When people denounced [former Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad for rejecting and criminalizing homosexuality, it should be remembered that was true of the United States until very recently. Women's rights were unheard of. Civil rights proponents were horribly treated, not just in the South. It was awful there, but pretty bad here. Environmental issues did not exist. Opposition to aggression was virtually zero. In fact, so little, that to this day, even scholarship mentions the Vietnam War as beginning in 1965.
Noam ChomskyThere have been repeated cases when nuclear war came ominously close, often a result of malfunctioning of early-warning systems and other accidents, sometimes [as a result of] highly adventurist acts of political leaders.
Noam ChomskyThe Russian ambassador at the United Nations did make some proposals for a political settlement in which Bashar Assad would be slowly eased out. The West dismissed it immediately, and we don't know if it was real, because it didn't come from the Kremlin, and it was informal. But the point is every such proposal is immediately scotched. And you just don't know if they're real.
Noam ChomskyThere is a social responsibility to take care of vulnerable people. It seems that a sensible social responsibility is obligatory education, but also decent education, and that is not happening.
Noam Chomsky