Redeeming Noam in 2003

Government of the USA in Exile
Resisting the Fourth Reich on Behalf of All Species

January 1, 2003

Dear Noam, Greetings again, mon. Happy New Year! Sorry to have to get down with you once more—but I’ve recently seen an appalling quote from you. Somebody had asked you about a Gore Vidal piece regarding evidence of RUSG (Rogue U .S. Govt) complicity in the events of 9/11/01. Here’s your astounding reply:

I read it, and agree that there is a scattering of unexplained facts, etc., which one could weave into a story of the kind suggested. But I remain entirely unconvinced, as before, and for reasons Iíve already discussed here (and that are discussed in more detail in a posted discussion by Mike Albert and Steve Shalom). In brief, one could take any arbitrary day, say yesterday, and find similar data that could be woven into a story that the White House was purposely allowed to be blown up yesterday. Or just about anything else. The world is full of unexplained data. Intelligence agencies and military forces are deluged with low-quality information which may, in retrospect, seem significant, but cannot be seriously evaluated. Something similar is the case even for controlled scientific experiments; have a look at the letters columns of technical journals. And the world of human events and experience is vastly more chaotic. I can also think of no remotely comparable historical example; some have been suggested, but they seem to me either very dubious or far from relevant. It would also have been quite mad, in my opinion, for any government to try something like what is suggested. I think such speculations lead us away from issues of prime significance, not towards them. But if you feel otherwise, then by all means explore the matter and see what you discover. Personally, I don’t think itís worth the effort.

Hoo yoo kiddin, Noam? This canít possibly be you---given your background as such a thorough and astute observer of the ongoing Amerikan scene. Youíre pretending! Youíre pretending to be stupid when actually you’re very bright. Why?

When you say you can think of ìno remotely comparable historical example, youíre pretending not to remember the Reichstag Fire or Pearl Harbor or the 67 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty as a way of scapegoating Egypt or U.S. top brass suggesting in 62 ‘we could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba.’

When you say it would be “quite mad” for RUSG “to try something like what is suggested”, you’re pretending not to remember that they know they can rely on your abject obedience to all the most egregious aspects of their propaganda. They know you counter them only in secondary matters.

Yes, why? Has your life been threatened? Have the blue-pimpstripe-suited Homeland Secret Police given you one of their sleazy Midnight Knocks? I hope that’s what has happened to you because it will allow me to retain most of the great respect I’ve had for you.

Iíd like to believe that they force you to appear on CNN rather than having to believe youíre such a Collaborator that you do so voluntarily. Rather than having to believe that you and Ralph Nader voluntarily provide the Bush Junta with their best argument for conning folks into thinking the U.S. is a democracy: “How can you paww-sibly say weíre not a democracy when Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader go on CNN and say whatever they want?”

Yeah, how can we. . .

A friend who teaches at Chiangmai University visited the U.S. Sector in Spring 2002 and his report on it was that hardly anybody back there was willing to talk frankly in public about the national political situation---but that in the privacy of their own homes many of them would open up. That doesnít sound like a democracy, does it, Noam? Sounds like Eastern Europe fifty years ago to me.

And I suppose you saw the piece about Sweden providing a safe haven for individuals from the U.S. Pentagon, CIA and State Department who felt so threatened back in the U.S. that they couldnít say what they knew about the lies of the Bush Junta. Some of them on reaching Sweden still were too frightened to talk even when they were guaranteed anonymity. Sounds like Eastern Europe fifty years ago to me.

So Iím trying my best to believe that the reason Ralph and you are so silent about all the stuff like this is that you feel your lives are in great danger. I wish there were some way you could signal such to us.

I remember bumping into a chap in San Francisco about a decade ago who told me that when he was a military clerk at the U.S. National Security Agency back in the late Fifties a sergeant introducing him to the scene said: “Yeah, there are UFOs but if you ever say anything youíll be run over by a truck or found floating face down on a pond”. I hope the threats to Ralph and you were equally crude so all of us can sympathize to the max with both of you. I hope that when Ralph made his memorial comments about Senator Wellstone he was warned by some Wackenhut cutthroat not to mention that Wellstone and his family were murdered for political reasons; otherwise, Ralph has absolutely no excuse for such serf-like silence.

It reminds of the time back in 68 when an NYC detective threatened me merely because Iíd appeared a couple times on TV news shows as a socalled protest leader.

So I hope you’ve been deeply threatened—but I still have a problem, Noam. In Summer 2002 during my North American fact-finding tour I came across a copy of The Ecologist which had a rather long interview with you. I was enjoying the juicy irony of a periodical ostensibly devoted to ecology interviewing somebody who for three consecutive decades had totally ignored our horrendous biospheric emergency when suddenly I could hardly believe my eyes as I read you saying that you were more optimistic about the planetary future than in a long time.

My problem is I can’t imagine even the most abominable Wackenhut cutthroat making you say stuff that ludicrous. So what was really going down? Were you optimistic because more people than ever before were buying your books?

Since youíve been so busy on the liberal-arts side of things, I should inform you that the news from the world of biophysics is that the planet on which you live is biodegrading so rapidly now that quite soon outdoor agriculture will feed only about half the current population. That’s hardly cause for optimism, baby. Is this sort of info too serious for you? Do you prefer that we stay within your comfortable left/progressive illusions?

Yeah, your safe sanitized human-chauvinist left/progressive world wherein you can comfortably lament various erosions of human rights, various injustices of U.S. imperialism, various episodes of genocide, etc.

Meanwhile, all around your ivory tower our entire homeplanet life-support system collapses at a velocity already high and constantly increasing. Thatís called biocide, Noam. Or ecocide. Or omnicide. Within which we—yes, of course—indeed find human-rights erosions, imperialistic injustices, genocidal episodes. But I think you get my point. Right? You feed on genocide while ignoring the omnicide surrounding it.

Iím remembering that youíve always been breathtakingly naieve about the role of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in all this. Do you recall our exchange on this a couple years back?

And in Spring 2001 I was flabbergasted to learn that you hadnít even heard of the Carlyle Group! Wow! I hope you got that clipping about them which I posted you from India. In case you didn’t I’ll point out that the Carlyle Group is to the Fourth Reich as the S.S. was to the Third. They buy war (‘defense’) contractors cheap, then create in D.C. a politics within which much more money will go to these contractors. Their trip is as sleazy as the pencillin-dilution scam in Orson Welles’ The Third Man. In the two or three decades of their existence they’ve averaged an annual profit of somewhere between 36% and 38%—higher than even George Soros most successful hedge-fund. Quite a bit of these profits will go to George W. Bush when his dad dies.

In the backrooms of the Fourth Reich the Carlyle hoodlums are regarded as cowboys because theyíre always pushing for higher fear-levels. Bill Gates, for example, would much rather have lower fear-levels so ‘Consumer Confidence’ (a favorite hymn in the Fourth Reichís Church of Money) will rise and he can peddle more of his Microsoft shit. That’s why heís more comfortable with the CFR than with the Carlyle hoodlums. But donít get me wrong: Both the CFR and the Carlyle hoodlums want to do a monumentally vicious number on Iraq (partly as intimidation of any nation-state thinking about acting a bit uppity) but CFR wants to do it with more emphasis on minimizing the negative impacts in equity markets.

So why is it that you never talk about any of this stuff? Do you still fail to understand its overwhelming significance? (Or maybe you’re in a comfortable groove with your publisher and he or she doesn’t perceive its significance?) If so, mon, we are all forced to say that you’re living in a MFW (Monumental Fantasy World). There’s no excuse for not having been hip to all this at least a decade ago.

Fortunately, you’re only in your mid-seventies, so it’s not too late to redeem yourself. The best way currently is to join us in a mass boycott of the infamous Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Youíd finally be doing a sequel to your gallant 1967 gesture wherein you risked a felony bust by forthrightly supporting draft resisters.

Iím sure youíll agree that the Bush Junta is light years beyond being reached by any sort of moral appeal. The only thing they understand is money, so we must become too expensive for them. With this in mind our best opportunity is to encourage a widespread grassroots refusal to provide any more financial support for the juntaís biocidal national treasury. This is our best chance to become too expensive without indulging in massive property destruction.

(But Iím not negative about property destruction. An activist asked Gandhi if blowing up a freight train is a violent act and his response—published in his periodical ‘Harijan’—was that blowing up a passenger train is. So the most effective Gandhian action of recent decades was when the Tamil Tigers suddenly became too expensive by blowing up half Sri Lankaís airliners without injuring anybody on either side.)

One advantage of tax refusal just now is it leads logically to a long-overdue coalition of ìleft and ìright allowing each to avoid becoming quaint within the overwhelming biospheric emergency. After all, most of the rhetoric about the illegality of the IRS has come from the ìright. Such coalitions should be encouraged whenever their parameters are mutually clear and mutually respected.

Another way you can be contemporarily helpful—instead of just writing books and making speeches—is to join us in demanding the results of the 9/11 insider-trading investigation initiated more than a year ago by the SEC and the Chicago Options Exchange Board. Note well that such would merely commit you to an acceptance of a citizenís right-to-know. Nobody’s gonna kill you for just that. You’d be totally free to continue pretending you’re not convinced of RUSG complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

Yours for all species,
Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te,
Ponderosa Pine
Transition President

PS: In case you don’t want to join our IRS boycott we could at least play it for a few laughs. For example, a satire of you for Mad Magazine, which by the way has been making a comeback recently. What about “WHAT UNCLE SAM REALLY WANTS” above a photo of you—pen in hand—about to sign a Form 1040 as you look upwards towards the lens and flash one of your charming hi-there smiles? The underline might read: “What Uncle Sam really wants is for Noam Chomsky to sign his 1040 like a Good Little Boy.” Okay? Are you up for something like this? Please, as they say, advise.