In 1898 Cuba was liberating itself from Spain and the US intervened in what’s called here Liberation of Cuba but in fact was the prevention of the liberation of Cuba by Cubans. The US took over the island … At gun point the US imposed a treaty on Cuba. Noam Chomsky, Talks at Google 4th April 2014, Youtube 1.02.41
Indonesia was supposed to be in this new [post-war] world order granted a kind of nominal independence … In Indonesia there were essentially three forces: one was President Sukarno, the leader of the nationalist’s movement who was an independent nationalist and therefore already unacceptable, then there was a mass-based popular party – the Indonesian communist party – which was needless to say totally unacceptable, and thirdly there was the army which more or less shared US aims. Noam Chomsky, lecture MOMA 16th November 1992
The CIA began to support right-wing parties – that didn’t work. They supported an insurrection in 1957/58 – that was put down. The US then turned to a classic technique for overthrowing civilian government – one that’s used over and over again – namely, cut off any aid or assistance or support to the government but maintain, even increase, military aid. ibid.
1965 and then Suharto took over and then came this huge bloodbath … The biggest bloodbath since the holocaust. ibid.
East Timor: The silence began in December 1975 with the Indonesian invasion: from then on there’s a sharp decline in coverage – it reaches zero, zero literally in the United States and Canada, in 1978 which is the year in which the atrocities peaked, and in which in fact Jimmy Carter took some time off from his sermons about human rights to increase US aid to Indonesia because they were actually running out of arms in the war against this tiny country. ibid.
Britain stepped up its military sales to Indonesia. ibid.
Modern-day American imperialism is just a later phase of a process that has continued from the first moment without a break. Noam Chomsky, lecture Boston University, ‘Modern Day American Imperialism: Middle East and Beyond’, Youtube 2.00.01
Woodrow Wilson: One of the most brutal and vicious interventionists in American history. ibid.
Anyone who resists the United States is guilty of aggression. ibid.
We own the world … everything we do is necessarily with the best of intentions. ibid.
There is no principled critique within the mainstream. ibid.
Kissinger won out: we followed the policy of stalemate. Since that time the United States has been alone in the world outside of Israel in blocking every move towards a political settlement. It’s vetoed UN security council resolutions … year after year. Noam Chomsky, lecture BMFA 18th February 1993
My own feeling is that one should refuse to participate in any activity that implements American aggression – thus tax refusal, draft refusal, avoidance of work that can be used by the agencies of militarism and repression, all seem to me essential. Noam Chomsky
1989: An elite Salvadorean battalion, who are fresh from renewed training in the John F Kennedy School of Special Warfare in North Carolina, invaded the Jesuit University in El Salvador and brutally murdered six leading Latin-American intellectuals. Noam Chomsky, lecture Rickman Godlee Lecture 2011, ‘Contours of Global Order’, Youtube 1.39.23
During that period around 70,000 people were killed in El Salvador overwhelmingly by the US armed and trained forces. ibid.
Now, if we had the slightest concern with democracy, which we do not in our foreign affairs and never have, we would turn to countries where we have influence like El Salvador. Now in El Salvador they don’t call the Archbishop bad names; what they do is murder him. They don’t censor the press; they wipe the press out. They sent the army in to blow up the Church radio station. Noam Chomsky, Ten O’Clock News WGBH Public TV 1985
Our prime concern should be our own responsibilities. Noam Chomsky, compilation ‘War, State Power, and American Exceptionalism’, Youtube The Essentials 2.43.03
Vietnam: One can look at it as a failed venture, a mistake … We have no idea what the costs were to the Vietnamese. ibid.
What was the just cause in supporting Suharto? … What was the just cause when we invaded South Vietnam? … In Central America in the 1980s killing hundreds of thousands of people? … We did it, therefore it’s a just cause: you can read that in the Nazi archives too. ibid.
Over the years there have been a series of concepts developed to justify the use of force in international affairs for a long period. It was possible to justify it on the pretext, which usually turned out to have very little substance, that the US was defending itself against the communist menace. By the 1980s that was wearing pretty thin. Noam Chomsky
Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony. Noam Chomsky
Since about 1970 the United States has stood virtually alone in the international arena in blocking diplomatic efforts to bring about a negotiated settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict through peaceful means. Noam Chomsky, lecture July 1995, ‘‘Protecting Corporate Power Against Democracy’, Youtube
Some of the primary characteristics of failed states can be identified: one is their inability or unwillingness to protect their citizens from violence and perhaps even destruction; another is their tendency to regard themselves as beyond the reach of domestic or international law and hence free to carry out aggression and violence. Noam Chomsky, Failed States audio
Terror: There is a straightforward single standard. Their terror against us and our clients is the ultimate evil while our terror against them does not exist or if it does it is entirely appropriate. ibid.
Bush planners extended Clinton’s doctrine of control of space for military purposes to ownership of space which may mean instant engagement anywhere in the world. ibid.
The standard observation that the United States stood almost alone in rejecting the Kyoto protocols is correct only if the phrase United States excludes its population which strongly favours the Kyoto pact. ibid.
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and company may even have succeeded in causing irreversible damage to Iraq’s oil fields. To support the invasion the fields are being driven to pump more than they should. ibid.
If the United States can maintain its control over Iraq which has the world’s second largest known oil reserves and is located at the heart of the world’s major energy supplies, it will enhance significantly Washington’s strategic power and critical leverage over its major rival in the tripolar world that has been taking shape for the past thirty years. ibid.
Among the most salient properties of failed states is that they do protect their citizens from violence and perhaps even destruction, or that decision-makers regard such concerns as lower in priority than the short-term power and wealth of the state’s dominant sectors. Another characteristic of failed states is that they are outlaw states whose leaderships dismiss international law and treaties with contempt. Such instruments may be binding on others but not on the outlaw state. ibid.
An invisible network of prisons and detention centres into which thousands of suspects have disappeared without trace since the War on Terror began … Unknown numbers of suspects have been sent by rendition to countries where torture is virtually guaranteed. ibid.
Basic services deteriorated even more than they had under the sanctions: hospitals regularly ran out of the most basic medicines; the facilities are in horrid shape. ibid.
The Lancet study estimating 100,000 probable deaths by October 2004 elicited enough comment in England so that the government had to issue an embarrassing denial but in the United States virtual silence prevailed. ibid.
Halliburton: the biggest recipient of Iraqi funds. ibid.
A viable non-proliferation regime depends crucially on the implementation of the obligation to disarm nuclear weapons as well as the obligation not to acquire them. ibid.
The logic of the annexation of Texas was essentially that attributed to Saddam Hussein when he conquered Kuwait. ibid.
[Adam] Smith held that the principle architects of global policy our merchants and manufacturers have sought to ensure their own interests are most peculiarly attended to however grievous the impacts on others. ibid.
The war on drugs also had an important domestic component much like the war on crime: it served to frighten the domestic population into obedience as domestic policies were being implemented to benefit extreme wealth at the expense of the large majority. ibid.
Failed states need not be weak. ibid.
Washington firmly supported Pinochet’s regime of violence and terror and had no slight role in its initial triumph. ibid.
The United States has the right to make them suffer by economic strangulation: Eisenhower approved economic sanctions in the expectation that if the Cuban people are hungry they will throw Castro out. Kennedy agreed that the embargo would hasten Fiden Castro’s departure as a result of the rising discomfort among hungry Cubans. Along with expanding the embargo Kennedy initiated a major terrorist campaign designed to bring the terrors of the Earth to Cuba. ibid.