From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Today's Quote...
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 09:35:16 GMT


As Reagan's terrorist war against Nicaragua(*) was in full swing
during the winter of 1986, blowing up bridges and murdering health
care workers and literacy volunteers who were committing the crime of
helping the Nicaraguan poor and thus cooperating with the Sandinista
government, Noam Chomsky was invited to lecture at the Universidad
Centroamerica in Managua, Nicaragua by the rector, and gave morning
lectures on language and knowledge, and late afternoon lectures on
political issues, resulting in two books.

	[(*)Use the GET command (see bottom) with WHO-WERE CONTRAS for]
	[ample documentation; see also the rest of the "Nicaragua  ]
	[Libarary" referenced there.                               ]

The later lectures were published in 1987 in _On Power and Ideology:
The Managua Lectures_. After each lecture there was a question/answer
session, and what the translators could transcribe from the tape
recorded Q/A is also found in the book. Following lecture 2, a
Nicaraguan asked Noam Chomsky how, as someone who supported the
Nicaraguan people against the U.S. slaughter, he could speak in the
terms he did about the Soviet Union.

	[Excerpt enclosed from page 51, _On Power and Ideology:
	The Managua Lectures_, 1987]

                 ===================================
		 Lecture 2: Discussion March 2, 1986
                 ===================================

QUESTION: We feel that through what you say and write you are our
friend but at the same time you talk about North American imperialism
and Russian imperialism in the same breath. I ask you how you can use
the same arguments as reactionaries such as Octavio Paz, Vargas Llosa,
etc.

ANSWER: I have been accused of everything and that therefore includes
being a reactionary. From my personal experience there are two
countries in which my political writings can basically not appear. One
is the U.S. within the mainstream with very rare exceptions. The other
is the USSR(*). I would personally not want to be associated with Vargas
Llosa, Octavio Paz, and the rest. I think what we ought to do is
to try to understand the truth about the world. And the truth about
the world is usually quite unpleasant.

	[(*) Chomsky was banned in the Soviet Union. See e.g.
	introductory interview in _The Chomsky Reader_ --HB]

One of the truths about the world is that there are two superpowers,
one a huge power which happens to have its boot on your neck, another,
a smaller power which happens to have its boot on other people's necks.
In fact these two superpowers have a form of tacit cooperation in
controlling much of the world.

My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my
own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be
the larger component of international violence. But also for a much
more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it.
So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in
the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I
would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical
judgment. That is, the ethical value of one's actions depends on
their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to
denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much
ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th
century.

The point is that the useful and significant political actions are
those that have consequences for human beings. And those are overwhel-
mingly the actions which you have some way of influencing and
controlling, which mean for me, American actions. But I am also
involved in protesting Soviet imperialism, and also explaining its roots
in Soviet society. And I think that anyone in the Third World would be
be making a grave error if they succumbed to illusions about these matters.


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