Free Because We Say So by Noam Chomsky Page A

Washington in November, shortly after Iran agreed to attend.
    The Obama administration’s official reason was “politicalturmoil in the region and Iran’s defiant stance on nonproliferation,” the Associated Press reported, along with lack of consensus “on how to approach the conference.” That reason is the approved reference to the fact that the region’s only nuclear power, Israel, refused to attend, calling the request to do so “coercion.”
    Apparently, the Obama administration is keeping to its earlier position that “conditions are not right unless all members of the region participate.” The United States will not allow measures to place Israel’s nuclear facilities under international inspection. Nor will the U.S. release information on “the nature and scope of Israeli nuclear facilities and activities.”
    The Kuwait news agency immediately reported that “the Arab group of states and the Non-Aligned Movement member states agreed to continue lobbying for a conference on establishing a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction.”
    Last month, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling on Israel to join the NPT, 174–6. Voting no was the usual contingent: Israel, the United States, Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.
    A few days later, the United States carried out a nuclear weapons test, again banning international inspectors from the test site in Nevada. Iran protested, as did the mayor of Hiroshima and some Japanese peace groups.
    Establishment of a nuclear weapons–free zone of course requires the cooperation of the nuclear powers: in the Middle East, that would include the United States and Israel, which refuse. The same is true elsewhere. Such zones in Africa and the Pacific await implementation because the U.S. insists on maintaining and upgrading nuclear weapons bases on islands it controls.

    As the NGO meeting convened in Helsinki, a dinner took place in New York under the auspices of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an offshoot of the Israeli lobby.
    According to an enthusiastic report on the “gala” in the Israeli press, Dennis Ross, Elliott Abrams and other “former top advisers to Obama and Bush” assured the audience that “the president will strike (Iran) next year if diplomacy doesn’t succeed”—a most attractive holiday gift.
    Americans can hardly be aware of how diplomacy has once again failed, for a simple reason: Virtually nothing is reported in the United States about the fate of the most obvious way to address “the gravest threat”: establish a nuclear weapons–free zone in the Middle East.

WHO OWNS THE WORLD?
    February 5, 2013
E XCERPTED FROM P OWER S YSTEMS : C ONVERSATIONS ON G LOBAL D EMOCRATIC U PRISINGS AND THE N EW C HALLENGES TO U.S. E MPIRE . I NTERVIEWS WITH D AVID B ARSAMIAN BY N OAM C HOMSKY .
    DAVID BARSAMIAN : The new American imperialism seems to be substantially different from the older variety in that the United States is a declining economic power and is therefore seeing its political power and influence wane.
    NOAM CHOMSKY : I think talk about American decline should be taken with a grain of salt.
    World War II is when the United States really became a global power. It had been the biggest economy in the world by far for long before the war, but it was a regional power in a way. It controlled the Western Hemisphere and had made some forays into the Pacific. But the British were the world power.
    World War II changed that. The United States became the dominant world power. The U.S. had half the world’s wealth. The other industrial societies were weakened or destroyed. The U.S. was in an incredible position of security. It controlled the hemisphere, and both the Atlantic and the Pacific, with a huge military force.
    Of course, that declined. Europe and Japan recovered, and decolonization took place. By 1970, the U.S. was down, if you want to call it that, to about 25