1.
Goodman: This month is the 15th anniversary
of Democracy Now! on the air, and it’s a real privilege to have MIT professor,
analyst, world-renowned political dissident, linguist, Noam Chomsky with us.
I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, and we’ve been together for this whole 15
years, Juan. It’s really been quite an amazing journey. As we talk about this
revolution that’s rolling across the Middle East, we put out to our listeners
and viewers on Facebook last night that, Noam, you were going to be in. And so,
people were sending in their comments and questions. We asked, on Facebook and
Twitter, to send us questions. Here is one of the questions.
2.
Ryan Adserias: Hello, Professor Chomsky. My name is Ryan
Adserias, and I’m a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison,
and also the child of a long line of working-class union folks. I don’t know if
you’ve been noticing, but we’ve been holding a lot of protests and rallies here
in our capital to protest Governor Scott Walker’s attempt to break collective
bargaining rights that Wisconsin workers worked hard for over 50 years ago and
have enjoyed ever since. We closed all the schools around here for tomorrow —
today and tomorrow, actually. The teaching assistants here at the university
are staging teach-outs. The undergraduates are walking out of class to show
solidarity. And all of this is because our governor and governors all around
the country are proposing legislation that’s going to end collective bargaining
and really break the unions. I’ve also been noticing that there’s not a whole
lot of national representation of our struggle and our movement, and it’s
really been troubling me. So my question to you is, how exactly is it that we
can get the attention of our national Democratic and progressive leaders to
speak out against these measures and to help end union busting here in the
United States?
3.
Goodman: That was a question from Ryan Adserias in
Madison, Wisconsin, where more than 10,000 — some say tens of thousands of
people, teachers, students, are protesting in the Capitol building, schools
closed, as Ryan said. So, from Manama to Madison, from Manama, Bahrain, to
Madison, Wisconsin, Noam Chomsky?
4.
Chomsky: It’s very interesting. The reason why you can’t get Democratic leaders to join is
because they agree. They are also trying to destroy the unions. [The day where
the citizens of the United States realise this will be a great step toward a
better society in northAmerica.] In fact, if you take a look at — take,
say, the lame-duck session. The great achievement in the lame-duck session for
which Obama is greatly praised by Democratic Party leaders is that they
achieved bipartisan agreement on several measures. The most important one was
the tax cut. And the issue in the tax cut — there was only one issue — should
there be a tax cut for the very rich? The population was overwhelmingly against
it, I think about two to one. There wasn’t even a discussion of it, they just
gave it away. And the very same time, the less noticed
was that Obama declared a tax increase for federal workers. Now, it wasn’t
called a “tax increase”; it’s called a “freeze.” But if you think for 30
seconds, a freeze on pay for a federal workers is fiscally identical to a tax
increase for federal workers. And when you extend it for five years, as he said
later, that means a decrease, because of population growth, inflation and so
on. So he basically declared an increase in taxes for federal workers at
the same time that there’s a tax decrease for the very rich. And there’s been a wave of propaganda over the last couple of
months, which is pretty impressive to watch, trying to deflect attention away
from those who actually created the economic crisis, like Goldman Sachs,
Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, their associates in the government who — Federal
Reserve and others — let all this go on and helped it. There’s a — to switch
attention away from them to the people really responsible for the crisis —
teachers, police, firefighters, sanitation workers, their huge pensions, their
incredible healthcare benefits, Cadillac healthcare benefits, and their unions, who
are the real villains, the ones who are robbing the taxpayer by making sure
that policemen may not starve when they retire. And this is pretty
amazing, like right in the middle of the Madison affair, which is critical. The CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, got a $12.5
million bonus, and his base pay was more than tripled. Well, that means
he — the rules of corporate governments have been modified in the last 30 years
by the U.S. government to allow the chief executive officer to pretty much set
their own salaries. There’s various ways in which this has been done, but it’s
government policy. And one of the effects of it is — people talk about
inequality, but what’s a little less recognized is that although there is
extreme inequality, it’s mostly because of the top tiny fraction of the
population, so like a fraction of one percent of the population, their wealth
has just shot through the stratosphere. You go down to the — you know, the next
10 percent are doing pretty well, but it’s not off the spectrum. And this is by
design.
5.
Goodman: The New York Times coverage of Madison?
6.
Chomsky: Well, that was very interesting. In fact, I urge people to take a look at the February
12th issue of the New York Times, the big front-page headline, you know, banner
headline, “Mubarak Leaves,” its kind of subheadings say, “Army Takes Over.” They’re
about 60 years late on that; it took over in 1952, but — and it has held power
ever since. But then if you go to an inside page — I
don’t know what page it is — there’s an article on the Governor of Wisconsin.
And he’s pretty clear about what he wants to do. I mean, certainly he is aware
of and senses this attack on public workers, on unions and so on, and he wants
to be upfront, so he announced a sharp attack on public service workers and
unions, as the questioner said, to ban collective bargaining, take away their
pensions. And he also said that he’d call out the National Guard if there was
any disruption about this. Now, that’s happening now to Wisconsin. In Egypt, public protests have driven out the president.
There’s a lot of problems about what will happen next, but an overwhelming
reaction there. And I was — it was heartening to see that there are tens
of thousands of people protesting in Madison day after day, in fact. I mean,
that’s the beginning, maybe, of what we really need here: a democracy uprising.
Democracy has almost been eviscerated. Take a look at the front-page headlines
today, this morning, Financial Times at least. They predict — the big headline,
the big story — that the next election is going to break all campaign spending
records, and they predict $2 billion of campaign spending. Well, you know, a
couple of weeks ago, the Obama administration selected somebody to be in charge
of what they call “jobs.” “Jobs” is a funny word in the English language. It’s the way
of pronouncing an unpronounceable word. I’ll spell it: P-R-O-F-I-T-S.
You’re not allowed to say that word, so the way you pronounce that is “jobs.” The person he selected to be in charge of creating jobs is
Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, which has more than half their
workforce overseas. And, you know, I’m sure
he’s deeply interested in jobs in the United States. But what he has is
deep pockets, and also, not just him, but connections to the tiny sector of the
ultra-rich corporate elite, which is going to provide that billion or
billion-and-a-half dollars for the campaign. Well, that’s what’s going on.
7.
González: Well, I’d like to ask you about this whole issue of the
assault on unions. Clearly, it has arisen in the last few months in a
coordinated way. Here in New York State, all the major business people have
gotten together, raised $10 million to begin an ad campaign, and they’re being
supported by both the Democratic new governor, Andrew Cuomo, and as well as the
Republican-Independent Mayor Bloomberg. But they seem to be going after the
public sector unions after having essentially destroyed most of the private
sector union movement in the United States. They realize that the public sector
unions are still the only vibrant section of the American labor movement, so
now they’re really going after them in particular. Yet, you’ve got these labor
leaders who helped get Obama elected and who helped get Andy Cuomo elected, and
they’re not yet making the stand in a strong enough way to mobilize people
against these policies.
8.
Chomsky: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. There
has been a huge attack against private sector unions. Actually, that’s been
going on since the Second World War. After the Second World War, business was
terrified about the radicalization of the country during the Depression and
then the war, and it started right off — Taft-Hartley was 1947 — huge
propaganda campaigns to demonize unions. It really — and it continued until you
get to the Reagan administration. Reagan was extreme. Beginning of his
administration, one of the first things was to call in scabs — hadn’t been done
for a long time, and it’s illegal in most countries — in the air controller
strike. Reagan essentially — by “Reagan,” I mean his administration; I don’t
know what he knew — but they basically told the business world that they’re not
going to apply the labor laws. So, that means you can break unions any way you
like. And in fact, the number of firing of union organizers, illegal firing, I
think probably tripled during the Reagan years. Then,
in fact, by the early '90s, Caterpillar Corporation, first major industrial
corporation, called in scabs to break a strike of industrial workers, UAW. That's
— I think the only country that allowed that was South Africa. And then it
spread. When
Clinton came along, he had another way of destroying unions. It’s called NAFTA. One of the predicted consequences of NAFTA, which in fact
worked out, was it would be used as a way to undermine unions — illegally, of
course. But when you have a criminal state, it doesn’t matter. [Accurate.] So, there was actually a study, under NAFTA rules, that
investigated illegal strike breaking organizing efforts by threats, illegal
threats, to transfer to Mexico. So, if union organizers are trying to organize,
you put up a sign saying, you know, “Transfer operation Mexico.” In other
words, you shut up, or you’re going to lose your jobs. That’s illegal.
But again, if you have a criminal state, it doesn’t matter. Well, by measures
like this, private sector unions have been reduced to, I think, maybe seven
percent of the workforce. Now, it’s not that workers don’t want to join unions.
In fact, many studies of this, there’s a huge pool of workers who want to join
unions, but they can’t. And they’re getting no support from the political
system. And part of the reason, not all of it, is these $2 billion campaigns.
Now, this really took off in the late '70s and the ’80s. You want to run for
office, then you're going to have to dig into very deep pockets. And as the
income distribution gets more and more skewed, that means you’re going to have
to go after Jeffrey Immelt and Lloyd Blankfein, and so on and so forth, if you
want to even be in office. Take a look at the 2008 campaign spending. Obama way
outspent McCain. He was funded — his main source of funding was the financial
institutions.
9.
Goodman: Now they’re saying he’s going to raise,
Obama is going to raise $1 billion for the next campaign.
10.
Chomsky: Yeah, and it’ll probably be more than
that, because they’re predicting $2 billion for the whole campaign, and the
incumbent usually has advantages.
11.
Goodman: Noam, we have to break. We’re going
to come right back.
12.
Chomsky: Yeah.
13.
Goodman: Noam Chomsky, professor of
linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, world-renowned political
dissident. Stay with us.
14.
[break]
15.
Goodman: Our guest for the hour is Noam Chomsky.
He has authored over a hundred books; his latest, Hopes and Prospects, among
others. Professor Chomsky, I want to ask you about former President Ronald
Reagan. A very big deal is made of him now on the hundredth anniversary of his
birth. Last year President Obama signed legislation establishing a commission
to mark the centennial.
16.
Obama: President Reagan helped, as much as
any president, to restore a sense of optimism in our country, a spirit that
transcended politics, that transcended even the most heated arguments of the
day.
17.
Goodman: Noam Chomsky, your response?
18.
Chomsky: This deification of Reagan is extremely
interesting and a very — it’s scandalous, but it tells
a lot about the country. [Accurate.] I mean, when Reagan left office, he
was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter.
If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was
more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy. When he came into office, the United States was the
world’s leading creditor. By the time he left,
it was the world’s leading debtor. He was fiscally totally irresponsible — wild
spending, no fiscal responsibility. Government actually grew during the
Reagan years. He was also a passionate opponent of the free market. I mean, the
way he’s being presented is astonishing. He was the most protectionist
president in post-war American history. He essentially virtually doubled
protective barriers to try to preserve incompetent U.S. management, which was
being driven out by superior Japanese production. During his years, we had the
first major fiscal crises. During the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the New Deal
regulations were still in effect, and that prevented financial crises. The
financialization of the economy began to take off in the ’70s, but with the
deregulation, of course you start getting crises. Reagan left office with the
biggest financial crisis since the Depression: the home savings and loan. I won’t even talk about his international behavior. I mean,
it was just abominable. I mean, if we gained our optimism by killing
hundreds of thousands of people in Central America and destroying any hope for
democracy and freedom and supporting South Africa while it killed about a
million-and-a-half people in neighboring countries, and on and on, if that’s
the way we get back our optimism, we’re in bad trouble. Well, what happened
after Reagan left office is that there was the beginnings of an effort to carry
out a kind of — this Reagan legacy, you know, to try to create from this really
quite miserable creature some kind of deity. And amazingly, it succeeded. I mean, Kim Il-sung would have been impressed. The events that took place when Reagan died, you know, the
Reagan legacy, this Obama business, you don’t get that in free societies. It
would be ridiculed. What you get it is in totalitarian states. And I’m waiting
to see what comes next. This morning, North Korea
announced that on the birthday of the current god, a halo appeared over his
birthplace. That will probably happen tomorrow over Reagan’s birthplace.
But when we go in — I mean, this is connected with what we were talking about
before. If
you want to control a population, keep them passive, keep beating them over the
head and let them look somewhere else, one way to do it is to give them a god
to worship.
19.
Goodman: Noam, you’ve written about, over the
years, COINTELPRO, FBI raids. We’re seeing that today. There’s almost no
attention given to what we have focused on a good deal on Democracy Now!, from
Minneapolis to Chicago, the FBI raids, activists being subpoenaed to speak
about in various cases.
20.
Chomsky: Yeah, that’s a pretty — it’s not just —
the raids are serious enough, but what’s more significant is what lies behind
them. These are the first actions taken under new rulings by the Supreme Court.
A very important case was six or eight months ago, I guess, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project. It was initiated by the
Obama administration. It was argued by Elena Kagan, Obama’s new court
appointment. And they won, with the support of the far-right justices.
The case is extremely significant. It’s the worst
attack on freedom of speech since the Smith Act 70 years ago. The case
determined that any material support to organizations that the government lists
on the terrorist list is criminalized, but they interpreted “material support”
— in fact, the issue at stake was speech. Humanitarian Law Project was giving
advice — speech — to a group on that’s on the terrorist list, Turkish PKK. And
they were also advising them on legal advice and also advising them to move
towards nonviolence. That means if you and I, let’s say, talk to Hamas leaders
and say, “Look, you ought to move towards nonviolent resistance,” we’re giving
material support to a group on the terrorist list. Incidentally,
the terrorist list is totally illegitimate. That shouldn’t exist in a free
society. Terrorist list is an arbitrary list established by the executive with
no basis whatsoever, by whim, for example, but no supervision. And if
you take a look at the record of the terrorist list, it’s almost comical. So,
take Reagan again. In 1982, the Reagan administration decided it wanted to aid
their friend Saddam Hussein. He had been — Iraq had been on the terrorist list.
They took it off the terrorist list. They had a gap. They had to put someone
in.
21.
Goodman: South Africa, ANC.
22.
Chomsky: Put in Cuba. They put in Cuba, and I
suppose in honor of the fact that, in preceding several years Cuba had been the
target of more international terrorism than the rest of the world combined. So,
Saddam Hussein goes off, Cuba goes on, no review, no comment. And now, with the
new Obama principle, giving — advising groups that are arbitrarily put on this
group is criminal. And that was the background for those raids.
23.
Goodman: Noam Chomsky, we’re going to
continue this conversation online and play it on the show again. Noam Chomsky,
professor of linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
24.
Chomsky: We were talking about unions before.
Union busting is criminal activity by the government, because they’re saying,
“You can go ahead and do it; we’re not going to apply the laws,” effectively.
And the COINTELPRO, which you mentioned, is actually the worst systematic and
extended violation of basic civil rights by the federal government. It maybe
compares with Wilson’s Red Scare. But COINTELPRO went on from the late ’50s
right through all of the ’60s; it finally ended, at least theoretically ended,
when the courts terminated it in the early ’70s. And it was serious. It
started, as is everything, going after the Communist Party, then the Puerto
Rican Independence Party. Then it extended — the women’s movement, the New
Left, but particularly black nationalists. And it ended up — didn’t end up, but
one of the events was a straight Gestapo-style assassination of two black
organizers, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, literally. I mean, the FBI set up the
assassination. The Chicago police actually carried it out, broke into the
apartment at 4:00 in the morning and murdered them. Fake information that came
from the FBI about arms stores and so on. There was almost nothing about it. In
fact, the information about this, remarkably, was released at about the same
time as Watergate. I mean, as compared with this, Watergate was a tea party.
There was nothing, you know?
25.
González: I’d like to ask you — we’re obviously entering very soon a
new presidential season, and for many of the progressives and liberals who had
placed some much hope in the Obama administration, they’re now going to be
faced with the quandary of what to do as they move into a new administration.
On the one hand, they feel betrayed by many of the things the administration
has done; on the other hand, they see this extreme right that is attempting to
paint Obama as a socialist, as destroying the Constitution and freedom in
America. And they’re going to have to figure out how they’re going to maneuver
in this new reality, especially with the Citizens United case, the enormous
amount of money that’s going to be poured into. Your thoughts on what
progressives who are still glued to the ground and understand the reality of
what’s happening in the country should be doing?
26.
Chomsky: Well, my feeling — actually, I had the
same feeling in 2008. I’m not disillusioned, because I didn’t have any
expectations, just looking at the funding, looking at his background. Actually,
I wrote about it before the primaries even. But nevertheless, you know, when I
was asked in 2008, “Who should you vote for?” my own feeling was — and it will
be next time — that if you’re in a swing state, you better vote against the
prehistoric monsters, because they’re going to cause much more trouble. Well,
in our system, the only choice you have would be to vote for Obama. Hold your
nose and vote, but don’t expect anything. Just take a look at where he’s coming
from, where his funding is coming from. Over a long period, like a century, you
can pretty well predict policies by just looking at concentration of campaign
funding. Thomas Ferguson, very outstanding political scientist, has done the
main work on this, and it’s convincing. So, when you find that the core of the
funding is the financial institutions, you can pretty well expect that the
major policies will be to reward them. Yeah, OK, it’s pretty much what happened.
You shouldn’t be disillusioned. But if you have to make a choice between that
and, you know, Newt Gingrich, well, OK, you have to make that choice. Don’t
expect anything. What has to be done is what’s happening in Madison, or what’s
happening in Tahrir Square in Cairo. If there’s mass popular opposition, any
political leader is going to have to respond to it, whoever they are.
27.
Goodman: Noam Chomsky, I wanted to ask you about
the situation in Haiti. The country is preparing to hold a controversial runoff
presidential vote next month. The U.S. has resumed deportations to Haiti
despite the earthquake-ravaged, cholera-ravaged country. And former Haitian
president Jean-Bertrand Aristide has been given a passport that would allow him
to return home seven years after he was ousted in a U.S.-backed coup. I wanted
to go back just to a brief clip. I spoke to President Aristide at the time of
the coup in 2004, and he talked about the role of the United States in Haiti
and in the world.
28.
Aristide: They went to Iraq. We see how is the
situation in Iraq. They went to Haiti. We see how is the situation in Haiti.
Pretending imposing democracy, we saw people killing people. Why don’t they
change their approach to let democracy and the constitutional order flourish,
slowly, but surely? After imposing an economic embargo on us, being, from the
cultural point of view, very rich, from an historic point of view, very rich,
but from an economic point of view, very poor, because we are the poorest
country of the Western hemisphere, after imposing their economic embargo upon
us, because the people wanted one man, one vote, so equality among us.
29.
Goodman: That was President Aristide in 2004.
30.
Chomsky: That’s right. I mean, in 2004 — I don’t
have to tell you — the United States and France, the two traditional torturers
of Haiti for hundreds of years, joined by Canada, you know, plodding along,
carried out a military coup. They kidnapped the president, sent him off to
Central Africa. The United States has tried hard to keep him out of the
hemisphere ever since, blocked him from coming back to Haiti. This last
election, which is a complete farce, I think about less than a quarter of the
population voted even. By most accounts, Aristide is the most popular figure in
Haiti. He’s kept out of the election. His party, Fanmi Lavalas, has easily won
every election in which there was even a modicum of sort of honesty. They were
kept out of the election by the United States. So we have an election in which
the most popular political figure is out, most popular political party is out,
country is a total wreck, people can’t get registration cards. I mean, that’s a
total ruin. A lot of money was pledged; very little of it has actually been
allocated. Having an election under those conditions, it doesn’t rise to the
level of a joke. There was an OAS, Organization of American States,
investigation, but if you look at the people on the commission, it’s mostly the
United States or its puppets, totally unserious. You can’t even laugh about it.
I mean, Haiti, once again, is being denied the possibility of having a
democratic election. Now, it’s not the first time. The first real democratic
election in Haiti was in, 20 years ago, 1990. To everyone’s amazement, Aristide
won. Everyone assumed — me, too — that the U.S. candidate would win. Former
World Bank official, he had all the money, all the elite support.
31.
Goodman: Marc Bazin.
32.
Chomsky: He got 14 percent of the vote. You
know, nobody was — it’s kind of like Egypt and what Marwan was saying about the
Middle East. Nobody is paying attention to what’s going on in the slums and the
hills, which happens to be where the population is. They’re just paying
attention to what’s happening up in the rich sectors of Pétionville, you know, where the rich
people live. Well, it turns out a lot of popular organizing was going on, a
really impressive democratic achievement. It’s something that I wish we could
even come close to here: actual, real, live democracy. And they swept into
office, with a big majority, a populist priest who immediately initiated
programs which were in fact pretty constructive. They were in fact highly
praised, even by the international financial institutions, you know, which
don’t usually go for this. He cut back corruption. He fixed up the budget. Well,
you know, just kind of waiting, and it took seven months for the military coup
to come, which threw him out. The OAS declared an embargo. The U.S. technically
joined the embargo, but within weeks the government, that was Bush number one,
announced that U.S. firms would be exempt from the embargo. I remember the New
York Times, that report, saying this is a very humanitarian gesture: the
embargo is being fine-tuned for the interests of the people of Haiti, namely by
exempting U.S. firms. It turned out — and trade increased. Actually, I was
there during — it was a horrible terror. I was right during it. Maybe you were,
too. It was just awful. The CIA was reporting that all — to Congress, that no
oil is coming in. You could see the oil farms being built by the rich families.
And in fact, it later turned out that first Bush, then Clinton, had authorized
the Texaco Oil Company to ship oil to the military junta and to the elite in
violation of presidential orders. Barely mentioned. The Wall Street Journal had
an article on it. And so it went on. You know, every time there has been an
effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from
200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.
And that’s what’s happening now with this so-called election.
33.
González: I’d like to ask you one final question on the U.S.
situation. Yesterday the Federal Reserve Bank upped its prediction for growth
in the United States. Corporations are getting record profits. The banks are
back in great shape. The Dow is back up before it was in the crisis. And yet,
we still have massive unemployment, conservatively estimated at nine percent,
and we still have a huge mortgage crisis in the country, more and more people
losing their homes. The disconnect between what the indicators are saying and
the reality of what the American people are facing?
34.
Chomsky: Well, actually, it depends how you look
at the indicators. I mean, for the last 30 years, for a majority of the
population, real incomes have pretty much stagnated. I mean, there’s growth.
And the growth is going to — and the wealth is going into very few pockets.
That’s by design. Tax laws are designed that way. Take, say, the Bush tax cut.
It was very cleverly done. It’s devastating the economy, but not the rich. The
tax cut was done so that at the beginning, the first — right off, everyone got
a check, you know, so it looks, “Oh, great. We’re getting a tax cut, couple
hundred dollars.” But it was designed so that over the years the cut would shift.
By the end, over half the tax cut, I think, was going to maybe one percent of
the population. But by then, nobody notices anymore. Well, that’s the way
fiscal policy has been designed. It’s the way corporate governance rules have
been designed. They come from the federal government. And they effectively give
the CEO the right to pick the panel that gives him the salary, and all sorts of
things like this, along with the deregulation, which — bipartisan, incidentally
— which has led to a situation where, you know, maybe you can talk about growth
on the average, but for most of the population it’s not there. For a large
part, especially maybe the lower half of the population, they’re basically
living in the Depression. Not quite. I mean, I’m old enough to remember the
Depression. My family was mostly unemployed working class. It was objectively
worse than now, if you count, you know, objective standards. On the other hand,
it was hopeful. There was a sense that something is going to happen. You had a
government which was doing things that helped the population, because they were
under pressure. In fact, Roosevelt famously talked to the labor leaders and
said, “Make me do this. You know, so you go have sit-down strikes and you
protest and so on, then we’ll push this legislation through.” Well, it
happened. So you had WPA. You had — Social Security was coming in. There was a
sense that we’re going to get out of this somehow. There was hope for the
future. Now there isn’t. The industrial workforce is living in the Depression.
Unemployment is at Depression levels. And the jobs aren’t coming back, because
policy is designed, by the man in charge of jobs for the Obama administration
and others like him, to send production abroad. It’s cheaper. It’s more
profitable for the banks and the management. Or to move from investment in
production to investment in finance, which does nothing for the economy,
probably harms it, but it is very profitable and has the nice feature that when
it crashes, as it’s going to do, the taxpayer will come in and bail you out.
It’s a great system. It’s a real racket. We will — the regulations are such so
that we can take very risky transactions, make a lot of money, it’s going to
crash, but no problem, there’s that nice taxpayer. They will come in and bail
us out. We’ll be richer than before. And each time it gets worse than it was
the last time. Now, this one is really bad. So whatever the growth figures
show, for the population, that’s not happening, except for a small sector. So
the numbers could be right, but that’s not what it means for people’s lives.
35.
Goodman: I wanted to ask you quickly about
Vermont. You have Madison, Wisconsin. You have all of Wisconsin now, Scott
Walker saying they’ll break the unions, bring out the National Guard if the
teachers and other union workers protest. In Vermont, the new governor, Peter
Shumlin, has run on a platform of instituting single-payer healthcare
immediately. And in January, a landmark measure was introduced to revoke the
granting of personhood rights to U.S. corporations. The bill calls for a
constitutional amendment declaring corporations are not persons under the laws
of the United States. You live next door in Massachusetts. How significant is
this whole movement?
36.
Chomsky: The movement is significant, but of
course it has to take root and spread. I mean, take, say, the personhood goes
back a century, and it was not by law. No legislation saying corporations are
persons. That was by court decisions, a series of court decisions over time
which have given these fictitious legal entities — established by the state,
incidentally, and protected by the state; they’re basically state-based
organizations — giving these entities more and more rights. It was bitterly
attacked by conservatives when — because it was a big attack on the classical
liberal ideals a century ago. Citizens United, which you mentioned, is just the
last state of it. So that’s quite right. The other thing about single payer is
extremely significant. I mean, you know, we’re supposed to be upset about the
deficit. Whether we should be or not is another question. You should have a
deficit in a recession. But let’s say we’re worried about the deficit. Where is
the deficit coming from? About half of it is military spending, which is out of
sight. You know, it’s as much as the rest of the world combined. It’s not for
defense. In fact, it probably increases dangers to the United States. But it’s
there. The other half is our totally dysfunctional healthcare system. I mean,
it costs about twice as much per capita as comparable countries and doesn’t
have — has pretty poor outcomes, plus 50 million uninsured and other scandals.
And it’s the only privatized, virtually unregulated healthcare system. So costs
are out of sight. Administrative costs are very high. You have profits. You
have cherry picking, all sorts of things that cost money. That’s about half the
deficit. In fact, if we had a healthcare system like comparable countries, we’d
probably have a surplus. Well, if you look at the debate that’s going on — you
know, you read New York Times, anybody —- they say the big problem is
entitlements. Entitlements means Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Well,
Social Security is just pure lies. I mean, Social Security doesn’t even add to
the deficit. It’s funded by payroll taxes. And furthermore, it’s in quite good
shape for decades. So that’s just mentioned in order to try to destroy Social
Security. Social Security does nothing for the wealthy. It’s a means of
survival for working people and poorer people, so therefore let’s get rid of
it. Also, Social Security is dangerous. Social Security is based on a principle
which is frightening: namely, we care about each other. So, Social Security is
based on the idea that you care if a disabled widow across town has food to
eat, and you have to drive that out of people’s heads. They’re supposed to care
only about themselves, not anybody else, like part of the reason for attacking
unions. So you’ve got to get rid of Social Security, so therefore lie about it.
But what about Medicare and Medicaid? It’s true, those expenses are going
through the roof, and they’re going to tank the federal budget. But that’s
because of the healthcare system. I mean, Medicare -—
37.
Goodman: So, what could Obama do right now?
38.
Chomsky: He could do what the population has
wanted for years: put in a national healthcare system like every other
industrial country has in one form or another. That was just given up during
the healthcare — they didn’t talk about it. There was one last residue of it in
the healthcare reform: namely, the public option. The public was in favor of
that by I think about five to three or something, substantially. That was just
given away, you know? We’ve got to make sure that the rich — financial
institutions are richer and richer — insurance companies, in this case. Same
with pharmaceutical corporations. Drug prices in the United States are much
higher than comparable countries, with one exception: Veterans Administration.
Veterans Administration has reasonable prices, and there’s a reason. The
government is allowed to bargain with pharmaceutical corporations for the VA,
but not for the rest of the population. So, of course, the prices are out of
sight. Well, yeah, the public has views on this, too. In fact, actually, it’s
only one poll. It showed about 85 percent opposition. But it’s not even
discussed. So, yes, entitlements are a problem, but not the entitlements.
What’s a problem is paying off the insurance companies and paying off Big
Pharma. That’s a problem. And unless we do something about that, that problem
is going to get worse and worse, and you’ll have a bigger and bigger deficit,
plus the military. So what Vermont is doing is picking the right problem. But,
you know, it’s a small state. What they can do depends on how — if we have a
popular uprising like, say, Tunisia or Egypt or Bahrain, yeah, then you could
get somewhere.
39.
Goodman: We just had this breaking news that the
Obama administration is making a call to Bahrain to use restraint. I mean,
again, we have the U.S. military base there. But did you ever think you’d see,
Noam, in your lifetime, what we are seeing now in the Middle East, this rolling
revolution?
40.
Chomsky: No, not really. But then, I never
expected to see what’s happened in Latin America for the past 10 years. Over
the past 10 — what’s happened in Latin America is very dramatic. There’s 500
years of history here. And this is the first time, since the Spanish and
Portuguese conquerors came, that Latin America has started to take its fate
into its own hands. They’ve kicked out all the American military bases. The
countries are integrating. They’re beginning to deal with the absolute scandal,
that’s internal to each country, a tiny sector of extreme wealth,
Western-oriented -—
41.
González: The wealth gap is shrinking.
42.
Chomsky: And it’s shrinking, and they’re doing
something about it. A long way to go, but at least being faced. And there also
integration of the countries, which is a prerequisite for independence. Now,
that’s dramatic. It’s far more significant than what happened in Eastern
Europe. I mean, the comparisons to Eastern Europe I don’t think are very
convincing. First of all, in Eastern Europe, remember, you had Gorbachev. Now,
the person who was in charge, basically, and had the guns was saying, “Go
ahead.” You don’t have any Gorbachev in the West, nothing like him.
Furthermore, in the case of Eastern Europe, the major power sectors in the
world — the United States and Western Europe — were supporting the uprising, of
course, because it was undermining an enemy. There’s nothing like that here. In
fact, about the only comparison to Eastern Europe that isn’t sort of ridiculous
is the one that’s never talked about: Romania. Romania, which had the worst
dictator in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, he was a darling of the West. The United
States and Britain loved him. He was supported until the last minute. They
couldn’t support him anymore, so, you know, turned against him — the usual game
plan. But that’s about the only analogy. On the other hand, what happened in
Latin America is extremely significant, and what’s happening in the Middle East
could turn into something similar.
43.
Goodman: And the role of the U.S. in the Middle
East, what it should play right now? And I know you have to go after that.
44.
Chomsky: Well, what it should do is say, “OK,
we’re out of here. This is your country. You live there. You do what you want.
We’re going to support democracy. Or we’ll support whatever comes out.” But
think what’s involved in that. Just take a look at Arab public opinion. You
take a look at Arab public opinion, you see democracy would be a disaster for
the U.S. leadership. I mentioned the figures, but the whole of U.S. policy in
the region would instantly collapse if you had democracy. Well, you know, the Middle
East is an important area. It goes back to almost 90 years, since oil was
discovered, especially since the Second World War. Take a look at internal
documents. The Middle East oil was regarded as the most important and strategic
— the strategically most important area of the world, because it’s got the
major oil reserves. And if you think what’s happened in the Middle East over
the years, the big — the United States and Britain have traditionally supported
radical Islamic fundamentalism. The core of radical Islamic fundamentalism is
Saudi Arabia. That’s also the main fundamental of jihadi terror. That’s our
main ally. In fact, in 1967, when U.S. relations with Israel took on their
current form, the primary reason was that there was a war going on, literally,
between Saudi Arabia and Egypt in Yemen. And Saudi Arabia is the center of
radical Islamic fundamentalism. Egypt was the center of secular nationalism.
And secular nationalism is frightening, because — it wasn’t democratic, it was
autocratic, but it was secular and it was nationalist. And Nasser was talking
about using the resources of the region for their own populations, not to
enrich Western oil companies and, you know, the Saudi elite. Well, that’s
frightening. So there was this conflict going on, the U.S. and Britain of
course supporting radical Islamism. Israel won that battle for them. That’s
when relations were established in their current form, and that continues. It’s
not 100 percent, but substantially the U.S. and Britain have supported and
continue to support radical Islam, because it’s a barrier against democracy. If
it goes the wrong way, they don’t like it, but as long as it’s going your way,
fine. Actually, during this entire crisis, I thought one of the most astute
comments was a two-sentence comment by Marwan Muasher. He’s a former high Jordanian
official who’s head of Middle East research for the Carnegie Endowment. He
said, “There’s an operative principle in the Middle East.” He said, “The
principle is, as long as people are quiet and passive, we’ll do whatever we
like.” That’s a general principle of statesmanship that applies here, too. As
long as people are quiet and passive, we’ll do whatever we like. Now, of
course, if they stop being quiet and passive, we’ll have to adjust somehow.
Maybe they’ll even throw us out, but we’ll try to hang on as much as we can.
And that’s what we see going on in the Middle East. That’s what we saw going on
in Latin America. It’s what we see right here.
45.
Goodman: Noam Chomsky, thank you so much for
spending this time.
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