ZMAG: Chomsky's Irish Times interview

by Daithi Sun Jan 29, 2006 19:59

Pearl Harbour was a US Naval base on an island that the US conquered from the native people. Hardly "US soil" in any meaningful sense of the term.

by gay geori Sun Jan 29, 2006 12:03

"For another, the United States has never been attacked and the last attack on US soil was in 1814, which is not par of US history.

We’re safe, we’re not going to be attacked. We can’t be attacked."

Pearl Harbor?

by Coilín Sat Jan 28, 2006 16:52

Thanks for crediting me with investigating this story, R., but actually my role in the story is fortuitous.

I sent the articles from the Indo to Chomsky, simply thinking he would be pleased to see that his provocative comment about Bertie had been given prominent coverage in the media here.

It was Chomsky who pointed out that he had given no interview with any Irish journalist in late December, and that the comment directed specifically against Bertie did not sound familiar.

Senan Hogan contacted me with further information when he saw my comments on Indymedia:
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=73602&condense_comments=false#comment133118

I think this has something to teach us about anti-war PR: sometimes, if you pass interesting information on to interested parties, it can turn into unexpected news stories.

Something similar happened when a translator buddy, Billy O'Shea, told me how to use an online database to demonstrate that Raytheon was the manufacturer of the American missile that struck a marketplace in Shu'ale, Baghdad, on 28 March 2003. I passed the information on to a list of people, including Glen Rangwala, and it was only a week later that I discovered that Rangwala had done some more research and given the story to the British news desks. The story was covered on the BBC news, and in the Guardian and the Independent, and led to questions in the House of Commons.

While I did nothing but pass the information on, it turned out that that was a useful thing to do. Anybody else with a sense for interesting information could have done the same.

Hope this provides a useful pointer to other activists who want to make an impact: if you come across interesting new information, please do pass it on!

More information about this kind of PR action in an article I co-wrote with Tom Nagy in January 2004:
Methods For Saving The World's Children
Successes of the Danish Peace Movement in Raising Political Awareness
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/iraq/nagy.html

Best,
Coilín.