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Chomsky: Classified Documents
Blog Post, July, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
The scheduled release of declassified documents in the official State Department history is 30 years. In practice it is a bit longer, about 35 years or so usually. Of course, not everything is declassified. Sometimes it turns out on independent ...
Chomsky: The Reagan Era
Znet Article, June, 11 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
With regard to the political system, the Reagan era represents a significant advance in capitalist democracy. For eight years, the U.S. government functioned vir...
Chomsky: Interview with Noam Chomsky
Znet Article, June, 11 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Oldenburg: In one chapter of your book Understanding Power - recently published in Germany under the title Eine Anatomie der Macht - you describe an interview situation in Canada. The interviewer got angry, cause you started criticizing Cana...
Chomsky: India Today
Blog Post, June, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
It's important to bear in mind that there are two quite different Indias. There is the high tech India in Hyderabad, which Thomas Friedman raves about in his odes to "globalization" -- meaning, the neoliberal version of investor-rights-based int...
Chomsky: Turkey in the World
Blog Post, June, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Turkey's human rights record has been awful, though it has been improving, as commentators routinely point out. But that overlooks a rather important fact: Turkey's crimes against its own population, particularly Kurds, rely crucially on (1) massi...
Chomsky: The SU and the Arms Race
Blog Post, June, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Questioner: Given that the arms race was a disaster for the Soviet Union economically and of little advantage militarily, why did the USSR engage in it? What it did to them economically is exactly what Khrushchev predicted, and presumably what JF...
Chomsky: Iraq and Vietnam
Blog Post, June, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Personally, I don't see much useful analogy between Iraq and Vietnam. Vietnam was in a remote corner of the world that no one cared about very much, so the US could pound away at it, devastating four countries, with little international protest, ...
Chomsky: Saudi Puppet
Blog Post, June, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
It's often pointed out in the international relations literature that the notion "puppet" is not a simple one. Puppets can often influence the dominant power significantly. The Soviet satellites were certainly "puppets," if the term has any meanin...
Chomsky: The Reagan Phenomena
Blog Post, June, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
I believe this is the first such extravaganza in the US. ... There was something similar after the JFK assassination, but of course the assassination of a living president is quite different. I don't recall anything else remotely similar, perha...
Chomsky: Defeating Nazi...
Blog Post, June, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Questioner: The U.S. opposed and defeated the Nazis and the Communists. Doesn't this evidence U.S. humanitarianism for the rest of the world? The "history" assumed in this argument is so radically and uncontroversially false that it is hard even ...
Chomsky: Oil Prices
Blog Post, June, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Regarding the rising price of oil, the first point to remember is that the price of oil is not high by historical standards. I haven't seen an exact calculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if the real price per barrel is maybe half of what it w...
Chomsky: Trade?
Blog Post, June, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Questioner: In a debate I had with a capitalist once, he asserted that most US investment occurs in European and developed Asian countries, saying that that means that free trade is beneficial. Your reaction? He's right that most Foreign Direct I...
Chomsky: Rising Boats?
Blog Post, June, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Questioner: Frequently, when conservatives respond to allegations of inequality in capitalism, they say that "The boats are all rising, who cares if the tide carries some higher?" That is, if growth is occurring at some rate, capitalism's good. Wh...
Chomsky: Bush Lying?
Blog Post, June, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Did Bush lie on the reasons for 9-11 ("they hate our freedoms," etc.)? I think one has to be a bit cautious. Lying requires a certain competence: at least, it requires an understanding of the difference between truth and falsehood. When a 3-year...
Chomsky: Doctrines And Visions: Who Is To Run The World, And How?
Znet Article, June, 07 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
We have just passed the first anniversary of the President's declaration of victory in Iraq. I won't speak about what is happening on the ground. There is more than enough information about that, and we can draw our own conclusions. I will just me...
Chomsky: Humanitarian Interventions?
Blog Post, May, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
I won't run through the details regarding Somalia since you can find a lot in print, right at the time and later. Steve Shalom had a fine article about it at the time in Z; I wrote about it right away in Z too. More later, after other facts drib...
Chomsky: South Africa Style Sanctions Against Israel?
Blog Post, May, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
I think there are many reasons why the South African analogy does not apply to this case. One, commonly overlooked, is that sanctions against South Africa did not become a really significant issue with a major impact until after years of educati...
Chomsky: Transfer Real Sovereignty
Blog Post, May, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Occupying armies have responsibilities, not rights. Their primary responsibility is to withdraw as quickly and expeditiously as possible, in a manner determined by the occupied population. It follows that the orders issued by Proconsul Bremer are...
Chomsky: Rwanda and Abu Ghraib
Blog Post, May, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
The past month was the 10th anniversary of the massacres in Rwanda, and there was much soul-searching about our failure to do anything about them. So headlines read "To Say `Never Again' and Mean it; the 1994 Rwandan genocide should have taught us...
