1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - index page 6 of 6 The opposition to the war in Iraq was very strong in Japan. And the government just ignored the public will, which was against participation. This was true in every country. There was an international poll last December by Gallup, the major polling organization, in which many countries were polled around the world on Iraq. The main question was, "Would you support a war fought by the United States and its allies without U.N. authorization?" Allies means Britain, so the question really was, "Would you support a U.S./British war without U.N. authorization," which is, of course, what they did. The highest figure they got anywhere, I think, was 11% in Romania. In most countries, it was very low. In fact, even when they asked, "with U.N. authorization," it was also pretty low. But without U.N. authorization, namely the war that was fought, it was almost nothing. That wasn't reported in the United States. How do you see things in Japan? Do you have a sense of where Japan is headed? I hate to talk about Japan. You people know a lot more about it than I do. It's pretty clear from observing from a distance that there's a kind of a split developing. The policy is moving in a rightward, militaristic direction. On the other hand, the population is clearly much more open and free than it was before. For example, discussions like this five or ten years ago in Japan would have been very unlikely. I should say, I've been visiting Japan for some 40 years now. I travel in a lot of countries, and until recently it was the only country in the world where I was never asked to give political talks, or have political interviews. I had plenty of interviews, but they were on professional topics, and I gave professional talks and so on. That's changed a lot in the last couple of years. That's what it looks like to me in one direction. On the other hand, if you look at policies, it's going in the other direction. It's just like the United States. The United States is much more open than it was a couple of years ago. There are huge audiences for talks and books, tremendous demand and so on. On the other hand, policy is shifting so far to the right that positions that were regarded as outlandish a couple of years ago are right in the middle of the spectrum today. The public opposition, in the form of demonstrations and things like that, was a bit slow to develop in Japan. But, when it did develop it was quite strong, historically, very large numbers. I wouldn't say that it was slow [to develop]. I think we have a funny perspective when we say that. If you go back, say, to the Vietnam War, there were finally big demonstrations of protest, but that was after about six or seven years of war. There was so little protest that people don't even remember that the U.S. attacked South Vietnam in 1962. That's when Kennedy sent the U.S. Air Force to start bombing South Vietnam. That's when they started carrying out chemical warfare programs to destroy food crops, started rounding up millions of people in strategic hamlets, essentially concentration camps. There was no protest. It was five or six years later that protest became substantial. The same on other issues. There was a huge anti-nuclear movement in the United States, I think it was [supported by] about 75% of the population in the early 80's, but that was after decades and decades of major threats of nuclear war. We just learned last October what may be one of the most startling discoveries in history. It was right in the middle of all the fuss about attacking Iraq, and the national security strategy. I don't know if this was reported in Japan. There was a meeting in Havana for the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, with key decisionmakers from the United States, Russia and Cuba. Robert McNamara and others participated. They knew at the time, in 1962, that the Missile Crisis was, as [the historian] Arthur Schlesinger described it, "the most dangerous moment in human history." They knew that. It was very close. But, they didn't know how close it was. New information was revealed at the last meeting. It turned out that there were Russian submarines armed with nuclear torpedoes, and they were under attack by U.S. destroyers. Two of the submarine commanders authorized shooting nuclear-tipped torpedoes, which would have led to a nuclear response, and we wouldn’t be talking. One Russian submarine commander countermanded the order. That's how close it was. This was learned last October. And that is not the only case. There have been case after case, some of them very dangerous. One last question, which is often asked at screenings of the film: How do you maintain your sense of optimism amidst all these unfolding events? One thing is what we’ve been talking about. The populations of the world, in my opinion at least, are becoming much more civilized. They’re much more concerned about things. They're looking into issues seriously, acting on them. There are very important developments in the world which we haven't discussed: the international opposition to the war in Iraq is completely without precedent. There has never, in the history of Europe and the United States at least, been such massive protest against a war before it was launched. It takes years usually. The global justice movements are, again, without precedent. They're international, there's a lot of international solidarity, North/South solidarity. They're dedicated to serious issues. They're working hard. These are very promising developments. Basically they're two trajectories in the world. There's one towards war, destruction, repression, demolition of progressive achievements and so on. That's very clear. There's another that's going quite in the opposite direction, and it's just a question of which one will prevail. We're not going to have a lot of time to answer that question. The survival of the species is a fragile matter at this point. Somebody, again, observing this from Mars would not put very high odds on human survival. So, it's up to us to make it happen. Thank you, I appreciate your time. page 6 of 6 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - index All materials on these pages are copyrighted by SIGLO Ltd.All rights reserved.Text (c) Noam Chomsky. No part of these pages, either text or image, may be used for any purpose other than personal or educational use. Contact us:siglo@cine.co.jp