Transcribing Noam Chomsky's talks

Noam Chomsky - on Darwinsm

2011-07-29T00:09:00.001+09:00

There is the Social Darwinist view that Herbert Spencer is famous for developing that in the capitalist system, it will be nature and “red in blood and claw,” the strongest win. And Goldman Sachs is given as an illustration or maybe IBM and so on. But they’re not illustrations. They’re illustrations of how the nanny state, the powerful state that’s run by the principal architects of policy, designs policy in such a way as to enrich and privilege the designers. What do they have to do with capitalism? I mean there’s kind of a capitalist fringe to it. But what about Herbert Spencer?

Well, at the same time, a little after Herbert Spencer, there was a response much less known. Namely [Peter] Kropotkin: natural historian who wrote a book called Mutual Aid: a Factor of Evolution. And he argued the exact opposite. He argued that on Darwinian grounds, you’d expect cooperation in mutual aid. And to develop and leading towards community, workers control and so on. Well, he didn’t prove his point. That’s at least as well argued as Herbert Spencer is. In fact, Kropotkin essentially founded what is now called sociobiology or evolutionary psychology. But his contribution is sort of unmentionable because it came out with wrong conclusions. Well, nobody could give right conclusions, human natures probably has all of these factors in it. But some of them are favorable to the interests of the rich and powerful so those do survive. Here, there is, if you like, a Spencerian element. The ideological concoctions that are beneficial to the rich and powerful, they’ll tend to propagate. The ones that are harmful to the interests of the rich and powerful will tend to be marginalized and suppressed. But that has nothing to do with the reality of the world. That has to do with how power systems function.

exceptional post:Japan's nuclear catastrophe, march 2011

2011-03-14T16:58:00.001+09:00

the crucial explanation from 18:00 and beyond and also in the Q and A section

the news conference given by Citizens' Nuclear Information Center on March 13, 2011 in Tokyo.

Gaza One Year Later (December, 2009)

2010-09-28T22:49:00.004+09:00

[and today, Al Aqsa intifada, ten years later]

Watertown, Massachusetts, December 6, 2009

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2009/12/24/noam_chomsky_gaza_one_year_later

Noam Chomsky: Well, let me begin with two caveats, pitfalls that I think we should be careful to avoid. It’s very important to have this meeting about Gaza, one of the most disgraceful situations in the world. But we should remember that it’s only in US and Israeli policy that Gaza is separated from the West Bank. They are unity. One unit, what’s left of Palestine: 22 percent of the original Mandate. Now, it’s very important for the US and Israel to separate the two and isolate them. For one thing, that means if there ever is some kind of political settlement, the West Bank will be deprived of any access to the outside world; it will be imprisoned. It won’t have the seaport. It’ll essentially be contained by two enemies. So, there is a strategic reason for the longstanding and intense effort to distinguish Gaza and the West Bank to keep them apart, to ban transport and also kind of ideologically to make them seem as if there were two different places. They aren’t, outside of US and Israeli ideology. And we should be careful not to—[it's important] to resist that, I think.

Another division that I think is important to resist is between US and Israel. We constantly talk rightly about Israeli crimes but that’s highly misleading, because they are US-Israeli crimes. There’s nothing that Israel does that goes beyond what the United States authorizes and in fact, directly supports with economic, diplomatic, military and also ideological support that is by framing issues. So, that, there’s this First Amendment exception that Nancy [Murray] mentioned.

So, these are US-Israeli crimes. If we talk about Israel, we should remember we’re talking about ourselves. It’s not like talking about crimes of China. These are very important to keep in mind.

Now, turning to Gaza and the West Bank, the separation of Gaza and the West Bank is part of a much more general policy: policy of fragmentation of the residue of Palestine, so they cannot hope to emerge as a viable entity. Separating Gaza from the West Bank is one part of it. Gaza, as Nancy pointed out, has been converted into a prison. The screws are being steadily tightened so that it becomes a maximum security prison, something like Guantanamo. It’s kind of a little odd on the side that there has been so much horror in the United States about Guantanamo. It’s not very different from the maximum security prisons that the United States runs. And we’re unique in the world, in the western world in having incarceration system of this kind.

So, it’s not just becoming a prison. It’s becoming something like a maximum security prison, which is basically a torture chamber. It’s under constant siege, very harsh and brutal siege. And siege is an act of war. Of all countries in the world, Israel surely is unusual in recognizing that. It twice launched the war in 1956 and 1967 on the grounds that its access to the outside world was very partially restricted. That was considered a crime. And total siege is, of course, a much greater crime.

So, it’s a major war crime that we’re carrying out. Supplies that you just heard are restricted so that you have bare survival. And there’s constant and systematic attacks on all the borders including the coast line to drive the population inland. On the borders, that takes away limited arable land. On the sea, what it is done is drive fishing fleet to a couple of kilometers from the shore, where fishing is impossible because of the conditions that Nancy described. After the destruction of the sewage systems, the power systems and other infrastructure, fish can’t survive and people can’t survive near the sea so that that destroys the fishing industry and it contains Gaza even more narrowly. Again, part of the policy of imprisonment. It sounds like sadism and it is. But it’s kind of rational sadism. It’s achieving well-understood and carefully planned end of US and Israeli policy.

There are also regular atrocities, special atrocities just to keep showing who’s boss. So, at the end of September, Israeli troops entered northern Gaza and kidnapped five children and brought them over to Israel and they disappeared into the Israeli prison system. Nobody knows too much about it. It includes secret prisons which occasionally surface. It’s estimated that roughly a thousand people are there, often for years, without any charge at all, just hidden away somewhere. So these kids probably joined that.

All of this happen with total impunity, happens regularly with complete impunity. That’s part of our ideological contribution to ensuring the crushing of Palestinians. That’s been going on for decades, in fact, in Lebanon and in the high seas. Israel has been hijacking boats on the way from Cyprus to Lebanon. Capturing or sometimes killing, passengers are taken to Israel, some keeping them in prisons, sometimes for decades, sometimes as hostages for eventual release, no charges. Often, we only barely know where they are by occasional surfacing of stories about secret prisons which aren’t published in the United States as they are in Europe and Israel.

And this is, again, in complete impunity because we permit it. We say we’re not going to talk about it so therefore, impunity. This is worth remembering when you read about what’s considered now one of the primary barriers to negotiations: the fate of an Israeli soldier Gilat Shalit, who was captured at the border on June 25^th, 2006. Well, capture of a soldier of an attacking army is some sort of a crime, I suppose. It doesn’t rank very high among crimes. And against the background of constant, hijacking boats, kidnapping of civilians, killing of civilians on the high seas in Lebanon, it doesn’t rank very high. And the situation was made even more dramatic by the fact that one day before corporate Shalit was captured on the border, Israeli troops entered Gaza City, kidnapped two civilians, a doctor and his brother, spirited them across the border, and the two disappeared into the US-backed Israeli secret prison system. And nobody is talking about negotiations to get them out. They are Arabs, so they have no human existence. So, we don’t talk about them. And in fact, it was barely reported here because it’s insignificant. Shalit ought to be returned in prisoner exchange but that’s a toothpick on the mountain—but the one that we talk about.

And other crimes just go on regularly. Like a few days ago, you may have read that Israel banned the shipment of cooking gas into Gaza. Just an act of gratuitous cruelty. It means that—it is used for almost everything. So, that’s gone. The water system is under very severe attack. The International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN Environmental Protection Agency which work there estimate that, by now, only maybe 5 to 10 percent of the water, very limited water in the Strip, is usable.

Israel has constantly attacked the water system. The last invasion, US-backed Israeli invasion a year ago, destroyed around 30 kilometers of pipes and other equipment. Nothing is allowed back in to repair them. So, by now, as Nancy said, children are dying of diseases from poisoned water. And that is going to continue. The Red Cross estimates that if this continues, it would—at the best of circumstances, unless something is done about it—it may take centuries before this region becomes viable, before it’s possible for life to exist there.

Well, this is more rational savagery. A couple of months ago, I was out in California, giving a fund-raising talk for Middle East Children’s Alliance—it’s a marvelous organization. It’s been working in Gaza and other places for years, Barbara Lubin, its director, who had just come back from Gaza, a very heroic woman. And she described, she talked, as Nancy did, about what they found. One of the things they did, the delegation, was to go around the schools and just asked children, if you had one request, what could it be? And they thought they might direct their funding to that. And overwhelmingly, what children said in the schools was that what they would like is a drink of water in the morning. Well. That’s Gaza. And they did manage to find mechanics in the Strip who were able to construct small water purification devices and they’re trying now to fund enough water purification made with local materials, so that maybe children can have a drink of water in the morning. Their fondest wish. Well, that’s what we are doing. We’re doing. And we should remember that.

There’s a purpose. The purpose was explained right at the beginning of the occupation by Moshe Dayan, who was the Minister of Defense in charge of the occupied territories. In late 1967, he informed his colleagues that we should tell the Palestinians in the territories that we have nothing to offer them:“They will live like dogs. And those who will leave, will leave. We’ll see where this ends up.” And that’s the policy. It’s quite rational. “Live like dogs. And we’ll see what happens.” So, yes, sadism, but rational sadism.

And things are not dramatically different in the West Bank. Somewhat, but not much. First of all, everything turning the West Bank, just about everything that’s going on there is in a violation of international law. Gross violation. There’s a lot of talk here about expansion of the settlements. That’s completely diversionary. That has almost nothing to do with the issues. I mean, even if there was no further expansion of the settlements, they already destroyed the possibilities of viable Palestinian existence. Every one of them is illegal and known to be. There isn’t any controversy about it.

In late 1967, Israel was informed by its highest legal authorities—the main one, Theodor Meron, is a very respected international lawyer, a judge in the International Tribunals—he informed the government of what, in fact, is transparent that: “transferring population to occupied territories is in gross violation of the Geneva Conventions.” It’s the foundations of international humanitarian law. The Attorney General affirmed his conclusion. A couple of years ago, as you know, it was reaffirmed by the International Court of Justice. Moshe Dayan, who was in charge, recognized that. In late 1967, he said yes, it’s true, everything we’re doing is in violation of international law, but that’s often done, and so we’ll dismiss it. And he’s right. As long as the Godfather says it’s fine, you can dismiss it. So, yes, we’ll go on carrying out criminal acts. And we’ll debate some minor crime. You know, like debate of expanding settlements to allow natural growth. That’ll divert attention from the real issue, and we’ll be able to believe that our government is somehow acting humanly in an effort to achieve peace.

That, expansion of settlements, which is the big issue that we’re supposed to be excited about, even a ten-month alleged suspension which Hillary Clinton praised as “unprecedented generosity,”—all of that, even that little toothpick is a fraud. When Obama announced that he wanted termination of expansion of settlements, he was just quoting George W. Bush, who had said exactly the same thing. In fact it’s in the so-called Road Map, officially agreed framework for policy. When that’s ever mentioned, it’s rarely pointed out that Israel did accept the Road Map formally, but immediately added 14 reservations which completely eviscerated it.

So, it rejected the Road Map with US acquiescence, so therefore, as Dayan said, yes, fine, we’ll dismiss it. But that’s in the Road Map and Obama repeated it just as Bush did. But he repeated it with a usual wink. When asked, his spokesperson said that: US opposition to the expansion was purely symbolic. He would not go even as far as Bush No.1, who imposed very mild sanctions for expansion of settlements. But Obama made it clear that we’re not going to do it; these are just symbolic statements, so this minor diversionary operation can continue with effective US support.

Well, so it’s all illegal. We permit it, so therefore, it’s fine. It’s authorized. And it expands the principle of fragmentation, which is the core of US-Israeli strategic policy. So, separate Gaza from the West Bank. In the West Bank itself, the program is, for Israel, to take wherever is valuable and break up the rest in two unviable cantons. What’s valuable is, first of all, water resources. It’s a pretty arid region but there is an aquifer. There’s water that runs on the West Bank and Palestinian side of the international border. So, Israel has to annex that. And that’s also some of the most arable land and it’s also the nice suburbs. It’s the pleasant suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, kind of like Lexington where I live, relatively to Boston, a nice place to live. So that all happens to be in the West Bank, so we have to annex that.

And there’s the wall, as you know, snaking through the West Bank. It should properly be called an “annexation wall,” because the plan is to annex everything that is inside it, incorporated within Israel and that’s with a polite smile from the Godfather, so therefore that’s OK.

It’s interesting, in a commemoration of November 9th, the fall of Berlin Wall, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor made an impassioned speech about how we have to bring down all the walls that divide us. But not the one cutting through the West Bank, which is about twice as high as the Berlin Wall and far longer and simply stealing land from defenseless people, thanks to the leader of the free world and us, because we’re allowing it.

So, take over everything that’s valuable, kind of near the border. Take over the Jordan Valley on the other side, it’s about a third of the West Bank. And Palestinians are being kept out of it by one means or another or driven out, that’s being settled. That imprisons what’s left. And what’s left is divided by carefully planned settlement salients which cut through to break it up into parts. So, there's one going east of what’s called Jerusalem, greatly expanded region, “Greater Jerusalem,” expands almost all the way to Jericho. And that essentially bisects the West Bank. There’s another to the north including the town of Ariel. Another one, north to that, goes to Kedumim. So it essentially breaks the region up. There’s technically contiguity where over—through the desert to the east, but that’s essentially unviable.

And what remains is broken up by hundreds of checkpoints which are there primarily for harassment. They move, so nobody knows where they exactly are going to be. But it means, for example, that if you want to visit your cousin two miles away, it may take you five hours to get there if you ever manage. And an ambulance may take two hours to get from one spot to a hospital a couple of miles away because it has to go through checkpoints and a patient has to be carried over, you know, a big barrier, put him on another one on the other side, and so on. These are essentially techniques for harassment. They have no security purpose, even a remote one. But they are perfectly rational to ensure that the population will “live like dogs and if they want to leave, that’s fine, they’ll leave.”

That’s aside from the actions in what’s called Jerusalem, a vastly expanded region around what used to be Jerusalem. There, the actions are doubly illegal. They are not only in violation of international law but they are also in violation of explicit Security Council resolutions barring any modification of the status of Jerusalem. Actually, the US signed and joined those resolutions back in the late 1960’s and for several years afterwards.

So, they are doubly illegal and they continue. I mean, that’s--there's what you read every day in the papers about new buildings, taking over Palestinian homes. And there’s now, just reported that last year Israel radically accelerated its withdrawal of resident status for inhabitants of Jerusalem for whom the courts decided that the center of their life was somewhere else. In that case, you can have your residents removed if you’re Palestinian. There’s no case on record that I know of of an Israeli who had citizenship reduced because the center of their life is in Los Angeles or in New York, for example. So, it’s just another racist law designed to rid the region of sort of “rubble and vermin” that are in the way.

We’re kind of familiar with that in American history. It resonates. That’s why we’re here, basically. Yes, that’s what we did in the conquest of national territory except that the US was much more violent and exterminated the indigenous population. But it’s a familiar pattern. And I suspect that it’s part of the reason for the residual sympathy for Israel’s activities, strikes kind of a cord in our own national history. Maybe one we don’t like to look at very much.

Expropriation continues steadily. By now, rough estimates, about a third of the West Bank has been expropriated, converted into state land. Yossi Sarid mentioned recently that this means Israel can continue settlement for a hundred years without expropriating anything any further. Well, that’s what continues.

Senator Kerry has an interesting stand on this. He’s very close to Obama. He’s become more or less as a foreign policy—a kind of emissary. He gave a most important speech[O1] on the Obama administration’s policies; policies with a speech to the Brookings Institution a couple of months ago. Obama—that took a standard position. The party line is that the United States is an honest broker, trying desperately to bring peace to these two difficult antagonists. So he repeated that, that’s normal. But then he added that, for a long time, Israel has been seeking a legitimate partner for peace and it’s never had one. So it’s kind of devastated—who can we negotiate with? But Kerry said that, now, finally, Israel may have a legitimate partner for peace. [the audience pointed out a PA problem]....I was talking about Senator Kerry and his formulation of the Obama administration’s position. He gave a talk a few months ago, in which he said that the US has, of course, always been an honest broker seeking peace. That’s true by definition, you know. You don’t need any factual evidence relating to that. And now, Israel has always been desperately seeking a legitimate partner and finally may have had one. What was interesting is that he gave his evidence. His evidence was that during the US-Israeli attack on Gaza, which he didn’t, of course, described it that way, there were no protests on the West Bank. It was quiet. Of course, that’s the other half of Palestine but they didn’t do anything about it. And he explained why. He said the reason is that the US has established an army, mercenary army headed by US General Dayton, trained with the assistance of Jordan and Israel and the army is able to suppress any sign of resistance to what the US and Israel were doing in Gaza. So, this, things are really looking up. There’s a possibility that there might be a legitimate partner controlled by a paramilitary force that is under our command. I should mention that the Dayton Army is under State Department control, meaning at least some guns of weak restrictions on human rights and other conditionalities. But people in the West Bank say that is much more a savage force which is under CIA control, General intelligence, and that’s subject to nothing. That’s standard all over the world.

So, we have a military force so that we can keep the population quiet. There’s collaborationist elite. And living in Ramallah, it’s kind of like, Tel Aviv, Paris, New York—a lot of money flowing in from European Union, cultural life, people live pretty well. A few miles away in villages, life is entirely different. But this is the model. That perfect model of a neo-colonial society. That’s what the US is—and the US has a plenty of experience with this. This is the model that was crafted in the Philippines a century ago after the US conquered the Philippines to uplift them and Christianize them and so on. Although most of the noble motives were killing a couple of hundred thousand, there was a problem with what to do with them. So, a new model of control was developed, which was a real break from European imperial pattern and it’s pretty much what I described.

There’s a military force, the Philippine constabulary, but it has to have collaborationist elite. The nationalist movement was broken up by various devices, subversion, spreading rumors and all sorts of other things. And the population was put under a very tight surveillance and control, using the highest technology of the day. This is a century ago, so that meant telephone, radio and so on. And they had extremely tight surveillance of the population, knew where everybody was and so on. Those techniques were later developed and applied in other US domains in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua and so on. And they blew back to the United States very quickly. In fact, Woodrow Wilson applied them in the United States during the First World War. And we’re familiar with them today and even more so elsewhere like Britain.

In the West Bank, which is, as Nancy pointed out, an experimental region. The biometric controls are extremely sophisticated. So, there’s identification of every person by any kind of measure you can think of, all in their identity cards. Pretty soon, they’ll be in chips put into their brains or something. There’s a talk of extending these measures to Israel. There, there’s arousing protests, but in the West Bank, no protest. We just do that. So, this is a familiar technique and it works. The Philippines are still under that control. It’s 100 years. And that’s one of the reasons why the Philippines, the one American colony in Southeast Asia hasn’t joined the exciting economic development of the past 20 years. It’s not one of the East Asian tigers.

So, that’s a model which can be followed and which might work if we allow it. There are of course pretexts for all of this. Whatever a state does, there’s a pretext: security. Whatever you do, it’s in self-defense, kind of by definition. As usual, in this case, the pretext doesn’t stand up to a moment’s scrutiny. So, take, say, the annexation wall. I mean the reason that was offered is defense. Security. I mean if they were concerned with security, we know exactly what would be done. The wall would be built on the international border. It could be made impregnable, patrolled on both sides, a mile-high, totally secure. And that would give security. But, of course, if the purpose is what it actually is, namely to steal land and resources, then it can’t be built on the international border, where it might, furthermore, inconvenience [inaudible], instead of just inconveniencing and in fact, stealing from Palestinians.

And the same is true with the attack on Gaza. It’s almost universally accepted here, and in the West generally, that Israel had a right of self defense, and therefore was justified in attacking Gaza even though the attack was maybe disproportionate. That’s accepted, for example, by the Goldstone report. The Goldstone report is very valuable account of the atrocities that were carried out in the course of the war, but they are regarded as disproportionate actions in a legitimate war of self-defense.

OK, think about it for a minute. There is indeed the right of self-defense. Sure. Everyone agrees to that. But there is no right to self-defense by force. That has to be argued. And there is extensive international law and just common sense on this. You do not have the right to use force in self-defense unless you have exhausted peaceful means. Well, in this case, there definitely were peaceful means and the US and Israel knew it. And they chose not to, even attempt them because they wanted a war. They wanted to attack.

Peaceful means are obvious, again, not controversial. There had been a ceasefire initiated and proceeding in June, 2008. Israel concedes officially that during the ceasefire, there was not a single Hamas rocket fire. Sderot was quiet. The ceasefire was broken on November 4th, when using the cover of the US election, Israel invaded the Gaza Strip and killed half a dozen Hamas activists. And yeah, then rockets started firing. And in the following month, Hamas offered repeatedly to reinstate the ceasefire. Israel acknowledged it, the cabinet discussed it and decided not to accept it. OK. No right to use force in self-defense. It’s quite apart from conditions of international law, which I won’t go into, which is pretty explicit on this, are all violated.

So, the attack itself was a criminal act. The US and Israel are guilty of outright aggression. And if they fire one bullet, it was a crime. And if they carried out the atrocities as they did, it was a crime. And if you look, case by case, they’re just—there’s virtually no justification for the claim of security. And in fact that, I won’t go into the history here, but it goes back—at the very least until February, 1971. This has kind of been washed out from history because it doesn’t look nice for us.

But in February 1971, President Sadat of Egypt offered Israel a full peace treaty. Nothing for the Palestinians, just mentioned as refugees, on condition that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories. And all he cared about was withdrawal from the Egyptian territory. So, in effect, it was an offer of a full peace treaty with all the property guarantees and so on, in return for withdrawal from conquered Egyptian territory. One year later, Jordan made the same offer with regard to the West Bank, a full peace treaty if Israel withdraws from the West Bank.

Well, at that point, security problem was over, if Israel wanted it to be over. If Israel had accepted those peace treaties, the major Arab state, Egypt, would be out of the conflict. And Jordan, the minor Arab state on the southern border, would be out of the conflict. OK. End of security problems. There was no Palestinian security problems to speak of at the time. You know, if such [inaudible] could have easily been controlled. But Israel made a decision, a fateful decision to choose expansion over security. At that time, expansion was into northeastern Sinai, where they were planning to build a huge city Yamit and a lot of settlements.

The real question is: what’s the Godfather going to say? Well, there was a debate in Washington. It was internal controversy. Henry Kissinger won out. His position, as he says, was what he calls “stalemate”: we should have no negotiations. Just force. And so, Israel was able to reject the peace offer. I won’t go into the consequences but it meant an awful world, a lot of suffering and constant security problems.

And if you look, from then through now, it’s pretty much the same. I mean Israel could have security right now. The Arab League has long endorsed the international consensus on a two-state settlement. In fact, they initiated it. The major Arab states in January 1976, when they introduced a resolution at the Security Council, calling for a full peace treaty on the international border. It was vetoed by the United States. And US vetoes are double vetoe. It doesn’t happen and it’s out of history. So we don’t talk about that.

So, it continues. The Arab states have reiterated in a more developed form of peace agreement, a full peace agreement. The organization of Islamic states—they should include Iran—has accepted it. Hamas accepted it. In fact, anybody relevant accepted it with exception of the United States and Israel. So, yes, there are real security problems but not justifiable ones.

Among all the reports—there were a number of reports that came out of Gaza, the Goldstone report, an extensive one. Amnesty International published several, Human Rights Watch, they are very revealing. In my opinion, the most revealing of all of them is—at least the most important for us—is Amnesty International report, which really broke new ground for human rights reports. It went through the weaponry that had been used in the assault against Gaza. A lot of high-tech, destructive, murderous weaponry. It traced it to its source, which is mostly back to us. And it called for an arms embargo. Amnesty international called for an arms embargo on both sides, which means essentially on Israel. That’s talking to us. That’s saying we ought to join in an arms embargo and stop sending arms in violation of international law and indeed in violation of US law. We should stop violating US law and sending arms to a country that’s using them for aggression and violence and destruction.

Well, you know, that’s a policy that Americans ought to follow. Let’s follow US law. Let’s try that for change. And stop sending arms to Israel. Well, I think adhering to the Amnesty international’s plea would make a lot of sense. There have been occasional reports from Human Rights Watch and others saying, you know, some arms shouldn’t be sent to a country that has used, that is carrying out regular tortures and so on. But this is the first call that I know of by a human rights group for a total arms embargo to an aggressive and violent state.

And the call is directed to us. We are the one providing the overwhelming bulk of the arm and continuing to do it. And I think we should listen to the call. That also suggests something about tactics. If we want to act in ways which is going to change policy, not just to make us feel good but change policy, the tactic should be directed to Washington. Unless Washington changes its position, there isn’t going to be any peaceful settlement.

And there are good, historical analogies that we can use to sharpen up or thinking about this. It’s pretty common to make analogies between Israel and South Africa. Most of those analogies are pretty dubious. There are some similarities but enormous differences. One fundamental difference is that the white nationalists in South Africa needed the black population. That was the source of their labor and sustenance, so they didn’t want them to live like dogs and flee the country. They wanted them to stay there and be a subordinate population. That’s quite different from the case of Israel; they don’t want the Palestinians. They want them out away somewhere. Like the US attitude toward the indigenous population here: “Just either die or disappear.” That’s a serious disanalogy. But there are some—even though the analogies are weak, we can learn something from history. And histories are worth thinking about.

By the early 1960s, South Africa was becoming a pariah state. There was a talk of sanctions, and boycotts but they hadn’t been implemented yet. There were negative votes in the United Nations, there were sharp attacks. South Africans were aware of it. They did pretty much the kind of things that Israel is doing today.

South Africa was reacting at that time very much the way that Israel is doing now: the whole world hates us. You know, they’re just racist. They don’t understand how wonderful we are. We have to have better information and educational campaigns to explain to them how what we’re doing is exactly right and to the benefit of the black population and so on. They were doing all those things but they knew pretty well that they were not going to work. Just as Israel ought to understand that comparable effort is not going to work. They are going to continue being--turning into a pariah state. But South African foreign minister, about fifty years ago, spoke to the US ambassador and he said something quite perceptive and relevant. He told the US ambassador that yes, overwhelmingly they’re voting against us in the United Nations and so on. But in the United Nations, there is only one vote: yours. And as long as you’re backing us, it doesn’t matter what the rest of the world says. That’s a pretty accurate perception. That’s what it means to have overwhelming global dominance of a kind that has never existed in history. And he was right. And if you look at the history what followed, it demonstrated it.

Through the 60s and 70s, South Africa became more and more a pariah nation. The United States and Britain kept supporting it. By 1980 or so, boycott, sanctions and so on were beginning; US corporations were beginning to refuse to invest; Congress began passing legislation. But the US continued to violate. The Reagan administration violated congressional legislation and overwhelming global opinion to continue supporting South African apartheid. And that’s one of the most violent and brutal periods.

In the 1980s with US support, South Africa was able to go kill an estimated a million and a half people and caused about $60 billion of damage just in neighboring countries, putting aside what it was doing inside South Africa with constant US support, went on through the 1980s.

In 1988, at that time, you couldn’t find anybody defending apartheid. You know, mayors, corporations, Congress, whatever. In 1988, the US formally identified the African National Congress, Mandela’s ANC, as one of “the more notorious terrorist groups in the world.” That was in 1988. You’ll be pleased to know, if you don’t already, that Mandela was taken off the terrorist list a couple of months ago. So we know how long we have to be terrified of him. Around 1989, for reasons which are not entirely known—we don’t have internal documents for that period—US policy shifted. And it moved towards ending apartheid and instituting a regime which sort of maintains the social and economical structure of the apartheid regime, but without total exclusion of the blacks. So, if you go to Cape Town or Johannesburg, you can see black faces in limousines. Even though for—and other signs of improvement, that was a major achievement getting rid of apartheid. But the fundamental structure was maintained. However, apartheid wad ended. Mandela was let out of prison, he was given a couple years of instruction and democracy and freedom and so on. And then he was allowed to appear. And the US, their Godfather changed its position and it ended. If you go back to 1988, it looked like one of the worst periods in South African history. People were desperate, giving up.

And that has happened elsewhere. So, South African minister was correct. And it happens in other cases too. I have no time to go through them but there are other cases where just a slight shift in US policy terminated violent, murderous aggression, in fact, near genocidal aggression. And it could happen in this case too. But something is going to have to press it and that’s going to have to come from inside. It’s not going to come from the rest of the world. And I think that is lessons we ought to keep in mind when we think about, first of all, our own responsibilities and also the kinds of tactical moves that would be appropriate. Thanks.

[O1]http://www.brookings.edu/events/2009/~/media/Files/events/2009/0304_leadership/0304_leadership.pdf

Reparations for the Palestinians (Edward Said on Democracy Now! 1999)

2010-09-25T01:12:00.001+09:00

[In remembrance of Professor Edward Said]

Reparations for the Palestinians

Amy Goodman: Well, as we come to the end of the century, we’re going to take a look at reparations movements around the world. The historic agreement between the organizations that represent slave laborers—the German government, German corporations—follows on the heels of settlements with Swiss banks and the Swiss government, also, which held the money of victims of the Holocaust. Well, we’re going to take a look at reparations movements in other parts of the world and for other populations. Later in the show, we’ll look at the fight for reparations in the Native American community in this country as well as the fight for reparations for African Americans, descendants of slaves.

But we’re going to start on the issue of Palestinians in a movement to compensate a people displaced by the formation of the State of Israel in the 1940s. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat says he’s unhappy with the progress of current talks with Israel and will declare an independent state next year, possibly even before the September 13 deadline for a final peace agreement with Israel. According to Arafat, the main dispute with Israel is still the issue of new Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where Palestinians hope to establish a state. Negotiations over a framework agreement are deadlocked over the Palestinian demand that Israel freeze all settlement construction, a demand Prime Minister Barak of Israel has so far refused. The two leaders are to meet this week to try to resolve the issue.

But these do not go to the overall issues of reparations. And right now, we’re joined by Professor Edward Said. He’s university professor at Columbia University, teaches comparative literature, and among his other books are Peace and Its Discontents, Culture and Imperialism and his own memoir Out of Place. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Edward Said.

Edward Said: Thank you very much, Amy.

Amy Goodman: Well, Professor Said, let’s begin on this issue of reparations. You’ve, I’m sure, been watching as the Jewish organizations have been negotiating with the German government, this, against the backdrop of the US government supporting these negotiations for reparations for Jews and other victims of the Holocaust. What about Palestinians? Where does the reparations movement stand today?

Edward Said: Well, let me just say first that I support the reparations movements around the world. I mean I think it’s the least that can be done to mitigate the enormous amount of suffering that went into, whether it was imperialism or colonial outposts or genocide or mass displacement of people, occurring in the name of progress or ethnic cleansing or whatever you want to call it. And I think, you know, it shouldn’t be invidious. I think there should be a broad principled work that people who have suffered at the hands of identifiable oppressors ought to be entitled and are entitled to recompense.

Just one word about the Jewish reparations, because they are very important for Americans, I think, to understand. According to Norman Finkelstein and Alex Cockburn and CounterPunch, a recent issue of it, the problem isn’t settled by simply going after Swiss Banks and German corporations, because it’s estimated that a good half of the money that was smuggled out of Germany by Jews who were—out of Europe, by Jews who were targeted—came to this country. And I would certainly support a movement for the investigation of US banks holding holocaust victims’ accounts and have yet not been investigated. So, I think, across the board, it’s an important thing.

Now, in the case of Palestinians, there has been no appreciable momentum or movement of any sort officially by either the PLO or the Israeli government or the US to go over what, in fact, the UN has ruled since 1948 Palestinians are entitled to. Namely, compensation and/or repatriation. The PLO, to my knowledge, has no serious accounting on its own of what was lost in 1948.

There have been independent Palestinian researchers, beginning with Sami Hadawi in the 50s, who has all the village statistics and compiled an impressive record of several billion dollars of losses, now amounting to probably 90 to 100 billion dollars in 1948. These have yet to be acknowledged by Israel, which declared them all alien property in 1949 and 1950, and simply took them over in the name of the Jewish people.

Others—a Palestinian researcher, Salman Abu Sitta, has also done similar work on his own. But the impetus for all this comes—it has to be noted—not from the PLO, which is now, in my opinion, a victim of the bipolar or tripartite negotiations with Israel, the United States and the PLO and it’s committed to the terms of that agreement—but rather from refugee communities. And it’s important to know that most Palestinians today are refugees, in other words. The demography of the situation is that more people live outside Palestine—refugees or descendants of refugee—than inside.

The last point, tragically, and in my opinion unforgivably, the Oslo agreements make quite clear that the PLO and Israel have agreed to ignore another form of oppression to Palestinians. Namely the expense to Palestinians of occupation: the houses destroyed, the villages annexed, the lands taken over. You know, the huge amount of suffering imposed on the population. There was a kind of blank check, sort of forgiven to the Israelis by Yasser Arafat. In my opinion, it’s impossible to understand it. But Israel has, takes no responsibility for what it has done, for example, in the total destruction of the economy of Gaza in the years since 1967. So, things, I think, are in a very bad moment for the Palestinian reparations movement.

Amy Goodman: Professor Edward Said is a leading Palestinian, he is a university professor at Columbia University in New York, where he teaches comparative literature, has written numerous books about the Middle East. Can you talk more about what you think are the strategies that the Jewish groups have successfully used, that the Palestinians have not been able to employ?

Edward Said: Well, I think the most important is making of inventories: the compilation of lists that are done with a systematic modern attitude that leaves no stone unturned. Now, that drives to a certain degree from political power. I mean it’s impossible to imagine the Jewish reparations achievements without looking carefully and admiring in many ways the power of individual Jewish communities, whether in Israel or the United States and elsewhere in Western Europe.

So, I think that’s the first step: to be able to sit down and authoritatively claim, not just attention which is very important, which we haven’t done, but also claim specific properties. And the PLO, which is the only official body that represents or is supposed to represent Palestinians, has never done that. It has never said, “We have a list which we are going to put at the center of the negotiations because our society was entirely destroyed." 780,000 people in 1948 were ethnically cleansed. I mean even Israelis agree to that. And “here’s the bill. And you have to fork up the amount of money that was lost, the interest accrued in the fifty years since that time.” I think that’s what..I mean that’s the first step that has to be done.

Secondly, of course, it has to become a central agenda item. In your own broadcast, you pointed to the fact that Yasser Arafat, a principal goal which he is threatening to execute, you know, to implement any day now, is to declare a Palestinian state. He doesn’t care about the enormous amount…even if he got a Palestinian state in what’s left of Gaza and the roughly 22 % of the West Bank that he’s going to get, that would still amount to less than about 18 or 19 percent of historical Palestine, which we all lost in 1948. So, it’s quite clear that a clearly stated goal and a central negotiating posture around the issue of reparations is the first step that both the American Jewish community did and what Palestinians need to. And we haven’t done it.

Amy: Do you see any coming together of the two communities over this issue? I mean certainly the Jewish organizations have learned a lot (Said: Yeah.) in their organizing and strategizing. Later in the show, we’re going to talk about Native Americans reparations and then with John Conyers, the Congress member, about reparations for descendants of slaves.

Edward Said: Well, you bring up something very important. I take it what you mean by two communities, you mean Israeli or Jewish and Palestinian. But of course, what I thought of immediately is Palestinians inside Palestine and the refugees outside, who are really two communities also. But you raise a very important point and that is, it seems to me more effort has to be spent, expended on persuading Jews and Israeli Jews—I mean Jews in Diaspora and Israeli Jews—what profoundly direct and perhaps tragic, if you want to call it, responsibility Israel bears for the depredations that were visited upon the Palestinians.

In other words, unless there is a worldwide awakening to consciousness and conscience and some sense of responsibility for what happened, we’re not going to get anywhere because in the first place, you have to get a public and official acknowledgment, from wrung out of Israel, that it was responsible for the dispossession of Palestinians.

And, as I say, one of the major negotiating flaws in the PLO and Arafatian strategy has been not to concentrate on that but rather to concentrate on winning some elusory little statelet that has simply no sense. I mean it will have no sovereignty to speak of. It will be discontinuous and it will be totally dominated by all that is feeding the fantasy of Arafat that he wants to become a leader instead of thinking about the well-being and the history of his people which is totally saturated in dispossession, tragedy and fantastic loss.

So, I mean one has to give credit to Jewish leaders for sensing their responsibility and transacting it, so to speak, in negotiations. The Palestinians leadership is not up to the task. And that’s why I think, whatever movement is going to come, it’s going to come from the refugee groups, Diaspora, which is now forming itself, girding its loins so to speak, organizing itself to press the claims whether at the International Court, at the UN, etc.

Amy: Well, Professor Said, I want to thank you very much for joining us.

Said: Thank you.

Amy: Professor Edward Said, professor of comparative literature at Columbia University. Among his books, Peace and Its Discontents, Culture and Imperialism and his memoir Out of Place.

Edward Said on 9.11 and others (Democracy Now! September 25, 2001)

2010-09-15T23:00:00.005+09:00

[in remembrance of Professor Said and Sabra and Shatila]

As Israel Intensifies Its Occupation in Palestinian Territories, a Conversation with Edward Said

[rush transcript]

Amy Goodman: Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, political commentators have flooded the mainstream media with superficial commentary about the nature of Islam, its relation to the Taliban and the challenges the US faces in being understood and appreciated in the Muslim and Arab world.

The Bush administration is continuing in its efforts to convince Arab and Muslim states to support its plans for wide-ranging military action against the Taliban, using a combination of threats, diplomacy and the lure of military and economic aid. But there’s still little reflection on the social, political and economic basis of the resentment that US power has engendered, not just in the Middle East and Central Asia but around the world. There’s been even less discussion of what a just relationship with Arab and Muslim states might look like, or how the US might get there, ideas that seem lost in the Bush administration’s single-minded preparation for a war we still know almost nothing about.

We’re joined on the telephone right now by Edward Said. He’s a professor of comparative literature at Columbia University and author of many books including Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism and his memoir Out Of Place. He’s also considered a leading voice for Palestinian self-determination. Welcome to the War and Peace Report, Professor Said.

Edward Said: Thank you, Amy.

Amy: Thomas Friedman writes in his column in today’s New York Times: “I understand that this particular act of terrorism we just experienced is something so much more frightening than what Beirut’s residents had to deal with.” He ends his column with the reflection, “I went to the ballgame Friday night, took in Dvorak's New World symphony at the Kennedy Centre on Saturday, took my girls out to breakfast in Washington Sunday morning, then flew to the University of Michigan. Heck, I even went out yesterday and bought some stock. What a great country. I wonder what Osama bin Laden did in his cave in Afghanistan yesterday?” Professor Said, can you comment and help us unpack some of the assumptions in these words?

Edward Said: Well, I think in the first place, you know, speaking as a New Yorker, and somebody who has lived here, really the major part of his life, I mean I feel I’m second to none in feelings of horror and sorrow and disorientation as a result of what happened. But there’s no need, I think, to take this out of history and out of time and turn the agony of New York into sort of a unique event of all time. I mean I’m a man of two worlds, really. I mean my entire family went through the siege of Beirut by the Israeli army, when in the course of three months, 20,000 people in a country of roughly two and a half million people were killed by the Israeli army--basically people living with no protection, no anti-aircraft, [no] guns, no missiles, nothing to protect the onslaught of Israeli F15s and helicopter gunships and missiles and rockets and all the rest of it.

So, you know, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. I mean, suffering under such horror is equal, it seems to me, in every part of the world. And what is implicit in a lot of what Friedman writes is that the Arabs and Muslims are to be talked down to, that somehow their experiences are not as valid or somehow not as valuable as those of the so-called West. I mean I say “so-called,” because the West is really a very nebulous idea. Most Lebanese think of themselves perhaps as part of the West. So, it’s typical to make, to draw distinction of that sort.

The other is that the experiences, much as one hates them and despises them. The experiences that produce the kind of mad mindset of which Osama Bin Laden has become the embodiment with are the tip of the iceberg. You know, I mean I myself don’t understand what would drive a person to suicide and to the kind of mass murder that these bombers did on September the 11th, but certainly the feeling of resentment and human dismissal which a lot of people in the Arab and Islamic world feel is very, very real, not because of some fantasy about America; most of them, in fact, are very interested and fascinated and indeed like America. Their children come here--I’m talking about the intellectuals of whom, of course, Osama and his people are examples, and not The Wretched of the Earth. They’re not people who live in refugee camps, either educated or the middle class people, who have gone bananas as a result of the tremendous pressure on them..on their minds of what they perceive as American contempt and dismissal of them as human beings, their religion and their culture.

It’s very difficult for a Muslim today in Pakistan or in Saudi Arabia or in Egypt not to make connections between the agonies of Chechnya, the agonies of the Palestinians, the contempt with which Islam is regularly discussed and treated in the media, the way in which the United States has, for the last ten years, more or less single-handedly, been inflicting a regime of horrendous, genocidal sanctions against the people of Iraq, and [not] to see all of this as a product of one power which can get away with it. And when the disaster strikes as it did last week horribly and maleficently in the worst and most barbaric way, of course—to see this as a kind of a retribution and to see it as a kind of, you know, sort of just desserts and not feel the kind of compassion and self-suffering that most people would ordinarily feel, partly, they think, because none of that compassion and fellow-feeling and fellow-suffering has been manifested toward them.

They’ve been treated as the enemy. The United States supports regimes like that of Saudi Arabia, for example, or the Israeli government, because it suits them; not because it’s a humane support or support for humane purposes.

And in this mind, which we have no inkling of, there’s very little interchange on any level at all, really. Connections are made and the descriptions are made for which there’s very little contradiction, but simply because the Arab and Islamic world are treated with the kind of contempt and inferiority that we feel they deserve. It’s mostly ignorance, I think. Terrible, terrible ignorance as a result of poor education in our part of the world and poor education in their part of the world.

Amy: We’re talking to Professor Edward Said of Columbia University. Others as well as Friedman of the New York Times write of the Taliban, in particular, and the Muslim world, in general, as being anti-modern, jealous of American technology and attacking the United States for its freedom.

Edward Said: Well, this is one of the most monstrous ideological fictions I’ve ever heard. It was originally started around the time, I mean it gained currency around the time of [Samuel] Huntington’s article on the Clash of Civilizations. And it comes from the work of several, very, very reactionary in my opinion and mischievously inclined, politically inclined orientalists who have argued exactly that:that the world of Islam is a basically medieval world, that it is a world that resents modernity and above all, the symbol of modernity, the United States, so on and so forth.

I mean that’s complete nonsense. In the first place, modernity in the sense of McDonald's and computers and air lines and shopping centers in the mall, etc, has come to the entire world, certainly to the Islamic world as well. And you know, it’s quite clear that on the level of culture, there’s an exchange that goes on despite the ideologues who say that the East is the East and the West is the West on both sides. I mean it’s very difficult to distinguish between the everyday life of one over the other.

But it is also the case that people in the Islamic world feel that they, for the most part, live in polities and states, in countries, ruled by unpopular regimes all of whom without any exception that I can think of in one way or another—of course, Iraq is an exception—but are supported by the United States.

I mean one mustn’t forget, in the first place, that the Mujahedeen, who preceded the Taliban, sort of the previous incarnation of the Taliban, were supported by the United States as fighters on the side of Islam against the godless communists in the Soviet Union in 1980s. And when their leaders came to Washington—I’ll never forget this as long as I live—and these beared people, to my mind, being a secular person from a part of the world that produces monotheistic religions, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, I was horrified that Reagan greeted these people as, in fact, the moral equivalent of the founding fathers, our founding fathers.

You know, it suited the United States to coddle these people, as it has all these years, the government of Saudi Arabia because of its oil, not because of its enlightened policies. And in many people in these countries, there is a healthy secular opposition. There’s women’s movement, there’s human rights movement. So, in all respects, I think one can find not only the elements but the wide currents of modernity inside contemporary Islamic societies.

The question is that they are engaged in a political struggle with people who want to take Islam back to some earlier state. Just as in this country, we have people who want to return—well, we have [Jerry] Falwell and [Pat] Robertson and all the hundreds of thousands, millions even, of fundamentalist Christians in this country who want to return us to a puritanical and simpler society.

So that’s the war. It’s not between Islam and the West. It’s between ideas of the past that exist in the West and ideas of the past and of the correct tradition that exists in the Islamic world and indeed everywhere.

Jewish world, look at the struggle within Israel between different interpretations of Judaism. So, I would say it’s really the struggle of interpretations and not the struggle between modernity of the West and the success of America, which most people in the Arab world that I know find very attractive and somewhat at odds with America’s behavior internationally, as a major, as the only superpower on one hand. And people want to, who want to return society to its earlier, pure, less sinful state, I mean that exists everywhere.

Amy: We’re talking to Professor Edward Said and we’ll be back with him in a minute after we have a break for stations to identify themselves. Then we’re going to Peshawar and Islamabad to talk about the humanitarian disaster that is brewing right now in Afghanistan. Up to one million Afghans face starvation as Bush officials plan to bomb them. Stay with us.

(break)

Amy Goodman: We’re talking with Professor Edward Said, a comparative literature institute professor at Columbia University, who has recently written a piece about the latest that has taken place in the United States: the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York. A piece called “Collective passion Can the voice of rationality be heard over the war drums?” This appeared in Al Ahram Weekly online based in Cairo. You were just talking about understanding the Muslim and the Arab world and also comparing fundamentalisms, whether it’s Muslim fundamentalism or Christian or Jewish fundamentalism. Would you like to continue on that point?

Edward Said: Yes, I mean I think they—the mix of religion with politics that I found rather chilling in some of the President’s statements is a very unhealthy one, because you know, if you think you have the vision and you’re in touch with the divine that speaks through you, then, you know, there’s certainly no stopping what you do.

I mean I think that’s certainly true of Muslim fundamentalism, it’s true of Christian and Jewish fundamentalists and [it] produces the most skewed and immoral and pathological—I think that’s a right word for it—pathological politics. Whereas it would seem to me that as a great country, I mean with enormous power, it would seem to me that the United States ought to be setting the standard for universalistic norms that apply across religions and across cultures, if you like, that should govern human behavior.

There is no reason for example, why a man who was responsible, like Sharon was for the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, should not be included in the war against terrorism and why only Muslim terrorists are singled out and, of course in this case, they should be.

But you know, the idea is that there should be universal norm set by the United Nations obviously, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by which human behavior and state behavior is governed. And [there should] not these religious justifications with which you can’t argue. If you are possessed to the truth, there’s nothing that can be said to you. That’s clearly the mindset of people who believe that God has given them excellent and they should take it and drive out these inferior others who happened to be there, this sort of thing. So, I think monotheistic fundamentalism is really the same across the board. And if we want to single out one, we ought to be choosing including, not invidiously, but we ought to be including inclusively all the others as well.

Amy: Professor Said, Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister is going to meet with the Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw following a 15-minute phone call between Sharon and Prime Minister Tony Blair. Sharon had earlier called off the meeting because of the remarks Straw made in an article in an Iranian newspaper, the passage which caused defense said: “One of the factors that helps breed terror is the anger that many people in the region feel at events over the years in the Palestinian territories.” Well, Downing Street said the phone call took place this morning at the request of Sharon. Straw is visiting Tehran as part of US-British effort to form international coalition that would include Iran. What do you think of this latest—well, what Straw said and also the meeting with Sharon?

Edward Said: Well, I think Straw, for the first time, you know, British official at a high level that told the truth. I mean there’s no question. There’s absolutely no question. I mean, don’t forget we live in an age of television and satellite television which has brought the Arab world together to watch the daily sufferings of Palestinians during the Intifada. I mean, in my opinion, I haven’t been there, [I have been] watching it now from the distance, there’s no question that Israel’s behavior includes the worst collective punishment that ought to qualify for terrorism, state terrorism imaginable.

I mean the idea of locking people in their house, making it impossible for them to travel, demolishing their houses, taking their land, uprooting—you know they’ve uprooted two hundred thousand trees! I mean that’s sheer sadistic cruelty, to say nothing of endless killings and what they call “targeted killings” which are, in fact, assassination of political leaders. I mean, you know, and the settlements go on and the humiliation of Palestinians at the checkpoints where they can’t move without being –without going through Israelis. I mean this has been fantastically galvanizing, I would even say polarizing, awareness amongst the Arabs everywhere who watch this every day, powerless to do anything about it.

And with the United States, more or less, continuously supply Israel with arms. I mean that, of course, doesn’t anyway justify horrendous acts, heinous acts of criminal violence, senseless destructiveness of the kind that hit our city. But it goes a long way to explaining a mood in which the United States and Israel are perceived as a malevolent and not the kind of pure and innocent creatures that perhaps they want to pretend they are.

So, I think what I’m really pleading for is a kind of secular, open and rational understanding of human behavior and not to condemn it to the realms of supernatural, say, this is, you know, evil we don’t un—you know, that comes from the devil and all. No, no, these are human beings who are acting in an unacceptable way. Their degrees, one ought to be able to analyze without, of course, condoning what to ought to be able to explain and at the same time make judgments.

But I think unless one does that and uses one’s mind and try to get past the collective passion, whether it’s in the Arab world and in the Islamic world against the Unites States or in our country, against, you know you’re just wanting to go to war without some understanding what the ground is like. I don’t mean just the geography but the moral and political and historical ground is like in the minds of others. I mean we live in one world, we don’t live in twenty seven different worlds. And once this campaign is over, we will have to go back to a world very much altered, in which I think the exchange between people becomes, I think, paramount.

Amy: And what do you think of bringing Iran into the coalition?

Edward Said: Well, I doubt that Iran will be in the coalition. In properly speaking, I think the Iranians are ..who are the sworn enemies of the Taliban..you know, there’s no love that’s lost at all between them. You know, every country acts according to its interest. And Tehran is not quite in the same position as being pressured as Saudi Arabia and emirates are who have in fact been supporting these Taliban and the Mujahidin, but originally because the US made them do it. But there’s lots of private contribution from these countries to Afghanistan. The Iranians, I think, are in quite a different position. And they may think of this as a way perhaps of improving their position with the United States. But I think entirely on their terms. I don’t think there’ll be any military actions from Iran. I think there’ll be an attempt to somehow soften the atmosphere and make possible normal relationship.

Amy: The House of Representatives voted yesterday to release half a billion dollars that the United States owes in back dues to the United Nations, ending a long running squabble at a time when the Bush administration says international cooperation is needed. What do you make of this right?

Edward Said: Well, I mean it’s obviously too little too late. I mean I’m glad they did it but we still owe, the United States still owes, we still owe a billion in back dues to the UN. Some members of the Senate and the House have made no secret of their contempt for the United Nations. They feel, I suppose many Americans, but not all, feel that we, the United States should go it alone and why should we be bound by protocols and bind the rest of humanity?

You know, maybe this is the beginning of change. And certainly the efforts on the part of the Bush administration to make this coalition to give it some kind of international, perhaps even the United Nations legitimacy is a sign of that we’re beginning to understand this, even with our great power and distance we are from the rest of the world. We are not invulnerable, we suffer as much as, we will and can suffer as much as anyone and have suffered in the case of this terrible atrocity on September the 11th.

But I think there is no hope, in my opinion, for the human community unless we rest our faith, I think, in communal organizations of which the only international, I mean the only universal one is the United Nations. And [I think] that we should be bound by the declarations and resolutions which, in many ways, we ourselves have formulated. But I mean the behavior of the United States in the United Nations has also been scandalous. Promiscuous use of veto whenever something goes against whenever, for example, Israel is criticized, to use the United Nations as we did in the case of Iraq to enter this long period of just slow genocidal torture of the Iraqi people in which you know half a million children have died needlessly.

You know, those are shown in the end, I think, a kind of contempt for the rest of the world that ill suits us as the great power with, I think, an extremely compassionate population. I think most Americans are given a chance, I think the media has not been good about this, but given a chance. We’re trying to understand what the US means in the world and what has been done in its name abroad and that most Americans are open to the suffering and miseries of others.

Amy: Finally, Saddam Hussein, where this puts Iraq? You have people like Paul Wolfowitz pushing for the bombing of Iraq, where do you think Iraq will fit in here? And the vision that you have of what actually is going to happen since that has not been made very clear at this point, how the US will conduct this so-called war?

Edward Said: Well, I think there has been a profound misunderstanding of what Iraq represents in the Arab world. [noise] I don’t think there is much love lost among Arabs [noise] for Saddam, for his regime which is known to be cruel and murderous. And I don’t know many people who were in favor of this annexation and the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But you know, it’s one thing to be opposed to Saddam and another to want to destroy the country even further. I mean that seems to me be sadism. You know, there was an opportunity, as no one is tired of remembering or repeating, during the war to enter Baghdad. If that was the goal, you know, to get rid of them, get rid of them in that way rather than to starve the Iraqi people.

I think there’s a struggle going on inside the administration as to what to do about Iraq, who [which] to people, I think, like Wolfowitz, seems to be important, only because it might be at one point a threat to Israel. I see them—I mean Iraq is, by any standard, there’s not a threat to anyone now. I mean Saddam obviously is, but the country has been, you know, its infrastructure destroyed, its people are in terrible shape after years of these sanctions. So, I think wanting to destroy Iraq yet again seems to be just gratuitous violence and cruelty for no particular reason. And I doubt that it will occur, but I may be wrong.

Amy: Professor Said, I want to say thank you very much for being with us and I hope you are feeling well. Professor Said is institute professor of comparative literature at Columbia University, author of many books, among them, Orientalism and his memoir Out of Place.

Noam Chomsky and Edward Said on Kosovo

2010-09-09T16:11:00.008+09:00

[This is the Q and A period at Columbia University on April 4th, 1999]

[from Democracy Now! website]

NATO struck at Serbia’s industrial heartland today, returning to sites already hard hit in the allied air campaign. As NATO foreign ministers convened today in Belgium for their first meeting since the air strikes began nearly three weeks ago, refugee agencies continue to express deep concern over the more than half-million ethnic Albanians who have left Kosovo, as well as the hundreds of thousands of others displaced within the province. As the mainstream media here in the U.S. continues to cover the war in Yugoslavia through the voices of military experts, NATO spokespeople and U.S. government officials, today we bring you voices of dissent that have been effectively censured everywhere else. Debate in the mainstream media has been confined to the discussion of two options: continuing the air strikes against Yugoslavia or sending ground troops to the region. Today, we take a look at a number of other options.

[my rush transcript]

Amy Goodman: NATO struck Serbia’s industrial heartland today, returning to sites already hard hit in the allied air campaign. As NATO foreign ministers convened today in Belgium for their first meeting since the air strikes began nearly three weeks ago, refugee agencies continue to express deep concern over the more than half-million ethnic Albanians who have left Kosovo and the hundreds of thousands of others displaced within the province. While the mainstream media here in the United States continues to cover the war in Yugoslavia, through the voices of military experts, NATO spokespeople and US government officials, we’re going to bring you something else. The discussion in a next few days as the Congress goes back to session, is about options. That’s right. The way the mainstream media in this country defines options is whether the air strikes should be followed by ground troops. That’s the spectrum of discussion that takes place in most of the media. Today we’ll bring you voices of dissent that have been effectively blocked out almost everywhere else. We first turn to two of America’s most respected political dissidents: Noam Chomsky and Edward Said. They spoke last Friday at Columbia University at a special event on the Middle East. We’re going to first hear from Edward Said and then Noam Chomsky as they go back and forth on the issue of Kosovo. Their major addresses were about the Middle East but at the end of the Q and A period, a student from Columbia University asked what they felt about the bombing.

Edward Said is a professor of English comparative literature at Columbia University and analyst on Middle East politics. He’s written over dozen books including Peace and its Discontents, essays on Palestine and the Middle East Peace Process, also Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism. He was a member of Palestine Liberation Council between 1977 and 1991, when he left.

Noam Chomsky is a world renowned linguist, scholar and political analyst, author of dozens of books including Manufacturing Consent, Profit over People. We first turn to Edward Said responding to that question about the bombing of Yugoslavia.

Edward Said: I don’t want to give a whole thing on the current situation in Yugoslavia but a number of things need to be said. In the first place, obviously, I mean I tried to emphasize this in my talk, I mean, I see the evils of ethnic cleansing and forced dispossession which is taking place by the forces of Serbia under Milosevic. And there’s obviously a parallel there between what happened to Palestinians in 1948.

And I certainly want also to add, since you talked about Iraq, that there can be no brief at all for what Saddam Hussein has wrought on the people of Iraq and the neighborhood. But one should remember that these are not things that happened out of context and just suddenly, suddenly we discovered the monstrosity of these regimes. Saddam was supported very, very methodically during the 80s especially during the Iranian-Iraq war by the United States and European powers.

And Milosevic was always involved. I mean the Dayton Accord made a point of really sub-- sidelining the Bosnians and dealing with Milosevic (Chomsky: Kosovars) and the Kosovars, of course. So, the policy, now, of bombing, it has to be seen in the context of US moves elsewhere. And that is to say that at the same time that this action is taking place—a kind of clean war, safe war, you know, no US pilots hurt, etc, with these smart bombs and so on and so forth, devastation of a country—there is a war being waged by a NATO ally, Turkey, against the Kurd:46,000 Kurds have been killed. And not a word has been said about this by the United States which simply tolerates it.

I think these false dichotomies, either you’re with, as you--it used to be said during the Gulf War, either you’re for fascism or you’re for imperialism, you have to be for imperialism because it’s always slightly better than fascism, and you know, fascism [inaudible].These are the kinds of false dichotomies we’re placed into at the current moment. And I think that the net result out again without any particular plan or without any notion of what’s going to be done afterward, given the history of other refugees in the last fifty years. It seems unlikely that this action on the part of NATO and the United States is going to produce anything except more destruction and more fragmentation and dispossession and probably at the end Clinton will walk away and say he had a success.

Noam Chomsky: Well, I’ll be brief. I think the first thing we ought to do when facing this--it’s a difficult and complicated issue--but the first thing we at least ought to agree is to be honest. If we don’t want to be honest, then let’s just stop this discussion. If we are willing to be honest, we see instantly that it cannot possibly be an operation resulting from humanitarian concerns. I mean that’s just trivial. I’ll leave...take one example that Edward mentioned, in which incidentally I disagree with him. He said that the US ignored the Turkish atrocities in Kurdistan, which is absolutely untrue, as he agrees I’m sure—the US worked as hard as it could to escalate those atrocities. In fact, in nineteen—and this is not, you know, this is not ancient history. I mean atrocities in southeastern Turkey which, well beyond Kosovo, peaked in 1994; it was a peak year of atrocities. It was also the peak year of US provision of weapons under Clinton to Turkey, that included jet planes, Napalm, anti-personnel weapons, tanks all of which were used. In fact, Turkey became the biggest importer of weapons in the world, thanks to the huge supply of weapons that Clinton was offering them to consummate a destruction and massacre which unfortunately was well beyond what’s happening in Kosovo or had happened. Remember 2000 people were killed there last year according to NATO.

And in fact, Clinton even had to evade congressional restrictions. Human rights groups found that US jets were being used illegally to bomb Kurds. And the humanitarian Clinton had to find ways of evading those restrictions to allow the jet planes to keep going to keep bombing Kurds. So, that’s just one example of many. There’s no possibility that this is a humanitarian operation.

That leaves with the question whether we should carry it out. OK, a separate question. And so, now you look and see. Where were we on March 24th, when the bombing started? Well, there, according to NATO, had been 2000 people killed in the past year, as Serbians responded brutally to KLA attacks on police stations and so on.

Incidentally, you might ask yourself how the United States would respond to attacks on police stations in New York by a guerrilla group being supported by, say, Libya, and based across the border? This, but put that aside. But in any event, the response was brutal, a couple thousand people were killed, a few hundred thousand refugees.

On March 24th, the way the situation stood was--well, actually I learned something interesting in the New York Times yesterday, hidden down at the bottom of a column, the place which is usually useful to begin reading--it turns out, I had another speech for it, that the Serbian Parliament had called for—before the bombing—had called for UN forces to be in Kosovo as observers where the US was insisting on NATO forces. Well, that’s consistent with US contempt for and hatred for the United Nations or for any other international institution. But it does put a rather different cast on the situation.

There were clearly negotiating opportunities and options that could be pursued. The US picked one option. It was an option which was guaranteed practically to make the situations far worse. I want to express my opinion. Let me just quote the US/NATO commander. On March 26th, Wesley Clark, two days after the bombing started, he said in his words, it was “entirely predictable” that as a result of the bombing, there would be a vast escalation of Serbian atrocities on the ground.

Well, you know, “entirely predictable” was too strong, the world is not that simple. Nothing is entirely predictable. But it was pretty obvious that they were going to react somehow. And they were going to react where they have strength. Well, they don’t have strength in the air, you know, they have strength on the ground. So, they were going to react the way they did, you know, by sharply increasing the attacks and so on. If you look at the number of refugees, the UN had registered zero refugees in Albania and Macedonia. There were some but they weren’t registered by the UN as of March 26^th, in fact. That’s when the refugee flow started. It was after the bombing.

The effects of the bombing, rather predictably, not entirely, predictably as the NATO general stated, rather predictably, were to sharply increase the damage to the populations, the harm to the populations very severely, all populations. Other effects were that it wiped out a very promising and courageous democratic movement in Belgrade, which was best hope for getting rid of this gangster, Milosevic, with whom we’d been dealing. It’s having…I mean everyone rallies around the flag, you know, just the way we would do if New York started getting bombed. So that’s going on, at least for the moment, maybe forever. The very harsh effects on the surrounding regions. There is yet another attack on the system of international law and World Order. Well, like if you are Saddam Hussein you don’t take this very seriously. But maybe not everybody accepts the standards of Saddam Hussein. Maybe there’s some people who think that we ought to have some sort of regime of international order which provides at least some support for the weak, which doesn’t provide any support for the strong; they don’t need it. But it provides some the restrictions against the use of force, provides some protection for the weak, OK, we will have another blow against that. In fact, across the board it’s disaster; say, human disaster. In fact, so, forgetting the―even the possibility that this was—it had humanitarian motives, of course it didn’t, we have to ask what it meant. Well, that’s approximately what it meant. It doesn’t look very much in doubt and it looks as if there were alternatives. There still are alternatives as there always are.

In fact, let me just put the whole thing in a kind of mundane level. Like, suppose you walk out in the street this evening. And you see a crime being committed. You know, somebody is robbing someone else. Well, you have three choices. One choice is to try to stop it. You know, like maybe call 911 or something. Another choice is to do nothing. Third choice is to pick up an assault rifle and kill them both and kill the bystanders at the same time, you know. Well, suppose you do that. And somebody says, well, you know, why did you do that? And you’d say, look, I couldn’t stand my doing nothing, you know. I mean, is that a response? You know? Why—I mean if he can think of nothing that wouldn’t do harm, then do nothing, you know. And the same is true magnified in international affairs apart from in fact that there were things that could have been done.

Edward Said: But I want to add one other thing if I may, that this--at the same time that this war is going on, the United States is continuing to bomb Iraq. Again, on the bottom of the pages of the New York Times. I think one of the things, one of the demonstrations, I think, behind the action in Yugoslavia is a kind of projection of US power and the assertion that the US can fight regional wars more than one, maybe two, three, four at a time. And interestingly, one of your favorite columnists, Thomas Friedman, the other day, was saying in the New York Times that, he says it’s sort of a repetition of the—some of the tactics used during the Indo-Chinese episode. That is to say: to appear as irrational as possible. And he was advocating the unreasonable use of force, in another words, just for the sake of the force, not to achieve any particular results but to show the people who is boss. And it’s, I think that mentality is very much part of it.

And the second point to be made is the continued attack upon the United Nations. That is to say: the United Nations is “useful” in Iraq. You know, they can use resolutions that the United States push through continued Arrears in dues and the continued scorn for attempts at peace making and so on and so forth, as in Rwanda in 1994. But essentially the United Nations is a contemptible body. And as most people in the Senate and the House both, they have never been out of the United States, they don’t even have a passport. So, “Why should we care about the world body that gives---that tries to take sovereignty away from the United Nations?” I think that’s also part of it. I mean this is assertion of World Number One without much interest at all in any possible outcome that anyone can possibly see is anything but bleak.

(break)

Amy Goodman: You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! The exception to the rulers, I’m Amy Goodman. We move on our War and Peace Report. We started it during the bombing of Iraq, now dealing with the bombing of Yugoslavia. And we bring to the conclusion of the discussion between Columbia University professor Edward Said and MIT professor Noam Chomsky on the bombing. This is Professor Chomsky.

Noam Chomsky: Let me just say on this matter of looking irrational. Thomas Friedman didn’t make it up. That’s the official US policy. (Said: It is, yeah.) There is a national defense--forget the name of it—in 1995, which proposed that—that, which is partially declassified—which proposed that the United States should maintain an irrational posture in which it would look like a dangerous, irrational state because that will frighten people and we should use the nuclear arsenals that way. The more uncertain they are, the more power we have. Now there’s actually an Orwellian phrase for this, which is repeated by Clinton and his little puppy dog Tony Blair, Madeleine Albright and everyone else. The phrase is “we have to preserve the credibility of NATO.” That’s the main argument that’s given. Well, try to decode that. I mean, are they worried about the credibility of Denmark? You know, or of Italy? NO. The credibility of NATO means credibility of the United States. Now, what does credibility mean? Well, credibility means, like what any Mafia don would understand. If somebody doesn’t pay, you know, what they’re supposed to do in a grocery store, the don has to maintain credibility. Other people have to understand that you don’t do this, you know, credibility means be frightened of the enforcer, so, and that once you carry out translation, I think, you can see what’s going on. I think that’s exactly what Edward said. That’s a major motivation. You have to preserve the credibility the enforcer. And I mean if we do it by being irrational and violent and destructive, well, you know, that’s where the cookie crumbles.

Edward Said: I have a tiny footnote to this, is, to bring it back to the Middle East. I mean it’s irrational for Israeli policy in Lebanon. (Chomsky: Yeah.) You know, where you occupy a strip of land and you say this is to protect yourself, so you occupy more land inside another sovereign state. And then you mete out punishment through mercenaries but certainly by air—you know, the clean bombing, you know, use of air craft and so on and so forth. And then of course, when you meet resistance, you call them terrorists. And it’s--what’s interesting is how the US presses follow along with this logic so that whenever they talk about the Hisbullah guerrillas in southern Lebanon fighting the Israeli occupation, all is referred to it is “Iran’s supported terrorist Hisbullah” and so on and so forth.

But the footnote I wanted actually to bring attention to with around the–well, just before the middle of March, it must have been around the 11th or 12th of March, the Israelis invaded further north, it took another area in a town called Arnoon, just north of the security zone in southern Lebanon. And they surrounded it and they took the village. This kicked out the most of the inhabitants and put barbed wire around it. A couple of days later, there were big demonstrations in Beirut and a bunch of students came down from Beirut by bus to Arnoon in southern Lebanon to this newly occupied town north of the Israeli zone but which was just recently occupied by Israelis. And they stood in front of the barbed wire, warned off. The Israelis shot rifles in the air [and] warned that they--the wires were full of electricity and that there were land mines and so on and so forth. Then you know, as it happens in situations with crowds and so on, a couple of them, of the Lebanese students attacked the barbed wire which of course was not wired and there were no land mine and liberated the town. And the Israeli soldiers with all their arms ran away. It’s a small episode in a generally not brave, distinguished history of conflict but it does show at times that a bully can be confronted.

Amy Goodman: That was Edward Said and Noam Chomsky. Professor Edward Said of Columbia University professor of English and comparative literature and Noam Chomsky, a world renowned political analyst, critic and linguist, speaking at Columbia University last Friday at a forum on Middle East politics sponsored by the Italian Academy for advanced studies in America.

Noam Chomsky On Middle East Politics (April, 1999)

2010-09-09T12:43:00.025+09:00

This is a talk given at Columbia University in April 1999. I wanted to do this because it was a rare occasion in which Noam Chomsky and Edward Said gave talks together. After I transcribed this talk, I found that it had already been transcribed and posted on Chomsky.info. But I post mine here anyway, because I’d like to go on to its Q and A section where both speakers answered to a question about Kosovo. The audio is here at Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/2001/2/7/noam_chomsky_on_middle_east_politics

(starts at 22:43)

Amy Goodman: This is an article from the Guardian newspaper in Britain, a mainstream press last October. It says “If Palestinians were black, Israel would now be a pariah state.” Its development and settlement in the West Bank “would be seen as a system of Apartheid, in which the indigenous population was allowed to live in a tiny fraction of its own country, in self-administered Bantustans.” And it goes on from there. In the US, we have to turn to voices like that of Noam Chomsky to give analyses of Middle East, rarely heard in the mainstream media. The current election results in Israel of Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister have roots in a legacy of occupation and failed peace efforts. Noam Chomsky, a longtime activist and professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently spoke about the history and politics of Israel and the occupied territories.

Noam Chomsky: The core issue in the Middle East is very straightforward, namely oil. Since World War One, when the world began to move onto an oil-based economy, the Middle East has become central in world affairs for the very obvious reason that it has: by far the largest and the most accessible petroleum resources, primarily in Saudi Arabia, secondarily in Iraq, and thirdly in the Gulf Emirates and elsewhere. And it is—as the State Department described it during the Second World War, when the US was taking over, it says:“It’s the stupendous source of strategic power and the greatest material prize in world history.” It’s strategically “the most important part of the world,” as the president of Columbia University described it, as he was making his transition from Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe to supreme commander of the world, in the White House—which, I guess, is something about Columbia’s rank in world order.

The smaller, more expensive reserves like North Sea and Alaska are declining. The role of the Middle East and in the world energy system is accordingly increasing. And it will become critical, probably in the not-too-distant future, if, as is widely anticipated, the current oil glut proves to be temporary, which is not unlikely; the rate of discovery has been declining since the 1960’s despite high technology and deep sea drilling and so on, and the usage of energy has been sharply increasing. In fact, about half of the total usage in history is, since the oil price rise in the early 1970s, it’s going up. And it’s expected that “the magic half-way point,” as it’s called, when half of the known, accessible resources are used, is coming fairly soon. All of this spells crisis.

It’s possible, of course, that some unpredictable breakthrough will take place and things will change, but policy planning is not based on unpredictable technological breakthroughs. So we can pretty confidently expect that the United States will continue, as in the past, to do everything it can to make sure that “the greatest material prize in world history” remains firmly in its hands.

Well, the United States took over from Britain in the Middle East and in fact, much of the world, after the Second World War. Actually took, replaced Britain and France. France was summarily expelled; they weren’t given the time of day. Britain, however, was given a role. It was given a role of “junior partner” as the British Foreign Office rather ruefully described it accurately. Britain was going to be our lieutenant. The fashionable word is “partner,” as they were described by a senior advisor of the Kennedy administration. The US—you know, that’s reasonably accurate, actually you’re seeing an example of it right now—the lieutenant is doing its job. The attack dog, maybe.

The United States took over from, inherited from Britain the modalities of control of over the region as well. These modalities had changed during and after World War One, when Britain no longer had the force to rule the Empire directly by occupation and therefore had to turn to air power and high technology, advanced technology. So, it was explained pretty frankly. The distinguished statesman Lloyd George, he was commenting on Britain’s success—in undermining a disarmament conference, which would have barred the use of air power against civilians—he pointed out that that was a success because as he put it, “We have to reserve the right to bomb the niggers,” which kind of sums up world affairs rather nicely.

Winston Churchill, who was then the Secretary of State at the War Office, was a great enthusiast for using advanced technology to achieve the same end. His favorite was poison gas. He said back in the early 1920’s that “Poison gas would be a fine weapon” he thought “against uncivilized tribesmen,” and “recalcitrant Arabs.” And that is referring to Kurds and Afghans at the time, but they apparently qualify. He said it should inspire “a lively terror.” You recall that poison gas was the ultimate atrocity in those days. And he said that this is simply the use of –it’s application of western science to military warfare, that meant to measures of warfare, therefore we shouldn’t back off from it. Well, those were the military tactics that they’ve had distinguished career ever since.

On a the political side, Britain—we know from the British Foreign Office records, Colonial Office records, which have been declassified—they developed a system which, in fact, the US has taken over. The idea was that the oil-producing states would be administered by what the British called, secretly of course, what they called an “Arab façade,” constitutional fictions behind which Britain would continue to rule. Now the façade has to be weak because it has to be dependable. It has to do what you tell it. But then there’s a problem, because if the façade is weak, it may not be able to control its population. And its own population is uncivilized and ignorant. They do not understand that they can be easily infected by what’s called “a virus” of radical nationalism which was defined by the State Department back in the 1940s as the belief that the first beneficiaries of a country’s resources ought to be the people of that country. And that, of course, is intolerable because any sane and civilized person can understand that the first beneficiaries of a country’s resources have to be wealthy investors in the United States and so on.

So, these people just don’t understand that and are always causing trouble, they are uncivilized tribesmen and so on and sometimes poison gas doesn’t work. So you have to have some way of keeping the Arab façade in power. And to do that, as the US developed the system there’s two levels of violence required. Actually this is all over the world. I mean much of the history of the last half century is the playing out of this issue in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Middle East and all over. It’s not put that way but that’s the way it is.

In the Middle East, the way it was worked out is that there are to be what the Nixon administration called “local cops on the beat” that is local gendarmes who sort of keep order in their neighborhood. And it’s best to have them be non-Arab ; they’d be better at killing recalcitrant Arabs. So there’s periphery of--in fact, what David Ben Gurion, Israel’s Prime Minister called “the periphery policy” of non Arab states: Iran under the Shah, Turkey, Israel, Pakistan. There they are to be the local cops on the beat. Their understanding is, of course, that the police headquarters remains in Washington. And if things really get out of hand, the local cops on the beat can’t handle it, there’s British and US muscle in reserve to be used when needed. That’s essentially the modality of control.

The Central Command, as it’s now called, which was initiated by Carter’s Rapid Deployment Force, it’s the major US intervention force, by far in the world. And it’s an enormous force. It’s based from Guam to the Azores—even with bases in the Indian ocean where the junior partner was kind enough to drive out the population of islands so that US bases could be put in there, all aimed at the core area, the Middle East intervention forces.

In 1980, when the Carter administration was explaining this to Congress, they pointed out the problem wasn’t the Russians. And in fact, this is after the invasion of Afghanistan but they realized that’s not the problem. The problem is regional unrest. That is the virus of radical nationalism. Well, that’s essential and that remains the case. So, as for the Russians, we don’t have to argue it anymore.

After the fall of Berlin Wall, the Bush administration in a very important and therefore unreported declaration to Congress, explained that everything has to remain exactly the same. Same military budget, everything including the intervention forces aimed at the Middle East where, as they put it the threat to our interests “could not be laid at the Kremlin’s door.” I mean, “Sorry guys, we’ve been lying to you for fifty years. But now there’s no Kremlin, so let’s be straight. The threat to our interests is regional unrest and we got to control it.”

Incidentally, notice the threat to our interests could not be laid at Iraq’s door either. At that point, Saddam Hussein was a great friend and ally. He had, it’s true he had gassed Kurds and tortured dissidents and massacred people and so on, but they hadn’t yet committed any crimes. The crime was disobedience, that’s a crime. That came a couple of months later. But at that point he was a great friend and ally and the US continued to support him right through these things that maybe you and I would call crimes—it’s interesting to hear, just to switch to another period. Like right now, when the US and its attack dog attack and bomb Iraq, the line you hear from Tony Blair and Madeline Albright and other distinguished figures is that we have to do this. How can we happen to let such a creature survive, he even committed the ultimate crime of gassing his own population. Their willingness to say that over and over expresses their extraordinary trust in the educated classes in England and the United States who they trust not to say what everyone knows—that that can’t possibly be the reason, because we supported Saddam right through those atrocities, and continued to increase the support after it. But their trust is warranted as you can tell by looking at the press and commentary.

Going back here, if you look at the structure of the system of control, you can determine very quickly how policy works. Participants have rights which are commensurate with their role in the system. So, the United States has rights by definition. And the junior partner has rights as long as it stays loyal. The same with the Arab façade and the same with the local gendarmes. What about peasants in Iraq or people in the slums of Cairo? Well, they don’t contribute to the system so they have no rights.

What about the Palestinians? Well, they actually have negative rights. The reason is that they are a disruptive element. The fact that they were displaced arouses nationalist feelings and causes the problems for the facade and gendarmes and the attack dog. So, therefore their rights are negative. These are just kind of elementary principles of statecraft. If you master those, you can predict very easily the way policy develops and it works quite well.

The end of the Cold War changed nothing. And that was well understood. So, one of the leading Israeli strategic analysts, formerly head of military intelligence, Schlomo Gazit, about a year after the end of the Cold War, wrote that “Israel’s main task has not changed at all, and it remains of central importance.” Israel remains of central importance as “the devoted guardian of stability in the region.” Its role is “to protect the existing regimes,” namely the façade, and “to prevent radicalization.” That’s accurate.

You have to do a little translation. So, “stability” means US control. And Israel is the devoted guardian of the control of the Master and it’s amply paid for its service. “Radicalism” means misunderstanding of who the first beneficiaries of a country’s resources are. And “fundamentalist religious zealotry” does not, [inaudible] does not entail that we have to say “Bomb Saudi Arabia,” or “bomb Jerusalem” or “bomb most of the United States,” which is the most extreme radical, fundamentalist religious state in the world I suppose. Rather, what it means is that this is a code word which means the particular forms of radicalization. That is failure to understand who the first beneficiaries are, the particular forms of radicalization that happen to take a religious cast when secular nationalism is destroyed. That’s a pretty common pattern. But if you make the translation, what Gazit was saying was certainly accurate.

Well, US-Israel relations developed in that context. So, in 1948, the US military was quite impressed by Israel’s military actions. They were described, a couple of days ago, in Israel’s leading newspaper Ha’aretz by a good reporter as being “Kosovo without TV cameras,” approximately accurate. In 1949, US Army planners concluded –I’m quoting, that “Israel had demonstrated by the force of arms its right to be considered the military power next to Turkey in the near and Middle East.” In 1958, the US intelligence concluded that it’s logical corollary, of opposition to radical Arab nationalism, to support Israel as the only reliable US ally in the region.

Actually, 1958 was a very important year in modern history. The US was facing three major crises at that time. They were described in now-declassified records by Eisenhower and Dulles at the National Security Council. They said the US was facing three major crises: Indonesia, North Africa and the Middle East. They also—Eisenhower and Dulles—both explained vociferously, according to the notes, that there was no Russian involvement in any of them. Well, they are all, of course, Islamic countries, maybe like an early illustration of the clash of civilizations. But that was irrelevant. I mean that could have come from Mars.

The crucial thing about those three regions is that they are all oil producers. The concern over them was interrelated having to do with the threats to US domination of oil production of oil in the Middle East and maybe use of Indonesia as a temporary substitute. There were very significant actions that took place. Among them was the destruction of Indonesian democracy. The US carried out a huge clandestine operation to try to break up Indonesia. They separated off outlying islands, the ones that were oil producers. That had all kinds of consequences.

In the Middle East, the US landed troops in Lebanon, armed—apparently with authorization to use nuclear weapons, according to high US officials. It was a serious matter. The concern at that point was Iraq. Iraq had broken the Anglo-American condominium over oil. Remember this is the second largest producer. And a military coup which the US regarded as Nassarite in inspiration and had sort of pulled the country out of the system and that caused a real hysteria. I won’t have time to go into it now. I’ll talk about it if you like, but the British Foreign Secretary flew to the United States immediately and they laid plans which are extremely revealing. They just explain just about everything what was going on in 1990 and 1991; it’s almost verbatim. Anyhow, it was taken pretty seriously. That’s 1958.

In the early 1960s, there was a proxy war going on between Nasser and-Nasser was considered the heart of the rot, the source of radical nationalism. And there was kind of a proxy war was going on between Nasser and Saudi Arabia, the main oil producer which was very threatening. In 1967, Israel intervened and smashed Nasser. And that was a major contribution, US-Israeli alliance was solidified. After the Israeli military victory, Israel also became the darling of American intellectuals.

Amy Goodman: Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, well-known scholar and activist on foreign policy, particularly US foreign policy around the Middle East. You’re listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! We’ll be back to Professor Chomsky’s speech in a minute.

(break)

Amy Goodman: As we continue with Noam Chomsky’s speech, given in Spring of 1999 at Columbia University talking about the Middle East, history and politics. Noam Chomsky.

Noam Chomsky: After the Israeli military victory, Israel also became the darling of American intellectuals from going from far right to left liberal, which is an interesting phenomenon about the United States. But its consequences show up mostly in the coverage of these events and discussion about them.

In 1970, Israel again served proof that it’s a devoted guardian. The US needed it to intervene to prevent possible Syrian involvement to try to block Jordan, which was then massacring Palestinians. And Israel did intervene and barred that. And that was considered a very welcome contribution. US aid to Israel quadrupled at that point. In 1979, when the Shah fell, Israel’s role simply increased. One of the main guardians was gone, that’s actually the origins of what’s falsely described as “the arms for hostage deal,” which began at that time, there were no hostages. It’s completely different. But anyhow, it did solidify the alliance further.

Going back to 1967, that war was dangerous. It came, it—well, quote, by Secretary McNamara, who was then Secretary of Defense, “We damn near had war,” he said, with the Russians. There was an actual confrontation between the Russian and American navies in the eastern Mediterranean and it was realized we better quiet things down. So there was a diplomatic settlement worked out under the initiative of the United States and its junior partner.

That’s the famous UN 242. UN 242 November 1967 basically called for full peace in return for full Israeli withdrawal. Notice that UN 242 was completely rejectionist. That’s very crucial for understanding what’s happening now. It offered nothing to the Palestinians. Just an agreement among states, so full peace in return to full withdrawal. That was a deadlock. The Arab states refused full peace and Israel refused full withdrawal. That deadlock was broken in February 1971. At that point, President Sadat of Egypt offered full peace to Israel for only partial withdrawal, namely withdrawal from Egyptian territory. The US kind of had an internal problem at that time, and it was a bureaucratic battle went on. It was won by Henry Kissinger, who preferred force, what he called “stalemate,” no negotiations.

So he refused Sadat’s offer, he took over, a very important date. That terminated US support for UN 242. Since that time, the United States has not supported it contrary to what you read because it has reinterpreted it to mean partial withdrawal as the United States and Israel determine. At that point, this was a period of enormous triumphalism which Kissinger shared. He thought Egypt as a basket case. And his ignorance and stupidity, which were really colossal when you look at the documents, led directly to the 1973 war, which did demonstrate that Egypt was not a basket case. You had to pay some attention to it. That even got through the clouds to Kissinger. And he then undertook shuttle diplomacy. The plans at that point were to try, since you can’t forget about Egypt, let’s eliminate it; it’s a major Arab military force, let’s remove it from the conflict so that then Israel can proceed with US support to integrate the territories and attack Lebanon. That’s policy which then reached—which was concluded at Camp David, that’s known in the United States as the Peace Process. And that, in fact, that’s exactly what happened, US support for Israel reached 50% of total aid at that point.

Well, meanwhile there was a shift in international consensus going on. It was shifting away from pure rejectionism towards recognition of Palestinian rights. That became a crisis on another crucial date, namely January 1976, when the Security Council debated a resolution, calling—which included UN 242, all of its wording, but also called for a Palestinian state in the territories that Israel was to leave under 242. Well, that was supported by the whole world, virtually. The Arab states, the PLO, the Russians, Europe, Latin America. Everybody except the one state that counts, which vetoed it. So the US vetoed that resolution and it’s also vetoed from history. You might try to search for it. But it was a very crucial date. At that point, the US became a doubly rejectionist in a strong sense: no 242 and no Palestinian rights. Alone in the world, virtually except for Israel.

Well, then the matters continued. Things shifted in the General Assembly. There were almost annual votes of a similar nature, usually like 150 to 2 or something like that. There were initiatives from Europe, from Arab States and from the PLO, all rejected by the United States. The leading journals, say, the New York Times refused even to publish most of them, even letters that were referring to them. All of this is what’s called the peace process again. That continued until 1990. The last General Assembly vote was December 1990, 144 to 2, then came the Gulf War. The Gulf War established as George Bush put it, the Gulf War established that “what we say goes,” and you’d better understand it. And it was understood.

So, what we say goes, the US returned to its support for its old friend Saddam while he murdered Shiites and Kurds, since then he has been turning to a rather rational policy of destroying Iraqi society. That’s highly rational, especially for an oil producing state. If you destroy the society and the population, there is much less concern that the first beneficiaries might be the people of the region because they are not going to be able to ask for anything. So, the policy that is going on now, of basically mass murder, is a very reasonable policy particularly for an oil producer.

With regard to the Israel-Arab problem, the Israeli-Palestinian problem, the US immediately move onto Madrid—fall of 1991. The Madrid Conference met all US conditions. First, it was unilateral—no interference from Europeans or anyone else. Secondly, it was totally rejectionist. So, the US could ram through its rejectionist program. That was the official program. Actually it was yet to be reported in the United States as far as I’m aware in the mainstream, that is. But it was The Baker Plan. The Baker Plan, which simply endorsed the Shamir and Peres Plan, which stated that there cannot be “an additional Palestinian state”; “additional” because there already is one, namely Jordan. So there can be “no additional Palestinian state” and “the fate of the territory has to be settled according to the guidelines of the State of Israel.” That was the official program endorsing the Shamir-Peres consensus, which was instituted at Madrid.

And we then move onto Oslo, September 1993. The Declaration of Principles was signed. And it was an enormous victory for the United States. I don’t know, if you’ve look at it—but you should look at what it said. It didn’t say much but it said something. It described the permanent settlement that is the long term end goal which must be achieved. And that must be strictly UN 242, not the other UN resolutions which called for Palestinian rights alongside of Israel. And of course, UN 242 means the US interpretation of it, which rejects UN 242. So, the permanent settlement is doubly rejectionist. No Palestinian rights, no UN 242. Israeli withdrawal just as Israel and the US decides.

The US and Israel had decided. They were pursuing a program that was called “the Allon Plan,” that the Israeli labor government instituted in 1968, which essentially—it’s varied a little bit over the years—but the basic idea is that Israel keeps roughly 40 percent of the Occupied Territories. The resources, primarily water, the usable land, the nice suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, which are mostly in the West Bank, part of Gaza Strip they want and so on. The rest, sort of you know, can leave to “the recalcitrant Arabs,” “the uncivilized tribesmen.”

That has changed a little bit over the years, so right now, it’s a little different. Netanyahu calls for what he calls “Allon Plus.” So the Allon Plan plus a little bit more. His opponent at the Labor Party, Barak, he calls for the expanded Allon Plan. Those are two political groupings in Israel, either the Allon Plus or the expanded Allon Plan. One political commentator in Ha’aretz again says that “One listens to the ideas of Barak and hears the voice of Netanyahu.” kind of paraphrasing a Biblical passage. And the US supports it, of course.

After Oslo, Rabin and Peres immediately moved to expand settlement and development, took over about 30% of the Gaza Strip, most of its meager resources. In the West Bank, the most crucial part of development is the area which is called “Greater Jerusalem.” Greater Jerusalem is a huge area that extends from Ramallah to Bethlehem and as far east as Jericho. And since Israel is keeping the Jordan Valley, it effectively breaks up the West Bank into two cantons. There are other developments which break it up into further ones.

Oslo Two, September 1995 spells all this out further. There’s the Palestinian Authority, which can sort of run affairs in downtown Nablus. And then there is roughly—more than a hundred scattered Palestinian settlements, separated from one another and crucially isolated from the economic, cultural and even medical center in Jerusalem: centers of Palestinian life. There are---the Jewish areas are connected by super highways. You can drive through and not even know there are any Palestinians. Then there are things which are officially called “Palestinian roads.” Actually I drove one not long ago, from Bethlehem to Ramallah. I mean if you make it alive, you’re lucky. If it’s raining, very lucky. Those are the Palestinian roads, which interconnect the Palestinian settlements.

Somebody has got to manage the Palestinian population. OK. So that’s where Yasser Arafat and the PLO come in. They’re—I have to say that’s a gangster regime based on robbery and brutality. The managers are better to enrich themselves and to suppress the locals. The more brutally they do it, the more they are applauded by Al Gore and Bill Clinton. That’s the central content of the Wye Accords. The CIA is now there to supervise to make sure it works right. This should not surprise anyone. This is an absolutely typical colonial pattern. That’s the way the British ran the Raj, that’s the way the US runs Central America. It’s just standard. Now it’s being carried over in this case.

Well, the goals have been perfectly obvious for years to anybody with eyes open. It takes real dedication to miss them. And remember, that these are the plans of Labor doves even in the voices is Netanyahu’s.

I was in Israel not too long ago, giving talks about this. And I started by just reading a paragraph from a standard history of South Africa in the early 1960s, at the time when they were setting up the first homelands, Transkei. It’s a kind of late so I’ll skip the paragraph unless you want me to read it. But the point is, that I didn’t have to comment. You read the paragraph about the establishment of Transkei, and everybody could recognize what’s happening right outside their door. Yeah. That’s exactly it. That’s the position of the doves.

Now there are differences between Rabin, Peres, two heroes and Netanyahu, the villain. A number of differences contrary to the comment in the Israeli press. Rabin and Peres were adamantly opposed to allowing the Palestinians to call, whatever they got, a state. On the other hand, Netanyahu has been more ambiguous. So his minister of---director of Communications and Policy Planning, David Bar-Illan recently said, well, if you the Palestinians want to call these scattered areas a state, we won’t mind, in fact, if they want, they can call it “fried chicken”—he said elegantly. That’s—you know, there’s a little different between the two.

There’s also a difference in style. And the style is important. The style reflects their constituencies. Labor is the party of the rich. That’s the party of professionals, the westernized, secular elements. Likud, the other party, grouping, is the party of the poor. You know, working people, Oriental Jews, religious and so on. And those divisions do reflect themselves in the style by which they behave. So, Labor is much more attuned to the norms of western hypocrisy. They do know things in the way they know the west is going to like. So they have spokesmen like Abba Eban, who knows how to put in nice phrases, things like “beating people up” and “smashing them” and so on and so forth.

Amy Goodman: Professor Noam Chomsky teaches linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a well-known political analyst and critic. He’s author of numerous books, particularly, on the Middle East.

Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

2010-01-29T09:56:00.003+09:00

We've just lost Howard Zinn.

Listen to his words here.

Howard Zinn wrote in the Foreword of Noam Chomsky's American Power and the New Mandarins:

"When the Reagan administration declared a blockade of the revolutionary Sandinista government in Nicaragua, five hundred of us occupied the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in downtown Boston, and were arrested. Noam and I, and all the others, were charged under an ancient Massachusetts statute: 'Failure to quit the premises.' That charge―'failure to quit'―could well describe Noam and indeed the whole protest movement in this country."

Then it became the title of one of Howard's books, Failure to Quit: reflections of an optimistic historian.

Noam Chomsky Discusses Kosovo(1999 Democracy Now!)

2009-12-13T13:11:00.007+09:00

[Note: I think what he said in 1999 is still very relevant in 2009, when President Obama, in his Nobel Peace Prize address, said something like war being peace or peace being war.]

[rush transcript by me]

Democracy Now! April, 5th, 1999

Amy Goodman: Well, overall first, what is your reaction to these bombings?

Noam Chomsky: Well, my reaction to the bombings is essentially that of the NATO/US commander, Wesley Clark. A day or two after the bombings began, he stated that it was “entirely predictable” that the bombings would lead to a sharp escalation of atrocities in an effort to drive out ethnic Albanians. The phrase “entirely predictable” is too strong but the general point is correct. And that’s pretty much what happened. And that was predictable. And last year, about 2,000 people were killed. The main fighting started after the Kosovars switched from support for a long nonviolent resistance program which received…elicited no support from the West. In fact, it was simply dismissed. Turned to violence which led to counter-violence of a much greater kind, as I said, about 2,000 people killed. As the threats of NATO bombing increased, the violence increased. As the monitors were withdrawn, the violence increased. When the bombing actually began, it very sharply escalated for, essentially, the reasons that General Clark stated. Their reactions to the threat and the actuality of the bombing had the effect predictable, if not entirely predictable, of offering both a motive and an opportunity for heightened atrocities and expulsion of population, which is now reaching very severe crises. I mean it’s now approaching perhaps the level of other examples. For example, it’s not yet anywhere near as high as the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948. Or it doesn’t come close to the atrocities against the Turks [sic-I think he meant the Kurds] in Southeastern Turkey a few years ago. But it’s on the level perhaps of Colombia and other atrocities―pretty serious.

Amy: Some of these issues have begun to be raised. For example, the idea of comparative genocides, not just the expulsions of people. The idea, for example, that in 1994 close to a million Rwandans were killed in 10 days yet the US not only didn’t go in to intervene but Clinton refused to even use the term genocide. And yet here, it is used much easier for far fewer people who were killed. But do you think this comparative use of the term and rationale is helpful?

NC: The use of the term genocide is―that’s just the propaganda term. I mean it’s used for atrocities that the United States opposes. Scale is irrelevant. That can be 5 people. If you---the term has essentially, unfortunately lost its meaning. It’s just simply used as a term referring to atrocities to which the United States happens to be opposed: so, say, for example, when the United States was actively involved in the expulsion of maybe a million or so people---from--in Southeastern Turkey, when thousands of villages were destroyed and you know, tens of thousands of people were killed. This is under the Clinton administration. It’s not that long ago. That was not called genocide, in fact it was barely reported. And the reason was―it was kind of like East Timor. It was using overwhelmingly American arms which continued to flow, reaching their peak as the atrocities peaked in 1994. So that wasn’t genocide. And similarly it wasn’t called genocide when 750,000 Palestinians were kicked out of their country in 1948. That wasn’t genocide. Nor is it called a genocide in Colombia, where there was a million and half refugees perhaps something of that order.

The concern correlates with the assessment of the threat to Western interests. So if people want to slaughter each other in Sierra Leone, that doesn’t harm the interests of western Europeans. Therefore it’s not a crisis. And in fact, there, for example, the United States has actively undermined efforts by the United Nations to undertake these peace keeping operations. In the Congo, which is the biggest war probably in the history of modern Africa, the United States, the Clinton administration, refused to provide a hundred thousand dollars to pay for a peace keeping nation. That’s not a crisis because it’s not harming the interests of rich and powerful people. Any turbulence in the Balkans, in contrast, has…carries with it…the threat of danger to European and the United States interests, and therefore it becomes a crisis. Scale is not a relevant consideration.

Amy: What do you think, Noam Chomsky, should happen right now in the Balkans, in Yugoslavia? What should the US, what should NATO be doing?

NC: I think it should be clear to any moderately dispassionate observer that the NATO bombings―apart from being a sharp attack on the principles of international order, world order and international law, apart from that―are having the “predictable” effect of sharply escalating the atrocities. When you’re carrying out an action that is making a bad situation worse, much worse, first step is to stop carrying out that action. After that--so the bombings should be stopped--after that, effort should be made to explore the few remaining options. The more violence is used, the fewer the options are. So, there are fewer options now than there were two weeks ago. But there’re still not zero. They’ve just become fewer and uglier. It will mean a return to some form of negotiations in diplomacy. The United States and Britain, the two warrior states, are basically…have rendered themselves ineligible for participation in any such negotiations. But there are powers with a more, elements with a more neutral stance that might try to undertake them. They say the options are very much reduced and the few that remain are pretty ugly, but perhaps the best that one can imagine at this stage of the game is some kind of partition of Kosovo, which is probably what Milosevic is aiming for anyway. With the northern areas, which are the areas with the resources and the historical monuments and so on, with those taken over simply by Serbia, and the rest which is...can be...will be a kind of desert used to return to the Kosovars that the West doesn’t want. That’s not pretty, it’s ugly, but it’s hard to see what other options remain.

Amy: What do you think of the reaction of the traditional, progressive peace community in this country?

NC: Well, you can understand people—people should be concerned by atrocities. That’s correct. On the other hand, selective concern for atrocities is not a high moral stance. When you are concerned with atrocities because powerful elements, the government and the media and so on, tell you to be concerned about them, or when you’re concerned about them because they threaten the interests of privileged and wealthy people, that’s not a very high moral stand. On the other hand, people are certainly, genuinely concerned by the atrocities. Out of that, [to] make sure one can draw some conclusion…I hesitate to do it.

Amy: Can you expand on that?

NC: Look, I think that it’s a human, decent reaction to be concerned by atrocities. On the other hand, you should understand that you’re being directed to respond to certain atrocities: those that affect the interests of wealthy and powerful people. So you’re to be concerned about the Kosovars, you’re not to be concerned about the Kurds. You’re not to be concerned about Sierra Leone. You’re not to be concerned about Colombia. To take areas of the world very far away, in Laos, right now, this minute, thousands of people are being killed every year from unexploded US terror weapons―sort of much worse than landmines, little bomblets. And the US refuses to clear them or even to provide the information as to how to render them harmless to groups that are trying to clear them. Well, you’re not supposed to be concerned about those atrocities because they’re ours. The feeling of revulsion against what is seen, accurately seen, as major atrocities in Kosovo is understandable and it should be tempered by the understanding that you’re being manipulated.

Amy: You mentioned the Kurds, which brings us to Iraq. At the same time the US is bombing Yugoslavia, it seems that the Pentagon has a dream come true. Bombings on two fronts because [the] US has, just once again bombed Iraq, as they’ve been doing almost consistently daily for the last months.

NC: Yeah, we should add to that that, you know, the bombing is the visible atrocity but it pales into insignificance in comparison with the sanctions, which are just mass murder. I mean if you want to use the term genocide―it’s a term that I don’t like―it applies much more accurately to the killing of say, 5,000 children a month in Iraq simply as a result of the sanctions.

(break)
Amy: Our guest is Noam Chomsky talking about the bombing of Yugoslavia. NATO. What this means for NATO and for US arms manufacturers. Noam?

NC: With regard to NATO, I would place it in the context of the long standing US effort to undermine and neutralize international institutions. That began years ago because they began to fall out of control. And it was made very explicit and clear in the official US policy: UN is just worthless, it’s out of control, the World Court is out of control. Therefore, similarly other—I mean even the World Trade Organization insofar as doesn’t go along with US demand―is pushed to the side, eliminated. The US is what is called in a current issue of Foreign Affairs, of all places, a “rogue superpower.” It simply is going to run the world in its own way, lawlessly and by violence if necessary.

That requires a shift of authority from the [UN] Security Council, where it’s vested in international law, to NATO, which is essentially under US control. Therefore, there’s expansion of NATO power as a reflection of the ---in the early 1950s, the United States could use the United Nations as a cover for its actions. That can’t be done anymore. Therefore, NATO is a more reasonable cover. Also just as dirty work could be shunted over to the United Nations if the US didn’t want to do it, the same can be done with NATO. You can shift the dirty work over the Europeans when you don’t feel like doing it, as long as the US remains in control.

A side effect of this is the one you mentioned. Expansion of NATO is just a bonanza for arms manufacturers. They are the main ones in favor of it. And the use of weapons, of course, increases the need for them and that’s a further bonanza to arms manufacturers. However, here too, we ought to bear in mind that “arms manufacturers,”―that’s kind of a euphemism that refers to most of high tech industry. High technology industry has been developed primarily in the state sector: a huge state sector in the United States. And that’s been done under the cover of military spending very commonly. So, you know, high tech industry doesn’t explicitly gain when you should (inaudible) cruise missile but the development of the technology, its dual use, its transfer to civilian uses and so on. That’s the way most dynamic sectors in the economy develop. Then they are later taken over by private capital and they become profitable. I mean that’s just the essential driving force of the economy.

Amy: I get that sense very much, over the last two weeks, of the military hardware show on the corporate networks, which are in fact owned by weapons manufacturers that are making parts of the weapons for the bombing of Iraq―with CBS being owned by the Westinghouse and NBC being owned by General Electric. But today, the announcement that the Apache Helicopters will be moving in and the triumph of the B-2 which was considered such a major boondoggle for so long, etc:

NC: Yeah, but I think we should not be misled by that. Over the years, that feeds into your computer, the airplane you take when you visit San Francisco and so on. That is the foundation of the high technology economy. And that’s the reason for it. You know the reason is in part for the use of force but also the reason is that it undergirds the future high technology industry. This was well understood in the 1940s when the first secretary of the Air Force [Stuart Symington], Truman secretary of the Air Force told Congress we should not use the term “subsidy,” we should use the term “security.” And that’s the way it works. So if you use the Internet, that’s because for twenty years or so it was developed within the military until it got to the point where it could be handed over to Bill Gates.

Amy: You mean it wasn’t developed by Al Gore.

NC: Surprise.(laughter) As late as 1994, pretty recently, Bill Gates was so uninterested in the Internet. He wouldn’t even attend conferences concerning it. At that point it had already been developed for 30 years mainly within the state sector: the military and the National Science Foundation.

Amy: Finally, Noam, where do you see the bombing in the Balkans, the bombing of Yugoslavia going? What do you see as the end?

NC: Well, you know, bombing has its own dynamics. It will—I mean it could go a lot of different ways. I mean, for example, maybe a sort of worst case possibility, which is not excluded, is that if Kosovo was largely cleansed of its population—remember that means Albanians but also Serbs. Serbs are fleeing north. If the population is sharply reduced and has mostly the military forces there, the United States could just carpet bomb it and turn it into desert. It’s a possibility. I mean while Yugoslavia is being—it’s not---the talk is military buildings but a few western correspondents like Robert Fisk, who, you know, go into hospitals, find plenty of civilian casualties. Horrible cases of civilian casualties, of course. One effect of the bombing inside Serbia is to have undermined and probably destroyed a very promising and courageous democratic opposition which is now mostly rallying around the flag—[that] is what people do when you get bombed. The long term consequences even within Yugoslavia are--could be pretty ugly and in the surrounding regions it’s just unpredictable.

Chomsky in London

2009-11-05T00:50:00.008+09:00

I'm so wanting to come back with a new transcript, but for the moment, here's a great video.

"Palestine and the region in the Obama era: the emerging framework"

with Gilbert Achcar and Tariq Ali. (November 2009)

also at:

http://blip.tv/file/2799996

http://www.vimeo.com/7350655

"Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours"part3

2009-07-10T08:17:00.002+09:00

Transcribed by Scott Senn

"Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours"part3

12 June 2009
Harlem, NY

Also at:
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5295017/13964512
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5295224/13964982

(01:04:20)
Well, there's a far more severe crisis, even for the rich and powerful. It happens to be discussed in the same issue of the New York Review that I mentioned, [an] article by Bill McKibben [("Can Obama Change the Climage?", 11 June 2009)]. He's been warning for years about the dire impact of global warming. His current article – worth reading – relies on the British Stern Report, which is sort of the gold standard now. On this basis, he concludes, not unrealistically, that "2009 may well turn out to be the decisive year in the human relationship with our home planet." The reason is that there's a conference in December in Copenhagen which is supposed to set up a new global accord on global warming; and he says it'll tell us "whether or not our political systems are up to the unprecedented challenge that climate change represents." He thinks that "the signals are mixed". To me, that seems kind of optimistic unless there's really a massive public campaign to overcome the insistence of the managers of the state-corporate sector on privileging short term gain for the few over the hope that their grandchildren might have a decent future.

Well, the picture could be a lot more grim even than the Stern Report predicts, and that's grim enough. A couple days ago, a group of MIT scientists released the results of what they describe as "[t]he most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the earth's climate will get in this century" which "shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated [a couple of] years ago - and [it] could be even worse than that", because their model does not fully incorporate positive feedbacks that can occur: for example, the increased temperature that is causing a melting of permafrost in the arctic regions which is going to release huge amounts of methane (that's worse than CO2). The leader of the project says, "There's no way the world can or should take these risks." He says, "The least-cost option to lower the risk is to start now and steadily transform the global energy system over the coming decades to low or zero greenhouse gas-emitting technologies" [("Climate Change Odds Much Worse than Thought", 19 May 2009)]. And there's very little sign of that.

Well, furthermore, while new technologies are essential, the problems go well beyond on that. And, in fact, they go beyond the current technical debates about just how to work out cap-and-trade devices, being discussed in Congress. We have to face something much more far-reaching: we have to face up to the need to reverse the huge state-corporate social engineering projects of the post Second World War period which very consciously promoted an energy-wasting and environmentally destructive fossil fuel economy. It didn't happen by accident. That's the whole massive project of suburbanization, then destruction and later gentrification of inner cities. The state-corporate program began with a conspiracy by General Motors, Firestone Rubber, Standard Oil of California to buy up and destroy efficient, electric transportation systems in Los Angeles and dozens of other cities. They were actually convicted of criminal conspiracy and given a tap on the wrist: I think, a $5,000 fine. The federal government then took over; it relocated infrastructure and capital stock to support suburban areas and also created a huge interstate highway system under the usual pretext of "defense". Railroads were displaced by government-financed motor and air transport. The public played almost no role, apart from choosing within the narrowly structured framework of options that are designed by state-corporate managers. They are supported by vast campaigns to "fabricate consumers" with "created wants" (borrowing [Thorstein] Veblen's terms). One result is the atomization of the society and the entrapment of isolated individuals with huge debts. These efforts grew out of the recognition (that I mentioned) a century ago that democratic achievements have to be curtailed by shaping attitudes and beliefs – as the business press put it, directing people to "superficial things of life" like "fashionable consumption". All of that's necessary to insure that the "opulent minority" are protected from "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" (namely, the population).

[I'll] just add a personal note on that: I came down here this afternoon by the Acela – you know, the "jewel in the crown" of the new high-speed railroad technology. The first time I came from Boston to New York was sixty years ago, and there was improvement since then: it was five minutes faster today than it was sixty years ago.

While state-corporate power was vigorously promoting privatization of life and maximal waste of energy, it was also undermining the efficient choices that the market doesn't and can't provide. That's another highly destructive, build-in market-inefficiency. So to put it simply, if I want to get home from work, you know, in the evening, the market does allow me a choice between (say) a Ford and a Toyota, but it doesn't allow me a choice between a car and a subway, which would be much more inefficient, and maybe everybody wants it, but the market doesn't allow that choice. That's a social decision, and in a democratic society, it would be the decision of an organized public. But that's just what the elite attack on democracy seeks to undermine.

Now these consequences are right before our eyes in ways that are sometimes surreal. A couple of weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal had an article reporting that the US Transportation [Department] chief is in Spain. He's meeting with high-speed rail suppliers: "Europe's engineering and rail companies are lining up for some potentially lucrative US contracts for high-speed rail projects. At stake is $13 billion in stimulus funds that the Obama administration is allocating to upgrade existing rail lines and build new ones that could one day rival Europe's..." [("Europe Listens for U.S. Train Whistle", 29 May 2009)]. So think what's happening: Spain and other European countries are hoping to get US taxpayer funding for high-speed rail and related infrastructure. And, at the very same time, Washington is busy dismantling leading sectors of US industry, ruining the lives of workers and communities, who could easily do it themselves. It's pretty hard to conjure up a more damning indictment of the economic system that's been constructed by state-corporate managers. Surely the auto industry could be reconstructed to produce what the country needs, using its highly skilled workforce. But that's not even on the agenda; it's not even being discussed. Rather, we'll go to Spain and we'll give them taxpayer money for them to do it, while we destroy the capacity to do it here.

It's been done before: So, during World War II, it was kind of a semi-command economy – government-organized economy. That's what happened: industry was reconstructed for the purposes of war, dramatically. It not only ended the Depression but it initiated the most spectacular period of growth in economic history. In four years, US industrial production just about quadrupled, as the economy was retooled for war. And that laid the basis for the golden age that followed. Well, warnings about the purposeful destruction of US productive capacity have been familiar for decades, maybe most prominently by the late Seymour Melman, whom many of us knew well. Melman was also one of those who pointed the way to a sensible way to reverse the process. The state-corporate leadership, of course, has other commitments. But there's no reason for passivity on the part of the public, the so-called stakeholders (workers and community). I mean, with enough popular support, they could just take over the plants and carry out the task of reconstruction themselves. It's not a very exotic proposal. One of the standard texts on corporations in economics literature points out that "[n]owhere...is it written in stone that the short-term interests of corporate shareholders in the United States deserve a higher priority than...all other corporate stakeholders" (workers and community) [(W. Keller & L. Pauly, "Globalization at Bay", Current History, November 1997)]. That's a state-corporate decision; it has nothing to do with economic theory.

It's also important to remind ourselves that the notion of workers' control is as American as apple pie. It's kind of been suppressed; but it's there. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution in New England, working people just took it for granted that those who work in the mills should own them. And they also regarded wage labor as different from slavery only in that it was temporary (also Abraham Lincoln's view). There have been immense efforts to drive these thoughts out of people's heads, to win what the business world calls "the everlasting battle for the minds of men". On the surface, they may appear to have succeeded; but I don't think you have to dig too deeply to find out that they're latent and they can be revived. And there have been some important concrete efforts. One of them was undertaken thirty years ago in Youngstown, Ohio, where US Steel was going to shut down a major facility that was at the heart of this steel town. And there were substantial protests by the workforce and by the community. Then there was an effort, led by Staughton Lynd, to bring to the courts the principle that stakeholders should have the highest priority. Well, the effort failed that time; but, with enough popular support, it could succeed. And right now is a propitious time to revive such efforts, although it would be necessary – and we have to do this – to overcome the effects of this concentrated campaign to drive our own history and culture out of our minds.

There was a very dramatic illustration of the success of this campaign just a few months ago: In February, President Obama decided to show his solidarity with working people. He went to Illinois to give a talk at a factory. The factory he chose was the Caterpillar corporation. Now that was over the strong objections of church groups, peace groups, human rights groups, who were protesting Caterpillar's role in providing what amount to weapons of mass destruction in the Israeli-Occupied Territories. Apparently forgotten, however, was something else: In the 1980s, after Reagan had dismantled the air traffic controllers' union, the Caterpillar managers decided to rescind their labor contract with the United Auto Workers and to destroy the union by bringing in scabs to break a strike. That was the first time that had happened in generations. Now that practice is illegal in other industrial countries, apart from South Africa at the time (not now; now the United States is in splendid isolation, as far as I'm aware). Well, at that time, Obama was a civil rights lawyer in Chicago, and he certainly read the Chicago Tribune which ran quite a good, very careful study of these events [("Caterpillar Strikers Face the Bitter Truth", 9 September 1992)]. They reported that the union was "stunned" to find that unemployed workers crossed the picket line with no remorse, while Caterpillar workers found little "moral support" in their community. This is one of the many communities where the union had "lifted the standard of living for entire communities".

Wiping out these memories is another victory in the relentless campaign to destroy workers' rights and democracy, which is constantly waged by the highly class-conscious business classes. Now the union leadership had refused to understand. It was only in 1978 that UAW president Doug Fraser recognized what was happening and criticized the "leaders of the business community" – I'm quoting him – for waging "a one-sided class war in this country – a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society," and for having "broken and discarded the fragile, unwritten compact previously existing during a period of growth and progress." That was 1979. And, in fact, placing one's faith in a compact with owners and managers is a suicide pact. The UAW is discovering that right now, as the state-corporate leadership proceeds to eliminate the hard-fought gains of working people while dismantling the productive core of the economy and sending the Transportation Secretary to Spain to get them to do what American workers could do, at taxpayer expense of course.

Well, that's only a fragment of what's underway, and it highlights the importance of short- and long-term strategies to build – in part, resurrect – the foundations of a functioning democratic society. One short-term goal is to revive a strong independent labor movement. In its heyday, it was a critical base for advancing democracy and human and civil rights. It's a primary reason why it's been subjected to such unremitting attack in policy and propaganda. An immediate goal right now is to pressure Congress to permit organizing rights: the Employee Free Choice Act legislation. That was promised but now seems to be languishing. And a longer-term goal is to win the educational and cultural battle that's been waged with such bitterness in the one-sided class war that the UAW president perceived far too late. That means tearing apart an enormous edifice of delusions about markets, free trade, and democracy that's been assiduously constructed over many years and to overcome the marginalization and atomization of the public.
Now, of all the crises that afflict us, I think – my own feeling is that this growing democratic deficit may be the most severe. Unless it's reversed, Arundhati Roy's forecast might prove accurate, and not in the distant future. The conversion of democracy to a performance in which the public are only spectators might well lead to – inexorably to what she calls "the endgame for the human race". Thanks.

"Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours" part2

2009-07-09T08:44:00.002+09:00

Transcribed by Scott Senn

"Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours" part2

Also at:
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5295017/13964512
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5295224/13964982

(00:40:50)
After World War II, Americans were told that their taxes were going to support defense against monsters about to overcome us; that's why it was under a Pentagon cover. So, for example, in the mid-'60s, when LBJ warned that there are only 150 million of us and that there are 3 billion of them, and if might makes right, they're going to "sweep over" us and "take what we have", so we have to stop them in Vietnam [("Remarks to American and Korean Servicemen at Camp Stanley", 1 Nov 1966, )]. And if that sounds familiar, it's because it is. For those who are concerned to understand the realities of the whole Cold War system of controlling the public, there's a very obvious moment to inspect carefully: that's just twenty years ago, at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and what followed later. Now the celebration of the 20th anniversary (this November) – it's already begun with ample coverage, and it's surely going to increase as the date approaches. But the very revealing policy-implications of what followed have been ignored, as in the past, and probably this coming November, except on Democracy Now ! What happened after the Berlin Wall fell? Well, the Bush I administration reacted immediately: it issued a new National Security Strategy and a budget proposal which laid out what our new course will be after the collapse of what the Kennedy called the "monolithic and ruthless conspiracy" to conquer the world, Reagan's "evil empire". It was gone. And now that it was gone, the whole framework of propaganda collapsed. So what was the response of the planners in the Bush administration? Very straightforward: in brief, everything will go on exactly as before, but with new pretexts. So we still need [the] same huge military system, but for a new reason: literally because of the "technological sophistication of Third World" powers [(National Security Strategy of the United States, March 1990)]. (Nobody laughed!) We have to maintain what they called "the Defense Industrial Base"; it's a standard euphemism for high-tech industry: the system whereby the public pays the costs and takes the risks and, you know, high-tech industry gets the profits. We also, they said, have to maintain intervention forces, directed mostly at the Middle East. And then comes this interesting phrase: ...directed at the Middle East, where the "threats to [our] interests" that required military intervention "could not be laid at the Kremlin's door". In other words: "Sorry, folks, we've been lying to you for fifty years; but now the clouds have lifted, so you can see, if you choose to." And few chose to.

Actually, the fate of NATO is very instructive and highly pertinent right now. Prior to Gorbachev, NATO's announced purposed was to deter a Russian invasion of Europe. That was often a little hard to take seriously, for example, in 1945. In May 1945, Winston Churchill ordered war plans to be drawn up for what they called Operation Unthinkable; it was aimed at (quote) "the elimination of Russia". The plans, which were declassified ten years ago, (I'll quote it) called for "a surprise attack" by "hundreds of thousands of British and American troops, [joined] by 100,000 rearmed German soldiers", while "the RAF" – the British air force – "would attack Soviet cities from bases in Northern Europe" [(Richard Aldrich, The Hidden Hand)]. And pretty soon nuclear weapons were added to the mix. All of this was declassified ten years ago.

The official stand also wasn't very easy to take about ten years later, when Khrushchev took over in Russia. And he very soon proposed a very sharp mutual reduction in offensive military weaponry. He understood very well that the much weaker Soviet economy couldn't possibly sustain an arms race with the Untied States and still hope to develop. Well, when the US dismissed the offer, as it did, he carried out the reduction unilaterally. And Kennedy did react to that: he reacted with a very sharp increase in military spending, which the Russian military later tried to match. That's tanking the economy, as Khrushchev had anticipated. Actually, that was the crucial moment in the Soviet collapse; the economy stagnated since then.

Well, whatever one thinks of the defensive pretext for NATO, it at least had some credibility. But what happens when the Soviet Union is gone and the pretext disappears? Well, it got more extreme. Gorbachev made an astonishing concession: he permitted a unified Germany to join a hostile military alliance run by the global superpower. (That is astonishing, in the light of history. Germany alone had practically destroyed Russia twice in the century.) Now there was a quid pro quo. This is Bush #1 and James Baker. It had been thought up until a couple of months ago that Bush and Baker promised not to expand NATO to the eastern European, former Soviet satellites. But there was the first careful study of the original documents – just came out by Mark Kramer, a Cold War historian [("The Myth of a No-NATO-Enlargement Pledge to Russia", )]. He believes that he's refuting charges of US duplicity; but in fact what he shows is that it's much more cynical than what had been assumed. It turns out that Bush and Baker promised Gorbachev that NATO wouldn't even fully extend to East Germany. I'll quote them: they told Gorbachev, "... no NATO forces would ever be deployed on the territory of the former [German] GDR [or East Germany]." "... NATO's jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward." They also assured Gorbachev that "...NATO would be transforming itself into a more political organization...." Well, there's no need to comment on that promise; but what follows tells a lot more about the Cold War and its aftermath. Right after that, Clinton came into office, and one of the first things he did was to begin the expansion of NATO to the east, in violation – radical violation of the commitment. The process accelerated, with Bush's general aggressive militarism. These are a severe security threat to Russia. It naturally reacted by developing more offensive military capacity. All of this is a serious threat to human survival.

Obama's National Security Advisor James Jones – he has a still more expansive conception: he calls for expanding NATO further to the east and the south, becoming in effect a US-run global intervention force, as it is today in Afghanistan. The Secretary General of NATO, Dutch officer, de Hoop Scheffer – he informed a NATO meeting that "NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed for the West", and more generally NATO has to protect sea routes used by tankers and other "crucial infrastructure" of the global energy system. All of that just opens up a new phase of Western imperial domination. Actually, the polite term for it is "bringing stability and peace". That's what's happening now.

In "AfPak" – Afghanistan-Pakistan – as the region is now called, Obama is building enormous new embassies and other facilities, on the model of the "city within a city" in Baghdad. These are like no embassies anywhere in the world. And they are signs of an intention to be there for a long time. Right now in Iraq, something interesting is happening. Obama's pressing the Iraqi government not to permit the referendum that's required by the Status of Forces Agreement. That's an agreement that was forced down the throats of the Bush administration, which had to formally renounce its primary war aims in the face of massive Iraqi resistance. Washington's current objection to the referendum was explained two days ago by New York Times correspondent Alissa Rubin [("Iraq Moves Ahead With Vote on U.S. Security Pact", 9 June 2009)]: Obama fears that the Iraqi population might reject the provision that delays US troop withdrawal to 2012; they might insist on immediate departure of US forces. [An] Iraqi analysis in London.- head of the Iraqi Foundation for Democracy and Development in London (it's quite pro-Western) – He explained: "This is an election year for Iraq; no one wants to appear that he is appeasing the Americans. Anti-Americanism is popular now in Iraq", as indeed it's been throughout – facts that are familiar to anyone who's read the Western-run polls, including Pentagon-run polls. Well, the current US-efforts to prevent the legally required referendum are extremely revealing; sometimes they're called "democracy promotion". Well, while Obama is signaling pretty clearly his intention to establish a firm and large-scale presence in the region, he's also, as you know, sharply escalating the AfPak war, following Petraeus' strategy to drive the Taliban into Pakistan, with potentially awful results for this extremely dangerous and unstable state, which is facing insurrections throughout its territory. These are the most extreme in the tribal areas, which cross the AfPak border. It's an artificial line imposed by the British, called the "Durand Line"; and the same people live on both sides of it: Pashtun tribes; and they've never accepted it; and in fact, the Afghanistan government never accepted it either, as long as it was independent. Well, that's where most of the fighting is going on. One of the leading specialists on the region – Selig Harrison – he recently wrote [("Pakistan's Ethnic Fault Line", Washington Post, 11 May 2009)] that the outcome of Washington's current policies (Obama's policies) might well be what he calls an "Islamic Pashtunistan" (Pashtun-based, separate, kind of quasi-state). The Pakistani ambassador had warned that if the Pashtun and Taliban nationalism merge, "we've had it, and we're on the verge of that." The prospects become still more ominous with the escalation of drone attacks that embitter the population with their huge civilian toll, and more recently (just a couple of days ago in fact) with the unprecedented authority that has just been granted to General Stanley McCrystal. He's taking charge. He's a kind of a wild-eyed Special Forces assassin. He's been put in charge of heading the operations. Petraeus' own counterinsurgency advisor in Iraq, General David Kilcullen – [correction:] Colonel, I think – He describes the Obama-Petraeus-McCrystal policy as a fundamental "strategic error" which may lead to "the collapse of Pakistan"; he says, it's a calamity that would "dwarf" all other current issues, given the country's size, strategic location, and nuclear stockpile [("Death From Above, Outrage Down Below", New York Times, 16 May 2009; "A Conversation With David Kilcullen", Washington Post, 22 March 2009)].

It's also not too encouraging that Pakistan and India are now rapidly expanding their nuclear arsenals. Pakistan's nuclear arsenals were developed with Reagan's crucial aid. And India's nuclear weapons programs just got a major shot in the arm with the recent US-India nuclear agreement; it's also a sharp blow to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. [The] two countries have twice come close to nuclear war over Kashmir, and they're also engaged in kind of a proxy war in Afghanistan. These developments pose a very serious threat to world peace, even to human survival. Well, [there's] a lot to say about this crisis, but no time here.

Coming back home: whether the deceit here about the monstrous enemy was sincere or not (in Johnson's case, it might well have been sincere), suppose that (say) fifty years ago Americans had been given a choice of directing their tax money to development of information technology so that their grandchildren could have iPods and the internet, or else putting the same funds into developing a livable and sustainable socio-economic order. Well, they might very well have made the latter choice; but they had no choice. That's standard. There's a striking gap between public opinion and public policy on a host of major issues, domestic and foreign. And, at least in my judgment, public opinion is often a lot more sane. It also tends to be fairly consistent over time, which is pretty astonishing, because public concerns and aspirations, if they're even mentioned, are marginalized and ridiculed. That's one very significant feature of the yawning democratic deficit, as we call it in other countries. That's the failure of formal democratic institutions to function properly, and that's no trivial matter. Arundhati Roy has a book, soon to come out, in which she asks whether the evolution of formal democracy in India and the United States (in fact, not only there) (in her words) "might turn out to be the end game of the human race" [(Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy)]. And that's not an idle question.

It should be recalled that the American republic was founded on the principle that there should be a democracy deficit. James Madison, the main framer of the Constitutional order – His view was that power should be in the hands of "the wealth of the nation", the more responsible set of men who have sympathy for property owners and their rights [(Rufus King's Notes of the Constitutional Convention of 1787; Records of the Federal Convention of 1787)]. And Madison sought to construct a system of government that would (in his words) "protect the minority of the opulent from the majority" [(Records of the Federal Convention of 1787)]. That's why the Constitutional system that he framed did not have coequal branches: the executive was supposed to be an administrator, and the legislature was supposed to be dominant, but not the House of Representatives, rather the Senate, where power was vested and protected from the public in many ways; that's where "the wealth of the nation" would be concentrated. This is not overlooked by historians. Gordon Wood, for example, summarizes the thoughts of the Founders, saying that "[t]he Constitution was intrinsically an aristocratic document designed to check the democratic tendencies of the period", delivering power to a "better sort of people" and excluding "those who are not rich, well-born, or prominent from exercising political power" [(Creation of the American Republic)]. Well, all through American history there's been a constant struggle over this constrained version of democracy, and popular struggles have won a great many rights. Nevertheless, concentrated power and privilege clings to the Madisonian conception. It changes form as circumstances change.

By World War II, there was a significant change: Business leaders and elite intellectuals recognized that the public had won enough rights so that they can't be controlled by force; so it would be necessary to do something else: namely, to turn to control of attitudes and opinions. These were the days when the huge public relations industry emerged, in the freest countries in the world: Britain and the United States, where the problem was most severe. The public relations industry was devoted to what Walter Lippmann approvingly called a "new art" in "the practice of democracy": "the manufacture of consent" [(Public Opinion)]; it's called "the engineering of consent", in the phrase of his contemporary Edward Bernays, one of the founders of the PR industry. Both Lippmann and Bernays had taken part in Woodrow Wilson's state propaganda agency; "Committee on Public Information" was its Orwellian term. It was created kind of to try to drive a pacifist population to jingoist fanaticism and hatred of all things German. And it succeeded, brilliantly in fact. And it was hoped that the same techniques could insure that what are called "the intelligent minorities" would rule and that the general public, who Lippmann called "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders", would serve their function as spectators, not participants. These are all very highly respected progressive essays on democracy by a man who was the leading public intellectual of the 20th century and was a Wilson/Roosevelt/Kennedy progressive, as Bernays was. And they capture the thinking of progressive opinion. So President Wilson – he held an elite of gentlemen with "elevated ideals" must be empowered to preserve "stability and righteousness": essentially the prospective of the Founding Fathers. In more recent years, the gentlemen are transmuted into the technocratic elite and the "action intellectuals" of Camelot, Straussian neocons, other configurations. But, throughout, one or another variant of the doctrine prevails. (The quote from Samuel Huntington that you heard is an example.)

And, on a more hopeful note, popular struggle continues to clip its wings, quite impressively in the wake of 1960s activism, which had quite a substantial effect on civilizing the society and raised the prospects for further progress to a much higher plane. It's one of the reasons why it's called the "time of troubles" and bitterly denounced: too much of a civilizing effect.

Well, what the West sees as "the crisis" – namely, the financial crisis – that'll presumably be patched up somehow or other, but leaving the institutions that created it pretty much in place. A couple of days ago, the Treasury Department, as you read, permitted early TARP repayments, which actually reduce capacity. I mean, it was touted as "giving money back to the public"; in fact, as was pointed out right away, it reduces the capacity of the banks to lend, although it does allow them to pour money into the pockets of the few who matter. And the mood on Wall Street was captured by two Bank of New York employees who "predicted that their lives – and pay – would improve even if the broader economy did not" [("10 Large Banks Allowed to Exit U.S. Aid Program", New York Times, 9 June 2009)]. That's paraphrasing Adam Smith's observation that the architects of policy protect their own interests, no matter how grievous the effect on others. And they are the architects of policy: Obama made sure to staff his economic advisors from that sector, which has been pointed out too: the former chief economist of the IMF Samuel Johnson pointed out [("The Quiet Coup", The Atlantic, May 2009)] that the Obama administration is just in the pocket of Wall Street. As he put it, "Throughout the crisis, the government has taken extreme care not to upset the interests of the financial institutions, or to question the basic outlines of the system that got us here", and " elite business interests" who "played a central role in creating the crisis...with the implicit backing of the government" – they are still there, and " they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the [set] of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive." He says, "The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them" – which is no surprise, considering who constitutes and who backs the government.

(continued)

"Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours" part1

2009-07-07T22:20:00.006+09:00

Transcribed by Scott Senn

This is a very informative and important lecture.

Scott Senn transcribed the entire talk. I appreciate his hard work.

"Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours"

12 June 2009
Harlem, NY

Also at:
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5295017/13964512
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/5295224/13964982

(16:04) Thanks. It was really exciting to watch Amy [Goodman] a couple of days ago when she was interviewing Judy [Brown Chomsky] . It's quite an amazing achievement. I won't go into the whole story, but she took a lot of courage and effort to win a completely unprecedented case. I don't think there's ever been a case of a settlement like that, where the evidence – which she had in fact gathered in Nigeria – was so strong that the corporation [Shell Dutch Oil] not only settled but even allowed the settlement to be public, indicating their concern that they might be exposed in trial.

Well, let me say a couple of words about the title ["Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours"] which as always is shorthand. There's too much nuance and variety to make any sharp distinction between "us" and "them". And of course neither I nor anyone else can presume to speak for us. But I'll pretend it's possible. There's also a problem about the word "crisis". Which one do we have in mind? There are numerous very severe crises. Many of them will be under discussion here in a couple of weeks at the United Nations in their Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis. And these crises are interwoven in very complex ways which preclude any sharp separation. But again I'll pretend otherwise for simplicity.

Well, one way to enter this morass was helpfully provided by a current issue of the New York Review, dated yesterday. The front cover headline reads "How to Deal with the Crisis" [("The Crisis and How to Deal with It", 11 June 2009)]. It features a symposium of specialists. And it's worth reading, but with attention to the definite article: "THE crisis". For the West, the phrase "THE crisis" has a clear enough meaning: it's the financial crisis that hit the rich countries, and therefore is of "supreme importance". But in fact, even for the rich and privileged, that's by no means the only crisis or even the most severe of those they face. And others see the world quite differently: for example, the newspaper New Nation in Bangladesh. There, we read: "It's very telling that trillions have already been spent to patch up leading world financial institutions, while out of the comparatively small sum of $12 billion pledged in Rome earlier this year, to offset the food crisis, only $1 billion has been delivered. The hope that at least extreme poverty can be eradicated by the end of 2015, as stipulated in the UN's Millennium Development Goals, seems as unrealistic as ever, not due to lack of resources but to a lack of true concern for the world's poor." They're talking about approximately a billion people facing starvation, severe malnutrition, even thirty/forty million of them in the richest country in the world. That's a real crisis, and it's getting much worse. In this morning's Financial Times, the British business press, it's reported that the World Food Program just announced that they're cutting food aid and rations and also closing operations. The reason is that the donor countries have been cutting back the funding because of the fiscal crunch, and they're slashing contributions. So [there's] a very close connection between the horrendous food crisis and poverty crisis and the significant – but less significant – fiscal crisis. They're ending up closing down operations in Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, many others. They have a twenty to twenty-five percent cut in budget, while food prices are rising and the financial crisis – the general economic crisis – is bringing unemployment and cutting back remittances. That's a major crisis.

We might, incidentally, remember that when the British landed in what's now Bangladesh, they were stunned by its wealth and splendor. And it didn't take long for it to be on its way to become the very symbol of misery, not by an act of God. Well, the fate of Bangladesh should remind us that the terrible food crisis is not just a result of Western lack of concern; in large part, it results from very definite and clear concerns of the global managers: namely, for their own welfare. It's always well to keep in mind an astute observation by Adam Smith about policy formation in England. He recognized [(Wealth of Nations, Book 4, chap 8)] that what he called "the principle architects" of policy – in his day, the "merchants and manufacturers" – make sure that their own interests are "most peculiarly attended to", however grievous the impact on others, including the people of England but far more so those who were subjected to what he called "the savage injustice of the Europeans", particularly in conquered India (his own prime concern). We can easily think of analogues today. His observation in fact is one of the few solid and enduring principles of international and domestic affairs; [it is] well to keep in mind. And the food crisis is a case in point.

It erupted first and most dramatically in Haiti in early 2008. Like Bangladesh, Haiti is a symbol of utter misery. And, like Bangladesh, when the European explorers arrived, they were stunned because it was so remarkably rich in resources. Later it became the source of much of France's wealth. I'm not going to run through the sorted history; it's worth knowing. But the current food crisis traces back directly to Woodrow Wilson's invasion of Haiti, which was murderous and brutal and destructive. Among Wilson's many crimes was to dissolve the Haitian parliament at gunpoint, because it refused to pass what was called "progressive" legislation, which would allow US businesses to take over Haitian lands. Wilson's marines then ran a "free election" in which the legislation was passed by 99.9% of the vote; now that's of the five percent of the population permitted to vote. All of this comes down to us as what's called "Wilsonian idealism". Later, USAID instituted programs in Haiti under the slogan of turning Haiti into "the Taiwan of the Caribbean", by adhering to the sacred principle of "comparative advantage": that is, they should import from the United States, while working people – mostly women – slaved under miserable conditions in US-owned assembly plants. Haiti's first free election in 1990 threatened these economically "rational" programs. The poor majority made the mistake of entering the political arena and electing their own candidate: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a populist priest. And Washington instantly adopted standard operating procedures, moving at once to undermine the regime. A couple months later came the military coup, instituting a horrible reign of terror, which was backed by Bush I and even more so by Clinton. By 1994, Clinton decided that the population was sufficiently intimidated, and he sent US forces to restore the elected president (that's now called a "humanitarian intervention"), but on very strict conditions: namely, that the president accept a very harsh neo-liberal regime – in particular, no protection for the economy. Haitian rice farmers are quite efficient, but they can't compete with US agribusiness that relies on a huge government subsidy, thanks to Ronald Reagan's "free market" enthusiasms. Well, there's nothing at all surprising about what followed next. In 1995, USAID wrote a report pointing out (I'm quoting it) that the "export-driven trade and investment policy" that Washington mandated will "relentlessly squeeze the domestic rice farmer." In fact, the neo-liberal policies rammed down Haiti's throat destroyed, dismantled what was left of economic sovereignty, drove the country into chaos. That was accelerated by Bush #2's banning of international aid on totally cynical grounds. In February 2004, the two traditional torturers of Haiti, France and the United States, combined to back a military coup and send President Aristide off to Africa. The US denies him permission to return to the entire region. Haiti had by then lost the capacity to feed itself, making it highly vulnerable to food-price fluctuation. That was the immediate cause of the 2008 food crisis which led to riots and enormous protests, but not getting food.

The story is familiar, in fact quite similar in much of the world. So, going back to the Bangladesh newspaper, it's true enough that the food crisis results from Western lack of concern (a pittance, by our standards, would overcome its worst immediate effects); but more fundamentally, it results from the dedication to Adam Smith's principles of business-run state policy. These are all matters that we too easily evade; they happen daily, along with the fact that bailing out banks is not uppermost in the minds of the billion people now facing starvation, not forgetting the tens of millions enduring hunger in the richest country in the world.

Well, also sidelined is an easy way to make a significant dent in the financial and the food crises. It's suggested by the publication a couple of days ago of the authoritative annual report on military spending by SIPRI, the Swedish Peace Research Institute . The scale of military spending is phenomenal, regularly increasing, this last year as well. The US is responsible for almost as much as the rest of the world combined, seven times as much as its nearest rival China. No need to waste time commenting.

This distribution of concerns reflects another crisis here, kind of a cultural crisis: that is, the tendency to focus on short-term parochial gains. That's a core element of our socio-economic institutions and the ideological support system on which they rest. One example, now prominent, is the array of perverse incentives that are devised for corporate managers to enrich themselves: for example, what's called the "too big to fail" insurance policies that are provided by the unwitting public, and deeper ones that are just inherent in market inefficiencies. One such inefficiency, now recognized to be one of the roots of the financial crisis, is the under-pricing of systemic risk: the risk that affects the whole system. And that's general. Like, if you and I make a transaction – say, you sell me a car, we may make a good deal for ourselves, but we don't price into that transaction the cost to others. And there's a cost: pollution, congestion, raising the price of gas, all sorts of other things, killing people in Nigeria because we're getting the gas from them. That doesn't count; we don't count that in. That's an inherent market inefficiency, one of the reason why markets can't work. And when you turn to the financial institutions, it can get quite serious. So it means that if (say) Goldman Sachs – if they're managed properly – if they make a risky loan, they calculate the potential cost to themselves if the loan goes bad; but they simply don't calculate the impact on the whole financial system. And we now see how severe that can be, not that it's anything new. In fact, this inherent deficiency of markets – this inefficiency of markets is perfectly well known. Ten years ago, at the height of the euphoria about "efficient markets", two prominent economists John Eatwell and Lance Taylor – they wrote an important book called Global Finance at Risk in which they spelled out the consequences of these market inefficiencies (which we now see), and they outlined the means to deal with them. These proposals were exactly contrary to the deregulatory rage that was then being carried forward by the Clinton administration under the leadership of those who Obama has now called upon to put band-aids on the disaster that they helped create.

Well, in substantial measure, the food crisis plaguing much of the South and the financial crisis of the North have common roots: namely, the shift towards neo-liberalism since the 1970s. That brought to an end the post Second World War Bretton Woods system that was instituted by the United States and Britain right after World War II. It had two architects: John Maynard Keynes of Britain and Harry Dexter White in the United States. And they anticipated that its core principles – which included capital controls and regulated currencies – They anticipated that these principles would lead to relatively balanced economic growth and would also free governments to institute the social-democratic programs – welfare-state programs – that had enormous public support around the world. And to a large extent, they were vindicated on both counts. In fact, many economists call the years that followed – until the 1970s – the "golden age" of capitalism. That golden age led not only to unprecedented and relatively egalitarian growth, but also the introduction of welfare-state measures. Keynes and White were perfectly well aware that free capital movement and speculation inhibit these options. Professional economics literature points out – what should be obvious – that the free flow of capital creates what they sometimes call a "virtual Senate" of lenders and investors who carry out a "moment-by-moment referendum" on government policies, and if they find that they're "irrational" – meaning they help people instead of profits – then they vote against them, by capital flight, by tax on the country, and so on. So the "democratic" governments have a "dual constituency": their own population and the virtual Senate, who typically prevail. And for the poor, that means regular disaster. In fact, one of the reasons for the radical difference between Latin America and East Asian in the last half century is that Latin America didn't control capital flight. In fact, in general, the rich in Latin America don't have responsibilities. Capital flight approximated the crushing debt. In contrast, during South Korea's remarkable growth period, capital flight was not only banned, but could bring the death penalty, one of many factors that led to the surprising divergence. Latin America has much richer resources; you'd expect it to be far more advanced than East Asian. But it had the disadvantage of being under imperialist wings.

From the 1970s, the "golden age" faded. When neo-liberal rules were observed – insofar as they've been observed, economic performance deteriorated and social-democratic programs have been substantially weakened. We see that right here. The United States partially accepted these rules. And for the past 30 years real wages for the majority of the population have stagnated; up till then, they essentially tracked growth. Work hours have increased – now well beyond Europe. Benefits, which have always lagged, have declined. Social indicators – kind of general measure of the health of a society – they also tracked growth, until the mid-1970s when they began to decline, reaching the 1960-level by the end of the millennium. Well, there has been economic growth; but it's finding its way into very few pockets, increasingly into the financial industries, which have grown enormously, while productive industry has significantly declined. And we're seeing it right now. And with the decline of productive industry of course that means decline in living standards – in fact, even opportunities to survive – for much of the work force. The economy has also been punctuated by bubbles, or financial crises, and public bailouts. So the huge bailout of Citigroup right now is nothing new; something quite similar happened in the early '80s to its predecessor Citibank, thanks to the US taxpayer.

These results were described, all through this period, and explained by a few really outstanding international economists (David Felix is one). But the mythology about "efficient markets" and "rational choice" prevailed. And that's not at all surprising. These myths were highly beneficial to very narrow sectors of privilege and power – what Adam Smith called "the principle architects" of policy. That's another very severe institutional and cultural crisis which persists.

Actually, the phrase "golden age of capitalism" is a little misleading. It might more accurately be called "state capitalism". It's worth bearing in mind that the dynamic state sector was and remains a primary factor in development and innovation, through a variety of measures: research and development, procurement – government procurement, public subsidy, regular bailouts, and other means. It's particularly true in the United States. It was done here under a Pentagon cover, as long as the cutting edge of high-tech industry –advanced economy – was electronics-based. For that, the Pentagon served as a good cover. (In recent years, if you look at government spending, it's shifting more towards the health-oriented institutions of the government. That's a reflection of the fact that the cutting edge of the economy is becoming more biology-based.) That includes computers, the internet, satellites, most of the rest of the IT revolution that finally exploded in the late '90s in a tech-bubble, but also much else: civilian aircraft, advanced machine tools, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and a lot more. The crucial role of the state in economic development should be kept in mind, when we read these days dire warnings about government intervention in the financial system, after private management has once again driven it to ruins, this time an unusually severe crisis and one that harms the rich not just the poor, so it merits special concern. It's also worth recalling that large-scale state intervention in the economy is nothing new. On the contrary, it's always been a central factor in economic development. (It's a matter I wish I had time – There's no time to review it here, but the history, which I'll skip, is quite instructive.) These state-guided modes of economic development require considerable deceit in a society where the public can't be controlled by force. So people can't be told that the advanced economy relies heavily on the principle that the population pays the costs and takes the risks and that the profit is eventually privatized. And the eventual can be a long time, sometimes decades, as in the case of computers and the internet, for example.

(continued)

Q&A Session part5&6

2009-06-28T23:33:00.002+09:00

Transcribed by Scott Senn

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories"
7 April 2009 Madison, WI

Part 5

Chomsky (continued): Now the Russians understand that as well as the Americans. And in fact if they don't understand it, they can read it in American strategic analysis journals, where they can read the detailed explanation of why the "missile defense" system is a potential threat to the Soviet deterrent. Okay, if there's a threat to the Soviet deterrent, what they're going to do is build up offensive military capacity to get around it, which is exactly what they're doing of course. That increases the threat of nuclear war – of maybe, by accident, if you have systems on high alert – . They've come really close to accidents very frequently – maybe stopped by human intervention in the last two minutes or something. So we're consciously increasing the threat of nuclear war. And there are many other cases. I mean, let's take a major case: We just had the NATO summit, okay? Think about NATO for a minute. If somebody wanted some other topics to work on, take NATO. Why does NATO exist? Okay, now, during the Cold War there was a kind of rationale. I mean, you could believe or not; but it had a rationale that wasn't total imbecility: It was supposed to be there to protect ourselves from a Russian attack. Was there a possibility of a Russian attack, you know? Probably not. But at least there's some kind of a credible rationale. Well, you know, after the Soviet Union disappeared, what's the rationale? I mean, there isn't any! And take a look at what happened. I mean, as the Soviet Union collapsed, Gorbachev, the Russian premier, made an astonishing concession to the United States, he allowed – he agreed to allow a unified Germany to be of course militarized and also to join a hostile military alliance. Now that's astonishing. Just look at the history of the past century: I mean, Germany alone practically destroyed Russia several times in the century. Now he's saying a militarized Germany – a main power in Europe – can join a hostile military alliance led by the United States. Amazing concession! But he insisted on a quid pro quo and got it. He insisted that the Bush administration (this is Bush I) agree that – the words they used – that NATO would not expand "one inch" to the east. Okay, that gives Russia a kind of a buffer zone. And that was agreed upon; it was a pledge by the United States. Gorbachev also proposed a nuclear weapons free zone from the Arctic down to the Mediterranean, which would, again, reduce the threat of accidental conflict or some other kind of conflict. The US never responded to that, as far as I know; and it never happened. All right, then Clinton came in. One of Clinton's first acts was to violate that pledge and expand NATO to the east. You know, the Clinton administration – people like Strobe Talbott who was in charge of eastern Europe – say, well, we had to do that to get the eastern European states to join the European Union. But that's just not true. There's no connection between joining the European Union and being a member of NATO. I mean, there's a lot of states – Austria, Finland, Sweden – are part of the European Union but they're not part of NATO. So, okay, you want the eastern European states in the European Union? It makes some sense; it's got nothing to do with NATO. Expanding NATO to the east is just a seriously aggressive act, which significantly threatens Russia, so of course they reacted, by expanding offensive military capacity. Then Bush came along with his aggressive militarism, and it expanded even further. And now it's expanded still further by Obama, by insisting on putting systems in eastern Europe which can only be understood – you know, it's not even a worse case analysis [but] the only rational interpretation of them – is as a threat to the Soviet deterrent which is going to increase tensions. Well, you know, that's not the only example. But there's case after case where actions are being taken which increase the threat of nuclear war. (And that's terminal; you know, nothing much is going to survive a nuclear war.) Many other examples. That's one case, and the other case is environmental destruction, which is creeping along; you know, it's not like imminent and total the way a nuclear war is; but it's going to be severe. Nobody knows the exact details; but everybody knows that the longer you wait, the worse it's going to be. And it could be very severe. Again, [there's] a lot of uncertainties; but all the uncertainties look bad, and most of them look pretty bad. So that's two good reasons why the species is not likely to survive.

Part 6

Chomsky (continued): As for the Samson option, that's actually real. I mean, I said before that if the United States essentially tells Israel, "you've got to withdraw", they'll almost certainly do it. But they do have an option. It was called – It goes back to the 1950s. [If] you look at the Israeli records back to the 1950s, when they were a weak state, not a powerful state, they did say – the top leadership, you know, the Defense Ministry and others (this is the Labor government) – that if anybody crosses us, "we will go crazy". That was the phrase that was used: "we'll be a crazy state; we'll do something so wild that they'll be forced to do what we want." Well, they couldn't really do that back in the 1950s. But once they have nuclear weapons options, they can. And in fact if you read US military journals, you find analyses saying that the Israeli nuclear weapons are a threat to us. You know – not that they're going to attack us, but they'll do something that will cause such, you know, blow-up in the world that we'll get in real trouble. Okay, that's the "Samson option". It goes back to the biblical story of Samson who, you remember, killed a lot of Philistines, and then they caught him and blinded him. And he was in a Philistine temple. He'd gotten his strength back; his hair grew. (You've all learned this stuff.) And he stood between two pillars, and he pulled down the pillars, and the ceiling fell, and he killed more Philistines in his death than in his lifetime. He was basically the first suicide-bomber, who killed lots of Philistines. He's a hero, you know. But that's the Samson option: "we'll bring the temple down, even if we kill ourselves." And it's real, you know. And it's a danger. The more we strengthen Israel's military capacity, the greater the threat to us. I mean, the former head of the Strategic Command, General Lee Butler, after he left it – . (That's, you know, the part of the military that controls strategic weapons, including nuclear weapons.) He was very straight about it; he said, the greatest threat in the region is that Israel has this extraordinary destructive capacity, which first of all impels others to try to match it, but also is an enormous danger in itself. [http://www.basicint.org/pubs/Research/1998nuclearfutures(2).pdf] So we may be shooting ourselves in the head by letting a crazy state develop. And the craziness of the state is not because the people are insane. Once you pick a policy of choosing expansion over security, that's what you end up getting stuck with.

Questioner #6: I was wondering if you could address the Palestinian refugee problem and the question of the right of return in terms of a two-state solution.

Chomsky: Well, there are some problems that are solvable, and there are others that unfortunately – much as we regret it – aren't solvable. It'd be nice if it were otherwise. A two-state settlement can be achieved. But the rights of Palestinian refugees are not going to be achieved except symbolically. It's a horrible story; but if you think about it, it's basically a fact. The refugees in Lebanon or in Jordan – some of them – under a political settlement – some of them could return. Very few are going to return to their homes. I mean, that's about as likely as, you know, Native Americans coming and resettling in Madison. I mean, you could give an argument for it that it would be just. But it's not going to happen in the real world. And the Palestinian refugees – very few are going to return to their homes which have been destroyed, taken over, and so on. I mean, some proportion of them might go back to a Palestinian state, which is of course not their home and is very poor and so on – at best. But most of them are just going to have to be absorbed somewhere. And the right solution, I think, would be for the United States to bring them to the United States. I mean, we have a large degree of responsibility for their plight; we have the wealth and resources to take care of refugees. So, yeah, we ought to do it. I mean, just as in the late – .

Questioner #7: You think Israel and the US will go after Iran?

Chomsky [hoarsely]: I think I better end at this point, because I can't talk.

Q&A Session part3&4

2009-06-25T23:57:00.003+09:00

Transcribed by Scott Senn

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories"

7 April 2009 Madison, WI

Part 3

Questioner #3: Hi. In the early 1980's when Zbigniew Brzezinski left his post as National Security Advisor for Jimmy Carter, he went back to Columbia University and taught as one of his first students Barack Obama – taught Sovietology – one of eight students chosen for that. In 1981 Barack Obama visited Pakistan and was, by the last year's president, after Musharraf resigned in 2008, the man who just became president [[?…inaudible…]] to (quote) "watch over" Barack Obama. This was at a time when State Department was discouraging all Americans from going to Pakistan; in fact, you had to have government approval to do so. And then in 1983, he left the university and worked for Business International, a CIA front company. And this is in Bill Blum's "Anti-Empire" project; this is where this information comes from, and from the New York Times in terms of the specific corporation that he worked for. And then fast forward to, you know, the presidential campaign: all of a sudden for the first time in the post-war – . Well, during the entire Cold War every president came from a high-military-spending state – per capita income, above average military spending. Every president elected during the Cold War. And then Clinton has his CIA connections. And Barack Obama are the only two exceptions. We had Illinois and New York – two very low military-spending per capita states – vying for the presidency. What was the difference? Barack Obama carried fourteen of the fifteen highest per capita military spending states in the primaries and became the next president. So is this change we can believe in, or is this just more of the military-industrial complex we've had all along?

Chomsky: Well, I don't put much faith in any of that, frankly. I'm not sure of the data. But let's say they're right. I really don't think it tells us much. If you want to know something about Obama's likely policies, don't look at military spending; take a look at his financing. That's a very good predicter of policies; in fact, there's good studies of this. His financing is primarily from the financial institutions, which preferred him to McCain quite a lot – by a large margin. And that's the kind of policies that he's implementing domestically – those that are favored by the financial institutions that were his largest funders. As far as military spending is concerned, you know, it stays pretty constant; you know, it goes up and down a little; but it stays pretty constant through presidencies. In Obama's case, it's being modified slightly: there's less spending for high-tech military equipment (like the F-22 Fighter) and more for intervention forces. Okay, that reflects the new perceived tasks of the Pentagon. They're not expecting to fight a war against Russia; they're expecting to invade other countries. But I think that's almost independent of where the president comes from. Incidentally, the so-called military-industrial complex – That's a little misleading – the phrase – you know, Eisenhower's phrase. I mean, the "military-industrial complex" in fact is the core of American high-tech industry. Thing like (say) computers and the internet and so on come out of the military-industrial complex. In fact, a large part of Pentagon funding is just devoted to creating the next phrase of the electronics-based economy. So, sure, every president is in favor of that: in favor of having the public pay the costs and take the risks of funding future profits.

Questioner #4: Dr. Chomsky, you dispelled several myths indoctrinated into the American culture tonight about the Middle East. A couple weeks ago, you shared at M.I.T. some myths about the economy. Because these are so hard to detect until you've been exposed to the other side, could you briefly list some more of these myths indoctrinated into our culture, so that we may broader our horizons?

Chomsky: Pick the topic, and you'll find myths. And, what's worse, the same is true of every country I know of. So which topic?

Questioner #4: Whatever you feel is important.

Chomsky: Let's take the main domestic concern of Americans. For decades, the major domestic concern of Americans – either top or very close to the top – hsas been the health system. Okay. And it's obvious why: it's a total catastrophe. It has about twice the per capita costs of other industrial countries and has about the worst outcomes. And, you know, like fifty million people don't have insurance or many more have much too limited insurance. Now those are things that really hurt people. You know, they're not abstract. Drug prices are like two or three times as high as in comparable countries. That hurts people, and they care about it. And furthermore people have consistent ideas, consistent beliefs over a long period. And on this issue, they have very consistent beliefs. For decades, a large part of the population has been in favor of some kind of national health care system. It's called here "single-payer" or, you know, it's called "Canadian style". The reason it's called "Canadian style" is because people know that Canada exists. And it's not called, you know, "Australian style" (which is a better system) because who knows what they have in Australia? But there's been overwhelming support for it. And it would almost certainly be much cheaper than the system we have now. In fact, if you take the socialized part of the system – Medicare – its administrative costs are a fraction of the privatized system. I mean, there's constant talk about, you know, the "problems" that Medicare is facing down the road: "we got to do something to stop it." Yeah, it's true, but the problems are because it has to work through the privatized system, which makes it highly inefficient, costly, bureaucratized, a lot of intervention, and so on.

Part 4

Chomsky (continued): Well, the public has wanted something that makes sense. But it's not on the political agenda. Very few people know that that's what everybody wants and know the reasons for it, because it's not discussed. Okay, that's a pretty impressive achievement: to have suppressed for decades – . Like, everything I said you could find the data in papers, but you've got to research it. But here's a situation where there's a major domestic concern; there's a lot of public support. If it was even discussed publicly, the support would grow much higher. You know, when things are not discussed and debated, people may have an opinion, but their feeling is: "Well, I must be crazy!"; you know, "Nobody else believes this." If it was part of an ongoing, lively debate and discussion (as would happen in a functioning democratic society), yeah, then people would see the reasons for it, and it would reinforce, and you'd have public pressure. Well, up until 2004, these ideas were never on the political agenda. So [if] you go back to the 2004 election (Kerry/Bush election), take a look at the debates and the coverage. The last debate, right before the election, was on domestic issues. [If] you go back and look at the New York Times or the Washington Post the next day, they point out correctly that Kerry never suggested any government involvement in the health care system because it's "politically impossible" and "lacks political support". Okay, the only support it had was the large majority of the population, but it "lacked political support" and was "politically impossible", which means the insurance companies didn't like it, the financial institutions didn't like it, pharmaceutical corporations didn't like it, and so on. In fact, shortly after that, Congress passed legislation which made it illegal for the government to use its purchasing power to negotiate drug prices. I think the United States must be the only country in the industrial world where anything like that is true. So, like, the Pentagon can negotiate prices, you know, to get paper clips, let's say. But Medicare can't negotiate to get lower drug prices. Well, you know, [the] Medicare program created which is a gift to the insurance companies – incidentally, the Democrats voted for it. This year, 2008, something changed: For the first time, the Democrats began putting forward programs which are towards what the population has wanted for decades. (They don't really get there; but at least they're in that direction.) First, Edwards; then, Obama and Clinton. Well, what happened between 2004 and 2008? Public opinion didn't change; it's been pretty much the same for decades. What changed is that the manufacturing industry starting coming out in favor of a national health care system, because they are being smashed by the cost of the privatized system in the United States. Like, General Motors says it cost them over $1,000 more to produce a car in Detroit than across the Canadian border, because they have a rational health care system – more rational – not perfect, but better. Well, you know, when a sector of concentrated capital becomes interested in something, it starts to become "politically possible" and have "political support". You know, these are things that people ought to be discussing and think about. What does that tell you about functioning democracy, if something can become sort of "politically possible" (even if [it's] not what the public wants), but only if a major sector of concentrated capital is in favor of it? I mean, these ought to be topics that are, you know, the main issues for people who want to create a functioning democratic society. And that's the major domestic concern. Now if you take a look at Obama's program today, it's being criticized because it's going to be expensive and we can't afford it. Well, yeah, the way he's planning, it's going to be expensive, because it's maintaining the privatized system. And in fact [the] privatized health care system is complaining bitterly right now, because if there's an option of the coverage system, as is written into the program, they won't be able to compete on a level playing field. That's a way of saying, "We're so inefficient and costly that we can't compete with a national health care system; so it's unfair." And Obama's proposals – such as they are – are now being tinkered with to help the costly and inefficient privatized system compete on a level playing field. Well, why should the population allow any of this to happen? Okay, there's a topic – a very different one – on which popular organizing can take place and should have been for decades, and in fact would have been, if democracy was functioning. If democracy means that, you know, wealthy elites run the country, then of course democracy doesn't function. And this takes us to a broader question: The general population is pretty much aware of this. If you take a look at polls, for a long period, something like 80% of the population says that the government is "run by a few big interests looking out for themselves", not by "the people". That's pretty serious. You know, is it impossible to organize people who think we live in a tyranny, that feel so hopeless they can't do anything about it? Well, it shouldn't be that hard. You know, again, much greater achievements have been made. Okay, those are other issues. And you can continue on and on. Everywhere you look, there's delusion, deceit, control of attitudes and opinions – very systematic. A lot of the business world in fact is devoted to those things, as well as media and so on. They all have to be countered by popular movements. And when they have been in the past, you've got steps towards a more decent society. There's no shortage of such tasks. Take a look almost anywhere, and you'll find them.

Questioner #5: You said before that you think there's a possibility that the human species won't survive the 21st century. I was wondering if you could explain why you think that's true, also if you could discuss Israel's Samson Plan.

Chomsky: I got everything but the last word. ....Oh, the "Samson complex". Well, actually that worries me. There's two good reasons why the species may not survive very long. (So, again, you got some Martian looking at what's gone on here: they wouldn't put high odds on the survival of the species.) One of those is nuclear weapons. I mean, there could be a nuclear war almost any time. I mean, in fact it's kind of like a miracle that we survived since Nagasaki without a nuclear war. We've come awfully close many times – I won't run through the record – but much too many for any rational person to expect. And it continues. So take (say) Obama the other day: Obama made a nice speech about reducing nuclear weapons. Okay, that's good. In the same speech, he said we're going to go ahead with the so-called missile defense programs in Czechoslovakia and Poland. All right, that increases the threat of nuclear war, for obvious reasons. Everyone on all sides is aware that so-called missile defense is a first-strike weapon. It's the only thing it could conceivable do if it were ever [[?...inaudible...]] is to stop a deterrent strike; [it could] never stop a first strike. So it could conceivably stop a deterrent if it ever worked, which it doesn't.

(to part 5&6)

Q&A Session part1&2

2009-06-24T00:45:00.004+09:00

Transcribed by Scott Senn

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories" Q&A

7 April 2009 Madison, WI

Part 1

(starting at 04:28)

Questioner 1: Thank you so much for your analysis. I think it is exactly what I saw when I was in the West Bank in 2006. And yet I find what you say rather discouraging. So what gives you hope that we actually will be able to turn this around? And what do you think we need to do?

Chomsky: Well, it's really very easy. It's one of the easier things to do. The reason is that the population of the United States is already on our side. I mean, a large majority of the population supports the international consensus. There's high-level support for it, like in the bipartisan commission that I mentioned. All that's necessary is to organize the already-existing support into an activist movement – and there have been plenty of them in the past and they have succeeded – which will cause a change in the rejectionist commitment of the Obama administration, which has no fundamental, you know, interest in sustaining the illegal criminal occupation and can just withdraw support for it, like stop funding the daily criminal activities in the West Bank and in Gaza. In Gaza it's pretty serious; I didn't go into a lot of it. But the siege – . I mean, you know about the destruction in Gaza; but there's a lot more going on which never gets reported. So, for example, in the year 2000, British Gas – a British petroleum company – discovered an apparently pretty substantial natural gas field off in the territorial waters of Gaza. Well, of course Israel wants to get its hands on it. And what's been happening since then, according to local activists (this includes the people who are involved in the Free Gaza Committee, the ones sending ships in to try to break the blockade), Israel has been driving fisherman out of the Gazan territorial waters, closer and closer to shore. Now there's no official statement to that effect, and they don't warn them; they just start shooting at them with the gunboats. And then they get closer and closer to shore. Now you can't fish near the shore in Gaza because the destruction of the power and sewage systems have made the pollution so intense that you just can't fish anywhere near shore. So it's wiping out the Gazan fishing industry, and also laying Israel's claim to take over Gazan energy resources which apparently could be pretty substantial – you know, could play a significant role in developing the country. Israel right now – if you read the petroleum journals (you know, the industry journals) – is sending delegations to make a deal with British Gas to have the gas that's discovered off the waters sent to Israel. Well, you know, those are things we don't have to tolerate, any more than we have to tolerate anything else that's going on. And I don't think it's a hard problem to deal with. I mean, there are much harder problems: say, global warming, or, you know, ending the US occupation of Afghanistan and the bombing of Pakistan. Those are really harder problems because there you're running into fundamental state interests.

Part 2

Chomsky (continued): Here, what's necessary is to carry out enough of an educational program so that people are not deluded by the constant flood of lies and distortion. I mean, when people hear every day unremitting claims that "of course Israel had a right to invade Gaza in self-defense", it's not very hard to explain to people that there's absolutely no basis for that. You know, it takes like two minutes. And if enough people are convinced, they can also be organized to do something about it. So among many tasks that have been carried out over the years, this doesn't really seem to be like a very hard one. It requires organization, and activism, and educational efforts.

Questioner #2: Some of what tonight you say reminds me of what happened to the people and presumably the culture of Diego Garcia. But the question I have for you is: There are progressive Palestinians and progressive Israelis who are now pushing for a one-state solution, which would clearly, it seems to me, put the government of Israel in the light of an apartheid regime, because it will not be able to maintain, you know, what it's trying to do without doing something closer to what happened in South Africa under apartheid. Is that a usable strategy – one-state solution – for activists?

Chomsky: Well, first of all, a one-state solution is sort of meaningless. I mean, what would make sense to look forward to is a binational state. I mean, you got two separate communities with different cultures, different languages. It could be a multi-national state. And that's a reasonable objective; I mean, I've believed in it all my life. But you have to make a distinction between proposing something and advocating it. Like, we can propose that everybody ought to live in peace; you know, beat your swords into plowshares; let's all love each other. Nice proposal. But it isn't advocacy. It becomes advocacy when you spell out a path from here to there. Now there is a way to advocate a binational state – in fact, one and only one way, as far as I'm aware of. And that's to begin with a two-state settlement. It has to be approached in stages. Now there was a time when it could have been implemented directly. That was – . First of all, before 1948, it could have been. But since 1948, it could have been implemented in the period from about 1967 up to '75. And in fact, something like it was even advocated by Israeli military intelligence, but the government turned it down. During that point, it could be literally advocated; Israel was in a position to implement it. And there was discussion of it at the time; I wrote about it a lot in fact. But it was absolute anathema – you know, bitterly condemned. And the reason was: it was feasible. Now it's tolerated, in fact encouraged. So you can read proposals about it in the New York Times and, you know, the New York Review of Books. Why is it tolerated now, but anathema then? Because now it's completely unfeasible. So therefore it serves only to undermine what might be the first stage towards achieving it. So therefore it's popular. You know, I'm not suggesting that those who propose it are trying to undermine a settlement. Of course they're not trying to; but they're doing it. And that's why what they're doing is tolerated. You should think that through: why was it anathema when it was feasible, but tolerated now that it's totally unfeasible? It has no support anywhere. It's not at all like South Africa. If you look back at – . The South African illustration is actually a good model; but you have to pay attention to what happened. First of all, Israel under the current US-Israeli policies – you know, "convergence plus" – Israel's not going to become an apartheid state. It's going to be demographically, ethnically pure. It's going to include Jews and kick out Palestinians, including those who are in Israel. So the apartheid issue will never arise. Furthermore, in the case of South Africa, it did make sense to, you know, have boycotts and divestment and so on to end apartheid, first of all, because South Africa could not get rid of its black population. It's not like Israel; it delighted to get rid of the Palestinian population. South Africa couldn't; it's their entire workforce; you know, it's eighty/eighty-five percent of the population. In fact, that's why South Africa developed the Bantustans: they wanted them to viable, because they needed them. And therefore they became an apartheid state. But even in that case, the protests against apartheid took decades before they developed. I mean, the major programs with, you know, boycott, divestment, and so on were actually in the 1980's. That was after decades of educational effort. It was at a time when there was nobody speaking in favor of apartheid; I mean, literally, it was gone. Congress was passing anti-apartheid legislation. The US corporations were opposed to it; they wanted to end it because it was bad for business. And at that point, you could have boycott/divestment programs, which were in fact effective and important in kind of intensifying and dramatizing these efforts. And they had an effect. The situation in this case is totally different. I mean, the South African model is just irrelevant. I mean, you can talk about a one-state settlement. But it's on a par with calling for everyone to live in peace. That would be nice too, you know. But what's the path to get there? Well, there is a path. It would start with a two-state settlement, which practically the whole world, including the US population, favors. That would cut back the level of violence. It would set up the circumstances in which possibly – and in fact, I think, likely – relations between the two states would grow – commercial relations, cultural relations, commerce, you know, cross-border, and so on. And maybe it would, as circumstances permit, lead to proposals for closer integration, which would make a lot of sense. But if there's another form of advocacy of a binational state, I haven't heard of it. That's the only form I've ever heard of. And I think the appeal which many good activists are entering into for a one-state settlement is simply a diversionary force which is undermining the possibilities for peace, and even undermining the possibilities for an eventual integration into a single state.

(to part 3&4)

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories"part8&9

2009-06-15T20:34:00.005+09:00

Transcribed by Scott Senn

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories"part8

Part 8

You know, suppose you're sitting on Mars, and you're watching this. The US is telling Iran to give up arms and terror?! I mean, does Iran have 800 military bases around the world? You know? Does Iran produce half of the world's armaments? I mean, is Iran the country that blocks Security Council Resolutions to regulate arms trade? Is Iran the country that has to abandon aggression? The US in fact has invaded and occupies two countries right next door to Iran. Does Iran occupy Canada and Mexico? When was the last time Iran committed aggression? You know? But this passes without comment. It tells us a lot about ourselves – ourselves, you know, people like us. We sit there and watch this and don't collapse in ridicule. In fact, it's applauded: "Obama is so much more forth-coming than Bush! Isn't that wonderful!" Well, that's the kind of thing that happens constantly.

What are the prospects actually for the Palestinians at this point? There's basically two. One is that the United States will join the world; it'll accept the international consensus. If it agrees to a two-state settlement, stops supporting Israel's violation of international law in the Occupied Territories, Israel will go along. They basically have no choice. Once they decided to abandon security in favor of expansion, they have to do what the US says. So they would withdraw. It's sometimes claimed that they couldn't, because it would lead to a civil war. That's not true, however. I mean it's partly true: like, if the Israeli army tried to eliminate the settlers by force, it would probably lead to a civil war, because of the religious, nationalist elements in the officer corps and so on. But there's absolutely no need for the Israeli army to withdraw any settlers. It would be sufficient for the government of Israel to announce that on such and such a day the army returns to Israel, and then provide, you know, trucks and buses, and the settlers who have been subsidized to live illegally in the Occupied Territories would climb quietly into the buses and go quietly back into Israel where they would be subsidized there. Maybe a few would remain: you know, a couple of religious Jews from Brooklyn maybe would decide to hang onto to pieces of rock Okay, they can do that. [If] they want to live under Palestinian authority, [it's] their choice; they don't have to be removed. In fact, the disengagement from Gaza [2005] could have been handled exactly the same way. There was what was called a "national trauma": you know, they sent in the army, and they had to take the settlers out screaming; big pictures on the front pages of little boys pleading, "Don't take us away from our homes!"; cries of "Never again!", you know, "Auschwitz!" and so on. This was all staged, totally staged. I mean, it was staged so transparently that commentators from the Israeli press were just ridiculing it, because it was totally unnecessary. They didn't have to remove a single settler. All they had to do was announce that on August 1st the IDF – the army – will leave Gaza, and the settlers would have left, you know, period. But then you wouldn't have had a "national trauma", and you wouldn't have had a justification for increasing settlement in the West Bank (which was the whole point of the disengagement), and you wouldn't have the cries of "Never again!" and so on. And what made this even more ridiculous was that it was a repetition of a staged "national trauma" in 1982. In 1982, after Israel and the United States finally accepted Sadat's 1971 offer, Israel had to evacuate settlements of northeastern Sinai. So there was a staged trauma, in which miraculously not a single settler was injured. In fact, the Israeli press – maybe Rita [Giacaman] will remember – had headlines saying, "National Trauma 1982", and making fun of it. Okay, it was just a repeat in 2005. And if they want to leave the West Bank, it'll be the same thing. So no civil war, no national trauma. Just pull out, and the settlers will follow you, if you help them by sending lorries, okay, they'll get into the lorries.

That's one possibility. The other possibility is "convergence" or " convergence plus": that is, the US and Israel pursue the policies that they are now developing right in front of our eyes – they're not secret; they go every day – just carrying forward. Sometimes it's claimed that that'll lead to an apartheid state. That's just not true. Israel will take what it wants. The Palestinians – those who remain – will be left somewhere in isolated cantons. In fact, the Israeli tourist bureau may even subsidize them, because it's "picturesque": if Israelis and American tourists drive past on the superhighways they're building, it'll be nice for the Israeli tourist guide to point to a Palestinian leading a goat up on the hills as kind of a Biblical scene; you know, it kind of looks nice. So they may even subsidize them. And the rest will rot, like Dayan said, you know: "live like dogs; if you want to leave, leave." No apartheid, no civil rights struggle, you know, nothing. Just take what you want, and let the others rot. That's the alternative.

And it gets worse. There was an ultra-right position in Israel advanced by Avigdor Lieberman who's now the Foreign Minister. When he announced this, this was described as "neo-Nazi". The idea was to take parts of Israel that had that heavy Palestinian population – there's one particular area (Wadi Ara) which is in Galilee right up near the Green Line – take that area, force the population into Jordan or into a Palestinian state in fact, force them into a derisory third-world barely-existing Palestinian state, and then take over the parts of the West Bank that we want, which would solve the "demographic problem" (the problem of "too many non-Jews in a Jewish state"). Well, of course the population is strongly opposed to it. You can read articles in the Washington Post by the Israeli correspondent describing it. You know, they don't want to lose their citizenship in the country where they live, a rich first-world country, and be kind of tossed into a barely surviving third-world country. But they don't matter. You know, we do what we want. It doesn't matter what the people want. Now when Lieberman proposed that, it was literally denounced as "neo-Nazi". Now it's mainstream. It was accepted by Kadima. Tzipi Livni, who's the official dove, thought it was a good idea. Kissinger thought it was a great idea; he said the only people who oppose this are those who want anarchy and so on. The New York Times thinks it's a great idea. The New York Times correspondent in Israel Ethan Bronner ["In Israeli Vote, With Two Parties Nearly Tied, the Winner Is Gridlock", 12 Feb 2009] wrote a couple of weeks ago that Lieberman's proposal appeals to the left: the left "likes" it because he's calling for "yielding areas that are now part of Israel" in a land swap. "Yielding areas." He didn't bother to tell us how they're "yielding areas". They're going to "yield areas" where the population wants to stay where they are and have the limited rights they now have in a rich country.

Part 9

But Israel is going to humanely "yield" them, over the bitter opposition of the population. Well, you know, right now that's mainstream policy. And if they move towards some ridiculous form of "two-state" settlement, that'll probably be included.

Well, you know, none of this is graven in stone. I mean, Americans don't have to accept.the deluge of lies and deceit and support for terror and violence that's constant. They don't have to watch silently as our government implements a very rare event in history: namely, the systematic murder of a nation at our hands. And it is at our hands.

(continuing to Q&A)

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories"part7

2009-06-15T20:29:00.004+09:00

Transcribed by Scott Senn

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories"part7

Part 7

In fact, the US-style of what's called neo-colonialism – you know, developed paramilitary or military forces, colaborationist forces, to control the population and make sure they don't do outrageous things like express sympathy when some other part of the population is being slaughtered – that's very "encouraging" and we're good at it. It's second nature. Now General Dayton's forces are the soft side of population control. There are also much tougher and more brutal forces in the West Bank: they're called General Intelligence and Preventive Security. And those guys are really tough, not like Dayton. They're trained by the CIA. There's no supervision for CIA training. So they can really train, you know, mass killers. General Dayton is technically under State Department supervision, and that means Congress occasionally has a look at and maybe some soft-hearted Congressman will say something about human rights conditionalities. But the CIA-trained forces can just be, you know, unconstrained in brutality, and torture, and terror. So that's the tough part of the "encouraging" developments, which finally give Israel a "legitimate partner for peace" for the first time.

Well, let's go back to the "reconceptualization", the core of the Obama policies. Israel-Palestine is now side-lined, with the exception of supporting the "encouraging" development of paramilitary forces to control the population and keep them quiet; and we now have to move towards a "coalition" of Israel [and] the Arab "moderates" who are now willing to cooperate with Israel against Iran. Well, what's US policy towards Iran? Obama and Kerry agree that the US must maintain the threat of force against Iran. So that's what it means to say, "All options are open." Threat of force is first of all in violation of international law: Take a look at the UN Charter; it says, "the threat or use of force" is barred, is criminal. But the US has no particular interest in international law. It's also against the will of a large majority of the American population. A large majority of the population thinks we ought to enter into normal relations with Iran: no threat of force. But the population is as irrelevant as international and domestic law are.

So they [Obama and Kerry] agree on that. And they agree on a lot more. The Obama administration is willing to negiotiate with Iran, but on a condition: namely, the condition that US demands – namely, the ending of uranium enrichment – are conceded in advance. So if Iran agrees to our conditions, we'll then negotiate with them, but not before. That was put most clearly by Vice President Biden who spelled out the administration's position. He said that the US is willing to negotiate if Iran first puts a stop to its "illicit weapons programs." Well, what are Iran's "illicit weapons programs"? There was a National Intelligence Estimate [http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf] a year ago – a little over a year ago [November 2007] – which concluded, with "moderate-to-high confidence", that Iran had no weapons programs and hadn't had any for years. But that doesn't matter: the Obama administration, when it came into office said, "We reject the Intelligence Estimate." They conceded that they had no evidence, but we don't like it, so we reject it. So therefore they have "illicit weapons programs". And until they stop the programs, which they may or may not have (and US intelligence says they didn't have them), we can't agree to negotiations.

We also read constantly that the "international community" has demanded that Iran stop uranium enrichment. First of all, everyone agrees that uranium enrichment is a right of Iran: they signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty; they have the right of uranium enrichment, unlike Israel, say, which didn't sign it, doesn't have that right, but has a couple hundred nuclear weapons. So who's the "international community"? Well, the "international community" consists of Washington, US allies who agree with Washington, and nobody else. It omits most of the world. The Non-Aligned States (most of the world's states) forcefully support Iran's right to develop – to enrich uranium for nuclear power. So they're not part of the "internatinal community". A large majority of Americans agree with them: about seventy-five percent agree, yes, Iran has the right to enrich uranium. So they're not part of the "international community". The "international community" is reduced to Washington and whoever goes along with them. Okay, so in that sense, it's true the international community demands that Iran stop its enrichment of uranium. Just to add a little bit to the irony, the programs that Iran is carrying out were strongly supported by the United States, by Kissenger, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, as long as the Shah was in power. The US had installed a brutal tyrant, overthrew Iranian democracy. They [the Iranians] somehow remember that, but we're not supposed to. And during that period, the US insisted strongly and helped Iran develop uranium enrichment programs. In fact, a lot of it was done at M.I.T., where I was. [There was] a big fuss about it when the Shah sent thousands of nuclear engineers to be trained at M.I.T. to develop nuclear enrichment programs. Well, that was then, you know; then, the country was ruled by the tyrant we imposed. Now, not; so now they "don't need" nuclear energy.

There is no attention at all paid to the most important proposal, which a large majority of Americans agree to: that is, to establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the region, which is the right idea. That would include Iran, Israel, and any American forces deployed there, with a verification system. Okay, that would mitigate, if not eliminate, any potential threat that Iran poses. But that's off the agenda, because it would mean that Israel has to get rid of its illegal and huge collection of nuclear weapons and of course the US forces wouldn't be able to have nuclear weapons there. The US has also blocked nuclear-weapons-free zones in other parts of the world because it wants to deploy nuclear-armed forces there: in the South Pacific, Europe, and elsewhere. But this one is off the agenda, though a large majority – about seventy-five percent – of Americans favor it. Well, Obama did give a speech, which you read about, to Iran, you know, reaching out in friendship on the Iranian new year Nowruz. A lot of publicity for that. What did he actually say? He said, "Yes, we're delighted to deal with you." (A big, radical change from the Bush administration.) "But first you have to show that you're responsible members of the civilized world: You have to give up arms and terror. Okay?"

(to part 8)

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories"part6

2009-06-14T00:29:00.006+09:00

Transcribed by Scott Senn

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories"part-6

7 April 2009
Madison, WI

Part 6

An illustration of what the US did was that the European Union proposed – I'm quoting now – to provide some health aid – needed aid for health care. Well, the US blocked it. And it had a reason; the reason was that "US officials" – I'm reading the New York Times [Weisman, "Europe Plan to Aid Palestinians Stalls Over U.S. Salary Sanctions", 15 June 2006] – "US officials expressed concern that some of the money might end up paying nurses, doctors, teachers and others previously on the government payroll, thereby helping to finance Hamas," which won the election. That was said with no shame; you know, just sort of: "Yeah, normal. We don't like the outcome of elections: we punish the population. It's natural." It's also natural that this goes on side by side with "soaring rhetoric" about our "idealism", our "commitment to democracy promotion", and so on and so forth. No contradiction – which in a sense is natural too, because it's so consistent. Well, Israeli attacks picked up severely in the following months: by June Israel had fired 7,700 rockets at northern Gaza; that's since its formal withdrawal in September.

Now on June 25th, an event occurred which sharply escalated the US-Israeli attack. On June 25th, Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier on the border: Gilad Shalhevet. That led to a huge outcry in the United States and in fact in Europe too: you know, "What a crime!": kidnapping – [correction:] capturing – (you can't "kidnap" a solider) – capturing a soldier from an attacking army. Okay, maybe that's wrong; but there are worse crimes, like one committed one day before the capture of Gilad Shalhevet: namely, the Israeli army invaded Gaza, kidnapped this time two civilians – a doctor and his brother – in Gaza City, spirited them across the border (violation of international law), and they sort of disappeared somewhere into the Israeli prison system where nobody knows what goes on; but there are certainly hundreds – at least – of people under what's called "administrative detention", just kept there without charge. These two brothers, the Muamar brothers, have disappeared. Now that was one day before the capture of Gilad Shalhevet. And kidnapping civilians is a far worse crime than capturing a soldier in an attacking army. But the two events are treated quite differently: The capture of Shalhevet is a major international event. To this day, Israel offers it, puts it forth – with the support of the United States and indeed Europe – as a reason for refusing a political settlement. What about the kidnapping of the Muamar brothers? Well, it was reported: about a couple dozen words in the Washington Post. But it disappeared, which in a way is justified, because this is standard, regular Israeli practice. In the preceding decades, they have repeatedly kidnapped civilians in Lebanon, on the high seas (an act which is much worse than Somoli piracy), killing them sometimes, bringing many of them to Israel, where they are then kept in prisons, sometimes secret prison torture chambers, sometimes for decades, and held as hostages. Well, since that's regular practice, why care if they did it once again on June 24th? But of course if Hamas captures a soldier of an attacking army, well, you know, "the world is coming to an end!" That's again a typical illustration of Western racism. If somebody else does something to us, it's a horror story; if we do much worse to them consistently for decades, you know, it's a yawn.

Let's go back to January 2006. (I should say, after the capture of Shalhevet, the attack on Gaza escalated very sharply: huge attack, large-scale destruction, destroyed the power systems, the water systems, the sewage systems, and so on. But that was considered okay too after this "outrage", which still today is put forth as the main reason for refusing a ceasefire and a setttlement.)

Well, in order to overturn the election, the United States and Israel went farther: they armed a military force, a paramilitary force, led by Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan (you know, a tough thug), whose task was to carry out a military coup in Gaza to overthrow the elected government. Well, that failed. Hamas preempted it. And that led to new attacks and a strengthened seige. But also the US and Israel didn't stop there. A US general was sent, General Keith Dayton, to train a paramilitary force, with the help of Jordan, which would be the Fatah paramilitary force. And here we get back to Kerry. He gives a reason to explain why Israel now has a "legitimate" Palestinian "partner": the reason is the Dayton-run paramilitary force, which he says is really good. In fact, he says it's the most important development to show Palestinian legitimacy. And our goal – our primary goal – , he said, is to strengthen General Dayton's efforts to train Palestinian security forces to "keep order" in the West Bank and to "fight terror". And then he says, "Recent developments have been extremely encouraging: During the invasion of Gaza, Palestinian Security Forces were largely successful in maintaining calm in the West Bank amidst widespread expectations of civil unrest. …More has to be done, but we can help" extending this force.

Well, to translate that into English: During the Israeli invasion of Gaza, it was expected that there would be protests in the West Bank. You know, it's the same country after all. But thanks to the US-trained paramilitary forces, they were able to keep the population under control, and there was no expression of sympathy for the people being slaughtered in Gaza. And that's, as Kerry says, "extremely encouraging" and we have to do more. Well, the US has a lot of experience in this, in fact unique experience. It goes back a century, since the US established the Philippine Constabulary to try to control the Philippines. After invading it and killing a couple hundred thousand people, there was a lot of unrest. But the US did succeed, in complicated and sophisticated measures, to create a Philippine paramilitary force, which still pretty much runs the country; that's one of the reasons why the country is kind of a basket case, and it's a century later. And it's happened over and over: the national guards in the Caribbean and Central America, the paramilitary forces in Columbia, which were responsible for, you know, huge atrocities in the last couple of decades. And in fact the military forces themselves, which, for example in Columbia, just cooperate with the paramilitaries; [they are] part of them essentially. And other armies too. So we got a century of experience in how to control populations with collaborationist paramilitary and military forces. So we should be able to achieve it in the West Bank too. And that's, for Kerry, most "encouraging". It includes his own experience in Vietnam, where the Saigon army was such a force; its task was to control the population and prevent them from achieving any form of self-determination. And so, yes, we're pretty good at that.

(to part7)

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories"part 5

2009-06-11T23:44:00.005+09:00

Transcribed by Scott Senn

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories" part 5

7 April 2009 Madison, WI

Part 5

Well, let's go back to Kerry, and his expression of his views in his explanation, outlining of the positions of the Obama administration. He talks about the invasion of Gaza – different than Obama, who omitted it. But his position is the standard one, in fact universal position. He said that – . (Incidentally the invasion was of course in violation of international law, but also in violation of US law. US law very explicitly bars the use of US weapons for anything but strictly defensive purposes. And [we] can't even pretend that in this case, but that's kind of overlooked. We don't care about US law any more than about international law.) But he justified the invasion in the universally accepted terms: He said that (I'll quote him) "if terrorists in Quincy, Massachusetts, were launching rocket attacks into Boston…we'd have to put a stop to it, just as the Israelis were forced to respond" in Gaza. And, again, that's Obama's statement about "what I would do if my daughters were being attacked by missiles". And that's pretty near universal. You have to look pretty far to – There is debate about whether the Israeli attack was "disproportionate", but there's no debate about the fact that it was "necessary, justified, in self-defense".

Well, that's not only false, but it's transparently false. It's false in an unarguable fashion. The issue which is constantly evaded is not whether Israel had a right to defend itself. Sure, everyone has a right to defend themself. The issue was: did they have a right to defend themselves by force? That's a totally different question. Nobody, in Washington or anywhere else, accepts the principle that every state has the right to defend itself by force. So when, for example, Vladimir Putin invaded Chechnya, practically destroyed the place, he claimed correctly that it was a reaction to Chechen terror, which was pretty awful. But it wasn't praised here, or anywhere. In fact, it was bitterly condemned, because he had a way to resolve – to eliminate the terror without force: namely, withdraw from Chechnya. When the British army was in the United States in the 1770's, they had a right to defend themselves from the terror of George Washington's army, which was incidentally very real. But they didn't have a right to defend themselves by force, because there was a way to settle it without force: leave the country, you know. And you can give case after case. The question is: did Israel have a right to defend itself by force? Had they exhausted peaceful means? That's the crucial question. And the reason the issue is evaded is because the answer to that question is transparent: they had not even tried peaceful means, because they didn't want them. There are peaceful means, which are narrow, which would have sufficed: namely, to accept a ceasefire. Hamas repeatedly offered a ceasefire right up to the invasion. And in fact there had been a ceasefire in June 2008, one of many. And, like every other one, Israel didn't live up to it. So, in the ceasefire of June 2008, there was an agreement: Israel would put an end to siege, open the borders; and Hamas would put an end to rockets. Well, Hamas lived up to it. Israel did invade in November 2008, killed half a dozen Palestinians. But up until that invasion, the Israeli government concedes that there wasn't a single rocket. Okay, so [Hamas] lived up to it totally, while Israel didn't live up to it at all; it maintained the siege. A siege is an act of war, and a very brutal act of war in this case. Nevertheless, Hamas lived up to it. Well, after Israel broke the partial ceasefire – the unilateral ceasefire – again there were repeated offers of ceasefire and Israel rejected them; they went up to right before the invasion. So there was a very narrow way for Israel to put an end to rocket-firing if it cared about it.

But there's also a broader and more important way, which is similar to Putin in Chechnya and the British in the colonies: Israel could stop the criminal activities in the West Bank and in Gaza, for that matter. And that they are criminal activities is not in doubt, as I mentioned. So they could put an end to the criminal activities, and that presumably would put an end to the resistance to them. It's pretty hard to argue that people don't have a right to resistance to constant, ongoing, criminal attacks on them. So, okay, that's a broader way to defend themselves against rocket-fire.

The conclusion is that there was no justification whatsoever for Israel to invade Gaza. And the reasons are really not debatable; I mean, they are transparent. They are based on a principle that everyone accepts – and we not only accept but insist upon in the case of our enemies: namely, the use of force is not legitimate unless peaceful means have been exhausted. If they have, you can then debate whether the use of violence is legitimate. You need still [to face] a burden of proof. But you can't raise the question if peaceful means have been rejected. So the universal assent – near universal assent to the idea that Israel had a right to invade Gaza is just pure hypocrisy; it's just a reflection of the depth of imperial mentality.

Well, let's return to Kerry's thesis that now at last there's a "legitimate" Palestinian "partner for peace"; there wasn't one before, but he goes on to say, "Now there is one." And he gives a very interesting argument for that. The "legitimate partner for peace", he said, for the first time is now Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah. Let's review a few facts about them and the rest of Palestine. In January 2006 there was an election – a free election – a lot observers ratified it as a free election – in fact the only one in the Arab world. It came out the wrong way: the United States and Israel didn't like the outcome of the election. And so therefore they reacted in a standard fashion by punishing the population for the crime of voting the wrong way in a free election, and punishing very harshly. The punishment was extreme: in the case of Israel, you know, assassinations and so on. But it also went even as far as cutting off the flow of clean water to the arid Gaza strip where sewage and everthing else has destroyed the aquifer; it's very hard to get any water. They cut off the water.

(to part 6)

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories"part-4

2009-06-08T22:05:00.005+09:00

Transcribed by Scott Senn

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories"part-4

7 April 2009 Madison, WI

Part 4

So, for example, Prime Minister Olmert of Israel came to the United States in May 2006 and gave an address to a joint session of Congress, where he received a rousing ovation for saying that the historic rights of the Jewish people to the land of Israel are beyond question. Huge applause. What did he mean by "the land of Israel"? Well, you know, traditonally that's kept pretty vague. But his background is in the Likud party which is now considered the more "moderate" element of the governing coalition. And they have a charter. Their charter calls for Israel to control both sides of the Jordan [River]. In other words, everything in the Palestinian mandate and the state of Jordan. And they have recently somewhat moderated that position: In 1999 they restated their charter, and it calls for Israel to dominate – rule everything from the Jordan to the sea. That's the historic "land of Israel". And then it says, everything that "dominates the Jordan Valley". That's pretty vague. I mean, of course it includes everything on the Palestinian side; but it could be interpreted – and they may mean it – as whatever is of value on the other side. But anyway, at the very least, the most sympathetic reading, [is] everything from the Jordan to the sea: all of Palestine. And there Israel has the "right" to settle anywhere, because it's "the land of Israel"; you know, "God said so; it's the land of Israel; we can settle anywhere." And in that territory there cannot be any Palestinian self-determination. Okay, that's the official charter from 1999 of the "moderate" element of the ruling coalition. (You know, everybody talks about the Hamas charter, which nobody has paid the slightest attention to except in propaganda. But try to find a reference to the 1999 charter of the "moderate" element of the ruling coalition.) Well, that's the plan. And in the May 2006, Olmert spelled it out. The plan is what he called "convergence": that means Israel takes over everything within the so-called Separation Wall – actually, an annexation wall. That includes more than half of the water supplies of the region and a good part of the arable land. It takes over the Jordan Valley; that's about a third of Palestine. That traps what's left. And it takes over salients that run through the remaining area: one to the east of Jerusalem, going through the town of Ma'ale Adumim which was settled and colonized and built during the Clinton years in order to bisect the West Bank, effectively. And then, a couple of other salients farther north which break up what's left. And then, you know, random checkpoints all over the place, to make life impossible for whoever remains and to lead to the kinds of medical conditions that you can read about.

Well, he gave up that position. And, again, rousing applause. He gave up that position as too moderate a year later and moved to what you might call "convergence plus", fundamentally the same idea, but more extensive. And, again, those are not words. They are being implemented constantly. So last year, 2008, there was a sixty percent increase in housing starts in the areas that the US and Israel intend for Israel to annex. That compares with housing starts in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, inside Israel, where housing starts dropped considerably. And a vast increase is planned. The current plans are to double settlers in the Occupied Territories. That's according to an assessment by Peace Now, which monitors settlement. You can read it in the US press a little while ago. So that's happeneing. And it happens every day, you know.

Right now, in fact, there's an Israeli effort to remove Palestinians from a traditional – an old Palestinian area right in the center of East Jerusalem, throw them out, replace them by Jewish settlers – religious Jewish settlers. ([There's] all kind of pretexts which aren't worth talking about.) There was a very sharp condemnation of that by the European Union, because, again, that almost eliminates the possibility – or at least makes it much harder to achieve anything like a meaningful settlment. And there was also an admonition by Hillary Clinton: she said it was "unhelpful". The Israeli leadership, no doubt, quaked in their boots when they got this, you know, thirty lashes from a piece of macaroni or something like that. And that's pretty typical. I mean, the US regularly says, "It's unhelpful to do what we're paying you to do and what we're giving you the military, and economic, and ideological support to do." Well, that continues with no change.

Incidentally, all of this is in violation of Security Council orders, going back to December 1968, which at that time the US supported, because – remember – then the US was part of the world. So it voted for those resolutions which barred any Israeli actions in Jerusalem. But that's "past history". And of course it's against international law. And there's never been the slightest doubt about that. In 1967, the Israeli government was informed by its highest legal authorities: the very distinguished international lawyer Theodor Meron (its main legal advisor), and the Justice Minister. They were advised that any movement of population into the Occupied Territories is in gross violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law: the Geneva Conventions. And that was understood. Moshe Dayan, who was the Defense Minister and in charge of the Occupied Territories, agreed that it was illegal. But he said there's nothing new in that. "The situation today" – he described it sort of poetically: he said, "the situation today resembles the complex relationship between a Bedouin man and a girl he kidnaps against her will…." He said, "You Palestinians, as a nation, don't want us today, but we'll change your attitude by forcing our presence on you." You will "live like dogs, and whoever will leave, will leave," while we take what we want. So, okay, it's illegal; but that's the way the world works: the powerful do what they want. The World Court ruled on this a couple of years ago and – again, unanimously, including the US justice – declared that any transfer – that the Geneva Conventions apply to the Occupied Territories – any transfer of population is illegal, all settlements are illegal. Well, that's international law; but international law has no enforcement mechanism. If the powerful want to disregard it, they disregard it. It's not the only case. In fact, the US is a leader in disregarding international law when it doesn't like it. And as long as the population of the United States accepts that, you know, nothing's going to stop it.

continuing to part 5

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories" part 3

2009-06-06T06:43:00.008+09:00

Transcribed by Scott Senn

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories" part-3

Part 3

Now the critical question, as always, was: what would the United States do? There was an internal beaurocratic battle in the Nixon administration. The State Department –William Rogers – wanted to continue with what had been US policy: so no expanion; withdraw to the international border. And that would mean: accept President Sadat's offer and have security. Henry Kissinger objected. He was National Security Advisor. His position, as he described it, was "stalemate", meaning no negotiations, just force. Okay, not unusual for Mr. Kissinger. And he won out in the beaurocratic battle, and the United States backed off its traditional position since '67 and left the world. And it's been out of the world since then on this issue. That was critical. Israel made a really fateful decision, preferring expansion to peace and security, with US backing. It meant that Israel's completely reliant on the United States really for survival: it's going to be in a position of military confrontation and so on; it's got to have a powerful foreign backer; and the United States is it. So what happened from then on was more or less set in February 1971.

Now President Sadat of Egypt kept warning that if the United States and Israel don't accept peace, he's going to go to war. They were laughing at him basically. It was a period of extreme racism both in Israel and the United States: mockery of Arabs: "how could they fight a war?", "they didn't know which end of a gun to hold", and so on. Well, Sadat went to war, and Israel was practically destroyed. It came very close. It even came close to a nuclear war, because apparently they armed their nuclear warheads and the US declared a nuclear alert; so it was no joke. Okay, that finally was settled. But then, you know, the clouds lifted. It became clear to Israeli leaders and Kissinger that Egypt can't be dismissed as a basket case. They're going to have to negotiate with it. And then started a series of negotiations. I won't run through them. They ended up at Camp David in 1978 and '79. And what actually happened at Camp David is the United States and Israel accepted the offer by Sadat that they had rejected in 1971. Now, in US diplomatic history, that goes down as a great diplomatic triumph of the United States: Carter's "great triumph". That was a diplomatic catastrophe: they accepted an offer that they had rejected eight years earlier; the result was a major war with, you know, huge loses and suffering, almost a nuclear war; and then they finally accepted the offer. It's not exactly a diplomatic triumph; but that's the way it's interpreted in powerful states with obedient intellectuals, like us.

Well, meanwhile, in those years, something else had happened: The Palestinian issue, which had been side-lined before – it was not [even] there – entered the international agenda for various reasons, and it entered it very explicitly in January 1976. In January 1976, the major Arab states, all the relevant ones, brought a resolution to the Security Council of the United Nations, calling for a two-state settlement; that's what the Arab League recently reiterated and what the rest of the world agrees to. Well, that didn't get very far: the United States vetoed it. Now that happens all the time. But when the United States vetoes a resolution, it's a double-veto: first of all, it doesn't happen, and then it's wiped out of history. So, again, you have to look hard to find the record of that; but it's there. The same thing happened in 1980 under Carter. At that point, the Security Council was sort of dismissed; the US wasn't going to let anything happen there. The isssue shifted over to the General Assembly where there is actually a veto, but technically there isn't: a US vote against a resolution amounts to a veto. And there were almost annual resolutions at the General Assembly, kind of reiterating the call for Palestinian national rights. The votes were pretty uniform: you know, 150 to 2: the United States and Israel. Sometimes the United States picked up, you know, Dominica or the Marshall Islands or somebody. But that was the record right through the General Assembly sessions, and it goes right up till today. I mean, Obama and Kerry have just reiterated it, in their indirect and deceitful way.

Now actually it's very important to recognize that, in this record of over 30 years of blocking a diplomatic settlement, there was one exception, a very crucial one. In the last month of Clinton's term, he modified his rejectionist position. In December 2000, he presented what he called his "parameters" for a settlement. They were kind of vague, but they tolerated the international consensus as a part. He then made an important speech in which he said both sides have accepted the parameters, but both sides have presented reservations. They then met in Taba, Egypt: a week of negotiations. And the two sides came pretty close to a resolution which was not very far from the international consensus – a pretty detailed resolution on all issues. And in fact in their final press conference they said if they had a few more days, they probably could have solved the problem. Well, they didn't have a few more days: Prime Minister Barack of Israel canceled the negotiations prematurely, and that came to an end. But that's important. Things have happened since 2001, but not anything fundamental with regard to a settlement. And what it tells us is that if a US president were just willing to tolerate a settlement, it could very likely be reached, just as it almost was reached then. Well, that's out of history too. Again: wrong story. But it's there.

Well, these are the kinds of things that John Kerry omitted when he talked about our failed efforts to be an honest broker since the three no's of 1967. And they're pretty critical, and, again, he's an intelligent person; and if he can omit this, it tells us something. He also, like Obama, brought up the Arab League proposal, but omitted its central component. So that tells us quite a lot.

I should add that this is not just words. I mean, it's not just that the US and Israel block a settlement in words. Much more importantly, they block it in deeds. And that's what's actually happening on the ground. If you were here last night, you saw Rita [Giacaman] put up a map up on the screen back there, which described what the US and Israel have been doing in the West Bank. And what they've been doing is a very planned, systematic project – continuing right now – of undermining the possibility of a two-state settlement. So it's one thing to veto dipolomacy in words, but it's more important to act in a way to undermine the possibility of realizing it. And that goes on constantly, and it's not secret.

(to part 4)

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories" part-2

2009-06-04T22:18:00.009+09:00

Transcribed by Scott Senn

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories" part-2

Part 2

Well, Obama is an intelligent man. He's literate. He chooses his words carefully. So we can learn something from what he said and what he didn't say. What he didn't say is what the content of the Arab League proposal is. Slight omission. The content of the Arab League proposal is simply a reiteration of the international consensus, which in fact the Arab States had agreed to 30 years earlier. They reiterated it in the 2006 proposal, just as before, same as the Volcker commission, same as everyone who's talked about it: two states on the international border with maybe minor modifications. And they said in that context the Arab States should proceed to normalize relations with Israel. Well, Obama very scrupulously avoided the content and just talked about the corollary: normalize relations with Israel. To any rational person, that tells us what he has in mind: namely, a continuation of US rejectionism which unilaterally has blocked a diplomatic settlement for over 30 years.

Well, there's a more extensive presentation of the Obama administration's position in an important speech that was given by the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee. He's very close to the administration. He gave a speech ["Restoring Leadership in the Middle East: A Regional Approach to Peace " - 4 March 2009 - http://kerry.senate.gov/cfm/record.cfm?id=309250] to the Brookings Institution in Washington, considered kind of "center-left" – whatever that's supposed to mean. And it was a very interesting talk and should be read carefully. I'll quote some parts of it and comment on it. He began by saying that we should recognize the failure of our past efforts to bring about a political settlement among these two adversaries. He said we've tried honorably to reach a political settlement; we have failed because of the intransigence of the Arab States and because – I'm quoting – although "for years everyone has talked of the need to give the Israelis a legitimate partner for peace...", we and our Israeli ally have failed in that effort and we should therefore agree that it's behind us. So we have to – As he put it, we have to "reconceptualize" the problem. Since our efforts to act as an honest broker have failed – we haven't been able to find "a legitimate partner for peace" for Israel – , we've got to look at the whole issue in a different framework. We should look at it as a "regional" issue. We should put the Israel-Palestine conflict to the side. We've tried; we can't solve it. And we should form a "coalition" against Iran, including Israel and the "moderate" Arab States. Now, "moderate" is an interesting word in the techical jargon of diplomacy; "moderate" means you follow orders. So the "moderate" Arab States are the brutal Egyptian dictatorship and the most extreme, radical Islamic-fundamentalist state in the world – also a dictatorship – Saudia Arabia. Those are the "moderates", because they more or less do what we say and they are our natural allies. So we should form a coaltion between the "moderate" Arab States and Israel, under our aegis, to confront the "real" problem in the region: namely, Iran. And, he says, it's been difficult in the past, but now it's possible. It's possible because he says there's been what he calls a "techtonic shift in Middle East geopolitics". I'm quoting now: "The rise of Iran has created an unpredented willingness among moderate Arab nations to work with Israel. This realignment can help to lay the groudwork for progress towards peace." And he says there's a crucial new fact: the Arab peace initiative of 2006. And he goes on: "Whereas once the Arab world voted unanimously for the three no's [of Khartoum], [meaning] no dialogue with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no peace with Israel," – that was before – "there are now three different no's which dominate many discussions in the region; no Iranian nukes, no Iranian meddling, and no Iranian hegemony."

Well, the "three no's" were in 1967 and a few things have happened between 1967 and today, which he omitted. What happened? Well, the first thing that happened was in fact in 1967, right after the "three no's". President Nassar of Egypt began trying to open up ways for peaceful settlement, rejecting the "three no's". At that time, the United States was still part of the world, which is important. The US had a position; its position was UN 242, November 1967. The US interpreted that as meaning: no acquisition of territory by force, Israel returns to the international border, and there's a diplomatic settlement. Now 242 has nothing in it for the Palestinians; so therefore the US and Israel like it. In every international negotiation, they constantly insist that 242 has to be the sole topic under discussion, because it has nothing about Palestinian rights. There's a whole series of other UN resolutions, but they're off the agenda. And of course Israel and the United States don't interpret it the way they did when the United States was part of the world. Well, that was 1967. And that lasted for a few years.

In 1971 there really was a tectonic shift, a significant one, so significant that it's been wiped out of history. You've got to look hard to find the evidence; but it's there. In February 1971, Egypt offered Israel a full peace treaty – a full peace treaty – everything – in return for Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian territory. They mention "territories"; they only cared about Egyptian territory. Again, nothing about the Palestinians. Okay, Israel had what it regarded as a genuine peace offer. Egypt is the – by far – in fact the only major military force in the Arab world. If it made peace with Israel, Israel's security problems would be eliminated. There was no Palestinian issue to speak of at the time. So they could have had security. They rejected it. They rejected it in favor of expansion. At that time, it was expansion into northeastern Sinai. There was some settlement in the West Bank, but it was mostly northeast Sinai, where Israel was planning to – it was the Labor government incidently – the doves – were planning – and soon did – expel thousands of Bedouin farmers into the desert, pretty brutally, destroy the villages, destroy the mosques, the cemetaries, everything, driving them behind barbed wire into the desert, and proceed to develop a major city – it was intended to be a million people – a seaport – Yamit and a lot of settlements. Well, that was the choice: security or expansion. And Israel chose expansion. And in fact that's continued until the present.

(continuing to part 3)

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories"part-1(transcribed by Scott Senn)

2009-06-03T01:27:00.009+09:00

Scott Senn, who helped me correct "the Just War Theory lecture" last summer, sent me his transcript. I'm happy to post this important talk. Thanks.

"Assessing the Role of US Foreign Policy, Israeli Security, & Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories"
7 April 2009 Madison, WI

Part 1

Well, the question that presumably is on the mind of most people – me as well – is simple; it's: "What next?" We have a new administration. It was elected on a slogan of "change" and "hope". It has inspired a great number of people, here and abroad. What can, then, we expect in its actions generally, specifically in the Middle East region and more specifically with regard to Israel-Palestine?

Now there is a criterion – a very clear criterion – by which we can evaluate these policies as they develop and are implemented. The criterion is an agreement that's held worldwide, that has been held for over 30 years. It's quite explicit. There's no ambiguity about it. It was recently expressed again, a few weeks ago, by a high-level bipartisan commission in the United States, led by Paul Volcker with leading specialists from the security system from both parties [http://www.usmep.us/bipartisan_recommendations/A_Last_Chance_for_a_Two-State_Israel-Palestine_Agreement.pdf]. And they reiterated what has been this overwhelming international consensus; [it] includes essentially everbody. The consensus is that there should be a two-state settlement on the internationally recognized border – that's the pre-June-'67 border – with perhaps "minor and mutual modifications". That's the official US-government wording, during the period when the US accepted the basic assumptions of the fundamental document everyone agrees [on]: UN 242 of November 1967. So that's the criterion. How will the Obama-administation's policies relate to this criterion?

I should emphasize how broad agreement is on this. It literally includes virtually everyone who matters. It includes the Non-Aligned countries (most of the countries in the world), Europe, Latin America. It includes Hamas. It includes Hezbollah. It includes Iran. In fact, it includes anyone you can think of, with one critical exception: us. The United States has blocked it for over 30 years, along with Israel, and – I'll come back to that – apparently still does. That's critical, because as long as – . And it's blocked it not only in words, but in deeds, which is much more significant.

Well, what can we expect? During the campaign, Obama said virtually nothing about this. In fact, the truth of the matter is: he said virtually nothing about every topic; so it's not surprising. So he said nothing about this. However, his saying nothing was done with what was called "soaring rhetoric", the main thing that the press admired in every article. There were a few – There was one comment about Israel-Palestine during the campaign. Last summer [2008], he visited Israel and made the obligatory visit to Sderot, the town that's been hit by Hamas rockets from Gaza. And he said that "if my daughters were subject to the fear of rocket attacks, I would do anything to protect them." And that comment – And in fact he met with sort of the two extremes of the Israeli political leadership: Shimon Peres who's regarded as one of the leading doves, and Benjamin Netanyahu who's now the prime minister and is considered the leading hawk. And both of those leaders reported to the press that they were very pleased that Obama had agreed with them completely. So they thought this was very good. That led to an article by one of Israel's leading political analysts saying, "It's not surprising. That's Obama. His style is to sit and listen, make people feel that he cares for them and that he agrees with them, and then go ahead and do what he wants." So, from the campaign, we're left with essentially nothing except this.

That continued after the election, in fact, right till the end of the attack on Gaza, which incidentally was carefully timed so that it ended immediately before the inauguration. That gave Israel maximal time to do as much destruction as possible. And it insured – It eliminated the remote possibility that Obama might say something critical about it. He didn't have to, because, after all, it's over – you know, "past history" – let's "move on". The only thing that was said during this whole period was that his campaign reiterated his comment about Sderot.

So we learn very little from before the inauguration. We do learn something from afterwards. Obama has in fact made one foreign-policy declaration bearing on this; in fact, it's practically his only one. That's when he introduced George Mitchell as his emissary for Israel-Palestine. Now that's a good choice. Mitchell is a serious person, has successful experience in resolving conflicts. Northern Ireland was his main achievement. He was an emissary for Israel-Palestine and had pretty sensible recommendations which were ignored by Israel and the United States. Though it's a good choice, I think. The question is: Does he have any leeway to do anything? And Obama made it clear that he doesn't: his job, he said, is to listen, not to talk. And he's not supposed to listen to everybody. So, for example, he's not permitted to listen to the elected government in Palestine. Well, it would be a little difficult to listen to them anyway because most of them are in jail in Israel: can't get in there. But he's not supposed to listen to the ones who are out of jail either. There are pretexts for that; I'll come back to them if there's time; but I'll just say, they don't have even minimal credibility. They simply reflect pretty traditional US opposition to democratic elections if they come out the wrong way. Now that's not the official line, but it's a very well-established principle. I'll come back to it. So Mitchell can listen, except to the elected government of Palestinians in a free election.

However, he [Obama] went beyond that in accouncing Mitchell's appointment. He made it clear that our prime concern is the security and safety of Israel. Nothing about the security and safety of the people under military occupation. But he did say that there is one constructive proposal that we shoud pay attention to: namely, the Arab League proposal. The Arab League proposal, he said, has highly constructive elements: it calls on the Arab States to normalize their relations with Israel. He said that's a very good idea, and he called on the Arab States to live up to their proposal.

(to part 2)

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Jean Feraca part 2

2009-05-18T12:01:00.006+09:00

Here On Earth: Radio Without Borders APRIL 7, 2009

About Obama on North Korea and Iran

President Obama: North Korea broke the rules once again by testing a rocket that could be used for long-range missiles. This provocation underscores the need for action, not just this afternoon at the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons. Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response.

JF: That’s another clip from President Obama, this time, speaking over the weekend in Prague on the rocket launch that actually failed but was attempted by North Korea. Noam Chomsky, those words of President Obama’s, strong words.

NC: Not really. That’s…He proposed those strong actions. There are also many questions that one might ask. Maybe North Korea is the worst place in the world; you could make a case from that. But, is sending a rocket a violation of law? I mean just a week before, a couple of weeks before, the US had launched a much more powerful rocket to carry a satellite far more powerful. Is that following the rules?
Yeah, we think so. In fact, the world thinks so. Does North Korea have a right to try to duplicate that? I mean according to US analysts, it was a failed satellite launch. Nobody wants them to do it, who has their brains functioning, because it’s true that could be used as a missile for nuclear weapons.

But under what circumstance would North Korea fire a nuclear-tipped missile? Well, there are only two possibilities. One is that they have a wish for self-vaporization. If they even so much as mounted a nuclear-tipped missile, the country would be vaporized. So, either it’s that or else it’s a deterrent. They would like a deterrent against US attack.

In fact, if you look back at the negotiations over the past years, during the Clinton years, there were negotiations. And they were more or less successful. So it ended with North Korea not having nuclear weapons capacity.

JF: And that was in return for the promise of aid.

NC: It was the promise of aid and it was also the promise―unclear promise of withdrawing the threats, the constant threats; they want security naturally. Well, when Bush came in, he just undermined all of that, took a very hostile stance. And they immediately started nuclear weapons development. So it ended up with supply of nuclear weapons and missile development.

Well, there was an agreement in September 2005 that North Korea would stop all of its nuclear weapons development. In return, the United States would take them off the list of states supporting terrorism---well, that’s a list that says we can attack you if we feel like it---and would give some kind of security guaranties and would allow them to enter into the world with economic relations and so on. Within weeks, the Bush administration undermined that, blocked economic transfers and so on. And they went back to missile development.

JF: Isn’t the same thing true of Iran?

NC: Iran is a slightly different case. And Obama position is interesting. There was a national intelligence estimate, highest level US intelligence estimate in November 2007, which concluded with pretty high confidence that Iran is not following weapons development program and hasn’t been for several years.

JF: Uranium enrichment for energy purposes.

NC: That’s what the US intelligence concluded and [Iran] had been doing so for years. That’s within their rights, most of the world agrees to that.
Now, Obama, when he came in, his administration said, well, we reject this intelligence analysis. They said, we have no new evidence but we just reject it. Now therefore they talk about what they call Iran’s “illicit weapons program.” They don’t tell us why it’s a weapons program, they just say it’s an illicit program. And they state―what you quoted states correctly―that states ought to follow the rules and not develop nuclear weapons. Well, there are some states that have developed nuclear weapons. In the region, the one that’s far ahead than anyone else, is Israel.

JF: And also Pakistan.

NC: Pakistan has developed nuclear weapons on the background that is interesting.

JF: Ronald Reagan.

NC: That was Ronald Reagan, who knew, I don’t know what he knew but his administration certainly knew that Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons but he regularly denied it so that the US could continue providing massive military aid to the Zia Al Huq dictatorship, which was imposing radical Islamization on Pakistan and also developing nuclear weapons. So, yeah, they have them, too.

And there’s another one: India. India developed nuclear weapons in violation of its international obligations. And the US did have sanctions for a while but they were removed by George Bush, who said OK, you can have nuclear weapons and you are now our partner, we’ll allow you to get nuclear technology and so on. So, sure, it’d be nice if nations followed the rules.

And there are in fact rules that apply to us. So, the signers of the Non Proliferation Treaty pledged themselves to move to take good faith efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons. A large majority of Americans think the US ought to do that.

JF: Who’s above the rules?

NC: Anyone with power. It’s not pleasant but there’s a statement by Thucydides, which more or less describes the world, which says “the powerful do what they want and the weak do what they must."

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Jean Feraca-part 1

2009-05-17T20:56:00.008+09:00

Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders APRIL 7, 2009

(From the website)
"If the Nuremburg laws were applied, then every post World War American president would have been hanged." Noam Chomsky said that. He'll be paying Here On Earth a visit during his stay on the UW-Madison campus.

About Obama on the Middle East

President Obama: The United States is not and will never be at war with Islam. In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical, not just in rolling back the violent ideologies that people of all faiths reject but also to strengthen opportunity for all people.

Jean Feraca: In his historic speech at the Turkish parliament in Ankara yesterday, President Obama aimed to overcome widespread resentment in the region for what many saw as the Bush administration’s aggressive policies against Moslems and Arabs. The speech which lasted 45 minutes and covered a wide array of issues including the Arab-Israeli peace process was carried by Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya and drew favorable responses throughout the Middle East. Welcome to Here On Earth, Radio Without Borders from Wisconsin Public Radio. I’m Jean Feraca. This hour, Noam Chomsky reflects on US Middle East policy.

JF: You’re here for a series of lectures that you’ve been giving, among other things, focused on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and especially on health issues there.

NC: Well, actually the people who are speaking about health issues are people who have actually worked on them:Rita Giacaman, who is a health worker/physician from the West Bank, from Ramalla, and Graham Watt, who is British and works extensively on health issues in the occupied territories. And I’m there partly to listen, partly to fill in some background.

JF: President Obama did mention the Israel-Palestine situation in his speech yesterday saying that “the United States strongly supports the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. That is a goal shared by Palestinians, Israelis and people of good will around the world. That is a goal that (the) parties agreed to in the Road Map and at Annapolis. That is a goal that I will actively pursue as president. Both Israelis and Palestinians must take the steps that are necessary to build confidence.”
How do you respond to that message?

NC: Well, there’s a couple of striking omissions that should be filled in. First, it’s not just Israelis and Palestinians who have to build confidence, but it’s primarily the United States. The United States has to act in such a way that will build confidence. And there is a history which he ignores. The history is that for over 30 years, the US and Israel have unilaterally blocked the diplomatic settlement that the rest of the world agrees to and has agreed to for a long time and that is exactly a two-state settlement.

What he fails to mention is where that two-state settlement will be. So, even the most reactionary and nationalist Israeli politicians say, yes, OK, a two-state settlement. But for the Palestinians, it will be some scattered cantons that they can call a state if they want, but won’t be viable. Now he’s carefully omitting that.

And there’s another crucial omission. And the US has blocked the settlement up until now. And everything he said indicates that he intends to continue with that policy.
Now, he says that everyone agreed to the Road Map. That happens to be incorrect. Israel formally signed the Road Map but immediately added 14 reservations which almost completely eliminated its content and the US backed them. So, the US and Israel don’t accept the Road Map.

As far as the Annapolis decisions are concerned, they were pretty vague. But the current foreign minister of Israel, at his first pronouncement after his appointment, said that Israel is not bound by Annapolis. So, there are some critical gaps, the most important one being the absence of recognition of what the US role has been for over 30 years and his own intentions with regard to perpetuation of this role.

JF: And to add to what you just told us about prime minister Netanyahu, Israel’s new foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman declared Wednesday that “those who wish for peace should prepare for war” and that “Israel was not obligated by understandings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reached at Annapolis,” that is [what Lieberman called]“the American-sponsored peace conference in late 2007.”

NC: Yeah. And Lieberman added that the US is bound by the Road Map, failing to point out that Israel had instantly added reservations which undermined the Road Map to which he is committed.

JF: Syria, in particular, was elated by President Obama’s speech especially with regard to his pledge to pursue a two-state solution in the Middle East, even going so far as to assume that that two-state solution would have Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestine state. I think that’s hardly likely, but what impresses me about that response is that, A, that it is coming from Syria, a state that President Bush, the former president Bush labeled as part of the Axis of Evil, and [B], that it seems to suggest that Middle Eastern countries are ready to assume that President Obama really is holding out an olive branch and plans to do something tactical about the problems of the Palestinian territories.

NC: Well, President Obama during his campaign and since, has shown an absolute genius in speaking and acting in such a way that people will draw their own favorite conclusions from it. His typical style through the campaign has been essentially to present himself as a kind of a blank slate on which you write your wishes and hopes. So, very careful to avoid saying…dealing with specific issues and taking a rhetorical stance of friendship, hope, change, partnership and so on. And yes, it’s very easy for people who have been kind of under the lash to think, well, maybe something good is coming.

Over and above that, you should expect the leadership of every state to welcome whatever is said by the master of the world. You know, you want to be on the good side.
So, the Syrian leadership, which is not necessarily Syria―it’s a dictatorship so it’s not necessarily the popular response―but the leadership will, of course, welcome what sound like accommodating statements from the leader of the world’s sole superpower, and will hopefully add their own interpretation to it.

But he said nothing about what matters: where are the two-states? George Bush said we are dedicated to a two-state settlement. Where?
The United States continues to act in a manner which undermines the possibility of a two-state settlement.

So for example, right at the moment, Israel is extending settlements in the occupied territories. The most recent event was essentially throwing out Arab settlers in a critical area of Jerusalem and replacing them by Jewish settlers. That was harshly condemned by the European Union. But all the Obama administration said is that it’s “unhelpful.” Well, that’s not going to exactly frighten the Israeli government. And while not criticizing it except in a meaningless way, the United States also continues to subsidize it. OK.
As long as that continues, the words wouldn’t mean anything even if they were definite, but they’re kept crucially indefinite.

For example, will the…just let me give you a concrete example. Obama has in fact made one declaration on Israel and Palestine. It was in the press conference where he introduced George Mitchell as his emissary. He did refer indirectly to the two-state settlement. He said there is one constructive proposal which we should really take seriously：the Arab League Proposal, which, in fact, reiterates the wide, long-standing international consensus that the US has blocked. It calls for a two-state settlement on the internationally recognized border, maybe some minor modifications. And it says that, in that context, the two-state settlement (on the internationally recognized border maybe with some minor modifications), the Arab states will proceed with normalization of relations with Israel. (Emphasis and explanation added by the transcriber)

OK, Obama’s correct to say that it’s a significant statement. But notice the gloss that he gave to it.
He said, yes, it’s a very constructive statement, the Arab states should proceed to normalize relations with Israel; that wasn’t the Arab League proposal. The proposal, as he knows, was to…reiterating the international consensus, the view of the world: two-state settlement on the international border and in that context, normalize relations.

Well, by eviscerating the (Arab League) proposal, he gave a pretty clear indication that he expects the US to maintain its rejectionist program. And it’s—it is unilateral. I mean everyone accepts this (the Arab League proposal), even Hamas, Iran, Europe and the non-aligned countries, Palestinians. That’s been true for over 30 years with a few exceptions. If we had time, we could go through the exceptions, but it’s basically been true. And he said nothing to indicate any change in that.

JF: Well, he said nothing yet, as we all know by now, he’s a very careful politician. He chooses his words very judiciously. The fact that he managed to please both secularists and Islamists in Turkey, I think, testifies to that. What do you think of the choice of Ankara as a place for him to deliver this speech?

NC: Well, let me just say a word on his ability to please all sides that he’s notorious for that. Last summer I think it was in July, he visited Israel. And there were statements by various people he visited, like Shimon Peres, who’s regarded as a dove(whatever that means), said, oh, he was very happy, Obama agreed with him about everything. And Binyamin Netanyahu, who is regarded as a hawk, said oh, delighted we had a great conversation, he agreed with him about everything.
And one of the Israel’s leading correspondents, Aluf Ben, wrote in an article in a main paper saying well, yeah, that’s Obama: he talks to you in such a way that he’s friendly and outgoing, he makes you think he agrees with you. But these two people are at swords points in every way. He couldn’t have agreed with both of them. It’s just that he made them feel that way.

Yeah, that’s pretty much what the campaign has been and his presentation has been. Why he made it in Ankara? Well, Ankara[sic] is a critical country from the point of view of US strategy. It’s been a major ally since the Second World War. In fact it’s part of the sometimes what’s called “peripheral system” that the United States has set up to control Middle East oil resources. Its major US military bases are in eastern Turkey. It’s a Muslim country but basically secular and has had a close alliance with Israel since 1958. It’s a part of the Israel-Turkey-Saudi-Iranian-(before the Shah fell)-alliance, basically aimed at controlling the region. It did have a serious falling-out with the United States in 2003.

JF: Because they refused to allow a path through the country to Iraq.

NC: That’s right. I mean that Turkey was very, bitterly condemned in 2003 as we recall, because the Turkish government followed the will of 95% of the population.

(Break)