Obama, the Middle East, and the Prospects for Peace

my name is Carl Hobart director of access of Hope based right down calm Ave here at the School of Education Boston University and it's my pleasure to introduce our guest speaker this evening professor Noam Chomsky received his PhD in linguistics in 1955 from the University of Pennsylvania during the years 1951 to 1955 professor Chomsky was a junior fellow of the Harvard University School of fellows the major theoretical viewpoints of his doctoral dissertation appeared in the monograph syntactic structure in 1957 this formed part of a more extensive work the logical structure of linguistic theory circulated in 1955 and published in 1975 professor Chomsky joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor in 1976 he was appointed Institute professor in the Department of linguistics and philosophy for over 30 years professor Chomsky has been a path-breaking linguist as well as a provocative sometimes controversial critic of American policies and politics he has lectured at countless universities here and abroad and he is the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards he is written and lectured widely on linguistics on philosophy on intellectual history on contemporary issues on international affairs and on u.s. foreign policy his most recent books include a new generation draws the line new horizons in the study of language in mind rogue states 9/11 understanding power on nature and language pirates and emperors old and new Chomsky on democracy and education imperial ambitions failed states perilous power interventions inside Lebanon what we say goes conversations on us power in a changing world the essential Chomsky and Middle East allusions this forthcoming book hopes and prospects will be published in 2010 this evening lecture by professor Chomsky is being co-sponsored by the Boston University School of Education under the sage leadership of Dean Hardin Coleman it's also being sponsored by axis of Hope a nonprofit organization collaborating with a school of education and dedicated to improving the practice of international conflict analysis management and prevention in public and independent high school and middle schools in the US and around the world I was introduced to Professor Chomsky years ago by a mutual friend as I studied and became passionate about the ideas of Martin Luther King jr. and Gandhi and began to ponder the idea of what I still to this day call educational civil disobedience in u.s. schools over the years professor Chomsky and I spoke about the preventive medicine ideas of Paul Farmer and Jim Kim and the philia dal at Partners in Health or the bricks and mortar of schools that Greg Mortenson was working on or the people's history of the United States idea of mutual friend Howard Zinn professor Chomsky's advice and guidance have helped us at access of hope to carefully craft in-class intellectual outward-bound conflict resolution exercises to help us and foreign youth learn to prevent rather than to instigate conflict this is what we now call it axis of hope preventive diplomacy professor Chomsky also taught me to pursue what I believed in with passion in this case speaking out with a diplomatically dissenting voice about the need to create the future the prospect for future peace by working tirelessly with view youth specifically focused upon teaching them trust compassion transparency empathy and humility as global citizens one child at a time two professor Chomsky I am greatly indebted as I use many of his sage ideas and teaching a course called sed 214 here educating global citizens focusing on international conflict management and Prevention Professor Chomsky's lecture this evening being filmed by bu productions and then placed in the archives for future viewing purposes is entitled Obama the Middle East and the prospects for peace he will speak for thirty minutes following this portion of his lecture we will open the floor to questions from the audience for one hour until 7:30 during the question-and-answer there will be two Boston University students roving the auditorium with microphones they will bring the microphones to you so that you may ask your questions please wait until the microphone gets to you to ask those questions one suggestion if you're in the balcony and you want to come down during that Q&A session please feel free to walk down and have someone bring you a microphone professor Chomsky it's an honor to welcome you here to Boston University this evening well I think a reasonable way to approach this network of problems is from the perspective of preventive diplomacy one of your main concerns preventive diplomacy of course is also a primary concern of the Security Council of the United Nations and in fact it recently passed an important resolution on preventive diplomacy in the Middle East the residue was blacklist late last September the 1887 if you want to look it up on the Internet the resolution was held here as a major victory for President Obama and his ongoing conflict with President Ahmadinejad and Iran and actually if you read the resolution you find that that's not entirely accurate it had two provisions one of them was a call for all states to refrain from the threat or use of force in their conflicts that merely reiterates the leading leading element of the United Nations Charter article 3 point 2 4 which says States should refrain from the threat or use of force the second part of the resolution 1887 called on all states to resolve their conflicts within the framework of the non-proliferation treaty well who is that resolution directed at nothing in the resolution relates to Iran they are not engaging in the threat or use of force and as far as anyone knows they're staying within the framework of the non-proliferation treaty however the resolutions directly is directed explicitly against the two states that consistently unregular Li do resort to force and the threat of force namely the United States and Israel those are the countries that carry out aggression regularly and repeatedly that invade other countries occupy other countries impose terror and violence and they're unique and at respect furthermore they are the countries that refuse to accept the non-proliferation treaty now of course the United States is a member of the non-proliferation treaty but it backs other countries that are not and supports them in their violation of the non-proliferation treaty there are three countries that have never signed the non-proliferation treaty all in the least one is Israel one is India South Asia and the others Pakistan in all cases they have developed their nuclear weapons programs with US aid and support and continue to and they all responded to resolution 1887 as did the United States itself in the case of India it responded to the resolution calling for States to settle to work within the non-proliferation treaty by announcing quite publicly that it can now produce nuclear weapons with the same power yield as those of the great powers as those of the United States and it's been able to develop its nuclear weapons program in particular thanks to the Anglo the u.s. Indian treaty which exempts India from the provisions of US law and the non-proliferation treaty that had up till deciding this treaty barred States developing nuclear weapons outside the NPT barred them from having gaining aid in their nuclear weapons programs now the u.s. of course says that its nuclear aid India is out this for civilian programs but of course it can be transferred immediately to nuclear weapons programs and doubtless that's being done the treaty was signed pretty openly there was no secrecy about this in order to improve the opportunities for US corporations to sell nuclear equipment in to India jet planes other military weapons which would have been barred under the provisions of preceding US law so that's India now what about of course India expands its nuclear weapons programs its offensive programs Pakistan does as well can't keep up but it devotes resources to expanding its own offensive nuclear weapons capacity that was developed primarily during the 1980s it's one of Reagan's Ronald Reagan's many gifts to the world Reagan the most vicious of Pakistan's many military dictators ziyal Huck was the president in the 1980s after a military coup and he was a real Reagan favorite be giving us was giving extensive aid to Pakistan the pretext was the war in Afghanistan the Russian invasion of Afghanistan however the u.s. the CIA station chief and Islamabad made it very clear that the purpose of the aid is not to liberate Afghanistan the u.s. didn't care about that it was to kill Russians and as he put it so in order to achieve that objective meanwhile tearing Afghanistan to shreds and leaving it in the hands of radical Islamist fanatics who Reagan and organized the new proceeded to tear the place to shreds with such violence that the population welcomed the Taliban in order to maintain this Reagan and his administration pretended that they didn't know that Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons and although it was completely obvious and they certainly knew but they had to pretend that they didn't know because otherwise there would have been a barrier to providing aid as the zeal Huk carried out his programs which included among other things the radical Islam ization of Pakistan with Saudi money and US port they developed a network of madrasas radical schools which laid the basis for what we're now seeing in fact radicalization and Islamic radicalization of substantial parts of Pakistan so that's Pakistan India mentioned what about Israel well Israel of course developed its nuclear weapons with the support and of the United States that's not controversial but right at the time of the passage of resolution 1887 and the you know the furor about whether Iran is concealing something from the International Atomic Energy Agency as they doubtless are right in the middle of that furor on the front pages every day still is the International Agency considered a resolution calling on Israel to join the non-proliferation treaty and to open up its nuclear weapons nuclear facilities including weapons facilities to international inspection well the United States and Europe tried to block the resolution when they failed it was voted anyway and it was passed but then Obama immediately informed Israel that they could be they were immune to it he also informed India that they were immune from resolution 1880s so the resolution wasn't literally barred it was just barred from the site of the American population thanks to the cooperation the media which doesn't report things of this kind you can read it if you read the Mexican press or AP reports or something like that but it didn't if you're not a disappears here the how did the United States respond to resolution 1887 well right at the time that Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize for his inspiring contributions to peace which maybe somebody can find if they have a electron microscope in their pocket but right at that time the Pentagon announced that it is rapidly accelerating the production of the most lethal weapons in the u.s. arsenal short of nuclear weapons 13 ton bombs to be delivered by bb2 b-52 stealth bombers which are what are called massive penetration ordnance they're designed to penetrate deep into the ground through huge amounts of reinforced concrete and destroy whatever's down there these are huge bombs way beyond anything else the plant everybody knows exactly what they're for they're one of the many threats against Iran the the programs had actually been initiated under George Bush with kind of languished however as soon as Obama came into office he called for sharp acceleration of programs and they are now according to the Pentagon accelerated by three years and should be deployed within a few months that's a part of Washington's radical violation of the UN Charter and of course the Security Council resolution which bans any threat of force these are parts of the over threat of force and Israel's case as well it is the US and Israel were supposed to carry out air operations planning clearly planning for posed as a threat for to Iran that was kind of undermine when Turkey pulled out of it refusing to join in the end these violations of international law one of the reasons why turkey is being slapped on the wrist for its disobedience these days but those were the reactions of the three countries to whom against whom resolution 1887 was directed Iran has rotten government nobody doubts that and certainly nobody wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons or anyone else for that matter but it's easy to see why the world outside the West just doesn't take seriously Washington's professions of concern about these matters and the same is true of Washington's profession the West's professions of concern about human rights in Iran not a terrible repression undoubtedly but by the standards of US allies in the region not very bad so it's not as bad as say Saudi Arabia or Egypt Egypt has a brutal dictator President Mubarak and Obama made clear his attitude towards human rights when he visited the Egypt for his famous Cairo speech for which he was magnificently praised he was asked what he had to say about President Mubarak and his answer was I don't like to use labels for folks when ippolit politician uses the word folks you kind of get ready to shutter something Awful's happening and he continued I don't like to use labels for folks so I wouldn't call him Authority arian in fact he's a force for stability and good in the region yeah okay you wonder why the world collapses and ridicule outside the West when they hear the United States talking about concern for human rights in Iran and in fact it is most of the world outside the West we don't hear about it because we are carefully protected from the events of the world by an information system designed for that purpose media commentary and so on so very few people know that when you read that the that Iran is defying the international community by enriching uranium very few people know that the term international community means Washington and whoever happens to agree with it so the majority of the countries in the world the non-aligned countries most of the world have repeatedly and vigorously endorsed Iran's right to enrich uranium within the framework of the non-proliferation treaty of which it's a member unlike the u.s. allies Israel India and Pakistan in fact very few people know that the majority of the American people are excluded from the world - they also endorse that right or they did as of a couple of years ago when the last polls were taken it's very likely different now because of the go haven't seen a poll because of the massive propaganda campaign to demonize Iran and portray it as a major threat to world peace that's been going on for the last few years the that's the world and it in it's necessary to be very delicate and reporting things so for example one of the most maybe one of the most or one of the most popular leaders in the world is President Lula of Brazil and he's also Washington's fair-haired boy in South America he's supposed to be the moderate as compared with the bad guys who are going farther left so it's been necessary for some time to suppress the fact that Lula has been quite openly and strongly supporting Iran's right to do what it wants within the bounds of the law including develop developed nuclear power enriched uranium it became if Hugo Chavez says something like that you know huge uproar we expect of this demon but when Lula says the same thing even more strongly have to suppress it if any of your going into journalism you've got to learn these lessons it became pretty hard to suppress in the last few weeks when President Assad visited Brazil so then yes you had to report it and admonish Brazil for stepping out a line but in fact relations between Brazil and Iran in fact South America in general and Iran have been improving trade relations and others because the world outside the West simply doesn't follow us orders the way it's supposed to it used to because it was terrified to do anything else but the world is getting more diverse and the Godfather is losing his clout to some extent so it's necessary to kind of suppress what's happening though it is happening there's a lot more like this so take say thee there's a lot of talk to remember a couple of weeks ago Obama announced that he was going to reconfigure the missile defense systems in Eastern Europe which were regarded by the Soviet Union by the Russia it's not so anymore regarded by Russia as a threat to its security with justice if you read us arms control journals you'll find that US strategic analysts like say Theodore Postol over at MIT recognized that these so-called missile defense systems would have to be construed by the Russians as a threat to their security there's a good reason for that a missile defense systems are not for defense their first strike weapons and that's understood everywhere I mean if they were work they're not going to stop a first strike but it could conceivably stop a retaliatory strike so they're effectively a first strike weapon and that's understood by strategic analysts on all sides almost in the same words well Obama did agree to reconfigure these systems and move them somewhere else and there was a big debate about whether that was a sellout to the Russians or whether it was as he said a better way to defend the world against the threat of Iranian missiles and nuclear weapons that was the debate does the debate make any sense I mean I suppose Iran had missiles and nuclear weapons it could it used them as much as loaded a weapon the country would be vaporized and the ruling clerics have not evidenced any wish for mass suicide and destruction of the country that they pretty much own and in fact the US intelligence analysts on specialized in the Middle East consider the threat of an Iranian attack with missiles as so small that you can't even evaluate it if they're developing which maybe they are it would only be as a deterrent an effort to deter a threatened very openly threatened u.s. Israeli attack the u.s. is not quiet about this openly threatening attack Israel even more so in fact Israel is sending Israel happens I have nuclear nuclear submarines capable of carrying nuclear tip torpedoes at gift of Germany and it's openly sending them through the Suez Canal with the agreement of the force for stability and good President Mubarak sending them through the Suez Canal into the Gulf as a threat to Iran saying you know if you if we don't if we want to we can wipe you out and you won't be able to do anything about it so yes the threats are constant and continuous and but those are coming from the rogue states the only states that regularly resort to violence and the threat of violence who else is occupying two countries in the region and illegally occupying other territories who else constantly carries out aggression in the region and other violence I mean Iran hasn't done it for probably two centuries but the United States and Israel do it constantly so yeah there's a good reason for the Security Council to be concerned with preventive diplomacy in the region and for others concerned with preventive diplomacy to be concerned to that particularly the ones here because we're right at the heart of it we're at the heart of the use and threat of the use of force and the threat of force in the region nobody else begins to compare just think it through these is kind of an intriguing feature of our intellectual culture that these matters cannot be perceived I mean it's not that they're profound or hidden on the right on the surface you know completely on the surface but they can't be perceived that is a revealing indication of the strength of the grip of imperial ideology which is comes naturally in the West history the West for hundreds of years sort of second nature so much so that it literally cannot be perceived though again there's absolutely nothing concealed about it well let's turn to the other major trouble spot in the israel-palestine what's President Obama's contribution to that Obama has made actually one major speech about Israel Palestine it's when he introduced george mitchell as his negotiator now mitchell is a good choice for a negotiator he was also george bush's and he's got a good record he was prominent in negotiating the the peace in Northern Ireland which is no small achievement I happened to be in northern in Belfast a couple of weeks ago and I had been there in 1993 in 1993 it was a war zone you couldn't park your car you know there were security forces all over the place people were afraid to go from one area to another because of the threats literally a war zone and this time it's peaceful on the surface like for an outsider like me it looks peaceful how and of course the people all look alike you know so you don't identify the ones that were in conflict however as soon as you travel around a little bit than with the guidance of people who know Belfast you see that while it is a vast improvement over what it was which is attributed to George Mitchell and Bill Clinton and Tony Blair the the division the problems still remain not far below the surface the fact that still is a regular low level of terror low nothing like what it was but the divisions remain is very little intermingling among the two populations unionists and nationalists and you see driving through Belfast you know a wall of a building with a big painting on it saying this a loyalist area meaning don't enter here or enter at your risk unless you're one of us the mystic is kind of still there but they're not violent they're much less violent in fact they when I went in 1993 I was my wife and I were taken from Dublin to Belfast by a young woman who was a Catholic a peace activist in North in Belfast and she is now a minister in the government on the way she had as she managed to get us to visit with an IRA hitman who was on the run he'd escaped from British from British jail so it was kind of you know secret place and a lot of security and so on I spent a couple of hours talking to him basically asking one question what do you think you're achieving by killing Protestants his answer basically was basically I'm not achieving anything he killed my cousin they killed my cousin I'm going to kill their uncle and then they'll kill my brother and that's the way it is well a couple years later he was on the negotiating team now he's in the government okay things can change no unchanged for the better and Mitchell had a substantial role in that the real reason it happened is because the British finally recognized that if you want to deal with terror and IRA terror was not a joke you better pay some attention to its roots the terror is you know it's criminal but it's based on grievances a lot of those grievances are legitimate and they should be dealt with terror or not and if you do pay some attention to the grievances you'll reduce the terror and they finally agreed the respond to terror not by more violence but by paying attention to the grievances and it worked and there's been a tremendous improvement and that's an important lesson of preventive diplomacy if you like well let's go back to the Middle East so Obama introduced Mitchell and he made a speech and he said the United States wants to bring about peace through diplomacy and negotiations and he said fortunately there's a there's a very constructive proposal on the table from the Arab League the proponent he was referring to the originally the Saudi proposal which was adopted by the Arab League and then adopted by the Organization of Islamic States which includes Iran and the proposal calls for a two-state settlement on the international border which has been the international consensus for 35 years blocked only by the United States of Israel but that's something else were not supposed to know the so they endorsed the international consensus and they went beyond it in the Arab League proposal by saying well in the context of establishing a political of a political settlement establishing two states the Arab states should proceed towards normalization of relations with Israel okay so Obama referred to the proposals and very constructive at them on the head and then urge the Arab states to live up to it by beginning to normalize relations with Israel well you know he's an intelligent man he's literate he knows that's not what the proposal was the proposal called for normalization of relations in the context of a two-state settlement kind of a corollary to it so Obama mentioned only the corollary omitting the content which tells everyone who has a gray cell functioning that he intends to continue with the u.s. policy of extreme rejection ISM that is blocking a political settlement I wish the u.s. in fact been doing ever since it clearly ever since 1976 when it vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement done you know full guarantees for the peace and security every state in the region and so on put forth by the major Arab state time and continuing on I won't run through the record but it's been a very consistent record of leading the rejection front of blocking diplomacy and Obama was saying okay we're going to continue with that very clear that's his one major speech on the least there was also in a quite an important speech by John Kerry air senator head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who's been one of Obama's active agents and negotiating in the region Young and Kerry had something is the Brookings Institute a couple of couple of months ago Kerry gave the usual picture the standard picture virtual party law and Exceptionalist the United States is an honest broker but that's true by definition no matter what's going on the u.s. is an honest broker trying desperately to seek peace and human rights and it's been sort of caught than this is trying to get these two sides together and Israel has been desperately seeking a legitimate partner for peace and it's never had one but Kerry went on to say at last Israel may have a legitimate partner for peace namely the Palestinian Authority and he then gave the reason the reason was that during the attack on Gaza a year ago which we call an Israeli attack but that's a mistake it was a u.s. Israeli attack joint attack during the attack on Gaza which is a violent brutal murderous attack there were no protests in the West Bank and the reason was that there's an army in the West Bank run by a u.s. general general Keith Dayton and that army was able to suppress any protests okay so we've got enough military control over the population of the West Bank so they can't even protest when the other half of Palestine is subjected to a vicious assault so maybe at last Israel has a legitimate partner for peace dayton's army is trained with this with support of Israel and and Jordan and it's not the most violent army in the West Bank the most violent of this Satan's armies under State Department control supervision so there's some constraints on what it can do kind of weak but non-existent but the CIA is running its own military forces their general intelligence and the presidential guard and they have no constraints what the CIA does is anything you like reports from there are that those are the the worst state terrorist forces so at last we have Israel has a legitimate partner for peace and we can proceed with our plan for peace now right now Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu we're calling for negotiations and the Palestinian Authority is dragging its feet and so that shows maybe it's not such a legitimate partner negotiations are from a good thing the better than killing each other but negotiations presuppose something what are the negotiations about you can't enter into negotiations or they're not about anything okay so what are they about in this case well there are two views of that one view is that of the entire world outside the United States in Israel the negotiations are about a two-state settlement on the international border okay which the US and Israel have been blocking for 35 years so that's one possible topic the other topic is the u.s. Israeli policies in the territories maybe negotiate about them well what are they well they're very clear the policies first of all are to break Gaza from the West Bank there's no basis for that in law or anything else they're just the two parts of what's left of Palestine but they're treated quite separately now by the United States and Israel and that's kind of important because that means if there ever is any kind of entity it won't have it'll be trapped it won't have any access to the outside world which it would if it were in Gaza and Gaza was allowed to develop to be have a seaport and Airport and so on so but if it's just the West Bank it's completely trapped in within hostile forces so first break Gaza from the West Bank second turn Gaza into a prison in fact a maximum-security prison where you just torture the population in ways which are really sadistic like just a couple of days ago to tighten the siege your siege is of course an act of war to tighten the seeds blocks anything but just bare survival you know us Israel don't want the population to die like flies that would look good so keep them alive somehow but make sure they can't really survive so the water supplies are destroyed the sewages powers destroy the trickle of goods get in just a couple of days ago the Israel tightened it a little more by closing the entry point that follows which is the place where cooking gas gets into Gaza so now no cooking gas Egypt cooperated yesterday by closing that terminal it took at the Egypt in Arafah preventing diesel fuel from getting in so there's continued to strangle the population meanwhile drive them away from the borders so this constant bombardment another terrorist acts by Israel along the borders which drive the population inland depriving them of arable land and making the maximum security prison even worse and also driving away from the Seacoast so the Israeli Navy in the last seven or eight years has just been driving fishing boats out of Gaza in territorial waters and right up to the shore which essentially destroys the fishing industry because after the Israeli destruction of the power and Su and other facilities the pollution on the shores so outrageous that you can't fish there so just drive them inland keep it keep the keep it tightened make the situation worse and worse and just we'll see what happens that's the Gaza the prison in the West Bank the policies are very explicit there's a wall snaking through the West Bank it's called the separation fence it should be called the annexation wall it's about far higher and much longer than the Berlin wall and its purpose is very explicit it's to ensure that Israel can annex the valuable territory in the West Bank the water resources which happen to be behind the annexation wool arable land and the pleasant suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem the place is kind of similar to where I live say Lexington the nicer burbs of Boston which happened to be in the West Bank Hills so let them take that also take the Jordan Valley which is about a third of the territory so that the rest is in prison and in what's left that the us-israeli settlement programs if you look at a map cut through what's left with said ends at one east of Jerusalem which pretty much bisects the West Bank and two others farther to the north which kind of break up what's left what's called Jerusalem is actually a greater a great area way beyond Jerusalem and Israeli actions there which you read about every day in the press you know kicking out our families building and so on those are not only illegal but doubly illegal all settlement in the West Bank is illegal all settlement that has been recognized universally including by Israel since late 1967 as Israel began the settlement programs and after the 67 war its highest legal authorities highly respected international lawyer there may runs its Attorney General and so on inform the government that all of this is in violation of international law the defense minister Moshe Dayan who was in charge of the occupied territories agreed he said yes it's in violation of international law but States violate international law so we'll do it to which you can do as long as the Godfather says it's fine so those are in violation of international law that's all the settlements and Jerusalem Greater Jerusalem doubly because that's also in violation of explicit Security Council resolutions barring any change in the status of Jerusalem but as Diane said yes we can violate international law freely as long as our patron provides military economic diplomatic and ideological support that's us and that will and then in the little territory that's left the hundreds of checkpoints are put up mainly for harassment to make it say impossible to go and an ambulance from one place to two miles away to a hospital and just to make life impossible following a principle that in fact Moshe Dayan stated explicitly back in late 67 minister in charge I said too we should tell the Palestinians that they will live like dogs and whoever will leave will leave and we'll see where that turns out so that's the u.s. Israeli policy it's being implemented right before our eyes and meanwhile Obama is talking about settlement expansion which is just a diversionary tactic doesn't make the slightest difference where they expand settlements or not they're all illegal and they all break everything up so if you can focus on expansion maybe people forget the real problem namely the settlements and all of this is designed to ensure that there can't be any political settlement that allows any meaningful national self-determination to the Palestinians and the 22% of the tear of Palestine that technically they're supposed to have under international law well those are the policies right before our eyes I haven't talked about the the constant regular brutality and sadism which is serious but that's the diplomacy and Mitchell is bound by it there's he's not given any gently maybe perfectly good negotiator he has no opportunity to do anything as long as the United States remains committed to those policies well there are things that can be done in fact one good suggestion was made by Amnesty International it's now considered in the United States and Israel a kind of a radical left organization but hope we don't talk about that in the several Human Rights reports about the u.s. Israeli war in Gaza they call it an Israeli war but that's politeness in the have been quite a few human rights investigations and one of the most important of them hence the least publicized was an Amnesty International report which went through the weaponry that was used in the attack on Gaza found of course that almost all of it comes from the United States including white phosphorus another high-tech weaponry and it called for an arms embargo on both sides well can't call an arms embargo and cos because no state publicly leaps provides them with arms but you can call for and of course most overwhelmingly that means Israel so they called for an arms embargo on Israel for good reason because it's actions violate international law and u.s. shipment of arms to Israel violates US will the u.s. loss quite explicit that arms cannot be sent except for the purpose of defense and of course this is it I might say a word about that Israel of course claims that all the actions I described are in self-defense but you know that claim is meaningless everything that a state every state when it uses force reflexively says it's for self-defense like when Hitler invaded Poland it was to defend Germany from the wild terror of the poles and so on if you can find an exception to that in history it kind of be interested so to say it's in self-defense is like saying two plus two equals four you have to ask is there any merit to that claim well is there let's take the separation fence going through the West Bank and what does that have to do with self defense I mean if Israel wanted to build a war that would keep wall that would keep it secure it would build it on the border it would make it impregnable you know mile high tanks on all sides this is an annexation wall has nothing to do with defense but take the attack on Gaza its uniform in the United States including the human rights reports to say yes Israel had the right to attack it has a right to defend itself against Hamas rockets there is no there is a right of self-defense that's true everyone agrees that state has a right of self-defense but that's not even the issue the issue is that which is never discussed did it have a right of self-defense by force okay that's different from a right of self-defense now international law is quite clear on that as it's common sense you have a right to use force himself defense if you've exhausted peaceful means that's a precondition well the US and Israel not only didn't exhaust peaceful means they refused to try them and they refused to try them because they knew they were going to work there were clear peaceful means that could be used in fact there had been a ceasefire that was called in June 2008 and Israel concedes publicly that during the ceasefire there wasn't a single Hamas rocket so okay and Israel broke the ceasefire in November by sending troops into the Gaza Strip and killing a bunch of Hass activists and then rockets started in response but then Hamas continued to offer to renew the ceasefire and the Israeli cabinet considered it we have the public record and decided not to and the u.s. of course never mentioned it well that alone completely undermines any claim to the youth to the right of force if they fired one bullet into the Gaza it would have been a crime that quite a permit but the discussion is all about disproportionate use of force which again an evasion you don't talk about disproportionate use of force unless there's a right to the use of force in the first place which there wasn't then if you go case-by-case there are no security issues of course there are security issues but they're largely self-generated because there are opportunities for peaceful settlement well the United States has been blocking them and continues to block them and so does Obama and that's another good case for preventive diplomacy as we get microphones out I'd like for people to think about questions they have for professor Chomsky again focusing on the Middle East focusing on the first term of Barack Obama focusing on George Mitchell's role they're also focusing on the role of Hillary Rodham Clinton who's playing an interesting role in this whole quote unquote peace effort do we have microphones one right there we have a second right there please raise your hand if you'd like to ask a question and please make certain that once you get the microphone you speak right into it so we can hear your question please raise your hand first let's start right down here terrific speech um it seemed after 9/11 that Bush's policy with Israel largely fell under the war on terror and there's a lot of support with it kind of fell into the axis of evil scheme and all that how would you relate that to the rationale of the Obama administration in terms of how they relate to Palestinian self-determination Israel's response to terror what not about the same it's hard the war on terror is a kind of an interesting concept what we are supposed to think is that George Bush declared a war on terror in after September 11th that's not quite accurate here II declared a war on terror the war on terror was declared by Ronald Reagan in 1981 as he came into office he announced and his administration announced that international state-directed international terrorism is the plague of the modern age returned to barbarism in our time it's going to be the core of our policy and then they proceeded to deal with it by carrying out massive terrorist wars which practically destroyed Central America killed over a million people in southern Africa and supported the invasion of Lebanon just a massive terrorist war so that's kind of out of history because we're not supposed to talk about our terrorism so therefore that terror that war on terror is kind of submerged what about Bush's war on terror about the same it has almost nothing to do with reducing terror is real you know 9/11 happened it's bad it was a real crime actually if you try going to Latin America you may find that people call it the second 9/11 the reason is there was another 9/11 September 11th 1973 in Chile which by any objective standard was much worse I can go through the details if you like and we know who was responsible for that people like Henry Kissinger and others so yes there was massive terror 9/11 our 9/11 was another one and if you want to if when there is a case of terror a major crime there are ways to react to reduce the terror and they were understood so in the case of what we call 911 second one if you wanted to reduce if your goal was to reduce terror which would have done is use the options that were available so for example the jihadi movement which is a broad movement was highly critical of Obama Osama bin Laden and 9/11 there were fad was coming from them you know the radical clerics and al-azhar university kind of you know the main Islamic Center condemning bin Laden and al-qaeda for this and if you wanted to reduce the threat of terror what would have been done is to exploit the opportunity to break up the jadi movement you know to separate this violent militant element from its space of support okay that's the natural way to reduce the threat of terror that's in fact what Mitchell succeeded in doing in northern instead the u.s. decided to escalate the threat of terror by welding the jihadi movement back together at first by attacking Afghanistan then by attacking Iraq that's exactly what happened so for example the evasion of Iraq it was predicted but so every Intelligence Agency that it would increase the threat of terror for a very simple reason terror doesn't come out of nowhere you know it's not because people decided I want to blow myself up there's there's a background for it and the background are grievances and sometimes the grievances are legitimate as in northern island so if I mean one of the leading and by terror and Iraq I'll come back to this intelligence agents predicted it with the invasion would increase the threat of terror as indeed it did far beyond what was anticipated so using quasi-governmental statistics terror increased by a factor of seven two big jump the year after the invasion of Iraq of Iraq as anticipated but more and we can go through other cases a protection of a population from terror or other violence is usually a low priority of States not a high priority and that's true of the United States as well so sort of down there somewhere but not a major priority that's easy to show furthermore what do you do about 9/11 itself what was criminal act when there's a criminal act the first thing you do is try to figure out who perpetrated it it wasn't so simple in this case about eight months later the head of the FBI after the most intensive international investigation in history said that the the FBI was still unable to really pinpoint the blame they said we believe the word that was used that the plot may have been hatched in Afghanistan what was probably implemented in the United Arab Emirates and in Germany okay so that's what they believed eight months afterwards well okay if you're trying to carry fine perpetrators of a criminal act you go beyond your beliefs until you're pretty confident who carried it out and then you work to apprehend them if it's an international case you get international support which very easy in this case and then bring them to a fair trial that doesn't mean want anima or Bagram well that's the way to deal with criminal acts assuming you want to reduce terror okay if reducing terror is not your concern or a very low concern then you do the kinds of things that were done now use force and violence to achieve your other objectives that's I could go on with many other examples so as you may know there was a 9/11 commission that was formed over the objections of the Bush administration but was formed to high-level commission to recommend means to reduce the threat of terror and if you look over they recommend that they reconstituted themselves later because they were quite angry that none of the recommendations work we can't being carried out and if you look yes they weren't being carried out so for example one of the recommendations was to fortify the border the Canadian border that's the poorest border for the United States I mean you and I could cross the Canadian border with a suitcase with a small nuclear weapon in it and you just go through the forests basically unguarded border so one recommendation was okay reinforce the border well the Bush administration responded by reinforcing the border namely the Mexican border which was not considered a threat because the threat that the people who are fleeing from the effects of NAFTA and the u.s. terror in Central America the the need to keep them out as far higher than the need to protect the people in New York from a nuclear explosion and it goes that way step-by-step I mean governments are not the benevolent agencies their power systems they carry out policies in the interest of those who dominate and control them and protecting populations is a low priority Israel's a case in point could have security but prefers expansion thank you another question yes sir right here do we have a microphone right down there place right up there what worries me is what's going to happen in this country Obama raised such exaggerated expectations such great hopes in people precisely because he wasn't unknown I recall reading that approving peasant was asked why he voted for a particular candidate for presidencies he said because I know nothing about him and I'm afraid that's what happened in this country people voted for Obama because they knew nothing about what he was going to carry out and it's a very dangerous situation when you raise exaggerated high hopes and they did - them down you know what happened in France after 1968 the goal came back to power with a vengeance the Labour Party disappointed people in in the 60s and the facture regime came in harder disappointing people this country we've got Reagan what's going to happen it seems to be starting right now when this exaggerated hopes are dashed down who we have real dangers here and how can we fight that yeah you're quite right and in fact his Obama and his campaign managers made sure you would know nothing about him or very little about him and if you look back at the campaign the slogans were hope and change what hope for what you know what change well at that point it kind of evaporates why hope and change well you know campaign managers are intelligent enough to read polls and they knew that 80% of the population thought the country is going in the wrong direction okay hope and change in fact those were McCain's slogans - except he didn't do it as well Obama made it Merilee because the financial institutions who are of enormous power in the country mainly thanks to Reagan and Clinton the they preferred him to McCain so they poured money into the Obama campaign way beyond McCain and that's the core of the funding and yes he managed to make it you know over to win the election and it shouldn't come to a surprise to anyone who knows anything about American political history that they're being paid off just take a look at the front pages every day I'm the big problem for the big banks now is that the profits and the bonuses are so high that they're getting a bad press and also have to figure out some way to conceal it by taking them in stocks instead of money so you're kind of borrowing money from the public instead of stealing it no so sure they're getting paid off for having put Obama in office but the other programs are well you know what's happening to them is probably a nice man I don't know but that there shouldn't it's just as you said there should be no surprise they were very careful to keep it quiet and that's characteristic of US elections the u.s. elections are a facade I mean they are run by the public relations industry who market candidates the same way they market toothpaste and lifestyle drugs I mean when you see an ad on television you know you're not supposed to believe it you know it's not an attempt to inform you the way it would be in a market system it's a way to create uninformed consumers will make irrational choices exactly the opposite of what you're taught in an economics class about markets but business spends huge amounts of money to undermine markets by constructing uninformed consumers who are supposed to make irrational choices and the same institutions PR institutions run the campaigns and they market candidates the same way they want an on informed electorate that'll make irrational choices and in fact as maybe you know Obama won an award from the advertising industry for the best marketing campaign of 2008 they beat out Apple Computer and if you read the business press executives were euphoric they said you know best we've done since we since Reagan when we sort of were able to market him now we have an even better achievement it's going to change the atmosphere in corporate boardrooms in new ways of behaving and portraying ourselves and so on yeah that's the case and what one technique is if you really want to create an uninformed electorate you have to keep issues off the agenda and there's a second reason for that on issues both of the political parties are commonly well to the right of the population so it's important to keep issues off the table make sure people don't know what they are so yeah you're quite right and what will the result likely be and Mike well my suspicion is an erosion of the base for the Obama campaign because people will be disillusioned they shouldn't be but they will be in it's understandable and a very significant backlash there's a major group of huge group of people in the country who feel they have serious grievances the grievances come back go back to the 1970s the shift of the economy from production to finance which a huge shift at the place primarily under Reagan and then Clinton and of course Bush even workstream and that's left a lot of people out in the cold majority of the population have seen their wages and incomes stagnate for 30 years their benefits decline you know services decline infrastructure collapse and so on and they're not happy about it and they want to know why is this happening if you listen to talk radio you get a good sense of it which I do my drive I listen the the the standard person is saying something like you know I'm I've done everything right I'm a hard-working decent white Christian done everything right why is this happening to me well who's going to give them an answer they're not going to get an answer from the Republican Party saying yeah that's the policies we designed to shaft you an enriched couple of rich people and they're not going to get an answer from the Democratic Party saying well that's pretty much our policy - except maybe not as Extreme so they get an answer from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck who tell them well why I got an answer it's the rich liberals who own the banks and run the government and on the media and don't care about you people to fly over people they only care about the rich folk and on the two coasts they want to give everything away to illegal immigrants and you know the unworthy poor and so on so yeah that's your problem well you know if that's the only answer you're going to get people are likely to believe it and we've seen we had experiences like this it's unfortunately reminiscent of late by our Germany where there were also were people with grievances and they were getting an answer crazy answer horrible answer but happen to take over with consequences we know about I'm not saying that's going to happen here but the similarities are not insignificant wait a question in the back yeah as it becomes more apparent that our leadership is complicit with Israel in its occupation by sending three billion dollars a year in military aid and as the demographic in East Jerusalem is changing more rapidly with housing evictions and shakes Iran still on in other neighborhoods and like the Israeli left is shrinking and shrinking and getting gradually smaller do you find hope in the boycott divestment and sanctions movement that's been growing in the world or do you feel that that there's other ways of assisting and ending the occupation and other problems in the region well I think the development of the sanctions movement reflects an understandable and in many ways appropriate reaction to what's going on but it has some problems that we ought to think through the sanctions movement is directed against Israel okay that absolves the United States but the United States is the prime actor in this Israel can go just as far as the u.s. permits it to and as far as the US provides the essential support so tactics are supposed to be educational and this one is Mis educational it's direct it's in fact a gift to the United States saying that's those terrible guys over there now a sanctions program can be effective and sensible but it has to be formulated properly BDS is called boycott divestment sanctions that's a pretty blunt instrument you can use it effectively you can use it badly to be used effectively first of all it ought to be directed against the right target and it ought to be done in a way which the population which can be which is defensible which the would take the high moral ground not be indefensible for example it shouldn't be obviously hypocritical for example if you boycott say an Israeli dance group may make Israelis feel bad but it's totally hypocritical why not work out a u.s. dance group saying well US has a far worse record of violence and aggression you're boycotting an Israeli dance group because you get away with it there that we can't do it against the United States too strong and tough but anybody can see that that's just total hypocrisy on the other hand something like say the Amnesty International proposal that makes a lot of sense calling for the u.s. to follow its own laws you know and stop sending arms to Israel first of all it's directing it against the right target namely us and we should always be primarily concerned with ourselves and that happens to be the appropriate target anyway and it's completely defensible the u.s. Auto live up to its laws and that opens the door to an educational program and make it clear that the u.s. is violating its own laws international law by sending arms to a country that's engaged in direct aggression not using it for defensive purposes this is the first time a human there have been cases in the past where human rights groups like Human Rights Watch have suggested that the u.s. live up to its own laws by not sending arms to Israel because there are laws that bar sending arms to laws that engage in systematic torture as Israel does but this is much more extensive this is calling for an overall arms embargo and it's coming from an impeccable source Amnesty International and they have a very good reason and a defensible reason and one that can be you know can be justified and can be used to as a wedge to get people understand the situation so that's a sensible PDS program others are - so for example a boycott of say arms manufacturers or caterpillar which is just create destroying the occupied territories yeah that makes a lot of sense but you just have to craft these things so that they're sensible it can be done actually the case of South Africa is a very interesting one that's usually suggested as a model but you should really pay some attention to it I'm the BDS program against South Africa it really took off by around 1980 that was at a point where nobody was defending apartheid Congress was passing legislation against supporting a mayors were getting arrested the press was against it and so on and it was after decades of educational programs that got people to oppose apartheid okay at that point a BDS program made a lot of sense and it was effective the Reagan administration which was a criminal administration beyond the norm had to evade congressional legislation in order to continue to support its South African allies and I was no small business as I mentioned it led to the killing of probably over a million people in the neighboring countries well that was important and in fact to finish up on South Africa but a lot of the lot of analogies are made between Israel and South Africa I don't think many of them hold up very well one reason they don't hold up is that South Africa needed its black population its African population badly they were its workforce Israel doesn't want the Palestinians be happy if they would disappear that's one crucial difference and it's a difference in the policies that are followed but there is something to be learned from the history in South Africa by the early 1960s South Africa was beginning to become a pariah state and there wasn't a boycott campaign but there's a lot of condemnation of apartheid and there were votes in the United Nations you know overwhelmingly against apartheid and so on as that was that the South African nationalists reacted pretty much the same way Israel's reacting we're right the world is wrong they don't understand this all we need is an information campaign to explain to the world that everything we do is wonderful and perfect and that's pretty much what's happening now and it went on for a long time but a South African the South African foreign minister made a very interesting comment as to comment to the American ambassador this must be close to 50 years ago he told the American ambassador yes the UN is voting against us but it really doesn't matter because you and I know there's only one vote the United Nations yours okay and as long as you're backing us it doesn't matter what the rest of the world say and he was right and the history showed it as long as the United States continued the back of them they could get away with whatever they wanted then matter if the whole world objected didn't matter of Congress passed legislation against them as late as 1988 the Reagan administration condemned the African National Congress Mandela as one of the more notorious terrorist groups in the world that's 1988 actually as you may know Mandela was just removed from the terrorist list a couple of months ago that's 1988 within about two years the United States changed its position for reasons we could debate but anyway it did change its position Mandela was allowed out of the prison at Robbins Island there were moves towards overcoming apartheid with a couple of years the system was gone all it takes is that one vote which happens to be the only vote there is in the United Nations that's what it means to have overwhelming power and that's a hopeful sign it's not the only case there are other cases like that too and it means we can really do something if we want to but we're going to have to focus tactics on what the United States does not what somebody else does another question yes right here hi um I have a sort of two-part question the first is with the increasing fear-mongering towards the Iranian regime it seems like an Israeli airstrike it could be quite possible and if that happens I think the United States stands to lose more just because we have our troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq if that happens or if Israel and the first could you repeat the first part understand it it seems as though there's an increasing chance of an Israeli airstrike on your own increasing Oh an airstrip the threat of an air strike on Iran right yeah and if that happens I think the USA can lose more than Israel would just because our troops are far closer how do we stop an Israeli air strike when they claim that they're fearing for their existence and my second question is our negotiations with Iran have consisted so far of us demanding that they stop how can we expect this to be a negotiation if we're not willing to budge on our issue on any issue if we're not willing to budge on any of the issues if we haven't offered or we haven't asked them what they want in return and all we're doing is demanding that they stop well as far as stopping an Israeli air strike is concerned that's fairly straightforward the u.s. just has to tell them you're not going to do it okay then there won't be an Israeli air strike and put teeth into that statement which of course the u.s. can do u.s. is providing the armaments providing the state allow for transit you know in fact it's happened like last summer for example summer 2008 so you're a half go right in the midst of the presidential campaign you know the most sensitive moment AIPAC fees main Israeli Lobby was trying to get Congress to pass a resolution calling for a blockade on Iran well that's an act of war that could have led to a war and they had gotten a lot of support a lot of Congress people were lined up and signing all of a sudden the campaign ended there was no indication of why but it must have been that they just got a message from the White House saying we don't want to war now so call off your boys and the campaign ended right in the middle of a campaign very sensitive and that's happened over and over I'm in Israel and it's lobbies here know that they can go only so far they can go as far as the u.s. lets them if they tried to do something to do as really opposed they'd be in serious trouble and they understand that they're not suicidal either so yeah we can stop it by putting an end to our support for it there are on threats for that matter and you can it's not a 100 percent guarantee but pretty pretty safe prospect as for the negotiations it's not very clear what they're about actually we're going to try to prevent your Iran from exercising the rights of a signer of the non-proliferation treaty as we're insisting well we can insist on that but we certainly can't expect the world to go along with us except for Europe which you know follows obsequious leave behind but outside Europe the world doesn't accept that that's why you have the kind of statement I quoted from President Lula Brazil and the non-aligned countries which continue to support that right if we want to negotiate with Iran got to offer them something and what we should offer them is first of all that they should have their rights but also the will put an end to the effort to exclude them from the world which is serious it's quite serious like we now have laws in the United States which bar international banks from dealing with Iran we can't legally do that but again when the Godfather says it it happens so the banks don't want to lose under the Patriot Act for example if a bank is violating the u.s. sanctions it can be barred from action within the United States that's pretty serious risk for some international banks oh sure they follow well okay we could offer opportunities for Iran to enter into the world system which I think would also be a help to the Iranian reformers I mean it's just the harsher we are in our treatment of Iran the easier it is for the ruling clerics to get the population to huddle under the umbrella of power for you know for defense and we know that perfectly well you know after 9/11 okay everybody was willing to accept you know harsh restrictions you know support the government and so on yeah other others react that way too so I think there are steps that can be made they're not guaranteed to succeed but we should at least begin by putting an end to the hypocrisy you cannot praise President Mubarak of Egypt as a force for stability and good and then in the next sentence condemn the Iranians for a harsh treatment of protesters and expect people not to crack up and laughter outside the highly disciplined West which of course you know does what stole so there's there steps that could be made if there were serious diplomatic interests we have time for just one more question from this side yes hi my question is early in your talk you talked about the threat of Iran being exaggerated how it's not as big of a threat as the world and the Middle East is making it seem to be and then later you talked about how no-one is emitting to supplying arms to terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon but you also implied that somebody Iran is doing so so and they have so how is that not a threat to the Middle East and to the world how is it not a threat if Iran violates say international agency resolutions and so on Oh surprising terrorist organization well that's an interesting notion - according to the United States and it's obedient allies the United States is supporting terrorist organizations okay well ask yourself is that true I mean which of the terrorist organizations I mean they're presumably they're providing arms to Hezbollah and to Hamas are they terrorist organizations well I mean Hezbollah is called a terrorist organization because it drove Israel out of southern Lebanon okay maybe it carried out other terrorist acts maybe not but the main charge against Hezbollah is it drove our ally out of an illegal military occupation of southern Lebanon where our ally was there in violation of Security Council resolutions went back 22 years you know they did drive him out they also defended Lebanon when Israel invaded it's six that's v invasion in 2006 okay terrorism from one point of view not from others we can't expect the world to accept our condemnation of that as terrorism what about Hamas yeah I must say the Hamas Rockets are criminal acts no doubt but we're not going to you can't expect rational people to accept the charge that charge if they know as we prevent ourselves from knowing that there's a very simple way to stop those acts namely accept the ceasefire in fact there's a more general way pointed out by near rosen who's one of the best reporters of in the region a very fine reporter he was asked he was on Amy Goodman's show Democracy Now a couple of weeks ago and she asked you know what can we do to stop Muslims from killing us as well stop killing them okay stop killing them maybe they'll stop killing us not a bad answer so sure the Iran is undoubtedly supporting Hamas and Hezbollah but you know as compared with what we do it's like a toothpick on a mountain I mean whatever you think about from us that Kerry had nothing like the violent murderous acts of Israel and Egypt which we strongly support and the same with Hezbollah they've defended Lebanon and you may like him or hate him that's really irrelevant but there maybe they've involved in something like for example there one of the charges against Hezbollah is that they carried out a suicide bombing in 1983 at which the US Marine base in Lebanon well actually probably wasn't Hezbollah which you look at experts on the topic they point out as well I barely existed then it's probably somebody else but whoever it was was it a terrorist act I mean the US military base in Lebanon was being used to bomb an attack Lebanon that was the time when the US Navy right off shore was bombarding the hills over in Lebanon in support of our our allies in a civil war a response to that action is hardly a terrorist act so you really have to ask yourself who are the terrorists you know they're not nice people and I wouldn't admit him but in fact they happen to be pretty popular in Lebanon it here organism you have to be very careful not to believe what you read in the American press Curley like right right after there was an election in Lebanon a couple of a couple of months ago and if you read people like say Thomas Friedman or everyone else they were just overjoyed Friedman was the most extreme as usual he said you know tears come to my eyes when I hear about free elections and on and on he said the Lebanese people had a free choice and they voted for Obama and against doc Medina jawed course the us-backed coalition won the majority of votes in the parliament what he didn't tell you and what the American press didn't report is that the majority vote went to the Hezbollah backed coalition they got 54% of the vote of the roughly half of the population of voted and because of the sectarian system in Lebanon which is a residue of French colonialism the Shiite population is very much underrepresented underrepresented so you believe in free elections the festival out back coalition won in fact won pretty handily but if you really hate free elections which is standard here then they didn't because the way of manipulating the vote that put them in the minority of the legislature so that you know you can't really say that they're an unpopular group in Lebanon in fact the legislature just recently authorized their retaining arms well make some sense I mean if Lebanon has a right of self Lebanon has no right or self-defense yeah then of course they shouldn't have arms but if Lebanon does have a right of self-defense then who else is going to defend it against the next Israeli invasion I mean not the Lebanese army they can't do it if it's about like nah I can do it but did do it so okay nothing to do with whether you like him or hate him but you should be a little cautious about using the notion terrorist organization particularly when we happen to be in the state which is guilty of far more terrorism than anybody else you can think of practically before we go I'd like to offer a couple of get to professor Chomsky the first gift is a beautiful bookmark thanks to our wonderful Dean of the School of Education who's sitting in the back garden Coleman a true visionary a true what I call entrepreneur bu was lucky to get from the University of Wisconsin this is from Dean hard and Kuhlmann and the School of Education thanks very much second we already have a few for your grandchildren but one more this is from axis of hope on the back you'll see that it says teaching youth for peace beginning today that's for you also thank you all for coming

Channel: Boston University

Views: 94,605

Rating: 4.579782 out of 5

Keywords: school of education, axis of hope, social activist, linguist, palestine, israel, Lectures

Id: WvczABgZbhU

Length: 89min 19sec (5359 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 10 2010