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THE ABSURD TIMES
From the Great Latuff
Who Rules the World?
Malaise is strong in our minds today and during the last few weeks. Few things seem amusing and the thin line between the ludicrous and the insane no longer exists. There is little point in talking about our election here when the future of the planet, much less individual nations, seems extremely grim.
There are a few encouraging signs, however. Since optimism is needed, we have the cheerful outlook of Noam Chomsky below, and we say this without any trace of scarcasm. Indeed, his outlook on what things are like is about as cheerful as possible these days.
He also mentions an article worth reading (see below). It discusses how Germany, at the pinnacle of cultural and intellectual history during the 1920s was able to descend into barbarism within a decade. While such comparisons are often disparaging to barbarians, it is probably time to accept the vulgate definition of this term as it is handy in describing activities we see all-too-often recently.
Some important points are the analysis of the Clinton/Sanders debate over whether Israel's response was disproportional. Clinton essentially said "no" and Sanders "yes". Corporate media frames the discussion in such a way that the reality, that there should have been no response, and that whatever the provocation was, it was driven by Israel in the first place, such a reality can not be acknowledged. The same applies to the settlements in the occupied territories. Are they expanding too rapidly or not, when the truth is that they are all illegal, the fact is that the occupations are all directly in violation of every conceivable law.
So, to stop the diatribe, here is Noam[1]:
President Obama has just passed a little-noticed milestone, according to The New York Times: Obama has now been at war longer than any president in U.S. history—longer than George W. Bush, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Obama has taken military action in at least seven countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Just last month, President Obama announced the deployment of 250 more Special Operations troops to Syria in a move that nearly doubles the official U.S. presence in the country. As war spreads across the globe, a record 60 million people were driven from their homes last year. Experts warn the refugee crisis may also worsen due to the impacts of global warming. Over the weekend, NASA released data showing 2016 is on pace to be by far the hottest year ever, breaking the 2015 record. Meanwhile, many fear a new nuclear arms race has quietly begun, as the United States, Russia and China race to build arsenals of smaller nuclear weapons. These multiple crises come as voters in the United States prepare to elect a new president. We speak with one of the world's preeminent intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught for more than 50 years. His latest book is titled "Who Rules the World?"
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We're on the road here in New York, then on today to [Chicago], toMadison, Wisconsin, and then to Toronto, Canada.
The New York Times is reporting President Obama has just passed a little-noticed milestone: He has now been at war longer than any president in U.S. history—longer than George W. Bush, longer than Franklin Delano Roosevelt, longer than Abraham Lincoln. Obama has taken military action in at least seven countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Just last month, President Obama announced the deployment of 250 more Special Operations troops to Syria in a move that nearly doubles the official U.S. presence in the country.
As war spreads across the globe, a record 60 million people were driven from their homes last year. Experts warn the refugee crisis may also worsen due to the impacts of global warming. Over the weekend, NASA released data showing 2016 is on pace to be by far the hottest year ever, breaking the 2015 record. April became the seventh month in a row to have broken global temperature records. Meanwhile, many fear a new nuclear arms race has quietly begun, as the United States, Russia and China race to build arsenals of smaller nuclear weapons. These multiple crises come as voters in the United States prepare to elect a new president.
To make sense of the challenges facing the globe and the state of the U.S. election, we're joined today by one of the world's preeminent intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he's taught for more than half a century. His latest book is called Who Rules the World?
Noam Chomsky, welcome back to Democracy Now! It's great to have you with us.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Glad to be with you again.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Noam, who rules the world?
NOAM CHOMSKY: That's, to a certain extent, up to us. It is possible for populations to rule the world, but they have to struggle to achieve that. And if they don't, the world will be ruled by concentrations of power—economic power, state power—closely linked with consequences that are of the kind that you describe. But that's a choice.
AMY GOODMAN: How does the United States set the terms of the global discourse and, overall, what's happening in the world?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, that's basically an outcome of the Second World War. At the end of the Second World War, the United States had a level of power and comparative wealth that had never existed in history. It had literally half the world's wealth. It had an incomparable position of security—controlled the hemisphere, controlled both oceans, controlled the opposite sides of both oceans. In military terms, it was overwhelmingly preeminent. Other industrial societies had been devastated or severely weakened. The war had actually greatly benefited the U.S. economy. It ended the Depression. Industrial production virtually quadrupled. There was a debt, which you could easily grow out of it by growth. So the United States was in fact in a position to pretty much set the terms for virtually the entire global system.
It couldn't stay that way, of course, and it began to erode pretty quickly, though, with all the changes over the past years, the United States still is in a preeminent position with incomparable advantages and maybe now a quarter of the world's wealth. In military terms, on that dimension, the United States is completely alone. It's the only country that has hundreds, maybe a thousand, military bases around the world, troops all over the world. U.S. military spending is almost as great as the rest of the world combined, technologically much more advanced. And within that context of the past 70 years or so, the United States has had a—usually, a pretty dominant role in world affairs and setting the framework within which others operate—not without conflict, of course.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the two major threats facing the world today: nuclear war and climate change. Talk about each.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I might start by referring to the Doomsday Clock of theBulletin of Atomic Scientists, a clock that's—since 1947, shortly after the atomic bombing, they established a Doomsday Clock. Every year, a panel of specialists make an estimate of how close we are to midnight. Midnight means termination for the species. It's moved up and back over the years. Right now, it—just last year, it was moved two minutes closer to midnight because of the two threats that you mentioned, stayed there this year. That's three minutes to midnight, close as it's been since the early 1980s, when there was a major war scare. It was recognized then to be serious. Now that Russian archives have been opened, we see that it was far more serious than was assumed. We were at one point literally minutes away, several points in fact, minutes away from nuclear war. That's where the Doomsday Clock stands now.
The nuclear threat is the threat of—on the Russian border, which happens to be the invasion route through which Russia was virtually destroyed twice last century by Germany alone—well, Germany as part of a hostile military alliance—on that border, both sides are acting as if a war is thinkable. The U.S. has just sharply increased; it quadrupled military expenses on its side. The Russians are doing something similar. There are constant near collisions, jets coming close to colliding with one another. A Russian jet a couple months ago virtually hit a Danish commercial airliner. U.S. troops are carrying out maneuvers virtually on the Russian border. That threat is escalating and very serious. William Perry, a respected nuclear specialist, a former defense secretary, recently estimated that the threat is higher than it was during the 1980s. There are also confrontations near the Chinese around China, South China Sea and so on. That's one major threat.
The other is what you just described. The threat of global warming is very serious. Every time one reads a science journal, there's an even more alarming discovery. Virtually all the ice masses are melting. The Arctic ice mass, which was assumed to be pretty stable, is actually melting very fast, much more than was thought. The glaciers are melting. There's severe droughts. Right now already, about 300 million people in India are on the edge of starvation from drought, which has been going on for years. The groundwater is depleted as the Himalayan glaciers melt, as they're doing. It will undermine the water supply for huge areas in South Asia. If people think there's a migration crisis now, they haven't seen anything. The sea level is rising. Chances are it could rise three to six feet, maybe more, by the end of the century—some estimate even sooner. It will have a devastating effect, not just on coastal cities, but on coastal plains, like, say, Bangladesh, where hundreds of millions of people will be severely threatened. I mean, this is a—we're already killing other species at the level of the so-called fifth extinction. Sixty-five million years ago, when an asteroid hit the Earth, devastating consequences ended the age of the dinosaurs, opened the way for small mammals to develop, ultimately evolve, finally evolve intoHomo sapiens, which now is acting the same way the asteroid did. That's the fifth extinction. It's going to get worse. All of these are—the rate of global warming today is far faster, maybe a hundred or more times as fast as any moderately comparable period that can be estimated in the geological record.
And to make it worse, of these two huge threats, we have an electoral—the quadrennial electoral extravaganza is going on right now, of course. And it's pretty remarkable to see how the worst threats that the human species has ever faced, the most important decisions it must make—and soon—are virtually absent from the discussions and debates. On the Democratic side, there's a couple of comments about it here and there, not much. On the Republican side, it's much worse. Every single candidate either denies global warming altogether or, in one case, Kasich, admits that it's taking place but says we shouldn't do anything about it, which is even worse.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam—
NOAM CHOMSKY: That's 100 percent.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, we're going to go to a break. When we come back, we'll play the last remaining Republican in the race, Donald Trump's comment on climate change, and also get your take overall on the 2016 presidential election here in the United States. Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, has a new book out; it's called Who Rules the World? Stay with us.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
World-renowned political dissident Noam Chomsky weighs in on Trump's candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, particularly his denial of climate change and push for greater militarization. "Trump is saying, 'Yeah, let's make the global warming problem as dangerous and imminent as possible. Let's march towards destruction of the species, like we're destroying everyone else. And let's escalate militarization and, at the same time, sharply cut down resources by radical tax cuts, mostly for the rich,'" Chomsky says. "This is a really astonishing moment in human history, if you look at it."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: That's the Rude Mechanical Orchestra performing in Albany, New York, over the weekend, part of a wave of actions against fossil fuels around the world. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm in New York. Noam Chomsky is in Massachusetts, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author, his latest book titled Who Rules the World? Noam, you were just talking about the issue of climate change. Let's turn to the presidential election and a clip of the presumptive Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, speaking last month when he dismissed concerns about climate change.
DONALD TRUMP: President Obama said the biggest threat to our country is global warming. That's called—give me a break. OK? The biggest threat to our country is nuclear. And we cannot let Iran get a nuclear weapon.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Donald Trump. Noam Chomsky, your response on that comment and Donald Trump, overall, as a possible president of the United States?
NOAM CHOMSKY: It's a pretty scary prospect. For one thing, it's not easy to find out what he thinks, if—I doubt—it's not even clear that he knows what he thinks. He's a kind of a loose cannon. All kind of statements come out, sometimes some statement plus the negation of that statement within a few minutes. It's kind of a con job.
But there are some pretty steady features of his position, which, in fact, were expressed in the clip that you ran. One, "There isn't any global warming. Give me a break. That's not an issue." So what he's saying is, "Let's race to the precipice as quickly as we can." And we should not—this is not abstract. It's already having major effects, the Republican position. And notice it's not Trump; it's 100 percent of the Republican candidates taking essentially the same position. What they're saying, "Let's get rid of the EPA. Let's get rid of regulations. It's all a joke. It's a liberal hoax," and so on. That's having an effect. The Paris conference last December—the signing was just a couple days ago—aimed at establishing a treaty, which countries would be committed to adhere to, which would put fixed limits on global warming. The limits were nowhere near enough, but at least it was something. But even that could not be reached—for one clear, explicit reason: the Republican Congress, which would not accept a treaty. That was recognized worldwide, therefore a hope for a treaty was abandoned, in place was put voluntary agreements, obviously much weaker. When the Republicans on the Supreme Court just recently beat back a pretty moderate proposed Obama regulation on coal, that again is a message to the world, says, "Don't bother doing anything. The biggest, most powerful country in the world just isn't going to—doesn't care, so you go ahead and do what you like." This is all literally saying, "Let's race to the precipice." And it's not remote. It's not a matter of centuries; it's a matter of decades. It's just shocking to see this happening.
Now, Trump did mention—correctly—that nuclear weapons are a very serious threat. And he picked the absolute worst possible example. Iran is not a threat, period. The world doesn't regard Iran as a threat. That's a U.S. obsession. You look at global—polls of global opinion taken by Gallup's international affiliate, the leading U.S. polling agencies—agency, one of the questions that they ask is, "Which country is the greatest threat to world peace?" Answer: United States, by a huge margin. Iran is barely mentioned. Second place is Pakistan, inflated by the Indian vote, that's way behind the United States. That's world opinion. And there are reasons for it. Americans are protected from this information. The media literally did not report it. You could read it—you hear it on BBC, or you could pick it up on the international press. Iran, there's never been any—the threat of Iran, so-called, is actually described, pretty clearly, by U.S. intelligence. What they've made clear is that the threat of Iran's nuclear programs—not nuclear weapons, they don't have any, but the threat of Iran's nuclear programs—is that they might serve as a deterrent in the region. What does that mean? It means that the states that carry out regular aggression and violence in the region might be deterred if Iran has a capability of someday producing nuclear weapons. Which states are those? The United States and Israel. So Iran might be a deterrent to the two rogue states that rampage in the region. That's the threat.
If there was any concern for the threat, real concern, there would be clear, straightforward ways to eliminate it—namely, move to establish a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. Now that—there are countries that advocate that. Primary among them is Iran. As head of the Non-Aligned Movement, it's been leading the call for a nuclear weapons-free zone. It's strongly supported by the Arab states, has been for decades. In fact, it's supported by about the whole world. Why aren't we making steps towards it? Because the United States blocks it. And why does the U.S. block it? Well understood: wants to protect Israel's nuclear weapons capacity from scrutiny and accountability. That's the nuclear threat in the region, not Iran.
So, yes, there—and, in fact, Trump did not go on to give his answer. What he says, if he means it, is we have to rapidly build up our military forces, which are already overwhelming. Obama already has a $1 trillion program outline for modernization of nuclear weapons, which includes what you mentioned correctly earlier, small nuclear weapons, which are regarded by specialists—correctly—as a very serious threat, because there will be a temptation to use them. And it's almost certain that any use is going to quickly escalate, and that Doomsday Clock goes right to midnight.
So Trump is saying, "Yeah, let's make the global warming problem as dangerous and imminent as possible. Let's march towards destruction of the species, like we're destroying everyone else. And let's escalate militarization and, at the same time, sharply cut down resources by radical tax cuts, mostly for the rich, which means essentially eliminate pretty much the rest of the government." Incidentally, in that position, he's not very different from Paul Ryan, who's considered the intellectual on the Republican side. This is a really astonishing moment in human history, if you look at it.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
We speak with world-renowned political dissident Noam Chomsky about where the Democratic presidential candidates stand on the issue of Israel and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS. "Boycott and sanctions make perfectly good sense when these tactics are properly applied, as they often are," Chomsky says. "You can understand why Hillary Clinton is frightened of them. They might undermine the policy of her husband and his predecessors, and Obama, as well, to support Israeli violence and aggression."
Who is the world-renowned political dissident Noam Chomsky voting for? "In the primaries, I would prefer Bernie Sanders," Chomsky says. "If Clinton is nominated and it comes to a choice between Clinton and Trump, in a swing state, a state where it's going to matter which way you vote, I would vote against Trump, and by elementary arithmetic, that means you hold your nose and you vote Democrat. I don't think there's any other rational choice."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Our guest for the hour, Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, professor emeritus of linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His latest book, Who Rules the World? So, that's an interesting question for 2016, since the president of the United States occupies a very powerful role in the world, Noam. Who do you support?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, before answering that, let me just make one comment on elections: They're important. It does matter who sits in the White House, who's—who appoints Supreme Court justices, who makes decisions about war and peace, about environment and so on. Matters who's in Congress, matters who's in the state legislatures and so on. It matters. But it's not the main issue. We are kind of indoctrinated here into focusing all of our attention and energy on what button we push in November every couple of years, which is not insignificant, but not the main issue. The main issue, what is—what are the forces, domestic forces, that are pressuring, acting, to determine the kind of choices that will be made, legislation that will be passed and so on? Now, of course, there's one force that's always going to be there: private concentrated capital, corporate power. Lobbyists, corporate lawyers and so on, writing the legislations, certainly, they're always—funding the elections, they'll always be there. The question is: Is there going to be a countervailing force? Is there going to be a force representing popular interests, needs and concerns, defending themselves against what in fact is a standard class-based assault against them? And now, elections can be used as a way of galvanizing and mobilizing the kinds of groups which will—could become persistent, dedicated, growing, constant forces that influence significantly what's done in the White House and Congress. The New Deal legislation of Roosevelt, for example, wouldn't have been passed—it wouldn't have even been initiated—without militant labor action and other political action. And those are lessons to remember.
But now, going back to who should you push the button for, well, my own—in the primaries, I would prefer Bernie Sanders. If Clinton is nominated and it comes to a choice between Clinton and Trump, in a swing state, a state where it's going to matter which way you vote, I would vote against Trump, and by elementary arithmetic, that means you hold your nose and you vote Democrat. I don't think there's any other rational choice. Abstaining from voting or, say, voting for, say, a candidate you prefer, a minority candidate, just amounts to a vote for Donald Trump, which I think is a devastating prospect, for reasons I've already mentioned. So—but meanwhile, do the important things.
The significance of the Sanders campaign, which is pretty remarkable, I think—it certainly surprised me. It's not radical. I mean, Sanders himself is pretty much a traditional New Deal Democrat. I don't say that in criticism. That's a—doesn't pretend to be anything else, and that's a breath of fresh air in the current generally right-wing climate. But the importance of it is, if it can be used, the energy and enthusiasm that's been organized and mobilized can be used to develop an ongoing popular movement, which will be a powerful force, no matter who's in office, to influence and direct the country in ways that are absolutely necessary, even for survival at this point. That's my view of it.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think there's any possibility that Bernie Sanders could—the man you prefer, the candidate you prefer, could be the candidate?
NOAM CHOMSKY: It's possible, I guess. I mean, I've been—I should say I've been wrong all along, both about Sanders and Trump: I never thought either of them would get anywhere. I was in good company in making those predictions, but they were wrong. And I could be wrong again. But I think the probabilities are—there isn't a lot of point speculating. We'll see how—you know, we can try to reach the conclusions we want, the outcomes we want. But—
AMY GOODMAN: And what do—what do you think Donald Trump is tapping into? And what do you think of his statements, you know, waffling on whether he would disavow support of the known Klan leader, David Duke, the avowed white supremacist, saying that no Muslims can come into this country? Whether or not he wins, what effect will this have?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I think—I should say, this is not new. This is something that's been around for a long time. He's brought it into open view, but it's been there. About probably 15 years ago, early 2000s, in a book of mine, I quoted an article, interesting article—it's worth going back and reading—by one of the leading historians of modern Germany, Fritz Stern. It appeared in the main establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, wasn't secret. It was called something like "Descent into Barbarism." And it was discussion of how Germany, which in the 1920s had been the peak of Western civilization, a decade later was the absolute depths of human history, and how did it descend into barbarism. And he discusses it. And he says very—it's clear what he has in mind. He pointedly says that he has concerns about the country that rescued—that gave him refuge from Nazi Germany. And every point that he makes is an oblique reference to what was happening in the United States 15 years ago. These are deep elements of U.S. society.
But the appeal of Trump is not only to racism, which is very profound, ultranationalism, which is very profound, fear—it's one of the most terrified countries in the world, has been through much of its history. It's part of the reason for the extraordinary gun culture. It's not only that. He is also appealing to pretty much the same kind of things that Sanders is appealing to. In his case, it happens to be mostly the white working class. But the—
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Oh. But he's appealing to the fact that people have just been cast aside by the neoliberal assault of the past generation, that can—
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, we're going to continue this conversation in post-show, and we're going to post it online and play it on the air at democracynow.org. Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author. He is the author of a new book right now. He's written more than a hundred. This book is called Who Rules the World?
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, I want to turn back to the Democratic debate that was held here in Brooklyn. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton sparred over the issue of Israel and Palestine. This exchange begins with a question from the moderator, Wolf Blitzer.
WOLF BLITZER: Secretary Clinton, do you agree with Senator Sanders that Israel overreacts to Palestinian attacks, and that in order for there to be peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel must, quote, "end its disproportionate responses"?
HILLARY CLINTON: I can tell you right now, because I have been there with Israeli officials going back more than 25 years, that they do not seek this kind of attacks. They do not invite rockets raining down on their towns and villages. ... So I don't know how you run a country when you are under constant threat, terrorist attack, rockets coming at you. You have a right to defend yourself. ... And let me say this: If Yasser Arafat had agreed with my husband at Camp David in the late 1990s to the offer that Prime Minister Barak put on the table, we would have had a Palestinian state—
WOLF BLITZER: Thank you. Senator, go ahead.
HILLARY CLINTON: —for 15 years already.
WOLF BLITZER: Go ahead, Senator.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: I don't think that anybody would suggest that Israel invites or welcomes missiles flying into their country. That is not the issue. And you evaded the answer. You evaded the question. The question is, not does Israel have a right to respond, not does Israel have a right to go after terrorists and destroy terrorism. That's not the debate. Was their response disproportionate? I believe that it was. You have not answered that. ... There comes a time when, if we pursue justice and peace, we are going to have to say that Netanyahu is not right all of the time.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton on the issue of Israel and Palestine. Noam Chomsky, your response?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, it's interesting and helpful that Sanders said that. By world standards, it's way off to the extreme—I don't know what dimension to call it, the nationalist right. The talk—the question of Israel's disproportionate response is a little bit like the question of expansion of the settlements, the only one you're allowed to discuss here. These are not the questions. The question is: Why is there a response at all? Why are there any settlements? The settlements are totally illegal. That's been determined by the highest authorities: Security Council, International Court of Justice, Red Cross, ministers of the Geneva Conventions. There's simply no question about their legality. At one point, the U.S. also agreed that they were illegal. Now they just say it's an obstacle to peace. So—and the same is true of the disproportionate response.
So let's take at these alleged missiles. First of all, there aren't any missiles, but the so-called rocket attacks that are coming. Why are they coming? You look at the record. I've gone through it in detail in print, if you want to look at it; it's in the book that you just mentioned, in fact. Consistently, what has happened is this: A ceasefire agreement is reached between Hamas and Israel. The terms are always about the same—end the siege, no more military action, beginning of commercial relations and so on. Israel complete—Hamas lives up to the terms. Israel totally disregards them—maintains the siege, a brutal, harsh siege, continues with military actions. Finally, some escalation in Israeli attacks leads to a Hamas response. At that point, we get another episode of what Israel politely calls "mowing the lawn," each one worse than the lasts. Then we get a question here: Is Israel's response disproportionate? I mean, if it weren't so grotesque, it would be comical. The question is: Why is Israel maintaining a harsh, brutal, vicious siege, which is destroying Gaza, consistently violating the ceasefire agreements that it reaches, and then, when there's some response to its escalating crimes, carries out a monstrous attack, while its protector debates whether the response is disproportionate?
The real problem is right here. As long as the United States continues to support all of this, it's going to continue. And incidentally, U.S. support for Israeli actions is not only—is not only supporting violations of international law, it is explicitly violating U.S. law. Take a look at U.S. law, so-called Leahy law. It flatly bars military—dispatch of military equipment to any military group that is involved in consistent human rights violations. There's simply no doubt that the Israeli army is involved in extremely serious human rights violations consistently. Now, that's why organizations like Amnesty International and, if I recall correctly, Human Rights Watch have called for a ban on sending weapons to Israel—in accord with U.S. law, incidentally. So, yes, if the United States lived up to U.S. law, if it stopped providing the decisive support for the settlement activities it claims it's opposed to, for other repression and violence, then there wouldn't be any need for any response, certainly not a disproportionate response.
As to Clinton's famous offer, alas, at Camp David, Mrs. Clinton may remember that Clinton himself recognized that it was inadequate. A couple months later, in December, he—after Camp David, he issued what he called his parameters for a settlement. Both sides accepted them. Both sides had reservations. Israel had extremely severe reservations. They were to negotiate these in Taba in January 2001. Negotiations took place. They were called off by Israel at a point where the negotiators, at least, say they were coming pretty close to an agreement, an agreement which was much less extreme on the pro-Israel side than the Clinton proposals. Well, Prime Minister Barak himself has said, informally, that—maybe, I presume, correctly—that the Israeli negotiators at Taba had no authority to negotiate anything, so it was kind of a show.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, I wanted to go back to the candidates on this issue, particularly what Hillary Clinton had to say to AIPAC earlier this year, when she criticized the BDS movement, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.
HILLARY CLINTON: As I wrote last year in a letter to the heads of major American Jewish organizations, we have to be united in fighting back against BDS. Many of its proponents have demonized Israeli scientists and intellectuals, even students. To all the college students who may have encountered this on campus, I hope you stay strong. Keep speaking out. Don't let anyone silence you, bully you or try to shut down debate, especially in places of learning like colleges and universities. Anti-Semitism has no place in any civilized society—not in America, not in Europe, not anywhere.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Noam Chomsky, can you respond to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, some of what she said is quite accurate. I'm strongly—I'm very happy that she has agreed that one should not shut down debate on this issue in campus. She's about 40 years too late. Over the past decades, I've had plenty of experience. The few other people who talk about this issue have similar experience of trying to give talks on the topic on university campuses, with police protection, with meetings broken up violently, with airport-style security at entrances. Even at my own university, until not long ago, not only did there have to be a police presence, but the police insisted on walking me back to my car, just because of the threat of violence. So, that's been going on for decades. And it's very nice that Mrs. Clinton has finally decided, yes, maybe it would be nice to have free and open debate on campus—as there is now for the first time. And it's a good thing that there is, that there is now a possibility of free and open debate on campuses. You can find, if you search, marginal cases of excesses. Reminds me of back around 1970, when people like Seymour Martin Lipset were desperately searching through local black newspapers to see if they could find an anti-Semitic comment somewhere, so they could then condemn the black movements as anti-Semitic. Yeah, I can understand the game. But the fact of the matter is, now there is, for the first time, free, open, extensive discussion and debate on campus—not perfect, by any means, on—you can find things on all sides, but radically different from before.
As to the tactics of boycott and divestment, they make perfect sense. When the Presbyterian Church imposes a boycott and divestment on anything connected to the Israeli-occupied territories, including U.S. multinationals—that's critical—which are involved in the territories, that's a very positive step forward, not only supportive of international law, supportive of genuine moral principles, a significant act, a nonviolent act, to oppose brutality, violence and repression. We could, I think, go much farther. As I said, we should be calling for implementation of U.S. law, along joining Amnesty International and others to call for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. Boycott and sanctions make perfectly good sense when these tactics are properly applied, as they often are.
You can understand why Hillary Clinton is frightened of them. They might undermine the policy of her husband and his predecessors, and Obama, as well, to support Israeli violence and aggression, to protect Israeli nuclear weapons from scrutiny so we can't have a nuclear weapons-free zone in the region, to veto Security Council resolutions, which literally support official U.S. policy, as Obama did in February 2011. Yeah, and the nonviolent actions to undermine this, legitimate actions, of course frighten Hillary Clinton enormously. And then you hear tirades like this.
But one part was correct. Namely, it's a good idea to protect the right of free discussion and debate on campus. It's a shame that that never occurred to her for the past 40 years, when it was impossible to have debate and discussion without violence, police protection and so on.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, I want to break and then ask you who you're supporting in this presidential race. Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His latest book, Who Rules the World? Stay with us.
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