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Today's
Stories
November
3, 2003
Bernie
Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November
1 / 2, 2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce
Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler
/ Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets'
Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne
Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick
Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest
Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip
Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert
Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander
Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October
29, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence
Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine
Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October
28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane
Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert
Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason
Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris
White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27, 2003
William
A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David
Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine
Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert
Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October
25 / 26, 2003
Robert
Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James
Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher
Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane
Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin
Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn
Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey
Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets'
Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October
24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David
Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry
Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
October
23, 2003
Diane
Christian
Ruthlessness
Kurt Nimmo
Criticizing Zionism
David Lindorff
A General Theory of Theology
Alan Maass
The Future of the Anti-War Movement
William
Blum
Imperial
Indifference
Stew Albert
A Memo
October
22, 2003
Wayne
Madsen
Religious
Insanity Runs Rampant
Ray McGovern
Holding
Leaders Accountable for Lies
Christopher
Brauchli
There's
No Civilizing the Death Penalty
Elaine
Cassel
Legislators
and Women's Bodies
Bill Glahn
RIAA
Watch: the New Morality of Capitalism
Anthony Arnove
An Interview with Tariq Ali
October 21, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Beilin Agreement
Robert Jensen
The Fundamentalist General
David
Lindorff
War Dispatch from the NYT: God is on Our Side!
William S. Lind
Bremer is Deaf to History
Bridget
Gibson
Fatal Vision
Alan Haber
A Human Chain for Peace in Ann Arbor
Peter
Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Hanging of Thomas Russell
October
20, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Chile's
Failed Economy: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Chris
Floyd
Circus Maximus: Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California
Mark Hand
Democrats Seek to Disappear Chomsky
& Nader
John &
Elaine Mellencamp
Peaceful
World
Elaine
Cassel
God's
General Unmuzzled
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
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Behold,
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November
3, 2003
Cuba's 50 Years of
Defiance
An
Interview with Noam Chomsky
By BERNIE DWYER
Havana, Cuba.
Noam Chomsky was in Cuba to participate in the
3rd Latin American and Caribbean Social Sciences Conference (CLACSO)
27-31 October 2003, where he was interviewed there by Bernie
Dwyer. --AC/JSC
Bernie Dwyer: It's really a pleasure
to welcome you to Cuba on your first visit here. What motivates
you to continue to offer analysis, commentary and possible solutions
to world problems?
Noam Chomsky: It seems to me the opposite question is the
one that ought to be asked. There is a moral truism about this
that is as elementary as anything can be: privilege confers responsibility
and the people who are called intellectuals, for no particularly
good reason, happen to be privileged.
We have education, training, resources,
opportunities and in a country like the United States, virtually
no repression, it's an unusually free country by comparative
standards, so we just have that much more responsibility than
people who lack those opportunities, like most people in other
countries including those under the boot of the
United States, and most people in our own country. After that
it's just a matter of choice. Do you observe moral truisms or
don't you?
If you do, these are the kind of things
that you naturally and automatically do and it doesn't merit
any credit or applause or anything else, it's just being a human
being and using the opportunities that you have.
BD: Do you see popular movements taking
the place of the organized Left in the major task of building
a new society, as was mentioned several times during the conference,
which commented that the Left is in disarray?
Noam Chomsky: Well, I have never really thought that the Left
was much in "array" as far as political purposes were
concerned. These are usually various power systems, maybe good
things, maybe bad things. I don't think that these new popular
movements are taking the place of anything, they're really new.
There never was anything like the World Social Forum before.
The goal of the Left from its modern
origins has been to create a real International. The Left has
never been anti-globalization, that's why every union is called
an International. You want to have international solidarity and
support and so on. It never succeeded. Now the Internationals
were very limited in their outreach and they fell apart, actually
under internal authoritarian reasons in each case.
Now this is different. This is really
international and it has participation from a vast range of components
from society: peasant, working people, environmentalists, intellectuals,
poets, all sorts of people. How far this will go, who knows.
There are a lot of disruptive forces inside and a lot of pressures
outside, a lot of difficulties, maybe this one will fail, but
even if it fails, it succeeds. It lays the basis for something
that can come next. You don't expect anything important to happen
in a day--whether it's the elimination of slavery or women's
rights or whatever it may be. These are things that take time.
One of the problems of organizing in
the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think--even
the activists--that instant gratification is required. You constantly
hear: "Look I went to a demonstration and we didn't stop
the war so what's the use of doing it again?" But people
who live real lives know that that is not the way things work.
If you want to achieve something, you build the basis for it.
If you want to achieve something like,
say, an electoral victory that means something, you have to spend
decades organizing the basis of the groups so all local communities
can take part and so on and so forth. It's a lot easier in countries
where there are more opportunities and wealth and less repression.
It's still not going to happen in a few minutes, so the World
Social Forum is not really replacing left parties. Its place
is maybe establishing more authentic ones and I'm not even sure
whether political parties are what we are looking for. Maybe
what we are looking for are cooperatives and communities which
interact and federate and just build a new society.
BD: During these times of US world
domination, what role do you see Cuba playing?
Noam Chomsky: Well, Cuba has become a symbol of courageous
resistance to attack. Since 1959 Cuba has been under attack from
the hemispheric superpower. It has been invaded, subjected to
more terror than maybe the rest of the world combined--certainly
any other country that I can think of--and it's under an economic
stranglehold that has been ruled completely illegal by every
relevant international body, It has been at the receiving end
of terrorism, repression and denunciation, but it survives.
If you look back at the declassified
record and the problems that Cuba was posing and therefore had
to be overthrown, one intelligence analyst said that "the
very existence of the Castro regime is successful defiance of
US policies that go back a hundred and fifty years". He's
not talking about the Russians. He is talking about the Monroe
Doctrine, which says we are the masters of the hemisphere. It
goes on to say that this really dangerous as it offers a model
that others might want to follow. That's what is called "communist
aggression". You have a model that somebody wants to follow.
So you have to destroy the virus.
Kissinger, for example, during the other
9/11--the one that happened in 1973--was concerned that Allende,
with his democratic victory and social programs would spread
contagion not only in Latin America, but even in Italy where
the United States at the very same time was carrying out large
scale subversive operations to try to undermine Italian democracy
and even supported fascist parties in Italy.
Yes, Cuba is the symbol of successful
defiance that accounts for the venomous hostility. The very existence
of the regime, independent of what it does, by not subordinating
itself to power is just an unacceptable defiance for the rest
of the world. It's a symbol of what can be done without using
harsh conditions. It's once again a case of those under the most
severe conditions are doing things that others can't do.
So, for example, let's take Cuba's role
in the liberation of Africa. It's an astonishing achievement
that has almost been totally suppressed. Now you can read about
it in scholarship, but the contribution that Cuba made to the
self-liberation of Africa is fantastic. And that was against
the entire concentrated power of the world. All the imperialist
powers were trying to block it. It finally worked and Cuba's
contribution was unique. That's another reason why Cuba is hated.
Just the plain fact that black soldiers from Cuba were able to
beat back a South African invasion of Angola sent shock waves
throughout the continent. The black movements were inspired by
it. The white South Africans were psychologically crushed by
the fact that South African forces could be defeated by a black
army. The United States were infuriated. If you look at the next
couple of years, the terrorist attacks on Cuba got much worse.
But yes, it's a symbol of successful
defiance. One can have arguments about what society is like and
what it does, but that's for Cubans to decide. But for the world
its symbolic significance is not slight.
BD: You are aware of the plight of
the five Cuban political prisoners in the United States. You
are also very aware of flagrant abuses, not only judicial but
also of human and prisoner rights regarding the visits of two
of the prisoners' wives. Why do you think that the EU, the UN,
and the other international bodies that are supposed to be keeping
an eye on democracy are allowing this repression to continue?
Noam Chomsky: The reason is embarrassingly simple. You don't
challenge the chief Mafia Don. It's dangerous. Everyone knows
that. There's no higher authority, there's just the Mafia. If
the Don is doing something you don't like, you can only object
quietly. That's the main reason.
The secondary reason is that the European
elite share the interests of American power. They may not like
the US throwing its weight around that much--especially when
it interferes with them--but fundamentally they don't disagree.
They want to support the same programs of economic integration,
so-called neoliberal programs. They are not unhappy to see the
US power in reserve to crush people who stand up and get in the
way.
The thing with the Cuban Five is such
a scandal, its hard to talk about it. Cuba was providing the
FBI with information about the terrorist actions taking place
in the United States, based in the United States--completely
criminal. So instead of arresting the terrorists, they arrested
the people that provided the information, which is so ridiculous
I find it difficult to talk about it. They put them under very
hard conditions and it's not recorded. You can't read about it.
So one of the reasons it goes on is because nobody knows about
it. There were a few brief mentions, but all it said was that
these people were informing Cuba that an unarmed plane was going
.to fly over Havana. That's about the only story that was reported.
The actual facts of the matter are not secret but no one knows.
Take the embargo, which has been challenged
by everyone. The European Union did bring a challenge to it at
the World Trade Organization and the US just told them to get
lost. In fact, what the Clinton administration said was that
Europe was challenging a policy, at that time, of thirty years.
These were US policies aimed at overthrowing the government in
Cuba without announcing that yes, "we are international
criminals and you are interfering with us and therefore you have
no right to say anything" and then the US just pulled out
of the negotiations and what's anybody going to do about that?
The US has vetoed resolutions calling
on all states to observe international law. It vetoed the Security
Council resolution affirming the World Court judgment which condemned
the US for pronounced international terrorism. No one mentions
this, nobody knows it, it's not part of anyone's consciousness.
You go into the faculty club or the editorial offices and people
will never have heard about it. That's what it means to have
extreme power and a very subservient intellectual class. It's
out of history, it didn't happen.
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 25 / 26, 2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce
Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler
/ Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets'
Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
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