Posts
THE ABSURD TIMES
“I got Covid-19 because I wore a mask” --Republican
politician from Texas (Gohmert)
Insanity
or Stupidity?
By
Czar
Donic
Well,
we managed to last another month. This month and the next should end this crap.
Trump’s attempt to postpone the election failed (even Mitch McConnell would not
bite on that) bombed and wimpy Republicans have decided that many of them had
better separate themselves from this nut.
As to not accepting the results, he will have no choice and once the
oath is taken he is no longer in Office. Biden will simply need to order him
removed.
We
post here an interview with Noam Chomsky, a fitting way to end, with his
analysis and then remarks on Israel’s wild west takeover of Palestine. Without
Trump, they know the game is up, so they will be working fast in the next 9
weeks or so.
Frankly,
it is a relief that it is over soon. People are busy debating and hurtling
insults at one another, deciding Biden is no choice at all, and so on, but the
Bozo family has to move out and then it’s all over.
Don’t
worry about him leaving – Actually, the Secret Service is in charge of getting
rid of unwanted trespassers (which is what Trump will be).
It
looks as if people will be evicted and unemployment insurance reduced as Bozo
does not seem likely to get the new FBI building built next to a new hotel, but
it is all conjecture. Who knows for sure?
Maybe everyone will have to survive on 70% of what they get now.
One
thing I am confident about in addition to the above is that the death toll from
Covid-19 will reach a quarter of a million by the end of the year. No special
medical or political expertise involved, the numbers just look that way, that’s
all.
Chomsky
is here and summarizes everything nicely. He has more or less stopped his
linguistic contributions although he retains an interest in Artificial
Intelligence. One of his major
contributions was to show that Behavioralism is a farce, although it remains
the mainstay of Psychology studies. The cognitive aspects are now at least
recognized. He was to have three debates with Skinner long ago, but Skinner was
crushed during the first and never returned. RIP. Another interesting observation is that prior to puberty
languages are far easier for people to learn and pick up than later on. That
has never been investigated.
So,
Noam is still alive down in Arizona, just not going out anywhere. He has a
great deal of experience on observing political and social events, and he seems
right on target here. We present the entire transcript here:
* *
*
As the U.S. corona virus death toll tops 150,000, we spend the hour with
world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky, who says
decades of neoliberal policies that shredded the social safety net and public
institutions left the country ill-prepared for a major health crisis. “We
should understand the roots of this pandemic,” he says.
AMY GOODMAN: This
is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org,
The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
The U.S. coronavirus death toll has topped 150,000 on Wednesday, the
highest of any nation by far. The hardest hit states per capita are Florida,
Louisiana, Arizona, Mississippi, Alabama, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas, Idaho,
Tennessee and Georgia, a list that includes all seven of the original
Confederate states.
Today we talk about COVID and so much
more as we spend the hour with Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned political
dissident, linguist and author, Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, where he taught for more than 50 years, now laureate professor
in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. Author of more
than 100 books. Professor Chomsky spoke with Democracy Now!’s
Nermeen Shaikh and I on Thursday, from his home in Tucson, Arizona about the
coronavirus crisis.
NOAM CHOMSKY We
should understand the roots of this pandemic. If we do not understand the roots
and extirpate them, there is going to be another and worse one coming. So far
we have been kind of lucky. The coronavirus, pandemics, epidemics are very
serious, and there are many possibilities. So far, all the ones that have
happened in the last ten or 15 years, either the virus has been very deadly but
not very contagious, like Ebola, or very contagious but not very deadly,
like COVID-19. What happens when the next one
comes along that is both very contagious and very deadly? We are in deep
trouble. Deep. Much worse than this. Much worse than the so-called “Spanish
flu,” which ought to be called the Kansas flu by Trump’s logic. It originated
in Kansas the century ago. We may be facing something much worse than that.
There are ways of dealing
with it. After the SARS epidemic in 2003,
scientists knew that another one is very likely. They warned against it. They
presented policies that could be carried out. They weren’t implemented, in part
because of deep institutional pathologies. The drug companies who are the
obvious candidates for dealing with it can’t, by straight capitalist logic. You
don’t spend money to try to prevent a catastrophe ten years from now. What you
do is try to make money tomorrow. That is the logic of the system. So the
pharmaceutical companies were ruled out by capitalist logic.
The government could step
in. The government, in any event, does most of the basic research for vaccines
and drugs, almost all of them. So they could have stepped in, create
laboratories, and plenty of unlimited resources. But they are blocked by the
neoliberal plague. Remember Ronald Reagan—that government is the problem, not
the solution, which means we have to take decision-making and action out of the
hands of government, which has a flaw; it’s somewhat responsive to the
population. We have to shift it to unaccountable, private tyrannies, which are
totally unaccountable to the population. That is the meaning of Reagan’s
slogan. That is the fundamental principle of neoliberalism. We’ve been
suffering—the world has been suffering from it for 40 years, except for the
tiny percentage who have become super rich and extremely powerful. Well, that
blocks the government.
Nevertheless, there were
things that the government could do. When the Obama administration took office,
in the first few days, Obama called the presidential scientific advisory board,
which had been established by George H.W. Bush, the first Bush, who had some
respect for science. Obama called it. He requested that they put together a
pandemic reaction program, a way to deal with a pandemic if it comes. They came
up with a report a couple weeks later. It was implemented. It was in place
until January 2017.
Trump came into office,
the first few days, dismantled the whole system. Nothing. That’s part of the
general wrecking ball. “We have to destroy everything that Obama did. We have
to wreck everything.” Because it is the only way to look like you are doing
something. Happening all over. So that went.
There were programs of
U.S. scientists working in China with Chinese colleagues to try to detect and
identify coronaviruses. Most of them are deep in caves. It’s very dangerous
work. Some have been killed, Chinese scientists. But they were finding them and
identifying them and testing them. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is the main
center for investigating this. Trump canceled the program.
There were simulations
run of a pandemic as late as October 2019 warning of what would happen. No
attention. The Trump administration isn’t interested. So when the epidemic
finally hit, the United States was singularly unprepared. After that comes a
series of grotesque inactions and actions. For a couple of months, Trump
refused to admit that it was happening.
Other countries were
doing things. In Asia, Oceania, Australia, New Zealand, they were reacting.
Some of it, South Korea, which was one of the first places hit, never had to go
to a lockdown because they dealt with it rationally. They identified the places
that were hot spots, controlled them, tested, traced people for contacts.
Countries pretty much functioned. Vietnam has reported zero deaths, and
apparently that is taken quite seriously by leading U.S. specialists. The Johns
Hopkins School of Public Health, which monitors the international situation,
records zero deaths from Vietnam, which has a 1,400-mile border with China.
South Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia are doing quite well. And Europe,
they delayed in quite a way, but they did finally act. As you mentioned, the
curve has sharply reduced since March for most of Europe. Some of them, like
Norway, Germany, doing quite well in this respect. People are traveling through
southern Italy almost like normal.
It has gotten so extreme
that, as you know, Europe has banned American visitors. The United States is
such a pariah state that Americans are not permitted to go to other countries.
Other countries won’t allow them in. This is kind of mimicked in a horrible way
in Brazil. Bolsonaro just denies that it’s happening. “It’s just a mild flu.
Don’t worry about it. Brazilians are strong. We don’t care.” So big meetings of
right-wing Bolsonaro supporters dancing in the streets and spreading the virus,
and Bolsonaro says fine.
And one of the really
world-shaking crimes that is being carried out is the destruction of the
Amazon. That affects the whole world, not just Brazil. It’s basically genocide
to the indigenous populations. Scientific predictions are that on our current
course, the Amazon will shift in about 15 years from being a net sink of carbon
dioxide to a net emitter of carbon dioxide, sometimes called the lungs of the
Earth. The forest absorbs huge amounts of carbon dioxide. It will start
emitting them instead. A little further down the road, the Amazon, under the
current course, will just turn into savanna, no forest anymore. Devastating for
Brazil and the other Amazonian countries. Devastating for the world. It’s one
of the main oxygen producers of the world.
At every level, we are
racing madly towards total catastrophe under the leadership of sociopathic
fanatics. It is as if some evil demon decided to take over the human species
and drive them to self-destruction. Much of the world is trying to counter it,
almost all of the world, but the United States and Brazil are the extreme cases
of racing with dedication towards disaster.
Going back to this
election, that is the reason why it is the most dangerous, the most significant
election in history. Why Trump is, in fact—this may sound outrageous, but it’s
true—Trump is the most dangerous figure in human history. The Republican Party
today is the most dangerous organization in human history. You can compare Trump
to, say, Hitler, the Wannsee declaration in 1942, called for killing all the
Jews, tens of millions of Slavs, not destroying humanized society. There has
been nothing like this. Nothing.
The Republican Party, we
know how they shifted. You go back just a decade or so, John McCain, 2008, was
running for president. His program had some pretty weak, but some policies
directed to global warming. The Republican Congress was beginning to
contemplate global warming, policies to restrict global warming. The Koch
brothers, a superrich energy corporation, got wind of this. They had been
working for years to prevent it. David Koch, one of the Koch brothers who died
recently, launched an incredible campaign to make sure that the Republican
Party would turn to denialism. They bribed senators, intimidated others with
the threat of running counter-campaigns against them. Huge lobbying campaign.
Astroturf campaigns. A massive juggernaut. The party shifted, dropped all of
its efforts to deal with climate change. It’s now a party led by denialists.
AMY GOODMAN: As you talk about
this denialism and the science denialism, first dealing with the climate crisis
and then extending to the pandemic, both threatening life on Earth, with
President Trump now holding a daily coronavirus press briefing without the
scientists, you have Anthony Fauci throwing out the first ball at the
Washington Nationals game, the chief infectious disease scientist, who won’t
play ball exactly with the White House, so he is not in the coronavirus briefing.
You have Dr. Birx. President Trump says she’s right outside, but she is not a
part of this news conference. Do you think reporters who are sitting in the
White House briefing room should refuse to be there unless scientists are there
and unless President Trump wears a mask?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yes, I think so,
and I think they should do much more. They should be pointing out constantly
what I just said: we’re dealing with the most dangerous figure in human
history, backed by the most dangerous organization in human history, and give
the facts. Not only the pandemic, but the much more serious threat of
environmental disaster and the growing, very severe threat of nuclear war.
In my opinion, every
newspaper should have on the front page an image of the Doomsday Clock. You
know all about this, but every January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
gathers—the main scientific journal dealing with these issues—gathers
scientists, political analysts to try to give an estimate of the security, the
state of the world security. Started shortly after the atom bomb, it has been
going on for 75 years. The minute hand is moved closer or farther—it
oscillates—closer or farther to midnight, depending how dangerous the world
situation is. Midnight means we are finished.
Every year that Trump has
been in office, the minute hand has moved closer to midnight. Two years ago, it
reached the closest it had ever been. This last January, the analysts gave up
minutes; they moved to seconds. A hundred seconds to midnight. Since January,
Trump has made every one of the issues that they have brought up worse. There
were three major issues. One is of course the threat of nuclear war, second the
threat of environmental catastrophe, the third the deterioration of democracy.
Which does belong, because it is only with a vibrant democracy of informed,
engaged public that we can have any hope of escaping from the two existential
crises.
Since January, Trump has
succeeded in making all three crises worse. I mention the nuclear weapons
issue, considerably worse thanks to Trump’s actions. The environmental crisis
of course getting worse, as he continues to press for maximization of the use
of the most dangerous fossil fuels, cuts back through his EPA representatives and others, cuts back on the efforts
to mitigate the crisis through regulatory means. And democracy, it’s pretty
obvious; the executive branch has been essentially cleansed of independent
voices. Nothing but sycophants of Pompeo variety. “We were sent by God to save
Israel.”
The Inspectors General
who were imposed by Congress, by the Republican Congress to monitor malfeasance
of the executive branches, purged. Trump in fact went out of his way to
humiliate the senior Republican senator, Charles Grassley, who had spent much
of his career imposing these monitors. The attorney for the Southern District
of New York looked into the Trump swamp; fired. Congress, turned by McConnell,
used to be called the greatest deliberative body in the world. Now it is a
joke. Doesn’t do any deliberation. It does essentially nothing except try to
race through as many appointments of young, ultra-right judges as possible so
they can pack the judiciary for a generation. The only other thing it does is
figure out ways to pour money into the—dollars into the pockets of the rich,
like the tax scam. That’s the Senate, the greatest deliberative body. Proposals
come from the House for legislation; McConnell just cans them. Don’t look at
them. That is not the role of the Senate.
Going back, that’s why
they should be putting the Doomsday Clock on the front of every newspaper. Show
us what the United States is doing to the world. To itself and the world. That
should be in front of everyone’s attention. And there are many other things
that should be done. There should be major protests now, everywhere, against
the use of military force to occupy American cities and to crush peaceful
dissidents. This is intolerable in a functioning democracy. We can’t sit by and
let it happen, just let it proceed step by step until we reach real catastrophe.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor
Noam Chomsky. When we come back from break, he talks about Israel’s threat to
annex the West Bank, the upcoming U.S. election and more.
As
the world races to develop a COVID-19 vaccine,
Noam Chomsky says any successful treatment must be accessible to everyone, and
he warns that President Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization
will hamper the international body’s efforts to distribute medicine in
countries racked by poverty and war. “There’s at least one country in the world
that is showing genuine internationalism, providing medical aid and support for
people that need it,” Chomsky says, and that is Cuba.
Transcript
This is a rush
transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy
Now! I’m Amy Goodman. It’s the Quarantine Report. We return now to
the interview I did with Nermeen Shaikh with Professor Noam Chomsky.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Chomsky,
I’d like to ask about one of the immediate crises we are facing, which you’ve
just spoken about earlier, which is of course this pandemic. If you could say a
little—now, many scientists believe that a vaccine will be possible for this
virus. Could you talk a little about what you hope will happen in terms of
access to this vaccine?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, first of all,
whether a vaccine will be available is an open question. There are some pretty
favorable reports, but the development of safe vaccines is a pretty slow
process. Rushing vaccines through has dangers associated with it that may be
unknown, side effects, lots of problems that can be dealt with by slow
development. But racing through does raise these problems. Nevertheless, given
the spread of the virus, it’s imperative to do whatever can be done.
Then comes your question, how is it distributed? Well, in
the kind of society in which we live, it will be distributed pretty much the
way the stimulus money is being distributed, or the way the bailout in 2008 was
distributed. That was the Obama administration, not the administration of a psychopath.
So how was it done under Obama? Well, Congress passed the legislation with two
parts, to bail out the perpetrators of the crisis, the big banks, the ones who
had played games with derivatives and so on. “Let’s bail them out.” And the
other part was to provide support for the victims, the people who lost their
homes under foreclosure. “Let’s do something for them.” Half the program was
enacted, the first part. The inspector general for the Treasury Department,
Neil Barofsky, was so outraged, he was writing articles. He even wrote a book
about the scandal. That was the good guys, the Obama administration.
Now we are talking about the bad guys, the Trump
Administration, off the spectrum. That is what has been happening with the
stimulus funds. One of the major funds, about 80% of it went to people who
earned over a million dollars a year. You just gave the figures before about
the cornucopia that is flowing to the superrich [inaudible] others. Well, that
will be the way the vaccine is distributed too, if we retain our current social
order.
We don’t have to do that. Maybe Trump was sent by God to
Earth, but the system that we live in, it’s humanly designed and can be
changed. Can readily be changed. The coming election could lead to a change if
there is real dedication to getting rid of the malignancy in the White House
that is destroying us, and changing the former political party, still called a
political party, that backs the radical insurgency. That can be tamed and
returned into something like it was. We can get a stable government run by
people who care somewhat about the population.
And if popular activism continues, which has made a big
impact, it’s worth—the Sanders campaign was a remarkable success, and Sanders
joined the planning of the Biden campaign. It’s had a big impact on the
program. It is the most progressive program of any candidate in recent history,
maybe as far back as Roosevelt. The climate change program is not what I would
like, not what you would like, but is better than anything that has been
proposed by anyone. It was partially written by the activists of Sunrise
Movement. The leadership of the movement strongly endorses it.
If popular activism continues, it can ensure or at least
make it highly probable that these programs will be enacted and improved.
That’s the key. That’s real politics. Keep the pressure on daily, not just push
a lever every four years. That’s what has effect. If that can continue, we can
escape from this crisis. There are ways to deal with the environmental crisis.
There are ways to deal with a pandemic. Of course nuclear war, yes, there are
ways to deal with it. They are not insoluble. But you have to grasp the
opportunity.
Now as far as distributing the vaccine is concerned, we
are going to be facing real problems. One is the radical inequality in the
society, which is just going to push the more wealthy and privileged to the
front. That has to be stopped. The vaccine should go to those who need it, who
are mostly the poor and vulnerable. They are the ones who are suffering most
and they should be up front. People in impossible—like the concentration camps
not far from where I live, on the southern border with Mexico, the pandemic is
raging there in the prisons. Raging. All of these have to be dealt with.
We’re going to face another problem. The anti-science
thrust of this administration has accelerated a tendency in the country to be
opposed to science. It’s very strong. There’s a strong anti-vaccination
movement, which says, “We can’t take vaccines. They are too dangerous.” You’ve
probably seen a story circulating that the pandemic was created by Bill Gates
and George Soros to try to control the world population. Very widespread. A
recent investigation by Pew Research Center found that among Republicans, of
those who are familiar with the story, which is a great many, that almost 60%
believe it. These are people who listen to Rush Limbaugh, who tells his 30
million people in the audience—this is Trump’s favorite news man, just got the
Medal of Freedom—he tells his audience there are four corners of
deceit—government, media, academia, and science. They thrive on deceit. OK?
Tens of millions of people hear that kind of thing. They
see what you described in the White House with the scientists pushed to the
side. “We don’t want science.” OK. They believe it. Not surprising. That is
what people are inundated with. And coming back to the distribution of the
virus, they may refuse to take the vaccine. A person who refuses to take the
vaccine is not just harming him or herself. It’s like a person who says “I’ve
got an assault rifle. I want to run around the streets shooting it at random.”
That’s what it means not to wear a mask or not to take the vaccine.
AMY GOODMAN: Do people have
reason to be afraid, Professor Chomsky, about a vaccine that has been
developed, in Trump’s words, the name of the program “Warp Speed”? That in his
zeal at deregulation to get a vaccine, which so many people want around the
world, that there would be a danger in the original vaccines?
NOAM CHOMSKY: If vaccines are
rushed through, there is always a danger. It means that many of the
possibilities simply haven’t been tested. That’s what happens when you rush
things through. Maybe the balance of costs and benefits says you should do it
anyway. But what are we going to do? We are talking about the United states,
how to distribute a vaccine. What about Africa? What about Yemen? What about
poor areas of Latin America? And what about the huge mass of deeply
impoverished people in India? What is going to happen to them? That’s most of
the population of the world.
Well, they get some relief from the World Health
Organization. It hasn’t been discussed as far as I know, but something pretty
shocking just took place. When Trump, as I said before, flailing around to try
to find some scapegoat to cover up the fact that he is responsible for killing
tens of thousands of Americans, one of his targets is the World Health
Organization. First, defunding. Second, trying to destroy it.
What does this mean to tens of thousands if not millions
of poor people in Africa? The World Health Organization is what provides them
with medical support and treatment for the many diseases that they face all the
time. Now it’s getting worse under the virus. What does it mean for Yemen, the
worst humanitarian crisis in the world? Thanks to our providing Saudi Arabia
with arms and intelligence so that they can destroy the country, a large part
of it. The population, they have a terrible pandemic raging. The World Health
Organization is one of the few means of providing medical support for them. So
let’s withdraw it.
Pulling out of the World Health Organization, defunding
it is threatening the lives of huge, uncountable numbers of people. Why isn’t
that a headline? Or even a small story somewhere? It is shocking what we are
overlooking. Going back to your question of distribution of vaccines, they
ought to be right in front. We should be doing something for them.
There’s at least one country in the world that is showing
genuine internationalism, providing medical aid and support for people who need
it. When there was a pandemic in northern Italy, a serious epidemic in northern
Italy, there were some rich countries to the north—Germany, Austria—which had
it pretty much in control. They didn’t send doctors. Doctors were sent from
Cuba, a poor country that the United States has been trying to crush for 60
years. They were able to send doctors to northern Italy, as they’ve done before
and elsewhere. Not the rich countries in what’s called the European Union.
Well, that is the kind of world we live in. This is
sometimes covered and discussed in the U.S. media, but the way it is done is to
accuse the Cuban government of using slave labor to enrich themselves. That is
what it means for Cuba to send doctors to work in dangerous places to deal with
a pandemic, as they’ve done many times before. It’s true that the Cuban
government takes part of the funding for this to use for their medical system,
their remarkable medical system. So you turn that through the U.S. propaganda
system and it becomes using slave labor to enrich themselves. This is the
country that we are crushing, starting with a terrorist war and vicious
economic strangulation. The whole world is opposed to it. When it comes up in
the United Nations every year, the world votes unanimously against the United
States. One exception, Israel, which has to go along with the U.S. Everyone
else opposed. Who cares? We’re the global pariah state. We don’t care about
anybody else.
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Noam Chomsky says Israel’s planned annexation of the occupied West Bank
“basically formalizes” what has already been official policy over the last
half-century, from both left-wing and right-wing parties in Israel. He compares
Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to anti-immigrant policies in the United
States, and says the main goal of annexation is to take over as much territory
while excluding its Palestinian inhabitants. “Israel does not want to bring
Palestinian populations into the greater Israel they’re constructing.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I
wanted to ask you about Israel. Thousands of people have been protesting the
way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dealt with the coronavirus pandemic.
Also protesting his corruption. This comes as the United Nations warns Israel’s
threat to annex parts of the West Bank has hindered Palestinian efforts to
control the pandemic. The UN Special Envoy made the remarks a day after Israeli
authorities demolished a coronavirus testing center in the West Bank city of
Hebron. Can you talk about what is happening there, both the issue of the
coronavirus pandemic and Netanyahu’s express attempt, any day now, to annex the
West Bank?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well,
what’s happening with the virus is pretty horrible. You look at the records of
the main Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, they actually report cases in
which settlers, what’s called the Hilltop Youth—extremist right-wing,
ultra-religious settlers in settlements that even the government of Israel
regards as illegal, but leaves them alone and supports them—some of them did
have coronavirus. These young, crazed militants broke into Palestinian villages
to try to spread the virus. And that’s at the extreme end. Destroying those
centers as you described, is the legal part of it.
In
fact, Israel is treating the Palestinians, it has for a long time, in modern
history, pretty much the way the United States is treating immigrants in the
virtual concentration camps south of where I live. The annexation, which they
are holding off for the moment, basically formalizes policies that have been
implemented over the last 50 years.
This
is both major political groupings. The Labor Party has pretty much disappeared,
but it used to be the major party. Under the Labor Party, Golda Meir, Moshe
Dayan, and others, under Shimon Peres, under the Labor Party as under the
Likud-based coalition, the same policies have been carried out, trying to
create a greater Israel, which takes over everything in the West Bank that is
valuable and integrates it into Israel with huge infrastructure projects, and
ban Palestinians of course. You can drive from Ma’ale Adumim—built mostly
during the Clinton years, a town east of Jerusalem, kind of virtually bisects
the West Bank—you can drive from there to Tel Aviv without even seeing a
Palestinian on a superhighway.
So
you take what’s important, but avoid the population centers. Israel does not
want to bring Palestinian populations into the greater Israel they are
constructing. That is what is called the demographic problem—too many non-Jews
in a Jewish state; can’t have that. So we want to avoid the population centers,
don’t take over Nablus and other population centers. Take over the areas that
are of value to us. There is a Palestinian population and try to get rid of
them as much as possible by making life unlivable, or else isolate them in
unviable cantons, probably almost 200 of them in the areas that Israel is
taking over, where people are cut off from their fields, from their olive
groves. They have to pass through checkpoints to cross the road. Just make life
as impossible as possible, and try to limit the population and take over what
is valuable.
The
Jordan Valley, about a third of the West Bank, take that over. Palestinian
populations have mostly been removed by one or another technique. Set up
military firing zones, where nobody is allowed in it. So you kick out the
Palestinians, then you put in a Jewish settlement and tie it to the electrical
and water grid. Pretty soon, it’s settled by Jews. Do the same with the Gurion
Park, and so on. And that’s the policy for the last 50 years. Do it slowly,
sort of under the radar, so outsiders can pretend they don’t see it. But that
is what has been happening. Annexation will essentially formalize it.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I
wanted to ask what you would like to see happen here in the U.S. in the months
leading up to this election, which you have said is the most important in human
history. What should happen here in the country, in the U.S.? What should
people be doing to organize?
NOAM CHOMSKY: They
should be doing anything they can think of—demonstrations, protests, political
organization, pressure on every pressure point you can think of, to try to
block the very transparent effort of Trump, backed by his party, to set up
major military confrontations, which will be an excuse for trying to either
eliminate the election or to affect its results so that he does not have to
leave the White House.
Also
stressing the fact that we are in a major crisis. The pandemic is the immediate
crisis; meanwhile, the environmental crisis is growing seriously, has to be
addressed now. We cannot wait. We must put into practice means to mitigate the
crisis and overcome it. To get off of fossil fuels. To get to zero net
emissions within a short time. All of this has to be done now.
We
have to strongly act constantly to try to prevent the crazed lunatics in the
White House from carrying out nuclear weapons tests. That’s the next thing on
the agenda, breaking down the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Trying to pressure
them, it’s possible, to renegotiate the new START treaty.
If the Democrats win the election, they’ll do it, even thought it may be too
late to get anywhere. All of these things have to be done right away. No
let-up. We are in a very dangerous period for the next few months. What happens
may determine the fate of the country, the fate of the species.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam
Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author joining us
from Tucson, Arizona, where he is sheltering at home in the midst of the
pandemic with his wife. Noam Chomsky is 91 years old. He is Professor emeritus
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught for more than 50
years. Now laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the
University of Arizona, Tucson. Author of more than 100 books. To see part one
of our interview we broadcast last week, go to Democracynow.org.
And
this news just in, the U.S. economy contracted by a record 33% in the second
quarter and another 1.43 million people filed for state unemployment last week.
More than 50 million people have filed for unemployment since the start of the
pandemic. And that does it for our show. I am Amy Goodman with Nermeen Shaikh.
Thanks so much for joining us.
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