why nato toetotoe 'when yo git a potatoe

nato nato the world empire's cop sq uad

cha nge and moveme t alway come from the bottom

Ok you hear dat? you sick poets wan ti g with yer power

ad yer pu blication--____________ yer literary
gotta visit the Cli niiqe

a in terview wid Mistah Chomskee at democracee now

NOAM CHOMSKY: Alright. Well, I think the first question to ask about NATO is why it exists. We’re now approaching the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, unification of Germany, first steps in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, the alleged reason for NATO’s existence was to protect the West against a Russian assault. You can believe what you like about the reason, but that was the reason. By 1989, that reason was gone. So, why is there NATO?

Well, that question did arise. Mikhail Gorbachev offered at that time to the United States, which runs NATO, that he would permit a unified Germany to join NATO, a hostile military alliance aimed at the Soviet Union. Now, that’s a remarkable concession. If you look back at the history of the twentieth century, Germany alone had practically destroyed Russia several times. And now he was offering to let a reunited militarized Germany join a hostile military alliance, backed by the most awesome military power in history.

Well, there was a quid pro quo. George Bush, the first, was then president; James Baker, Secretary of State. And they agreed, in their words, that NATO would not expand one inch to the east, which would at least give Russia some breathing room. Now, Gorbachev also proposed a nuclear weapons-free zone from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, which would have again given some protection and, in fact, security for peace. Well, that was just rejected. I don’t even think it was answered. Well, that’s where things stood in 1989, ’90.

Then Bill Clinton was elected. One of his first acts was to break the promise and expand NATO to the east, which, of course, is a threat to Russian security. Now, the pretext given, for example, by his—Strobe Talbott, who was the Under Secretary of State for Eastern Europe, is that that was necessary to bring the former satellites into the European Union. But that can’t be. There are states inside the European Union that are not part of NATO: Austria, you know, Finland, Sweden. So that’s irrelevant. But it was a threat, and Russia, of course, reacted to the hostile threat. It increased tension.

Well, going up to the present, President Obama’s national security adviser, James Jones, has been a strong advocate of the view that NATO should expand further to the east and to the south and that, in fact, it should—to the east and to the south means to control the energy-producing regions. The head of NATO, Dutch, the Secretary General de Hoop Scheffer, has proposed, advocates that NATO should take the responsibility for protecting energy supplies to the West—pipelines, sea lanes, and so on.

Well, now we’re getting to Afghanistan, which is right in the—has always been of great geostrategic importance because of its location, now more than ever because of its location relative to the energy-producing regions in the Gulf region and in Central Asia. So, yes, that’s what we’re seeing.

Actually, there’s more to say about NATO, about why it exists. So we might look back, say, ten years to the fiftieth anniversary. Well, the fiftieth anniversary of NATO was a gloomy affair that was—right at that time, NATO was bombing Serbia—illegally, as everyone admitted—claiming it was necessary for humanitarian reasons. At the NATO summit, there was much agonizing about how we cannot tolerate atrocities so near Europe.

------------ O yo poets yo t'ink you ke'n be a machin e
without the machinie?

for the bala nce go there