Good foreign policy discussion: Chomsky on Iran, Iraq, and the Rest of the World. Mostly focusing on the Middle East, North Korea and Venezuela.

I hope he’s right on the topic of the US attacking Iran:

“I still think, despite everything, that the US is very unlikely to attack Iran. It could be a huge catastrophe; nobody knows what the consequences would be.“

And some interesting comments on the Israel/Palestine situation:

“In fact, if you look at our policies they’re the opposite. Take Palestine. There was a free election in Palestine, but it came out the wrong way. So instantly, the United States and Israel with Europe tagging along, moved to punish the Palestinian people, and punish them harshly, because they voted the wrong way in a free election. That’s accepted here in the West as perfectly normal. That illustrates the deep hatred and contempt for democracy among western elites, so deep-seated they can’t even perceive it when it’s in front of their eyes. You punish people severely if they vote the wrong way in a free election. There’s a pretext for that too, repeated every day: Hamas must agree to first recognize Israel, second to end all violence, third to accept past agreements. Try to find a mention of the fact that the United States and Israel reject all three of those. They obviously don’t recognize Palestine, they certainly don’t withdraw the use of violence or the threat of it — in fact they insist on it — and they don’t accept past agreements, including the road map.”

Not that US foreign policy isn’t hypocritical in many areas, but this one was especially bad.  They’re all about “spreading democracy and freedom” yet they put a country under sanctions because of the outcome of a freely democratic election.  I’m not saying I liked the outcome of the election, but the entire point of democracy is that the voters get to make the choice, not outside influences.