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Chomsky: Policy Spectrum
Znet Article, August, 01 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
MIT Professor Noam Chomsky is one of the world's most perceptive social critics. I had the opportunity recently to ask him some questions concerning a range of subject matter. Professor Chomsky's latest book is Hegemony or Survival: America's ...
Chomsky: An Independent Iraq
Blog Post, July, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
For what it's worth, polls in Iraq reveal very considerable and apparently growing support for withdrawal of the US occupying army, apart from the Kurdish regions. That doesn't mean withdrawal tomorrow. No one is talking about that, and it isn't...
Chomsky: Peak Oil Theory
Blog Post, July, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
The basic theory is incontrovertible. The only questions have to do with timing and cost. ... The date can be pushed back much farther if more costly (or maybe some to-be-discovered improved) technology is used. As for the estimates of cost, by r...
Chomsky: Iran's Threat
Blog Post, July, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
The sharp increase in focus on Iran's alleged threat (nuclear weapons, connections to terror, etc.) is very clear. ... The same has been true with regard to Syria (including last December's "Syria Accountability Act" passed almost unanimously in ...
Chomsky: Invading Cuba
Blog Post, July, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Cuba was officially regarded as a security threat to the US until 1998, and when the Pentagon decided that maybe the US could survive a Cuban assault, the Clinton administration insisted that the threat must be defined as "negligible," but still r...
Chomsky: The Wall and Israel's Aims
Blog Post, July, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
If the goal were security, Israel would have built the fence a few km inside its borders. It could then be a mile high, patrolled on both sides by the IDF, mined with nuclear weapons, utterly impenetrable. Perfect security. The problem would be ...
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...
