1.
Goodman: For reaction to the WikiLeaks
documents, we’re joined now by world-renowned political dissident and linguist
Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
author of over a hundred books, including his latest, Hopes and Prospects. Well,
40 years ago, Noam and the late historian Howard Zinn helped government
whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg edit and release the Pentagon Papers, the
top-secret internal U.S. history of the Vietnam War. Noam Chomsky joins us now
from Boston. It’s good to have you back again, Noam. Why don’t we start there,
before we talk about WikiLeaks. What was your involvement with the Pentagon
Papers? I don’t think most people know about this.
2.
Chomsky: Dan and I were friends. Tony Russo
also, who also who prepared them and helped leak them. And I got advanced
copies from Dan and Tony, and there were several people who were releasing them
to the press. I was one of them. And then I, along with Howard Zinn, as you
mentioned, edited a volume of essays in an index to the Papers.
3.
Goodman: So, explain, though, how it worked. And
I always think this is important, to tell this story, especially for young
people. Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon official, top-secret clearance, gets this U.S.
involvement in Vietnam history out of his safe. He xeroxes it. And then, how
did you get your hands on it? He just directly gave it to you?
4.
Chomsky: From Dan and — Dan Ellsberg and Tony
Russo, who had done the xeroxing and the preparation of the material, yes,
directly.
5.
Goodman: [inaudible] exactly did you edit?
6.
Chomsky: Well, we didn’t modify anything. The
Papers were not edited. They’re just in their original form. What Howard Zinn and I did was — they came out in four
volumes. We prepared a fifth volume, which is critical essays by many scholars
on the Papers, what they mean, their significance and so on, and an index,
which is almost indispensable for using them seriously. That’s the fifth
volume in the Beacon Press series.
7.
Goodman: So you were then one of the first
people to see the Pentagon Papers.
8.
Chomsky: Outside of Dan Ellsberg and Tony
Russo, yes. I mean, there were some journalists who may have seen them. I’m not
sure.
9.
Goodman: So, what are your thoughts today, as —
for example, we just played this clip of New York Republican Congress member
Peter King, who says WikiLeaks should be declared a foreign terrorist
organization?
10.
Chomsky: I think that’s
outlandish. The materials — we should understand — and the Pentagon Papers is
another case in point — that one of the major reasons for government secrecy is to protect
the government from its own population. In
the Pentagon Papers, for example, there was one volume, the negotiations
volume, which might have had bearing on ongoing activities, and Dan Ellsberg
withheld that. That came out a little bit later. But if you look at the Papers
themselves, there are things that Americans should have known that the
government didn’t want them to know. And as far
as I can tell, from what I’ve seen here, pretty much the same is true. In
fact, the current leaks are — what I’ve seen, at least — primarily interesting
because of what they tell us about how the diplomatic service works.
11.
Goodman: The documents’ revelations about Iran
come just as the Iranian government has agreed to a new round of nuclear talks
beginning next month. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said
the cables vindicate the Israeli position that Iran poses a nuclear threat.
Netanyahu said, quote, “Our region has been hostage to
a narrative that is the result of 60 years of propaganda, which paints Israel
as the greatest threat. In reality, leaders understand that that view is
bankrupt. For the first time in history, there is agreement that Iran is the
threat. If leaders start saying openly what they have long been saying behind
closed doors, we can make a real breakthrough on the road to peace,” Netanyahu
said. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also discussed Iran at her news
conference in Washington. This is what she said.
12.
HillaryClinton: I think that it should not be a
surprise to anyone that Iran is a source of great concern, not only in the
United States, that what comes through in every meeting that I have, anywhere in
the world, is a concern about Iranian actions and intentions. So, if anything,
any of the comments that are being reported on allegedly from the cables
confirm the fact that Iran poses a very serious threat in the eyes of many of
her neighbors and a serious concern far beyond her region. That is why the
international community came together to pass the strongest possible sanctions
against Iran. It did not happen because the United States went out and said, “Please
do this for us.” It happened because countries, once they evaluated the
evidence concerning Iran’s actions and intentions, reached the same conclusion
that the United States reached, that we must do whatever we can to muster the
international community to take action to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear
weapons state. So, if anyone reading the stories about
these alleged cables thinks carefully, what they will conclude is that the
concern about Iran is well founded, widely shared, and will continue to be at
the source of the policy that we pursue with like-minded nations to try to
prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
13.
Goodman: That was Secretary to Hillary
Clinton yesterday at a news conference. I wanted to get your comment on
Clinton, Netanyahu’s comment, and the fact that Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the
King, who’s now getting back surgery in the New York, called for the U.S. to
attack Iran. Noam Chomsky?
14.
Chomsky: That essentially reinforces what I said
before, that the main significance of the cables that have been released so far
is what they tell us about Western leadership. So,
Hillary Clinton and Binyamin Netanyahu surely know of the careful polls of Arab
public opinion. The Brookings Institute just a few months ago released
extensive polls of what Arabs think about Iran. And the results are rather
striking. They show that Arab opinion does — holds that the major threat in the
region is Israel, that’s 80 percent; the second major threat is the United
States, that’s 77 percent. Iran is listed as a threat by 10 percent. With
regard to nuclear weapons, rather remarkably, a majority, in fact, 57 percent,
say that the region will be — it would have a positive effect in the region if
Iran had nuclear weapons. Now, these are not small numbers. Eighty
percent, 77 percent say that the U.S. and Israel are the major threat. Ten
percent say that Iran is the major threat. Now, this may not be reported in the
newspapers here — it is in England — but it’s certainly familiar to the Israeli
and the U.S. governments and to the ambassadors. But there isn’t a word about
it anywhere. What that reveals is the profound hatred
for democracy on the part of our political leadership and, of course, the
Israeli political leadership. These things aren’t even to be mentioned. And
this seeps its way all through the diplomatic service. So the cables don’t have
any indication of that. When they talk about Arabs, they mean the Arab
dictators, not the population, which is overwhelmingly opposed to the
conclusions that the analysts here, Clinton and the media, have drawn. There’s
also a minor problem. That’s the major problem. The minor problem is that we
don’t know from the cables what the Arab leaders think and say. We know what
was selected from the range of what they say. So there’s a filtering process.
We don’t know how much it distorts the information. But there’s no question
that what is a radical distortion is — or not even a distortion, a reflection
of the concern that the dictators are what matter. The population doesn’t
matter, even if it’s overwhelmingly opposed to U.S. policy. This shows up
elsewhere. There are similar things elsewhere. So, just keeping to this region,
one of the most interesting cables was a cable from the U.S. ambassador in
Israel to Hillary Clinton, which described the attack on Gaza, which we should
call a U.S.-Israeli attack on Gaza, December 2008. It states that — correctly,
that there had been a truce. It does not add that during the truce, which was
really not observed by Israel, but during the truce, Hamas scrupulously
observed it. According to the Israeli government,
not a single rocket was fired. That’s an omission. But then comes a straight lie: it says that in December 2008,
Hamas renewed rocket firing, and therefore Israel had to attack in
self-defense. Now, the ambassador surely is aware — there must be somebody
in the American embassy who reads the Israeli press, the mainstream Israeli
press, in which case the embassy is surely aware that it’s exactly the
opposite: Hamas was calling for a renewal of the ceasefire. Israel considered
the offer and rejected it, preferring to bomb rather than to have security.
Also omitted is that while Israel never observed the ceasefire, it maintained
the siege in violation of the truce agreement. On November 4th, the U.S. election, 2008, the Israeli army entered Gaza,
killed — invaded Gaza and killed half a dozen Hamas militants, which did lead
to an exchange of fire, in which all the casualties, as usual, are Palestinian.
Then in December, Hamas — when the truce officially ended, Hamas called for
renewing it. Israel refused, and the U.S. and Israel chose to launch the war.
What the embassy reported is a gross falsification and a very significant one,
since it has to do with the justification for this murderous attack, which
means either the embassy hasn’t a clue what’s going on or else they’re lying
outright.
15.
Goodman: And the latest report that just came
out from Oxfam, from Amnesty International and other groups about the effects
of the siege on Gaza, what’s happening right now?
16.
Chomsky: A siege is an act of war. If anyone
insists on that, it’s Israel. Israel launched two wars, ‘56 and ‘67, in part on
grounds that its access to the outside world was very partially restricted.
That very partial siege they considered an act of war and so justification for
— one of several justifications for what they call “preventive” or, if you
like, preemptive war. So they understand that perfectly well, and the point is
correct. The siege is a criminal act, in the first place. The Security Council
has called on Israel to lift it. Others have. It’s designed to, as Israeli
officials have stated, to keep the people of Gaza to a minimal level of
existence. They don’t want to kill them all off, because that wouldn’t look
good in international opinion, but, as they put it, “to keep them on a diet.” The
justification — this began very shortly after the official Israeli withdrawal.
There was an election in January 2006, actually the only free election in the
Arab world, carefully monitored, recognized to be free. But it had a flaw: the
wrong people won. And the U.S. — namely, Hamas, which the U.S. didn’t want and
Israel didn’t want. Instantly, within days, the U.S. and Israel instituted
harsh measures to punish the people of Gaza for voting the wrong way in a free
election. The next step was that they, the U.S. and Israel, sought to, along
with the Palestinian Authority, try to carry out a military coup in Gaza to
overthrow the elected government. This failed. Hamas beat back the coup
attempt. That was July 2007. At that point, the siege got much harsher. In
between, there were many acts of violence and shellings, invasions and so on
and so forth. But the basic — Israel claims that when the truce was established
in the summer 2008, Israel’s reason for not observing it, withdrawing the siege,
was that there’s an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who was captured at the
border. And this is — you know, international commentary regards this as a
terrible crime. Well, whatever you think about it,
capturing a soldier of an attacking army — and the army was attacking Gaza —
capturing a soldier of an attacking army isn’t anywhere near the level of crime
of kidnapping civilians. Just one day before the capture of Gilad Shalit at the
border, Israeli troops had entered Gaza, kidnapped two civilians, the Muamar
brothers, spirited them across the border. They’ve disappeared somewhere in Israel’s
prison system, which is — there are hundreds,
maybe a thousand or so, people sometimes there for years without charges. There
are also secret prisons. We don’t know what happens there. This alone is a far
worse crime than the kidnapping of Shalit. And in fact, you could argue that
there was a reason why it was barely covered. Israel has been doing this for
years, in fact decades — kidnapping, capturing people, hijacking ships, killing
people, bringing them to Israel sometimes as hostages for many years. So it’s
regular practice. But the — Israel can do what it likes. But the reaction
here and in the rest of the world of regarding the Shalit kidnapping — not
kidnapping, you don’t kidnap soldiers — the capture of a soldier as an
unspeakable crime, a justification for maintaining a murderous siege, that’s
disgraceful.
17.
Goodman: Noam, so you have Amnesty
International, Oxfam, Save the Children, eighteen other aid groups calling on
Israel to unconditionally lift the blockade of Gaza. You have in the WikiLeaks
release a U.S. diplomatic cable, provided to The Guardian by WikiLeaks, laying
out, quote, “national human intelligence collection
directive” asking U.S. personnel to obtain “details
of travel plans such as routes and vehicles used by Palestinian Authority
leaders and HAMAS members.” The cable demands “biographical,
financial, biometric information on key PA and Hamas leaders and
representatives, to include the young huard inside Gaza, the West Bank and
outside,” it says.
18.
Chomsky: That should
not come as much of a surprise. Contrary to the
image that’s portrayed here, the United States is not an honest broker. It’s a participant
in — a direct, crucial participant in Israeli crimes, both in the West Bank and
in Gaza. The attack in
Gaza was a clear case in point: used American weapons, the U.S. blocked
ceasefire efforts, gave diplomatic support. The same is true of the daily
ongoing crimes in the West Bank. We shouldn’t forget that. Actually, in Area C, the area of the West Bank that
Israel controls, conditions for Palestinians have been reported by Save the
Children to be worse than in Gaza. And again, this all takes place because of —
on the basis of crucial, decisive, U.S. military, diplomatic, economic support,
and also ideological support, meaning distorting the situation, as is done
again dramatically in the cables. The siege itself is simply criminal. It’s not
only blocking desperately needed aid from coming in, it also drives
Palestinians away from the border. Gaza is a small place, heavily, densely
overcrowded. And Israeli fire and attacks drive Palestinians away from the
arable land on the border and also drive fishermen in from Gazan territorial
waters. They’re compelled by Israeli gunboats — all illegal, of course — to
fish right near the shore, where fishing is almost impossible because Israel
has destroyed the power systems and sewage systems and the contamination is
terrible. This is just a stranglehold to punish people
for being there and for insisting on voting the wrong way and for just refusing
— Israel wants — they decided, “We don’t want this anymore. Let’s just get rid
of them.” We should also remember that U.S.-Israeli policy, since Oslo, since
early ‘90s, has been to separate Gaza from the West Bank. Now that’s in straight violation of the Oslo agreements,
but it’s been carried out systematically, and it has a big effect. It
means almost half the Palestinian population would be cut off from any possible
political arrangement that would ever be made. It also means that Palestine
loses its access to the outside world. Gaza should have and can have airports
and seaports. And the West Bank, what’s being left — I mean, right now Israel
has taken over about 40 percent of the West Bank. Obama’s latest offers granted
even more, and they’re certainly planning to take more. And what’s left is just
cantonized. It’s what the planner, Ariel Sharon, called Bantustans. And they’re
imprisoned, too, as Israel takes over the Jordan Valley, drives Palestinians
out. So, these are all crimes of a piece. The Gaza
siege is particularly grotesque because of the conditions under which people
are forced to live. I mean, if a young
person in Gaza, a student in Gaza, let’s say, wants to study in a West Bank
university, they can’t do it. If a person in Gaza needs advanced medical []treatment
from an East Jerusalem hospital where the training is available, they can’t go.
Medicines are held back. I mean, it’s a scandalous crime all around
Gaza.
19.
Goodman: What do you think the United States
should do in this case?
20.
Chomsky: What the United
States should do is very simple: it should join the world. I mean, there
are negotiations going on, supposedly. They’re
presented here as — the standard picture is the U.S. is an honest broker
trying to bring together two recalcitrant opponents — Israel, Palestinian Authority. That’s just a charade. I mean, if there
were serious negotiations, they would be organized by some neutral party, and
the U.S. and Israel would be on one side, and the world would be on the other
side. And that is not an exaggeration. It
shouldn’t be a secret that there has long been an overwhelming international
consensus on a diplomatic political solution. Everyone knows the basic outline.
Some details, you can argue about. And it includes everyone except the
United States and Israel. The U.S. has been blocking it
for 35 years, with occasional departures, brief ones. It includes the
Arab League. It includes the Organization of Islamic States, which happens to
include Iran. It includes every relevant actor except the United States and
Israel, the two rejectionist states. So if there were to be negotiations that
were serious, that’s the way they would be organized. The actual negotiations
barely reach the level of comedy. The issue that’s being debated is a footnote,
minor footnote: expansion of settlements. Of course it’s illegal. In fact,
everything that Israel is doing in the West Bank and Gaza is illegal. That’s
been —- it hasn’t even been controversial since 1967 -—
21.
Goodman: Noam, we have to break, but —
22.
Chomsky: — when Israel’s own highest legal —
yes.
23.
Goodman: We’re going to come back to this in
a minute. Noam Chomsky, author and Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT, as we
talk about WikiLeaks and the state of the world today. This is Democracy Now!
Back in a minute.
24.
[break]
25.
Goodman: Our guest is Noam Chomsky,
world-renowned dissident, author of more than a hundred books, speaking to us
from Boston. Noam, you wrote a piece after the midterm elections called “Outrage Misguided.” I want to read for you now
what Sarah Palin tweeted, the former Alaskan governor, of course, and
Republication vice-presidential nominee. This is what she tweeted about
WikiLeaks. Rather, she put it on Facebook. She said, “First and foremost, what
steps were taken to stop WikiLeaks director Julian Assange from distributing
this highly sensitive classified material especially after he had already
published material not once but twice in the previous months? Assange is not a ‘journalist,’
any more than the ‘editor’ of the al Qaeda’s new English-language magazine
Inspire is a ‘journalist.’ He is an anti-American operative with blood on his
hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more
than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same
urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?” Noam Chomsky, your response?
26.
Chomsky: That’s
pretty much what I would expect Sarah Palin to say. I don’t know how much she understands, but I think we should
pay attention to what we learn from the leaks. What we learn, for
example, is the kinds of things I’ve said. The most — perhaps the most dramatic
revelation is the — I’ve already mentioned — the bitter hatred of democracy that is
revealed both by the U.S. government — Hillary Clinton, others — and also by
the diplomatic service. To tell the world, to tell — they’re talking to
each other — to pretend to each other that the Arab world regards Iran as the major
threat and wants the U.S. to bomb Iran is extremely revealing, when they know
that approximately 80 percent of Arab opinion regards the U.S. and Israel as
the major threat, 10 percent regard Iran as the major threat, and a majority,
57 percent, think the region would be better off with Iranian nuclear weapons
as a kind of deterrent. That doesn’t even enter. All
that enters is what they claim has been said by Arab dictators, brutal Arab
dictators. That’s what counts. How
representative this is of what they say, we don’t know, because we don’t know
what the filtering is. But that’s a minor point. The major point is that the population is irrelevant. All that matters is
the opinions of the dictators that we support. And if they were to back us, that’s
the Arab world. That’s a very revealing picture
of the mentality of U.S. political leadership, and presumably elite opinion.
Judging by the commentary that’s appeared here, that’s the way it’s been
presented in the press, as well.
27.
Goodman: Your piece —
28.
Chomsky: It doesn’t matter with the Arabs
believe. Yeah, sorry.
29.
Goodman: Your piece, “Outrage Misguided,” back
to the midterm elections and what we’re going to see now — can you talk about
the Tea Party movement?
30.
Chomsky: Well, the Tea Party movement itself is
maybe 15, 20 percent of the electorate. It’s relatively affluent, white,
nativist. You know, it has rather traditional nativist streaks to it. But what
is much more important, I think, is the — is its outrage. I mean, over half the
population says they more or less support it or support its message. And what
people are thinking is extremely interesting. I mean,
overwhelmingly, polls reveal that people are extremely bitter, angry, hostile,
opposed to everything. The primary cause undoubtedly is the economic disaster.
It’s not just a financial catastrophe, it’s an economic disaster. I mean, in
manufacturing industry, for example, unemployment levels are at the level of
the Great Depression. And unlike the Great Depression, those jobs are not
coming back. U.S. owners and managers have long ago made the decision that they
can make more profit with complicated financial deals than by production. So,
finance — this goes back to the ‘70s, mainly Reagan escalated it, and onward —
Clinton, too. The economy has been financialized. Financial institutions
have grown enormously in their share of corporate profits. It may be something
like a third or something like that today. At the same time, correspondingly,
production has been exported. So you buy some electronic device from China.
China is an assembly plant for a Northeast Asian production center. The parts
and components come from the more advanced countries, and from the United
States, and the technology. So, yes, that’s a cheap place to assemble things,
sell them back here. And it’s, you know, rather similar in Mexico, Vietnam and
so on. That’s the way to make profits. It destroys the society here, but that’s
not the concern of the ownership class and the managerial class. Their concern is profit. That’s what drives the economy. And
the rest of it is a fallout. People are extremely bitter about it but
don’t seem to understand it. So, the same people
who are a majority, who say that Wall Street is to blame for the current
crisis, are voting Republican. Both parties are deep in the pockets of
Wall Street, but the Republicans much more so than the Democrats. And the same
is true on issue after issue. So the antagonism to everyone is extremely high.
Actually, antagonism — they don’t like — population doesn’t like Democrats, but
they hate Republicans even more. They’re against big business. They’re against
government. They’re against Congress. They’re against science.
31.
Goodman: We only have 30 seconds, Noam. Noam,
we only have 30 seconds. I wanted ask if you were President Obama’s top
adviser, what would you tell him to do right now?
32.
Chomsky: I would tell him to do what FDR did
when big business was opposed to him: help, organize, stimulate public
opposition and put through a serious populist program, which can be done.
Stimulate the economy. Don’t give away everything to financiers. Push through
real health reform. The health reform that was
pushed through may be a slight improvement, but it leaves the major problem
untouched. If you’re worried about the deficit,
pay attention to the fact that it’s almost all attributable to military
spending and the totally dysfunctional health program.
33.
Goodman: We’re going to leave it there, but
we’ll continue the conversation after and post it online at democracynow.org.
I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.
34.
Goodman: Noam, you’re continuing your
prescription, your advice that you would give to President Obama today.
35.
Chomsky: Well, the economy is a disaster. There
is 10 percent official unemployment, probably twice that much actual
unemployment. Many people unemployed for years. This is a huge human tragedy,
but it’s also an economic tragedy. These are unused resources, which could be
producing to make the things that this country needs. I mean, the United States
is becoming a kind of a third world country. You
take a — the other day, I took a train from Boston to New York. That’s, you
know, the star of the trains of Amtrak, train system. I mean, it took about
maybe 20 minutes less than the train that my wife and I took 60 years ago from
Boston to New York. In any European country, any
industrial country, it would have taken half the time. Plenty of non-industrial
countries. Spain is not a super-rich country. It’s just introducing a
200-mile-an-hour new railway. And this is just one example. The United
States desperately needs many things: decent infrastructure, a decent
educational system, much more pay and support for teachers, all kinds of
things. And the policies that are being carried out are designed to enrich
primarily financial institutions. And remember that
many of the major corporations like, say, GE and GM are also financial
institutions. It’s a large part of their
activity. It’s very unclear that these financial shenanigans do anything for
the economy. There are some economists finally, mainstream ones, finally
beginning to raise this question. They may harm it, in fact. But what they do
is enrich rich people, and that’s where policies are directed to. An
alternative would be to stimulate the economy. There is no — demand is very
low. Business — the corporations have money coming out of their ears, their
huge profits. But they don’t want to spend it, don’t want to invest it. They’d
rather profit from it. Financial institutions don’t produce anything. They just shift
money around and make money from various deals. The public is some
consumer demand, but it’s very slight. We have to remember that there was an $8
trillion housing bubble that burst, destroying the assets for most people. They’re
desperately trying to keep a little to save themselves. The only source of
demand right now would be government spending. It doesn’t even have to affect
the deficit, can be carried out by borrowing by the Fed, which sends interest
right back to the Treasury. If anyone cares about the deficit, which is
actually a minor issue, I think, that should be the major issue. There should
be massive infrastructure spending. There should be spending on things — simple
things like weatherization. I mean, we should have a substantial program to
reduce the very severe threat of global warming. That’s unfortunately unlikely
with the new Republican legislators and with the effects of the massive
corporate propaganda to try to convince people that it’s a liberal hoax. The
latest polls show about maybe a third of Americans think that —- believe in
anthropogenic global warming, you know, human contribution to global warming. I
mean, that’s almost a death knell for the species. If the U.S. doesn’t do
anything, nobody else will. We now have chairs going into the -—
36.
Goodman: Noam, what do you think of the U.N.
climate change summit that’s taking place in Cancún?
37.
Chomsky: Well, the
Copenhagen summit was a disaster. Nothing happened. This one, Cancún, has set its sights much lower, in the hope
of at least achieving something. But let’s say they achieve all their
goals, which is very unlikely. It’ll still be a toothpick on a mountain. There are much more serious problems behind
it. We’re now facing a situation where the House, relevant House committees —
science, technology, energy and so on — are being taken over by climate change
deniers. In fact, one of them recently said, “We don’t have to worry about it,
because God will take care of it.” Well, you know, this is — it’s unbelievable
that this is happening in the richest, most powerful country in the world. That’s
one major area where there should be substantial changes and improvements. If
not, there’s not going to be anything much more to talk about in a generation
or two. Others include just reconstructing the economy here so that people get
back to work, that they can produce things that the country needs, that they
can live decent lives. All of that can be done. The resources are there; the
policies aren’t.
38.
Goodman: Noam, you know, when you look at the
new Congress — I’m reading from The New Yorker, “Darrell Issa, a Republican
representative from California, is one of the richest men in Congress. He made
his money selling car alarms, which is interesting, because he has twice been
accused of auto theft. ([Issa has] said that he had a ‘colorful youth.’) Now,
with the Republicans about to take control of the House, Issa is poised to
become [the chairman] of the Oversight Committee. The post comes with
wide-ranging subpoena powers, and Issa has already indicated how he plans to
wield them. He is not, he assured a group of Pennsylvania Republicans over the
summer, interested in digging around for the sort of information that might
embarrass his fellow-zillionaires: [he said,] ‘I won’t use it to have corporate
America live in fear.’ Instead, he wants to go where he sees the real
malfeasance. He wants to investigate climate scientists. At the top of his list
are the long-suffering researchers whose e-mails were hacked last year from the
computer system of Britain’s University of East Anglia. Though their work has
been the subject of three separate ‘Climategate’ inquiries — all of which found
that allegations of data manipulation were unfounded — Issa isn’t satisfied.
[He said recently,] ‘We’re going to want to have a do-over.’”
39.
Chomsky: Yeah. That’s
part of the massive offensive, basically a corporate offensive. And they haven’t
been quiet about it, like the Chamber of Commerce, biggest business lobby,
American Petroleum Institute and others have said quite publicly that they’re
carrying out a massive, what they call “educational campaign” to convince the
population that global warming isn’t real. And it’s having an effect. You can see it even in the way the media present it. So you read, say, a New York Times discussion of climate
change. They have to be objective, present both sides, so one side is 98
percent of qualified scientists, and the other side is Issa and Senator Inhofe
and a couple of climate change skeptics. There,
notice, also missing is a third side, namely, a very substantial number of
leading scientists who say that the consensus is nowhere near alarmist enough,
that in fact the situation is much worse. Well, you know, the United States is
now — it has been dragging its feet on this for a long time, and it’s now much
worse. I mean, there was just recently — a couple days ago, there was a
report of an analysis of green technology production. It turns out China is in
the lead, Germany is next, Spain is high up there. The United States is one of
the lowest. In fact, investment from the United States in green technology is
higher in China — I think twice as high in China — than in the United States —
than it is in the United States and Europe combined. I mean, these are real
social pathologies, exacerbated by the latest election, but just one aspect of
where policy is going totally in the wrong direction, where there are
significant alternatives, and if they’re not pursued, there could be real
disaster, and maybe not too far off.
40.
Goodman: I’d like to switch gears for a minute,
Noam Chomsky, and talk about the elections in Haiti that just took place.
41.
Chomsky: “Elections,” you should put in quotation
marks. If we had elections in the
United States in which the Democratic and Republican parties were barred and
their political leaders were exiled to South Africa and not allowed to return
to the United States, we wouldn’t consider them serious elections. But that’s exactly what happened in Haiti. The major
political party is barred. As we know, the United States and France essentially invaded
Haiti in 2004, kidnapped the president, sent him off to Central Africa. His party
is now banned. Most analysts assume that, as in the past, if it was allowed
to run, it would probably win the election. President — or former President
Aristide is, by all information available, the most popular political figure in
Haiti. Not only is he not allowed to run, by essentially the U.S., but not
allowed to return. They’ve been trying to keep him out of the hemisphere. Can’t
go back to Haiti, but the U.S. has been trying to keep him out of the
hemisphere altogether. What’s taken place is a kind of a charade. I mean, it’s
not nothing. You know, Haitians are trying to express themselves. We should
respect that. But the major choices that they might have are barred by foreign
power, U.S. power, and France, which is the second of the two historic torturers
of Haiti.
42.
Goodman: Honduras. Actually, interestingly, in
these cables that have come out through the WikiLeaks release is a U.S.
diplomatic cable from 2008 that says exactly what the U.S. government would not
say publicly, that the coup against Manuel Zelaya was outright illegal. Your
response, Noam Chomsky?
43.
Chomsky: Yeah, that’s right. This is an analysis
by the embassy in Honduras, Tegucigalpa, saying that they’ve done a careful
analysis of the legal and constitutional backgrounds and conclude — you can
read their summary, which is a conclusion — that there is no doubt that the
coup was illegal and unconstitutional. The government
of Washington, as you point out, wouldn’t say that. And in fact, after some
dithering, Obama finally essentially recognized the legitimacy of the coup. He
supported the election taking place under the coup regime, which most of Latin
America and Europe refused to recognize at all. But the U.S. did it. In fact,
the U.S. ambassador publicly accused the Latin Americans who wouldn’t go along
as being seduced by magic realism, you know, García Márquez’s novels or
something, just a statement of contempt. They should go along with us
and support the military coup, which is illegal and unconstitutional. And has
many effects. One effect was that it preserves for
the United States a major air base, the Palmerola Air Base, one of the last
ones remaining in Latin America. We’ve been kicked out of all the others.
44.
Goodman: Noam, I have two questions, and we only
have two minutes left. One is about North Korea. The WikiLeaks documents show
Chinese diplomats saying that Chinese officials increasingly doubt the
usefulness of neighboring North Korea and would support reunification. The
significance of this?
45.
Chomsky: I’m very skeptical about that
statement. There is no indication that China would be willing to have U.S.
troops on its border, and that’s the very likely outcome of a reunified Korea. They’ve been bitterly objecting to U.S. naval maneuvers in
the Yellow Sea, not far from their coast, what they call their economic
territorial waters, and expanding U.S. military forces near their borders is
the last thing they want. They may feel — I don’t know — that North Korea
simply is unviable, and it will have to collapse, and that’s a terrible problem
for them from many points of view. That I don’t know. But I’m pretty skeptical
about that leak.
46.
Goodman: Finally, Noam, your latest book, Hopes
and Prospects, what gives you hope?
47.
Chomsky: Well, the “hopes” part of that book is
mostly about South America, where there really have been significant, dramatic
changes in the past decade. For the first time in 500
years, the South American countries have been moving towards integration, which
is a prerequisite for independence, and have begun to face some of their really
desperate internal problems. A huge disparity between islands of extreme wealth
and massive poverty — a number of the countries, including the leading one,
Brazil, have chipped away at that.
48.
Goodman: We have ten seconds.
49.
Chomsky: And Bolivia has
been quite dramatic with the takeover by the indigenous population in a major
democratic election. These are important facts.
50.
Goodman: Noam Chomsky, thanks so much for
being with us. Oh, by the way, happy birthday, pre-birthday.
51.
Chomsky: Thanks.
52.
Goodman: Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at
MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of over a hundred books, his
latest called Hopes and Prospects.
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