Chomsky interview on MSNBC

Noam Chomsky was interviewed (again) on MSNBC on October 2, 2001. ZMag has the transcript. He touches on the failure of the U.S. propaganda system abroad (despite its resounding success on Americans):

<q>…the reason is that they can see with their own eyes what the facts are. When you produce false propaganda to people who can see that it’s false, it does not succeed. Just the way that we never believed Soviet propaganda. It was so obviously ridiculous that you just laughed at it.</q>

Also discussed are alternatives to a military response, which include taking the case to World Court, an action that Nicaragua tried at one point:

<q>[Nicaragua] went to the World Court with a case, the World Court ruled in their favor and ordered the United States to stop its “unlawful use of force” (that means international terrorism) and pay substantial reparations. Well, the United States responded by dismissing the court with contempt and immediately escalated the attack. At that point Nicaragua went to the UN Security council which voted a resolution calling on all states to obey international law. They didn’t mention anyone, but everyone knew they meant the United States. Well, the United States vetoed it.</q>

He also cautions to “…look very carefully at this anti-terrorism coalition and who is joining it and why.” Many of the states joining it (Russia, China, Indonesia, Algeria, etc.) are interested in U.S. support for their own conflicts.

<q>And if you look around the world, those who are happily joining the coalition are doing it for reasons that should send shivers up their spine. There’s a lot of applause for the coalition, but it will disappear very quickly if you look at the reasons why countries are joining. If that’s the new internationalism, we should not want to be part of it, we should be strongly opposed to it.</q>

In a side issue, Mr. Chomsky has also published some interesting replies (first reply, second reply) to attacks on his views about the bombing of the pharmaceutical factory in Sudan in 1998. He discusses the Sudanese offer of “a vast intelligence database on Osama bin Laden and more than 200 leading members of his al-Qaeda terrorist network”, which was refused at the time. Both are definitely worth reading if you want to know more about our behavior and reactions when the tables are turned (i.e. we are doing the attacking).