Referring to the World Court ruling on Nicaragua vs. the United States, Noam Chomsky says that the United $tates should have honored the World Court ruling that called Uncle $am "terrorist" and after 9-11 it should have pursued the matter the way Nicaragua did in 1985:

"It is worth remembering--particularly since it has been so uniformly suppressed--that the U.S. is the only country that was condemned for international terrorism by the World Court and that rejected a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law.

"The United States continues international terrorism. There are also what in comparison are minor examples. . . .I didn't see anybody point out that Beirut also looks like Beirut, and part of the reason is that the Reagan administration had set off a terrorist bombing there in 1985 that was very much like Oklahoma City, a truck bombing outside a mosque timed to kill the maximum number of people as they left. It killed 80 and wounded 250, mostly women and children, according to a report in the Washington Post 3 years later. The terrorist bombing was aimed at a Muslim cleric whom they didn't like and whom they missed."(p. 44) With this example, Chomsky demonstrates a high degree of internationalism, by telling a whole nation's people some uncomfortable facts about themselves that they have to know if they expect other peoples to get along with them.

In another comparison Chomsky shows how Clinton's 1998 bombing of Sudan was worse than 9-11. Referring to calculations of the death toll Chomsky demonstrates something about himself and most Amerikkkans that we at MIM have struggled against: "He may be right about the 'loss of life in terms of numbers,' even if we do not take into account the longer-term 'political cost.'

"Evaluating 'relative cost' is an enterprise I won't try to pursue, and it goes without saying that ranking crimes on some scale is generally ridiculous, though comparison of the toll is perfectly reasonable and indeed standard in scholarship."(p. 52)

Let's be clear that the bombing of Sudan killed many more people than 9-11. So then Chomsky says we will not take up the relative numbers, which of course as a method has the bias inherent in it that U.$. crimes against millions of Third World and indigenous peoples will always far outstrip in numbers the number of people killed in all other crimes combined. Hence, what Chomsky does is morally equate the genocide against Vietnam and East Timor for instance with street crime in the united $tates. From MIM's point of view, this is what we would expect from an educated labor aristocrat, someone still valuing Amerikan lives above Third World lives by using this standard of "crime" as having no numbers.

Noam Chomsky is the most internationalist one can be within a pre-scientific mindframe. These essays bring that out clearly. Most of the material exposes U.$. terrorism without revealing our differences with Chomsky.

Chomsky points out correctly that the Amerikan propaganda machine uses one standard for the rest of the world and another for Amerika. "When we estimate the human toll of a crime, we count not only those who were literally murdered on the spot but those who died as a result. That is the course we adopt reflexively, and properly, when we consider the crimes of official enemies--Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, to mention the most extreme cases."(pp. 46-47) He goes on to point out that most accusations against Stalin and Mao count deaths that occurred under them as some kind of oppression, whether Stalin and Mao knew the dead or intended the deaths. Chomsky then rightly adds that we should do the same for our own leaders, in this case Clinton in 1998.

Chomsky reasons as much of the nihilist "left" does--whether of libertarian or merely mushy and confused sort. MIM has already addressed this point in the FAQ of its webpage, but it bears repeating here particularly in regard to Chomsky: 1) equating the street crime of say whoever killed Nicole Simpson with the genocide against Jews, Vietnam and East Timor is NOT just, and we say that at a pre-scientific level. Even more at a scientific level, we can say for certain that such a definition favors the rich countries with militaries that can kill more people more easily. 2) Anyone who enters politics speaking of "crimes" demonstrates one of two things: a) amateurishness b) a fascination with pre-industrial societies, because only pre-industrial tribal societies can have any claim to being without "crime."

The difference between a pre-scientific anarchist prop of the status quo and the scientific anarchist boils down to this: The scientific anarchist knows that all modern societies have states and all states are guilty of "crimes." That is nothing more than saying states are composed of people who are imperfect at this time, except arguably in those pre-industrial tribal societies still existing. The scientific anarchist is no longer surprised that states are guilty of crimes. This is something that real anarchists figured out a long time ago. What is now interesting to scientific anarchists is the "crime rate," how to get it down and thereby eliminate the same causations for the state's existence.

That is why the bottom line as a tactic for MIM in arguing with pre-scientific critics is to accept as given ALL their questionable individual facts. It's not a question of "sources" or "viewpoints," the topics that the pre-scientific intellectuals and their supporters spend so much time on. The question is the relative "crime rates." We accept every accusation against Stalin and Mao that is possible. The fact remains that the life expectancies in their countries doubled in their lifetimes. That means that the overall "crime rate" went down faster there than anywhere else, and yes, that means that their states were "less criminal" than others. No, it is not "ridiculous" to say so: it is a matter of life and death, because as of yet, humyns do not have any perfect choices for their political, social and economic organization placed in front of them. A Chomsky- like "morality" would only be non-criminal in the event that such an anarchist alternative existed right now. It does not. Chomsky and others like him have been preaching their solution for decades and centuries, but their preaching is not effective, precisely because the real-world alternative to crime-less life does not exist yet.

Here I will address just only the most recent evasion by anarchism hermetically sealed from the rest of the world--the fall of Baghdad in 2003. We heard the standard anarchist excuses that the looting was not "anarchy," but "chaos." These anarchists live in such a religiously sealed off world that it is simply not possible to argue with them. There is no reality that they accept as just to point to. When we argue about reality, they respond with definitions and moral absolutes. Instead of thinking that the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime shows that people do NOT automatically prefer statelessness when they experience it and do NOT take up cooperative living when they suddenly get the chance, our anarchists dwell on moralisms and definitions. Yes, the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime IS proof of something against anarchism, namely that a crime-less alternative to the state is not on the immediate agenda of the humyn species yet. No poetry or purified anarchist dictionary changes that reality on the ground for real live people.

The analogous equivalent in medicine of Chomsky's position is this: to precisely catalogue AIDS, it's causation, it's symptoms and its extent but then dodge the solution to the causation. Chomsky's brand of anarchism is like recommending chicken noodle soup for AIDS. Probably "chicken noodle soup" does no harm in itself on the AIDS question. The problem only arises when advising chicken noodle soup is deemed a moral substitute for recommending protease inhibitors, or any useful drugs that may have some nasty side effects. When Chomsky condemns Mao for "crimes," he is knocking the protease inhibitors (Maoism) on behalf of chicken noodle soup ("libertarian socialism" or "anarchism").

Far from being "moral" and opposed to "crime" such a position in fact should be considered a crime. Medical doctors like that should be shot, far from being commended for avoiding "comparison of the toll" as Chomsky says.

Until the day that there are no states, to speak of states is to speak of "crime." Only the naive believe otherwise, and they are the tools of the Rupert Murdoch school of justice. We at MIM make a big deal about a society that has half the crime rate or murder rate of another country. As scientists not seeking to avoid any facts, we are always willing to accept that Stalin and Mao committed crimes in the millions. The point is that the alternatives were worse, measurably much, much worse.