The Iranian issue I don't think has much to do with nuclear weapons frankly. Nobody is saying Iran should have nuclear weapons ยญnor should anybody else. But the point in the Middle East, as distinct from North Korea, is that this is center of the world's energy resources. Originally the British and secondarily the French had dominated it, but after the Second World War, it's been a U.S. preserve. That's been an axiom of U.S. foreign policy, that it must control Middle East energy resources.
Noam ChomskyAs for geoengineering, there have been serious general critiques that I think cannot be ignored, like Clive Hamilton's, along with many positive assessments. It is not a matter for subjective judgment based on guesswork and intuition. Rather, these are matters that have to be considered seriously, relying on the best scientific understanding available, without abandoning sensible precautionary principles.
Noam ChomskyIt is only natural to expect that guilds will tend to "protect their turf" and to resist challenge.
Noam ChomskyNow, you ban not the whole Muslim world. You ban seven states, seven states that have not been responsible for a single terrorist act. Those are the seven [Donald Trump] banned. But, you leave the ones that really are responsible, like Saudi Arabia, which is the center for propaganda and funding and so on for radical Islamic Jihadism, well you can't touch them because of business interests, also they have oil and so on and so forth.
Noam ChomskyThe most dramatic case is that of the Central Americans. Why are people fleeing Central America? It's because of the atrocities the U.S. committed there. Take Boston, where there's a fairly large Mayan population. These people are fleeing from the highlands of Guatemala, where there was virtual genocide in the early 1980s backed by Ronald Reagan. The region was devastated, and people are still fleeing to this day, yet they're sent back.
Noam ChomskyWhy was the United States so afraid of an independent South Vietnam? Well, I think the reason again is pretty clear from the internal government documents. Precisely what they were afraid of was that the "takeover" of South Vietnam by nationalist forces would not be brutal. They feared it would be conciliatory and that there would be successful social and economic development - and that the whole region might work.
Noam Chomsky