Noam Chomsky is a noted linguist, author, and foreign policy expert. On February 9, Michael Shank interviewed him on the latest developments in U.S. policy toward Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Venezuela. Along the way, Chomsky also commented on climate change, the World Social Forum, and why international relations are run like the mafia.
A soldier running from angry protesters died instantly when he fell off of a cliff, town offices were burned down, and one mayor escaped to Lima, claiming that his constituency was planning to lynch him. In spite of the Organization of American States' report of a normal election, Peruvian President Alan García called on the armed forces to quell violence across the country during and after regional elections held November 19, 2006.
Columbus, GA - 22,000 people from across the Americas gathered this weekend outside the gates of Ft. Benning, Georgia to demand a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy and the closure of a military training school that is synonymous with torture and repression for millions around the world.
"Nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history. To be sure, only a redeemed mankind receives the fullness of its past-which is to say, only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments"-Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History30 Yrs After Argentine Coup*
(Versions in español and français available below)
In September 2004, a number of organisations initiated a collaborative website to support peoples’ struggles against bilateral free trade and investment agreements: http://www.bilaterals.org. The initiators included the Asia-Pacific Research Network, GATT Watchdog, Global Justice Ecology Project, GRAIN, IBON Foundation and XminY Solidariteitsfonds.
When the site was set up, the collapse of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Cancún and the stalling of the US-driven Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) were being celebrated by numerous opponents of neoliberal globalisation. But behind the scenes, powerful governments — especially the US and Europe — were quietly moving to sign far-reaching bilateral free trade and investment deals in order to achieve what they and their transnational corporations (TNCs) had not been able to get at the multilateral level.
"Why does a strong nation strike against a weaker one?," Stephen Kinzer asks in the first line of his book Overthrow. "Usually because it seeks to impose its ideology, increase its power, or gain control of valuable resources." In this case, Kinzer is referring to the aggressive foreign policy of the United States in the last century, and specifically to the habitual, if extreme cases in which it has deposed foreign leaders in order to create a government more favorable to its own interests.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019