no2empire

Nowadays Chomsky points out something you can read in the December 23rd, 1985 edition of the New York Times - that six years after the hue and cry all over the US about "Cambodian genocide", the US began sending millions to Cambodia in order to arm Pol Pot.

Of course at this time the US was using its power at the UN to keep the Cambodian UN seat in the hands of the political coalition that the Cambodian communists belonged to.

He also points out the mass murder the US air force carried out in Cambodia, bombing rural peasant villages. That the US media ignored a genocide in East Timor that was happening at the time of the communists taking power in Cambodia.

Insofar as "denial of the Cambodian genocide" by Chomsky - could you give an example of a statement he made about Cambodia which was not true? If you are unable to do that, it is just mud-throwing - in some other thread he's said to be denying Nazi genocide in Europe because he was opposed to the jailing of a French professor accused of being a holocaust denier.

Faurisson was sentenced to jail for "denying the Holocaust" as you put it. Chomsky believed Faurisson had the right of free speech "even if Faurisson were to be a rabid anti-Semite and fanatic pro-Nazi" as Chomsky's statement said. Chomsky said to use his statement as wished, and it was put as the preface of a Faurisson book.

When people ask him about this Chomsky says he has signed hundreds of free speech petitions and free speech should not be removed just because he disagrees with the person, citing Thomas Jefferson. Some people believe in free speech, some think people with certain critical views of Nazi era nationality policy towards Jews should be jailed. In the USA, the free speech view tends to win, and this is where Chomsky is from.

Hezbollah has 12 MPs in the Lebanese parliament. It represents the interests of a section of Shia in Lebanon, many of whom were driven from their homes in Palestine in 1948 by Jewish settlers, and are now barred from returning home (whereas a Jew from anywhere in the world is allowed to settle in the West Bank).

The PFLP is "terrorist", Hamas is "terrorist", Hezbollah is "terrorist", the PLO is "terrorist", the DFLP is "terrorist" - anyone who fights back against Zionist (or sometimes American) aggression is labeled a "terrorist".

Hezbollah was formed because Israel invaded Lebanon and began killing Shia there (or letting their helpers do so in Sabra and Shatila). Hezbollah arose to defend the Shia from this foreign invasion.

USAID "assistance" to Africa and other countries is more of a gimme to the US big agriculture lobby than to Africa. The US pays big agriculture to send food and agriculture equipment to Africa and other countries. The temporary food abundance often destroys the country's ability to build up its agriculture. Also, it comes with strings attached where the country has to use patented seeds in order to get the aid, making the local farmers dependent on sending money to Monsanto every year - this happened in Haiti and Monsanto is doing it in Africa as well.

Also, USAID is infamous for spreading money around in order to destabilize governments who do not follow the US's dictates.

This notion that USAID is some benevolent aid program is ridiculous. It is a brutal instrument of US foreign policy and big business, cloaked in a very thin veil of liberalism/charity/humanitarianism.

The profitability of poverty is foundational to how capitalism works. Workers work, heirs do not. How do heirs manage to expropriate wealth workers create during their surplus labor time? The answer is the reserve army of labor - keep people unemployed or underemployed as a level to use against those who do work.

One sign of this is that unemployment did not even exist several centuries ago in any kind of manner - all those who were capable (except again, those on top expropriating wealth created during worker's surplus labor time) worked.

This is openly discussed in the business press, like this (http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_44/b3653163.htm ) BusinessWeek article "When is the jobless rate too low?" It's not a secret that those who control production are working to create unemployment, poverty etc. It's a foundation of the current economic system.

Drones are flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan right now, atatcking innocent families. A Zionist invasion of Palestine in the 1940s is pushing into Gaza, the West Bank, southwest Syria, and innocent Palestinians are being killed daily - with US backing. The US is doing this all over the world, or enabling it. It's a laugh to see the people who invaded Iraq and tortured prisoners in Abu Ghraib getting on their high horse. The chickens are just beginning to come home to roost in this case.