Havana: U.S. Dissident Noam Chomsky Says Bush Needs Fear for Reelection

Cuban President Fidel Castro, right, talks with an American intellectual and linguist Noam Chomsky, left, before the start of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences conference in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday October 28, 2003. At center, between Castro and Chomsky Cuban writer Carlos Marti looks on. (AP Photo/Cristobal Herrera)

HAVANA (Reuters) - U.S. linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky said on Wednesday that President Bush will have to "manufacture" another threat to American security to win reelection in 2004 after U.S failure in occupying Iraq.

Chomsky, attending a Latin American social sciences conference in Cuba, said that since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the Bush administration had redefined U.S. national security policy to include the use of force abroad, with or without U.N. approval.

"It is a frightened country and it is easy to conjure up an imminent threat," Chomsky said at the launching of a Cuban edition of a book of interviews published by the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, when asked how Bush could get reelected.

"They have a card that they can play ... terrify the population with some invented threat, and that is not very hard to do," he said.

After the "disaster" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bush could turn his sights on Communist-run Cuba, which his administration officials have charged with developing a biological weapons research program, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of linguistics said.

Chomsky said the military occupation of Iraq, to topple a "horrible monster running it but not a threat to anyone," was a failure.

"The country had been devastated by sanctions. The invasion ended sanctions. The tyrant is gone and there is no outside support for domestic dissidence," he said. "It takes real talent to fail in this endeavor."

Chomsky said it was reasonable to assume the Bush administration would try to "manufacture a short-term improvement in the economy" by incurring in enormous federal government debt and "imposing burdens on future generations."

The Bush administration was a continuation of the Ronald Reagan presidency that declared a national emergency over the threat posed by Nicaragua's leftist government in the 1980s, he said.

"The same people were able to present Grenada as a threat to survival of the United States the last time they were in office," Chomsky said, in reference to the U.S. invasion of the Caribbean island in 1983 to thwart Cuban influence.

Chomsky, a leftist icon who is better known today for his critique of U.S. foreign policy that for his revolutionary theory of syntax and grammar in the 1960s, gave a lecture on the U.S politics of domination on Tuesday night that was attended by Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

The author of "Language and mind," "Manufacturing Consent," "Profit Over People" and "9-11" said the Bush administration was out to dominate the world by the use of military force if need be, and Iraq was the first test.

Chomsky criticized Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar for backing the United States and Britain in invading Iraq under a false pretext that the Arab country possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Chomsky praised Cuba's defiance of U.S. hostility and trade sanctions for four decades. But he also criticized the jailing of 75 Cuban dissidents earlier this year by Castro's government.

"Yes, I have criticized them for that," he said in an interview on August 28 with Radio Havana. "I think it was a mistake."

Quick, don't let him back in!

Could the irony be any thicker with Castro's critics locked up?

Political prisoners hunger for justice - How long could you live in a cage?***Bear in mind that these prisoners live in cages where they cannot take three steps in a straight line or stretch their arms out to the side because they'll hit the walls. Once a day, they are allowed to collect water in a container, and they are given a small portion of food, often in bad condition, spoiled. It's the torture of physical hunger. Some of those reading this article have never had that experience: being hungry all day long and having nothing to eat.

Many Cubans, hundreds of thousands, have been imprisoned and know what we're talking about. But this is an extreme case. It is torture. It is a means of reducing a prisoner to the minimum of his physical and mental abilities.

This near-annihilation is completed by sensory isolation, a cloud of mosquitoes and, in many instances, rats and mice. Arbitrarily, guards confiscate inmates' correspondence and deny them their medicines, even those brought by relatives, because in prison -- according to the guards -- ''they lack nothing.'' The prison provides only pain, humiliation and rations of modus muriendi.

The family of Díaz Sánchez, a Varela Project coordinator, must take him what's called ''the toiletries'': soap, deodorant, sheets, a coat and anything else that he might need. From prison officials, the prisoners receive only cruelty, not basic supplies for survival.

When the family handed the guards the 30 pounds of food and ''toiletries,'' the guards said that the toiletries weighed 21 pounds. A prison official said that weight had to be subtracted from the food's weight, which meant that the prisoner could have only nine pounds of food. But that's not accurate either, because the weight of the containers is included.

In all, Díaz Sánchez would have a scant eight pounds of food for the next three months. That's not even 1.5 ounces a day. But this is not an article on statistics; it's a denunciation of torture.

Díaz Sánchez rejected the food package, because he considered such treatment to be degrading. He told the guards: ``I'm imprisoned here for defending the rights of all Cubans, and I'm not going to accept this violation.''

The warden told the relatives to leave through a back door and ordered two common prisoners to throw the bag with the food out on the road, which they did. Díaz Sánchez told his wife, daughters, and brother not to touch it. It just lay there. His wife told me that she felt very sad as she walked away and saw the package -- which she had put together with such sacrifice -- lying on the road. But she knew that at most one quarter of its contents would have reached him.

Meanwhile, I've heard from José Daniel Ferrer, who is at the Pinar del Rio prison known as Kilometer 5 ½. He tells me about the prisoners' suffering and constant hunger. His brother Luis Enrique -- who challenged the judges to sign the Varela Project and thus was handed the longest sentence, 28 years -- is now in a punishment cell. When normal conditions are torture, imagine what a punishment cell must be like. ***

The operative for that photo is old.

However, Bolivia may be latest Castro/Chavez victory*** After weeks of often deadly protests led primarily by leftist-organized indigenous Indians, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was recently forced to resign as president of Bolivia. He was replaced by his Vice President Carlos Mesa, former television journalist with no political experience. No one knows how long Mesa will be able to remain in office. The country is bordering on chaos.

While some see this as simply another populist revolt against an elected “neo-liberal” reformer in Latin America, some -- more accurately -- see it as one more defeat for the United States as well as for democracy and free markets in the region.

It is also a victory for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s dictator-in-waiting, Hugo Chavez.

..........Many see the decrepit Castro (who still has a huge, loyal following in Latin America developed and cultivated over the past four decades) as the brains behind this effort, with his alter ego Chavez (using Venezuela’s large territory and vast oil revenues) as the logistical and financial support for this new subversion campaign. Some of the coordination may also be conducted through the Sao Paolo Forum, the Castro-inspired anti-American movement founded in Brazil by Lula da Silva in 1990. ***

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