Your work has focussed on what you call the 'terrorism', the 'criminal acts' of the United States, and yet your parents view America as a safe haven, as a place of opporutnity and security, how do those two elements of your life fit together?

Chomsky: Very simple as in the same way it did for my parents, yes its a land of opportunity and in fact we know why: its a land of opportunity because the British colonists came and effectively exterminated the indiginous population, which is a typical property of settler colonialism the worst kind of imperialism, conquered half of mexico, instituted slavery, committed huge crimes and created a rich, prosperous country from which I benefit, enourmously. And since then have gone on to carry out horrendous crimes everywhere, the Vietnam war alone is probably the worse crime since the second world war, maybe 4million people killed, three countries devasted, these are real crimes and there are many others.

I don't want to go into detail I think its more the style of argument that I'm getting at now.

Chomsky: I think the style of argument should be to tell the truth, about important things..

Its very easy to condemn the crimes of others, Stalinist hacks condemn the crimes of the West, I don't applaud them for that. I applaud the Soviet dissidents who condemn the crimes of their own government.