OCCUPY THE PLANET

The planet has gone downhill, mainly with our help. However, we can say a few things about it.

Turkey and Iran have exchanged prisoners with Syria’s help. Meanwhile, we attempt to do to Syria the same as with Libya, except there is no oil to get out of it. As in Libya, terrorists are setting off bombs against the government. Al-Mara claimed responsibility for the last one which was conveniently overlooked by the corporate press here. We continued in Libya until Gaddafi was essentially sodomized to death. This is a departure from the West’s new policy of simply assassinating people it doesn’t like. Previously, we captured them and then tortured them.

The “Indignants” or “Indignati,” are demonstrating in Spain and Spain will go the way of Greece and France.

Ah yes, a Socialist is now running France. Sounds evil, does it not? At least in our corporate press. Don’t worry, Hollande, pronounced “Alon” in English is pretty mild. His main asset so far is that he is not Sarkozy. The presumed Socialist candidate was Dominic Strauss-Kahn, not very French sounding a name. Many accused Sarkozy of engineering his disgrace in order to maintain his position, but all it did was narrow the amount of his utter and disgracing defeat and still causing rejoicing throughout the world.

Greece was an example of the popular opinion of “austerity,” as we like to call it, or enforced poverty for the 99% to be accurate.

If the birth rate continues as it is, the Japanese will become extinct in a thousand years. I do remember the year predicted is 3011. This is a result of shutting down the nuclear power plants and better health care.

Obama says he is in favor of Gay marriage and this has led to a great deal of coverage and confusion. Some say it is because of contributions, and that would make him Gay for Pay. A headline said “Obama First Gay President,” and this confused Michelle.

If you are interested, a series on Showtime is excellent. The Borgias does a great job of showing what a kindly, generous, and idealistic gentleman Casere Borgia really was, in spite of all the propaganda of history.

Anyway, Noam Chomsky continues to impress. This latest covers just about everything. And it has some great lines in it. I tried to listen or watch, but the interview was conducted in an outdoors courtyard, so the transcript is the easiest to follow anyway. One great line is the description of Scott Brown’s campaign in Mass. “I’m Scott Brown. Here’s my truck.” Hey, it won him the election over the lazy Democrat who took election for granted. An Independent is running to the left of Warren, but he is hard to keep up with as the number of his tweets became overwhelming.

Palestine, Wikileaks, Occupy:

Monday, May 14, 2012

Noam Chomsky: Palestinian Hunger Strike a Protest Against "Violations of Elementary Human Rights"

We begin our hour-long interview with world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky by discussing the Palestinian hunger strike. A tentative deal has reportedly been reached to end a landmark action that’s seen an estimated 2,000 jailed Palestinians go without food to pressure Israeli prison authorities to end the use of solitary confinement and ease a wide range of restrictions. "The hunger strikes are a protest against ... violations of the elementary human rights," Chomsky says. He is Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of dozens of books, most recently, "Occupy." [includes rush transcript]

Filed under Noam Chomsky, Palestine, Author Interviews, Human Rights

Guest:

Noam Chomsky, author and Professor Emeritus of linguistics and philosophy at MIT, where he taught for over half a century. He is author of dozens of books, most recently, Occupy, part of the Occupied Media Pamphlet Series. He was recently awarded the Latin America Peace and Justice Award from the North American Congress on Latin America.

Noam Chomsky on WikiLeaks, Obama’s Targeted Assassinations and Latin America’s Break from the U.S. May 14, 2012 | Story
Chomsky: Occupy Wall Street "Has Created Something That Didn’t Really Exist" in U.S. — Solidarity May 14, 2012 | Story
Part 2: Human Rights Watch’s Kenneth Roth on Palestinian Prisoners, Saudi Arabia’s Role in Bahrain May 08, 2012 | Web Exclusive
From Prison to Parliament: Burma Pro-Democracy Leader Aung San Suu Kyi Wins Seat in Landmark Vote Apr 02, 2012 | Story
As Calls for Intervention in Syria Grow, Vijay Prashad Urges Reevaluation of NATO Attack on Libya Feb 21, 2012 | Story

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Noam Chomsky on WikiLeaks, Obama’s Targeted Assassinations and Latin America’s Break from the U.S. (5/14/2012)

Rush Transcript

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Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: Today we spend the hour with world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, Noam Chomsky. I interviewed him last week here in New York at the 45th anniversary celebration of NACLA, the North American Congress on Latin America. Chomsky was this year’s winner of the Latin America Peace and Justice Award. NACLA said they gave him the honor because, quote, "Chomsky’s work has influenced generations of concerned citizens who are committed to social justice in the Americas." Also honored was the Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, who founded the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity after his son was murdered last year in the drug war in Mexico. Visit democracynow.org for our two-part interview with the renowned Mexican poet, Javier Sicilia.
Noam Chomsky is author of more than a hundred books, most recently, Occupy. He is Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than half a century.
I began our interview by asking Noam Chomsky about the approximately 2,000 Palestinian prisoners who have been on hunger strike since April 17th. Representatives of the prisoners have reportedly reached a tentative agreement with Israel that could end the strike. Many of the Palestinian prisoners are being held by Israel without charge under a procedure known as "administrative detention." The strike is intended to pressure Israeli prison authorities to end the use of solitary confinement and ease a wide range of restrictions. We did the interview in a courtyard outside a building at New York University. I asked Professor Chomsky to comment on the Palestinian hunger strike.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Among the many atrocities going on in the Occupied Territories, one of them is administrative detention, and another is very harsh, punitive prison conditions. Israel acknowledges several hundred prisoners under administrative detention. There’s basically no inspection, so we don’t know. Some of them have been there for years. That means no charges, just suspected of something and locked up, some of them over and over again. And the hunger strikes are a protest against these violations of elementary human rights and of law, in fact.

AMY GOODMAN: Overall, the situation in the West Bank and Gaza?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, Gaza remains a prison. It’s completely under siege. I mean, Egypt has opened up a little of the borders, so there’s some entry up and back, but basically it’s the same as it’s been for years. They can’t export their produce. They can’t have a live economy. The Israeli navy pretty much bars fishing. The place is—nothing can be reconstructed, because you can’t bring any construction material. I mean, there is in fact wealth, through the tunnel system, but which has enriched, you know, kind of entrepreneurs, if you want to call them that. It’s a small sector of the population. But most of them are living under kind of a forced hunger strike. The way the Israeli officials put it a couple years ago is pretty accurate: we don’t want to kill them all, as it won’t look good, but we’ll keep them on a diet, so just at a survival level. A very young population, no future, can’t get out. It’s, in a way, not unlike the refugee camps in Lebanon, which are—they’re not torture chambers, but the hopelessness and the—when you go through them, you see kids playing in the dirt, and you know they’re going to be there all their lives, and their children are going to be there all their lives. They’ll never get out. That’s what Gaza is like.

The West Bank is being—the U.S. and Israel have a plan. They’re slowly implementing it: systematically take over whatever is of value in the West Bank. And it’s clear what it is; it’s never been a secret. The structure has been entirely obvious. Just go step by step. So you take over everything within the means, annex ultimately, the illegal annexation—they call it a separation wall; actually, an annexation wall—that includes much of the arable land, water resources, the pleasant suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and so on. So, take that over. Take over the Jordan Valley, where Palestinians are being slowly driven out and Israeli settlements are being built and, you know, hundreds of wells are being sunk and so on, more arable land. That basically imprisons what’s left. And in the region that’s left, about over half is essentially Israeli territory area C, and the Palestinians virtually no access to it. And there are salients cut through—first of all, Jerusalem itself is far larger than Jerusalem ever was, and it’s been annexed—illegally, of course, even in violation of Security Council orders. So there’s this vastly expanded greater Jerusalem, which includes East Jerusalem.

To the east of that is a salient going to a town founded in the '70s, but mainly constructed under Clinton in the ’90s, Ma'ale Adumim. Its borders reach virtually Jericho, kind of bisects the West Bank. And if you go further north, there are a couple of other salients, which cut what’s left into unviable cantons, what Ariel Sharon, the architect of the policy, he honestly—he called them "bantustans," which is not quite accurate, because South Africa relied on the black labor, so they took care of the bantustans, just kind of the way slave owners took care of slaves—they’re your kind of capital; you’ve got to keep them going, let them reproduce and so on—and they also hoped that the bantustans would be recognized by other countries, so they sort of, more or less, kept them viable. But Israel has absolutely no interest in the Palestinians. They can—you know, if they disappear, that’s just fine. So, they’re kind of left in these cantons. There’s major infrastructure developments. I mean, an Israeli or an American tourist can go from, say, Ma’ale Adumim to Tel Aviv on superhighways. No Palestinians, of course. Maybe you see a man with a goat up in the distance, a kind of biblical landscape. But that’s the direction it’s moving.

AMY GOODMAN: So what do you think needs to happen?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, what needs to happen is very straightforward. I mean, there are a lot of complex problems in the world where it’s hard to think of the solution, like, say, Kashmir or eastern Congo—try to figure out a solution, it’s not so easy. But Israel-Palestine, it’s transparent. There’s been an overwhelming international consensus, for about 35 years, on the basic structure of a settlement, a two-state settlement, international border, means pre-June '67 border, maybe some—to use official U.S. terminology, when the U.S. was still part of the world back in the early ’70s, "with minor and mutual adjustments," so straighten out the ceasefire line, and then various arrangements made for other issues. That's the basic structure. Actually, that came to the U.N. Security Council in 1976. It was brought by the major Arab states. It was vetoed by the United States, vetoed again in 1980. I won’t run through the rest of the story, but there’s been consistent barring of a political settlement by U.S. rejectionism. And until that changes, nothing much is going to change.

AMY GOODMAN: So what do you think of the BDS movement, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I think BDS is a very valuable tactic. I’d be a little cautious when it comes to be a movement. So, for example, if you go back to South Africa, BDS was used, and used effectively, but there was never a BDS movement. A movement begins to mean, you know, we’ve got a plan and a commitment, principles you have to adhere to, we apply the tactics without considering the consequences, and so on. Now, BDS, as a tactic, can be very effective. And in the case of South Africa, if you take a look, it was effective and targeted. So, for example, there was no boycott of universities, but there were boycotts insofar as they had racial hiring practices. There were boycotts of sports teams for the same reason. Also, it’s important to remember that boycott, divestment, sanctions began significantly, in the case of South Africa, after decades of preparation. By the time these tactics began, there was no support for apartheid anywhere in the world. Congress was passing sanctions legislation. The U.N. had imposed an arms embargo. And in fact, if you look through the ’80s—this is when the tactics were used—the Reagan administration had to violate congressional sanctions in order to keep supporting South Africa as it did.

And it’s interesting to remember why the United States supported South Africa: it was part of the war on terror. George Bush didn’t start the war—declare the war on terror, he re-declared it. Reagan declared it in 1981, very frankly and openly. Nobody likes to talk about it because of the horrors that emerged, but it’s true. And in 1988, for example, the African National Congress, Mandela’s ANC, was declared to be one of the more notorious terrorist groups in the world, so we naturally had to support white nationalists against this horrible terrorist force. It was 1988. By that time, overwhelming opposition to apartheid. And in fact, U.S. policy did change in the next couple of years. And when U.S. policy changed, the system collapsed. What came out of it is not very beautiful, by any means, but at least apartheid collapsed. But—and that could happen in this case, too. In fact, as I’m sure you know, Mandela himself was just removed from the terrorist list about two years ago. He can now come to the United States without special dispensation.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Noam Chomsky. We’ll continue the discussion with him, as he addresses WikiLeaks, the militarization of police in the United States, and the historical significance of Occupy Wall Street, but he’ll begin by talking about President Obama, in a moment.

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Rush Transcript

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: We return to my conversation with the activist, scholar, author, Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I asked for his assessment of President Obama’s presidency.

NOAM CHOMSKY: In many ways, it’s a little worse than what I expected, but I didn’t expect anything. After I wrote about Obama before the primaries, just looking at his webpage—so, take the Middle East. Take a look at his webpage before the primaries. A lot of stuff about the Middle East. Most of it is how—you know, his undying love for Israel, which just, you know, overcomes everything else. There’s almost no mention of the Palestinians—I mean, a phrase. This was, remember, the time—this was right after the last—the last of the Israeli invasions of Lebanon—actually, the fifth—in 2006. And one of the things he’s proud of about the Middle East and he boasted about is that, he says—in fact, he did very little in the Senate. But one of the things that he did was co-sponsor a resolution in the midst of the war, insisting that the United States do nothing that might impede the Israeli attack on Lebanon until it reaches its objectives, and censuring Syria and Iran because they’re allegedly supporting the resistance to the Israeli attack. That’s his one great achievement with regard to the Middle East. So nothing that’s happened there is any surprise.

With regard to other issues, he was, as he himself put it sometimes, a kind of a blank slate, didn’t say anything. There was vague talk about all kind of nice things. I don’t usually admire Sarah Palin, but when she was making fun of this "hopey-changey" stuff, she was—she was right. There was nothing there. And it was understood by the people who run the political system. So it’s no great secret that the U.S. electoral system is mainly public relations extravaganzas. They keep away from issues. It’s sort of a marketing affair, and the people who run it are the advertisers. And they had their national convention right after the 2008 election, and it revealed that they understood perfectly what was going on. They gave Obama the award for the best marketing campaign of the year. And if you go to the business press, they were reporting how executives were really excited. I mean, we have this new model as to how to, you know, delude people, enacted in the—we used to use the Reagan model, now we can use the Obama model for our delusional systems that we construct, which is pretty much what the PR industry is about. So, that captured it properly.

I mean, he’s—there are a couple of things that he did that are, I think—he had a couple good appointments to the NLRB, National Labor Relations Board. There are a few actions here and there that, you know, you can kind of clap.

AMY GOODMAN: He just announced his support of same-sex marriage, first U.S. president to do that.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, not quite. Yes, he did, but he said it has to go to the states. So, a states’ rights version. That kind of means that states can do what they like. He said something.

AMY GOODMAN: And 30 states have constitutional amendments against same-sex marriage.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Another one just a couple of days ago, yeah. But, I mean, you know, I’m glad he said it, but it’s a pretty safe stand.

Labor—there was a huge effort by the labor movement to get him into office. The first thing he did was kick them in the face, the no card check. In fact, what happened with the health program was quite interesting, because, you know, of course, there was a very important senatorial election in—must have been January 2010, after Senator Kennedy died—in Massachusetts, liberal state. And what was at stake was not just Kennedy’s position, but the filibuster-proof majority, which was quite critical. Well, the Democrats lost that election, which was pretty dramatic. And if—that was carefully analyzed. One of the main—there was, first of all, a ton of money pouring in to support the Republican candidate, who was a kind of a vacuum. I don’t know if you followed it. "I’m Scott Brown. Here’s my truck." You know, that was the campaign. But what was quite interesting was the—and in the suburbs, more or less affluent suburbs, voting was pretty high. In the downtown areas, the urban areas, where the working class and poor people live, voting was quite low. And what was quite interesting was the union vote, which was analyzed. Union members, the majority of them, voted against—well, for the Republican, meaning against Obama. Why? That was investigated, too. They were furious. They had worked really hard to put Obama into office. He broke all his promises to them.

But furthermore, the health plan—one of the promises was there would be some kind of national healthcare. And he could have—I think he could have achieved that. For example, support for the public option was about three to two, I think. If he made any effort, he could have gotten it through. But not only did he not put that through, but the one thing that he insisted on was cutting back what were called "Cadillac health plans," that actually should be called "Chevrolet health plans." And those are the health plans that union workers had fought for, for years. You look at the history of the American labor movement, it’s kind of abandoned all sorts of things all along the way—you know, the rights of workers in the workplace, all kinds of things. But it insisted—it did make one gain: it made a compact with management, a contract that they’d get good benefits—all benefits for themselves, not for the country. Of course, a compact like that lasts only as long as business decides to keep it. I mean, give it up, it’s over. But they did have reasonable health plans for themselves. Those are the Cadillac health plans. So the one thing Obama wanted to do was to kill the health plans that they had sacrificed for and fought for for 50 years, giving up plenty of other things in the struggle. And they were pretty angry about it, and understandably.

And I think if you look at other constituencies, it’s approximately the same. Take, say, environmental issues. I mean, you know, his attitude toward the tar sands and the fracking, the XL pipeline, is characteristic. So, in his State of the Union address, last State of the Union address, he emphasized the fact that we’re in a great position. We have maybe a hundred years of energy independence ahead of us using these methods, which are going to destroy the environment. So, who knows what things will be like in a hundred years? Maybe unlivable. But that’s—but it sounded nice. "I’ll put off the decision for a couple months and just have the southern part of the pipeline built, not the part that crosses the border." That’ll come next, when you’re not looking. But it’s been that way on issue after issue.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, it’s under President Obama, or you might say because of President Obama, that the Occupy movement has blossomed in this country. Talk about the significance of Occupy.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the Occupy movement is—it was a big surprise. You know, if anybody asked me a year ago, "Is this possible?" I would have said, "It’s crazy. Don’t even try." But it lit a spark, took off. There are now Occupy movements in thousands of American cities, spread overseas. I was in Australia recently, went to the Occupy movement in Sydney, in Melbourne. There’s one in Hong Kong. You know, everywhere. And there are parallel movements in Europe.

It’s the first—and it’s very significant, I think. Already in—it’s only been around for a couple of months, so, you know, you can’t talk about huge achievements. But there are two kinds of the achievements which I think are—have already had an effect that probably is permanent, but anyway significant. One is, they just changed the national discourse. So, issues that had been, you know, marginalized—they’re familiar, but you didn’t talk about them—like inequality, shredding of the democratic process, you know, financial corruption, environmental issues, all these things, they became—they moved to the center of discussion. In fact, you can even see it from the imagery that’s used. You read about the 99 percent and the 1 percent in the considerable press of the business press. That’s just changed the way lots of people are looking at things. In fact, the polls show that concern over inequality among the general public rose pretty sharply after the Occupy movement started, very probably as a consequence. And there are other policy issues that came to the fore, which are significant.

The other aspect, which in my estimation may be more significant, is that the Occupy movement spontaneously created something that doesn’t really exist in the country: communities of mutual support, cooperation, open spaces for discussion. They just developed a health system, a library, a common kitchen—just people doing things and helping each other. That’s very much missing. There is a massive propaganda—it’s been going on for a century, but picking up enormously—that you really shouldn’t care about anyone else, you should just care about yourself. You pay attention to yourself; we don’t want anything else. You take a look at the attitudes among young people, that’s—it’s polled, it’s studied. It’s remarkably high. So, there was just a study that came out from the Harvard Public Policy Institute, found that—pretty scary results, I thought. Less than—this is kids 18 to 24, you know, college students, basically. Less than half of them think that the government has a responsibility to deal with things like healthcare or food, and so on. When they say the government doesn’t have a responsibility, that’s kind of an interesting concept. If people thought they were living in a democracy, they would say—they would ask the question whether it’s a public responsibility. But again, the propaganda system is designed to make you feel that the government is some alien force, and it’s against you. You know, you want to keep it away from your affairs.

In a democratic society, it would be quite different. Like, you can see it on April 15th. And a good measure of the extent to which a democratic system is functioning is how people feel about taxes. If you had a functioning democratic society, April 15th would be a day of celebration. It’s the day on which we get together and fund the policies that we’ve decided on and that we’ve gotten our representatives to approve of. It’s not what it is here. It’s a day of mourning, because this alien force is coming to steal things from you. Well, that’s the kind of thing that the Occupy movement began to break. It said, "Yeah, we’re in it together." That’s what the old labor movement used to be. I mean, I can remember, as a kid in the '30s, when the situation was objectively much worse. But then, my family was mostly unemployed working-class here in New York. But there was a sense of hopefulness, largely because of labor organizing, which not only provided benefits to the people involved, but also made them part of something in which we can work together. The term "solidarity" wasn't just a vacuous term. And to rebuild that kind of thing, even if it’s in small pieces of the society, can become very important, can change the conception of how a society ought to function.

AMY GOODMAN: There’s this whole issue of the Posse Comitatus, which most people agree with this act, that U.S. soldiers should not be marching in the streets of the United States. But do you think authorities are getting around this now by militarizing the police, the kind of response we’re seeing to the Occupy encampments all over this country and—well, we’ll see what happens as the protests build around the Democratic and Republican conventions, NATO, that’s happening in Chicago, and beyond?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, power systems don’t say "thank you" and disappear. Of course they’re going to respond. And they’ll respond in various ways. I mean, what’s happening now is wrong, but we ought to bear in mind that it’s nothing like what happened in the recent past. So, for example, we don’t have COINTELPRO. Remember, not many years ago, the national political police, the FBI, was organizing Gestapo-style assassinations of organizers, like Fred Hampton, totally undermined the New Left. They tried to destroy the women’s movement. They were all over the place. That’s—mostly the black movements were just pulverized by government repression. Well, what’s happening now is bad, but it’s not that. And sure, but there’s going to be responses.

And that’s not the only case, after all. I mean, the part—you’re looking at Obama’s programs, the part that really did surprise me—and I don’t, frankly, understand it—is his attack on civil liberties, which is extreme. He’s gone beyond Bush. Some of the worst cases aren’t even discussed, like one—I think one of the worst cases is the Supreme Court case, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, which was initiated by the Obama administration, brought to the court by the administration, argued for the government by Elena Kagan, you know, his latest Supreme Court appointee. And if you look at the decision, it was kind of welcomed by the—even the right-wing justices didn’t accept all of it, but they accepted part of it. The crucial—at issue was whether this group, Humanitarian Law Project, was criminally liable for giving material support to a terrorist group. The material support in question was legal advice to the PKK, a Turkish group, giving them legal advice. That was material support. You read the wording, you and I, many people we know, are liable under this. If we’ve met people who the government calls or claims are terrorists—they don’t have to give any reason for it, they just say, "You’re a terrorist," like Mandela, for example—if you meet with them and you talk to them and you advise them, in fact, if you advise them to carry out nonviolent tactics, you’re giving material support under the Obama interpretation of "material support." Material support used to mean giving them arms or something, but it was extended by this to your speech to them. That’s a very wide-ranging and ominous stand.

And it was—I should add, on the side, that the whole concept of on the terrorist list or being accused of a terrorist is something that should not be tolerated in a free society. I mean, you know, Mandela is a good example. If the government says you’re a terrorist, that ends it. No recourse, no argument needed, no justification. They can put anybody they like on the terrorist list. The idea that they decide who’s a terrorist is a granting to state power something we’ve never had in a free society. So, not only is that—should that be intolerable—and that’s, of course, not Obama, it goes way back—but extending the notion of material support to discussions with them or advice to them, I mean, that’s—it should be beyond discussion. It’s barely discussed.

There are others that are pretty bad, too, like the attack on whistleblowers. As I’m sure you know, more whistleblowers have been under attack by this administration than all of American history put together. This is an attempt to strengthen executive power and executive privilege, keeping secret from the population. And if it was—and there’s another case. I mean, it’s not his initiative, but [inaudible]. But all of these extensions of state power and violations of civil rights are significant. But we should bear in mind that we’re a lot freer than people here have been in the past, and certainly a lot freer than other countries. So, it’s bad, but we shouldn’t exaggerate. There’s plenty of opportunities to do things.

AMY GOODMAN: MIT Professor Noam Chomsky. If you’d like a DVD of today’s show, you can go to our website at democracynow.org. Coming up, he speaks about WikiLeaks, the assassination of bin Laden, Occupy, Latin America and what gives him hope.

Rush Transcript

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: We return to our interview with Noam Chomsky. I spoke with him last week in the courtyard of the King Juan Carlos I Center at New York University. I asked him about WikiLeaks.

NOAM CHOMSKY: I don’t see anything that’s come out on WikiLeaks that was a legitimate secret. I mean, WikiLeaks is a service to the population. Assange should get an award for—presidential medal of honor. He’s—the whole WikiLeaks operation has helped inform people about what their elected representatives are doing. That should be a wonderful thing to do, like—and it’s interesting. Nothing really sensational has come out, but it is interesting to know, for example, that when the Obama administration effectively supported the military coup in Honduras that kicked out the democratic government and put in a—what amounts to a military-backed government, that they knew exactly what they were doing, because the embassy in—we learn from WikiLeaks that the embassy in Honduras had presented a detailed analysis right at the beginning of the coup that expelled the president and said, "Yeah, this is unconstitutional, it’s illegal," you know, and so on. So, yes, they knew exactly what they were doing when Obama and Clinton were saying, "Well, you know, it’s not that bad. Everything is going fine," and so on.

Or, for example, when Anne Patterson, the ambassador to Pakistan—this is some of the most interesting revelations. She supports U.S. policy in AfPak, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but she did warn that U.S. policies of, you know, assassinations, pressures on Pakistan, and so on, carry a real danger. They carry the danger of radicalizing Pakistan and—where opposition to these policies is enormous, and maybe creating even a situation where its nuclear facilities would be accessible to jihadi elements. So it’s creating terrific danger. In fact, Pakistan is way more dangerous to U.S. security than Afghanistan, which is nothing. Well, it’s good to know that they were getting that information. They were getting that information from analysts, you know, people who write about it and know about it, but the fact that they were getting it from the embassy is significant, when you think about how these policies were escalated. And, in fact, it’s quite striking that the policies are undertaken in ways which almost—it’s almost as if they’re consciously trying to increase the threat.

So, take, say, the assassination of Osama bin Laden. I mean, I’m a small minority of people who think that was a crime. I don’t think you should have a right to invade another country, apprehend a suspect—remember, he’s a suspect, even if you think he’s guilty—apprehend him, after he’s apprehended and defenseless, assassinate him and throw his body into the ocean. Yeah, civilized countries don’t do that sort of thing. But—and notice that it was undertaken at great risk. The Navy SEALs were under orders to fight their way out, if there was a problem. If they had had to fight their way out, they would have gotten air cover and probably intervention. We could have been at war with Pakistan. Pakistan has a professional army. They’re dedicated to protecting the sovereignty of the state, very dedicated to it, and they wouldn’t take this lightly. A war with Pakistan would be an utter disaster. It’s one of the huge nuclear facilities, laced with radical Islamic elements. They’re not a big part of the population, but they’re all over. But they did it anyway. Then, right after it, when Pakistan was, you know, totally outraged, we carried out more drone attacks in Pakistan, almost—you know, it’s kind of astonishing when you look at the planning, quite apart from the criminality.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the U.S. increased reliance—President Obama increasingly using drones to attack people in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and beyond?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Good comment about that made by Yochi Dreazen. He’s the military correspondent—was the military correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, is now for some other outfit, a military analyst. He pointed out accurately—this after the killing of Osama bin Laden, which he approved of, but he said that there’s an interesting difference between Bush and Obama. I mean, I’m now paraphrasing in my own terms, not his terms, so the way I would have said it is: Bush—if Bush, the Bush administration, didn’t like somebody, they’d kidnap them and send them to torture chambers; if the Obama administration decides they don’t like somebody, they murder them, so you don’t have to have torture chambers all over.

Actually, that tells us something else. Just take a look at the first Guantánamo detainee to go to trial under Obama. Trial means military commission, whatever that is. The first one was a very interesting case and tells us a lot. The first one was Omar Khadr. And what was his crime? His crime was that when he was 15 years old, he tried to defend his village against an attack by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. So that’s the crime, therefore he’s a terrorist. So he was sent to Bagram, then to Guantánamo, eight years in these torture chambers. And then he came up for trial under Obama. And he was given a choice: you can plead not guilty and stay in Guantánamo for the rest of your life, or you can plead guilty and get another eight years. So his lawyers advised him to plead guilty. Well, that’s justice under our constitutional law president, for a 15-year-old kid defending his village against an attacking army. And there was nothing said—the worst part is, there’s nothing said about it.

Actually, the same is true of the Awlaki killing, you know, this American cleric in Yemen who was killed by drones. He was killed. The guy next to him was killed. Shortly after, his son was killed. Now, there was a little talk about the fact that he was an American citizen: you shouldn’t just murder American citizens. But, you know, the New York Times headline, for example, when he was killed, said something like "West celebrates death of radical cleric." First of all, it wasn’t death, it was murder. And the West celebrates the murder of a suspect. He’s a suspect, after all. There was something done almost 800 years ago called the Magna Carta, which is the foundation of Anglo-American law, that says that no one shall be subjected to a violation of rights without due process of law and a fair and speedy trial. It doesn’t say, if you think somebody’s a suspect, you should kill them.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think the media has improved at all, as you assess it over these decades, right now?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I think it’s better than it was. I’m not a great fan of the media, but I think, if you compare them to, say, the '50s and the ’60s, it's considerably improved.

AMY GOODMAN: Because there’s competition and because people have access to other information, it puts pressure on the establishment media?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I don’t think so. In fact, it’s more monopolized than it was then. I think it’s because the country has changed. It’s a much more civilized country than it was, I mean, if you think back what things were like in the '60s. And first of all, you know, you have to—take, say, women's rights. I mean, throughout American history, up 'til quite recently, under law, women were basically property. They were the property of their fathers and their husbands. I mean, in the early years of the country, the argument against women voting was that it wouldn't be fair, because then the husband would get two votes, since obviously the wife has to do what she’s told, you know. And, in fact, until the 1970s, women didn’t have a guaranteed right to serve on juries, because they were considered—you know, couldn’t do that kind of thing. If you go back to the universities in the early ’60s, my university, it was, you know, obedient, deferential white males. All of that has changed.

It’s changed in many other respects. You mentioned gay rights. I mean, that would have been—you know, you couldn’t even utter the words not many years ago. And there are laws against sodomy, up until recently, maybe still. And it’s the same in England. There was just a dramatic case there. I don’t know if you’ve been following it. But one of the great mathematicians of the 20th century, Alan Turing, who was also a British war hero—he’s the one who pretty much decrypted the German codes and saved Britain from attack—well, he was a homosexual. In the early 1950s—that’s against British law. Early 1950s, he was subjected to treatment to cure him of this disease. The treatment was so grotesque, he finally committed suicide. Well, that’s, you know, a long time ago, that’s 1954. Now, Prime Minister Cameron was just asked whether time has come to issue a belated pardon. It’s the hundredth anniversary of his birth. And he said, "No, he violated British law. No pardon for that." So, OK, we killed—basically killed this war hero and great mathematician because he was violating British law. Well, you know, that’s—that’s changed a lot, maybe not in Cameron’s office, but—and it’s changed in many ways. And that’s affected the media, because, you know, the people working there, who—a lot of women, went through these experiences.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, what gives you hope?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, lots of—right here, for example. Take the Occupy movement. That’s very striking and dramatic. Or take where we are today. We’re in a meeting of NACLA, North American Congress on Latin America. What’s happened in Latin America in the last 10 years is just spectacular. I mean, in the last 10 years, for the first time in—since the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors—that’s half a millennium—Latin America has freed itself, substantially freed itself from Western domination and control, meaning mainly U.S.

In fact, there was a just very dramatic example of it just a couple of weeks ago at the Cartagena hemispheric conference, which is very important. It was kind of suppressed here. There was some Secret Service scandal, but there were really interesting things that happened. This is a hemispheric conference. There were two major issues. There was no declaration, because you couldn’t get agreement. The two issues were Cuba and drugs. The whole hemisphere wants Cuba to be admitted to the hemispheric—to the summit. The U.S. refused—U.S. and Canada refused. On drugs, practically the whole hemisphere is pressing for decriminalization, because they’re suffering the brunt of the—you know, they are the ones who get hit in the solar plexus. The demand for drugs is here. The supply of arms is here. And they suffer from it. So they want to move towards decriminalization. U.S. and Canada refused.

U.S. and Canada are isolated in the hemisphere. And in fact, there’s a new organization, just formed about a year ago, CELAC, which formally excludes the U.S. and Canada, includes everyone else. It’s quite possible that that may replace the Organization of American States, which is U.S.-run. One sign of it is the U.S. has been essentially kicked out of its military bases in South America. They’re also moving towards dealing with some of their internal problems, which are severe.

And the other thing that’s exciting there is the role of popular movements. I mean, there are mass popular movements of indigenous people, working people, others who have just been—you know, who have been extremely successful in substantially changing policy. That’s of historic significance.

AMY GOODMAN: So, the Occupy movement gives you hope. Latin America gives you hope.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Arab Spring. I mean, there are a lot of interesting things happening in the world. But I think consciousness is changing on a lot of things. I mentioned the attitudes of kids 18 to 24, which is pretty bad, but I think that can be changed, too.

AMY GOODMAN: MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, world-renowned scholar, dissident and linguist. He has taught more than half a century at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s Institute Professor and professor of linguistics. I interviewed him last week here in New York at the 45th anniversary celebration of NACLA, the North American Congress on Latin America, where he was being honored. Noam Chomsky is the author of over a hundred books, most recently, Occupy.

The Absurd Times

Monday, May 14, 2012