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ZNet | Cuba
Discussion on the Cuban Five
by Noam Chomsky
February 26, 2006

Screening of "Mission Against Terror", a documentary about
the Cuban Five. After the showing of the film, Professor
Chomsky answered questions from the audience. For more
information on the on-going case of the Cuban Five, visit
http://www.freethefive.org .

Woman: Since we are in the business of torture, and the
country has swung very far to the right, what are the
realistic chances of getting a fair trial for the five?

Noam Chomsky: Well, first of all it is not really true that
the country has swung far to the right. Though the press
systematically refuses to report it, there are extensive
public opinion studies taken in the United States. We know a
great deal about public opinion, and I can give you some
detail if you like. But what the studies shows,
consistently, is that both political parties and the media
are far to the right of the public on issue after issue, on
a host of issues.

To give one example, the Federal Budget came out yesterday
and today. Well there hasn't been time yet for a study of
public attitude towards this budget, but it's about the same
as the budget that came out a year ago, February 2005. Right
after that the most prestigious institute that studies
public opinion in the world, based in the University of
Maryland, carried out a study of what people thought the
budget ought to be, okay. And it was very striking. It was
the exact inverse of the budget. Where federal spending was
going up, the public wanted to go down: military spending,
supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan; where spending was
going down, the public wanted to go up: social spending,
health, education, veteran's benefits, renewable energy,
support of the United Nations peacekeeping missions, on and on.

Furthermore, they were an overwhelming majority; and the
scale of cutback and rises . . . increases the public
wanted, were enormous. Well, in a democratic society, one of
the things you want to know is what your neighbor thinks. I
mean if each person says "look, I am some kind of a lunatic,
everything I read is something else," you are not going to
get a functioning democracy. So we, therefore, want to know
what happened to this information. I am willing to bet that
almost none of you saw it. The reason is it was not
published in a single newspaper in the United States, at
least a single newspaper that's accessed by the stadard
database. Well, okay, so people don't know about it. I
suspect the same is true of this budget. And you'll probably
have the same study and the same suppression.

So it just isn't true, I mean there is case after case like
this, it's just not true that the population has swung to
the right. The government has, the parties have, the media
have, the public hasn't. And does that mean they can get a
fair trial? Well, yeah, I tend to agree with Leonard
Weinglass on that, it's possible. Not in Miami, of course.
But can you get fair coverage of it? Well, that's really up
to people like us. If there are delegations at the Boston
Globe day after day saying why don't you publish some of
this stuff, then chances are it'll get published. It's the
same elsewhere. If there is public engagement and
involvement, things change, otherwise, they don't. They'll
keep drifting to the right, and the public will be somewhere
else, with a huge gap between public opinion and public
policy. It's startling, in fact, when you look at it.

Man: Hi, professor Chomsky, I am under the impression there
is a sort of internal American electoral motivation to
appear to be against Cuba in order to keep carrying Florida
or something, can you address the. . . . The various
political parties want to try to keep winning Florida. Can
you address the motivation for us to be so nasty to Cuba?

Noam Chomsky: I don't. . . . I mean, that's certainly a
factor, but it's very minor. We are lucky that we are in a
very free country, the freest country in the world. That
means we have more information about what our government
does, thinks and plans, than any other country in the world.
On the other hand, we are unlucky to be in a highly
indoctrinated society. That means to find out the facts
about this you have to carry out. . . . Virtually carry out
an individual research project, very much like trying to
find out what public opinion is. Well, fortunately that's a
little of an exaggeration, there is some material you can
look at, there is groups working on it and so on. But if you
do look at it, you'll find out what the reasons are. They
are very clear. It goes right back to the time when the
terrorist war began.

Remember, it's not just a terrorist war, it's also combined
with the most extreme embargo that's ever been imposed. It
goes right back to our liberal doves in Camelot, the people
from Boston, Cambridge, you know, MIT and Harvard that went
down to make plans and so on. They picked up from the
Eisenhower administration. Since Cuba liberated itself in
January 1959, within months the Eisenhower administration
formally decided to overthrow the government. And they began
some sabotaging acts, but also an embargo, and they said
exactly why, and now we know, since it's public. The idea is
to punish the people of Cuba, not Castro, because if they
suffered enough, from starvation and disease and so on,
they'd get rid of the government. Okay, so therefore there
had to be efforts to make the population suffer, as the
under secretary of state put it, "they are responsible for
the government, therefore they had to suffer to get them to
overthrow the government."

Well, Kennedy picked that up, immediately. The reasoning was
made explicit, he picked up the same thing, yeah, the
population has to suffer. Kennedy right off launched an
invasion of Cuba, the Bay of Pigs. That was beaten back. The
reaction of the Kennedy administration was, as it was
described there by insiders, as savage. They needed a plan
of action immediately, they couldn't tolerate this defeat.
They instantly launched a major terrorist war, they one Phil
Agee (former CIA agent interviewed in the film) was talking
about, Operation Mongoose, which was a very serious
terrorist war against Cuba. The purpose of it, we know. The
person in charge of it was Robert Kennedy, president's
brother, the attorney general. He took it as his highest
priority, and his goal, in the words of his official
biographer, historian Arthur Schlesinger who was right
inside the administration. His goal was to "bring the
terrors of the earth" to Cuba, so that the people would
really suffer. Well, they almost brought the terrors of the
earth to the entire world. That was one of the major factors
that lead to the missile crisis which came within a hair of
a major nuclear war.

Miraculously we escaped a nuclear war. Immediately, Kennedy
re-launched Operation Mongoose, the terrorist war,
immediately. The reasoning was explained, internally, the
reason for it. I mean, it was a kind of fanaticism which
goes on right to the present, in a minute I'll talk about
this morning's newspaper, where you can see another example
of it. The fanaticism is extreme, and the reason is
explained in the internal documents, the State Department,
the CIA, the liberal. . . . We are not talking about the
right wing here. . . . The liberal administration, Kennedy
and Johnson, their prime concern was what they call Cuba's
"successful defiance of US policies going back 150 years."
It has nothing to do with the Russians. Going back 150
years, which meant to the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe
Doctrine declared that the US would control the hemisphere.
In the 1820s, the US couldn't do it, the deterrent. . . .
The British fleet was in the area, that's why the US never
succeeded in conquering Canada and conquering Cuba and so
on. But the planners recognized that sooner or later that
the US will become powerful enough so that it could chuck
the British aside, move over, and take it over, that's the
Monroe Doctrine. Well, Cuba was engaged in successful
defiance of this doctrine, and you don't tolerate that.
Successful defiance is intolerable.

If you don't understand why, ask your favorite mafia don. If
some small store keeper doesn't pay his money, you don't
just send goons out to get the money, you send them out to
beat him to a pulp, so everyone understand that's not
tolerable behavior. Furthermore there is an additional
problem with Cuba. It's what's called in the internal
planning record "a virus." That's Henry Kissinger's phrase,
"it's contagious, it may spread an infection to others." The
infection is successful independent development. There was
great concern of what they called "the spread of the Castro
idea of taking matters into your own hands." Which would
possibly inspire others in the hemisphere who are suffering
from the same kinds of problems. They might want to do the
same thing, and that's dangerous, the whole system of
control could erode.

British intelligence chimed in, Britain has, you know,
hundreds of years of experience with insubordination and how
to deal with it, hundred years in Ireland, and plenty
elsewhere. British intelligence came along in 1961 with the
same warnings. They said if Cuba succeeds it can spread,
what they called revolution, that is, independent
development elsewhere. So that can't be tolerated. The
combination of successful defiance and a contagious example
that might spread an infection is completely intolerable.
This, incidentally, is the prime thesis of the Cold War.
Case after case, when you look at it carefully, those are
the reasons for instituting military dictatorships, for
terror, for invasion, for subversion, for starvation. . . .
Whatever you want, going on over and over and these are some
of the pretext. If you look at the internal documents, this
is the reason, and Cuba is the classic case.

And ever since then, both the embargo, which we haven't
talked about, and the terror war continues right up to the
moment. So lets take this morning's newspaper, unpublished,
but if you look at the New York Times webpage this morning,
you'll find an AP report about how Mexico is bringing
charges against a US owned hotel in Mexico, and will
continue to the US government, I don't know if that's
actually public. The reason? There is a Cuban delegation in
Mexico. It was in, I think, a Sheraton Hotel or some US
owned hotel in Mexico City, and the US government ordered
the hotel to kick them out, and the hotel did, in gross
violation of Mexican law. Obviously the Mexicans don't like
it, so they are protesting. What were the Cubans there for?
Well, they were there to meet Texas oil executives who are
interested in exploiting the possible offshore oil in Cuba,
which is estimated to be possibly quite extensive, some of
the estimates say maybe twice as high as Equatorial Guinea,
a country you don't hear about very much but one of the
leading oil exporters in Africa, run by one of the most
monstrous tyrant, killer, anywhere, Teodoro Obiang, who is
of course welcomed to Bush's Whitehouse with a state visit,
and so on and so forth. Well, here is possibly plenty of oil
right off Cuba, Texas oil executives of even the big
companies like Con-Mobile are interested in doing something,
but the US government is telling them no, you can't, because
we have to strangle Cuba. Strangling Cuba is far more
important than getting over our addiction to Middle East
oil, to borrow the words of our leader.

Furthermore, who gave the order? You can learn a lot from
this case, I mean from morning newspapers you can learn a
lot, if you think about the background. The order, in this
case, was given by the Treasury Department, but by a
subgroup in the Treasury Department called the Office of
Foreign Assets Control, OFAC. Well, what's OFAC? OFAC is a
branch of the Treasury Department that has the task of
supervising suspicious financial transfers around the world.
Okay, as you know, that's a core element of the so called
war on terror, for obvious reasons. OFAC has testified to
congress of what it does. You won't read it in the
newspapers, but it testified. They said in the last report
that they have 128 employees looking into suspicious
financial transfers, 4 of them are devoted to Osama Bin
Laden and al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, 6 times that many are
devoted to whether anybody are violating the embargo against
Cuba. Well, that tells you about their priorities.
Protecting America from terrorism is very low on the
priority list, there's example after example of this, but
strangling Cuba is very high. You do not tolerate successful
defiance and possible contagious effects. That's way more
important then protecting the country from terror.

Furthermore it's not just this administration. You go back
and look at the OFAC record. I don't remember the exact
numbers, but since 1990, the number of cases brought
involving terror is a tiny fraction of the number of cases
brought for violating the embargo against Cuba. And the
sentencing, you know, I think it's a factor of a hundred or
something, some huge number, in the difference in the
sentencing. Well, that tells you the priorities of all
administrations. This one happens to be extreme, but not
that much different.

Well, how did that get reported? It's an interest to people.
People in the United States are interested in whether the
government is protecting them from terror. Well, I couldn't
find a single mention of it anywhere. But it's there. What
about the embargo against Cuba? What do people think about
that? Well, you can't really ask Americans what they think
about it, because most of them don't even know it exist. But
there are votes regularly in the United Nations, the last
one was this November, something you've got to report. But
the last vote this past November, it was I think 182 to 4.
The 4 were the United States, Israel, which reflexively has
to vote with the United States, Palau, and Haiti. Micronesia
abstained, everyone else voted for it, so the world was
divided. This has been condemned by every relevant legal
authority, even the Organization of American States which is
so terrified of its master that they are afraid to lift a
finger.

But it doesn't make any difference. If the population here
doesn't know about it and doesn't do anything about it, that
stranglehold will continue. Even at the cost of increasing
sharply the risk of terror, sharply increasing the reliance
on, supposedly unstable Middle East oil, totally independent
of any possible human rights consideration, it's totally
irrelevant. Just what they said it was, successful defiance
is not acceptable, and contagious example that might affect
others is multiply unacceptable. Furthermore it's not just
this case. It's consistent. It runs through case after case.

Can I just add one word to that? There is a suggestion that
people might take up which actually follows from US
government policy, follows it logically very strict. There
is something called the Bush Doctrine. The Bush doctrine,
Bush number 2, declares that any state that harbor
terrorists is a terrorist state, and has to be treated
accordingly by the civilized world, meaning by bombing, by
invasion and so on. And it follows very simply from that, we
ought to be calling on Washington to send the US Air Force
to bomb Washington, because by Bush's declaration, this is a
terrorist state and the civilized world ought to attack it.

I should say there is nothing ambiguous about this. Orlando
Bosch was mentioned there [in the film]. He is not only one
of the leading international terrorists, but he is so
declared by the FBI and the Justice Department. The FBI
accuses him for about 30 terrorist acts, many committed on
US soil. The US Justice Department has demanded that he be
deported as a threat to US national security. George Bush
number one, in the face of that, granted him a presidential
pardon. Another of his associate that was mentioned here [in
the film] Posada Carriles, he should be on the front pages
right now. He is a notorious international terrorist, he is
apparently the one who collaborated with Bosch in blowing up
the Cubana Airliner, but that's the least of it. He was in
the Bay of Pigs, he was an old CIA asset for years, he went
to Venezuela, work with the secret police. He was in fact
imprisoned for the Cubana Airline bombing. He miraculously
escaped. I mean he escaped, and the US sent him to El
Salvador, to the Ilopango Air Base, where he was involve
with Oliver North in supplying the Contras, a major
terrorist mercenary force which was carrying out another
major terrorist war against Nicaragua. I mean that alone
would dwarf all the other crimes against Cuba. But that's
not considered a crime here. He then went off to other
activities, you know, all sorts, I won't run through it.

Finally he got back into the United States. Venezuela asked
for his extradition for the Cubana bombing over Venezuela.
Well that came to the courts and the courts turned it down,
it's now sort of in limbo. And if there is no protest about
it, he will probably end up alongside his friend, Orlando
Bosch in Miami, enjoying themselves in a major terrorist
haven. That's another leading international terrorist. And
there is no ambiguity about any of these things. All of this
is completely public in the US documents, unchallenged.

Man: My question is directed toward the July 26th Coalition.
First I want to applaud you. I want to applaud an
organization like yours that fight terrorism, and call out
on governments that commits acts that are unjust. No
government has the right to take the liberties and basic
freedom of people, like the Cuban Five in the States.
However, I want to say something before I leave here, and
that's that one of the things that saddens me though, there
are no organizations that are capable of doing that in Cuba
right now. Not only, no organization can do this, no single
person has a right to call out on acts that the Cuba
government has committed. Having said that I want to say
that I am Cuban and I've lived there almost all my life, and
the reason I stood up here right now is because I have
friends there right now who got PhDs in physics and are
selling peach on the corner. I wanted to ask a question of
the 26th of July Coalition. You say that your mission is to
educate others about the achievements of the Cuban
Revolution, and you say that one of the achievements is
healthcare, I ask what good is healthcare if you can't buy
the pills; literacy and the right for education, what good
is the right to education if you can't read what you like,
you have to read what you are told to read, and you can't
express yourself; the rights of women, in work you have
limited discrimination based on race and class. I've lived
for most of my life in Cuba, I've experienced discrimination
myself, I couldn't say what I believed, I couldn't think
like I wanted and this is something that I wish that my
people, my friends, the people I lived with enjoy right now,
which is what we are doing today, the right to listen to
these opinions, the right to protest against this
government, and things like this. I just want to call this
out because I don't think everybody knows this. So I want to
ask you, do you do this also, do you also protest for the
rights of hundreds of political prisoners in Cuba, and for
the freedom of speech of many Cubans on the island?

July 26th Coalition Rep.: I would be happy to talk to him
afterwards, but I would also like to say that in my
neighborhood, Grove Fall, health indices, and the education
indices, and the availability of healthcare are far worse
than they are in Cuba.

Noam Chomsky: One comment about that, I actually agree with
you that there should be more freedoms in Cuba, and in fact
I talked about it on Havana radio. I talked about it on
Havana national television in an open audience, something
that I can't do about in the United States. Your point is
correct, there should be more freedoms in Cuba, and people
in the United States should be concerned about the state of
human rights, let's say in Latin America.

In particular, if they want to be concerned, a good place to
start would be Amnesty International Human Rights Report
which came out, the latest one. It runs through the record
of human rights violations in Latin America. And there are
plenty of them, they include Cuba. The worse human rights
violations in Cuba that they bring up happen to be in
Guantanamo. There are also human rights violations elsewhere
in Cuba, however if you compare the record in Cuba with the
record elsewhere in the hemisphere, you'll find that Cuba is
one of the least of the violators of fundamental human
rights in the hemisphere. Now on the rest of the hemisphere
it's you and me who are responsible for those human rights
violations. In Cuba, it's somebody else. We are partly
responsible there too because of the terrorism and embargo
for 45 years, but yes, it's up to Cubans to deal with their
human rights violations. It's up to us to deal with our
human rights violations, which in Latin America, is far
worse than Cuba, right through the hemisphere, take a look
at it. Rights of women, rights to food, rights to free
speech, the ability to organize unions, anything, just run
through it. That's not me, that's Amnesty International.
Take a look at Human Rights Watch, it's the same results.

Now if people here want to be concerned about human rights,
as they should, the place to start, always, is with your own
activities, no matter where you are. You start with your own
activities. That's what you are responsible for. Interested
in paying attention to others? That's fine, much lower
priority, obviously. But then do it honestly. Pick the
leading human rights violators and go after them. The minor
human rights violators are low in priority. And the ones
that are carrying out human rights violation while under our
jackboot, that's a different category all together.

So for example to go back to Ireland and England, for 800
years of British repression of Ireland, there could be,
probably were people in England, who were saying "look at
the terrible human rights violations of the Irish." Let's
take say, Nazi Germany. In Nazi Germany they were terribly
upset about the violence and terror carried out by the
partisans, which is correct, they did carry out violence and
terror. But we hardly respect them for that, and there's a
simple logic behind it.

Man: You mentioned OFAC, the Office of Foreign Assets
Control, and their eyes are on Cuba, well what are they to
do if they see financial transactions without US citizens
spending US dollars in Cuba, which means US citizens cannot
go to Cuba (inaudible) I would suggest you go for yourself,
if the US government won't let you go to Cuba. I mean they
are spending their resources to make sure you can't go to
Cuba. I mean that's an attack on the rights of working
people in this country to be able to travel to Cuba. I think
the whole thing around the Cuban Five case is important.
They are breaking and entering, seizing the documents of the
Cuban Five by the FBI and government officials is an attack
on all working people in this country. As well as in the
conspiracy charges, you know, it's very serious all that
means is that the government says you are talking about
doing this, planning to do this, not even that you did it.
Isn't it an attack on the democratic rights of working
people if they allow conspiracy charges being raised against
the Cuban Five, and breaking and entering and seizing
computer documents and stuff?

Noam Chomsky: I didn't quite get the question, but you know,
the restriction against travel to Cuba, actually against
spending one penny in Cuba, those are the conditions that
OFAC insisted that the Cuban delegation be kicked out of the
hotel in Mexico for, so they might make a penny out of it.
And that impact not only against Cuba, but against
Americans, and Texas Oil executives. They are protesting
bitterly because the US government will not permit them to
talk to Cubans about investing in Cuban oil that could be
good for people here. Yes that's an attack on the rights of
the American people, and sure, we shouldn't accept that.

Man: You mentioned previously how the US is using Cuba to
make a point to the rest of the world. So what do you think
is the consequence of the, kind of the emerging movement
which are now trying to make a come back in South American
countries like Venezuela and Bolivia, who now want to take
more control over their natural resources, especially
considering that countries such as the US pretty much
control the natural resources of a lot of Latin American
countries. So what do you think the consequence of these
countries all of a sudden saying that, you know what? We
want to control our own countries, we don't want to, pretty
much, go by what you tell us to do. So what do you think are
the consequences of those mentalities?

Noam Chomsky: Most questions just depend on what people
decide to do for the large part. Not much point in
speculating, the question is for action. But what you point
to is absolutely correct, there is something totally new
happening in Latin America, new in the entire history of the
continent. I mean, since the Spanish conquest, countries of
Latin America have, first of all, been very divided between
a tiny rich elite, and a huge impoverished population. That
was true of Cuba too, as long as the US was running it, up
till 1959. And it's true throughout the continent. The
wealthy simply don't have responsibilities in Latin America.
And furthermore, the countries have very little connection
with each other. The elites were connected to Western
countries, not the other countries, overwhelmingly. That's
changing, in both respects.

For one thing there are largescale popular movements, which
are rising up and challenging the severe, I mean, grotesque,
given maldistribution of wealth and power. And furthermore
they're beginning to integrate with one another,
significantly. That's happening from Venezuela to Argentina.
Also, they are more and more insisting on controlling their
own resources, instead of the outsider, primarily the US,
controlling it.

Beyond that the methods of control that the US used to have
are eroding. It used to be that if you want to overthrow,
you know, those contagious examples down there, you can
carry out a military coup, you can invade it, you can carry
out terrorism, one thing or another. It's not working
anymore. In fact the last time it was tried was just three
or four years ago, in 2002, when the Bush administration
supported a military coup in Venezuela, but quickly had to
back down because there were overwhelming protest in Latin
America. People actually take democracy seriously. So the US
had to turn to some kind of subversion instead, which is
going on.

The other modality of control is economic, that's through
the IMF, primarily, the World Bank, which is a kind of an
offshoot of the US Treasury Department. That's eroded. Where
ever the countries have followed the IMF rules almost
invariably been an economic catastrophe, for the last 25
years in Latin America it's been the worse period in
history. Well, they are throwing it out. Argentina, which
was the poster child for the IMF until a couple of years
ago, underwent a terrible economic collapse, a total
disaster. They finally managed to pull themselves out of it
by radically violating IMF rules. Now they are, in the words
of their president, ridding themselves of the IMF. They are
paying off the rest of the debt. They don't want to have
anything to do with the IMF anymore. And they are being
helped in that by Venezuela, which picked up a piece of
their debt, and it's the reason we are so hostile to
Venezuela participating in these efforts. The same just
happened in Bolivia. Bolivia for 25 years has been
rigorously following IMF rules, per capita income is lower
than it was 25 years ago. Well, you just saw what happened
in Bolivia, for the first time the indigenous majority
managed to elect someone from their own ranks.

Incidentally that's what is called democracy. It is
dramatically different from an election where you choose
between two rich guys who went to the same elite university,
and joined in the same secret society, and entered politics
with the same program. Of course they are supported by the
same wealthy corporations and so on. But in Bolivia, they
actually had a democratic election, where people selected
some one from their own ranks, a peasant, didn't go to Yale,
didn't join Skull and Bones.

And they also want to take control of their own resources.
Bolivia has the second largest natural gas resources in the
hemisphere, after Venezuela. The US is frightened about
that. There is an Indian revival throughout the region, some
are calling for an Indian nation, from Bolivia right up
through Ecuador, and they are calling for control of their
resources. Furthermore, a lot of them don't see any
particular point in developing their resources. Like, if you
develop oil in Ecuador, you are destroying the life style
and the culture of the people that live there. And many of
them don't see any purpose in that, so that people can sit
in traffic jams in Boston, and they want to either not
develop it or control it themselves.

Furthermore, they are diversifying their relations to the
outside world. They are integrating with one another for the
first time, gaining control of their own resources based on
a lot of popular movements, and they are diversifying their
relations outside. So, trade with China, for example, is
increasing pretty sharply. Venezuela is first, but also
Brazil and Chile, the other exporters. Increasing in Chinese
investment coming in, they just have a lot of options they
didn't used to have. All of this can make a difference. I
mean, the US planners for a long time have counted on near
monopolistic access to the resources in Latin America. It's
not true any longer.

Furthermore, the Bush administration, which I admit, has a
certain genius in alienating people, has even succeeded in
alienating Canada. That really takes talent. The Bush
administration has lost a series of NAFTA cases against
Canada, and naturally just told them to get lost. Well, you
know, Canada is not too happy about that, and Canada has
suggested it may start to divert a portion of their oil to
China, instead of sending it here. Well, that means the US's
capacity to control the resources of the hemisphere on which
it relies is declining sharply. They may also succeed in
losing control over Middle East oil, which really takes
genius, but that's another story. But all this is extremely
dangerous. I mean, a predatory creature, you know, a wild
lion or something, is dangerous. But a wounded one is even
more dangerous. That means they have to be controlled, and
the control can only come from inside. So these are not
things we ought to be just watching and speculating about,
but thinking through and acting to do something about it.

Bernie Dwyer: Our time is nearly up and I would like to
really take advantage of this because we are here in Boston
and we are going tomorrow. And we have Professor Chomsky
here, and I like to ask him a question about the five. In
his opinion, why does he think there is an absolute media
silence on the case of these five Cubans?

Noam Chomsky: The same reason there is a media silence on
every other major issue. So for example let's take a
question that was raised, an important question about human
rights violations, which undoubtedly exist in Cuba. As I
said, the worse ones are in Guantanamo. Yeah, it's real. How
much have you read in the press?

I mean, first of all, when you said that people here don't
know about Cuban human rights violations, I really have to
disagree. That's headlines all over, just so much focus on
that you have to blind not to see it. Why is it the case
that Cuban human rights violations, which are real, in a
country we are grinding with our jackboot, why are they
featured, but not the considerably worse violations in
countries elsewhere in the hemisphere where we are
responsible for them? Why is there silence on that? Well, we
can run through a long list of cases.

Let's take, say, terror again. You want to know something
about US government priorities? Here is something you might
think about, and another offer to ask about media silence
about. You know, I am sure everybody knows that Saddam
Hussein is on trial for some of the horrible crimes he
committed. The crimes he is on trial for are in 1982, okay.
1982 happens to be a very important year in US-Iraqi
relations, and you tell me how much you've read about this.
1982 is the year in which the Reagan administration,
basically the guys now in office, the Reagan administration
took Iraq off the list of state supporting terror, so that
they will be able to begin providing their friend Saddam
Hussein with substantial aid, including means to develop
weapons of mass destruction. Dangerous bio-toxins, systems
in nuclear weapons and missiles. It has nothing to do with
the war with Iran. It went on for years after the war with
Iran was over. That was 1982.

Well, when a state is taken off the list of states
supporting terror, there's a gap, so a country had to be put
in to fill that gap. That was Cuba. Cuba was put in to fill
that gap perhaps in honor of the fact that the terrorist war
against Cuba had just peaked in the preceding years. The
Cubana airliner bombing was just one of those cases. So here
the US terrorist war against Cuba is peaking, but Cuba is
not involved in various violence or supporting terrorist
acts, except giving support to people who are resisting US
atrocity. So Cuba is put on the list to replace Iraq so that
Iraq can get US aid, including military aid, which it then
had then used to carry out massive atrocities not just in
1982 but in subsequent years. Donald Rumsfeld was sent as
Reagan's special Middle East advisor to Iraq to finalize the
deal. Throughout all these atrocities the US continued to
support him, they didn't care. There was congressional
opposition but Reagan blocked it. How come none of this is
being reported? I mean it's really critical. It just so
happens to involve Cuba, which it's just so ironic and
ludicrous, but it's much bigger than this. You know, it's
the same throughout.

Man: can you talk about Colombia?

Noam Chomsky: Pardon? Well, take Colombia. Colombia has the
worse human rights record in the hemisphere by a long shot,
has for about 15 years. It's by far the leading recipient of
US military aid, dwarfing, probably greater than the rest of
Latin America combined. Take whatever example you like, say
labor organizing. More union activists are killed in
Colombia in most years than in the rest of the world
combined. Well, okay, you and I are paying for it, and it's
been going on for years. It's under some pretext or another,
pretext of the drug war, or whatever it is, total pretext,
has nothing to do with what's going on. Yeah, that's a very
good example.

The same is true, not as bad as Colombia, but if you look
right through the hemisphere, women's rights, labor rights,
freedom of speech, what ever you want, there is a very high
level of crime. Don't take my word for it, read the latest
Amnesty International report. Well, those are countries we
are supporting. Actually Colombia literally became the
leading recipient of US military aid throughout the world,
next to Israel and Egypt, which are totally in a separate
category. But those (inaudible) became the leading recipient
of US military aid in the world in 1999 just as atrocities
are peaking in Colombia. It replaced Turkey. Why had Turkey
been the leading recipient of US military aid? Well, because
the Clinton administration was supporting massive atrocities
in Turkey. Tens of thousands of Kurds were killed, thousands
of villages were destroyed, probably millions of people were
driven from their homes. That was about 80 percent US aid.
It was so extensive that in a single year in 1997, Clinton
sent more aid to Turkey, military aid, than the entire Cold
War period combined, up until the onset of the counter
insurgency. It's one of the real atrocities in the 90s.
Barely a word about it in the press. Did they know about it?
Sure they know about it, they all have bureaus in Ankara,
they've read the human rights reports and so on, in
Istanbul. Sure they knew it, but you don't report that kind
of things.

And you don't explain why Colombia replaced Turkey as the
leading recipient in 1999. It's very clear. By 1999, the
Turkish state atrocity the US was paying for had succeeded
pretty much in crushing any resistance. But in Colombia it
hasn't yet succeeded. And therefore Colombia replaced Turkey
as the leading recipient of military aid. Did you read about
this anywhere? Well, you know, we can go right through the list.

We happen to live in a society which is extremely free. We
are lucky. It's not a gift, but won by a lot of struggle. We
just celebrated Martin Luther King Day, commemorated a
couple of weeks ago. People think the freedom of speech is
guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, they are wrong. Freedom of
speech is not guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. In fact the
US had a terrible record on freedom of speech. They finally
reached a high level of protection in 1964 in the course of
the Civil Rights movement, in a case involving Martin Luther
King, when the Supreme Court for the first time hit a level
of freedom of speech that's in fact [unmatched] in the
world. That's a great achievement, but it's an achievement
of popular struggle, same with every other right we got. So
we got a lot of those rights, and we are very privileged in
that respect thanks to people who preceded us and fought for
those rights.

On the other hand we are a very indoctrinated society. The
educated classes are extremely subordinate to power. That
includes the media, and there are other pressures there
because of business. They are a part of the corporate
system. That means you can get a lot of information, like
you can find it out about what happened this morning and
next if you really look, and in my case you have your wife
searching the web for you. But it takes a real research
project. On the other hand, that means we have plenty of
opportunities. We got the freedom, we got the privilege
that's been won, so a legacy, we can use it to understand
what's going on. For example, understand why there is a
skewed, distorted picture of reality that gets to us, and
you can break through it. But it's going to take work, it's
going to take organization, it's going to take education.
It's not going to happen if people are isolated, and you
know, see a movie and go home, or go to a demonstration and
go home. It's not the way things happen, anymore than it
happened in the civil rights movement, or any other popular
movement that won rights. You got to work on it.

Woman: Do you see their successes, future success in Cuba's
defiance of US foreign policy, and do you see more of their
future allies. . . . I am excited about changes going on in
Latin America now too. Do you see all these countries, such
as Venezuela, Argentina, and Bolivia, as potential allies to
sustain and aid their defiance against this embargo?

Noam Chomsky: Well, actually that's happening. Venezuela, if
you read the American press, you read plenty of criticism,
sharp criticism of Venezuela because of its alliance with
Cuba. Actually it's a very sensible alliance. They are each
using what we are taught in economic courses what you are
supposed to do. They are using their comparative advantage,
which happens to be complimentary.

Venezuela's comparative advantage is in energy resources.
Cuba's comparative advantage is in trained professionals,
highly skilled medical professionals, teachers and others.
So they are exchanging. Cuba is sending tens of thousands of
doctors and teachers in Venezuela. And the Cuban doctors are
not like the Western doctors. They go to the poorest, most
repressed areas and live with the people. Actually it's even
going on in Kashmir and Pakistan right now. So they are
significantly improving medical care, running literacy
campaign and so on in Venezuela. In return Venezuela is
providing cheap oil. That's a very natural relationship, and
the US is frightened of them, for one reason because it's
extending, the virus is infecting others.

There is an operation now called operation miracle, in the
Caribbean, in which Venezuelan funded Cuban medical
specialists go to places like Jamaica, and right now they
are concentrating on blindness, blindness that can be
surgically treated by advanced techniques. They are finding
lots of people who are blind that could be treated, taken to
Cuba where they get medical treatment, Venezuela pays for
it, they go back to Jamaica or where ever it is, and they
can see. You can imagine what kind of effect this has on a
country. And you can read about it, not in headlines in the
New York Times, but you can read about it. That's extending,
and it's extending elsewhere.

Actually it's extending to south Boston. As I am sure some
of you at least know, back around last November, I guess, a
group of senators sent a letter to the 8 major oil companies
in the United States, asking them if they could provide low
cost oil to help poor people get through the winter, where
oil cost is going way up and the support system is woefully
under-funded. They got one answer from 8 corporations:
Citgo, the one owned in Venezuela. And Citgo in fact started
providing cheap oil to Boston, the Bronx, as I understand
elsewhere (Maine, Vermont).

Woman: They are now calling for a boycott though.

Noam Chomsky: Yeah the US is hysterical about this, it's not
like the other oil company are exactly starving. Their
revenues are going through the roof. And the US State
Department, and press, complained that this is just a kind
of showboating by Venezuela, they are doing it for political
purposes, you know, quite unlike our aid, (inaudible) with
no concern that their might be any benefit from it. But you
know the poor people in South Boston that are getting cheap
oil might not appreciate these subtleties. Just like the
people recovering their sight in Jamaica may not understand
all these complicated things, got to have a degree from
Harvard to understand that.

The point is that all of this is spreading, and it's
spreading in a lot of places. The US is very worried about
it. I mentioned I think the Venezuela buying up parts of the
Argentine debt, well that's helping Argentines ridding
itself of the IMF, which is an offshoot of the treasury
department, setting a measure of control. Venezuela just
joined Mercosur. Mercosur is a sort of a South American
trade bloc. It's, again, novel, you know. South American
countries are integrating trade for the first time.

Venezuela joining them is a big step forward. It was very
strongly welcomed by the presidents of Argentina, Brazil.
President Chavez, in the meeting in Uruguay, where they
joined, he made a very impassioned speech in which he said
Mercosur should not be just an economic alliance, it should
be a political alliance. It should not be just a trade bloc
which just supports rich corporations and the wealthy. It's
a not very subtle reference to what the US calls the Free
Trade Agreement of the Americas, which is extremely
unpopular in Latin America, and North America, and they are
trying to push it through kind of in secret. Well, he wants
it to be a different bloc.

All of this sends off, you know, very deep concerns in
Washington, and they are reacting. They've lost the major
techniques of control, like military coup, invasion and so
on. It doesn't work. Now they are losing economic measures.
The US is now, if you take a look at military personnel in
Latin America, it's going very high up. I think way higher
than the Cold War, the last figures show. For the first
time, the numbers of US military officers in South COM, the
Southern Command all over Latin America, is higher than the
number of people in the key civilian agencies. That would
have never happened before. The training of Latin American
officers is also going up very sharply. You've heard of the
School of the Americas, you know what that means. Latin
American officers are being trained now for domestic
programs, the main one is radical populism. What does it
mean when you train people to [crush] radical populism? I'll
leave that to your imagination, even if you don't have a
history in Latin America, where people do.

Military training is being shifted from the State Department
to the Pentagon, that's of some significance. The Congress
has some degree of supervision over the State Department,
and conditionalities have been imposed by legislation, not
very influential, but they are there. There are some human
rights, some democracy conditionalities for military
training under State Department auspices. The Pentagon is
free to do anything it likes, nobody looks, no
conditionalities. You can draw your own conclusions of the
consequences. Military bases are being set up all around
Latin America, Ecuador, El Salvador, Dutch Islands,
Paraguay. They are not there for fun. These are all parts of
the planning, whether it can be implemented or not, I don't
know, I don't think the Pentagon knows.

But it's up to us to decide, that's the important thing. We
are not sitting on Mars watching all of this. We can
determine what the outcome is. But, like everything else, by
participating, not by just watching and speculating.

--
Dan Clore

My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1587154838/thedanclorenecro/
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"