Chomsky. Transcript. BUSchoolOfLaw. ModernDayAmericanImperialismMiddleEastAndBeyond. 24apr2008.

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1.     Hello, everybody and welcome. My name is LianGului[?], and I'm the president ofBostonUniversityAntiWarCoalition. We are coalition formed as an alliance of students, united and support to end two wars and nonviolent methods of socialchange. Our main purpose is to raise awarenss through-Education and to advocate and developt legislative agenda that promotes our established goals. I'd like to start off the the evening by sharing some thoughts with you. It is no secret that we live in extremelycomplex world, and everyday, societie spawns new issues that become increasingly difficult to solve. OurTechnologybooms and collective intelligence expanse. Limits are replaced with innovations to the lights of which our parents could never dreamed. Progress has led to intricately run, consumberbased, massproductionsociety that [is] showing no sign of slowing down. Yet, in the currency of affairs, you do not have to look far to see our economic slowdown, increasing unemployment, or lacklustre medicalcare. Incarcerationrate in theUnitedStates is among the highest in the world, while energycrisis are skyrocketing, and our ignorance of the looming climatecrisis continues. And of course, there's a quagmire inIraq, which everybody seems to recognise as a blunder, but nobody can seem to find a way out of. Information aboutIraq has been stale from the beginning. The mainstreamMedia has effectively blocks out gruesome pictures of war and many action ofAntiWarMovement, while simutaneously misdirecting the public of loftyRhetoric and distracting them with breaking stories aboutBritneySpears. There are over fourthousanddeaths in american troops. Estimates anywhere eightyhousands to onemillion deceased iraqis, majority of them, civilians. With this war, ourGovernment has carried out an assault on civil liberties from legalising and justifying torture innocent people to openly spying on our citizens. While all along, the militaryindustrialcomplex is turning our profit in many different arenea, arenas. TopGovernmentofficials personally profit fromGovernmentcontracts that serve the private companies, such as the prime example ofVicePresidentCheney's **. This is all topped off with ["]mind numbing["] redundancies of presidential campaigns, complete  withMediadistration, personal attacks, and platforms behalf of our citizens [?],  feeling to be disfranchised. Considering that this country was founded upon the concept of (for the people, by the people), this dismay at public interest inUSPolicies has drastically followed over time, while detrimental effects of these policies to rest of the world exponetially grown. How many more transgressions will our unchecked ourGovernment commit before people get mad? What does it take for those who not awake to have urgency to our distress finally see it. And what does it for those who are conscious of our ills  to feel obliged to fix it? Some argue that it takes tragedy, yet more tragedy every page of every sort of newspaper, people are desensitised to it. The lack of outrage at the war inIraq and our burgeoning domestic issues, mostnotably from our generation, is due to viewing this issue seen as distraction. Society desperatelyneeds to be slashed from ** backseat of americanPolitics. Our methods ofGovernment are puntuated with rudimental grievances that are politicans are attempt[ing] to mend with bandaids. Being antiwar means a lot more than just an desire to end this war. What we are really fighting is [Unclear. Fuckit.]. That is why undeniable parallels between the wars inIraq and Vietnam could be drawn and why socialmovements in[19]60s are used as a paradigm for today's socialrevolution, and that is why hate has been perpetuated instead of unqualified love. Great enlightenment of our generation will come, but it will not look like it did in[19]60s. We, the current students of america are face with a difficult task to run this place in the future. Some say that there are nothing else we can do to fix it, that powers that be are too overwhelming to counter, that public dissent is a thing of the past. Here, I'd like to invokeMargaretMeade, who once said, "Don't ever tell me that a small group of thoughtful people can't change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." We must work within the confines of the structures of society for any end to simply a game of powerPolitics and social status that, while widely manipulated,  can be utilised to put someone in good intention into power. Yet this ultraconcentrated power undeniably is  tainting, and real challenge lies in combatting the culture of Greed, bigotry, ignorance, and intolerance that permeates theUnitedStates. Because these places are not identified by our increasingly unbalancedMedia, we turn to unsung heroes who have been voice of dissent, the forefront of innovatedPhilosophy, and was bold enough to questionReality. I'll never forget the day I first discoveredNoamChomsky. I had inkling that there was  something ["]off["] about our society that I have been living in foreightteenyears, especially concerning the war I've gone over [?] inIraq. Feeling overwhelmed and attempting to locate some facts, I was sifting throughMedia and I came across an article ProfessorChomsky wrote in december2002 and my mine was cracked wide open. Part of the article entitledModestProposal, illustrating persistent pattern of policies that have been current for decades and shows no signs of changing. It was as if I've been staring stragith at something for years, yet I was actually seeing it for thefirsttime. Mr.Chomsky's work is like precisionlaser, with crumbling down cumbersomeIdeology, indoctrinated into social psyche, exposing and contaminating their flawed underbellies. A true renegade, ProfessorChomsky has remained one of the mostcelebrated and highlydemanded voices of revolution since he first took a stance in the[19]60s. Although relentlessly sought after by internationalMediasources, he's often criticised at home in theUS. Most widely recognised for his groundbreaking contributions in the field ofLinguistics, undergrad[uate]s cannot take a course in evolutionaryPsychology, ComputerScience, or internationalPolitics without encoutering the works ofProfessorChomsky. His ?? intellect is conditioned with socialconsciousness that gives purpose and depth to his work. His flame has been igniting minds and hearts for decades, especially at his beloved school ofMIT, where he has taught for the pastfiftythreeyears. His wisdom has adorned with experience and expressed with clarity. Above all else, his individuality is marked by his unique positions, for he has never allowed anyone to ["]put him in a box["]. Refusing to reside along the established plane of partyPolitics, he's added dimension to the otherwise horizontal political spectrum. He has taught to dispel preconceived notions, ignore propagandistic headlines, ["]tune out["] soundbites, fight your selfserving tendencies, instead of sharpening difference between one and another, recognise commonality of men and potential for peace and Justice that exists within each being. He has taught to question everything aboutReality, to criticise and debate those in power, to find morehuman response to the challenges posed by globalisation. His ability to think in different modes has allowed for lifechanging revelation and has inspired my thinking, and it is my hope that you all will be inspired as well. To the future that is at stake is our own, I believe that with intelligent reasoning and original thought, the answers to all these questions can be discovered. So, without further ado, I'm honoured to introduced to you, the brilliant author, and powerlecturer, multitalented, adoring father and adoring husband, he's received honorary degrees from top twodozens universities on the planet. He has been called by theNewYorkTimes, Arguably, themostimportant intellectual alive, and he's among the eight mostcited scholars inHistory. I can go on for hours for all his credentials literally. Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only, ProfessorNoamChomsky. Sound of applaud.

2.     I don't anticipate ["]living up["] to that, but I'll try. Sound of laughter. I've been asked to talk about modernday americanImperialism. That's a rather challenging task. In fact, talking about americanImperialism is rather like talking about triangulartriangles. Sound of laughter. TheUnitedStates is the one country that exists, as far as I know, and ever has, that was founded as anEmpire explicitly. According to theFoundingFathers, when the country was founded, it was an "nascentEmpire." That's GeorgeWashington. Modernday americanImperialism is just a later phase of a process that has continued from theveryfirstmoment without a break, going in a verysteady line. So, we are looking at one phase in a process that was initiated when the country was founded and has never changed. The model for theFoundingFathers that they borrowed fromBritain was theRomanEmpire. They wanted to emulate it. I'll talk about that a little. Even before theRevolution, these notions were very much alive. BenjaminFranklin, twentyfiveyearsbefore theRevolution, complained that the british were imposing limits on the expansion of the colonies. He objected to this, borrowing fromMachiavelli. He admonished theBritish, I'm quoting him, "A prince that acquires new territories and removes the natives to give his people room will be remembered as the father of the nation." And GeorgeWashington agreed. He wanted to be the father of the nation. His view was that "the gradual extension of our settlement will as certainly cause the savage as the wolf to retire, both being beasts of prey, though they differ in shape." I'll skip some contemporary analogs that you can think of. ThomasJefferson, themostforthcoming of theFoundingFathers, said, "We shall drive them," the savages, "We shall drive them with the beasts of the forests into the stony mountains, and the country will ultimately be free of blot or mixture", meaning red or black. It wasn't quite achieved, but that was the goal. Furthermore, Jefferson went on, "Our new nation will be the nest from which America, north and south, is to be peopled," displacing not only the redmen here, but the latinspeaking population to the south and anyone else who happened to be around. There was a deterrent to those glorious aims, mainly Britain. Britain was themostpowerful military force in the world at the time, and it did prevent the steps that theFoundingFathers attempted to take. In particular, it blocked the invasion ofCanada. Thefirst attempted invasion ofCanada was before theRevolution, and there were several others later, but it was always blocked by british force, which is why Canada exists. TheUnitedStates did not actually recognise Canada's existence until after theFirstWorldWar. Another goal that was blocked by british force was Cuba. Again, theFoundingFathers regarded the taking over ofCuba as essential to the survival of the nascentEmpire. But the british fleet was in the way, and they were too powerful, just as the russians blockedJohnFKennedy'sinvasion. However, they understood that, sooner or later, it would come. The great grand strategist JohnQuincyAdams, the sort of intellectual father ofManifestDestiny, pointed out in the1820s that we just have to wait. He said that Cuba will sooner or later fall into our hands by theLaws of politicalGravitation, just as an apple falls from the tree. What he meant is that over time theUnitedStates would become morepowerful, Britain would become weaker, and the deterrent would be overcome, which, in fact, finally happened. And we should not ignore these early events. They are verymuch related to currentHistory. That's made very clear by scholarship on current affairs. A major scholarly work on theBushDoctrine, GeorgeWBushDoctrine, the preemptive war doctrine, is byJohnLewisGaddis, themostrespected historian of theColdWarperiod. It's on the roots of theBushDoctrine, and he traces it right back toJohnQuincyAdams, who is his hero, the great grand strategist. In particular, to AndrewJackson'sinvasion ofFlorida, which conqueredFlorida from the spanish. That was strongly approved by then SecretaryOfState, Adams, in a famous Statepaper in which he advocated the principle of preemptive war on the basis of the thesis that "expansion is the path to security", as Gaddis puts it. So, if we want to be secure, after all, we want to defend ourselves, we have to expand. At that time, expand intoFlorida. We were being threatened by what were called runawayslaves and lawless indians, who were in the way. They were threatening us by their existence, by barring our expansion. And, as Gaddis points out, there's a straightline from that to George[Walker]Bush. And now, "expansion is the path to security" means, We take over the world, we take over space, we take over the galaxy. There's no limit to how much you have to expand to guarantee security, and that's been the principle from the beginning. Gaddis is a good historian, and he cites the right sources on the socalled SeminoleWar, Jackson'sconquest ofFlorida. But he doesn't bother tell us what the sources say, and it's worth looking at what they say. They describe it as a war of murder and plunder and extermination, driving out the indigenous population. There were pretexts made, but they were so flimsy that nobody paid much attention to them. It was also thefirst executivewar in violation of theConstitutions, setting a precedent which has been followed ever since. There was no congressional authorisation. It's all. Adams lied ["]through his teeth["] toCongress. It's all veryfamiliar. So Gaddis is correct. It is the model for theBushDoctrine. He approves of both of them, but that's a Moraljudgement. But his analysis is correct. Yes, what is happening now traces right back to the wars of extermination and plunder and murder and lying and deceit, and so on. The executivewars that JohnQuincyAdams was the great spokesman for. Adams, incidentally, later in his life, regretted this. After his own contributions were well in the past, he condemned theMexicanWar as an executivewar and a terrible precedent. It wasn't a precedent, he'd established the precedent. And he also expressed remorse over what he called "that hapless race of Native Americans which we are exterminating with such merciless and perfidious cruelty." They knew what they were doing. ContemporaryHistory likes to purify it, but, if you read the descriptions and the observations by the people involved, they knew exactly what they were doing. [Of course.] He expressed regret for it, but, of couse, his own role was long past. Well, it's commonly argued that americanImperialism began in1898. That's when theUS did finally succeed in conqueringCuba, what's called in theHistorybooks liberatingCuba, namely intervening in order to preventCuba from liberating itself fromSpain, and turning it into a virtual colony as it remained until1959, setting off hysteria in theUnitedStates which hasn't ended yet. Also, conquering and taking overHawaii, which was stolen by force and guile from its population. PuertoRico, another colony. Soon, moving to the philippines and liberating the philippines. Also, ["]liberating["] a couple of hundred thousand souls to heaven in the process. And again, the reverberations of that extend right to the present. Ample Stateterror, and the one corner ofAsia that hasn't undergone high development, something we're not supposed to notice. But the belief that the imperial thrust started in1898 is an example of what historians ofEmpire call thesaltwaterfallacy, the belief that you have anEmpire if you cross saltwater [ocean]. In fact, if theMississippiRiver were as wide as theIrishSea, the imperial thrust would have started much earlier. But that's an irrelevance. Expanding over settled territory is no different from expanding over the invariablywaters. So, what happened in1898 was just an extension of the process that began when the nascentEmpire, as it saw itself, was formed in its first moments. The extension to beyond was. Again, a lot of this starts inNewEngland withNewEnglandmerchants who wanted to, were veryeager to take over thePacifictrade, the fabulous markets ofChina, which were always in their minds, which meant conquering the northwest so you can control the ports, and so on, meant kicking the british out and others out, and so on. It went on from right here. The goal, as WilliamSeward, who was SecretaryOfState in the1860s, pointed out, a central figure in americanImperialism, was that we have to gain command of theEmpire of the seas. We conquer the continent. Settle. Take it over. TheMonroeDoctrine was a declaration that we'll take it over. Everybody else keep out. And the process of doing so continued through thenineteenthcentury and beyond until today. But now, we have to have command of the seas. And that meant when the time was ["]ripe["], seventyyearslater, when the apple started to fall from the tree, given relative power, proceeding overseas to the overseasEmpire. But it's basically no different than [from] the earlier steps. The leading philosophical imperialist, BrooksAdams, he pointed out that, this is 1885, we were just on the verge of moving overseas extensively, that "allAsia must be reduced to our economic system, thePacific must be turned into an inland sea", just like theCaribbean had been, and "there's no reason," he said, "why theUnitedStates should not become a greater seat of wealth and power than ever was England, Rome, or Constantinople." Well again, there was a deterrent. The european powers wanted a piece of ["]the action["] in eastAsia, and Japan, by then, was becoming a formidable force. So, it was necessary to explore more complex modes of gaining command of turning thePacific into an inland sea and going on. And that was lucidly explained byWoodrowWilson, who is one of themost-brutal and -vicious interventionists in americanHistory. The probable [probably] permanent destruction ofHaiti is one of his many accomplishments. Those of you who study internationalrelationstheory or read about it know that there is a notion of WilsonianIdealism. The fact that that notion can exist is a veryinteresting commentary on our intellectual culture and scholarly culture if you look at his actual actions. Fine [?] words are easy enough. But these are some of his fine [?] words which he was smart enough not to put into print. He just wrote them for himself. He said, "Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused." That's 1907. There's a current version of that, a crude version byThomasFriedman, who says that "McDonalds cannot flourish without McDonnellDouglas", meaning theUSAirForce. Well, that's a crude version ofWilson'spoint. You've got to batter down the doors by force and threat, and no corner of the world must be left unused, no useful corner. There was a ["]watershed["] in this process at the time of theSecondWorldWar. At the time of theSecondWorldWar, theUS already had by far thelargestEconomy in the world and had for a long time, but it wasn't a major ["]player["] in worldaffairs. Britain was the leading ["]player["], France second, theUnitedStates lagging. It controlled the hemisphere and had made forays into thePacific, but it was not the leading ["]player["]. However, during the war, theUSplanners understood that the war was going to end with theUS the world dominant power. However, it turned out other competitors were going to destroy themselves and each other, and theUS would be left alone with incomparable security. In fact, theUS gained enormously from the war. Industrial production virtually quadrupled. The war ended theDepression. TheNewDealmeasures hadn't done so. At the end of the war, theUS had literally half of the world'swealth, and competitors were either damaged or destroyed, and incomparable security. It controlled the western hemisphere. It controlled both oceans. It controlled the opposite side of both oceans. There's nothing remotely like it inHistory. And during the war, planners understood that something like that was going to turn out. It was obvious from the nature of the war. From1939to1945, there were high level meetings, regular meetings, of theStateDepartment, theStateDepartmentplanners, and theCouncilOfForeignRelations, the sort of main external nongovernmental input intoForeignPolicy, and they laid careful plans for the world that they expected to emerge. It was a world, they said, in which theUnitedStates will "hold unquestioned power and will ensure the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty byStates that might interfere with US global designs." Incidentally, I'm not quotingNeoCons. I'm quoting theRooseveltadministration, the peak of americanLiberalism. They called for what they called "an integrated policy to achieve military and economic supremacy" for theUnitedStates and bar any exercise of sovereignty by anyone who would interfere with it. And they would do this in a region that they called the grand area. Well, in the early part of the war, 1939to1943, the grand area was defined as the westernhemisphere routinely, theformerBritishEmpire, which theUS would take over, and theFarEast. That would be the grand area. They assumed, at the time, that there would be a german led world, the rest. So there would be a nongerman world, that's us, and a german world. As the russians gradually ["]ground down["] theNaziArmies after1942, it became prettyclear that there wouldn't be a german world. So, the grand area was expanded to be as much of the world as could be controlled, limitless. That's simply pursuing the old position that expansion is the path to security for the nascentEmpire-of1736. These policies were laid down during the war, but then they were implemented right after the war. In fact, now that we have available in the declassified record, theplanningdocuments of thelate1940s, it turns out they're, not verysurprisingly, verysimilar to the wartimeplanning. One of the leading figures was GeorgeKennan, who was the head of theStateDepartment policyplanningstaff. He wrote one of his many important papers in1948, PPS23 if you want to look it up, in which he noted that theUnitedStates has half the world's wealth but only sixpercent of its population, and our primary goal inForeignPolicy must be, as he put it, to "maintain this disparity." In order to do so, we must put aside all "vague and idealistic slogans about-Democracy and -HumanRights." Those are for public propaganda, colleges, and so on. Sound of laughter. But we must put those aside and keep to straight powerconcepts. There's going to be no other way to maintain the disparity. Then, in the same paper and elsewhere, he and his staff went through the world and assigned to each part of the world what would be what they called its function in the global system in which theUS would have unchallenged power, unquestioned power. So, latinAmerica and theMiddleEast. TheMiddleEast obviously would provide the energyresources that we would control, gradually pushing out Britain, throwing out [expelling]France immediately and pushing out Britain slowly over the years and turning it into a junior partner, as theBritishForeignOffice ruefully described their role at that time. LatinAmerica, we simply control. It's "our little region over here, which has never bothered anyone," as SecretaryOfWar, Stimson said while theUS was violating the principles. It was establishing by setting up a regional organisation in violation of theUNCharter, and so on. So, latinAmerica we keep. TheMiddleEast we control. SoutheastAsia would be, its function was to provide resources and raw materials to the former colonial powers. Meanwhile, we would purchase them, too. That would send dollars there, which the colonial powers would take, not the population. And they could use those to, Britain, France, theNetherlands could use the dollars to purchaseUSmanufactures. It's called a triangular trading arrangement, which would allow. TheUS had the only really functioning industrial system in the world and had a huge excess of manufacturing products, and there was what was called a dollar gap. The countries we wanted to sell it to didn't have dollars. That's Europe, basically. So we had to provide them with dollars, and the rold of, the function of southeastAsia was to play a role in that. Hence, the support for frenchColonialism in recapturing its indochinese colony, and so on. There were various variations, but that's the basic story. And so, Kennan went through the world and assigned them a function each part. When he got to Africa, he decided that theUnitedStates really didn't have much interest inAfrica at that time, and therefore we should hand it over to the europeans to "exploit", that's his word, to "exploit for their reconstruction." He indicated that it would also give them a kind of a psychological ["]lift["] after the damage of the war and while we were taking over all of their domains. Well, you can imagine a different relationship betweenEuropeAndAfrica in the light ofHistory, but that couldn't even be considered. I mean, it was like too outlandish to discuss it and still is. So Africa was to be exploited byEurope for its reconstruction with consequences we know. TheUS has since gotten into ["]the act["]. Well, that was Kennan. He was removed from office soon after because he was considered toosofthearted. Sound of laughter. Not ["]up to["] dealing with this harsh world. And he was replaced with real tough guys. DeanAcheson, PaulNitze, and others. There's no time to go through it, but, if you want anEducation on hysterical jingoistFanaticism, you really should read their documents. If you study these issues, you've heard of at least NSC68, which is discussed by everyone, but itsRhetoric is omitted, and you have to look at itsRhetoric to see what's going on in these ["]crazed["] heads of the great thinkers. And this is true of the whole NationalSecurityCouncilculture. There's a wonderful book on it that came out a couple of years ago byJamesPeck, a sinologist, calledWashington'sChina. It's thefirst scholarly book to go through the wholeNationalSecurityculture, and it's like reading a collection of mad men. [I agree.] But it's verymuchworth studying, muchmoreworth studying than most of what people study in their courses on these issues. Well, anyway, what do we do about latinAmerica? The one, nobody has, our domain. Well, Kennan was prettyexplicit about that, too. He said, in latinAmerica, we should prefer policeStates. The reason is that, as he said, "harsh Governmentmeasures of repression should cause no qualms as long as the results are on balance favourable to our interests, in particular, as long as we guarantee the protection of our resources." Our resources happen to be somewhere else, but that's a historical accident. They're our resources, and we have to protect them, and if you have to do it by the mailed [?] fist, okay, that's the way you do it. As I said, he was removed. There is a long, ugly History, there's no time to go through it, but theColdWarHistory essentially follows this pattern. TheColdWar was a kind of a tacit compact between the superpower and the smaller power, theUnitedStates and Russia. The compact was that theUnitedStates would be free to carry out violence and terror and atrocities limitless in its own domains, and the russians would be able to run their own ["]dungeon["] without too much USinterference. So theColdWar, in fact, was a war of theUnitedStates against theThirdWorld, and ofRussia against its much smaller domains in easternEurope. And the events of theColdWar illustrate that. Each great power used the other's threats as a pretext for repression and violence and destruction, theUnitedStates way more thanRussia if you look at the record, reflecting their relative power. But that's essentially the picture. You can see the. In fact, for theUnitedStates, theColdWar was basically a war against independentNationalism in theThirdWorld. What was called radicalNationalism. Radical means, Doesn't follow orders. So, there's this constant struggle against radicalNationalism, and in particular, the leading thesis all the way through is that even thesmallestplace, if it becomes independent, is a serious danger. It's what HenryKissinger called a virus that might infect others. Like, even a tiny place, Grenada or something. If it has successful independent development, others might get the idea that we can follow, the rot will spread, as Acheson put it. So you've got to ["]stamp it out["] right at the source. It's not a novel idea. Any mafiadon will explain it to you. The godfather does not tolerate it when some small storekeeper doesn't pay protectionmoney. Not that he needs the money. But it's a bad idea. Others might get [formulate] the idea. And in particular, small, weak countries have to be. We have to crush them with particular violence, because there it's easy. Nobody can stop you, and others get the point. That's a large part of international affairs right to the present. Well, to learn about what theColdWar was all about, the obvious place to look is what happened when it ended, okay? So, november1989, theBerlinWall fell, theSovietUnion soon collapsed. So, what did theUnitedStates do? How did it react? I mean, the pretext for everything that had happened in the past was, you know, the russian monster, "the monolithic and ruthless conspiracy attempting to take over the world", as JohnFKennedy called it. Well, now the monolithic and ruthless conspiracy was gone, so what do we do? Well, it turns out what we do is exactly the same thing, but with different pretexts. And that was made clear instantly. A couple of weeks after theBerlinWall fell, theUnitedStates invadedPanama, killing unknown numbers of people. We don't count our victims. According to panamanianHumanRightsgroups, maybe a couple of thousand people, bombing the slum, ElChorilloslum. The panamanians take it seriously. In fact, lastdecember, they once again declared a national day of mourning about the, referring to the invasion, but I don't think it even made the newspapers here. I mean, when you crush ants in your path, you don't pay much attention to their, what they may have to say about it. But they invadedPanama and had to veto some SecurityCouncilResolutions. The point of the invasion was to kidnap a kind of a minor thug, No-rie-ga, who was kidnapped, brought [to] theUnitedStates, tried, sentenced, long sentence. Sentenced for crimes that were real, but he had committed them when he was on theCIApayroll almost without exception, a small footnote. But, for that, we had to invadePanama and kill however many people it was, a couple of thousand, probably, and install aGovernment of bankers and narcotraffickers, and drugtrafficking ["]shot up["], and so on. But it was a successful invasion and applauded here. It was kind of a footnote toHistory. This kind of thing theUS does in its domains all the time, but it was a little different. For one thing, the pretexts were different. This time, it wasn't that we were defending ourselves against the russians. It was we were defending ourselves against the hispanic narcotraffickers who were going to come and shoot our kids and destroy the country, and so on. In fact, Noriega was a minor narcotrafficker who had mostly been working for theCIA, but he became unacceptable when he started ["]dragging his feet["] on following orders., like he didn't participate enthusiastically enough in theUSterroristwar againstNicaragua, and so on. So he obviously had to ["]go["]. Well, one difference was that it had different pretexts. Another was that theUnitedStates was much freer to act. That was pointed out right away byElliotAbrams, who is now back in office runningMiddleEastaffairs. He pointed out right away that the invasion of Panama was different from what had preceded, because we didn't have to be concerned about the russians stirring up [starting] trouble somewhere in the world. We were free to use force without impediment. And it was a correct observation. It goes on right until today. Many of the violent acts that theUS has carried out since then, it would have hesitated seriously about if there was a deterrent. But now, there are no deterrents anymore, so you do what you like. That was a change. Again, if you want to learn more about what theColdWar was about, have a look at the documents that were produced right afterwards. This is GeorgeBushTheFirst [GeorgeHerbertWalkerBush]. Right after the, early1990, he gave his new budgetrequest. There was a new NationalSecurityStrategy, and they described what thepostColdWarworld would be. Turns out, exactly as before. We still have to have a huge, massive military force, and we have to maintain what they called theDefenseIndustrialBase. That's a euphemism for highTech.industry. For the public and so on, you talk about our belief in-Freetrade and -Freeenterprise, and so on, but anyone who knows anything about theUSEconomy knows it's based extensively on theStatesector. HighTech.industry is verylargely within theStatesector, and it's typically under a Pentagoncover as long as it's Electronicsbased. And that's called theDefenseIndustrialBase. So we have to maintain the huge public subsidy to highTech.industry called theDefenseIndustrialBase. We have to have a massive military. But it has different targets. As they pointed out, before this, we were aiming at a weapons rich target, namely, Russia. Now we are aiming at a target rich region, namely, theThirdWorld. There aren't any weapons, but there are a lot of rich targets there. So, that's what we need the major military forces for. In fact, that's pretty much what it was in the past, too, but now it's openly conceded. We have to. With regard to theMiddleEast specifically, we have to maintain interventionforces directed at theMiddleEast. And then comes this interesting comment. We need the same interventionforces directed at theMiddleEast where the "problems that we faced could not have been laid at theKremlin'sdoor.", okay? So, sorry folks, we've been lying to you for the lastfiftyyears claiming we're defending ourselves against the russians. But now that the russians aren't there, it turns out the problems couldn't have been laid at theKremlin'sdoor, which is correct. The problems were independentNationalism and they continue to be so. But now, it's said open and clear, because the pretext is gone. We have to also be concerned now about what they call the technological sophistication of theThirdWorldpowers. It's a reallyoverwhelming threat. Kind of like HillaryClinton a year or two ago saying that, If Iran attacksIsrael with nuclear weapons, we'll obliterateIran. The chance of(Iran attackingIsrael) with nuclearweapons is somewhere below an asteroid hittingIsrael. Sound of laughter. But it doesn't matter. It's a nice ["]throwaway line["]. But that's the kind of threat we have to worry about. It's kind of like RonaldReagan in1985 strapping on his cowboyboots and declaring a state of national emergency, because of the threat posed to the national security of theUnitedStates by theGovernment ofNicaragua, which was only twodaysaway fromHarlingenTX. So we really had to tremble in terror. Well, that's standard. It had to increase after the end of theColdWar with the main pretexts gone, and it has. This is all consistent with a conception of aggression that has developed through the period and right up to today. It's verylively today. Aggression has a meaning, but that meaning doesn't apply to us. By  USleaders, aggression means resistance. So, anyone who resists theUnitedStates is guilty of aggression. And that makes sense if we own the world. So any active resistance is aggression against us. So when theUS invaded southVietnam in the-early1960s underKennedy, Kennedy said we were defending ourselves from what he called the assault from within. The leading liberal light,  AdlaiStevenson described it as indir, internal aggression. So, internal aggression by south vietnamese against us, and of course, we were there by right, because we own the world. And that continues right to the present, so we'll skip a lot of time, because nothing much changed, and come right up till today. So the big problem in theMiddleEast now, if you read theWashingtonPost a couple of days ago, is "the growing aggressiveness ofIran." That's what's causing the problems in theMiddleEast. Well, you know, aggression has a meaning. It means sending your armed forces into the territory of some otherState. The latest case of iranian aggression is a couple of centuries ago, unless we count iranian aggression carried out under theShah, which we approved of. A tyrant who[m] we imposed conquered a couple of Arabislands, but that was okay. But, nevertheless, we have to defend ourselves against iranian aggression inIraq, inLebanon, and inGaza, where Iran is carrying out aggression, meaning people there are doing things we don't like. And Russia isn't around, so we'll blame it onIran. That's aggression. And there's even a lot of discussion about aggression insideIraq carried out by the renegade cleric Muq-tada-Al-Sadr. If you read the press, you might get the idea that Muq-tada's first name is renegade. There's hardly a phrase, reference to him that doesn't talk about "the renegade Muqtada al-Sadr." Why is he a renegade? Well, he opposes theUSinvasion of his country. Okay, that makes him a renegade or a radical obviously. And that's routine. Nobody questions that. It's kind of a reflexive description. CondoleezzaRice was asked a little while ago in an TVinterview, How could we end the war inIraq? She said there's a veryeasy way to end the war, it's quite obvious: "Stop the flow of arms to foreign fighters. Stop the flow of foreign fighters across the border." That'll end the war inIraq. If somebody was looking at this who hadn't been adequately brainwashed by a good westernEducation, they would collapse in ridicule. I mean, yes, there are foreign fighters inIraq and plenty of foreign arms in there, namely from the country that invadedIraq. Sound of laughter. But they're not foreign, remember? They're indigenous, because we're indigenous everywhere. That follows from owning the world, going back to the nascentEmpire. It spreads. So we're not foreign fighters there or anywhere else. We're indigenous, and it's the foreign fighters who have to be stopped. And actually, the concept of aggression has expanded recently. Couple of. Back in january, you may have seen there was an important statement by five former NATOcommanders which was reported. The big issue was that they had said we have to base our military posture on possession of nuclearweapons. But it's nothing new. It's always been true. It was strongly advocated by theClintonadministration in much stronger terms, in fact. But that was interesting. However, one thing that was new was their expansion of the concept [of] (acts of war). They said an act of war against which we must defend ourselves by the use of nuclearweapons, if necessary, is using weapons of finance. Okay, so, if a country uses weapons of finance against us, that's an act of war, and we have to be ready to use nuclear weapons if necessary. Well, two months after, in latemarch, theUnitedStatesTreasuryDepartment warned the world's financial institutions against any dealing with Iran'sStateowned banks. Now, those warnings have ["]teeth["] thanks to thePatriotAct. A little noticed element of thePatriotAct permits theUnitedStates to bar from (access to theUnitedStatesfinancialsystem) any country that violates its orders, meaning that, if a german or chinese or other bank tries to have dealings withIran, they can be barred from theUSfinancialsystem, which is a cost that veryfew are willing to bear, and might, could, is, in fact, a declaration of war by the judgment of the fiveNATOcommanders, an act of war against which Iran is entitled to respond any way it likes, perhaps with nuclearweapons or terror or whatever, according to these judgments. Now, you'll notice that there's a serious logical fallacy in what I've been just saying. It overlooks two fundamental principles, which are the crucial principles of the worldorder. The rest is footnotes. The first principle is that we own the world and Iran doesn't, So therefore the principles don't apply to us. They only apply to others. And kind of corollary to that is that everything we do is necessarily with the best of intentions. [StevenPinker] That's a tautology. You don't have to give evidence or arguments. And that's a constant feature of the intellectual culture, almost without exception, across the spectrum. So, for example, during the invasion ofVietnam. I hope I don't have to describe it to you, but it killed severalmillionpeople, destroyed threecountries. Monstrous atrocity. There was vast discussion of it. Mainstream discussion. But if you look closely, you'll find it never included a principled critique of the war. That was not permissible. Typically, just to keep to the left critical end, and the rest gets worse. At the end of the war, AnthonyLewis of theNewYorkTimes ["]wrapped it up["]. He said, speaking from the left liberal extreme, that theUnitedStates entered the war with "blundering efforts to do good." Notice "efforts to do good" is a tautology. We did it, so therefore it's efforts to do good. So it's not saying anything. "Blundering" because it didn't work, as well as they wanted at least. It worked pretty well, but not as well as they wanted. So we started with blundering efforts to do good, but by1969, it was clear that we could not establishDemocracy in-southVietnam at a cost acceptable to ourselves. Well, "establishDemocracy in southVietnam" is on a par with some Sovietcommissar saying that Stalin was trying to establishDemocracy in easternEurope, but that doesn't matter. It's us, so we are doing. But the problem with it was the cost to us, okay? So that meant we had to sort of start ["]pulling out["]. Well, that's the critique at theveryleft end. I'll take one more example. The leading american liberal historian, maybe themostfamous historian of his generation, ArthurSchlesinger, who was at first a super["]hawk["] like the wholeKennedyadministration was. No alternative to victory in their invasion of-southVietnam, which is what it was. But, by thelate[19]60s, he was having second thoughts and he wrote a book expressing them. He said that, "We all pray that the ["]hawks["] will be correct in hoping that the surge of the day," a big influx of troops will be successful. "And, if they are, we will be praising the wisdom and statesmanship of the American government in winning the war." And he was aware of what it was. He said, leaving a land of wreck and ruin, with its institutions destroyed. It may never recover. But "we'll nevertheless be praising the wisdom and the statesmanship of the American government. And we pray that they're right," the ["]hawks["]. But he said they probably aren't right. It's probably going to be too costly for us. No question about the cost to the vietnamese, land of wreck and ruin. So therefore, maybe we ought to rethink it. Well, that's the criticism at the critical end of the spectrum, the ["]dovish["] critical end. Then from there on over to the jingoist end of spectrum, we have a kind of a debate, Could we have won with more force, or It was a lost cause anyway, and so on. It was rather striking that the population is out of this. So, in1975, the year when Lewis wrote this, seventypercent of the population thought that the war was "fundamentally wrong and Immoral, not a mistake. " Try to find anything in the literature of educated sectors that says it was anything but a mistake, that it was fundamentally wrong and Immoral. That's not unusual. Internally, theGovernment was aware of this. One of the things that is not taught but should be read, because it's very illuminating, is the final part of thePentagonPapers. ThePentagonPapers are not declassified archives. They are stolen archives, so we know or have a better idea of what they were thinking. ThePentagonPapers end in1968, right after theTetOffensive in-january1968, which convinced the business world this is going to cost too much and we'd better start ["]winding it down["]. There was a request from theGovernment to send another couple of hundred thousand troops toVietnam. But they were dubious about doing it, and didn't do it finally, because they were afraid that there would be a popular uprising in theUnitedStates of unprecedented proportions, and they would need the troops for civildisordercontrol because of protests among privileged people, women, youth, and others who just weren't going to take it any more. Well, that tells you that. They didn't admit that they were listening, but they always do. They needed the troops for control, and they sort of slowly started ["]backing off["]. Another sixyears of war devastated-Laos and -Cambodia and -(much of Vietnam), but at least they started ["]winding down["]. Well, that was 1969. But notice that you can take theRhetoric about theVietnamWar and translate it almost verbatim to discussion of theIraqWar. There is no principled critique within the mainstream. And nobody can. By principled critique, I mean the kind of critique that we would carry out reflexively and do when somebody else commits aggression. Say when the Russians invadeCzechoslovakia, or Afghanistan, or Chech-nya. We don't ask, Is it too costly? In fact, it wasn't costly at all. They practically killed nobody inCzechoslovakia. Chechnya, reducing the place to ruin. Apparently it's functioning pretty well. In fact, according to western correspondents, if DavidPetraeus could achieve anything inIraq like what Putin achieved inChechnya, he'd probably be crowned king or something like that. But, nevertheless, we condemn it rightly. It doesn't matter whether it worked or not, or whether it was costly to them or not. Or when SaddamHussein invadedKuwait, killing possibly a fraction of the number of people that [GeorgeHerbertWalker]Bush killed a couple of months earlier when he invadedPanama. But we nevertheless denounce it as aggression. That's a principled objection. But, when we carry out aggression, it's inconceivable. And that goes back to the principles that I mentioned. We own the world, and everything we do is, by definition, good in intention. So the worst it can be is what BarackObama calls a strategic blunder, or what HillaryClinton calls getting into a civilwar which we can't win. In fact, iraqis overwhelmingly blame the civilwar on us, but that's irrelevant, too. That's the level of critique, and it follows from the principles that I mentioned. And it governs newscoverage, too, in fact, pretty openly. Here's JohnBurns, the dean of correspondents, themostsenior, mostrespected correspondent inIraq after a long career. He says that "theUnitedStates is the prominent economic, political, and military power in the world and has been the greatest force for stability in the world, certainly since theWorldWarTwo. It would be a dark day if the outcome inIraq were to destroy the credibility of american power, to destroy america's willingness to use its power in the world to achieveGood, to fight back against-Totalitarianism, -Authoritarianism, -grossHumanRightsabuses." Okay, in other words, that's the framework of reporting. Reporting must be cheering for the hometeam. Nothing else is conceivable, because of the depth of these principles which are instilled into people in the educational system and propaganda. You can't see the world in any other terms. So it's neutral, objective reporting to say we're cheering for the ["]hometeam["]. And it's quite open. It's interesting that he said it so clearly. He says that's particularly true in theMiddleEast. But notice that it makes not the slightest difference what (the people)-(of the world or theMiddleEast) think. That's not relevant. Or, for that matter, what the people in theUnitedStates think. So theVietnamWar was benign efforts to do good, which were too costly to us even when seventypercent of the population said that it's fundamentally wrong and Immoral, not a mistake. The population here is as irrelevant as the population in the rest of the world unless you're frightened of them and you have to keep your troops here for civildisordercontrol. What do people think? Well, what people think, we know from international polls that are regularly taken. They think that theUnitedStates is themost-frightening, -dangerous country in the world. Not JohnBurns'sline. And there's overwhelming opposition toUSforce, almost everywhere. It's also true of theMiddleEast. And there's nothing new about it. So, George, our currentGeorge[Walker]Bush, after NineEleven [SeptemberElevenAttack], asked, Why do they hate us and they hate our freedoms, and so on. You remember that. But what the press should have reported is that he was just repeating a question that PresidentEisenhower asked in1958. Eisenhower asked his staff, Why is there a campaign of hatred against us among the people of theMiddleEast. And theNationalSecurityCouncil, thehighest planningagency, had provided an answer. They said of the people of theMiddleEast that their perception is that theUnitedStates supports brutalTyrannies, blocksDemocracy and development, and does so because we want control of their oil. And then they went on to say, Yeah, the perception is more or less correct and that's the way it ought to be. And so therefore there is a campaign of hatred against us. And so it continues. AfterNineEleven [SeptemberElevenAttack], TheWallStreetJournal, to its credit, conducted some polls in theMiddleEast. They didn't care about the general population, what's demeaningly called theArabstreet. They polled what they called ["]money-ed["]  muslims, bankers, managers of multinational corporations , you know, the kind of guys we like. And they found ["]pretty much["] the same thing as 1958. There's a. They don't have any objection to neoLiberalism or any of this stuff. In fact, they love it. But they condemn theUnitedStates for supporting harsh, tyrannical regimes, which it does, and opposingDemocracy and development, which it does, because we want to control their energyresources. By2001, they had other objections, namely, Israel's USbacked vicious repression and dispossession of palestinians, which is ongoing, and also the sanctions againstIraq. The sanctions againstIraq didn't get much play here because we don't pay attention to our crimes. That's crucial. That's part of the principle that everything we do is good. But they do pay attention. And in fact, we know a lot about them, or we can if we want to. There were two directors of theOilForFoodProgramme, supposedly the humanitarian part of the sanctions. Both of them resigned because they regarded the sanctions as genocidal, carrying out a huge massacre of the population. TheClintonadministration would not permit them to transmit their information to theSecurityCouncil, which was technically responsible. And theMedia agree. The spokesman for theStateDepartment, JamesBurns, said in reference toHansVonSponeck, the second of the directors, "This man in Baghdad is paid to work, not to talk." And the press agrees, and scholarship agrees, so they're suppressed. They knew more aboutIraq than any other westerner. They had hundreds of observers running around the country sending back reports. But you can do a Googlesearch and find out how often they were allowed to speak in theUnitedStates, ["]run up["] to the war for that matter, or since. VonSponeck, who is a verydistinguished international diplomat, wrote a book about it about twoyearsago called ADifferentKindOfWar. I don't think there was a reference to it in theUnitedStates, let alone a review. We do not want to publicise our genocidal actions. But the people of theMiddleEast noticed and didn't like it, and that increased the campaign of hatred among the ["]money-ed["] muslims, our friends there. We don't have to think about the others. But it doesn't matter what they think. The same is true of the invasion ofIraq. Iraqis regard it as theMongolInvasions. Iraq may never recover. The great success story ofPetraeus is to establish warlordArmies, which will probably tear the country up in the future, and also to turnBaghdad. It's true the violence inBaghdad has declined, partly because there are fewer people to kill. You know, there's been massive ethnic cleansing, and that's been accelerated by thePetraeusstrategy of building essentially walled communities. There's a comment by NirRosen, who is one of the two or three journalists who actually reports seriously fromIraq. He speaks arabic fluently and he looks arab, so he can get around easily and travels all over. Not with the armed guards and Abramstanks and so on. He says, talking about Baghdad recently, he says,  "Looming over the homes", in the district he's looking at, "are twelvefoot high walls built by the americans to confine people to their own neighborhood, emptied and destroyed by civilwar," which theUS fomented, "Walled off by the surge, sections of the city feel more like a desolate, postapocalyptic maze of concrete  tunnels than a living, inhabited neighborhood." They're controlled by separationwalls and in fact by the increasing use of airpower. But a little quieter, so therefore the critics, having no principal criticism, don't talk about it much. Well, what does the public think about all these things? Well, we know aboutIraq. The public wants us to ["]get out["], but they're irrelevant. What about Iran, the next major crisis looming, which will makeIraq look like a teaparty if they go through with it? There are opinions about this. There is the opinion of american elites, which you can read in theNewYorkTimes, or theWashingtonPost, or liberal journals, and so on. They'll tell you that Iran is defying the world by enriching uranium. Well, exactly who is the world, okay? Well, we can find out. There is an organisation called G77. Onehundredandthirtycountries. It includes the vast majority of the people of the world. They vigorously supportIran'sright to all the rights guaranteed by the nonproliferation treaty, including enriching uranium for nuclearpower. So they're not part of the world, okay? Now what about the american population? An overwhelming majority of the american population agrees withG77, namely, that Iran should have the right to produce nuclearenergy, but not nuclearweapons. So the american population is not part of the world. So nonaligned countries are not part of the world, the american population is not part of the world, and obviously iranians are not part of the world. So who's left? Well, the world consists of people who follow Washington[DC]'sorders. You can't say it includes theUnitedStates, because the overwhelming majority of americans are not part of the world. They oppose this, just as on many other issues. And that goes on without comment, correctly,  if we're cheerleaders for the home team. And that's the framework for discussion. Is there a solution to the crisis withIran, which is extremelyserious? If theUS goes through with its plans, its apparent plans, it might makeIraq look like a teaparty. Well, there are solutions, potential solutions. One of them is what I just said, Iran should have the rights of any signer of the nonproliferation treaty. Israel, Pakistan, and India also ought to have those rights if they sign the treaty. Since they haven't done it, they don't have those rights. But, of course, they're doing it because we say it's okay. But that's the opinion of the large majority of americans. The same large majority, it runs around seventyfivepercent, says that a nuclearweaponsfreezone should be established in the region, including Iran, Israel, american forces deployed there, and so on. Well, that would end the crisis. Is that possible? Well, it's supported by the large majority of americans. But, as I mentioned, they're not part of the world. It's Iran's official policy, but they're not part of the world. The US and Britain are formally committed to it. In fact, more so than any other powers for a verysimple reason, which we would read about if we had a FreePress. When theUnitedStates and Britain went to war withIraq and tried to find a thin legal ["]cover["] for it, they appealed to UNSecurityCouncilResolution687.1991, which orderedIraq to get rid of its weapons of massdestruction. And, as you remember. Britain and theUnitedStates hadn't lived up to it. Well, you're all literate. You can read Resolution687. It commits theUnitedStates and Britain to work to establish a nuclearfreeweaponszone in theMiddleEast. So you can appeal to it as a justification for aggression, you're compelled to follow its provisions. But to point that out would be really to ["]break the rules["]. You can again do a Googlesearch to see if you can find anyone even near the mainstream who has ever bothered to point this out. Another way to move towards a solution would be to end the threats againstIran. The threats, if anyone cares, are a violation of theUNCharter. But for outlawStates, that's irrelevant. Again, the large majority of the american population thinks we should end the threats and move to normal diplomatic relations withIran. Well, if these steps were taken, the crisis would essentially be over. So we can ask, Who's defying the world if the world includes its people, including the american people. And the answer is verysimple and straightforward. Those who are defying the world are the ones in power inWashington[DC], and inLondon, and in the editorial offices, and the universityfaculties, and so on. They're defying the world. But notIran, not on these issues. And in fact, it's a serious matter because it could lead to a total disaster. And the same is true on other issues. So the other major live issue in theMiddleEast is Israel and Palestine. Well, what does the world think about this? There is an international consensus, supported by about twothirds of the american population, supported by former nonaligned countries, supported by theArabworld, formally at least supported byEurope, obviously latinAmerica, in fact everyone. Iran supports it. Hamas supports it. It's for a twoStatesettlement, twoStatesettlement on the international borders, theprejune1967borders with minor modifications. Who opposes that? Well, for the lastthirtyyears, theUnitedStates has opposed it and it continues to oppose it. And Israel of course opposes it, though, if theUS would support it, then Israel would necessarily ["]go along["]. So the problem is right inWashington[DC]. This begins in1976, when theUS vetoed thefirstSecurityCouncilResolution calling for a settlement in these terms as introduced by theArabStates, backed by thePLO. Actually, it even goes back earlier to1971, when PresidentSadat ofEgypt offeredIsrael a full peacetreaty in return for withdrawal from occupied territories. What he cared was withdrawal from theSinai, where Israel was kicking out thousands of peasants and settling. He didn't say anything about palestinian. They were not an issue at the time. Israel recognised this as a genuine peace offer and decided to reject it. They made a fateful decision, preferring expansion to security. A peacetreaty withIsrael, Egypt would've ended securityproblems. Theimportantquestion is what would happen intheUnitedStates. You know, theGodfather. Well, Kissinger managed. There was a battle bureaucratic internal in theUnitedStates. Kissinger won, and theUS followed his policy, which he called stalemate, meaning, No negotiations, just force, okay? That set the stage for the1973War and on to a whole list of horrors since. And up till today, theUnitedStates and Israel have been leading the rejectionistcamp. By now, they are the[only]rejectionistcamp. Not theUSpopulation, but theGovernment. So, who is defying the world on this issue? Is there a possible settlement? Sure, there is. It resides here. In fact, on issue after issue, the major problems happen to be right here, which is a reallyoptimistic conclusion because it means we can do something about it, because here we can have an influence, not elsewhere. Thanks.

3.     Sound of applaud.

4.     There's time?

5.     Gului: Anyone has any question, there's mike ["]set up["]. Threemikes. Come on down.

6.     Contrary to what you said in your introduction, theNewYorkTimesreports do not say you are themostimportant intellectual alive, and you know that well. It was merely an outsider, a professor atStanford[Univ.] who said it in a review, which appeared in theNewYorkTimes. Interestingly enough, you use that quote in several of your books. Also fabricated quote. You also say, whenever that arises in an introduction, like tonight, you correct it. And that's, of course, false, because you didn't do it here tonight, and that's happened in the past, also. Numbertwo, I couldn't help noticing a reference toArthurSchlesinger. Apparently, you still have something ["]sticking in your craw["] about your bout with him. I guess it was about1970 in which he exposed you from fabricating someHarryTrumanquotes. That was the exchange in which he dubbed you as an intellectual crook. So I guess that's ["]sticking in your craw["]  even now. And finally, as for this notion of cheering for the ["]hometeam["], which you obviously you don't do. There's somebody else you're cheering for. So I would like you to be veryforthright, like some leftists do, who say that they are cheering for our opponents in various places around the world quiteclearly. Do you have the courage to tell us right now you are ["]pulling["] against us in-Iraq and -Afghanistan. You're hoping we fail. You support the terrorists, or you might call them freedomfighters.

7.     Unknown: Who is us?

8.     Hoping they kill the americans.

9.     We get the point, yeah. Can I go through these points? On thefirstone, a quote, it was not by somebody interviewed. It was a reviewer.

10. I said it was reviewed.

11. You said he was interviewed.

12. I did not say that. Listen up.

13. You did, but it doesn't matter.

14. It was a bookreview.

15. It was a bookreview, right?. And every almost. It is true I didn't bother to correct it tonight, but I almost always do it, because it's funny. It's a veryfunny thing. What he actually said is, Themostimportant intellectual in the world. How can you write such terrible things aboutUSForeignPolicy? I like that quote. So I invariably.

16. That's not accurate, either.

17. I invariably correct it. You say you see it in backs of books. If you take a look at the publishingindustry, you'll find that an author has absolutely no control over what appears on blurbs. Nothing. If I had a choice. I tell them not to use it, of course. I often do, but they like to use it, and then I correct it when it's brought up, becauase I think the actual quote is quite interesting. So that's one. As forSchlesinger, you've got the story backwards. I criticisedSchlesinger on these points in a book which appeared in1969, which he was furious about, and, in his review of that book, which was a furious review, he tried to find some error, and he found an absolutelytrivial error, so small that it was corrected twomonthslater in the secondprinting. But he's been, he's been screaming about it ever since, and people like you do, too. The error was, in quoting a speech byHarryTruman, okay? Instead of quoting his actual speech, I quoted virtuallyverbatim paraphrase of it by a leading respected commentator, JamesWhalberg. So the words were slightlydifferent, but the content were [was] exactly the same. As I said, it was trivial, it was corrected twomonthslater. It's rare [that] a book doesn't have some small [insignificant or irrelevant] error. But yes, you know, defenders ofStateviolence are desperate, and, if they can find anything they can point to, they'll ["]run with it["] forever. So, that's the truth about the second point. As for the ["]cheering["], you've heard what I've said, and it's what I've written. I think we should pay attention to the population, okay? Population of theUnitedStates, population ofIraq, population of the world. We should pay attention to what they think. Of course, those who are supporters ofStateviolence think we shouldn't. We should pay attention to the guys in power and to the sort of ["]cheeringsection["] among the intellectuals that supports them. [JamesEllroy] Well, I don't agree with that. If. Just to take the case ofIran, I think the opinion of american population happens to be verysound, and I support it. The same is true ofIraq. I think the opinion of iraqis is verysane. Lastdecember, thePentagon released a study of focusgroups inIraq and reported [it as] good news. Very["]upbeat["] report. They said, Contrary to what people are saying, the critiques, there's a lot of agreement among the iraqis, therefore hope for reconciliation, okay? And then, if you read down a little further, What was there an agreement about? Well, there's an overwhelming agreement among the iraqis, theUnitedStates is responsible for the ethnic cleansing and secretarian violence, and theUnitedStates should ["]get out["], okay? That's what there's an agreement about. Yeah, I think we should pay attention to our victims. And I can ["]go down the line["] if you like. Everything else is just pure fabrication and you know it.

18. Your.

19. Sound of applaud.

20. If you want me to write me an email about it, I'd be glad to give you, you know.

21. You haven't got the courage to tell [us] who[m] you're cheerleading for.

22. Pardon?

23. You haven't got the courage to tell us who[m] you're cheerleading for.

24. You've made your point. Let's go.

25. So, decades ago, theUS instituted a policy of undercutting foreign foodmarket.

26. I'm sorry, can you please stand up?

27. Decades ago, theUS instituted a policy of undercutting foreign foodmarkets byUSsubsidies. Recently, USfarmsubsidies shifted into ethanolmarkets, much to the chagrin of almosteveryThirdWorldnation, and, furthermore, much to the disinterest [uninterest] of almostevery majorMedianetwork. What role, if any, do you think this foodcrisis are playing inUS-expansionistpolicy?

28. Just to clarify a little bit, when the ethanol["]craze["] began, it was overwhelmingly cheered by theMedia, the commentators, and so on. Not by everyone, I mean, I wrote an article critising it. In fact, there was even an article inForeignAffairs critising it. So they were critics. It doesn't take much to reliase that the shifting of cropplan to ethanolproduction for fuel was going to cause an increase in prices of food and shortage of food. It doesn't have to a genius to figure that out. It's particularlytrue if it's USethanol. It wouldn't haven been so obvious if it was brasilien ethanol. It's made from sugar, and it's muchmore cheaper. In order to keep the ethanolindustry from fucntioning here, theGovernment has to, first of all, to provide huge subsidies toUSAgri.business, and also to impose a huge tariff to prevent muchmorecheap and moreefficient braisilian ethanol from getting into the country. Technical term for that isFreetrade, okay? Sound of laughter. So it's big gift toAgri.business. It takes a plenty of land away from the cropproduction. That means there's a shortage of corn, but also a lot of other things. If the land is shifted into cornproduction, efficient cornproduction for ethanol, it's not being used for soybeans and peas, and so on. So that gets reduced. Same happening in theThirdWorld. TheThirdworldcountries that are, say, producing soybeans may shift to using crops that will be bought up for the rich by the ethanol. And that's happening, too. And it's spiral, and yes, it's leading to, it's one of the factors leading to a veryserious foodcrisis. Just how much of a factor that is prettyhard to estimate. So, the drought inAustralia is also a big,  contributory factor. But, you know, all of that is kind of irrelevant. We can't do anything about the draught inAustralia. One factor we can do something about is the use of cropland for fuel, and ethanol is not particularlyefficient from the point of view of-Pollution or -energy, and so on and so forth. So, all across the board, it was, I think, it was disaster and it was understood to be so by anyone who thought about it from the beginning, and it ought to be terminated. If anybody wants to use ethanol, they should break down protectionistbarriers and subsidies toAgri.business, and use brasilien ethanol. It's causing a. All of this is a part of whole system of undermining theThirdWorldfarmers. So one of the big effects of theNAFTA, its intended effects, is to drive mexican peasants off the land. Mexican peasants cannot compete with highlysubsidisedUSAgri.business. It's kind of obvious. So slowly being driven off the land, it's going to get worse now that Mexico has been forced to eliminate **tariffs. So, they flee into the cities, they lower wages, which is verygood forUSmanufactures who are exporting production there, and then they try to flee across the border, so we build walls, you know. These things are all interconnected. Same withHaiti. One of the things that american, you know,  ["]cheerleaders["] are supposed to ["]cheer["] theGovernment about is that Clinton sent theMarine to put an end to terror inHaiti in1995. That part is true, but there's little more. ElectedGovernment, AristideGovernment, thefirstelectedGovernment inHaiti was a populist, independentGovernment led by what we call radical priest, meaning neoliberationTheology, concerned about the poor. He was overthrown a couple of months later by a military coup, as anticipated. US did everything possible in order to undercut it in those few months. US immediatelyturned to supporting military coup, violating the organisation ofAmericanStatesEmbargo, that was underBushOne. [GeorgeHerbertWalkerBush] UnderClinton, the violation increased. Clinton actually authorised TexacoOilCompany to send arms, oil to military junta to richélite in violation of his own presidential order. 1995, Clinton decided that the public, population had been tortured enough, and it was prettymiserable. I was there for a while. So figured that's enough, we'll let theGovernment to go back, but on a condition. The condition was that they accept veryharsh neoliberal regime, mean drop your tariffs, drop your local production, and so on. Outcome was completelypredictable. I'm not saying it in retrospect. I and others wrote about it at the time. Haitian ricefarmers are prettyefficient, but they cannot compete with highlysubsidisedUSAgri.businessexporters. Now, Haiti is short of food, and you're getting fooddroughts. Yeah, predictably. That's the consequence of following such policies. Again, it doesn't take [require] a genius to figure them out. It's kind of like, elementaryschoolstudents can figure it out. And this is happening in many places. So your point is prettysignificant. There's a major foodcrisis, and we're not helping.

29. Hi. First of all, Thanks. I want to thank you a lot for all the intellectual inspiration. All these matters are a lot moreinteresting and now make sense. I've been following news a lot inIraq, it seems like there's some deal of escalation going on inIraq. And, like, a fewweeksago, VicePresidentCheney made a major trip to theMiddleEast, and, shortly thereafter, the iraqiGovernment convinced a large scale offensive against southern forces inBasra. Subsequently, there was morelarge scale action against southern forces in southern city inBaghdad. There was interesting phrase that was used in an article that I saw. There were iraqi tanks attacking southern city.

30. I'm sorry I didn't hear the last.

31. It was interesting to see the phrase there were iraqi tanks, which are storming southern city.

32. Yeah.

33. It seems like our policy on the war inIraq has been almostremarkablyrestrained. It seems like they've been concentrating mostly onGreenZone and the oilinfrastructure. So, given these recent escalations, I was thinking if you thought perhaps we were going to attempt to ferment some kind of increased violence and bloodbath and perhaps use that as a pretext for additional action inIran. I just wanted to what your thoughts are.

34. You're right. War inIraq is constrained in comparative standards. Killed a couple of hundreds of thousands people, maybe over onemillion. May have destroyed the country forever. Worse thanMongolInvasion, and so on, but, yes, that's restrained. For example, nothing like the attack onVietnam. Not even close. TheIraqWar never reached the scale ofVietnam in1965, you know. At that time, there was no protest. But. There are a couple of reasons for that. One reason is the american population is muchmorestrongly opposed to agression than it was in1960s.  That's part of the civilising effect of activism in1960s on all kinds of things. Support fromCivilRights, Women'sRights, EnvironmentalMovement, you know, kinds of things I was quoting about american indians, those were standard attitudes in1960s, not even questioned. The kind of things kids would read in schooltexts in[19]60s, you can find those backwards, crazed part of the country wouldn't be permissible. All of this is a civilising effect. That's why [19]60s are constantlycondemned as times of trouble, kids crazy, so on. They committed a crime. They civilised the country. And one of the forms of civilisation was opposition to aggression. So contrary to what is commonlysaid, the protest againstIraqWar is farbeyond protest against-theVietnamWar at any comparabe stage. At this stage of theVietnamWar, there was no talk about the withdrawal. In fact, thefirstbook on withdrawal was written byHowardZinn, who[m] you know. I think it was 1967. At that time, half of a million of american troops there, country has been torn to shreds, extent to the, that could barely be mentioned, because it was so ["]far out["]. Actually, he asked me to write a review of it, which I did inRamparts, because nobody would mention. Well, now, at the muchlower stage of aggression inIraq, everyone has to say something about withdrawal. They don't mean it, but they have to say something. That's a big change. So, one reason why it is restrained by comparative standards is because there's waymoreopposition. After all, IraqWar is thefirstwar in westernImperialism that was massivelyprotested before it was officially inaugurated. That's never happened before. Not that I can think of. That's one factor. But there's another moreimportant factor. Vietnam didn't matter much to theUnitedStates. If the country [disappeared from the map] were wiped off the map, US didn't care. I mean, Eisenhower tried to build up some support for his early stage of the war by building support, talking about tent and rubber, and so on, but that was a joke. Vietnam had no resources of significance to theUnitedStates. Concern aboutVienam was what I mentioned, virusinfectiontheory. There was deep concern that successful, independent development inVietnam might spur others to take on thesameefforts. Rot might spread toThailand, Indonesia, maybe even Japan, which was called the superdomino byJohnDower, leading Japanhistorian. Japan might have to accomodate to independent southeastAsia, that would have meant theUnitedStates would have lostPacificWar, which they weren't prepared to do in1950s. So there was a concern aboutVietnam, but nothing to do with resources. In fact, the concern was overcome simply by wiping [destroying] the place out. So, US basically won the war in1970s. It didn't achieve its maximum objective, but it did satisfy its basic waraims. You can't destroyIraq. It's fartoovaluable. Iraq has probably thesecondlargest oilresources in the world. They're verycheap and easily available. It's not like Albertasands. You stick a pipe in the sand and oil gushes out, and it's right at the heart of the major energyproducing sections of the world. That's a valuable asset, not likeVietnam. So, there's gotta be limit on the destructiveness. You can't destroy an asset you want to maintain, and US does want to maintain it. Today, it happens that. Just took a look at the morningnewspaper. ChristianScienceMonitor has a frontpagearticle on the opening of what is called USEmbassy inBaghdad. Embassy is not like any embassy in the world. It's the size of theVatican. It has twentyonebuildings, an entirelyselfcontained city, inside the protected area ofBaghdad. They're not building that in order to tear it down. MajorAirbases that are being built aroundIraq are huge facilities, and they are not being built with the intent of tearing them down, and they're supported by the democrats. They fund them. And the idea is clearly is to try to figure out some way to establish clientGovernment, which will be able to function. Much like theGovernment ofChechnya functions. There are chechens, they have their own securityforces, or like say, VichyGovernment underNazis. FrenchGovernment, frenchpolice, frenchofficials, so on, germans sort of hanging in the background. Actually, it's prettymuch the way Russia ran much of-easternEurope. Czechtroops, polishtroops, and so on, and so forth. But, try to set up something like that, the traditional imperial structure, but making sure it's based on USdomination and US controls it. And we don't have to debate this any longer, because it's public. Not much of fuss was made about it. I don't think it was even reported. But, in november, lastnovember, there was a declarationagreement byGeorgeBush and what's called the iraqiGovernment, which means little enclave inside theGreenzone. Never gets outside it. Which we call iraqiGovernment. The clientGovernment follows our orders. So, an agreement was made between them. It was interesting. It permits theUS to maintain effectively permanent military bases and operation insideIraq, all kind of pretext, that's sort of what it ["]amounts["] to. And ratherbrazenly, to my surprise, it says that "IraqiEconomy must be open to foreign investment, priviledging USinvestors." That's unusual, it's so unusual to see such brazen statement of crassImperialism. IraqiEconomy means oil. They don't, nobody cares about the asparagus they grow. Sound of laughter. It must be open to foreign investment, unlike other countires which control their own resources, and it must be priviledge to the foreign investments. That's moreextreme than themostextreme warcritic ever said, and Bush underscored it. In one of, many hundreds of his signing statements a couple of months later in january, in which he said. He signed some legislations. In fact, he won't live up to any legislation that interfers with theUSgoal of maintining sort of permanent capacity for military operations there and controls the energyresources. That's totallydifferent fromVietnam. US didn't care. Once the country was destroyed, and Laos was destroyed, Cambodia was destroyed, US didn't care much what happened. Happy to ["]pull out["]. This is just a completelydifferent situation, both domestically and in terms of theGeoPolitics of it.

35. I think I'll seem to. Other people that are waiting.

36. Yeah.

37. Gulini: Take that mike over there.

38. Hi. I really enjoyed your book, ManufacturingConsent. And I was just curious. Over the last couple of days, the mainstreamMedia has gotten behind this irrefutable evidence that northKorea has built a nuclearreactor inSyria, that Israel was able to successfull wipe it out. I was kind of curious to hear your take on that and, maybe cut through, cut through the propaganda.

39. That's a veryinteresting story. I'll give you some references if you're interested. I happened to be listeningNPR on the way here, the eveningnews. They had one of their ["]sober["] intellectualreports, which was a perfect example of(what JohnBurns was describing). You have to cheer for the hometeam. Described about half of the story. It said that. All of it is interesting evidence. NorthKorea is not living up to its obligation. ["]Hawks["] who say, we should, you know, break all the discussion and attack them or something, and ["]doves["] who say, Maybe we give them a little more time, and so on. It's probably true that northKorea is not living up to its obligations, but it is also true that theUnitedStates is not living up to its obligations. In fact, in the rare reoprting on this, you can occasionally find, thelastreport, original agreement was that Iraq would dismantle its nuclearfacilities and produce the declaration of its nuclearacitivites, and theUnitedStatew would join with othersixpowers, providingIraq with fuel with other aid, and US would enter into normal diplomatic relations, removing from the, remove the isolation from-northKorea. Well, theUS has done none of that. Furthermore, there's a History of this. Thesamenegotiation, the sameagreement prettymch was reached in2005. NorthKorea agreed to dismantle, to end all nuclearrelatedoperations. All nuclearoperation, end them all verifiably, and theUnitedStates, in return, would enter into diplomatic relationships, remove the threats toKorea, provided with like waterreactor, and a couple of other things, and end all threats. That would have end the crisis. A couple of days later, theUnitedStates carried out what the fiveNATOgenerals now call active war against northKorea. They closed down northkorean financialinstitutions, which happened to be a small bank inMacao. It was probably a trialrun for what they're doing againstIran to see how it works. That's a veryserious attack on a country, to isolate it from the international financialsystem. No exports, no imports, and so on, and so forth. And it was almostcertainlydone to undercut the negotiations just been reached. And, in fact, northKorea reacted, as you'd expect, carried out nucleartests, went on to develop missiles, and so on. That's been theHistory all the way back. NorthKorea may have theworstGovernment in the world, but they've been foloowing prettypragmatic course on this. When theUS gets moreaggressive, they get moreagreesive. When theUS gets moreconciliatory, they get moreconciliatory. And it's bee running steadily all the way through. And, there's another part of the story that is evenmoresignificant. I don't know if northKorea have been providing anything toSyria or not, but there would have been an easy way to stop this. A veryeasy way. In1993, NorthKorea and Israel were on the verge of agreement, by which Israel would recognise northKorea, and northKorea would terminate all weaponsrelatedactivities in theMiddleEast. That would be veryimportant forIsraelsecurity, but theClintonadministration said, No. They wouldn't let them do it. And, when thegodfather speaks, you have to listen. So, that agreement was never reached, and, if that agreement had been reached, we would not be having any discussion about whether northKorea is doing inSyria or not. That part of the story is knocked out. It's not that it's a secret. If you do some research, you read the armscontrolsliterature, and so on, you can find it. Actually, I've written about it, too, as have others, but it's certainly not a headline where it ought to be. It's not something that people know. Another small point was made byAndrewCordesman, who one of the leading theMiddleEastsecurityspecialist in theUnitedStates, suggested that this whole ["]flopping["] is just a warning toIran, saying, We've got our eyes on you. If you do anything or even if you don't do anything, we'll pretend that you did, and you're in trouble. So, yes, there's a lot to the story, but exactly what's going on, we don't know, and probably won't know until declassified documents come out if they ever do.

40. Hi. I think you're. I've read your books and I think you're excellent. My question is, Most people. I mean, we can sit here and have discussion on the problem we had in the past inPanama or Guatemala, inCuba. We can also talk about how, you know, how we supported theShah and we basicallyaffected iranian revolution. But the fact is, most people inAmerica don't even know, at one point, we supportedSaddamHussein. So, knowing these facts, how can we help educate the rest of american public on all these issues when it seems that theMedia won't do it, and it's all of this information you say is easy to find is, maybe it's not soeasy to find for average person.

41. Yeah. First of all, let's. You're right about supportingSadamHussein, but veryfewpeople know the extent of the support. In 1982. SaddamHussein was hanged a couple of months ago, oneyearago, whatever it was. You look, he was hanged for crimes committed in1982. He was alleged to have ordered the killing of hundreds of people, which, his standards, is like toothpick on a mountain. That's what he was judged for. It's interesting to see commentary on it. Something else happened in1982. In1982, theReaganadministration removedIraq from the list of State supporting terror, which is the list ofStates we want to go after. Nothing to do with supporting terror. So they removed it from the list in order that they could start providing aid and support their friend, SaddamHussein. DonaldRumsfeld went shortly afterwards to sign the friendly agreement, and through the1980s, theUS was one of a number ofStates, who supportedSaddamHussein. A lot of it was Agriculturesupport, which we desperatelyneeded, and it was big ["]boon["] toUSAgri.business, but also weaponssupport, you know, means to develop weapons of massdestruction, and so on. This went on right through SaddamHussein'sworstatrocities. HalabjaMassacres, AnfaLMassacres, everything, the use of chemicalweapons. All the way through**. There was some protest, Congreeprotest now and then, but Reagan vetoed any effort do anything about it. GeorgeBushNumberOne [GeorgeHerbertWalkerBush] came [into theWhiteHouse] along. He was a particular admirer ofSaddam. At1989, at the very time of invasion ofPanama, just when the invasion ofPanama was going on, Bush overrode theTreasuryDepartment and authorised new aid to his friend, SaddamHussein. The press cooperated by not reporting it. Also in1989, Bush invited iraqi nuclearengineers to theUnitedStates to get advanced training in weaponsproduction. Nuclearweaponsproduction, okay? That's also1989. Early1990, Bush sent a highlevel senetorial delegation toIraq, led byBobDole, Republican senate majority leader, who was then presidential candidate a couple of years later. And, the goal, the purpose of the delegation was to send GeorgeBush'sgoodwishes to his friend, Saddam. To ensure him that he can disrigard the kind of protest he hears now and then from american press. We have this FreePressthing here. We can't shut [silence] all these guys up. Told him he would take off the voice of american, anybody who was critising him. It was, generally, kind of lovesession. That was april1990, okay? A couple of monthslater, SaddamHussein disobeyed orders. Or maybe misunderstood orders, which is possible, and invadedKuwait, okay? Shiftedinstantly from a favoured friend and ally to a reincarnation ofHitler. You don't disobey orders. Like I said, any mafiadon understands. That's the support. Incidentally, shortly after that, Washington[DC] returned to support toSaddamHussein. After the war. War was murderous, destructive war. Way beyond anything that needed to getSaddam out ofKuwait. But, right after the war, by march1991, US had total control, military control in the region, control of the air, everything, and there was a large shiite uprising in the south, which probably would have overthrownSaddam, but theUS authorisedSaddam to crush it. They authorised him to use aircraft, military helicopters, and so on, to crush the uprising, killing probably tens of thousands of shiites in the south. General, what was his name, Schwarz-Kopf who was general, said later that he was fooled bySaddam. He didn't realise, when he authorisedSaddam to use military aircraft, he'd actually use them. Sound of laughter. So, kind of, we were tricked. But it was explained prettyopen, prettyfrankly by theNewYorkTimes. Chiefdiplomaticcorrespondent, ThomasFriedman. Chiefdiplomaticcorrespondent means theStateDepartment's spokeperson in theNewYorkTimes, just relays StateDepartmentpropaganda. He said, he wrote a clear column. He said, "The best of all possible worlds," He supported the decision to allowSaddam to crush the uprising, "The best of world for theUnitedStates would be an ironfisted military junta, rulingIraq, just the way Saddam did." But, with different name, because he's now kind of an embarassment. So, we have to settle for thesecondbest, Saddam himself. TheMiddleEastcorrespondant for theNewYorkTimes, who's still there, still there, topMiddleEastcorrespondent, AlanCowell. He said, You know, it's kind of unpleasant, watching all these people massacred, but there's a consensus among theUnitedStates and its allies, namely Britain and SaudiArabia, that thebesthope for stability inIraq is SaddamHussein, not the people who are trying to overthrow him, okay?  Therefore, we have to letSaddam crush the uprising that might have overthrown him. Stability is a technical term. It means, FollowingUSOrders, okay? So, that's stability, and Saddam is morehopreful for stability than iraqis. In fact, what upset him is, theworstpossible outcome is iraqis might ruleIraq. We're not going to allow that. IndependentNationalism is not to be accepted. That's why Muq-tada-Al-Sadr is the renegade, and so on. And, in fact, through the90s, it's thesamestory. If you look at the main effect of the sanctions, Clintonsanctions, they were murderous and destructive, but they strengthenedSaddamHussein. They undermined the opposition to him. They compelled the population to rely on him for survival, which is probably the reason he wasn't overthrown. Otherwise, he probably would have faced the same fate as Ceauşescu, Souharto, Mobutu, whole bunch of gangsters notverydifferent from him who[m] US supported until the end. But. In fact, that's exactly what was said by DenisHalliday and HansVonSponeck , thetwodirectors of theOilForFoodProgramme. No more aboutIraq than certainly any westerner. So may be so. But it's crucial that iraqis not ruleIraq. So, yes, there was support. Now, how do we get any of this stuff to american people? Well, how do you get anything else to the population? Was it you who quotedMargaretMeade at the beginning? Yeah, that's the way you do it. Everything happens exactly the way you said it. Take any. CivilRightsMovement, Women'sMovement, AntiVietnamWarMovement. Pick anything you like. EnvironmentalMovement. Starts with small groups of people doing things, and gradually it grows, and finally it get to the point, as in the case ofAntiVietnamWarMovement, where theGoverment is afraid to send troops because they needed for civildisordercontrol. All of that happened about twoyears. It just changed the world. Striking example is Women'sMovement. It's not that. I mean, there were feminists before, but until1960s, nothing much was happening, and within the couple of years, it changed country in the world dramatically. It's probably the major impact of the 60s on the world. And it happened just by consciousnessraising groups, bigger groups, activism, whatever was necessary, and so on. CivilRightsMovement is the same. A couple of blackkids at a lunchcounter, freedomfighters, busriders started riding, prettysoon you had a huge massmovement, which didn't solve the problems obviously, but solved a lot of. Made it a lot better.

42. Gulini: We have time for onemorequestion.

43. Earlier, you mentioned latinAmerica, and USpreference for policeStates. And I think we see those policeStates crumbling.

44. Preference for what? I didn't catch.

45. Preference for-policeStates

46. PoliceStates.

47. In latinAemrica, and thoseStates are crumbling. Most recently, there was the election inParaguay. While we never heard anything about generations of rulers inParaguay, this week, there was a significant election. You know, we find Correa inEcuador, who was saying that, USmilitarybases has no place inEcuador. Venezuela, Revolution with recourses, a rich revolution. EvoMorales inBolivia right now, as you know, there's a worldwide appeal[?] to seise the hostilities. Anyway, my question is, How do you see latinAmerica moving forwards on its leftist path or on its own path, and defying theUS?

48. This is one of themostimportant things happening in the world, I think. It's not latinAmerica, unfortunately. It's southAmerica. CentralAmerica was so devastated byReagan-ite terror [that] they may never recover. So there are not part of this much. I mean, a little, but not much. But southAmerica is undergoing reallydramatic change. It's the first time since spanishinvasions that the countries of southAmerica are beginning to face twofundamentalproblems, twofundamentalproblems, which have turned them into horrorstory. Some of theworst-poverty and -misery in the world in a region with enormous resources and a lot of potentials. It's not like, it's not like. It's not a desert somewhere. Two problems are both, both problems of disintegration. One of them, internal to each society. The other, among all the socities. Each. LatinAmerica societies typically have been run by verysmall, wealthy, verywealthy, largelywhite elite. Raceclasscorrelation prettyclose with a mass of suffering and misery. That's been an internal problem. So, compared with eastAsia, it's striking. I mean, latinAmerica has many advantage over eastAsia. Should be awayahead in development. But, in latinAmerica, capitalexporters are tiny richelite. Imports are luxurygoods, so that they can ["]live it up["]. Theirsecondhomes are inRiviera, some place like that. Childrens go to school overseas. They have almost nothing to do with population. No resposibilities.  No tax, nothing. Disintegration among the countries is that they're all separated from one another. Verylittle interaction among them during the colonial period, even the period of independence. You can see that in the transportationsystem, almost everything. Those things are changing. Strikingly, I think themostdramatic case isBolivia, which is reallyimpressive, what happened. And you're right. It's under a lot of threat now. The whiteélite that has always run the place is infuriated that they had a democratic election for thefirsttime, and theUS is just as infuriated. Democratic elections are realdanger. But they had a remarkable democratic election, which a large majority of the population, mostly indigenious, entered the political arena, elected someon of their own ranks. Crucial issues. Did you say some phrase you shouldn't have said, but on real issues. Control of resources, issues of cultural rights, Justice, and so on, and they've won. And they were not just pushing a button on electiondate. These are continuing struggles. Control over water, all sorts of things, sometimes with bitter struggles, and had developed mass popular organisation, and they had a democratic election, the kind that is unimaginable in theUnitedStates or theWest altogether. And yes, now there are serious efforts to overturn them,  strong successionist movement. We don't have documents, but I'm sure it's back by now in theUnitedStates, try to support the rich, mostlywhite minority to pull out and that happens to be where most of natural resources are, and  the majority wants to hold the country together and carry forward the significant changes that are taking place. And there's also, and that's happening in other countries, too. You mentioned includingBrasil, themostimportant. And there's a lot of integration going on. In fact, the whole region, almostentire region is sort of moving to the left, you know. Well, theUS had means of stopping this. Twomeans, violence and economicstrangulation, and both means have been severelyweakened. Correa throwing out theMantaairbase is a symbol of weakening of the weapon of violence. Traditionally, theUS would not have let anything like this happen. TheUS just carried out a milirary coup, instigate a military coup and install a bunch of gansters and that was the end of it, but they can't do that now. Thelasttime theUS tried a military coup was inVenezuela in2002. They did manage to, theUSbacked military coup did managed to overthrow a Goverment, but it was overturned within a couple of days. There was huge protest all over latinAmerica, and theUS had to back off, and they haven't been able to do it since. The economicstrangulation has also weakened. The economicstrangulation in recentyears has been, the instrument of it have been IMF, InternationalMonetaryFund, which is basically a branch ofUSTreasury. So, the idea is, get the country deeplyindebted, to give them possible debt that they can never pay, debts are not from the population. They're from the elites. Population didn't borrow the money and didn't gain anything from it. But international rules are they are the ones who have to pay it, okay? [Accurate] Well, that's being overcome. Country after country, ArgentinePresident put it, freeing ourselves from theIMF. Restructing the debts, repaying the debts. Argentina did it with the help ofVenezuela, Brasil did it in its own way, and theIMF is actually in trouble. It's not getting funding from debtrepayment. So in general,  method of economicstrangulation is declining partly because of the integration. The countries are working together. The standardUSline now, the press, scholarship, and so on, is that they are two kinds. They have to admit that latinAmerica is moving left. There's goodleft and badleft. The goodleft is Lula inBrasil and the badleft is, of course, Chavez, Morales, maybe Correa. But in order to maintain that partyline, you have to be ["]quick on your feet["]. For example, you have to overlook the fact that one of thestrongest supporters ofChavez is Lula. Doesn't fit the partyline, so it doesn't get reported. After Lula inBrasil, after he was, his second, after he was reelected, its first act practically was to fireNicaracus to supportChavez in electoral campaign and to dedicated joint venezuelanbrasilian project. Now moreprojects developing. shortly after that, there was veryimportant meeting of latinamericaPresidents inCochabamba inBolivia. Veryimportant place. That's where bolivian revolution took off. That's where peasants protestingWorldBank, USprograms to privatise water, which means water is out of, you know, people can't drink, because they can't pay the cost. So, they threw out, they succeeded in throwing out BechtelCorporation and blocking. It wasn't easy, a lot of people got killed. That's Coachabamba, a realsymbol. That's where latinamericanPresidents met in december2006, and they made interesting plans, joint plants for, EuropeanUniontypeintegration, actually taking steps towards it, and theUS just doesn't have much to do about it. It's lost its main weapons. Now, there's plenty of internal problems that have to be overcome, so it's not going to be an easy path, but it's thefirsttime they seriouslyfaced and with the participation of substantial mass popular movements. That's the basis forDemocracy. It's one of the reasons why we don't have functioningDemocracy. We don't have mass popular movements. Therefore, popular opinions are mostlydisregarded as it is. But, they are overcoming that. It's a real model to look for. TheUS is by no means giving up. You may have read in the paper a couple of days ago that training of military officers is being shifted fromStateDepartment toPentagon. That's been going on for some times now, in fact. They finallyreported it. That's quitsignificant. Training withinStateDepartment is at least theoretically under congressional supervision, meaning there are HumanRightsconditionalities, and so on. Once it moves intoPentagon, it's like a blackhole. They can do anything they want. nobody ever looks. Training for torture, whatever you do. It's a weak control, but it's something. Furthermore, training of latinamerican officers shot way up. TheUS is trying veryhard to recreate latinamerican officers for, that will be able to follow its orders. I think it's higher than it's ever been through theColdWaryears, and the purposes are explicit. The training is designed to combat what's called radicalPopulism. Well, in latinAmericacontext, radicalPopulism means, HumanRightsactivitis, unionleaders, priests organising peasants, anybody who gets in the way, and that's the explicit goal of the training of the officers. And the training of officers doesn't mean just teaching them. It means providing them withTechnology, weapons, connexions, and so on. So, theUS is certainlytrying to recreate the weapon of violence, and also the economic weapons, but it's not as easy as it was. For one thing, there's muchmore protest here, which is good thing. For another thing, there's, the whole world is becoming morediversed. So, the exporters in latinAmerica can now turn toChina for markets. China's investing. There's also southsouthrelationship developing. Brasil, southAfrica, India have now relations. All of these moves are verypositive, I think, and could lead to basis of some kind of authentic independence, but also overcoming the enormous internal problems. So, that's. So, these are all veryhopeful signs, I think.