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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: 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...
Chomsky: The Occupation
Blog Post, May, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
The occupation of Iraq has been an astonishing failure. It should have been one of the easiest in history. The more serious correspondents there are well aware of that. Patrick Cockburn recently wrote that "It has been one of the most extraordi...
Chomsky: The Iraq Occupation
Blog Post, April, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Typically, military occupations are quite successful, even by the most horrendous conquerors. Take, say, Hitler's occupation of Western Europe and Russia's postwar occupation of Eastern Europe. In both cases, the countries were run by collaborato...
Chomsky: Iraq Controversy in Perspective
Blog Post, April, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
The whole front-page controversy is, in my opinion, not only diversionary but a real tribute to the success of indoctrination. There is a simple point that seems obvious to Iraqis, but is unmentionable here in the mainstream: the conquest of Iraq,...
Chomsky: Understanding March 29
Blog Post, March, 20 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
I spoke at a demo of about 20,000 people in Vancouver, very enthusiastic and engaged, and as far as I could tell, inspired to go on. Also to audiences of several thousands, which seemed the same. The pre-war demonstrations were without historical...
Chomsky: Mahajan's Addition
Blog Post, March, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
In his blog, linked from the ZNet blogs, Rahul Mahajan of Empire Notes writes: In Chomsky's latest post, he's responding to someone advancing the standard humanitarian/liberation argument for the war on Iraq. At one point, he says The invasion o...
Chomsky: Mideast Solutions
Blog Post, March, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
[This is the first question and answer in a lengthy interview conducted by Justin Podur and Stephen Shalom -- it will appear in the May issue of Z] 1. What do you see as the best solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict? It depends what time f...
Chomsky: The Invasion of Iraq
Blog Post, March, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
All opponents of the invasion of Iraq -- at least, all those who bothered to think the matter through -- took for granted that there would be beneficial effects, as is often the case with military interventions: the bombing of Pearl Harbor, for ex...
Chomsky: Monbiot's Concerns
Blog Post, March, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Monbiot radically misinterprets the Hippocratic principle, "First, do no harm." According to Monbiot's interpretation, a doctor violates the Hippocratic oath by giving someone an injection, because the puncture harms the skin. No one has ever in...
Chomsky: Electoral Realities
Blog Post, March, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
About half the population doesn't bother to vote. The voters are heavily skewed towards the wealthy and privileged, who tend to vote for the more reactionary of the two factions of the business party. That's of course not enough for the Republic...
Chomsky: Modalities of Withdrawal
Blog Post, March, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
On the modality of withdrawal, we should seek as best we can to determine the wishes of the Iraqi people. It's not easy to determine the opinions of people under military occupation, and though there are many western-run polls, they tend to evad...
Chomsky: Structural Adjustment
Blog Post, March, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
What can we do about it? Just about everything. The IMF is hardly more than a branch of the Treasury Department. Economist Jagdish Bhagwati, no radical, refers to the IMF- Treasury-Wall St complex that is a core part of de facto world governmen...
Chomsky: Bush's Economics
Blog Post, March, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
Whether Bush believes, or even understands, the economic policies of his administration I have no idea, and it really doesn't matter much. What's important are the policies, not whether Bush understands what his handlers instruct him to say. The...
Chomsky: Welcome
Blog Post, March, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
This blog will include brief comments on diverse topics of concern in our time. They will sometimes come from the ZNet Sustainer Forum System where Noam interacts through a forum of his own, sometimes from direct submissions, sometimes culled from...
Chomsky: Welcome
Blog Post, March, 10 2004
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's ZSpace page
This blog will include brief comments on diverse topics of concern in our time. They will sometimes come from the ZNet Sustainer Forum System where Noam interacts through a forum of his own, sometimes from direct submissions, sometimes culled from...
