Question: Professor Chomsky, does the recent discovery and arrest of over a hundred Colombian paramilitaries in a ranch just outside of Caracas, many of them wearing Venezuelan military uniforms, does that signify a new phase in Washington's aggression towards the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and do you see any kind of military intervention, perhaps through Colombia, as being likely?

Noam Chomsky: It's not impossible, we really don't know, we don't have the details, but that the United States is trying to overthrow the Venezuelan government is not at all in question. In fact there was a military coup two years ago, which overthrew the government for a couple of days. The US welcomed it at once. It had to back down because of the overwhelming objection of the rest of Latin America, where they had this odd, old-fashioned idea about democratically-elected governments. And then the population immediately overthrew the coup-leaders.

There's a further consequence to that. The Venezuelan Supreme Court, which represents the old regime, the elite regime, determined that they could not be brought to trial, and the Venezuelan government, allegedly a totalitarian government, amazingly accepted the Supreme Court judgment, and did not bring them to trial.

Shortly after that, there was a terrorist bombing in Caracas, and two of the military officers who had been coup-leaders were implicated in the bombing. They fled to the United States, where they requested asylum. Venezuela called for extradition. That's where it stands right now, it's been about two months. The US has not given an official answer, as far as I know, to the call for extradition.

Incidentally, it's very hard to follow any of this because none of it ever gets reported, by the usual principals. But is this a further attempt? Your guess is as good as mine.