Chomsky. Transcript. DemocracyNow. 11sep2013.

1.      NERMEENSHAIKH: In a nationallytelevised address, PresidentObama announced he was putting off a plan to strikeSyria while pursuing a diplomatic effort fromRussia for international monitors to take over and destroy Syria’s arsenal of chemicalweapons. The speech came just tendays after he told the nation he would askCongress to authorise using military force. On tuesdaynight, Obama asked congressional leaders to put off a vote on his request to authorize the use of military strikes, but he said the military would remain ready if diplomacy fails.

2.      Obama: America is not the world’s policeman. Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong. But when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death, and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act. That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional. With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose sight of that essential truth.

3.      NERMEENSHAIKH: PresidentObama offered a qualified endorsement of the russian proposal to secureSyria’s chemicalweapons arsenal.

4.      Obama: Over the last few days, we’ve seen some encouraging signs, in part because of the credible threat of U.S. military action, as well as constructive talks that I had with President Putin. The russian government has indicated a willingness to join with the international community in pushing Assad to give up his chemicalweapons. The Assad regime has now admitted that it has these weapons, and even said they’d join the chemicalweapons convention, which prohibits their use. It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify that theAssadregime keeps its commitments. But this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemicalweapons without the use of force, particularly because Russia is one of Assad’s strongest allies. I have therefore asked the leaders ofCongress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue this diplomatic path. I’m sendingSecretaryOfStateJohnKerry to meet his russian counterpart on Thursday, and I will continue my own discussions withPresidentPutin. I’ve spoken to the leaders of two of our closest allies, France and the United Kingdom, and we will work together in consultation with Russia and China to put forward a resolution at theUNSecurityCouncil requiring Assad to give up his chemicalweapons and to ultimately destroy them under international control. We’ll also give UNinspectors the opportunity to report their findings about what happened on august21st. And we will continue to rally support from allies fromEurope to theAmericas, fromAsia to theMiddleEast, who agree on the need for action. Meanwhile, I’ve ordered our military to maintain their current posture, to keep pressure on Assad and to be in a position to respond if diplomacy fails.

5.      Goodman: To talk more about PresidentObama’s speech and the crisis inSyria, we’re joined by the world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, MIT ProfessorNoamChomsky. He has authored numerous books. His latest is OnWesternTerrorismFromHiroshimaToDroneWarfare, that’s out nextweek. He joins us via DemocracyNow video stream from his home in Massachusetts. Noam, welcome toDemocracyNow. First, let’s get your response toPresidentObama announcing lastnight in a nationwide address, which I’m sure was watched worldwide, that for the moment there would be no strike onSyria, as theUS supports the russian plan to deal with the chemicalweapons stockpile ofSyria?

6.      Chomsky: Well, the russian plan is a godsend forObama. It saves him from what would look like a veryserious politicaldefeat. He has not been able to obtain virtually any international support for this, the action he’s contemplating. Even Britain wouldn’t support it. And it looked as though Congress wasn’t going to support it either, which would leave him completely [“]out on a limb[“]. This leaves him a way out. He can maintain the threat of force, which incidentally is a crime underInternationalLaw, that we should bear in mind that the core principle of theUnitedNationsCharter bars the threat or use of force, threat or use of force. So all of this is criminal, to begin with, but he’ll continue with that. TheUnitedStates is a rogue state. It doesn’t pay any attention toInternationalLaw. He, it was kind of interesting what he didn’t say. This would be a perfect opportunity to ban chemicalweapons, to impose the chemicalweapons convention on theMiddleEast. The convention, contrary to what Obama said, does not specifically refer just to use of chemicalweapons; it refers to production, storage or use of chemicalweapons. That’s banned by the international norm that Obama likes to preach about. Well, there is a country which happens to be, happens to have illegallyannexed part of syrian territory, which has chemicalweapons and is in violation of the chemicalweapons convention and has refused even to ratify it, namely Israel. So here’s an opportunity to eliminate chemicalweapons from the region, to impose the chemicalweapons convention as it’s actuallyformulated. But Obama was verycareful not to say that he, for reasons which are tooobvious to go into, he, and that gap is highlysignificant. Of course, chemicalweapons should be eliminated everywhere, but certainly in that region. The other things that he said were not unusual, but nevertheless kind of shocking to anyone not familiar withUSpoliticaldiscourse, at least. So he described theUnited. He said that for sevendecades theUnitedStates has been "the anchor of global security." Really? Sevendecades? That includes, for example, just fortyyears ago today, when theUnitedStates played a major role in overthrowing the parliamentaryDemocracy ofChile and imposing a brutalDictatorship, called thefirst9/11 in latinAmerica. Go back earlier years, overthrowing the parliamentarysystem inIran, imposing aDictatorship; same inGuatemala a yearlater; attackingIndochina, theworstcrime in the postwar period, killing millions of people; attacking centralAmerica; killing, involved in killing, in imposing a dictatorship in theCongo; and invadingIraq, on and on. That’s stability? I mean, that aHarvardLawSchoolgraduate can pronounce those words is prettyamazing, as is the fact that they’re accepted without comment. So what he said is I’m going to lie like a trooper aboutHistory. I’m going to suppress theUSrole, the actualUSrole, for thelastsevendecades. I’m going to maintain the threat of force, which is of course illegal; and I’m going to ensure that the chemicalweaponsconvention is notimposed on the region, because our ally, Israel, would be subjected to it. And I think those are some of the main points of his address.

7.      Goodman: NoamChomsky. NoamChomsky, the world-renowned linguist, political dissident. We’re going to go to break and then spend the hour with him on PresidentObama’s policy and what’s happening in theMiddleEast. This is DemocracyNow, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Back in a minute. Our guest for the hour is ProfessorNoamChomsky. We’re going to turn again back to PresidentObama, who addressed part of his speech to the nation last night to opponents of military action on the right and left. ‑

8.      Obama: My fellow americans, for nearly seven decades, theUnitedStates has been the anchor of global security. This has meant doing more than forging international agreements; it has meant enforcing them. The burdens of leadership are often heavy, but the world is a better place because we have borne them. And so, to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might with a failure to act when a cause is so plainly just; to my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospitalfloor, for sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough. Indeed, I’d ask everymember ofCongress and those of you watching at home tonight to view those videos of the attack and then ask: What kind of world will we live in if theUnitedStatesOfAmerica sees aDictator brazenlyviolateInternationalLaw with poison gas and we choose to look the other way?

9.      Goodman: That was PresidentObama addressing the nation last night. ProfessorNoamChomsky, your response to his description of those who oppose military strike againstSyria for a chemicalweapons attack?

10.   Chomsky: Well, once again, what’s particularly interesting is what he didn’t say. So, yes, a good idea to look at the videos of the gas attack inSyria. But then we could also look at the photos of deformedfœtuses inSaigonhospitals stillappearing decades after JohnFKennedy launched a major chemicalwarfare attack against southVietnam, 1961, dousing the country with poisonous dioxinlaced AgentOrange. Dioxin is one of the major carcinogens. The attack was aimed at food crops, in an effort, and at ground cover, part of a general assault against the country, a huge number of atrocities, millions of people killed. The chemical, the effects of chemical warfare are felt until today, partially by american soldiers, too. Or we could look at the photos of other deformedfœtuses coming regularly inFallujah, attacked byUSMarines in november2004, killing several thousand people, destroying much of the town, using weapons which, of unknown character, but which left radiationlevels that epidemiologists have estimated are comparable toHiroshima. And the effects of that on high cancer rates, on deformed fetuses, on children devastated by horrifying deformities, that we could look at, too. Now, those are the ways in which theUS has brought, has been the anchor for global security for sevendecades. Can run through the record, if there were time, but everyone should know it. These, of course, that’s notsaid. TheUS, the idea that theUS has introduced and imposed principles ofInternationalLaw, that’s hardly even a joke. TheUnitedStates has even gone so far as to veto Security Council resolutions calling on all states to observeInternationalLaw. That was in the1980s underReagan. No State was mentioned, but it was evident that the intention was to request theUnitedStates to observeInternationalLaw, after it had rejected aWorldCourtjudgment condemning it for what was called unlawful use of force, it means internationalTerrorism, againstNicaragua. In fact, theUS has been a rogueState, the leading rogueState, radicallyviolatingInternationalLaw, refusing to accept international conventions. There’s hardly any international conventions that theUS has accepted, and those few that it has accepted are conditioned so as to be inapplicable to theUnitedStates. That’s true even of the genocideconvention. TheUnitedStates is selfauthorised to commit genocide. In fact, that was accepted by theInternationalCourtOfJustice. In the case ofYugoslaviaV.NATO, one of the charges was genocide. TheUS appealed to the court, saying that, by law, theUnitedStates is immune to the charge of genocide, self-immunized, and the court accepted that, so the case proceeded against the other NATOpowers but not against theUnitedStates. In fact, theUnitedStates, when it joined theWorldCourt—it helped introduce the modernWorldCourt in 1946, and joined theWorldCourt, but with a reservation. The reservation is that international agreements, laws, do not apply to theUnitedStates. So theUNCharter, the charter of theOrganizationOfAmericanStates, theUS is immune to their, selfimmunized to their requirements against the threat and use of force, intervention and so on. It’s kind of astonishing. I mean, by now it’s hard to be astonished, but it should be astonishing that aPresident of theUnitedStates, who is furthermore a constitutionallawyer or a graduate ofHarvardLawSchool, can say things like this, in the full knowledge that the facts are exactly the opposite, radically the opposite. And there are millions and millions of victims who can testify to that. Right today is, happens to be an important date, the fortiethanniversary of the overthrow of the parliamentary democracy ofChile, with substantial USaid, because we insisted on having a viciousDictatorship, which became a major international terror center with our support, rather than allowing a democraticsocialistGovernment. Well, that’s, these are some of theRealities of the world. Now, the picture that the president presented is, it doesn’t even merit the name fairytale.

11.   NERMEENSHAIKH: Well, ProfessorNoamChomsky, why do you think that theUS so quickly started to push for military strikes? And what do you think theUS or the international community should do to deal with this alleged use of chemicalweapons inSyria? What do you think the appropriate response would be?

12.   Chomsky: The appropriate response would be to call for imposing the chemicalweapons convention in theMiddleEast, in fact beyond, but we’ll keep to theMiddleEast, which would mean that any country that is in violation of that convention, whether it has accepted it or not, would be compelled to eliminate its chemicalweapons stores. Just maintaining those stores, producing chemicalweapons, all of that’s in violation of the convention, and now is a perfect opportunity to do that. Of course, that would require that USally, Israel, give up its chemicalweapons and permit international inspections. Incidentally, this should extend to nuclearweapons, as well. Thefurtherstep would be to move towards the kinds of negotiations, Genevanegotiations, that theUNnegotiator, LakhdarBrahimi, has been calling for, with russian support and with theUnitedStates kind of dragging its feet. Obama misstated that, too, last night. That’s the one thin hope, and it’s pretty thin, for some way to allowSyria to escape what is in fact a plunged, virtual suicide.

13.   NERMEENSHAIKH: And why do you think theUS started to push for military action so swiftly?

14.   Chomsky: As it always does. TheUnitedStates is a violent militaryState. It’s been involved in military action all over the place. [planet]. It invaded southVietnam, practicallydestroyedIndochina, invadedIraq, elicited a Sunni-Shia conflict, which is now tearing the region to shreds. I don’t have to run through the rest of the record. But theUnitedStates moves very quickly to military action, unilaterally. It can, sometimes can get some allies to go along. In this case, it can’t even do that. And it’s just a routine. TheUnitedStates is selfimmunised fromInternationalLaw, which bans the threat or use of force. And this is taken for granted here. So, for example, when PresidentObama repeatedly says all options are open with regard toIran, that’s a violation of fundamentalInternationalLaw. It says we are using the threat of force, in violation ofInternationalLaw, to which we are selfimmunised. There’s nothing new about this. Can you think of any other country that’s used military force internationally on anything remotely like the scale of theUnitedStates during these sevendecades when, according toObama, we’ve been the anchor of global security?

15.   NERMEENSHAIKH: Well, NoamChomsky, supporters of theUS plan say that theonlyreason that Assad agreed to hand over, relinquish control over chemicalweapons was because of the threat of military force, of US military force. And what interest does theUS have in strikingSyria militarily?

16.   Chomsky: Thefirstcomment is correct. The threat and use of force can be effective. So, for example, Russia was able to control Eastern Europe for 50 years with the threat and occasional use of force. Hitler was able to take over Czechoslovakia with the threat of force. Yes, it often works, no doubt. That’s one of the reasons it’s banned under international, underInternationalLaw. The reason, the pretexts for imposing, for carrying out a forceful act have generally declined, to the point that even the britishGovernment hasn’t accepted them, and theCongress was apparently going to reject them, and theUnitedStates, theGovernment, resorted to the, what is usually the last, thelastresort, when everything else fails, saying our credibility is at stake. That’s correct. UScredibility is at stake. Obama issued an edict, and it has to be enforced. That’s a familiar doctrine. It’s one of the leading doctrines of world affairs. Credibility of powerful, violent states must be maintained. It’s occasionallycalled theMafiadoctrine. It’s essentially the doctrine by which the godfather rules his domains within theMafiasystem. That’s one of the leading principles of world order: Credibility has to be maintained. But that has many variants. Sometimes it’s called theDominoTheory. If we don’t impose our will here, the dominos will start to fall, others will begin to be disobedient. In the case ofChile fortyyearsago, to go back to that, what latinamericans called thefirst9/11, HenryKissinger explained that Chile, underAllende, he said, is a virus that might spread contagion elsewhere, all the way to southernEurope. And he wasn’t saying that chilean troops were going to land inRome. He was concerned, rightly, that the model of peaceful parliamentaryDemocracy might spread, in which case the contagion would spread beyond, and theUSsystem of domination would erode. Just earlier on the program, you had an interview withSaulLandau, the lateSaulLandau, with regard to[Cuba], and exactly thesamedoctrine applies there. TheUS carried out, invadedCuba, BayOfPigsInvasion. When that failed, Kennedy launched an enormous terrorist campaign, murderous terrorist campaign. The goal was to bring "the terrors of the earth" toCuba, as ArthurSchlesinger described it, Kennedy’sadviser, latinamerican adviser. It was in the hands ofRobertKennedy, and it was no joke. It was veryserious. Now, that’s been followed by fiftyyears of economic warfare, veryharsh economic warfare, all unilateral. The world was overwhelmingly opposed to it. But it doesn’t matter. We, as a rogueState, we do what we like. And the reasons are explicit in the internal record. The reasons, you go back to theearly[19]60s, the internalGovernmentrecord explains that Castro is guilty of what they called "successful defiance" of theUSprinciples going back to theMonroeDoctrine, 1823, no russians, just theMonroeDoctrine, which established, in principle, our right to dominate the hemisphere. TheUS wasn't powerfulenough to do it then, but that was the principle, and Castro is carrying out "successful defiance" of that principle, therefore he must, Cuba must be subjected to massiveTerrorism, economic warfare and strangulation. That’s been going on for fiftyyears. Sameprinciple, theMafiaPrinciple. Thesame was true inVietnam. The primary motive for theIndochinaWars, going back to theearly1950s, was presented here as theDominoTheory. But what that meant was, if you read the internal records, that there was a fear, a justified fear, that successful independent development inVietnam might spread through the region, might spread contagion through the region. Others would attempt thesamepath, that itself was of no great significance, but it might spread as far as Indonesia, which has rich resources, and there, too, there might be a move towards independent development, independent ofUSdomination. And it was even feared that that might bring inJapan. JohnDower, the famousAsiahistorian, described Japan as the "superdomino." TheUS was concerned, deeplyconcerned, that if southeastAsia moved toward independent development, Japan would "accommodate," the word that was used, to eastandsoutheasternAsia, becoming its technological industrial center and creating a system, an asiansystem, from which theUS would maybe not be excluded, but at least which it wouldn’t control. Now, theUS had fought theSecondWorldWar to prevent that. That’s Japan’s new order, and it was in danger of being reconstituted if Indochina gained independence. That’s theDominoTheory. And that was understood. McGeorgeBundy, KennedyJohnsonnationalsecurityadviser, in retrospect, observed that theVietnamWar. TheUnitedStates should have called off theVietnamWar in1965. Why 1965? Well, because in 1965 a U.S.-backed military coup took place in Indonesia, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people, wiping out the only mass-based political party and instituting a regime of torture and terror, but opening the country up to Western exploitation, with its rich resources, and that meant that theVietnamWar was essentially over. TheUS had won its main objectives. It was pointless to continue it.Now, this policy is, these are major principles of world affairs, and they’re understandable, and they’re understood. So, go back toCuba again. When Kennedy came into office, he was concerned with changing Latin American policy. He developed the—set up a latinamerican researchcommission. It was headed byArthurSchlesinger, his historian who was his adviser, and they came out with a report. It was presented bySchlesinger to the president. And in it, Schlesinger described the problem ofCuba. He said the problem ofCuba is theCastroidea of taking matters into your own hands, an idea which may have resonance in other parts of latinAmerica, where the mass of the population is subjected to thesamekind of harsh repression that they are inCuba. And if this idea spreads, theUS system of control erodes. Well, going back to theMiddleEast, it’s the same.

17.   Goodman: Noam, we’re going to go back to theMiddleEast just when we come back from break. We want to ask you aboutSyria in the largerMiddleEastcontext, particularly looking at Iran and looking atIsrael. And, of course, as you point out, this is major date in history. Fortyyearsago today, September 11, 1973, inChile, SalvadorAllende died in the palace as thePinochetforces rose to power. And it is also the 12th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. This is DemocracyNow. We’ll be back in a moment.

18.   Goodman: Our guest for the hour is ProfessorNoamChomsky. In 2007, Noam, DemocracyNow interviewed GeneralWesleyClark, the retired fourstargeneral who was the supreme allied commander ofNATO during theKosovoWar. GeneralClark described how an unnamed Pentagon official, just after the september11thattacks, talked about a memo that said theUS planned to take out seven countries in five years, includingSyria.

19.   Gen.WesleyClark: About 10 days after 9/11, I went through thePentagon, and I saw SecretaryRumsfeld and DeputySecretaryWolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the joint staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you’re toobusy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with \Iraq." This was on or about the twentieth of september. I said, "We’re going to war withIraq? Why?" He said, "I don’t know." He said, "I guess they don’t know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connectingSaddam to alQaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war withIraq." He said, "I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down Governments." And he said, "I guess if theonlytool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail." So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing inAfghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war withIraq?" And he said, "Oh, it’s worse than that." He said, he reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper, and he said, "I just got this down from upstairs," meaning theSecretaryOfDefense’soffice, "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out sevencountries in fiveyears, starting withIraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don’t show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!"

20.   Goodman: That was GeneralWesleyClark. I was interviewing him at the92ndStreetY here in[NYC] in2007. ProfessorNoamChomsky, if you could respond?‑

21.   Chomsky: Well, I think that’s, it’s quite plausible. TheBushadministration veeredslightly, notfar, but slightly, from the general pattern. Actually, the goal ofUSPolicy for decades has been to control and dominate those countries. But theBushadministration was more extreme. They thought they could actually just, as they put it, "take them out" and forcefully impose our own regimes, not that that would be anything new. There’s a long list of similar cases, going back to Iran in1953, Guatemala in1954. There was an assault against, major assault againstIndonesia in1958, an effort to strip away the outer islands where the resources are, and because they were concerned about toomuchindependence inIndonesia. That failed. InvasionOfCuba failed. The murder ofLumumba, in which theUS was involved, in the Congo destroyed Africa’s major hope for development. Congo is now total horrorstory, for years. TheUS supported the Mobutu dictatorship. Now it’s maybe the worst place in the world. And on right through, case after case. This is standard USpolicy. TheBushadministration went beyond. They were more extreme in their goals and their actions. And they had to pull back, because that was just beyondUScapacity. Iraq, theIraqWar was a very serious defeat for theUnitedStates, unlike theVietnamWar. In the case of Indochina, it’s called defeat, but that only means that theUS did not achieve its maximal objectives. It did achieve its major objectives, as McGeorgeBundy well understood. It had prevented a Vietnam from moving on a path of independent development, which might have had this contagious effect that Kissinger was concerned with. As it was put at the time, one rotten apple may spoil the barrel, meaning just what ArthurSchlesinger and others said. If you allow independent taking matters into your own hand in one place and it works, others will try to emulate it, system will erode, a standard principle for systems of power. The godfather of theMafia understands it perfectly well. In theMafiasystem, if some small storekeeper decides not to pay protectionmoney, the money may not mean anything to the godfather, but he’s not going to let him get away with it. And, in fact, he’s not just going to go in and send his goons to get the money; he’s also going to beat him to a pulp, because others have to understand that disobedience is not tolerated. In international affairs, that’s called "credibility." The bombing ofKosovo, WesleyClark’sbombing ofKosovo, was the same. After other, there were pretexts, but they collapsed, and the final one, as TonyBlair and GeorgeBush said, was we have to maintain the credibility ofNATO. NATO had issued edicts, and we must ensure that they’re obeyed. And NATO, of course, does not mean Norway; it means theUnitedStates. The god.

22.   Goodman: Noam?

23.   Chomsky: Yeah.

24.   Goodman: If I could interrupt for a minute to ask you about your reflections on this anniversary of the September11th2001, attacks here in theUnitedStates? Your reflections on this anniversary, and also how it relates toSyria and theMiddleEast, and what needs to be done now?

25.   Chomsky: I will respond to that, though I. My own view is that we should be concentrating on the first 9/11, the one inChile, which was a much worse attack, by any dimension. But the one here was very significant. It was a major terrorist act, thousands of people killed. It’s the first time since theWarOf1812 that USterritory had been attacked. TheUnitedStates has had remarkable security, and this therefore was, aside from the horrible atrocity, a very significant, historical event. And it changed attitudes and policies in theUnitedStates quite considerably. In reaction to this, the government was able to ram through laws, PATRIOTAct, others, that sharply constrained civil liberties. It was able to provide pretext for invasion ofAfghanistan, invasion ofIraq, destruction ofIraq. The consequences have spread through the region. And it provides, it’s the basis for Obama’s massive terrorist war, the drone wars, the most extreme terrorist campaign that’s underway now, maybe most extreme in history. And the justification for it is the same: the second 9/11, 9/11/2001. So, yes, it’s had enormous effects on the society, on its, on attitudes, on policies. Many victims throughout the world can testify to that.

26.   Goodman: How do you see the situation inSyria being resolved? And now, can you tie it in to the largerMiddleEastcrisis? Talk aboutIsraelPalestine. Talk about theUSrelationship with Iran and relationship withSaudiArabia.

27.   Chomsky: Well, Syria right now is plunging into suicide. If the negotiations options that LakhdarBrahimi and Russia and others have been pressing, if that doesn’t work, Syria is moving towards a kind of verybloody partition. It’s likely that the kurdish areas, which already are semiindependent, will move towards further independence, probably link up with iraqi kurdistan, adjacent to them, maybe make some arrangements withTurkey, those are already in process, and the rest ofSyria, what remains, will be divided between a bloody, murderousAssadregime and a collection of rebel groups of varying kinds, ranging from secular democratic to murderous, brutal terrorists. That looks like the outcome forSyria. There is another part ofSyria which is nottalked about. It’s occupied byIsrael and annexed byIsrael. It’s theGolanHeights, annexed in violation of explicit SecurityCouncilorders not to annex it. Their credibility doesn’t matter, because Israel is an ally. So that’s another part ofSyria. That brings us toIsraelPalestine. Just a couple of days ago, SecretaryKerry, SecretaryOfStateKerry, appealed to theEuropeanUnion to continue to support illegal, criminal israeli settlementprojects in theWestBank, wasn’t put in those words, but the way it was put is that Europe had taken the quite appropriate step of trying to draw back from support for israeli operations in the illegal settlements. Incidentally, that the settlements are illegal is not even in question. That’s been determined by thehighestauthorities, theSecurityCouncil of theUnitedNations, theInternationalCourtOfJustice. In fact, up until theReaganadministration, theUS also called them illegal. Reagan changed that to "an obstacle to peace," and Obama has weakened it still further to "not helpful to peace." But theUS is virtually alone in this. The rest of the world accepts the judgment of the Security Council, the International Court of Justice, that the settlements are illegal, not just the expansion of the settlements but the settlements themselves. And Europe had pulled back from support for the settlements, and Kerry called on Europe not to do that, because the pretext was that this would interfere with the so-called peace negotiations that he’s set up, which are a total farce. I mean, the peace negotiations are carried out under preconditions, USimposed preconditions, which virtuallyguarantee failure. There are two basic preconditions. One.

28.   Goodman: We have fifteenseconds.

29.   Chomsky: Pardon?

30.   Goodman: We have fifteenseconds.

31.   Chomsky: Oh, OK. Oneprecondition is that theUS run them. TheUS is a participant, not neutral. The other is that Israeli expansion of settlements must continue. No peace negotiations can continue under those conditions.

32.   Goodman: Well, Noam, we want to thank you very much for being with us, spending the hour with us, Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author, Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than half a century, and has written more than a hundred books. And we will link to our past interviews with him at our website, democracynow.org. You can also go to our website to see a number of new interviews about theUSbacked coup inChile that took place fortyyearsago today, 11sep1973. I just spoke with the judges who later arrested and indictedGeneralAugustoPinochet and with the forensic specialist who exhumed the bodies of oustedPresidentSalvadorAllende and singerVíctorJara. Also on our website, you can see our interactive timeline of the voices of dissent surrounding the September 11, 2001, attack here at home. We showcase our archive of in-depth reports documenting the attacks and their aftermath. Also, we have a job opening hiring a Linux systems administrator. Go to our website at democracynow.org.