation of the Charter. It’s a violation of law. In outlaw states, like the United States and Britain where law doesn’t matter much. There is very little comment on that but definitely the threats are there and all of this could lead to just an accidental war.

The case of the captured British sailors is an example. There are no territorial boundaries in the Gulf that mean anything. You have naval forces there right next door to Iran. Yeah, you are likely to have an accident. And an accident can easily escalate and explode. So yes, there is a threat of war.
The question that we really should be asking, I think is “Is there a way to avert it?” Actually there is, a very simple way. You can’t prove that it will work but it’s certainly a good start: turn the United States and Iran into functioning democratic societies. You can tell me about Britain where I don’t know the details but I know them about the United States and Iran. You can find them out too.

Public opinion in the United States and Iran is very carefully monitored by the leading institution in the world that monitors public opinion: Program on International Policy Attitudes at University of Maryland. Find it on the Internet.
They did a careful study of Iranian and US opinion on nuclear issues. And very interestingly, they’re virtually identical.
In both countries, there’s the overwhelming majority --- in the United States, it’s 82% --- that think that all nuclear weapons should be abolished. What that means is that the nuclear states, like the United States and Britain, should observe their legal responsibility. And it is a legal responsibility determined by the World Court to take good faith efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons and not to increase their nuclear capacities as the US and Britain are now doing but to move to eliminate them.
Well, that’s supported by 82% of the population in the United States and comparable figures in Iran. If that can’t be achieved, very large majorities in both countries think that the Middle East, the entire Middle East should be turned into a nuclear weapons free zone. That means Iran, Israel and US and perhaps British forces deployed in the region should not have any nuclear weapons capacity whatsoever. OK, that would be a step forward. 75% of the Americans think that all threats against Iran should be dropped and the United States should enter into diplomatic relations with Iran.

Incidentally, they think the same thing about Cuba. Again an overwhelming majority of the Iranians and the Americans think that Iran should have the right to produce nuclear energy just as every signer of the Non Proliferation Treaty does, but should not have nuclear weapons.
Well, you know, that’s the framework for an agreement. All that would be necessary is to turn these countries and I suspect the same is to Britain, you can figure that out, change these two countries so that they become functioning democracies. That is societies in which an overwhelming majority of public opinion can have an influence on policy.
Well, let’s even take something weaker: countries in which an overwhelming majority of public opinion can be reported in the media. So far as I’m aware none of this has even been reported though it’s obviously highly pertinent. In real democratic societies, it would be very significant. It’s there. You can find it on the Internet. You can find it in dissident – I’ve written about it, I give talks about it and other people do, but that’s kind of on the margins. Try to find it in the mainstream press. Do internet search. I don’t think you will, but try to find it. We certainly ought to be able to do something to make our own societies functioning democracies. The claim that we can’t do that is absurd.
Can we do anything to help Iran become a functioning democracy? The answer is yes, we can. We could listen to the pleas of the very courageous Iranian reformers and democracy activists who are pleading with the United States to call off the threats. That’s people like Akbar Ganji or Shirin Ebadi and the labor activists, people you don’t hear about, but some of the most important and courageous of them. They are saying drop the threats for a good reason which we can all figure out.
When you threaten a government, it’s going to react. If you threaten a government with attack and destruction, which is called politely “regime change,” what are they going to do? Especially when the threat is credible, I mean it’s not like say, Luxembourg issuing the threat. This is the world’s super superpower acting to make the threat very visible, like the naval deployments in the Gulf. How did they react? We know. We know how our own governments react when there are much more mild threats. You react with repression. And in the reactionary theocracy that dominates Iran they react with severer repression.

2b
That’s why people are recently being jailed. I mean the West bitterly protests the imprisonment. Rightly I protested too, but I wish we recognized it as complete hypocrisy. Imprisonment is a predictable result of the actions that the US is taking with the approval of its allies to threaten Iran. It’s a predictable result and they keep telling us, if we want to hear. So yes, they reacted in the way and that’s the predictable consequence of our threats, illegal threats.

We can improve the circumstances for democracy promotion in Iran by doing what the overwhelming majority of Americans want: withdraw the threats. That will all leave some space for reformists and activists in Iran. And that’s what they are pleading for and that’s what we can do. No better source. So yes, we can act to improve the prospects for democracy in Iran so the Iranian public opinion will have an influence on public policy and we can certainly do in our own countries. OK, that leads out our steps towards alleviation of this crisis which could be a very severe one. If war breaks out either planned or accidental, it could be extremely severe.

Just recently, one well-known British military historian, Corelli Barnett said simply it’s going to be World War Three. Well, maybe, certainly it could have an enormous “Iran effect.” It could lead to indescribable consequences in Iraq and in the region. We might incidentally ask how people in the region feel. That’s also being studied.
In the Sunni states near Iran, the polls were taken, I think in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan where they don’t like Iran very much. Nevertheless, a large majority of the population favors a nuclear armed Iran over any military action. Certainly we can know what Iranians think. So if public opinion made any difference to policy, whether in the region, in the United States, anywhere, there would be no steps towards war, no threats of war. Rather there would be steps towards improving the possibilities for peace. I don’t know if you want me to go into it, there’s not a lot of time but there have been recent revelations of options for negotiation. They’re quite serious. They were simply rejected by the United States and incidentally by the European Union.

Just to mention briefly in 2003, we now know that Iran approached the United States with proposals to negotiate all outstanding issues. Nuclear issues, a two state settlement for Israel/Palestine, which incidentally Iran supports contrary to what you read, everything. The US reaction was to censure the Swiss ambassador who brought the proposal. The end of that.

The following year, the European Union entered into negotiations with Iran and actually reached an agreement, a bargain. The agreement was that Iran would suspend the uranium enrichment which it is legally entitled to carry out, that’s agreed on all sides, but it was suspended. And in return, the European Union would provide “firm guarantees on security issues.”

Now the “security issues” is -- the term is well understood-- that refers to US-Israeli threats to attack Iran, which are of course illegal. So European Union, its side of the bargain was to provide those guarantees. Well, Europe didn’t live up to its side of the bargain probably under US pressure or so US experts on the topic argue. Anyway they didn’t live up to it. After that Iran withdrew from its side of the bargain. It’s not the way it was described in the West as Iran broke the agreement. Not exactly true. That continues.

The West adores President Ahmadinejad. Every crazy phrase comes out with big publicity. Ahmadinejad has nothing to do with foreign policy. That’s in the hands of his superior, Ayatolla Khomeini, who has—you don’t read his statements very often: for example, his statement that Iran supports the Arab League position on Israel-Palestine, namely a full normalization of relations with Israel within the framework of the international consensus on a two-state settlement, but the US and Israel have blocked for the last 30 years. I haven’t seen that reported. Actually you have a little bit, a couple of reports on the Financial Times, London Financial Times but it’s not on everyone’s lips.
And internal to Iran, if you read specialists on the topic, there’s plenty of controversy and openings. We could assist in positive developments if that were the goal. Just as actions could be taken to reduce the threat of terrorism, if that were the goal. If that was not the goal, of course you proceed with aggressive militarism which is very likely to heighten the tensions and the consequences which could be awesome.

Democracy Now! Japan

Democracy Now! JAPAN provides daily headlines and news summary of Democracy Now! translated into Japanese.
It also provides video streamings of the show with Japanese subtitle.
Chomsky is one of the regular guests of the show.
Amy Goodman's father George Goodman and Chomsky were campers together at a Hebrew Speaking Camp when they were young.

Q and A at University of Sussex part1 ( June, 2007)

Q and A at University of Sussex part 1 ( June, 2007)

1 　On 9.11
Q: First Mr. Chomsky, with their recent release of film such as “Loose Change” in 9-11 mysteries on the internet, do you think there's much way behind the claims that the US government had either inside knowledge or played a role of the attacks on 9-11 or these sideline theses may be anti republican propaganda?

Chomsky: There are two different versions of that theory. One is that the government had some information about 9-11, that impending attack, and didn't do much to try to stop it or maybe anything. That's one idea. Another idea is that the government was actually actively involved in carrying out the terrorist attacks of 9-11.
Now, the first proposal is, first of all, in one version universally accepted. So even if you look at the official 9-11 government report, it points out repeatedly that there were opportunities that were not taken to avert a terrorist attack. And in fact it goes back right into the Clinton years. So from-- first remember that the first attempt to blow up the Word Trade Center was in 1993. And it came pretty close to succeeding. With the poor planning it didn't succeed. If it had succeeded with a little better planning, according to building engineers, it might have killed many thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands. And it was a much broader plot. It was an attempt to blow up the tunnels that link New York City to New Jersey across the Hudson River, blow up the FBI building and so on. It was aborted but barely. And ever since then it's been pretty obvious that the country is vulnerable to terrorist attack.

There are technical books published through the 90s by MIT Press for example, which are almost cookbooks of how to carry out a terrorist attack. And very little was done to avert this danger. The leading official in the CIA, who was responsible for tracking Osama Bin Laden, wrote several books anonymously but finally identified himself as Micheal Scheuer has been very bitterly, writes bitterly about the failure of the Clinton and particularly the Bush administration to take steps that could avert a terrorist attack.
And incidentally we know very well that Bush and Blair and their colleagues just don't care very much about terrorist attacks. We know this from what they’ve been doing in the last few years. And they are consciously acting in ways which increased the threat of terror significantly.

So the invasion of Iraq for example, was taken with the anticipation that it would probably increase terror and nuclear proliferation. We know that from the reports of --actually it was known at the time, but there's more now--from released reports of intelligence agencies from strategic analysts and others. And the dynamics are pretty clear.
Well, it did so. According to the latest study that just came out from two terrorism specialists, Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank in the United States using mostly government data, the “Iraq effect,” as they called it, the effect of the Iraq war on terror was to increase it by sevenfold. It's quite an increase and focused on countries and places involved in the war. London is familiar with this despite attempts by Blair to deny the obvious. And that continues.

And I mean there are now threats to, serious threats to attack Iran. The “Iran effect” is likely to be far greater than the Iraq effect. We can give many other examples. It's not that governments want terror, they just, it’s not their high priority. Protecting their own citizens from terror is simply not a high priority. So it's not all that’s surprising that from 1993 up till September 11th 2001, there were very limited precautions taken to avert a threat of terror that was anticipated by intelligence agencies and so on.
So that version of the theory is in a sense not controversial and it’s the problem. The issue is much deeper than these theories indicate and goes right on till today.

As for the other aspect that the government actually was involved in planning and implementing the attacks, I think that lacks credibility. For one thing, they would have to have been almost insane to try anything like that. The chances of it—consider the range of conspirators that would have to be involved, the Airline companies and plenty of people in the federal government and so on. The chances of a leak would be substantial and the effect of the leak would be simply to line them up before firing squads and terminate the Republican party forever. Furthermore, it’s a really chancy operation. You wouldn’t know if it’s going to succeed. If they were planning it, the planning would have had to be kind of half crazy. If the goal was to lay the basis for the invasion of Iraq, why not implicate Iraqis? Why implicate Saudis, therefore endangering the closest US relation with any country in the region, Saudi Arabia, which is where the oil is, the oldest most valued ally? I mean that would have been semi-insane planning. There is evidence proposed but I can’t review it here. But I suggest you take a careful look at it.

The evidence roughly is in two categories. Some of it is physical evidence, you know arguments that the buildings couldn’t have fallen if they were hit by an airplane and so on. Well, you know, technical arguments have to be evaluated on their merits. It’s-- you can’t get this specialist knowledge required for evaluating them by spending an hour on the Internet. That’s why they have civil mechanical engineering programs at places like MIT and others. It takes some serious knowledge and understanding.
When proposals are made about an alleged discovery of concerning physical evidence, there’s a standard way to proceed: submit an article on it to a recognized scientific journal, scientific engineering journal. Then others can evaluate it. So far as I’m aware, there hasn’t been single submission, accepted to a real journal, that is.
The rest of evidences are kind of circumstantial. You know, odd coincidences, why didn’t this happen and so on and so forth. The problem that is, that’s the kind of evidence that you can accumulate just by any complex event. By that kind of evidence you could probably prove that the White House was bombed yesterday. In fact that’s why scientists do experiments instead of taking video tapes of the world. Video tapes of the world are just too complicated. Too many things happening. You can’t figure out, you can’t learn anything much from them. Even in controlled experiments, you do find odd coincidences, unexp