See, Darwin really wasn't wrong. Survival of the fittest means domination of and by the mediocre.
Living in Amerika
by
Franz Kafka
Recently, I have noticed what moves the fools in the Trumpnik wing of the political spectrum. This arose from an exchange over social media with one of them in particular, but with observation of many others. The majority of their opinions are second hand, derived from media such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others who relentlessly push their own version of reality, those once referred to as "rabble-rousers".
I was impressed not so much by the falsity of their "facts," but by the selection. For example, one of them directly insulted, or tried to insult me, as insane or something like that. I was not sure as to whether he thought he was making an actual diagnosis or merely asserting his manhood or a similar adolesent foible. I learned, finally, that he simply had been handed selected items and connected the dots (or had them connected for him), and been first firghtened and then determined to fight to defend himself, his country, his savior, and so on.
For example, there is a persistant fear that Moslems are going to institute Sharia Law in this country, even though many Republican values seem to reflect it (relegation of women to second-class citizens, fear of the non-christian (vs. non-Moslem), hatred of sexual identiy isues, desire to curb free speech (once Trump wanted the freedom to sue the press), and so on. Our Constitution is fairly clear on the separation of church and state, perhaps inspired by a memory our founding fathers had of Oliver Cromwell (who actually made a few good points, btw.). No, they can rest easy. Sharia Law will not be instituted in this country.
The recent bombings were listed as examples of how Moslems are attacking Christians. Putting aside the fact that the Koran honors both Judasm and Christianity, those who did attack the churches in Sri Lanka were Islamic State-inspired, and now claimed by the group as their own work. They, however, can hardly be thought of as Moslem. Such behavior as witnessed in the earlier days of ISIS can hardly be credited as Islamic, just as much of what is done here in the name of Christ can hardly be claimed as "Christian". Furthermore, ISIS said the attacks were carried out in retaliation for the attacks on Mosques in New Zealand. Attacks here on Synagogues in Pittsburgh could hardly be called Christian. The list becomes endless and one finally comes to the conclusion that we are living in the midst of psychopaths.
Many wonder why people can be so disturbed with this situation (and we will return to it, don't worry). Well, perhaps your parents, even your grandparents, perhaps some of you, can remember when the President of the United States was JFK and the Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (Bobby). Once evening while campaigning Bobby Kennedy was in Indianapolis when he was tolk that MLK (Martin Luther King) has been assassinated, no doubt for speaking out about the war of the time, and announced the fact to his campaign crowd, mixed race to be sure, and quoted the words of the Greek Dramatist Aeschylus. It was the one large city in the entire United States that did not erupt into a race riot.
Today the President is Donald Trump and the Attorney General who replaced the closet Confederate Jeff Sessions, is William Barr. The last sane personell near to Presidency were Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State who called Trump a "Fucking Idiot" after a meeting about nuclear warheads, John Kelley who said he had the job as a "punishment for past sins," and Secretary of State "Mad-Dog" who told his staff after a crazy order to assassinate President Assad of Syria "We're no goinna do any of that shit." They are now gone. To paraphrase an old line from a comic: "What does it prove? Darwin was wrong!"
So, we have the religious feuds that are mainly used to excuse other modes of discrimination and violence. Do we really need to go into all the ways that religions are abused? No, we've done enough of that except we have not yet picked on the Buddhists. That religion supposedly believes that God is in everything, especially within onself. When shown the insanity of the Islamist activity in destroying old and valuable Bhuddist statues, the Dali Lama said, while giggling a bit, "they could still have been useful for tourism"! Hardly a call to arms. However, attacks on Moslems in what was once Burma was done in the name of religion. Hardly an act of meditation. And that woman sitting in her spacious dwelling and who once was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize did nothing to intervene. The military acted, on assumes on orders from Buddha?
Christian money makers on TV claim hurricanes are sent by God to punish states for homosexuality. Glory to God. Give us a break. What passes for Islam in most Christian afficianodos is not ISLAM, but rather Wahabbism. Some guy named Wahabbi, back in the 18th Century, decided to re-interpret Islam and that is what passes for it today (At the time, both his father and his brother thought he was wacked out, but accounts differ and details, as usual, are fuzzy.)
So now we have the current mass of candidates for the Democratic nomination. Any of them would be better than Trump and that is a given. You do have to admire the guts of Sanders on voting rights. He did say that everyone should be allowed to vote, in or out of jail. Yes, even the Boston Bomber. In fact, that is about all anyone is quoting about that. Fortunately, I saw the entire thing. The rationale: the rule should be that everyone of voting age should be entitled to vote, no matter what. If we start chipping away at that principle, there is no way to stop it. Now this is me: for example, it was once fashionable to ban Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, aka Schickelgruber. Well, then what next? Lolita, yes! Encourage pedophilia? No way. Huckleberry Finn, of course, usus the "N" word. How about the Bible? Why not? Lots of begetting and begatting in that! So, back to Sanders. Once they start to chip away at a right, they keep chipping awwy until there is nearly nothing left.
Student Loans
Well, we might as well get onto that. People are surprised when I told them I could put myself though University by playing semi-pro baseball during the summer. However, during that time, most all of the tuition is paid by the state. In Chicago, it was all paid for by the state and City. Then, they atarted to chip away at that. Today, hardly any of the tuition is paid for by the State, even in a State College or University. Why? We can't afford it? Bullshit.
The last balanced budget submitted was the last one Clinton left with Bush II. Well, georgie saw that and said, "oh boy, we can have a war, make lots of my people happy." So much for fiscal conservatism. Today, we are trillions in debt and Trump decides to cut taxes. Never mind that the top three families in the country own as much as the lower 50% of the population, they need a tax break. The money free higher education and loan forgiveness would cost would eliminate the kind of indentured servitude we have in this country. Most countries in Europe already have free higher education except Finland, where people are given a salary to go to University.
Culture
The decline can be seen with stand-up comedians. Some may remember Shelley Berman. He last appeared on BOSTON LEGAL as a doddering judge and also in the FOCKERS as a judge who let Peter DeNiro out of jail because Dustin Hoffman's wife, Barbara Streisand, a sex therepist, had improved his (the judge's, sex life. Deniro was a CIA agent who invented his own circle of trust and did DNA tests on prospective husbands and also invented a plastic breast to be filled with his wife's breast milk so he could bring up his child properly according to CIA standards.
Well, in the past, he was able to do a very funny and successful stand-up routine called Franz Kafka on the telephone. Who in the audience these days would know who the hell Franz Kafka was and what he meant or that he depicted the Statue of Liberty in his novel AMERIKA as holding a giant sword, not a light? How funny would a modern audience find a lecture on the Universe with someone who combined Wittgenstein and Xeno into it? Who the hell were they, you ask? Well, never mind. If you have to ask, never mind.
So, welcome to the age of Fat Donnie, our current President, from the party of Abraham Lincoln.
The recent attack on Syria by the Donald, designed to sidetrack a U.N. investigation into the attack as a similar investigation into the death of 200 civilians in Mosul did not turn out as we wanted, has diverted attention to that issue.Before the strike, Hillary, speaking before a women's group complaining about how misogyny played a role in her defeat put on a horrific display of post menopausal penis envy in ranting about the need to bomb Syria and get tough with Russia.Immediately thereafter, Trump sent 59 missiles into Syria.
However, above we have an illustration of our actions in Yemen carried out by Saudi Arabia.Right or wrong, true or false play no role here and never have.At one point Obama held Yemen up to be his "model" for dealing with terrorism.
Today, the reason the war will continue, despite the starvation of "beautiful little itty bitty babies" (Trump's words on Syria) the war will continue.The only reason is that Saudi Arabia pays a great deal of money to war munitions and equipment manufacturers in the United States.The was is buried in our media and gets little or no attention, so here is an excellent interview with perhaps the most informed and objective source on the subject:
The U.S. is also rapidly expanding military operations in Yemen. The U.S. has reportedly launched more than 49 strikes across the country this month—according to The New York Times, that's more strikes than the U.S. has ever carried out in a single year in Yemen. While the U.S. airstrikes have been targeting suspected al-Qaeda operations in Yemen, The Wall Street Journal is reporting the U.S. is now offering even more logistical and intelligence support for the Saudi-led war against Yemen's Houthi rebels, who are accused of being linked to Iran. More than 10,000 people have been killed since the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen began two years ago this month. Meanwhile, The New York Times is reporting today that the Trump administration has approved the resumption of sales of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia. President Obama froze some of these weapons sales last year due to concern about civilian casualties in Saudi Arabia's expanding war in Yemen. We speak to Iona Craig, a journalist who was based in Sana'a from 2010 to 2015 as the Yemen correspondent for The Times of London.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEENSHAIKH:We turn now to look at Yemen, where the U.S. is also rapidly expanding military operations. The U.S. has reportedly launched more than 49 strikes across the country this month—according toThe New York Times, that's more strikes than the U.S. has ever carried out in a single year in Yemen. While the U.S. airstrikes have been targeting suspected al-Qaeda operations in Yemen,The Wall Street Journalis reporting the U.S. is now offering even more logistical and intelligence support for the Saudi-led war against Yemen's Houthi rebels, who are accused of being linked to Iran. More than 10,000 people have been killed since the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen began two years ago this month. Meanwhile,The New York Timesis reporting today that the Trump administration has approved the resumption of sales of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia. President Obama froze some of these weapons sales last year due to concern about civilian casualties in Saudi Arabia's expanding war in Yemen.
AMYGOODMAN:This all comes as the United Nations is warning Yemen is on the brink of famine. This is U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien.
STEPHENO'BRIEN:Well, it's not just the number of people who are food insecure, which represents about 14 million out of the 26 million or so Yemenis, which is an enormous number for any nation to have to bear; it's the fact that we have seen an increase in severe acute malnourishment, particularly in young children and in lactating mothers. We have seen a very severe deterioration in the number of patients needing dialysis services, access to oxygen, and where we need to see more antibiotics being brought in and medical facilities made available. These are seriously deteriorating.
AMYGOODMAN:To talk more about the situation in Yemen, we go to London to speak with Iona Craig, a journalist who was based in Sana'a from 2010 to '15 as the Yemen correspondent forThe Timesof London. She was in Yemen again last month, where she reported on January's NavySEALraid that left 25 civilians and one U.S. NavySEALdead.
Iona, welcome back toDemocracy Now!Talk about the situation on the ground in Yemen right now.
IONACRAIG:Well, as you've already mentioned, the humanitarian situation is certainly getting worse. I went to several of the areas, remote areas, where some of the internally displaced people are finding it increasingly difficult to get access to food and even water. And then, on the military front, there is a stalemate on a lot of the—on the side of the ground war, whilst also a new offensive was actually launched on the Red Sea Coast whilst I was in Yemen in January, that then pushed a lot of the civilian population into these incredibly remote areas where there are no aid agencies to support them and to provide shelter and to provide food. So, across the country, really, it doesn't matter which side of the front line you are, if you're a civilian. People are finding it increasingly difficult to both access food and to be able to afford to pay for food, because many of the government employees have not been paid for more than six, seven months now, and so that reduces people's capacity to even purchase goods, even when they are available, in areas where they're not affected by the conflict.
So, really, there's a massive sense of war weariness amongst the civilian population. People are just really desperate for this war to come to an end, obviously. But certainly, on the political side, there is no indication that is about to happen. And, in fact, the warring parties are not even willing to even engage or speak with the U.N. special envoy who is charged with trying to find a political resolution to the conflict. So, both on the military front, things are shifting slightly or have done, but certainly, on the humanitarian side, things are getting worse, with the prediction now of wheat supplies soon to run out in perhaps the coming weeks, or certainly in the next two months, that that is only going to get worse, as well.
NERMEENSHAIKH:Well, Iona, as this humanitarian situation is worsening, the Trump administration is reportedly planning changes to the U.S. policy in Yemen. Could you tell us a little about the kinds of changes that are being considered and what their impact would be if they're put into place?
IONACRAIG:So, one thing that appears to have already been changed, from what we've heard, is Yemen now, or parts of Yemen, anyway, being regarded as areas of active hostility. Now, that's quite a technical term, but essentially what it means is those selected areas are put on a war footing the same as Iraq and Afghanistan. So, previously, under the Obama administration, Yemen was considered an area outside of active hostility, so there were different protocols put in place to ensure the prevention of civilian casualties. And it meant that when drone strikes or airstrikes or raids were carried out, that there had to be a near certainty that there were no civilian casualties. Obviously, that didn't always work. I have spent many years covering Yemen, and that included covering incidents of mass civilian casualties under the Obama administration. But now, when that changes to put in parts of the country into areas of active hostility, that near certainty basically gets chucked out of the window, and it means that those civilian casualties are kind of allowed and only have to be proportional. So, that's obviously very concerning for the civilian population in Yemen. We've also seen more military activity, as you've already mentioned, in the form of airstrikes. So that's more military activity, less oversight, because of the way the command structure is now—appears to have been changing, as well, in the sense that the military is going to be allowed to take more decisions on that level without the kind of micromanaging the Obama administration was always accused of, as well as moving these—removing these protocols to—that were supposed to, anyway, protect civilian lives.
In addition to that, now there is talk of the U.S. wanting to become more involved on the side of the Saudi-led coalition, who have, of course, been carrying out this aerial bombing campaign against the Houthi-Saleh forces, who are predominantly in northern Yemen, and have been carrying out this aerial bombing campaign against them, and ground war, since March 2015. Now, the U.S. wants to—has been—has put in a request to become more involved, particularly in an offensive that the Emiratis, theUAE, who are part of the Saudi-led coalition, are looking to launch on the Red Sea Coast, particularly on the port of Hodeidah, which is a vital supply line for northern Yemen, which is the most densely populated part of the country, which relies heavily on that route for the import of food.
Now, the most troubling part of this request to become more involved with the Saudi-led coalition appears to be because there has been—certainly come out from the White House, from the White House spokesman—this sense of conflating the Houthi rebels, who I mentioned, with Iran. Now, the Houthis have had support from Iran, and that appears to have been increasing, with specific military assistance and weapons to the Houthis over the last nine months. But to call them an Iranian proxy or to conflate them with Iran, it now appears that the—that this almost amounts to the U.S. wanting to start a proxy war with Iran in Yemen. And, of course, that is incredibly dangerous. It's incredibly dangerous for the civilian population, who are already facing famine at the moment, and it's incredibly dangerous because we don't know what the reaction would be from Iran. That reaction may not just be in Yemen. It may be elsewhere in the region, where they're also involved in wars—for example, in Syria. And that's really an unknown quantity. The known quantity is that the civilian population in Yemen will certainly suffer as a consequence of that, if the Americans become more involved in the Saudi-led coalition's efforts in the country.
AND WHAT ABOUT THE LAST ONE? THE HYPOCRASY?
Independent journalist Iona Craig recently traveled to the Yemeni village where the U.S. Navy SEALs conducted a raid in January that left 25 civilians and one NavySEALdead. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer described the raid as "absolutely a success," but Yemeni villagers who spoke to Craig painted a very different picture.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:Iona Craig, I wanted to ask you about the NavySEALraid in Yemen in January that you've investigated, the White House warning journalists and lawmakers last month against criticizing the botched raid by U.S. commandos on a Yemeni village that left 25 civilians and one U.S. soldier dead, William Ryan Owens. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports the January 28th assault killed nine children under the age of 13, with five other children wounded. Among those critical of the raid was Arizona Republican Senator John McCain.
SEN.JOHNMcCAIN:When you lose a $75 million airplane, and, more importantly, American lives are—a life is lost, and wounded, I don't believe that you can call it a success.
AMYGOODMAN:White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer lashed out at Senator McCain and journalists for criticizing President Trump's decision to order the raid.
PRESSSECRETARYSEANSPICER:It's absolutely a success. And I think anyone who would suggest it's not a success does disservice to the life of Chief Ryan Owens. He fought knowing what was at stake in that mission. And anybody who would suggest otherwise doesn't fully appreciate how successful that mission was, what the information that they were able to retrieve was and how that will help prevent future terrorist attacks.
KRISTENWELKER:But even Senator John McCain—
PRESSSECRETARYSEANSPICER:I understand that. I think my statement is very clear on that, Kristen. I think anybody who undermines the success of that rage [sic] owes an apology and a disservice to the life of Chief Owens.
AMYGOODMAN:So, that is Sean Spicer. President Trump, when he addressed a joint session of Congress, brought in the widow of Ryan Owens, but Ryan Owens' father, William Owens, refused to meet with President Trump when his son's body was brought to Dover Air Base, harshly critical of this raid, saying, "Why did he have to do this now, to move so quickly in his administration?" That was one NavySEAL, and then you have the number of civilian casualties, women and children. What did you find, Iona?
IONACRAIG:Well, really, the civilians that I spoke to when I went to the village had exactly that same question: Why? Why did the Trump administration choose to carry out this raid? For what reasons? And what are they going to do about it now? Because not only did they put the lives of Navy SEALs at a huge amount of risk, which was highly predictable if you had even a vague understanding of the local politics in that particular area of Yemen at the time, but obviously caused mass civilian casualties. There were 26 people in that village who were killed. As you've already mentioned, many of those were women and children. That village has essentially been abandoned now, because not only—after that raid happened, not only was the entire village strafed and more than 120 livestock were killed, but the U.S. went back a month later, at the beginning of March, and bombed it for four consecutive nights, both with drone strikes and helicopter gunfire, and killed two more children and several more adults. So the last person that I spoke to who was living there, Sheikh Aziz al Ameri, he then left the village and is now living under trees several miles away.
So, the impact on the local population, who were essentially on the same side as U.S. in the civil war in Yemen at the moment—they were fighting against the Houthis, which is exactly what the U.S. has been doing over the last two years—they've not only alienated the entire local population around there, but caused to huge amount of anti-American sentiment. And now tribesmen, who were not al-Qaeda, who are not even al-Qaeda now, but were not before, but are now quite willing and wanting to fight the Americans as a result of this and a result of them killing their children and their wives.
So, I think that what was quite clear before they even went in there was that, and what actually happened was the fact that, all of the local tribesmen in that area came to defend the village when the U.S. Navy SEALs went in there. And that was because they thought the village was being raided by the people they'd been fighting for the last two-and-a-half years, which is the Houthis. They had no notion that it was Americans that were coming in to attack the village when it happened. And that was quite clearly a huge risk when the Americans went in there to carry out this raid, that that would indeed happen. It's the middle of a civil war. That village is right behind the front lines. They had been receiving rocket fire and mortar fire from their opponents in the civil war in the days and weeks before the raid. So, of course it was their assumption that their village was being stormed by the Houthi rebels, whom they've been fighting for so long. So, every man within hearing distance of gunfire came running. I spoke to a man who drove 45 minutes from his neighboring village when he got the call to come and help defend his neighbors' area. And so, I think the risk to the Navy SEALs was massive before they even went in there. It appears that there had been at least some knowledge within the village that they were in fact coming, as well. And so, for all those reasons, the Navy SEALs were being put under a huge amount of risk, and it was highly likely that somebody was going to—one of their team was going to get killed, not to mention then the fact that they inevitably got pinned down by fire, then had to call in air support and basically decimate the entire village in order to be able to extract themselves safely from that situation. And from what I saw, and talking to people, most of that was predictable before they even went in there.
NERMEENSHAIKH:Well, Iona Craig, as you report in thepiece, White House spokesperson Sean Spicer said the purpose of the raid was intelligence gathering and not specifically targeting anyone, and that initially the U.S. Central Command posted a video backing Spicer's claim, but that video was subsequently removed when it was proven that it was 10 years old.
IONACRAIG:Yeah, I mean, two things on that front. Certainly, from what I was told and in addition to statements that appear to have come out from the military since then, they were in fact going after the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a man called Qasim al-Raymi. I think it's extremely unlikely that they would have been carrying out such a high-risk mission in order to gather laptops, cellphones or intelligence, as they suggest. He was not in the village and, in fact, released an audio statement mocking both Trump and the raid several days later. Although there were some low-level al-Qaeda militants there in one particular house, because of the situation of how the Navy SEALs came under fire, that house was in fact bombed by an airstrike before the SEALs could even get into it, so whatever intelligence they claim to have gathered from there would have come from other buildings where there were no al-Qaeda militants present.
That video that you mentioned, that was—when it was first posted, was labeled as an AQAP—so that's al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula—video of how to make bombs, as you say, was—had turned out was 10 years old, had already been available on the internet. Well,AQAP, as it is now, didn't even exist 10 years ago, so even to label it as anAQAPvideo was kind of laughable, really. And if that's the best of the intelligence that came out of there, then it seems that that was a very high-risk undertaking for very little gain, if that's the best that they can show for it.
But as I mentioned, certainly, the people I spoke to on the ground, when I asked them about what houses the Navy SEALs got into or perhaps access to the dead bodies, who may have been carrying, let's say, cellphones or electrical equipment, they couldn't even clarify to me that the Navy SEALs had got inside buildings or had actually access to the dead. They couldn't say either way, because of the chaos of the situation, it being extremely dark. They obviously didn't have night vision goggles like the Navy SEALs would have. So it wasn't even clear that they had in fact got into any buildings or not. So I think that's highly disputed, that intelligence. And certainly, some of the claims being made over the last few days, that the whole laptop ban was linked to intelligence gathered from the Yemen raid, do not add up at all, from what I've seen being written in the media on that, as well.
AMYGOODMAN:Iona, we have less than a minute to go, but earlier this month Amnesty International urged Trump to block future arms sales, writing, "Arming the Saudi Arabia and Bahrain governments risks complicity with war crimes, and doing so while simultaneously banning travel to the U.S. from Yemen would be even more unconscionable," Amnesty wrote. A front-page story inThe New York Timestoday, "Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has decided to lift all human rights conditions on a major sale of F-16 fighter jets and other arms to Bahrain in an effort to end a rift between the United States and the critical Middle East ally." If you can, very quickly, talk about the role of U.S. weapons in these conflicts?
IONACRAIG:In Yemen, it's huge. The U.S. is the biggest exporter to Saudi Arabia, and it's big business for the U.S. But, of course, we know that the majority of civilian casualties in the war in Yemen have been caused by Saudi-led airstrikes. And the U.S. has a huge influence over this. They were—those precision-guided weapons were suspended at the end of last year, and now we're looking at a resumption of that, where the U.S. does actually have influence over Saudi Arabia—not just over Saudi Arabia, but also the continuation of this war, for the weapons that it sells to them and to the logistical support it gives to the Saudi-led coalition in the terms of refueling and in the terms of targets, as well.
So, this is—it is, obviously, worrying for those people and campaigners who have been trying to prevent the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, but also the terms of those sales. There are indications now that those weapons may be sold under commercial terms rather than under military, which also then doesn't attach the same end use issues with them, so there isn't so much scrutiny then with the end use of those weapons in a war like Yemen. And that's also deeply concerning. So, I think now, at a stage where really the attempt should be made to de-escalate the conflict, it's—all indications are now that, in fact, the war in Yemen will be escalated by the activities of the U.S. government right now.
NERMEENSHAIKH:Well, one last, very quickly, Iona, that we—as we said in our introduction, there have been more airstrikes carried out since the start of 2017 than there were in all of 2016. But you've pointed out in a recent interview that there were more drone strikes in Yemen over the space of 36 hours than there were in all of 2016.
IONACRAIG:Yes, absolutely. And even in the last 24 hours, there have been U.S. airstrikes—and not just airstrikes, there's naval bombardments, as well, which, of course, were being done under the Obama administration, but those airstrikes have been carried out in Abyan province, in Shabwah, in Hadhramaut, in Ma'rib—in the last 24 hours in Ma'rib, in Shabwah and in Abyan, and also in Al Bayda, as well, earlier on in March. So, yes, there's definitely—there's not just this surge at the beginning of March, where we saw that 36 hours of airstrikes happening very rapidly, but that's been a continuation, as well, now. And as I say, it's not just drone strikes. It's airstrikes from fighter jets, and it's also coming from the sea.
AMYGOODMAN:Iona Craig, we want to thank you for being with us, freelance journalist who was based in Sana'a for years, has continued to go back and forth reporting on what's happening there. Thanks so much for joining us.
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Perhaps one way to resolve many issues is to discuss them all in one place, and this is the purpose of continuing the interview with Chomsky.
In the previous issue, the point was made that now Obama has marked the longest time the U.S. has ever been in a way, but that point is misleading.World War Two is actually the last war the U.S. involved itself in, but this is a matter semantics based on the idea that only Congress shall have the authority to declare war and it has not made such a declaration since Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked for it back in 1941, "A day that shall live in infamy," as he put it.Since it was clear that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor (which we said was us), the declaration was made.We know of no such declaration since.
However, what is referred to as the Korean War immediately followed, referred to on occasion as World War 2.4.Vietnam continued under the French until the U.S. took it over.Truthfully, aside from no formal declaration of war (which somehow would raise salaries for American Soldiers to serve as cannon fodder and people killers, we understand) we cannot find one single period of time during which the United States was in some sort of armed conflict around the world.If any of you can think of one, please let us know.One of the more interesting forays by the United States was during the Reagan administration when a Marine barracks was attacked and many were killed.Reagan did not hesitate to withdraw all of the U.S. troops from Lebanon and invade Grenada, the communist menace to the south consisting of some American medical students and some Cuban construction workers.Don't mess with America, y'all.
Cuba is discussed and by comparison Crimea is only a moderate restructuring of administration.One way Guantanamo(spell it as you will) can be solved is to return it to it's rightful owner, Cuba, and simply leave.With the American memory span roughly equivalent to that of a goldfish, all but a few people who write things down will forget the entire incident.
No point in extending this any further than is needed, so here is the interview:
Today, the U.S. and Russia co-chair a meeting of the 17-nation International Syria Support Group aimed at easing the five-year conflict with a death toll that has reached close to half a million people. 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. Syria is only one of a number of ongoing deadly conflicts in the Middle East. Last year, a record 60 million people around the world were forced to flee their homes, becoming refugees. For more on these conflicts and the rise ofISIS, we continue our conversation with internationally renowned political dissident, linguist and author, Noam Chomsky. "The U.S. invasion of Iraq was a major reason in the development, a primary reason in the incitement of sectarian conflicts, which have now exploded into these monstrosities," says Chomsky. He has written over 100 books, most recently, "Who Rules the World?" Chomsky is institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he's taught for more than 50 years.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:We're on the road in our100-city tour, today broadcasting from Chicago.
The United States and Russia are co-chairing a meeting in Vienna today of the 17-nation International Syria Support Group aimed at easing the five-year conflict. According to a recentreportby the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the death toll in Syria has reached close to half a million people, nearly twice the number counted by the United Nations a year and a half ago, when it stopped keeping track of the numbers killed because of the data's unreliability. 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. Syria is only one of a number of ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. Last year, a record 60 million people around the world were forced to flee their homes, becoming refugees.
Well, for more on these conflicts, from Syria to Iraq to Yemen, and the U.S. role in the ongoing violence, we continue our conversation with the internationally renowned political dissident, linguist, author, Noam Chomsky. He has written over a hundred books, most recently,Who Rules the World?Noam Chomsky is institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he's taught for more than half a century. I began by asking him to talk about the conflict in Syria.
NOAMCHOMSKY:Syria is spiraling into real disaster, a virtual suicide. And the only sensible approach, the only slim hope, for Syria is efforts to reduce the violence and destruction, to establish small regional ceasefire zones and to move toward some kind of diplomatic settlement. There are steps in that direction. Also, it's necessary to cut off the flow of arms, as much as possible, to everyone. That means to the vicious and brutal Assad regime, primarily Russia and Iran, to the monstrousISIS, which has been getting support tacitly through Turkey, through—to the al-Nusra Front, which is hardly different, has just the—the al-Qaeda affiliate, technically broke from it, but actually the al-Qaeda affiliate, which is now planning its own—some sort of emirate, getting arms from our allies, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Our own—theCIAis arming them. We don't know at what level; it's clandestine. As much as possible, cut back the flow of arms, the level of violence, try to save people from destruction. There should be far more support going simply for humanitarian aid. Those who are building some sort of a society in Syria—notably, the Kurds—should be supported in that effort.
These efforts should be made to cut off the flow of jihadis from the places where they're coming from. And that means understanding why it's happening. It's not enough just to say, "OK, let's bomb them to oblivion." This is happening for reasons. Some of the reasons, unfortunately, are—we can't reverse. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was a major reason in the development, a primary reason in the incitement of sectarian conflicts, which have now exploded into these monstrosities. That's water under the bridge, unfortunately, though we can make sure not to do that—not to continue with that. But we may like it or not, butISIS, theISIL, whatever you want to call it, does have popular support even among people who hate it. The Sunni—much of the Sunni population of Iraq and Syria evidently regards it as better than the alternative, something which at least defends them from the alternative. From the Western countries, the flow of jihadis is primarily from young people who are—who live in conditions of humiliation, degradation, repression, and want something decent—want some dignity in their lives, want something idealistic. They're picking the wrong horse, by a large margin, but you can understand what they're aiming for. And there's plenty of research and studies—Scott Atran and others have worked on this and have plenty of evidence about it. And those—alleviating and dealing with those real problems can be a way to reduce the level of violence and destruction.
It's much more dramatic to say, "Let's carpet bomb them," or "Let's bomb them to oblivion," or "Let's send in troops." But that simply makes the situation far worse. Actually, we've seen it for 15 years. Just take a look at the so-called war on terror, which George W. Bush declared—actually, redeclared; Reagan had declared it—but redeclared in 2001. At that point, jihadi terrorism was located in a tiny tribal area near the Afghan-Pakistan border. Where is—and since then, we've been hitting one or another center of what we call terrorism with a sledgehammer. What's happened? Each time, it spreads. By now, it's all over the world. It's all over Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, everywhere you look. Take the bombing of Libya, which Hillary Clinton was strongly in favor of, one of the leaders of, smashed up Libya, destroyed a functioning society. The bombing sharply escalated the level of atrocities by a large factor, devastated the country, left it in the hands of warring militias, opened the door forISISto establish a base, spread jihadis and heavy weapons all through Africa, in fact, into the Middle East. Last year, the—according to U.N. statistics, the worst terror in the world was in West Africa, Boko Haram and others, to a considerable extent an offshoot of the bombing of Libya. That's what happens when you hit vulnerable systems with a sledgehammer, not knowing what you're doing and not looking at the roots of where these movements are developing from. So you have to understand the—understand where it's coming from, where the appeal lies, what the roots are—there are often quite genuine grievances—at the same time try to cut back the level of violence.
And, you know, we've had experience where things like this worked. Take, say,IRAterrorism. It was pretty severe. Now, they practically murdered the whole British Cabinet at one point. As long as Britain responded toIRAterrorism with more terror and violence, it simply escalated. As soon as Britain finally began—incidentally, with some helpful U.S. assistance at this point—in paying some attention to the actual grievances of Northern Irish Catholics, as soon as they started with that, violence subsided, reduced. People who had been called leading terrorists showed up on negotiating teams, even, finally, in the government. I happened to be in Belfast in 1993. It was a war zone, literally. I was there again a couple of years ago. It looks like any other city. You can see ethnic antagonisms, but nothing terribly out of the ordinary. That's the way to deal with these issues.
Incidentally, what's happening in Syria right now is horrendous, but we shouldn't—useful to remember that it's not the first time. If you go back a century, almost exactly a century, the end of the First World War, there were hundreds of thousands of people starving to death in Syria. Proportionally, proportional to the population, it's likely that more Syrians died in the First World War than any other belligerent. Syria did revive, and it can revive again.
AMYGOODMAN:We'll continue with Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author, his latest book,Who Rules the World?, after break.
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As Saudi Arabia continues to fund fighting in Syria and Yemen, Noam Chomsky says it is "the center of radical Islamic extremism." Chomsky adds that the U.S. ally is "a source of not only funding for extremist radical Islam and the jihadi outgrowths of it, but also, doctrinally, mosques, clerics and so on, schools, you know, madrassas, where you study just Qur'an, is spreading all over the huge Sunni areas from Saudi influence."
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This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:We're on the road in Chicago, Illinois. I'm Amy Goodman, as we continue Part 2 of our conversation with world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, Noam Chomsky, institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he's taught for more than half a century. His latest book,Who Rules the World?I asked him to talk about Saudi Arabia's role in the Middle East.
NOAMCHOMSKY:Well, there's a long history. The basic—we don't have a lot of time, but the basic story is that the United States, like Britain before it, has tended to support radical Islamism against secular nationalism. That's been a consistent theme of imperial strategy for a long time. Saudi Arabia is the center of radical Islamic extremism. Patrick Cockburn, one of the best commentators and most knowledgeable commentators, has correctly pointed out that what he calls the Wahhibisation of Sunni Islam, the spread of Saudi extremist Wahhabi doctrine over Sunni Islam, the Sunni world, is one of the real disasters of modern—of the modern era. It's a source of not only funding for extremist radical Islam and the jihadi outgrowths of it, but also, doctrinally, mosques, clerics and so on, schools, you know, madrassas, where you study just Qur'an, is spreading all over the huge Sunni areas from Saudi influence. And it continues.
Saudi Arabia itself has one of the most grotesque human rights records in the world. TheISISbeheadings, which shock everyone—I think Saudi Arabia is the only country where you have regular beheadings. That's the least of it. Women have no—can't drive, so on and so forth. And it is strongly backed by the United States and its allies, Britain and France. Reason? It's got a lot of oil. It's got a lot of money. You can sell them a lot of arms, I think tens of billions of dollars of arms. And the actions that it's carrying out, for example, in Yemen, which you mentioned, are causing an immense humanitarian catastrophe in a pretty poor country, also stimulating jihadi terrorism, naturally, with U.S. and also British arms. French are trying to get into it, as well. This is a very ugly story.
Saudi Arabia—Saudi Arabia itself, its economy—its economy is based not only on a wasting resource, but a resource which is destroying the world. There's reports now that it's trying to take some steps to—much belated steps; should have been 50 years ago—to try to diversify the economy. It does have resources that are not destructive, like sunlight, for example, which could be used, and is, to an extent, being used for solar power. But it's way too late and probably can't be done. But it's a—it has been a serious source of major global problems—a horrible society in itself, in many ways—and the U.S. and its allies, and Britain before it, have stimulated these radical Islamist developments throughout the—throughout the Islamic world for a long time.
AMYGOODMAN:Do you think Obama has dealt with Saudi Arabia any differently than President Bush before him?
NOAMCHOMSKY:Not in any way that I can see, no. Maybe in nuances.
As protests continue in Brazil over the Legislature's vote to suspend President Dilma Rousseff and put her on trial, Noam Chomsky notes that "we have the one leading politician who hasn't stolen to enrich herself, who's being impeached by a gang of thieves, who have done so. That does count as a kind of soft coup." Rousseff's replacement, Brazil's former vice president, Michel Temer, is a member of the oppositionPMDBparty who is implicated in Brazil's massive corruption scandal involving state-owned oil company Petrobras, and has now appointed an all-white male Cabinet charged with implementing corporate-friendly policies.
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This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:What about what's happening right now in Brazil, where protests are continuing over the Legislature's vote to suspend President Dilma Rousseff and put her on trial? Now El Salvador has refused to recognize the new Brazilian government. The Brazilian—the Salvadoran president, Cerén, said Rousseff's ouster had, quote, "the appearance of a coup d'état." What's happening there? And what about the difference between—it looked like perhaps Bush saved Latin America simply by not focusing on it, totally wrapped up in Iraq and Afghanistan. It looks like the Obama administration is paying a bit more attention.
NOAMCHOMSKY:Well, I don't think it's just a matter of not paying attention. Latin America has, to a significant extent, liberated itself from foreign—meaning mostly U.S.—domination in the past 10 or 15 years. That's a dramatic development in world affairs. It's the first time in 500 years. It's a big change. So the so-called lack of attention is partly the fact that the U.S. is kind of being driven out of the hemisphere, less that it can do. It used to be able to overthrow governments, carry out coups at will and so on. It tries. There have been three—maybe it depends how you count them—coups, coup attempts this century. One in Venezuela in 2002 succeeded for a couple of days, backed by the U.S., overthrown by popular reaction. A second in Haiti, 2004, succeeded. The U.S. and France—Canada helped—kidnapped the president, sent him off to Central Africa, won't permit his party to run in elections. That was a successful coup. Honduras, under Obama, there was a military coup, overthrew a reformist president. The United States was almost alone in pretty much legitimizing the coup, you know, claiming that the elections under the coup regime were legitimate. Honduras, always a very poor, repressed society, became a total horror chamber. Huge flow of refugees, we throw them back in the border, back to the violence, which we helped create. Paraguay, there was a kind of a semi-coup. What's happening—also to get rid of a progressive priest who was running the country briefly.
What's happening in Brazil now is extremely unfortunate in many ways. First of all, there has been a massive level of corruption. Regrettably, the Workers' Party, Lula's party, which had a real opportunity to achieve something extremely significant, and did make some considerable positive changes, nevertheless joined the rest—the traditional elite in just wholesale robbery. And that should—that should be punished. On the other hand, what's happening now, what you quoted from El Salvador, I think, is pretty accurate. It's a kind of a soft coup. The elite detested the Workers' Party and is using this opportunity to get rid of the party that won the elections. They're not waiting for the elections, which they'd probably lose, but they want to get rid of it, exploiting an economic recession, which is serious, and the massive corruption that's been exposed. But as evenThe New York Timespointed out, Dilma Rousseff is maybe the one politician who hasn't—leading politician who hasn't stolen in order to benefit herself. She's being charged with manipulations in the budget, which are pretty standard in many countries, taking from one pocket and putting it into another. Maybe it's a misdeed of some kind, but certainly doesn't justify impeachment. In fact, she's—we have the one leading politician who hasn't stolen to enrich herself, who's being impeached by a gang of thieves, who have done so. That does count as a kind of soft coup. I think that's correct.
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We speak with world-renowned political dissident Noam Chomsky about the Republican party, the rightward shift in U.S. politics and the 2016 election. "If we were honest, we would say something that sounds utterly shocking and no doubt will be taken out of context and lead to hysteria on the part of the usual suspects," Chomsky says, "but the fact of the matter is that today's Republican Party qualify as candidates for the most dangerous organization in human history. Literally."
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This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:I wanted to move back to the United States, to the issue of the Republican Party and what you see happening there, the Republican establishment fiercely opposed to the presumptive nominee. I don't know if we've ever seen anything like this, although that could be changing. Can you talk about the significance—I mean, you have Sheldon Adelson, who is now saying he will pour, what, tens of millions of dollars into Donald Trump. You have the Koch brothers—I think it was Charles Koch saying he could possibly see supporting Hillary Clinton, if that were the choice, with Donald Trump. What is happening?
NOAMCHOMSKY:Well, first of all, the phenomenon that we've just seen is an extreme version of something that's been going on just for years in the Republican primaries. Take a look back at the preceding ones. Every time a candidate came up from the base—Bachmann, McCain, Santorum, Huckabee, one crazier than the other—every time one rose from the base, the Republican establishment sought to beat them down and get their own—get their own man—you know, Romney. And they succeeded, until this year. This year the same thing happened, and they didn't succeed. The pressure from the base was too great for them to beat it back. Now, that's the disaster that the Republican establishment sees. But the phenomenon goes way back. And it has roots. It's kind of like jihadis: You have to ask about the roots.
What are the roots? The Republican—both political parties have shifted to the right during the neoliberal period—the period, you know, since Reagan, goes back to late Carter, escalated under Reagan—during this period, which has been a period of stagnation and decline for much of the population in many ways—wages, benefits, security and so on—along with enormous wealth concentrated in a tiny fraction of the population, mostly financial institutions, which are—have a dubious, if not harmful, role on the economy. This has been going on for a generation. And while this has been happening, there's a kind of a vicious cycle. You have more concentration of wealth, concentration of political power, legislation to increase concentration of wealth and power, and so on, that while that's been going on, much of the population has simply been cast aside. The white working class is bitter and angry, for lots of reasons, including these. The minority populations were hit very hard by the Clinton destruction of the welfare system and the incarceration rules. They still tend to support the Democrats, but tepidly, because the alternative is worse, and they're taking a kind of pragmatic stand.
But while the parties have shifted to—but the parties have shifted so far to the right that the—today's mainstream Democrats are pretty much what used to be called moderate Republicans. Now, the Republicans are just off the spectrum. They have been correctly described by leading conservative commentators, like Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, as just what they call a radical insurgency, which has abandoned parliamentary politics. And they don't even try to conceal it. Like as soon as Obama was elected, Mitch McConnell said, pretty much straight out, "We have only one policy: make the country ungovernable, and then maybe we can somehow get power again." That's just off the spectrum.
Now, the actual policies of the Republicans, whether it's Paul Ryan or Donald Trump, to the extent that he's coherent, Ted Cruz, you pick him, or the establishment, is basically enrich and empower the very rich and the very powerful and the corporate sector. You cannot get votes that way. So therefore the Republicans have been compelled to turn to sectors of the population that can be mobilized and organized on other grounds, kind of trying to put to the side the actual policies, hoping, the establishment hopes, that the white working class will be mobilized to vote for their bitter class enemies, who want to shaft them in every way, by appealing to something else, like so-called social conservatism—you know, abortion rights, racism, nationalism and so on. And to some extent, that's happened. That's the kind of thing that Fritz Stern was referring to in thearticlethat I mentioned about Germany's collapse, this descent into barbarism. So what you have is a voting base consisting of evangelical Christians, ultranationalists, racists, disaffected, angry, white working-class sectors that have been hit very hard, that are—you know, not by Third World standards, but by First World standards, we even have the remarkable phenomenon of an increase in mortality among these sectors, that just doesn't happen in developed societies. All of that is a voting base. It does produce candidates who terrify the corporate, wealthy, elite establishment. In the past, they've been able to beat them down. This time they aren't doing it. And that's what's happening to the so-called Republican Party.
We should recognize—if we were honest, we would say something that sounds utterly shocking and no doubt will be taken out of context and lead to hysteria on the part of the usual suspects, but the fact of the matter is that today's Republican Party qualify as candidates for the most dangerous organization in human history. Literally. Just take their position on the two major issues that face us: climate change, nuclear war. On climate change, it's not even debatable. They're saying, "Let's race to the precipice. Let's make sure that our grandchildren have the worst possible life." On nuclear war, they're calling for increased militarization. It's already way too high, more than half the discretionary budget. "Let's shoot it up." They cut back other resources by cutting back taxes on the rich, so there's nothing left. There's been nothing this—literally, this dangerous, if you think about it, to the species, really, ever. We should face that.
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This month President Obama will become the first serving U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, Japan, where the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb toward the end of World War II on what Noam Chomsky calls "the grimmest day I can remember." Chomsky examines the U.S. role in launching the nuclear age, Obama's role in continuing it, and the rest of his legacy. "I don't usually agree with Sarah Palin, but when she was ridiculing this—what she called this 'hopey-changey stuff,' she had a point. There were a few good things. ... But opportunities that were available, especially in the first two years when he had Congress with him, just were not used. By the standards of U.S. presidential politics, it's kind of nothing special either way, nothing to rave about, certainly."
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This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:Do you think that President Obama has intensified this threat, I mean, now with the trillion-dollar plan to, quote, "modernize" the nuclear arsenal?
NOAMCHOMSKY:It's a very bad step. And it's not just modernizing the arsenal, which ought to be reduced. Worth remembering we have even a legal obligation to cut back and, ultimately, eliminate nuclear weapons. But it's also something you mentioned earlier: developing these small nuclear weapons. Sounds kind of nice. They're small, not big. It's the opposite. Small nuclear weapons provide a temptation to use them, figuring, "Well, it's only a small weapon, so it won't destroy, you know, a whole city." But as soon as you use a small nuclear weapon, chances of retaliation escalate pretty sharply. And that means you could pretty soon be in a situation where you're having a real nuclear exchange, pretty well known now that that would lead to a nuclear winter, which would make life essentially impossible.
AMYGOODMAN:As President Obama heads to Hiroshima, do you think he should be apologizing for the only nuclear bombs, atomic bombs, dropped in the world, the U.S. dropping them, launching the nuclear age, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in '45?
NOAMCHOMSKY:I thought—I mean, I'm old enough to remember it. And that day was just the—maybe the grimmest day I can remember. Then came something even worse: the bombing of Nagasaki, mainly to try to test a new weapon design. These are real horror stories. The carpet—the bombing, firebombing of Japanese cities a couple months earlier was not that much better, Tokyo especially. We might even recall that there was what was called a grand finale in the Air Force history. After the two atom bombs, after Russia had entered the war, which ended any Japanese hope for any kind of—any hope that they had for any sort of negotiated settlement, after that—it was all over—after Japan had officially surrendered, though before it had been made public, after that, the U.S. organized a thousand-plane raid, which was a big logistic feat, to bomb Japanese cities to kind of show the Japs who was on top, and survivors, so like Makoto Oda, a well-known Japanese writer who recently died, reported that as a child in Osaka, he remembers bombs falling along with leaflets saying, "Japan has surrendered." Now, that was not a lethal bombing, but it was a brutal one, a brutal sign of brutality. All of these events call for serious rethinking—yes, apology, but mainly serious rethinking of just what we're up to in the world.
And remember that this goes on. Those were small bombs by today's standard. If you look at the record since, since 1945, it's an absolute miracle that we've survived. New examples are discovered all the time. Just a couple of months ago, it was revealed that in 1979, last Carter year, the U.S. automated detection systems sent a—determined that there was a major Russian missile attack against the United States. Protocol is, this goes to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they evaluate it, goes to the national security adviser—Zbigniew Brzezinski at the time—and he notifies the president. Brzezinski was actually on the phone, ready to call Carter to launch a nuclear attack, which means the Doomsday Clock goes to midnight, on the phone when they received information saying that it was a false alarm, another of the hundreds, if not thousands, of false alarms. On the Russian side, there are probably many more, because their equipment is much worse. These things happen constantly. And to play games with escalating the nuclear arsenal, when it should be reduced, sharply reduced—I mean, even people like Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and so on, are calling for elimination of nuclear weapons. To escalate and modernize at this point is just really criminal, in my opinion.
AMYGOODMAN:World-renowned political dissident, linguist and author, Noam Chomsky. His latest book,Who Rules the World?We'll continue our conversation with him in a minute, talking about President Obama's legacy, Cuba and the death of Michael Ratner, coming up.
[break]
AMYGOODMAN:"O Que Será," performed by Nara Leão. This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. We continue our conversation with the world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, Noam Chomsky, institute professor emeritus atMIT. His latest book,Who Rules the World?I asked him for his assessment of the Obama administration.
NOAMCHOMSKY:It's about what I thought before he—before the 2008 primaries, when I wrote about him just based on the information in his web page. I didn't expect anything. I expected mostly rhetoric and—you know, nice rhetoric, good speaker and so on, but nothing much in the way of action. I don't usually agree with Sarah Palin, but when she was ridiculing this—what she called this "hopey-changey stuff," she had a point. There were a few good things. You know, there were a few good things in the W. Bush administration. But opportunities that were available, especially in the first two years when he had Congress with him, just were not used. And some—it's—by the standards of U.S. presidential politics, it's kind of nothing special either way, nothing to rave about, certainly.
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At the opening of the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C., last year after almost half a century, Democracy Now! spoke to attorney Michael Ratner, who played a key role in fighting for the habeas corpus rights of Guantánamo prisoners and wrote several books about the U.S. role in Cuba and Latin America. We discuss his legacy and new U.S. stance toward Cuba with Noam Chomsky, who argues the change came about in part because the United States was being driven out of the hemisphere. "Latin America used to be just the backyard. They do what you tell them. If they don't do it, we throw them out and put in someone else. No more. Not in the last 10, 20 years."
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This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:I wanted to ask you about the passing of Michael Ratner, Michael Ratner, the former head of the—or the late head of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the trailblazing human rights attorney, who died last week at the age of 72. I hadinterviewedMichael last year in Washington, D.C., at the reopening of the Cuban Embassy, after it was closed for more than five decades. And I asked Michael to talk about the significance of this historic day. This is an excerpt of what he said.
MICHAELRATNER:Well, Amy, let's just say, other than the birth of my children, this is perhaps one of the most exciting days of my life. I mean, I've been working on Cuba since the early '70s, if not before. I worked on the Venceremos Brigade. I went on brigades. I did construction. And to see that this can actually happen in a country that decided early on that, unlike most countries in the world, it was going to level the playing field for everyone—no more rich, no more poor, everyone the same, education for everyone, schooling for everyone, housing if they could—and to see the relentless United States go against it, from the Bay of Pigs to utter subversion on and on, and to see Cuba emerge victorious—and when I say that, this is not a defeated country. This is a country—if you heard the foreign minister today, what he spoke of was the history of U.S. imperialism against Cuba, from the intervention in the Spanish-American War to the Platt Amendment, which made U.S. a permanent part of the Cuban government, to the taking of Guantánamo, to the failure to recognize it in 1959, to the cutting off of relations in 1961. This is a major, major victory for the Cuban people, and that should be understood. We are standing at a moment that I never expected to see in our history.
AMYGOODMAN:That was Michael Ratner. It was July [20th]. It was that historic day in Washington, D.C., when the Cuban Embassy was opened after almost half a century. If you could talk both about the significance of Michael Ratner, from his work around Guantánamo, ultimately challenging thehabeas corpusrights of Guantánamo prisoners, that they should have their day in court, and winning this case in the Supreme Court, to all of his work, also talk about Cuba, Noam, something that you certainly take on in your new book,Who Rules the World?
NOAMCHOMSKY:Well, Michael Ratner has an absolutely fabulous record. His achievements have been enormous. A tremendous courage, intelligence, dedication. A lot of achievement against huge odds. The center, which he largely—it was a major—he ran and was a major actor in, has done wonderful work all over the place—Cuba and lots of other things. So I can't be excessive in my praise for what he achieved in his life and the inspiration that it should leave us with.
With regard to Cuba-U.S. relations, I think what he just said is essentially accurate. In fact, it's even worse than that. We tend to forget that after the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy administration was practically in a state of hysteria and seeking to somehow avenge themselves against this upstart who was carrying out what the government called successful defiance of U.S. policies going back to the Monroe Doctrine. How can we tolerate that? Kennedy authorized a major terrorist war against Cuba. The goal was to bring "the terrors of the earth" to Cuba. That's the phrase of his associate Arthur Schlesinger, historian Arthur Schlesinger, in his biography of Robert Kennedy. Robert Kennedy was given the responsibility to bring "the terrors of the earth" to Cuba. And it was—he in fact described it as one of the prime goals of government, is to ensure that we terrorize Cuba. And it was pretty serious. Thousands of people were killed, petrochemical plants, other industrial installations blown up. Russian ships in the Havana Harbor were attacked. You can imagine what would happen if American ships were attacked. It was probably connected with poisoning of crops and livestock, can't be certain. It went on into the 1990s, though not at that—not at the extreme level of the Kennedy years, but pretty bad. The late '70s, there was an upsurge, blowing up of a Cubana airliner, 73 people killed. The culprits are living happily in Miami. One of them died. The other, Luis Posada, major terrorist, is cheerfully living there.
The taking over of southeastern Cuba back—at the time of the Platt Amendment, the U.S. had absolutely no claim to this territory, none whatsoever. We're holding onto it just in order—it's a major U.S. military base—it was. But we're holding onto it simply to impede the development of Cuba, a major port, and to have a dumping place where we can send—illegally send Haitian refugees, claiming that they're economic refugees, when they're fleeing from the terror of the Haitian junta that we supported—Clinton, incidentally, in this case—or just as a torture chamber. Now, there's a lot of talk about human rights violations in Cuba. Yeah, there are human rights violations in Cuba. By far the worst of them, overwhelmingly, are in the part of Cuba that we illegally hold—you know, technically, legally. We took it at the force of a gun, so it's—point of a gun, so it's legal. I mean, in comparison with this, whatever you think of Putin's annexation of Crimea is minor in comparison with this.
All of this is correct, but we have to ask: Why did the U.S. decide to normalize relations with Cuba? The way it's presented here, it was a historic act of magnanimity by the Obama administration. As he, himself, put it, and commentators echoed, "We have tried for 50 years to bring democracy and freedom to Cuba. The methods we used didn't work, so we'll try another method." Reality? No, we tried for 50 years to bring terror, violence and destruction to Cuba, not just the terrorist war, but the crushing embargo. When the Russians disappeared from the scene, instead of—you know, the pretense was, "Well, it's because of the Russians." When they disappeared from the scene, how did we react, under Clinton? By making the embargo harsher. Clinton outflanked George H.W. Bush from the right, in harsh—during the electoral campaign, in harshness against Cuba. It was Torricelli, New Jersey Democrat, who initiated the legislation. Later became worse with Helms-Burton. All of this has been—that's how we tried to bring democracy and freedom to Cuba.
Why the change? Because the United States was being driven out of the hemisphere. You take a look at the hemispheric meetings, which are symbol of it. Latin America used to be just the backyard. They do what you tell them. If they don't do it, we throw them out and put in someone else. No more. Not in the last 10, 20 years. There was a hemispheric meeting in Cartagena, in Colombia. I think it was—must have been 2012, when the U.S. was isolated. U.S. and Canada were completely isolated from the rest of the hemisphere on two issues. One was admission of Cuba into hemispheric systems. The second was the drug war, which Latin America are essentially the victims of the drug war. The demand is here. Actually, even the supply of weapons into Mexico is largely here. But they're the ones who suffer from it. They want to change it. They want to move in various ways towards decriminalization, other measures. U.S. opposed. Canada opposed. It was pretty clear at that time that at the next hemispheric meeting, which was going to be in Panama, if the U.S. still maintained its position on these two issues, the hemisphere would just go along without the United States. Now, there already are hemispheric institutions, likeCELAC,UNASURfor South America, which exclude the United States, and it would just move in that direction. So, Obama bowed to the pressure of reality and agreed to make—to accept the demand to—the overwhelming demand to move slowly towards normalization of relations with Cuba. Not a magnanimous gesture of courage to bring Cuba—to protect Cuba from its isolation, to save them from their isolation; quite the opposite, to save the United States from its isolation. Of course, with the rest of the world, there's not even any question. Take a look at the annual votes on—the U.N. has annual votes on the U.S. embargo, and just overwhelming. I think the last one was something like 180 to two—United States and Israel. It's been increasing like that for years. So, that's the background.
As for Michael, Michael Ratner, his achievements are just really spectacular.
AMYGOODMAN:And finally, Noam, you've just written this book,Who Rules the World?You've written more than a hundred other books. And, I mean, you have been a deep, profound thinker and activist on world issues, for what? I mean, more than 70 years. You were writing when you were 14 years old, giving your analysis of what's been happening. And I'm wondering where you think we stand today, if you agree with—well, with Dr. Martin Luther King, that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice.
NOAMCHOMSKY:Actually, it was 10 years old, but not—nothing to rave about. If you look over the past, say, the roughly 75 years of my, more or less, consciousness, it's—in general, I think the arc of history has been bending towards justice. There have been many improvements, some of them pretty dramatic—women's rights, for example, to an extent, civil rights. It should be remembered that there were literally lynchings in the South until the early 1950s. It's not beautiful now, but that's not happening. There have been steps forward. Opposition to aggression is much higher than it was in the past. There's finally concern for environmental issues, which are really of desperate necessity. All of this is slow, halting, significant steps bending the arc of history in the right way.
There's been regression, a lot of regression. Things don't move smoothly. But there have been bad periods before, and we've pulled out of them. I think there are opportunities—they're not huge, but they're real—to overcome the—and I stress again—to overcome problems that the human species has never faced in its roughly 200,000 years of existence, problems of, literally, survival. We've already answered these questions for a huge number of species: We've killed them off.
AMYGOODMAN:Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author, institute professor emeritus atMIT. He taught there for over half a century. His latest book,Who Rules the World?If you want to watchPart 1of our conversation—it was all of Monday's show—go to democracynow.org.
I'll be speaking today inChicagoat 6:30 with Jeremy Scahill at the Chicago Temple Building on West Washington Street; then on Wednesday inMadison, Wisconsin, at the Barrymore Theatre; to Toronto, Canada,ThursdayandFriday; then on to Saturday inTroy, New York, at the Sanctuary for Independent Media; on Sunday inNew York; and on Monday at thePhiladelphiaFree Library. You can check our website at democracynow.org as we continue our100-city tour.
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