Sun Woo Lee: Chomsky Interview about Korea and International Affairs

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Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:33:59 -0800

Sun Woo Lee: Chomsky Interview about Korea and International

Affairs

 

 

 

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>

>Noam Chomsky is probably the most censored person in America. The

following interview is from a Korean publication. Sun Woo Lee

interviewed Chomsky in his MIT office. Ironically, though American,

Chomsky probably is published more often abroad than here, except for

his writing on linguistics, for which he is internationally renowned

as the world's foremost expert.

>

>Chomsky is identified in this piece as a libertarian. Because most

American libertarians are seen as right wingers who support corporate

power (The powerful corporate-financed American Enterprise Institute

and Cato Institute among libertarian organizations) it should be noted

that Chomsky's libertarianism involves democratic socialism, clearly

leftist.

>

>In this interview Chomsky goes into corporate crime and the potential

for nuclear war and environmental destruction. Particulars of this

discussion are almost entirely ignored by corporate media, although

they are of primary importance to the survival of our species. This

is long but damned good and I highly recommend it --Jack

>

>-\

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> http://www.chomsky.info/

 

> (January 24, 2006)

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> Korea and International Affairs

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>

>

> by Noam Chomsky and Sun Woo Lee

>

>

>

>

> SUN WOO LEE: How is your health?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: I am fine, as you can see.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Is there any recent issue of interest related to Korea

which you have been following?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: Korea is playing a very significant role in world

affairs. First of all, its economic development was remarkable, but

then its political development has been equally remarkable since the

overthrow of the Jun dictatorship. It is becoming a lively, exciting

society. Many things are happening.

>

> [There're] a number of things I hope to do when I am in Korea. One

of the invitations is from a Korea-based international peace

organization that is trying ... to lessen the confrontation with the

North. They have actions that take place right on the Demilitarized

Zone. Both sides participate. So I will probably take part in some of

those. There is also an invitation from Jeju Island, which I am very

interested in going to. I think they have some anniversary of the

massacre. It is a place I have been eager to see for a long time. I

think, I mean, I think the President and the government are taking a

sensible attitude towards overcoming what could be a very serious

crisis of nuclear weapons.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: We Koreans have been in the throes of dealing with the

shock from Dr. Hwang's scandal related to his faking of research

papers. Have you heard about this?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: Oh, sure.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Apart from controversies about the existence of the

relevant stem cell, some people argue that this research which

requires cloning embryonic stem cells raises ethical concerns. What is

your position on this?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: I think it can be done in a way which doesn't violate

human rights. I mean, these stem cells which are being harvested for

use are typically taken from embryos which are not being destroyed.

You are not harming anyone if you use the stem cells. In fact, it is a

way of improving, maybe vastly improving the health and the life of

many people. So, the choice is between taking cells from a basically

dead embryo, on the one hand, and using it, on the other hand, for

research that has great potential for advancing science and for

treating serious diseases overcoming thought-to-be incurable diseases,

like regenerating cells and so on. So, I think it's valuable work. I

mean it is unfortunate that this incident took place. But things like

that happen. And the sciences are different from history or

anthropology. When mistakes are made or there is fraud, it is very

quickly corrected because other people redo the experiments. So,

science has a built-in corrective apparatus which means that things

like this are rare and they are quickly corrected and then you just go

on. But it has happened before.

>

> In fact, there are much more serious cases right here, I think. It

is a very serious situation here which is maybe not as dramatic but in

the long run it's much more serious. That is, it's been discovered

that technical papers appear in the best journals. Uh, if you do a

statistical analysis of them, you can discover that you can, to some

extent, predict what they are going to publish on the basis of their

funding, which means that the experimental work and interpretation are

being distorted in the interests of the corporations that fund them.

Now that's very hard to correct. It is not outright fraud; it means

not reporting negative evidence and selecting, which is very hard to

detect. But over a long term, that can have really harmful

consequences with regard to drugs that people use. Are they safe?

>

> This research [= Hwang's research]. There was improper behavior and

that was an unfortunate incident. But, it didn't actually hurt anyone.

It is quite different from falsifying the record on the character of

some drug. So, yes there are things like that and there are much more

serious ones like what I just mentioned. And over time, they get

corrected, but it is often a very long time.

>

> There are well known cases. I mean, take, say, lead poisoning,

which is extremely serious. Nobody knows how many children died from

it. When the corporations began producing lead for gasoline, back in

the 1920s, they knew right away that it was toxic. They knew from

their own work that it was toxic. They kept it secret. They had enough

political power to keep the government from investigating it. It was

almost fifty years before it finally broke through. I mean, the costs

of that were incredible. And that's true all around us. I mean, cancer

rates, for example, are rising. In most of the world, particularly in

the industrial societies, it is very hard to trace particular causes,

but it's very likely that they are coming from chemical pollutants and

things of that nature - [Pollutants] are simply not controlled

properly. And the reason they are not controlled is just the power of

major financial institutions or corporations and others and their

power over government to prevent decent regulations. In fact, the most

dramatic case of all which may actually destroy the human species is

the unwillingness to take appropriate steps with regard to

environmental catastrophes like global warming, which could be

extremely serious. And the failure to act properly on that is

considered a major human crisis, which may make life unlivable for our

grandchildren. In comparison to that, the stem cell fraud is a minor

foot-note.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: As an academic, what opinion do you have on the issue

of fabricated research results? In the United States, how are such

frauds dealt with?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, if you read science journals, science

magazines, for example, or, if you look at the letters columns, there

are occasionally cases of where the authors of an article write a

letter withdrawing the article, saying that subsequent research has

discovered that what they wrote was incorrect or they rechecked the

data and it did not come out that way. Or others also write letters

correcting things. And in most areas of science, there is enough of a

corrective apparatus, so that it is overcome fairly quickly.

>

> In cases of bias due to funding, it is much harder to detect

because the nature of the inquiry is much more complex. But it is

dealt with seriously, I think. I am not sure there are any better ways

of much being done. You have to have peer review. And peer review has

potential corruption in it.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Are they punished in some way? If so, what kind of

punishment do they receive? Are they sent to prison?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, falsifying research is not a criminal offense.

It is wrong. Take, for example, tobacco companies who did suppress

information for a long time on the lethal effect of what they were

producing. There have finally been some sentences, very light

sentences. Corporate crime is simply not punished. White collar crimes

are barely punished. There are extensive studies of this. Just take

one example: two of the major drug companies - I think it was Eli

Lilly and Smith Kline - which have since been merged into some bigger

conglomerate. This must have been the late 1980s. There was, if I

remember, a class action suit against them for falsifying information

on some drugs which led to tens of thousands of deaths. They found

80,000 people who had suffered severely from this. They brought a suit

- these 80,000 people - against the company. And they won the suit.

And the company was charged 80,000 dollars - one dollar for each

person who they had seriously injured. I mean, if a particular person

was guilty of seriously injuring 80,000 people, they would not be

fined 80,000 dollars, but that is the way corporate crime is dealt

with. In fact, there are extensive legal studies of corporate

manslaughter. Killing someone with the understanding that what you are

doing may very well kill them -manslaughter- it is called corporate

manslaughter, which is huge, but has barely been investigated.

>

> England has a history of hundreds of years of concern for this

since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The first book on

corporate manslaughter by a British legal specialist just appeared

about seven or eight years ago. Actually he asked me to write an

introduction to it, which is how I knew it appeared. And in the U.S.,

I am not even sure how much study there is. Powerful systems tend to

have ways of immunizing themselves from punishment. Actually, that is

true in all of international affairs. I mean, take the Nuremberg and

Tokyo tribunals. Well, those tribunals, especially Nuremberg. It was

very explicit that the chief counsel, Robert Jackson, was very

eloquent, saying that if the crimes of those we are now sentencing are

crimes of everyone, and if we commit them, we have to be subjected to

the same criminal proceedings. Has that happened? I mean the supreme

international crime - as it was called at Nuremberg - the supreme

international crime, which encompasses all of the evil that follows,

for which people were hanged at Nuremberg - is a crime of aggression.

And aggression was carefully defined. Aggression means sending your

military forces into the territory of another state.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: O.K., I will return to that at an appropriate time. In

a sense, the rapid progress in scientific technology is frightening.

In relation to this, what prospect do you see for the human race in

the future?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: Human beings are facing now some of the greatest

threats in human history. There has been nothing like this. I mean,

there have been two major crises which literally threaten survival.

The most serious one is [1] nuclear war. That is a very serious

problem. It is not discussed anywhere near seriously enough. But if

you look at the literature of strategic analysts and others who pay

attention to this, many of them regard the crisis as greater now than

at any time during the Cold War.

>

> There are a lot of possibilities. One lesser possibility, but bad

enough is a terrorist use of a nuclear weapon, say a dirty bomb going

off in New York. Well, U.S. intelligence, their assessment of the

probability is that it is about a 50 percent probability that there

will be a dirty bomb within the next decade. And, you know, nobody can

guess what the consequences of that would be.

>

> But much more serious than that is an actual nuclear attack and

that is not only likely but increasingly likely. The reasons are

understood. So, take what's called missile defense. Fortunately,

missile defense - so far - shows no signs of success. And it is

criticized for wasting money on things that don't work. But that is a

misunderstanding. One of the dangerous things about missile defense

would be if it shows any sign of success. If the U.S. has a defense

system which looks as though it might work, then any potential

adversary is going to have to devise means to overwhelm it. That means

Russia and China, particularly. And they are doing it ... not just

with large increases on offensive missile and nuclear weapons capacity

that will overwhelm any imaginable missile defense. But that

enormously raises the danger, not just to the U.S., but to the world.

These missile systems, nuclear armed missile systems, are under

automated control. They are under computer control. Now we don't know

the details for Russia and China, but we know a lot about the U.S.

systems which are much more sophisticated. They have had hundreds of

computer failures. Hundreds of cases where the computers have given a

warning that a missile attack is coming. That just leaves a few

minutes for human intervention to assess whether it is true or not.

And fortunately so far human intervention has always discovered that

it isn't true, but that can easily go wrong. And the Russian systems

and Chinese systems are nowhere near as sophisticated. So, things like

missile defense and just the rapid expansion of the U.S. military are

forcing Russia and China to expand their offensive military capacity,

imposing great dangers also on countries like South Korea and Japan.

They are right in the middle of it. If China increases its military

forces, India is going to respond by incomparable increases. [if]

India expands its forces, Pakistan will respond, [and] you then start

getting a ripple effect. The more proliferators you get, the greater

the dangers. They don't have the same destructive capacity, but they

don't have the same controls, either. And all of this is increasing.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: O.K. I will return to nuclear weapons problem later.

What is the second crisis?

>

> NOAM CHOMKY: The second is [2] environmental catastrophe. That is a

longer term. Nuclear war could take place tomorrow by accident.

Environmental catastrophe is longer term, but it is coming and it is

serious. And no one knows exactly what the effects will be. But they

could be very serious.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: How would you assess the Bush administration? The

Iraqi war is not finished yet. How can it be wound up?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: The Bush administration is the most dangerous

administration that has ever existed in the U.S. I mean, it is taking

actions which significantly increase the threat of destruction of

species in both of the domains that we are talking about. It is also

taking actions which increase the threat of terror, which is quite

serious. It is not nuclear war but it is very serious, and they are

doing it quite consciously.

>

> The Iraq war, for example, was undertaken with the expectation that

it would increase the threat of terror and nuclear proliferation. And

in fact, it did. One of their own intelligence agencies which warned

in advance has confirmed that that has taken place: The number of

terrorist incidents approximately tripled the year after the war. That

proliferation is increasing. They are also acting in ways which are

extremely harmful to the population of the U.S. That is a separate

matter. There are also economic policies, imposing enormous burdens on

future generations. The fiscal [deficit] -the famous twin deficit -

that's for our grandchildren to pay for. They don't care as long as

they can stuff their pockets. Friends with lots of dollars. O.K. And

their grandchildren will somehow pay for it. And what is being done is

almost scandalous.

>

> I mean, like the U.S. health system, it is the most inefficient in

the industrial world. The costs are twice as high as any industrial

country and outcomes are very poor. They are at the bottom of the OECD

industrial societies. And it is understood why, because it is

privatized. And privatized systems are highly inefficient, contrary to

the dogmas that are taught. Health care has huge administrative

expenses which other systems don't have and has a lot of supervision.

Insurance company bureaucrats are looking over the shoulder of the

doctors. There is a lot of paper work, and the result is enormous

cost. And poor outcomes may get worse.

>

> If you want to see how bad it is and see bureaucracy going utterly

insane, simply have a look at the Medicare system which provides drugs

for the elderly. They came out with a new bill to provide drugs under

Medicare. The bill was written by the insurance companies and the

pharmaceutical corporations and so on. It is a huge gift to them. They

published a document of about a hundred pages which they distributed

to every senior in the country - I got one, my wife got one. It would

be comical if it weren't so serious. It is a hundred pages of detailed

instructions about the options that you have on how to get drugs under

the new Medicare system. I would need to take a group of research

assistants to work through it even to figure out what it means. You

give that to some person who is 80 years old and they are never going

to be able to figure it out. I mean it is a bureaucratic nightmare.

>

> The purpose of it is to enrich the drug companies and the financial

institutions and health maintenance institutions. I mean the prices of

drugs in the U.S. are far higher than in other industrial countries,

sometimes ten times as much - the same drug produced by the same

company. I mean they make huge profits in other countries and immense

profits here. And this is designed to increase the profits and also to

decrease care. It means that elderly people will simply not be able to

get decent medical care. For most people in this country this is the

most serious personal crisis and it is going to be a burden for future

generations. These costs mount very fast and they are becoming a huge

part of the budget. So in many ways it is a very dangerous administration.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: In the name of reconstructing Iraq, several countries

dispatched troops to Iraq. How do you view this?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the invasion of Iraq was an outright war crime.

It is a clear, explicit war crime. It had no pretext, no justification

and there was a reason for it: the reason was to take control of

Iraq's enormous oil resources and to strengthen U.S. power in the

region. I mean it is well understood by strategic analysts and

international affairs specialists and has been for 50 years, that the

reason the U.S. wants to control Middle East oil is not to gain access

to the oil. They can do that through market processes - the oil is

going to be sold, and anybody can buy it. The point is to have a

strategic weapon against their rivals, meaning against Europe and

Northeast Asia. Fifty years ago George Kennan, one of the leading

planners, said that if the U.S. controls Middle East oil, it will have

what he called veto power over anything Japan might do in the future

for obvious reasons. You have your hand on the spigot; you can control

what they do. And Japan understands it. That's why they have been

trying to diversify their own energy sources. And the same is true for

Europe. So the Iraq war should be a lever, a lever of power, against

Europe and Asia.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: And also Russia, too?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, Russia less, because Russia does have its own

energy resources. But Europe doesn't. China has very limited ones,

indeed very limited resources. Japan probably none. So, yes it is a

strategic weapon.

>

> It is an outright war crime. I mean, what's happened there is an

utter disaster. As to what should be done now, you know, what I think

ought to be done is that the U.S. and Britain pay reparations to Iraq.

Not aid, REPARATIONS, like Germany did after the Second World War. Or

like Japan did. [They did] not pay near enough. Just a little. That's

what they should do. Ten years of sanctions devastated the society.

They were an attack on the civilian society. They strengthened Saddam

Hussein. They probably kept him in power because the population could

not overthrow him the way Koreans overthrew Jun. If Korea had been

under sanctions like that, the population would have been so

demoralized and so dependent on the dictator for survival that they

wouldn't have overthrown him and that's pretty much what happened in

Iraq. So that destroyed, really destroyed, the society, and then comes

the war and then the aftermath of the war and its horrifying consequences.

>

> There is very little reconstruction going on. You read in this

morning's New York Times that they had the first government review of

the reconstruction process. Take a look at it all: total chaos and

bureaucratic confusion. Conflict of interest among the various

organizations. Some of it is comical. I mean, the Navy, for example,

wanted to control reconstruction of water, for some reason. So that

was given to them, but electricity was given to somebody else in the

Army. They don't work together. So you can imagine what happened.

Plus, there has been just enormous robbery. I mean U.S. corporations

like Halliburton have made so much money just by robbery, by

overcharging and et cetera. There are court cases coming along; but it

is going to be tens of, probably tens of billions of dollars going

right through and Iraq is in ruin.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Terrorist acts are occurring repeatedly all over the

world. How can we fundamentally reduce terror?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: There is also right now the insurgency which is

violent and brutal, but it was elicited by the invasion. Iraq hadn't

had any suicide bombers for probably a millennium, but now they have

them all the time. The U.S. intelligence and the Israeli and Saudi

intelligence have analyzed very closely the foreign fighters in Iraq.

There are very few. It is maybe 10 percent of the insurgents. But

almost none of them had any terrorist record. They are under extremely

close surveillance. Their people were mobilized by the war. It was

expected that the war would mobilize potential militants, ultimately

terrorists, and they would spread around the world. That's exactly

what happened. And you can read the CIA reports. Iraq has become what

they call the training ground for professionalized terrorists probably

much more severe than Afghanistan was under the Taliban. These are

people trained in urban terrorism, and highly skilled and so on and

[they're] going to spread all over the world and have already done it

in Jordan...

>

> So, one way to cut back terrorism is to [1] stop inciting it

(terrorism). If you stop inciting terrorism, that is one way to cut it

back. And another way which you are not allowed to talk about in the

west is to [2] stop participating in it. The western powers are

leading participants in terror. In fact, the U.S. is the only country

to have rejected a World Court decision. The World Court decision was

charging the U.S. with international terrorism in its war against

Nicaragua. The only country. And that's only one of many examples.

>

> So one way to cut back terrorism is to stop participating in it. A

second way to cut back terrorism is to stop inciting it. And then

other ways are understood. I mean terrorists - let's say, Al Qaeda -

regard themselves as kind of a vanguard. They have the potential mass

population which doesn't like terrorism and violence, but does

recognize that there is some justice in their cause and that the

grievances are real. Well, what the Jihadis -terrorists -want to do is

to incite that vast reservoir to join them in their terrorist

activities; just like a Leninist vanguard.

>

> They want to sort of lead the masses to join them, you know. On

this there is an almost total consensus among specialists on terror

and in intelligence agencies. If you want to counter this, you have to

have a two-pronged effort. The Jihadis themselves are criminals. You

deal with them like criminals. You identify them - just like somebody

who robs a store - find out who they are, get evidence, and you use

police procedures.

>

> If it is international, you have international police procedures,

bring them to court, have a trial, and sentence them. That is the way

you deal with criminals. Jihadis are criminals. The most important

part is the mass to which they are trying to appeal and there you have

to deal with the grievances. I mean you should do that, even if there

isn't any terror. But if you want to make sure that the Jihadis don't

succeed in mobilizing the population that they are trying to appeal

to, pay attention to their grievances. That's what you should do and

that will isolate them, and lessen their appeal. And this works.

>

> I just mentioned that I've just come back from Ireland. Last time I

was in Ireland was about 12 years ago. And it was in Northern Ireland,

and it was a pretty barbaric place - killings, police patrols were

everywhere and soldiers everywhere and people were afraid to go from

one place to another. I mean it was the worst place in the world. It

was pretty awful. Now it is peaceful. What happened? What happened is

that the British finally understood that there were legitimate

grievances from the northern Irish - Northern Ireland, the Ireland

Catholic population. They were legitimate grievances they should pay

some attention to. And then pretty quickly - it didn't eliminate

conflict - but it reduced it very considerably. It isolated the

professional killers on both sides - they are still there, but they

are isolated. And the situation enormously improved. Go through the

streets of Belfast, there is no fear anymore.

>

> Well, that's the way you deal with terror, if you want to reduce

it. If you're not interested in reducing terror such as the Bush

administration which doesn't care about terror, then you do exactly

what bin Laden wants. Take a look at these studies by U.S. government

specialists on terror. What they point out is that the best ally that

Osama bin Laden has is George Bush. He does exactly what bin Laden

wants. He does react with violence and terror against the populations

who Osama bin Laden is trying to appeal to. Sure, it's as if he is

following a script written by Osama bin Laden. Terror is a serious

problem. Terrorism is getting worse. But there are sensible ways to

deal with it. Actually President Roh in South Korea has done a similar

thing with regard to the North. You don't want them to have nuclear

weapons, obviously, but ...

>

> SUN WOO LEE: The Bush administration has declared that North Korea

is part of the Axis of Evil, and is spurring up the level of its

pressure on North Korea. What effect will this rhetoric have in

connection with the mood of reconciliation and peace developing on the

Korean peninsula? What do you think of the North Korean leader, Jong

Il Kim?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: North Korea is one of the most horrible countries in

the world, nothing good to say about it. But the question is : " what

do you do about it ? " You try to make it worse or try to move towards

reconciliation and improve matters.

>

> The Bush administration is making it worse. This hysterical

rhetoric is going - predictably - going to increase North Korean

efforts to develop a nuclear deterrent. And as the South Korean

president pointed out, you don't want them to do it, but it is

understandable why they would. You threaten a country with destruction

and they're not going to say. " Thank you, here is my throat, cut it. "

They are going to try to find some way to react.

>

> There are only two ways to react. Nobody is going to fight the U.S.

military. The U.S. spends about as much on the military as the rest of

the world combined. It's technologically far more advanced - such an

enormous destructive capacity - that nobody is going to fight a war

with it, which leaves two possibilities for a deterrent. One is

nuclear weapons and the other is terror. And so by carrying out

meaningful threats against other countries, you're simply inspiring

terror and nuclear proliferation.

>

> France just did the same thing. I don't know if you read President

Chirac's speech a couple of days ago.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Yes, I read it.

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: What he said is, France will consider using nuclear

weapons against anyone who - not people who do anything to us - but

people who threaten terror or threaten the use of nuclear weapons.

Apparently, France, which is supposed to have a history of logic,

didn't recognize that what President Chirac was saying was that he

ought to send the French Air Force to bomb Paris. What he said is that

" We are a country that is considering the use of the weapons of mass

destruction and any country that considers using the weapons of mass

destruction should be subjected to nuclear attack. " So what he was

saying is that France ought to be subjected to nuclear attack. Nobody

pointed this out - it's elementary logic, but quite apart from the

idiocy of the comment, it's a way of telling potential targets: " You'd

better develop a deterrent. " And the only deterrent they have is

nuclear weapons, rather - weapons of mass destruction - or terror.

>

> What other option do they have? It's the same with Iran. One of the

leading Israeli military historians, Martin von Krefeld, this is his

name, recently had an article. I think it was in the International

Herald Tribune in which he said, " Obviously we don't want Iran to have

nuclear weapons. But if they don't develop them they are crazy. " If

you put them under serious threat of attack, they are surrounded on

all sides by very hostile and aggressive forces - U.S. armies on both

sides and another nuclear state, Israel is a powerful nuclear state

which is threatening them. I mean, you threaten them with attack, they

are not going to say, " Thank you. " They are going to react. And how

can they react? In several ways. One of them is by increasing its

support for terror and the other is developing a nuclear deterrent.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: What opinion do you have about the issues related to

the human rights of the North Korean people? Do you have any solution?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: The solution is step-by-step reconciliation. It's not

going to solve the problem tomorrow. But in the longer term, it can

solve the problem. I mean you know much better than I - the Koreans

have always wanted to be reunited. That goes back to 1945. I'm sure

that that's just as true in the North as in the South. People have

families, [it's the] same country after all. So, a move towards

reconciliation will reduce the human rights violations. Not easily.

There will still be people starving, there will still be severe

controls over the population. But the way to reduce them is to move

towards the sunshine policy, move towards reconciliation.

>

> Every step that is made for reconciliation improves human rights.

So every threat makes human rights violations worse. That's almost

true everywhere. Syria and Iran. Take Iran. You know Iranian democrats

and reformers have bitterly condemned the sanctions and they say that

all it does is make the leadership harsher, and give them popular

support. So it undermines democracy, and it undermines human rights.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: How do you think we should solve the North Korean

nuclear weapons problem?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: There's a way to do it. There's a very simple way to

solve it. In fact, it came pretty close to working. In 1994, there was

a framework agreement, which, as far as we know, stops nuclear weapons

development in North Korea. In return, the West, primarily the United

States, pledged to provide them with the capacity for nuclear energy

development, which they need. They don't have internal resources. The

West didn't live up to that bargain.

>

> And then when the Bush Administration came in, waving its weapons

of mass destruction, saying, " We are going to attack you! " Well, OK,

it's the end of the framework agreement. They then began to carry out

the uranium enrichment for nuclear weapons. How far it's gone, we

don't know. But the way to reduce - you know, you can't eliminate

completely the possibility that someone will be able to develop

nuclear weapons. But you can reduce the probability. There are many

ways to do it. One is to work within the general structure of the

framework agreement. If you make nuclear energy available that reduces

the incentive to develop nuclear weapons. The other is to reduce threats.

>

> And then there're things that go far beyond that. I mean the big

problem that's been pointed out over and over by Mohamed Al

Baradei--who just won a Nobel Prize--is the production of high-grade,

weapons-grade enriched uranium--fissile material--that really can be

used for nuclear weapons. As long as that's produced, there will be

nuclear weapons produced. Again, I can't predict the details, but it's

available.

>

> So, the way to terminate the threat of nuclear weapons is to take

two steps. One of them is to control, to have an international control

over the development of any fissile materials and have a bank

somewhere under international control with all fissile materials

produced or stored. And if any country wants them for legitimate

purposes - nuclear energy, then release them. That proposal has been

at the U.N. for years, I think it was 1993, [that] it was proposed.

But the U.S. has blocked it.

>

> It finally came to a vote in November 2004. That's probably the

most important vote that the U.N. ever took. The vote came out 174 to

1. The U.S. voted against it. Two countries abstained: Israel and Britain.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Britain, too?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: Israelis reflexively have to do what the U.S. tells

them. So they abstained. Britain was much more interesting. The

British ambassador explained in the U.N. session why Britain was

voting against it. He said Britain is in favor of the treaty, but the

way this one is written is too divisive. It divides the world 174 to

1. And so therefore Britain will go along with the U.S. That just

tells you what Tony Blair's priorities are. Human survival is of much

lower priority for Tony Blair than making sure that he gets invited to

George Bush's ranch. And this was not reported. I don't know if it was

reported in South Korea, but in the U.S. it was not reported. It was

not reported, you know. That's one step towards eliminating nuclear

weapons.

>

> And there is a second step which Al Baradei has insisted on: the

non-proliferation treaty was a compact, it was a bargain. The

non-nuclear states agreed not to develop nuclear weapons and the

nuclear states agreed that they would eliminate nuclear weapons. Have

they done it? None of them have done it. And the U.S. isn't believed.

The U.S. simply says -those under Bush for the first time - it says

the provisions of the treaty don't apply to us. Well, O.K. if the

nuclear states are not going to live up to their side of the bargain,

then the non-nuclear states are not going to do it, either. You may

not be able to eliminate environmental catastrophe, but the threat of

nuclear weapons can be eliminated by simple ways.

>

> The nuclear states, primarily the U.S., should undertake their

obligation, by treaty, even underscored by a World Court judgment, to

move towards elimination of nuclear weapons. We're doing the opposite.

And there should be international control over production of the armed

materials. That would come very close to terminating the nuclear

threat. The other thing to do is to recover the nuclear weapons that

are around. There had been progress on that, up until the Bush

administration. They just dropped the efforts. These are solvable

problems and the fate of the species depends on it. Environmental

catastrophe is longer term. And we don't know if it's a solvable

problem but certainly there are things that should be done about it.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: What do you think of the division of the Korean

peninsula? How can the conflicts between South Korea-U.S. alliance on

the one hand and South Korea's reconciliation endeavors with North

Korea on the other hand be resolved?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: South Korea has a difficult situation. On the one

hand, it has to maintain good relations with the U.S., like every

country does. On the other hand, it wants to reduce security threats

and improve life situation. And these two commitments go in opposite

directions. And so South Korea is not the only country that has them.

>

> Take Ireland. One of the main things that I was talking about in

Ireland was the fact that the government of Ireland allows the U.S. to

use a major airport for sending military troops and supplies to Iraq,

and also probably for rendition, which is just a word for torture.

That's a serious issue in Ireland. Should they agree to do that? Well,

the government says, " We've got this big monster over our shoulders we

can't afford to alienate. " But on that, let's make a choice. Are we

going to participate in torture and aggression because we don't want

to upset the Mafia Don. Let's find a way between this, me thinks. 'Tis

not a simple answer. The real problem should be in the U.S. We should

- people in the U.S. should - withdraw the threat. Then other

countries have choices. But short of that, I think Korea and Ireland

and every other country has difficult choices to make.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: What do you think of the fall of socialism after the

collapse of the Soviet Union?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: First of all, there was no fall of socialism because

there was no socialism. In fact, in my view I wrote about it - the

collapse of the Soviet Union was a small victory for socialism. Just

the Soviet Union was one of the main barriers to it. It had been since

1970. I can go into that if you like.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: The phenomenon of the rich-get-richer and the poor-get

-poorer due to the negative effect of neo-liberalism is getting

serious in Korea, too. You have criticized neo-liberalism before. What

alternative ideas do you have?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: With regard to neo-liberal policies, they are simply

particular policy choices, nothing special about them. They have been

very harmful. South Korea did grow and develop because it ignored the

principles. The countries that ignored the neo-liberal principles like

South Korea, Taiwan, and China... had very rapid development. Now the

countries that observed the principles, like Latin America, it was a

disaster. So it's been an economic failure and it's a major attack on

democracy. It undermines options for government action, in fact it was

intended to.

>

> Are there alternatives? Of course, there are alternatives. And we

know them. The first 25 years after the Second World War did not

observe neo-liberal principles. That's not ancient history. That was

the fastest period of growth in economic history. It was egalitarian

growth. It includes welfare systems, benefit systems, and in fact

South Korea knows it, too. It developed rapidly by violating

neo-liberal principles. So those are alternatives. And in fact when

South Korea finally began to agree to accept the principles, accept

the financial liberalization, a couple of years later, it had a huge

financial crash. That's likely to happen if you accept these

principles. So the alternative is to reject them and turn to perfectly

sensible principles which are known and have been used and they are

being used right now by countries that don't observe them. I mean,

take the U.S. To an extent, the U.S. follows these principles. As a

result, it has been the worst period of American economic history for

the last 25 years. Real wages for the majority of the population have

stagnated. It never happened before.

>

> On the other hand, does the U.S. really follow these principles?

The U.S. economy relies very heavily on the state sector: Where did

computers come from, or the internet, or civilian aircraft, or

containerships, or lasers? It comes out of places like MIT. That's the

state sector. It doesn't rely on private enterprise. It's all a farce.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: It is known that you describe yourself as a

libertarian socialist and a sympathizer of anarcho-syndicalism. Have

you ever tried to put the ideas of libertarian socialism and

anarcho-syndicalism into action like actually building such a

community or a society apart from a series of talks and writings?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: An individual can't create a society. But you can

help create the basis for libertarian societies. And that's happening

in many places. There is worker control of industries. There's

self-governing communities, there's by now mass popular movements

which are calling for greater democracy and freedom. All of these are

steps towards - they are efforts to - reduce corporate power. All of

these are steps towards a more libertarian, cooperative society.

There's nothing you can click your fingers and get. You could form a

community somewhere of 25 people and live this way. Nice for them, but

it has no impact. So, yes, that's what the talks and the organization

and my meetings and so on are for.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: How do you think the status and role of the U.S. will

change in the era of Northeast Asia? What do you think of the sudden

rise of China?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: If you look over a longer stretch of history, if you

go back, say, to the 17th and 18th century, the commercial and

industrial centers of the world were China and India. They were the

most advanced. Japan, for example, had higher health standards than

Europe. This was really the center of the civilization. Europe was

kind of a barbaric fringe. Over the next two centuries, Europe

conquered most of the world. But I think what's happening now is that

history is beginning to move back to something like what it was for a

long time. Chinese and Indian civilizations go back millennia.

European civilization is an upstart. They were just tribes wandering

around.

>

> I mean China--if you count properly--it probably has the second

largest economy now, if you [consider] what's called " purchasing

power " . I mentioned India is moving up, but both China and India have

enormous problems. They have tremendous internal problems. Huge

problems of massive poverty, equality, and environmental destruction.

Also China and India, too, are very heavily dependent on foreign

investment. So if you look at the exports from China, a very high

percentage of them are foreign owned, mostly overseas Chinese, so it's

part of the whole Chinese world, but a lot are owned by the U.S. and

Europe. If you move toward the high-tech end, it's even heavier. They

have enormous financial reserves. Just this morning, in fact--or

yesterday--they came out with a new estimate of Chinese financial

reserves and it's getting close to Japan. Japan has the highest in the

world. I think Korea is quite high.

>

> But Northeast Asia is by far the most dynamic economic region of

the world, the fastest growing and the most developing. It has two of,

well now three of, the major economies of the industrial world: Japan,

China and South Korea. One of the reasons why North Korea is such a

geo-strategic problem is that it breaks the continuity of the

Northeast Asian system. So if you extend the Trans-Siberian railroad

to Seoul and into North Korea, and it's the one thing that isn't part

of the system... It's one of the many reasons for resolving it.

>

> This could be the Northeast Asian region link now to India. It's

also moving now into the Southeast Asian economies, which are mostly

developing now. That's a very powerful center of the global economy.

They have--Northeast Asia--probably has about half the foreign

exchange reserves in the world.

>

> One of their big problems is gaining their own access, organizing

their own access to energy, as I'm sure you know. There is Asian

Energy Security Grid based in China, but with Russia connected, and

South Korea will surely join, and maybe Japan and India. The U. S. is

very worried about that development. It's a major force in world

affairs. There is also Shanghai Cooperation Council. I don't know if

South Korea is in that, but it's China and Russia, primarily. But it

will draw in the other countries and that's kind of a counter to NATO.

It's developing as a counter to NATO aimed at Central Asia, because

they have their own interests in Central Asia and they don't want the

U.S. to dominate it. So these are long-term developments that will

doubtless be influential. I mean the world basically has three major

economic centers: that's North America, Europe and Northeast Asia,

with its extensions thereabout. In most respects on a par. The only

respect in which North America is more advanced is military.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Who dominates or controls the world and by what?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: The U.S. is for the moment dominating the world by

force. I mean, in the dimension of violence the United States is

unparalleled. I mean, it has about half of the total world military

spending; it's far more advanced in things like space, which is the

next dimension of military warfare. The U.S. has about 95% of the

expenses and in fact, is the only country that is trying to keep space

for military purposes. China, in fact, has been in the lead of trying

to keep space reserved for peaceful purposes. For years now, China at

the United Nations has been trying to extend and expand the Outer

Space Treaty and to impose restrictions on what's called prevention of

an arms race in outer space. The U.S. under Clinton, and even more so

under Bush, has been blocking and that's a serious problem.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: You have presented the 'propaganda model' by which big

transnational corporations and the media try to control the power of a

nation. Please illustrate it.

>

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: What happened over the past century is that in the

west, there were plenty of struggles for freedom and a lot of them

achieved quite a lot. So the two countries most advanced were Britain

and the U.S. and by a century ago they were the most free countries of

the world and they were the most industrially developed.

>

> In both countries, elites understood--and we know this from their

documents--that they no longer had the power to control the population

by force. So therefore they have to turn to controlling them in some

other way. I mean, the other way of controlling--attempt to control

them--is by propaganda. I mean efforts to shape attitudes and beliefs.

Out of that come the huge public relations industries, which developed

in Britain and the U.S. And public relations advertising and so on is

just propaganda.

>

> In fact, back at that time it was called propaganda. You know the

word propaganda got kind of a bad image during the Second World War,

associated with the Nazis and so on. So people dropped the term, but

in the 1920s, it was straight out called propaganda. Like the name,

texts of the public relations industry were called propaganda. And the

Nazis, incidentally, recognized the force of Anglo-American propaganda

and they mimicked it. The Nazi propaganda system was based on the U.S.

and British commercial advertising system: same ideas, simple slogans,

keep repeating, consumerism. So they picked it up. The German

commercial advertisers were mobilized by Goebbels to create the Nazi

propaganda system. It was very successful in Germany, horribly so.

>

> Germany, remember, was the most advanced country in the western

world. It was the peak of the arts and sciences, and so on, and within

a few years it had gone to total barbarism. I mean a lot of it was

propaganda borrowed from the Anglo-American systems. In the west, it's

more sophisticated and subtle but everywhere you look you're just

bombarded. I mean, take advertising. When you look at a TV ad for a

car or a life style drug or something, you don't expect to be told the

truth. I mean [if] you wanna find out about a Toyota or a Ford, you

don't look at the ad because the ads are an effort to delude you. They

wanna delude you with imagery. It's deceit. Everyone understands that.

What they wanna do is undermine markets. They hate markets, basically.

What they want is delusion and deceit by imagery.

>

> And very much the same happens in other domains, in the public

domain. So, let's take, say, elections. Elections in the United States

by now are run by the public relations industry. So people have almost

no idea of what the stand of the candidates is. In the last election

in November 2004, it was about 10% who could identify the stands of

the candidates. Now what you have is illusions. They create images to

try to undermine democracy. And it's the same industry. Actually other

countries are coming along behind. Europe is like a decade or two

behind; they're moving in the same direction. Probably South Korea

will, too. Elections will become just delusion, imagery and deceit.

That makes a lot of sense from the point of view of the business

world. They don't want people to become involved in public affairs.

>

> And if you look at the media, it's pretty much the same. Take, say,

the coverage of the Iraq war, the biggest issue. I mean, they claim

there's criticism, but it's the kind of criticism you had in Russia

during the Afghan war. Now if you read Pravda during the Afghan war,

there would be critics and they'd say, " Look, too many Russian

soldiers are dying. It's not working. We should put in a different

general. " That's the way the Iraq war is going. I mean if you went

back to Pravda in the 1980s, nobody would say that " It is wrong to

invade Afghanistan " , or you know, " It's a violation of international

law " , and it would be all full of the, you know, benign intent: " We

are not invading, we're there at the request of the legitimate

government, we are trying to help the people. " That's exactly what you

read in the western press. People don't even think about it. They're

so indoctrinated. They can't think about it.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Speaking of the truth, you have pointed out that

intellectuals have a special responsibility to speak the truth. What

is the truth?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: If it's a physicist, it's not simple to find what the

truth is, but we have methods for getting a better understanding of

what's true about the world. And in human affairs, it's really not

that difficult. Because it's not like physics, it's not deeply hidden.

Most of what's understood is right on the surface. And you just need

common sense, honesty... It will take some hard work, and requires

skepticism about doctrinal system. That's enough to give you a fair

grasp of the truth of the world. You can't be certain ever, nobody is,

but you can certainly get to understand it. As far as the

intellectuals are concerned, who are they? I mean, what makes people

intellectuals? It's just that they're privileged--they have resources,

they have a reasonable degree of wealth, they have training,

education, ok? That infers responsibility, so you have privilege of

that kind. Your responsibility is much greater than if you are a taxi

driver who doesn't have any of these advantages. So you've got to use it.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Today, large multinational corporations have great

political and economic power and throw responsibility for social

injustice back on the government, while garnering profits. Under a

more complex system, intellectuals find it difficult to ascertain who

is responsible for this. In this context, the role of NGOs seems to be

becoming more important. How would you view the influence of NGOs?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: First of all, I don't really think it's that

complicated. I mean, yes, it's not trivial, but as compared with any

of the sciences, it's baby talk. It's much easier to figure out these

things than to understand chemistry. It's not that hard. It takes some

work. NGO's--it's a mixed story. I mean some of them are probably

constructive, doing some serious work. Others are effectively agencies

of power. You have to be very cautious about them. I mean naturally

powerful systems of governments and corporations are going to create

an NGO system in their own interest. And even the NGOs that try to

work for people have to make compromises. Some make too many

compromises with systems in power. So it's difficult.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Please tell us how generative linguistics has changed

in the past 5 years and how it will look like in the years to come?

What will be the mainstream of generative linguistics?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: One of the least successful of human endeavors is

predicting the future of science. What's gonna happen, nobody can

tell. Somebody might come up with a totally new idea, goes off in a

new direction. I think you can see some tendencies. And remember, this

is a very personal perspective... Ask the people in this

department--my friends and colleagues--they will give you a different

answer. Everyone who is working in it sees things that seem to them

important, that guides your research.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: But you as the originator of transformational grammar....

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: These are all collective efforts. In science, nobody

owns any theory. I mean, it's collective activities. They say Einstein

was unusually innovative, but he was working on... I mean other

scientists were coming out with similar ideas at the same time. They

were mutually interacting. I mean, every time there is a class, or a

graduate student comes into the office, they have new ideas which

change things. These are collective endeavors. They shouldn't be

regarded as personally owned. I mean, I have my own ideas about where

things should develop, I could describe those, but whether they are

right or not, time will tell.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: There is an observation that 3-pole system of the US,

China, and the Middle East will be established in the first half of

the 21st century. What do you think of this?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: For about 35 years, the international economy has

become what is called " tripolar, " with three major

industrial-financial-commercial centers, roughly on a par: North

America, Europe, and Northeast Asia (at that time Japan-centered).

Since then South Korea has been a major economy, and China has been

growing rapidly. The Northeast Asia area is the most dynamic in the

world, holding most of global financial resources, and now being

strengthened with linkages to India and the Southeast Asian economies.

>

> These emerging structures are beginning to receive some formal

_expression in the Asian Energy Security Grid and the Shanghai

Cooperation Council, which brings in Central Asia as well. The Middle

East is a separate matter. It holds the world's major energy

resources, but has so far remained largely under external control,

though that could change, in ways that are a nightmare for US

planners, who have always taken for granted that they must control the

major energy resources of the region, not because of access, but as a

lever of global control.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Do you perceive the U.N. functions properly?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: There are plenty of internal problems at the UN, but

they pale into insignificance in comparison with the major problem:

the great powers place sharp restrictions on what the UN can do. A

good measure of the scale of their interference is the record of

vetoes. By the 1960s, the US had lost control over the UN as a result

of decolonization and the revival of the industrial powers from the

destruction of World War II. Since then the US has been far in the

lead in vetoes on all sorts of matters, Britain second, no one else

even close. The current UN Ambassador, John Bolton, has been quite

frank in expressing his belief that the UN should not even exist

except as an instrument of US power interests, primarily.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Globalization seems to be riding the current of the

times recently. Do you have any specific reasons why you are against it?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: I know of no one who is against globalization, which

means simply international integration: what you and I are now doing

is an example of globalization. The strongest proponents of

globalization have always been the left and the labor movements --

which is why labor unions have long been called " internationals, " in

the hope that the word could someday take on real meaning. That

remains true today. The strongest advocates of globalization are the

remarkable and unprecedented global justice movements, which get

together annually in the World Social Forum, and by now in regional

and local social forums.

>

> In the rigid Western-run doctrinal system, the strongest advocates

of globalization are called " anti-globalization. " The mechanism for

this absurdity is to give a technical meaning to the term

" globalization " : it is used within the doctrinal system to refer to a

very specific form of international economic integration designed in

meticulous detail by a network of closely interconnected

concentrations of power: multinational corporations, financial

institutions, the few powerful states with which they are closely

linked, and their international economic institutions (IMF, World

Bank, WTO, etc.).

>

> Not surprisingly, this form of " globalization " is designed to serve

the interests of the designers. The interests of people are largely

irrelevant. That is why there is such enormous popular protest against

this form of corporate globalization, worldwide -- symbolized,

tragically, by the suicide of Lee Kyong Hae at Cancun. It is also why

the treaties have to be signed virtually in secret, with the

population kept ignorant of what is being done to them.

>

> Furthermore, they have little to do with " free trade, " or even

" trade, " in any meaningful sense of the term. In the phrase " North

American Free Trade Agreement " (NAFTA), the only accurate words are

" North American. " It is not concerned with " free trade, " and is

certainly not an " agreement, " at least if citizens are regarded as

part of their countries. That extends worldwide.

>

> In the dominant propaganda systems, those in favor of globalization

that privileges the interests of people, not unaccountable

concentrations of private power, are called " anti-globalization. " The

fact that this ridiculous terminology has come into common usage is a

tribute to the great influence of concentrations of state-private power.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: If a few monopolistic enterprises like Microsoft are

allowed to dominate the basic means of communication, what kind of

social and cultural consequences will ensue?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: If means of communication are in the hands of

unaccountable private tyrannies (corporations), they will of course be

shaped primarily for their interests. There is a great deal to say

about this -- also about the rising popular movements opposing these

totalitarian-style outcomes.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Can the internet be a medium against existing

mainstream press media?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: It not only can be, but is. The global justice

movements, for example, rely almost exclusively on the internet to

circumvent the self-censorship and gross falsifications of the

corporate and state media. And that is typical. It is also becoming a

source of information, crossing national boundaries, thus another

effective implementation of globalization (carried out by those who

are described as " anti-globalization " by the doctrinal system). There

are also plenty of dangers and difficulties. Again, a long story.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: It has now become quite possible to buy your books or

gain access to your writings through the internet bookstores such as

Amazon and Z-net. After all, the internet has advanced globalization

ahead, hasn't it?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: Certainly. And it is worth remembering that the

internet, like most of the advanced economy, is largely a product of

the dynamic state sector of the economy, another illustration of the

absurdity of the notion " free trade. "

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Are there any internet sites that you frequent?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: Personally, I use the internet almost exclusively for

research purposes, and rarely access any sites. I haven't even seen

the site that friends have put up in my name: www.chomsky.info, I

think it is called.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: You were chosen as the No. 1 public intellectual

figure by the journals of Foreign Policy and Prospect. You are also

recognized as having insight of interpreting and changing the world.

What is your vision of the world?

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: First of all, I don't take this bullshit seriously

[laughing]. And I don't think anyone else should. But I think we can

go back to what I said before. There are some basic crises that are

imminent and serious and they have to be dealt with. Two of the major

ones are nuclear war and environmental catastrophe.

>

> There are many other problems--like what someone has called " the

democratic deficit " , the failure of democratic institutions to

function properly. That's very serious in the United States. So if you

look at public opinion and you look at public policy, they are very

different. We don't have time to go into it, but they are quite

different. That's a gap in functioning democracy, and it's important.

The same is kind of true to various extents in other countries.

>

> There are problems of social policy, which are very serious. The

neo-liberal policies are given plenty of support by powerful

institutions. There is a reason for that. The rich and the privileged

gain from this. Most of the rest don't. But they have succeeded in

imposing a doctrinal framework where they look inevitable. They are

not. They can be changed. And they should be changed. But a little to

my surprise, you know the Davos [conference [World Economic Forum]] is

going on right now. To my surprise, they asked me for a statement and

you can find it on their website. I think today it's going up--in

which I gave a critical analysis of each program.

>

> Now what's gonna happen? You can't predict that. That's a matter of

will and choice. So in 1985 in South Korea could you predict the end

of the dictatorship?

>

> SUN WOO LEE: No! No!

>

> NOAM CHOMSKY: People make choices. They are going to struggle.

>

> SUN WOO LEE: Thank you very much, Professor Chomsky. I really

appreciate your time.

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

Has it occured to anyone, or any organization, that bemoans Chomsky's complete

absence from so-called mainstream media,. to actually do something about this

censorship? Or will the left simply sit around and weep about it?

 

No, it isn't enough to tell the truth. The truth must also be heard, and

heard by enough people, that it makes a difference. What we need is the will to

go to war with our increasingly elite media (there's no misnomer as absurd as

" mainstream " media). Our media are mainstream only in the sense that they're

fed to the masses, but in every other sense they're owned and operated by, and

serve, the elites.

 

How can you have " elite " mass media in a democratic society? It's been made

to appear that the two can co-mingle peacefully, but reality proves it

impossible.

 

jp

 

-

califpacific

Thursday, February 23, 2006 4:08 PM

Sun Woo Lee: Chomsky Interview about

Korea and International Affairs

 

>Noam Chomsky is probably the most censored person in America.

 

(snip)