NOAM CHOMSKY: That essentially reinforces what I said before, that the main significance of the cables that have been released so far is what they tell us about Western leadership. So, Hillary Clinton and Binyamin Netanyahu surely know of the careful polls of Arab public opinion. The Brookings Institute just a few months ago released extensive polls of what Arabs think about Iran. And the results are rather striking. They show that Arab opinion does—holds that the major threat in the region is Israel, that’s 80 percent; the second major threat is the United States, that’s 77 percent. Iran is listed as a threat by 10 percent. With regard to nuclear weapons, rather remarkably, a majority, in fact, 57 percent, say that the region will be—it would have a positive effect in the region if Iran had nuclear weapons. Now, these are not small numbers. Eighty percent, 77 percent say that the U.S. and Israel are the major threat. Ten percent say that Iran is the major threat.
Now, this may not be reported in the newspapers here—it is in England—but it’s certainly familiar to the Israeli and the U.S. governments and to the ambassadors. But there isn’t a word about it anywhere. What that reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership and, of course, the Israeli political leadership. These things aren’t even to be mentioned. And this seeps its way all through the diplomatic service. So the cables don’t have any indication of that.
When they talk about Arabs, they mean the Arab dictators, not the population, which is overwhelmingly opposed to the conclusions that the analysts here, Clinton and the media, have drawn. There’s also a minor problem. That’s the major problem. The minor problem is that we don’t know from the cables what the Arab leaders think and say. We know what was selected from the range of what they say. So there’s a filtering process. We don’t know how much it distorts the information. But there’s no question that what is a radical distortion is—or not even a distortion, a reflection of the concern that the dictators are what matter. The population doesn’t matter, even if it’s overwhelmingly opposed to U.S. policy. This shows up elsewhere. There are similar things elsewhere.
. Утопија , исто срање како и тезата за комунизам само во друга крајност.Не може да постои демократија таму каде што играат интересите за власт и пари.
