April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

irthday of the current god, a halo appeared over his birthplace. That will
probably happen tomorrow over Reagan’s birthplace. But when we go in—I
mean, this is connected with what we were talking about before. If you
want to control a population, keep them passive, keep beating them over
the head and let them look somewhere else, one way to do it is to give
them a god to worship.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, you’ve written about, over the years, COINTELPRO,
FBI raids. We’re seeing that today. There’s almost no attention given to
what we have focused on a good deal on Democracy Now!, from Minneapolis
to Chicago, the FBI raids, activists being subpoenaed to speak about in
various cases.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, that’s a pretty—it’s not just—the raids are serious
enough, but what’s more significant is what lies behind them. These are the
first actions taken under new rulings by the Supreme Court. A very
important case was six or eight months ago, I guess, Holder v. Humanitarian
Law Project. It was initiated by the Obama administration. It was argued by
Elena Kagan, Obama’s new court appointment. And they won, with the
support of the far-right justices. The case is extremely significant. It’s the
worst attack on freedom of speech since the Smith Act 70 years ago. The
case determined that any material support to organizations that the
government lists on the terrorist list is criminalized, but they interpreted
"material support"—in fact, the issue at stake was speech. Humanitarian
Law Project was giving advice—speech—to a group on that’s on the terrorist
list, Turkish PKK. And they were also advising them on legal advice and also
advising them to move towards nonviolence. That means if you and I, let’s
say, talk to Hamas leaders and say, "Look, you ought to move towards
nonviolent resistance," we’re giving material support to a group on the
terrorist list.
Incidentally, the terrorist list is totally illegitimate. That shouldn’t exist in a
free society. Terrorist list is an arbitrary list established by the executive
with no basis whatsoever, by whim, for example, but no supervision. And if
you take a look at the record of the terrorist list, it’s almost comical. So,
take Reagan again. In 1982, the Reagan administration decided it wanted to
aid their friend Saddam Hussein. He had been—Iraq had been on the
terrorist list. They took it off the terrorist list. They had a gap. They had to
put someone in.
AMY GOODMAN: South Africa, ANC.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Put in Cuba. They put in Cuba, and I suppose in honor of
the fact that, in preceding several years Cuba had been the target of more
international terrorism than the rest of the world combined. So, Saddam
Hussein goes off, Cuba goes on, no review, no comment. And now, with the
new Obama principle, giving—advising groups that are arbitrarily put on this
group is criminal. And that was the background for those raids.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, we’re going to continue this conversation
online and play it on the show again. Noam Chomsky, professor of
linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
www.democracynow.org
After Mubarak: What's next for Egypt?
Khadija Sharife First Published in 17 February 2011