[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Chomsky Interview - ZNet

[Alfred Kagan]

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>From: Tom_Childs at douglas.bc.ca
>Date: Fri, 05 Jul 2002 01:05:35 -0700
>Subject: Chomsky Interview - ZNet
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>www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=36&ItemID=2068
>
>Chomsky Interview
>by Dimitriadis Epaminondas
>July 03, 2002
>
>1. How far do you belive will the US sacrifice its basic civil liberties for
>a greater sense of security?
>
>It is doubtful that the current attack on civil liberties has much to do
>with security. In general, one can expect the state to use any pretext to
>extend its power and to impose obedience on the population; rights are won,
>not granted, and power will seek any opportunity to reduce them.
>
>The current incumbents in Washington are at an extreme of reactionary
>jingoism and contempt for democracy. The question we should ask, I think, is
>how far citizens will allow them to pursue their agendas.So far, they have
>been careful to target vulnerable populations, like immigrants, though the
>laws they have passed have much broader implications. My feeling is that
>popular commitment to the rights that have been won in hard struggle is too
>deep to allow the attack to proceed very far.
>
>2. How can we keep the balance between protecting safety, protecting civil
>liberties and protecting privacy?
>
>It is impossible to answer in the abstract. It is necessary to consider
>proposals case by case. As I mentioned, the measures proposed and sometimes
>implemented generally have only a limited relation to "protecting safety."
>Many of them probably harm safety. Take the bombing of Aghanistan, for
>example. Whatever one thinks about it, did it increase security? US
>intelligence doesn't think so. They recently reported that by scattering
>al-Qaeda and spawning new terrorist networks the bombing may have increased
>the threat of terror. Does that matter? Not really, as far as state planners
>are concerned. When Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia came to the US recently
>to urge the administration to pay more attention to the effect of his
>policies in the Arab world, he was told by high officials: "if he thought we
>were strong in Desert Storm, we're 10 times as strong today. This was to
>give him some idea what Afghanistan demonstrated about our capabilities." In
>brief: "follow orders, or you'll be pulverized." That's what the bombing of
>Afghanistan was about.
>
>3. The war against terrorism will have a lot more casualities, a lot more
>innocent casualities. Can this be justified?
>
>Again, the question cannot be answered in the abstract. But there are some
>criteria for answering it. One simple criterion is that if some action is
>legitimate for us, then it is legitimate for others. To take an example, if
>it is legitimate for the US to bomb Afghanistan because Washington suspects
>that the plot to carry out the 9-11 atrocities was hatched there (the FBI
>has recently conceded they still have only suspicions, no firm evidence),
>then a fortiori, it would have been legitimate for Nicaraguans (Cubans,
>Lebanese, and a long list of others) to bomb Washington because they know,
>not suspect, that it is the source of terrorist actrocities that far exceed
>even 9-11. Those who do not accept the latter conclusion -- that is, every
>sane person -- cannot accept the former one, unless they reject the most
>elementary moral principles, and thereby abandon any claim to speak of right
>and wrong, good and evil.
>
>The same criterion applies universally. It does not answer all questions,
>but does answer a great many of them. It is true that elementary moral
>principles such as this cannot be considered by the rich and powerful,
>because of the consequences that follow very quickly. Nevertheless, honest
>people should be willing to entertain them.
>
>4. Which is the impact of terrorism on the world and especially in the US?
>
>The impact of terrorism is enormous. To take just some recent examples,
>Central America was devastated by state-directed international terrorism in
>the 1980s, as was Haiti in the early 1990s. I've just returned from
>Colombia, the scene of the worst terrorist atrocities in the Western
>hemisphere in the past 10 years, now getting even worse. Even the State
>Department concedes that the overwhelming majority are attributable to the
>military and paramilitaries, which are so closely linked that Human Rights
>Watch, which has done some of the most detailed studies, calls the
>paramilitaries the "sixth division" of the Colombian army, in addition to
>the five official divisions. Political murders are running now at maybe 20 a
>day, more than 300,000 people are added every year to those displaced
>(mostly by terror), Colombia holds the world record for murder of trade
>unionists and journalists, though of course the victims as usual are mostly
>peasants. And so on. Shortly before, I visited Turkey, where some of the
>worst state terrorist atrocities of the 1990s took place in the Kurdish
>southeast, and the population now lives in a virtual dungeon. All of this is
>international terrorism, because of its crucial reliance throughout on
>massive US support, not only military but also ideological support: silence
>and apologetics. Because of the agent, it is not counted in the annals of
>terrorism. It is easy to continue.
>
>The term "terrorism" is used, standardly, to refer to the terrorism that
>THEY carry out against US, whoever "we" happen to be. Even the worst mass
>murderers -- the Nazis for example -- adopted this practice. I imagine the
>fascist Generals in Greece must have done the same.
>
>Since the rich and powerful set the terms for discussion, the term
>"terrorism" is restricted, in practice, to the terror that affects the US
>and its clients and allies. Keeping to that very narrow category of
>terrorism, the atrocities of 9-11 had an enormous impact on the West. Not
>because of the scale -- regrettably, that was not unusual -- but because of
>the choice of innocent victims. For hundreds of years, it has been the
>prerogative of Europe and its offshoots to carry out such acts against
>others, with virtual impunity. It had been understood for some time that
>with new technology, the industrial societies were likely to lose their
>virtual monopoly of violence, maintaining only an enormous preponderance. On
>9-11, that expectation was realized, though in a way that was completely
>unanticipated. Of course it is a great shock.
>
>The reaction was complex. Among intellectuals, it was mostly jingoist
>hysteria, but that is quite normal. Among the general population, reactions
>varied. For many people, it was a "wake-up call," which has led to
>considerable openness, concern, skepticism, and dissidence. These are
>healthy reactions, and though it is difficult to measure their scale, it is
>surely substantial.
>
>5. What is your opinion about the US long awaited policy statement on how to
>end the Middle east conflict?
>
>George Bush's planners constructed a series of demands that they know the
>Palestinians cannot conceivably meet. They demanded that under harsh and
>brutal military occupation, Palestine should become Sweden, learning the
>ways of democracy from Saudi Arabia and Egypt (that is what the words the
>President spoke imply). They should have free elections, in which they
>choose a candidate the US selects for them. If they fail these conditions,
>the US will continue to provide massive support for the terror conducted by
>the official "man of peace," Ariel Sharon, and the US will continue to bar
>the international consensus on a political settlement, as it has been doing
>for 25 years. If Palestinians were to meet US conditions, then they would be
>permitted to contemplate George Bush's "vision" of an eventual Palestinian
>state, somewhere: maybe in the Arabian desert, as House Majority Speaker
>Dick Armey recently proposed. By staring soulfully into the future with this
>noble vision, Bush approaches (from below) the moral level of the more
>extreme partisans of Apartheid 40 years ago. They not only had a "vision" of
>Black-run states, but actually implemented their vision, even providing them
>with some economic support.
>
>For Israel, Bush calls for a "freeze" on settlements -- with a wink of the
>eye. Everyone familiar with the topic knows that settlements can be "frozen"
>but nevertheless expand without any disruption, by virtue of a device called
>"natural growth."
>
>In short, the US will continue to carry forward the goal of the Oslo
>process: to establish a "permanent neocolonial dependency" for Palestinians
>(in the words of Prime Minister Barak's chief negotiator at Camp David two
>years ago, representing the position of the doves). The Middle East conflict
>is to be resolved by force, not diplomacy, in accord with this long-standing
>conception.
>
>6. Which is the impact of globalization on the world?
>
>The term "globalization" is used by power centers to refer to the specific
>form of international economic integration that has been instituted within
>the "neoliberal" framework of past several decades. The impact of this
>investor-rights version of globalization is reasonably clear. Virtually all
>macroeconomic indicators have declined worldwide: rate of growth of the
>economy, of productivity, of capital investment, even trade. There are
>exceptions: namely, the countries that did not follow the rules, like China.
>In general, the regions that followed the rules more religiously, like Latin
>America, had the worst records. In the US, contrary to many claims, the
>period was one of slow growth as compared to the preceding decades,
>furthermore highly skewed towards the most wealthy sectors of the
>population. The majority suffered stagnation or decline. Social indicators
>also declined fairly steadily in contrast to earlier years, when they
>tracked growth.
>
>In general, the impact was about as presumably intended. The process has
>been highly successful for those who designed it, not surprisingly: for
>those sectors called "the masters of the world" by the international
>business press, with only a touch of irony. For others, the impact has been
>mixed, often gloomy. But what happens to them is incidental: policies are
>not designed for their benefit.
>
>7. Do you have any advice on how to institute an effective
>anti-globalization program without the assistance of violence?
>
>"Anti-globalization" is a propaganda term devised by the advocates of a
>particular investor-rights version of international integration. No sane
>person is opposed to globalization, surely not the left or the workers
>movements, which were founded on the commitment to international
>solidarity -- that is, a form of globalization that is concerned with the
>rights and needs of people, not private capital. As for the role of
>violence, official "globalization" relies very heavily on it: that should be
>obvious without comment. But I see no reason why people-oriented
>globalization movements (called "anti-globalization" in the propaganda
>system) should do so; on the contrary, such tactics lack justification and
>undermine the goals of the movements. The right ways to proceed are those
>that have been used for centuries in popular struggles for peace, justice,
>and human rights. We all know what they are. There are no magic keys. They
>require patient education, organization, when possible and appropriate
>direct action -- as, for example, in the actions of the Landless Workers
>Movement in Brazil, one of the most important components of the
>international peoples-globalization movements. There are no general rules,
>only specific proposals depending on circumstances and goals. One highly
>promising expression of the mass popular movements supporting a
>human-oriented form of globalization is the World Social Forum that has met
>twice in Porto Alegre, Brazil, perhaps sowing the seeds of the first genuine
>International, one might hope.
>
>8. What do you think the political impact of US corporate, accounting
>scandals will be? Are you concerned about it?
>
>They will presumably lead to some retraction of the lunatic version of
>markets that have been imposed by extreme reactionaries in recent years.
>There is a serious impact for workers who have lost their jobs and pensions,
>and for many others, but wealth and power will mostly escape unscathed, even
>enriched, as has already happened for many of those in charge. I doubt that
>there will be a long-term impact beyond a return to some of the regulatory
>apparatus that has been dismantled, predictably leading to disaster, as in
>the past.
>
>9. What do you think about the formation of the Euro-army?
>
>Europe is under no serious military threat, so a Euro-army is unlikely to be
>involved in defense (though whatever the military does is called "defense,"
>typically). We should ask, then, what tasks will be assigned to it. In a
>world that is far less than perfect, one can think of some legitimate tasks.
>But those who have an eye on history will expect something different, and
>not very pleasant to contemplate. These consequences are, however, in the
>domain of choice, and given the at least partially democratic character of
>Western societies, the choices can lie in the hands of a concerned public,
>to no slight extent.


-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu