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Featured stories in this issue...

Environmental Injustice and Precaution
  Massachusetts (probably the most liberal state in the Union) dumps
  up to 10 times as much pollution into communities of color and low
  income, compared to white middle-class communities. Other states are
  no doubt worse but even in Massachusetts the injustice is outrageous
  and blatant. The situation cries out for real remedies: Anti-
  discrimination policies based on fairness and a simple do-unto-others
  ethic -- but with teeth. Plus environmental policies based on
  precaution.
Huge Fight: Experimental Incinerator Planned for California
  An Oregon corporation plans to build a high-temperature incinerator
  in northern California to "melt" dangerous medical waste. If they get
  a toehold, they plan to expand across the United States. Have all
  reasonable alternatives been examined? It seems not. This is a stellar
  example of the old, discredited "risk assessment of a single option"
  approach to decisions. Will we ever learn?
Household Cleansers Containing Nano Particles Make People Sick
  The German government has issued a warning about household sprays
  that contain nano particles. Nano particles are one-ten-thousandth
  the diameter of a human hair and have never been tested for safety,
  yet they have been put into household products -- a kind of medical
  experiment on humans. Now the results of the experiment have begun to
  come in. Good luck identifying products containing nano particles --
  in the U.S. they're not labeled.
Noam Chomsky on Failed States: The Abuse of Power...
  One of our truly great journalists, Amy Goodman, interviews one of
  our most important thinkers, Noam Chomsky, about his new book,
  Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.
  Hang on tight. This is a scary interview.

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From: Rachel's Democracy & Health News #849, Apr. 6, 2006
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ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE AND PRECAUTION

By Tim Montague

We know from the growing body of literature on the social
determinants of health that our health depends on many factors beyond
diet and exercise, including income and social status, social support
networks, education and literacy, employment/working conditions,
social environment, physical environment and others. The World Health
Organization gives this example, "If you catch the metro train in
downtown Washington, D.C., to suburbs in Maryland, life expectancy is
57 years at beginning of the journey. At the end of the journey, it is
77 years. This means that there is 20-year life expectancy [gap] in
the nation's capitol, between the poor and predominantly African
American people who live downtown, and the richer and predominantly
non-African American people who live in the suburbs.[2]

Last week in Rachel's News #848 I reviewed the brutal state of
affairs in Massachusetts where the poor and communities of color
(towns with more than 15% nonwhite residents) are exposed to much
higher levels of industrial pollution. In their detailed study of
how hazardous waste, landfills and industrial pollution are
disproportionately heaped on the working poor and communities of color
in Massachusetts, Daniel R. Faber and Eric J. Krieg concluded that
it's four times as dangerous to be poor and twenty times as dangerous
to live in a community of color. They said, "...if you live in a
community of color, you are thirty- nine times more likely to live in
one of the most environmentally hazardous communities in
Massachusetts."[1, pg. 10] Taken together with the other social
determinants of health that predispose these populations to illness we
can see that the cumulative impacts are profound.

Traditional NIMBY (not in my back yard) tactics will help individual
neighborhoods and towns for a period of time. But what really needs to
happen, say Faber and Krieg, is nothing short of "a more holistic
strategy for achieving social and environmental justice; one that
involves moving from locally reactive actions to more regionally
proactive approaches to community planning and economic development.
To do so requires crossing profound racial and ethnic boundaries, and
bridging the divide between the white middle-class of suburbia and
poorer people of color and working class whites in the inner
cities.[1, pg. 59]

Discrimination of all kinds -- but mostly racism and classism --
empowers corporations and the government regulatory agencies (the
dominant culture) to dump on the less powerful (working poor and
communities of color). But even if we correct this wrong, and
distribute our pollution equally across race and class, we still have
a huge problem. In Massachusetts, from 1990-2002, industry
"...released over 204.3 million pounds of chemical waste directly into
the environment... an amount equivalent to over 2,550 tractor-trailer
trucks each loaded with 80,000 pounds of toxic waste."[2, pg. 5] No
matter how equitably we distribute our pollution, vast numbers of
children are going to suffer from cancer, birth-defects, low birth-
weight, developmental disabilities, immune disorders and a variety of
other harms. [See Rachel's News #829 -- "Why We Can't Prevent
Cancer"]

To tackle environmental discrimination, Faber and Krieg suggest policy
solutions such as, "An Act to Promote Environmental Justice in the
Commonwealth," a proposed law that is under review in Massachusetts.
It "...includes measures for enhancing the education, notification,
and participation of community residents in state-based environmental-
problem solving.[1, pg. 54] They outline some priorities of this
legislation, including:

(1) increasing public participation and outreach through EJ
(environmental justice) training programs (including greater language
accessibility);

(2) reducing risks by targeting compliance, enforcement and technical
assistance to EJ populations;

(3) streamline brownfield redevelopment projects with priority given
to EJ sensitive projects; and

(4) promote cleaner development by encouraging economic development
projects that incorporate state-of-the-art pollution control
technology, and alternatives to hazardous chemicals.[1, pg. 55]

Growing the state's sensitivity and priority for EJ communities is
good and necessary. But it's not going to solve the pollution problem
so Faber and Krieg go on to identify "...a more 'productive' EJ
politics with an orientation toward the prevention of environmental
risks from being produced in the first place. A movement for
environmental justice is of limited efficacy if the end result is to
have all residents poisoned to the same perilous degree, regardless of
race, color, or class.[1, pg. 55, emphasis added.]

And: "The transition to clean production and utilization of the
precautionary principle are key components of a more 'productive' EJ
politics. The precautionary principle posits that if there is a
strong possibility of harm (instead of scientifically proven certainty
of harm) to human health or the environment from a substance or
activity, precautionary measures should be taken. [1, pg. 56, emphasis
added.]

PRECAUTION VS. RISK ASSESSMENT

Faber and Krieg call on the Precautionary Principle to prevent these
gross environmental injustices in the first place. Where there is
reasonable suspicion of harm, and scientific uncertainty about cause
and effect, then we have a duty to act to prevent harm. The
Precautionary Principle suggests five actions:

1) Set goals;

2) Examine all reasonable ways of achieving the goal, intending to
choose the least-harmful way;

3) Heed early warnings and make mid-course corrections;

4) Shift the burden of proof; and

5) Throughout the decision-making process, honor the knowledge of
those who will be affected by the decisions, and give them a real
"say" in the outcome.

These goals are also compatible with our basic human rights as
outlined by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
of 1948 and codified in the Massachusetts Constitution: "...the public
has the right to clean air and water. When any citizen is unwillingly
harmed by exposure to industrial toxic pollutants found in the
environment, an injustice is being perpetrated."[1, pg. 58]

Faber and Krieg point out that: "Standard environmental policy
approaches in Massachusetts utilize risk assessments to determine
'acceptable' levels of public exposure to industrial pollutants, which
are then applied as a general standard on industry." This 'dilution is
the solution," assumes that dispersion of environmental pollution
leads to 'safe levels' of public exposure. But that's exactly how we
created a Massachusetts that is today heaping up to ten times the
amount of pollution on the poor and people of color. "Furthermore, the
scientific standards of proof for demonstrating the vast array of
potential health impacts of a chemical are very difficult to
demonstrate conclusively. Over 70 percent of the 3,000 high production
volume (HPV) chemicals produced by industry (HPV chemicals are
produced in quantities of one million pounds or more annually) have
not undergone even the simplest health and safety testing."[1, pg. 56;
and see "Getting Beyond Risk Assessment," in Rachel's News #846]

This is why the one chemical at a time approach just doesn't work. We
have to consider classes of chemicals like POPs (persistent organic
pollutants). And we have to put the burden of proof on industry -- so
that they have some incentive to find safe alternatives. Massachusetts
is taking some steps with a proposed law -- similar to the Louisville
Charter -- "Safer Alternatives to Toxic Chemicals". Faber and Krieg
explain, "This bill aims to create a model for the gradual replacement
of toxic chemicals with safer alternatives. It initially targets ten
substances that are currently replaceable with feasible safer
alternatives. It accomplishes this goal by laying out a careful
process to examine all available evidence to identify safer
alternatives and manufacturing processes that will benefit the health
of workers, customers, children, the environment, and the economy. The
proposed program would stimulate research and development on new
technologies and solutions when a safer alternative is not currently
feasible. It would also create programs to assist workers and
businesses in the transition to the safest available alternatives,
with funding provided through a fee on toxic chemicals."[1, pp. 56-57]

The questions then becomes, do we have the political will to take back
our democracy from those who would make it so small they can drown it
in a bathtub, as Grover Norquist would have it. In recent years in
Massachusetts, Faber and Krieg say, "...the Department of
Environmental Protection and Executive Office Environmental Affairs
has suffered devastating budget cuts and staff reductions. The
capacity of the DEP and EOEA to successfully address issues of
environmental injustice will require "...funding, staff, and other
resources to adequate levels."[1, pg. 59]

Precautionary principle policies are clearly the way forward. Europe
is doing it with REACH which could save billions by providing
environmental and health benefits. California has adopted integrated
pest management in schools in Los Angeles and Emeryville, zero
waste in Oakland and alternative purchasing agreements San
Francisco and Berkeley. The texts of many of these new laws are
available here and here. We can look forward to much lively
discussion and debate about current and future precautionary action at
the upcoming The First National Conference on Precaution June 9-11
2006 in Baltimore, Maryland -- and we hope to see you there.

[1] Daniel Faber and Eric Krieg, Unequal Exposure to Ecological
Hazards 2005: Environmental Injustices in the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts. Northeastern University, October 2005. Available
here.

[2] Michael Marmot, "What are the social determinants of health?,"
U.N. Commission on Social Determinants of Health. February 19, 2006.
Available here. See also "Health and Environmental Health:
Expanding the Movement" in Rachel's News #843 for a discussion of the
social determinants of health.

Return to Table of Contents

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From: Daily Journal (Los Angeles, Calif.), Mar. 24, 2006
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WASTE PLANT SETS TEHAMA POLITICS AFIRE

Rare Rescinding of Air Permits Causes Firm to Sue Local Board

By Dennis Pfaff, Daily Journal Staff Writer

Red Bluff, Calif. -- Just beyond a grove of walnut trees huddled
together against the chill of a late winter day and across the street
from the Iglesia Nueva Vida sits perhaps the next big battleground
involving one of society's most noxious garbage problems.

There, an Oregon company wants to construct what is believed to be the
continent's first facility to melt -- that's right, melt -- tons of
hospital gowns, needles and other hospital detritus, including human
tissue and animals, every day. Its would-be builders tout the plant
as an almost miraculously clean and environmentally friendly facility.

But opponents call it a polluter and yet another environmental insult
to poor, rural and working-class people. They believe much more study
is needed on what is essentially an unproven technology.

The Rev. Fred Villasenor, pastor of Nueva Vida, said members of his
flock, many of whom speak only marginal English, were not well
informed about the plant.

"I don't know that any of the owners of InEnTec would be willing to
live next to one of their plants, but they're willing to have someone
else live next to it," he said.

The proposal and a new lawsuit filed by the company to help secure its
ability to build the plant have ignited a civil war in rural Tehama
County, with legal reinforcements pouring in from around the state.
The divisions cross ethnic, regional and local political lines.
Proponents as well as critics accuse each other of stretching the
truth beyond the breaking point.

Prominent San Francisco and Los Angeles big-firm lawyers have weighed
in on either side of the issue, which has split American Indians, area
political leaders and even the Tehama County counsel's four-attorney
office.

Generating all this heat: A plan by InEnTec Medical Services
California, an arm of a Portland, Ore., company, to construct a $12
million plant in a light industrial area just outside of Red Bluff.

The facility, called a "plasma enhanced melter," would use
electrically produced heat approaching temperatures equivalent to
those on the surface of the sun to destroy as much as 20 tons a day of
medical waste shipped in from hospitals and clinics as far away as
Southern California. In this process, inorganic materials are absorbed
into a molten glass-like substance, which then cools into a solid form
that can be used to build roads, said David Farmer, president of
InEnTec Medical Services.

Tehama County planners and its assistant air pollution officer, Gary
Bovee, in 2004 and 2005, respectively, approved permits for the
project. The air pollution permits covered the melter unit and
associated generators, said Tehama County Counsel Will Murphy. The
generators would use gases created in the waste destruction process to
produce electricity.

The county's Planning Department, looking at the project under the
California Environmental Quality Act, determined that the facility was
so environmentally benign it did not need a full-blown environmental
impact report. Instead, planners issued a less stringent "negative
declaration" that found the project posed no significant environmental
impact.

But InEnTec's relatively easy ride through the regulatory process
began to stall last summer.

In August, San Francisco's Greenaction for Health and Environmental
Justice -- which monitors waste facilities and has acted to block
similar plants -- and a local group, Citizens for Review of Medical &
Infectious Waste Imports into Tehama County, challenged the facility's
air permits. In an apparently unprecedented action, a hearing board
for the county's air pollution district overturned the permits in
December.

Opponents contended the company had been disingenuous about the
technology's benefits that were touted as "pollution-free," when in
fact it would produce emissions such as cancer-causing dioxins. The
pollution-free claim no longer appears on InEnTec's Web site.

"We believe this technology is an incinerator in disguise, and it has
the potential to harm public health and the environment," said Bradley
Angel, Greenaction's executive director. "We believe there are safer,
noncombustion technologies for the treatment of medical waste."

Angel takes credit for helping raise the project's profile in the
conservative county. He began investigating the project and eventually
went to the local newspaper with his concerns. "My phone," he said,
"started ringing off the hook."

'It's Called Gasification'

The distinction between incineration and other means of disposal is
important. There are no incinerators in California permitted to handle
medical waste, said Darice Bailey, chief of the waste management
section of the state Department of Health Services. Bailey's agency
has approved the plasma technology as an alternative treatment method.
She noted, however, that endorsement was limited to its ability to
destroy disease-causing agents and did not look at other environmental
issues.

Most of the state's medical waste incinerators shut down following the
implementation of strict new air pollution rules in 1990, said Jerry
Martin, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board. The agency
has been skeptical about the new technologies such as those proposed
for Red Bluff, which Martin said would still produce pollutants such
as dioxin. "That's why we're still a little bit concerned," he said.

Farmer, who has accused opponents of engaging in a misinformation
campaign against the project, acknowledged the plant would produce
some dioxins. He also conceded the company "may have had some
marketing materials" that described the melter unit itself as non-
polluting.

But he said any dioxins would come from the electrical generators and
would be released at extremely low levels. The lack of incinerators
in California forces some waste to be sent out of state, and Farmer
clearly wants to tap this market. "It gets shipped halfway across the
country just to be disposed of," Farmer said. "We think that's not a
very smart way to handle waste. Why should California be sending its
waste to Texas to get rid of it?" In fact, he said, the plant would
represent a net reduction in dioxins released into the environment.
That's because trucks, which also produce the substance, would not be
shipping the waste as far. Farmer also insisted that the technology
does not constitute incineration. "It's called gasification," he
said.

Southern California Next?

InEnTec plans to eventually roll out the process "across the country,"
Farmer said. He said the company is actively searching for a site in
Southern California to build a similar facility.

"We firmly believe it is the most environmentally friendly superior
technology that exists, and we think it has good application, not just
for medical waste [but] for all types of waste material," he said.

That's exactly what concerns critics. If the Red Bluff facility
succeeds, "we're going to see this kind of thing all over the place,"
probably in poor and minority communities, said Luke Cole, an attorney
who directs the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment in San
Francisco. The organization focuses on air pollution issues, and it
equates the technology with incineration.

"This is the camel's nose under the tent," Cole said. "We want to be
sure that before this thing goes anywhere it is adequately vetted."

At least some people in Tehama County don't want the project, whatever
it's called. They received a boost in December when the rarely
convened hearing board voted 3-1 to toss out the air permits that had
been issued for the facility, including its associated electrical
generating units.

Among other problems, board members found several "significant
changes" to the project that should have triggered a more complete
environmental review. Along the way, the project's stated purpose,
size and even corporate identity changed, the board found.

Those changes included a 15 percent boost from the company's initial
request in the amount of waste allowed under the air permit.

The board's nine-page list of findings, which was written by the
project's opponents, also cited the discovery of an old industrial
dump at the site. Old tires, drums and what appear to be metal pipes
and other debris were clearly visible recently in a large berm of
materials excavated from the area.

The board also found numerous other shortcomings with the air
regulators' action, including failing to properly scrutinize the
company's emissions data and "possible serious problems" at similar
facilities in Hawaii and Richland, Wash. The Hawaii facility had
broken down for months. The Washington plant was closed for years and
was "not a successful operation," the board found.

Company officials have countered that those plants were operated by
others who did not follow InEnTec's recommendations.

Critics: Minorities Left Out

Meanwhile, critics have also portrayed the issue as one raising
"environmental justice" concerns.

They note the proximity of the site to the Iglesia Nueva Vida -- New
Life Church -- a beige metal one-story building sitting less than a
mile from the proposed melter site that serves a primarily Hispanic
congregation. Opponents charged that many key documents were never
translated into Spanish.

Farmer, however, said neither the county planners nor air regulators
have ever required documents to be translated into Spanish.

Additionally, opponents complain that no studies were done to explore
for American Indian artifacts or examine the possibly disproportionate
health effects on local American Indians, who eat fish from local
waters as well as berries and other native plants.

"The medical waste melter is not acceptable in that area or within
this county, period," said Fred Mankins, a Pit River Indian who
opposes the facility.

Not all local American Indian leaders feel the same way, though. The
Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians, which operate the Rolling Hills
Casino near the Tehama County town of Corning, are among major
investors in the InEnTec project. The project offered a "great
opportunity" for the tribe to diversify its holdings and to do so in
its home county, said John Crosby, the band's economic development
director. "It would be on the cutting edge of technology, as we
felt," Crosby said. He said the project would produce minimal air
pollution.

Farmer described the Paskenta tribe as a majority shareholder in the
company developing the Tehama plant. He said the band is the only one
with legal rights to any Indian cultural artifacts in the county, and
that InEnTec has an agreement with the Paskentas to call in the tribe
if it finds anything. He noted the plant's location in the county's
industrial park. "It's zoned appropriately for this," Farmer said.
"For anyone to suggest we're trying to bring it in on top of minority
groups, I think just doesn't have the facts right."

Suit Disputes Board's Authority

In February, InEnTec sued the hearing board in Tehama County Superior
Court in an effort to overturn the board's ruling. InEnTec Medical
Services California v. Hearing Board of the Tehama County Air
Pollution Control District, 56912.

The lawsuit attacks the board's expertise, the conduct of the hearings
that preceded the decision and the board's authority to deny the
permits. For example, the lawsuit claimed that once a "lead agency,"
in this case the Planning Department, has adopted a negative
declaration under CEQA, the air district had no authority to conduct
further environmental review except under limited circumstances.
Further, the board's jurisdiction extended only to questions of
whether air laws and regulations were followed, not the state
environmental law.

InEnTec's suit argued there was no evidence any of the changes to the
project cited by the board would "create new or more severe
environmental effects."

The board, the lawsuit noted, had not convened for seven years before
the InEnTec appeal. It never had previously heard a citizen appeal of
a permit. None of the four members who participated in the hearings
"had any background or experience in air quality regulations or in
CEQA requirements" relevant to the permits at stake, the suit said.
InEnTec's lawsuit also alleged opponents used the board's three-month
process to rally antagonism toward the project and intimidate its
supporters.

"The hearing board's failure to enforce order, decorum and fairness in
the appeal proceedings, including its unwillingness to restrict public
comment given outside the requirements for proper evidence, tainted
the proceedings to the prejudice of InEnTec and the district, each of
whom was denied a fair hearing," the lawsuit charged. Basically, the
suit challenges the board's conclusion that additional environmental
review is needed, said Ronald Van Buskirk, a San Francisco partner at
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, which represents InEnTec. "You could
do an [environmental impact report] but you'd be wasting your time,"
said Van Buskirk. Farmer said InEnTec wouldn't have objected if
county planners had wanted a more detailed review. But he said the
planning officials correctly determined the project needed no more
scrutiny. "We don't think it's appropriate to bring CEQA issues into
an air permit discussion," he said.

Tehama Position Questioned

Given the conflicting elements at play, critics have wondered how
vigorously the county's lawyers will defend the permit revocations.

Project opponents have said they believe many county officials favored
the facility. Murphy, the county counsel, meanwhile, advised the
hearing board during its deliberations. One of Murphy's deputies
represented the official who issued the permits.

"The county is in the remarkable legal position of having to both
defend and challenge the hearing board's decision," said Daniel
Irving, an attorney and Red Bluff City Council member who is active in
opposing the facility.

Irving said the city has also complained that the county had not kept
it fully informed of the project.

Tehama County at least partially mollified some of those concerns by
bringing in a heavyweight law firm of its own, Bingham McCutchen, to
defend the hearing board. Two veteran Bingham attorneys, Karen Nardi
of San Francisco and Rick Rothman of Los Angeles, lead the firm's
efforts in the case.

"I can certainly confirm that we expect to give a vigorous defense of
the hearing board's action," Nardi said.

But lawyers representing Greenaction and the local activist group also
expect to play their own role in defending the board.

"What the hearing board is willing to sign off on may be very
different from what the groups are willing to sign off on," in terms
of a settlement, said San Francisco attorney Cole. He, along with
Irving and Tim Grabiel, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense
Council in Santa Monica, represents the environmentalists in the case.

"We're coming in to protect Greenaction's and the citizens' interests
in this matter," Grabiel said. "We haven't had time to find out to
what extent they overlap with the hearing board's but they may be
different."

Murphy, however, rejects any suggestion, implied or otherwise, that
the defense will be less than diligent. For one, he said the county
itself has no formal position in the litigation.

Within his own small office, he said, he erected an "ethical wall"
between himself and the deputy representing the air pollution officer,
who is named as a real party in the case. The office maintains two
sets of documents, with each attorney assisted by separate staff,
Murphy said.

Tehama County supervisors, who double as the board members of the air
pollution district, hired Bingham McCutchen to provide "competent
representation" for the hearing panel, he said. He said the county is
paying Bingham's lawyers between $400 and $425 an hour for their work.

"You don't go out and select people from your community to do an
important thing like hear appeals in air pollution control matters and
then leave them hanging out there to dry," Murphy said.

When the litigation will get under way in earnest is anyone's guess.
The entire Tehama County bench -- consisting of four judges -- recused
itself from the case, according to Marcia Taylor of the Administrative
Office of the Courts.

The case was assigned to retired Alameda County Superior Court Judge
Richard A. Haugner. However, InEnTec disqualified Haugner for
undisclosed reasons of prejudice. As of Thursday, no judge had been
chosen to oversee the case, Taylor said.

==============

For more information on this campaign and issue, visit the Greenaction
web site http://www.greenaction.org.

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From: Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (Germany), Mar. 31, 2006
[Printer-friendly version]

EXERCISE CAUTION WHEN USING 'NANO-SEALING SPRAYS'

When used in confined spaces such as a bathroom, they can cause
serious respiratory problems

By the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment [Germany]

Sealing sprays for glass and ceramics containing moisture-repellant
nano particles and a propellant should not be used in confined spaces.

The Federal Institute for Risk Assessment [in Germany] has good reason
for pointing this out. In a short space of time the poison control and
treatment centres of the federal states have reported 39 cases
involving serious health disorders following the use of household
products of this kind. All the people involved complained of
respiratory distress. In six cases pulmonary oedemas were diagnosed
which had to be treated in hospital.

Sealing sprays with nano particles for ceramic and glass surfaces are
a new type of household chemical. In the bathroom and toilet they are
said to make surfaces water and dirt-repellent. Liquids are said to
trickle off without leaving behind any rings or lime spots. This
product is sold in pump bottles and aerosol cans.

Some users suffered severe health disorders after using aerosol cans.
It seems they had inhaled components of the spray which had remained
in the ambient air as fine particles of the aerosol. The particles
from the spray may have disrupted the function of the alveolar and
bronchial tissue in the lungs and, by extension, oxygen and moisture
exchange. This led to respiratory distress and, in severe cases, to
accumulation of water in the lungs (pulmonary oedemas).

No such incidents have been reported in conjunction with products
applied to surfaces using pump bottles.

The competent regional authorities and the poison control and
treatment centres of the federal states have since issued warnings
about two products which were sold in Penny stores according to the
manufacturers (e.g. www.giz-nord.de/php/index.php?option=
com_frontpage&Itemid=1). The incidents have also been recorded in the
European rapid alert system for non-food products RAPEX. The
distributors have launched a recall and advised against using the
sprays.

As the exact cause of the health disorders has still to be
established, BfR advises all consumers, who have already purchased
nano-sealing sprays on a propellant base, not to use them in confined
spaces.

No information is available as to whether other products with nano-
technological components and a propellant (e.g. shoe care products,
impregnating agents, moisture blockers, etc.) are also on the market
which may constitute a hazard. If respiratory disorders should occur
after using sprays of this kind, the consumers affected should
immediately contact a doctor or a poison control and treatment centre.
It is important to bear in mind that in order to fully understand the
situation they need to see the product used!

Because of these recent incidents BfR points out that, in accordance
with the Chemicals Act, doctors in Germany are bound to notify the BfR
Poison and Product Documentation Centre of any health impairments in
conjunction with chemical products.

BfR is working flat out to establish the cause of the occurrence of
these recent health disorders. There are plans for scientific
discussions.

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From: Democracy Now, Mar. 31, 2006
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NOAM CHOMSKY ON FAILED STATES: THE ABUSE OF POWER...

...and the Assault on Democracy

By Amy Goodman

The New York Times calls him "arguably the most important intellectual
alive." The Boston Globe calls him "America's most useful citizen"

He was recently voted the world's number one intellectual in a poll by
Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines.

We're talking about Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the foremost critics
of U.S. foreign policy. Professor Chomsky has just released a new book
titled "Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on
Democracy."

It examines how the United States is beginning to resemble a failed
state that cannot protect its citizens from violence and has a
government that regards itself as beyond the reach of domestic or
international law.

In the book, Professor Noam Chomsky presents a series of solutions to
help rescue the nation from turning into a failed state.

They include: Accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal
Court and the World Court; Sign the Kyoto protocols on global warming;
Let the United Nations take the lead in international crises; Rely on
diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones in
confronting terror; and Sharply reduce military spending and sharply
increase social spending

In his first broadcast interview upon the publication of his book,
Professor Noam Chomsky joins us today from Boston for the hour.

AMY GOODMAN: In this first broadcast interview upon publication of his
book, Professor Noam Chomsky joins us today from Boston for the hour.
We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Noam.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Glad to be with you again.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Failed States, what do you
mean?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, over the years there have been a series of
concepts developed to justify the use of force in international
affairs for a long period. It was possible to justify it on the
pretext, which usually turned out to have very little substance, that
the U.S. was defending itself against the communist menace. By the
1980s, that was wearing pretty thin. The Reagan administration
concocted a new category: terrorist states. They declared a war on
terror as soon as they entered office in the early 1980s, 1981. 'We
have to defend ourselves from the plague of the modern age, return to
barbarism, the evil scourge of terrorism," and so on, and particularly
state-directed international terrorism.

A few years later -- this is Clinton -- Clinton devised the concept of
rogue states. 'It's 1994, we have to defend ourselves from rogue
states." Then, later on came the failed states, which either threaten
our security, like Iraq, or require our intervention in order to save
them, like Haiti, often devastating them in the process. In each case,
the terms have been pretty hard to sustain, because it's been
difficult to overlook the fact that under any, even the most
conservative characterization of these notions -- let's say U.S. law
-- the United States fits fairly well into the category, as has often
been recognized. By now, for example, the category -- even in the
Clinton years, leading scholars, Samuel Huntington and others,
observed that -- in the major journals, Foreign Affairs -- that in
most of the world, much of the world, the United States is regarded as
the leading rogue state and the greatest threat to their existence.

By now, a couple of years later, Bush years, same journals' leading
specialists don't even report international opinion. They just
describe it as a fact that the United States has become a leading
rogue state. Surely, it's a terrorist state under its own definition
of international terrorism, not only carrying out violent terrorist
acts and supporting them, but even radically violating the so-called
"Bush Doctrine," that a state that harbors terrorists is a terrorist
state. Undoubtedly, the U.S. harbors leading international terrorists,
people described by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department as leading
terrorists, like Orlando Bosch, now Posada Carriles, not to speak of
those who actually implement state terrorism.

And I think the same is true of the category "failed states." The U.S.
increasingly has taken on the characteristics of what we describe as
failed states. In the respects that one mentioned, and also, another
critical respect, namely the -- what is sometimes called a democratic
deficit, that is, a substantial gap between public policy and public
opinion. So those suggestions that you just read off, Amy, those are
actually not mine. Those are pretty conservative suggestions. They are
the opinion of the majority of the American population, in fact, an
overwhelming majority. And to propose those suggestions is to simply
take democracy seriously. It's interesting that on these examples that
you've read and many others, there is an enormous gap between public
policy and public opinion. The proposals, the general attitudes of the
public, which are pretty well studied, are -- both political parties
are, on most of these issues, well to the right of the population.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Professor Chomsky, in the early parts of the
book, especially on the issue of the one characteristic of a failed
state, which is its increasing failure to protect its own citizens,
you lay out a pretty comprehensive look at what the, especially in the
Bush years, the war on terrorism has meant in terms of protecting the
American people. And you lay out clearly, especially since the war,
the invasion of Iraq, that terrorist, major terrorist action and
activity around the world has increased substantially. And also, you
talk about the dangers of a possible nuclear -- nuclear weapons being
used against the United States. Could you expand on that a little bit?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, there has been a very serious threat of nuclear
war. It's not -- unfortunately, it's not much discussed among the
public. But if you look at the literature of strategic analysts and so
on, they're extremely concerned. And they describe particularly the
Bush administration aggressive militarism as carrying an "appreciable
risk of ultimate doom," to quote one, "apocalypse soon," to quote
Robert McNamara and many others. And there's good reasons for it, I
mean, which could explain, and they explain. That's been expanded by
the Bush administration consciously, not because they want nuclear
war, but it's just not a high priority. So the rapid expansion of
offensive U.S. military capacity, including the militarization of
space, which is the U.S.'s pursuit alone. The world has been trying
very hard to block it. 95% of the expenditures now are from the U.S.,
and they're expanding.

All of these measures bring about a completely predictable reaction on
the part of the likely targets. They don't say, you know, 'Thank you.
Here are our throats. Please cut them." They react in the ways that
they can. For some, it will mean responding with the threat or maybe
use of terror. For others, more powerful ones, it's going to mean
sharply increasing their own offensive military capacity. So Russian
military expenditures have sharply increased in response to Bush
programs. Chinese expansion of offensive military capacity is also
beginning to increase for the same reasons. All of that threatens --
raises the already severe threat of even -- of just accidental nuclear
war. These systems are on computer-controlled alert. And we know that
our own systems have many errors, which are stopped by human
intervention. Their systems are far less secure; the Russian case,
deteriorated. These moves all sharply enhance the threat of nuclear
war. That's serious nuclear war that I'm talking about.

There's also the threat of dirty bombs, small nuclear explosions.
Small means not so small, but in comparison with a major attack, which
would pretty much exterminate civilized life. The U.S. intelligence
community regards the threat of a dirty bomb, say in New York, in the
next decade as being probably greater than 50%. And those threats
increase as the threat of terror increases.

And Bush administration policies have, again, consciously been carried
out in a way, which they know is likely to increase the threat of
terror. The most obvious example is the Iraq invasion. That was
undertaken with the anticipation that it would be very likely to
increase the threat of terror and also nuclear proliferation. And, in
fact, that's exactly what happened, according to the judgment of the
C.I.A., National Intelligence Council, foreign intelligence agencies,
independent specialists. They all point out that, yes, as anticipated,
it increased the threat of terror. In fact, it did so in ways well
beyond what was anticipated.

To mention just one, we commonly read that there were no weapons of
mass destruction found in Iraq. Well, it's not totally accurate. There
were means to develop weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and known to
be in Iraq. They were under guard by U.N. inspectors, who were
dismantling them. When Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest sent in their
troops, they neglected to instruct them to guard these sites. The U.N.
inspectors were expelled, the sites were left unguarded. The
inspectors continued their work by satellite and reported that over a
hundred sites had been looted, in fact, systematically looted, not
just somebody walking in, but careful looting. That included dangerous
biotoxins, means to hide precision equipment to be used to develop
nuclear weapons and missiles, means to develop chemical weapons and so
on. All of this has disappeared. One hates to imagine where it's
disappeared to, but it could end up in New York.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Noam Chomsky, and we're going to come
back with him. His new book, just published, is called Failed States:
The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy. We'll be back with
Professor Chomsky in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Professor Noam Chomsky, upon the release
of his new book, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on
Democracy. Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I'm Amy Goodman, here with Juan
Gonzalez. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Professor Chomsky, in your book you also talk about how
Iraq has become almost an incubator or a university now for advanced
training for terrorists, who then are leaving the country there and
going around the world, very much as what happened in the 1980s in
Afghanistan. Could you talk about that somewhat?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Actually, that's -- actually, these are just quotes from
the C.I.A. and other U.S. intelligence agencies and analysts. Yes,
they describe Iraq now as a training ground for highly
professionalized terrorists skilled in urban contact. They do compare
it to Afghanistan, but say that it's much more serious, because of the
high level of training and skill. These are almost entirely Iraqis.
There's a small number of foreign fighters drawn to Iraq. Estimates
are maybe 5% to 10%. And they are, as in the case of Afghanistan, are
expected to spread into throughout many parts of the world and to
carry out the kinds of terrorism that they're trained in, as a
reaction to -- clearly reaction to the invasion. Iraq was, whatever
you thought about it, was free from connections to terror prior to the
invasion. It's now a major terror center.

It's not as President Bush says, that terrorists are being
concentrated in Iraq so that we can kill them. These are terrorists
who had no previous record of involvement in terrorism. The foreign
fighters who have come in, mostly from Saudi Arabia, have been
investigated extensively by Saudi and Israeli and U.S. intelligence,
and what they conclude is that they were mobilized by the Iraq war, no
involvement in terrorist actions in the past. And undoubtedly, just as
expected, the Iraq war has raised an enormous hostility throughout
much of the world, and particularly the Muslim world.

It was the most -- probably the most unpopular war in history, and
even before it was fought. Virtually no support for it anywhere,
except the U.S. and Britain and a couple of other places. And since
the war itself was perhaps one of the most incredible military
catastrophes in history, has caused utter disaster in Iraq and has --
and all of that has since simply intensified the strong opposition to
the war of the kind that you heard from that Indonesian student of a
few moments ago. But that's why it spread, and that's a -- it
increases the reservoir of potential support for the terrorists, who
regard themselves as a vanguard, attempting to elicit support from
others, bring others to join with them. And the Bush administration is
their leading ally in this. Again, not my words, the words of the
leading U.S. specialists on terror, Michael Scheuer in this case. And
definitely, that's happened.

And it's not the only case. I mean, in case after case, the Bush
administration has simply downgraded the threat of terror. One example
is the report of the 9/11 Commission. Here in the United States, the
Bush administration didn't want the commission to be formed, tried to
block it, but it was finally formed. Bipartisan commission, gave many
recommendations. The recommendations, to a large extent, were not
carried out. The commission members, including the chair, were
appalled by this, set up their own private commission after their own
tenure was completed, and continued to report that the measures are
simply not being carried out.

There are many other examples. One of the most striking is the
Treasury Department has a branch, the Office of Financial Assets
Control, which is supposed to monitor suspicious funding transfers
around the world. Well, that's a core element of the so-called war on
terror. They've given reports to Congress. It turns out that they have
a few officials devoted to al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, but about -- I
think it was -- six times that many devoted to whether there are any
evasions of the totally illegal U.S. embargo against Cuba.

There was an instance of that just a few months ago, when the U.S.
infuriated even energy corporations by ordering a Sheraton Hotel in
Mexico City to cancel a meeting between Cuban oil specialists and U.S.
oil companies, including some big ones, seeking to explore the
development of offshore Cuban oil resources. The government ordered --
this OFAC ordered the hotel, the U.S. hotel, to expel the Cubans and
terminate the meeting. Mexico wasn't terribly happy about this. It's a
extraordinary arrogance. But it also reveals the hysterical fanaticism
of the goal of strangling Cuba.

And we know why. It's a free country. We have records going from way
back, and a rich source of them go back to the Kennedy-Johnson
administrations. They had to carry out a terrorist war against Cuba,
as they did, and try to strangle Cuba economically, because of Cuba's
-- what they called Cuba's successful defiance of U.S. policies, going
back to the Monroe Doctrine. No Russians, but the Monroe Doctrine, 150
years back at that time. And the goal was, as was put very plainly by
the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, to make the people of Cuba
suffer. They are responsible for the fact that the government is in
place. We therefore have to make them suffer and starve, so that
they'll throw out the government. It's a policy, which is pretty
consistent. It's being applied right now in Palestine. It was applied
under the Iraqi sanctions, plot in Chile, and so on. It's savage.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Noam Chomsky, his new book, after he
wrote Hegemony or Survival, one of scores of books, if not a hundred
books that Professor Chomsky has written, his new one is called Failed
States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.

You mention Israel, Palestine, and I wanted to ask you about this new
study that's come out. A dean at Harvard University and a professor at
the University of Chicago are coming under intense criticism for
publishing an academic critique of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington.
The paper charges that the United States has willingly set aside its
own security and that of many of its allies, in order to advance the
interests of Israel. In addition, the study accuses the pro-Israel
lobby, particularly AIPAC, the America Israel Public Affairs
Committee, of manipulating the U.S. media, policing academia and
silencing critics of Israel by labeling them as anti-Semitic. The
study also examines the role played by the pro-Israel neoconservatives
in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The authors are the Stephen Walt, a dean at Harvard's Kennedy School
of Government, and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago.
They, themselves, are now being accused of anti-Semitism. In
Washington, a Democratic congressman, Eliot Engle of New York,
described the professors as dishonest so-called intellectuals and
anti-Semites. The Harvard professor, Ruth Wisse, called for the paper
to be withdrawn. Harvard Law School professor, Alan Dershowitz,
described the study as trash that could have been written by neo-Nazi
David Duke. The New York Sun reported Harvard has received several
calls from pro-Israel donors, expressing concern about the paper, and
Harvard has already taken steps to distance itself from the report.
Last week, it removed the logo of the Kennedy School of Government
from the paper and added a new disclaimer to the study. The report is
81 pages. It was originally published on Harvard's website and an
edited version appeared in the London Review of Books.

The controversy comes less than a year after Harvard law professor
Alan Dershowitz attempted to block the publication of Norman
Finkelstein's book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and
the Abuse of History. Now, this goes into a lot of issues: the content
of the study, what you think of it, the response to it and also the
whole critique. In this country, what happens to those who criticize
the policies of the state of Israel? Noam Chomsky.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the answer to your last question is well described
in Norman Finkelstein's quite outstanding book and also in the record
of Dershowitz's attempts to prevent its publication. Some of the
documents were just published in the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Finkelstein's book gives an extensive detailed account, the best one
we have, of a frightening record of Israeli crimes and abuses, where
he relies on the most respectable sources, the major human rights
organizations, Israeli human rights organizations and others, and
demonstrates, just conclusively, that Alan Dershowitz's defense of
these atrocities, based on no evidence at all, is outrageous and
grotesque.

Nevertheless, Finkelstein comes under tremendous attack for being
anti-Semitic, and so on. Now that's pretty normal. It goes back, I
suppose, to the distinguished diplomat, Abba Eban -- it must be thirty
years ago -- wrote in an American Jewish journal that "the task of
Zionists," he said, "is to show that all political anti-Zionism" -
that means criticism of the policies of the state of Israel -- "is
either anti-Semitism or Jewish self-hatred." Well, okay, that excludes
all possible criticism, by definition. As examples of neurotic Jewish
self-hatred, I should declare an interest. He mentioned two people. I
was one; the other was Izzy Stone.

Once you release the torrent of abuse, you don't need arguments and
evidence, you can just scream. And Professors Walt and Mearsheimer
deserve credit for publishing a study, which they knew was going to
elicit the usual streams of abuse and hysteria from supporters of
Israeli crimes and violence. However, we should recognize that this is
pretty uniform. Try to say a sane and uncontroversial word about any
other issue dear to the hearts of the intellectual elite that they've
turned into holy writ, you get the same reaction. So -- and there's no
lobby, which does raise one of a few minor points that raises
questions about the validity of the critique.

It's a serious, careful piece of work. It deserves to be read. They
deserve credit for writing it. But it still it leaves open the
question of how valid the analysis is, and I notice that there's a
pretty subtle question involved. Everyone agrees, on all sides, that
there are a number of factors that enter into determining U.S. foreign
policy. One is strategic and economic interests of the major power
centers within the United States. In the case of the Middle East, that
means the energy corporations, arms producers, high-tech industry,
financial institutions and others. Now, these are not marginal
institutions, particularly in the Bush administration. So one question
is to what extent does policy reflect their interests. Another
question is to what extent is it influenced by domestic lobbies. And
there are other factors. But just these two alone, yes, they are --
you
find them in most cases, and to try to sort out their influence is not
so simple. In particular, it's not simple when their interests tend to
coincide, and by and large, there's a high degree of conformity. If
you look over the record, what's called the national interest, meaning
the special interests of those with -- in whose hands power is
concentrated, the national interest, in that sense, tends to conform
to the interests of the lobbies. So in those cases, it's pretty hard
to disentangle them.

If the thesis of the book -- the thesis of the book is that the
lobbies
have overwhelming influence, and the so-called "national interest" is
harmed by what they do. If that were the case, it would be, I would
think, a very hopeful conclusion. It would mean that U.S. policy could
easily be reversed. It would simply be necessary to explain to the
major centers of power, like the energy corporations, high-tech
industry and arms producers and so on, just explain to them that
they've -- that their interests are being harmed by this small lobby
that screams anti-Semitism and funds congressmen, and so on. Surely
those institutions can utterly overwhelm the lobby in political
influence, in finance, and so on, so that ought to reverse the policy.

Well, it doesn't happen, and there are a number of reasons for it. For
one thing, there's an underlying assumption that the so-called
national interest has been harmed by these policies. Well, you know,
you really have to demonstrate that. So who's been harmed? Have the
energy corporations been harmed by U.S. policy in the Middle East over
the last 60 years? I mean, they're making profits beyond the dream of
avarice, as the main government investigation of them reported. Even
more today -- that was a couple years ago. Has the U.S. -- the main
concern of the U.S. has been to control what the State Department 60
years ago called "a stupendous source of strategic power," Middle East
oil. Yeah, they've controlled it. There have been -- in fact, the
invasion of Iraq was an attempt to intensify that control. It may not
do it. It may have the opposite effect, but that's a separate
question. It was the intent, clearly.

There have been plenty of barriers. The major barrier is the one that
is the usual one throughout the world: independent nationalism. It's
called "radical nationalism," which was serious. It was symbolized by
Nasser, but also Kassem in Iraq, and others. Well, the U.S. did
succeed in overcoming that barrier. How? Israel destroyed Nasser. That
was a tremendous service to the United States, to U.S. power, that is,
to the energy corporations, to Saudi Arabia, to the main centers of
power here, and in fact, it's in -- that was 1967, and it was after
that victory that the U.S.-Israeli relations really solidified, became
what's called a "strategic asset."

It's also then that the lobby gained its force. It's also then,
incidentally, that the educated classes, the intellectual political
class entered into an astonishing love affair with Israel, after its
demonstration of tremendous power against a third-world enemy, and in
fact, that's a very critical component of what's called the lobby.
Walt and Mearsheimer mention it, but I think it should be emphasized.
And they are very influential. They determine, certainly influence,
the shaping of news and information in journals, media, scholarship,
and so on. My own feeling is they're probably the most influential
part of the lobby. Now, we sort of have to ask, what's the difference
between the lobby and the power centers of the country?

But the barriers were overcome. Israel has performed many other
services to the United States. You can run through the record. It's
also performed secondary services. So in the 1980s, particularly,
Congress was imposing barriers to the Reagan administration's support
for and carrying out major terrorist atrocities in Central America.
Israel helped evade congressional restrictions by carrying out
training, and so on, itself. The Congress blocked U.S. trade with
South Africa. Israel helped evade the embargo to all the -- both the
racist regimes of Southern Africa, and there have been many other
cases. By now, Israel is virtually an offshore U.S. military base and
high-tech center in the Middle East.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, we have to break for stations to identify
themselves, but we'll come back. Professor Noam Chomsky is our guest
for the hour. His latest book has just been published, and it's called
Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest today is Professor Noam Chomsky. His new book
is Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.
Noam Chomsky, longtime professor at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, world-renowned linguist and political analyst. I'm Amy
Goodman, here with Juan Gonzalez. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Professor Chomsky, in your book you have a fascinating
section, where you talk about the historical basis of the Bush
doctrine of preemptive war, and also its relationship to empire or to
the building of a U.S. empire. And you go back, you mention a
historian, John Lewis Gaddis, who the Bush administration loves,
because he's actually tried to find the historical rationalization for
this use, going back to John Quincy Adams and as Secretary of State in
the invasion by General Andrew Jackson of Florida in the Seminole
Wars, and how this actually is a record of the use of this idea to
continue the expansionist aims of the United States around the world.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, that's a very interesting case, actually. John
Lewis Gaddis is not only the favorite historian of the Reagan
administration, but he's regarded as the dean of Cold War scholarship,
the leading figure in the American Cold War scholarship, a professor
at Yale. And he wrote the one, so far, book-length investigation into
the roots of the Bush Doctrine, which he generally approves, the usual
qualifications about style and so on. He traces it is back, as you
say, to his hero, the great grand strategist, John Quincy Adams, who
wrote a series of famous state papers back in 1818, in which he gave
post facto justification to Andrew Jackson's invasion of Florida. And
it's rather interesting.

Gaddis is a good historian. He knows the sources, cites all the right
sources. But he doesn't tell you what they say. So what I did in the
book is just add what they say, what he omitted. Well, what they
describe is a shocking record of atrocities and crimes carried out
against what were called runaways Negros and lawless Indians,
devastated the Seminoles. There was another major Seminole war later,
either exterminated them or drove them into the marshes, completely
unprovoked. There were fabricated pretexts. Gaddis talks about the
threat of England. There was no threat from England. England didn't do
a thing. In fact, even Adams didn't claim that. But it was what Gaddis
calls an -- it established what Gaddis calls the thesis that expansion
is the best guarantee of security. So you want to be secure, just
expand, conquer more. Then you'll be secure.

And he says, yes, that goes right through all American administrations
-- he's correct about that -- and is the centerpiece of the Bush
Doctrine. So he says the Bush Doctrine isn't all that new. Expansion
is the key to security. So we just expand and expand, and then we
become more secure. Well, you know, he doesn't mention the obvious
precedents that come to mind, so I'll leave them out, but you can
think of them. And there's some truth to that, except for what he
ignores and, in fact, denies, namely the huge atrocities that are
recorded in the various sources, scholarly sources that he cites,
which also point out that Adams, by giving this justification for
Jackson's war -- he was alone in the administration to do it, but he
managed to convince the President -- he established the doctrine of
executive wars without congressional authorization, in violation of
the Constitution. Adams later recognized that and was sorry for it,
and very sorry, but that established it and, yes, that's been
consistent ever since then: executive wars without congressional
authorization. We know of case after case. It doesn't seem to bother
the so-called originalists who talk about original intent.

But that aside, he also -- the scholarship that Gaddis cites but
doesn't quote also points out that Adams established other principles
that are consistent from then until now, namely massive lying to the
public, distortion, evoking hysterical fears, all kinds of deceitful
efforts to mobilize the population in support of atrocities. And yes,
that continues right up to the present, as well. So there's very
interesting historical record. What it shows is almost the opposite of
what Gaddis claims and what the Reagan -- the Bush administration -- I
think I said Reagan -- the Bush administration likes. And it's right
out of the very sources that he refers to, the right sources, the
right scholarship. He simply ignores them. But, yes, the record is
interesting.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, I wanted to ask you a question. As many
people know, you're perhaps one of the most cited sources or analysis
in the world. And I thought this was an interesting reference to these
citations. This was earlier this month, program, Tim Russert, Meet the
Press, questioning the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General
Peter Pace.

TIM RUSSERT: Mr. Jaafari said that one of his favorite American
writers is Professor Noam Chomsky, someone who has written very, very
strongly against the Iraq war and against most of the Bush
administration foreign policy. Does that concern you?

GEN. PETER PACE: I hope he has more than one book on his nightstand.

TIM RUSSERT: So it troubles you?

GEN. PETER PACE: I would be concerned if the only access to foreign
ideas that the Prime Minister had was that one author. If, in fact,
that's one of many, and he's digesting many different opinions, that's
probably healthy.

AMY GOODMAN: That's General Peter Pace, head of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, being questioned by Tim Russert, talking about Jaafari, who at
this very moment is struggling to be -- again, to hold on to his
position as prime minister of Iraq. Your response, Noam Chomsky?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I, frankly, rather doubt that General Pace
recognized my name or knew what he was referring to, but maybe he did.
The quote from Tim Russert, if I recall, was that this was a book that
was highly critical of the Iraq war. Well, that shouldn't surprise a
prime minister of Iraq. After all, according to U.S. polls, the latest
ones I've seen reported, Brookings Institution, 87%, 87% of Iraqis
want a timetable for withdrawal. That's an astonishing figure. If it
really is all Iraqis, as was asserted. That means virtually everyone
in Arab Iraq, the areas where the troops are deployed. I, frankly,
doubt that you could have found figures like that in Vichy, France,
or, you know, Poland under -- when it was a Russian satellite.

What it means essentially is that virtually everyone wants a timetable
for withdrawal. So, would it be surprising that a prime minister would
read a book that's critical of the war and says the same thing? It's
interesting that Bush and Blair, who are constantly preaching about
their love of democracy, announce, declare that there will be no
timetable for withdrawal. Well, that part probably reflects the
contempt for democracy that both of them have continually
demonstrated, them and their colleagues, virtually without exception.

But there are deeper reasons, and we ought to think about them. If
we're talking about exit strategies from Iraq, we should bear in mind
that for the U.S. to leave Iraq without establishing a subordinate
client state would be a nightmare for Washington. All you have to do
is think of the policies that an independent Iraq would be likely to
pursue, if it was mildly democratic. It would almost surely strengthen
its already developed relations with Shiite Iran right next door. Any
degree of Iraqi autonomy stimulates autonomy pressures across the
border in Saudi Arabia, where there's a substantial Shiite population,
who have been bitterly repressed by the U.S.-backed tyranny but is now
calling for more autonomy. That happens to be where most of Saudi oil
is. So, what you can imagine -- I'm sure Washington planners are
having nightmares about this -- is a potential -- pardon?

JUAN GONZALEZ: I would like to ask you, in terms of this whole issue
of democracy, in your book you talk about the democracy deficit.
Obviously, the Bush administration is having all kinds of problems
with their -- even their model of democracy around the world, given
the election results in the Palestinian territories, the situation now
in Iraq, where the President is trying to force out the Prime Minister
of the winning coalition there, in Venezuela, even in Iran. Your
concept of the democracy deficit, and why this administration is able
to hold on in the United States itself?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, there are two aspects of that. One is, the
democracy deficit internal to the United States, that is, the enormous
and growing gap between public opinion and public policy. Second is
their so-called democracy-promotion mission elsewhere in the world.
The latter is just pure fraud. The only evidence that they're
interested in promoting democracy is that they say so. The evidence
against it is just overwhelming, including the cases you mentioned and
many others. I mean, the very fact that people are even willing to
talk about this shows that we're kind of insisting on being North
Koreans: if the Dear Leader has spoken, that establishes the truth; it
doesn't matter what the facts are. I go into that in some detail in
the book.

The democracy deficit at home is another matter. How have -- I mean,
they have an extremely narrow hold on political power. Their policies
are strongly opposed by most of the population. How do they carry this
off? Well, that's been through an intriguing mixture of deceit, lying,
fabrication, public relations. There's actually a pretty good study of
it by two good political scientists, Hacker and Pearson, who just run
through the tactics and how it works. And they have barely managed to
hold on to political power and are attempting to use it to dismantle
the institutional structure that has been built up over many years
with enormous popular support -- the limited benefits system; they're
trying to dismantle Social Security and are actually making progress
on that; to the tax cuts, overwhelmingly for the rich, are creating --
are purposely creating a future situation, first of all, a kind of
fiscal train wreck in the future, but also a situation in which it
will be virtually impossible to carry out the kinds of social policies
that the public overwhelmingly supports.

And to manage to carry this off has been an impressive feat of
manipulation, deceit, lying, and so on. No time to talk about it here,
but actually my book gives a pretty good account. I do discuss it in
the book. That's a democratic deficit at home and an extremely serious
one. The problems of nuclear war, environmental disaster, those are
issues of survival, the top issues and the highest priority for anyone
sensible. Third issue is that the U.S. government is enhancing those
threats. And a fourth issue is that the U.S. population is opposed,
but is excluded from the political system. That's a democratic
deficit. It's one we can deal with, too.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, we're going to have to leave it there for
now. But part two of our interview will air next week. Professor Noam
Chomsky's new book, just published, is called Failed States: The Abuse
of Power and the Assault on Democracy.

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