Showing posts with label Imperialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Imperialism. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 04, 2018

George SR.



THE ABSURD TIMES




Illustration:  A popularly elected leader of Chile murdered on 9/11



We have been hearing nothing but maudlin nostalgia for Bush I, and it is only the idiocy and blatant foolery of Donald Trump who twitters things away like a madman that he looks good. It dominates our news and nothing else gets through.  One must look even to the BBC, let alone RT, France24, and other international services to find out what is going on.  Below we have a reporter from Al-Jazerra, a mid-eastern service that Bush I and then Bush II bombed.  Quatar, which hosts the station, is boycotted by Saudi Arabia -- It tried to work in the U.S., but finally had to close up.

Back to Bush I.  The truth is that his perfidry is greatly underestimated.  He started as head of the CIA, his father was head of the OSS (the ancestor of the CIA) and all along he maintained the same underground self-importance and greed of the "old elite" classes, the bulwark of greed and aggression of the U.S.  During the Iran-Contra dealings he claimed he was "out of the loop" when he may very well have been the loop itself.  He was instrumental in setting up the Bay of Pigs fiasco for which the Kennedy administration is still blamed (although Dulles had set it up).  Right after that, JFK fired Alan Dulles, then the CIA director and a year later. Almost to the day, JFK was eliminated.  He was there when Alliende was overthrown by Kissinger and the CIA and much more to overcome the "Vietnam Syndrome", (which is another word for a free press).  He finally managed to pretty much wipe it out with Panama, but his real work was done in Iraq.  The Mideast is still in turmoil as a result.  Others who followed him merely improvised on it, until his son managed to wipe out the entire thing.  Then the fall of Gaddafi in Libya contributed, leading to the immigration crisis in Europe and to the various citizens turning to a populist form of fascism – which is how Hitler started and now Trump has made well known.

There is more evidence than provided below, but here it is for a start:




George H.W. Bush died in Houston on Friday night at the age of 94. Bush was elected the 41st president of the United States in 1988, becoming the first and only former CIA director to lead the country. He served as Ronald Reagan's vice president from 1981 to 1989. Since Bush's death, the media has honored the former president by focusing on his years of service and his call as president for a kinder, gentler America. But the headlines have largely glossed over and ignored other parts of Bush's legacy. We look at the 1991 Gulf War, Bush's pardoning of six Reagan officials involved in the Iran-Contra scandal and how a racist election ad helped him become president. We speak with Intercept columnist Mehdi Hasan. His latest piece is titled "The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice."


Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to look at the life and legacy of George H.W. Bush, the nation's 41st president, the father of the 43rd president. President Bush died in Houston on Friday night at the age of 94. His body will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda from tonight until Wednesday. He'll be buried later this week in Houston. There will be two memorial services: one at the National Cathedral on Wednesday and then one in Houston. Bush was elected president in 1988, becoming the first and only former CIA director to lead the country. From 1981 to 1989, he served as Ronald Reagan's vice president.
Over the weekend, the media honored Bush and his legacy, focusing on Bush's years of service, from his time in the Navy during World War II to his call as president for a kinder, gentler America. But the focus of the media's coverage has largely glossed over, or even ignored, other parts of Bush's legacy, from his expansion of the racist so-called war on drugs to his reluctance to tackle climate change, famously saying, quote, "The American way of life is not up for negotiation," unquote. It was also George H.W. Bush who nominated and continued supporting future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas even after Thomas was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill. Internationally, the ramifications of Bush's foreign policy in the Middle East are still being felt. In 1991, Bush launched the Gulf War in Iraq.
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: Our objectives are clear: Saddam Hussein's forces will leave Kuwait, will be restored to its rightful place, and Kuwait will once again the free. Iraq will eventually comply with all relevant United Nations resolutions. And then, when peace is restored, it is our hope that Iraq will live as a peaceful and cooperative member of the family of nations, thus enhancing the security and stability of the Gulf. Some may ask, "Why act now? Why not wait?" The answer is clear: The world could wait no longer.
AMY GOODMAN: Over the next 42 days, U.S. forces devastated the Iraqi civilian infrastructure and killed an unknown number of Iraqi civilians. On February 13, 1991, the U.S. bombed an air-raid shelter in the Amiriyah neighborhood of Baghdad. Four hundred eight civilians were killed. Some Iraqi relatives of the dead later sued Bush and his defense secretary, Dick Cheney, for war crimes. While the Gulf War technically ended in February of 1991, the U.S. war on Iraq would continue for decades, first in the form of devastating sanctions, then in the 2003 invasion launched by George H.W. Bush's son, President George W. Bush, the 43rd president. Thousands of U.S. troops and contractors remain in Iraq today.
President Bush's invasion of Iraq came just over a year after he sent tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of aircraft into Panama to execute an arrest warrant against its leader, Manuel Noriega, on charges of drug trafficking. General Noriega was once a close ally to Washington and on the CIA payroll. During the attack, the U.S. unleashed a force of 24,000 troops equipped with highly sophisticated weaponry and aircraft against a country with an army smaller than the New York City Police Department. An estimated 3,000 Panamanians died in the attack. Last month, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on Washington to pay reparations to Panama over what was widely seen as an illegal invasion.
In one of his last acts in office, President George H.W. Bush granted pardons to six former Reagan officials who were involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, when the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran to help raise money for the Nicaraguan Contras despite a congressional ban on providing aid to the Contras in Nicaragua. Bush was never held liable for his role in the scandal. The ex-CIA director claimed he was, quote, "out of the loop," even though other participants and a paper trail suggested otherwise.
Bush's time in office coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union. He termed the post-Soviet era the New World Order and was a key architect of neoliberal globalization, setting the stage for, among other things, NAFTA and the WTO.
To talk more about the legacy of George H.W. Bush, we're joined by Mehdi Hasan. He's a columnist for The Intercept, host of their Deconstructed podcast. He's also host of UpFront at Al Jazeera English. His most recent piece for The Intercept, "The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice."
Mehdi, we want to thank you for being with us. Of course, when someone dies, people—and certainly in the media, when it comes to a U.S. leader—they focus on what they feel was the important praiseworthy accomplishments of a person. And it's the instinct of all not to speak ill of the dead. But, Mehdi Hasan, if you can talk about the significance of the presidency of George H.W. Bush?
MEHDI HASAN: I mean, huge significance, Amy. And you're right. You know, not speaking ill of the dead is true, and it's a basic—you know, basic courtesy and decency. But this is not about speaking ill of the dead. This is about evaluating the record of a president of the United States, the 41st president of the United States, and one of the most important human beings of the 20th century, technically.
And, yes, a lot happened on his, you know, 4-year watch. You mentioned a great deal of it in your introduction there. And I think the problem is—I find it astonishing, as a Briton living in Washington, D.C., watching cable news on Saturday and seeing this hagiography masquerading as journalism, just talking about what a great guy he was, what a great president he was, what a civil and decent human being he was, ending the Cold War, and many achievements. You know, he stood up to the NRA. He stood up to AIPAC. He did do some good things. But the idea that you only focus on the positive and you ignore the negatives, especially when the negatives involve the loss of huge amounts of human life—in Iraq, for example, in Panama—I think, is absurd. It's a dereliction of journalistic duty for a president to die and journalists to act as if they're cheerleaders and put, you know, their own, whatever, patriotism or nationalism ahead of their duty to really give a full set of facts to the viewers, you know, a first draft of history, Amy.
A president is dead. We should look back on George Bush Sr. and say, "Hold on." You know, this is a president who is being described now as the anti-Trump, right? And yet he did some things which were similar to Trump. You mentioned in your intro the pardoning of the Iran-Contra perpetrators. He pardoned Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger on the eve of his trial. And the independent special counsel at that time—the independent special counsel at that time said this was misconduct. He said this was helping cover up the crimes. And today we get all worked up when Trump says, "Oh, I might pardon Paul Manafort." I think we should hold him to the same account we hold other people. The fact that, you know, he was nicer than Trump or less aggressive than his son doesn't change the fact that he has a lot to answer for.
AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi Hasan, and then we're going to come back and look at his record, from the Iraq War to the so-called war on drugs, the Willie Horton ad that became so famous, that one of his top aides, Lee Atwater, who really devised the scheme, apologized for on his deathbed. Mehdi Hasan is a columnist for The Intercept. We'll be back with him in a moment.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Rockin' in the Free World," Neil Young. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Mehdi Hasan is our guest, a columnist for The Intercept, host of the Deconstructed podcast, also is host of UpFront for Al Jazeera English. You mentioned the Iran-Contra scandal. If you can explain what the Iran-Contra scandal was?
MEHDI HASAN: Yeah. So, in the 1980s, there was congressional ban on the United States government supporting the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, which were trying to bring down a communist government in South America. And you had this issue where the Reagan administration decided to sell weapons to Iran, which was supposedly an enemy country at that time, fighting Iraq, and use the proceeds from that money to fund the Contras, in violation of a congressional ban.
There was a massive investigation. It was a huge scandal—think Russiagate times 10—at the time, in the 1980s. Reagan obviously left office without being punished for it. There was a special counsel, Bob Mueller-style, which was tasked to look into this: Lawrence Walsh, a former deputy attorney general under Eisenhower, I think it was. And when he tried to look into this, he found resistance from Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush. We're now being told what an honest and transparent man he was; he followed the rule of law, unlike Donald Trump today. And yet, at the time, he refused to hand over his diary. He refused to cooperate with the special counsel. He refused to give an interview. Sounds familiar, doesn't it, Amy? And then he pardoned the six top perpetrators—Elliott Abrams, the neocon; Caspar Weinberger, Reagan's defense secretary.
And the special counsel report, which is online—you can go and look at it now—very, very clearly says that Bush helped perpetrate the cover-up. Bush did not cooperate. And he says, I think, it's the first time a president pardoned someone on the eve of a trial that the president would have had to testify in. That's what Bush Sr. did. So when we're told today, "Oh, look at the difference between George Bush Sr. and Donald Trump," well, when it comes to obstruction of justice, when it comes to cover-ups, actually they were more similar than some of the media and some of the journalists would have you believe.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let's turn to the Gulf War. In January of 1991, George H.W. Bush addressed the nation on the invasion of Iraq.
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: As I report to you, air attacks are underway against military targets in Iraq. We are determined to knock out Saddam Hussein's nuclear bomb potential. … Some may ask, "Why act now? Why not wait?" The answer is clear: The world could wait no longer.
AMY GOODMAN: That's President George H.W. Bush in January of 1991. Of course, flags were at half-mast in Washington this weekend, as they were in Kuwait. Mehdi Hasan, you remind us of a very important part of the story, the lead-up to what took place and how it was the U.S. responded the way they did to Iraq and Kuwait.
MEHDI HASAN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell that story.
MEHDI HASAN: So, you heard the statement from George Bush Sr. Look, let's be very clear. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait illegally, in violation of international law. It was a brutal occupation of Kuwait. No one is denying any of that. But what Bush Sr. told the country was that this came without any warning, without any provocation, when in actual fact his own ambassador at that time in Iraq, the U.S. ambassador, April Glaspie, had told Saddam, just weeks before the invasion, that we in America have no opinion on your border dispute with Kuwait. It was interpreted as a green light. Historians—many historians have suggested that was a green light to Saddam from the Bush administration to invade. After Saddam invaded, we were also told by Bush Sr. that America had to go in to protect Saudi Arabia, because that was coming next. Saddam was about to invade Saudi, as well. There were Iraqi troops massing on the border. In fact, one reporter—I think her name is Jean Heller, if I remember correctly—went and bought some private commercial satellite data and found there were no Iraqi troops massing on the border to invade Saudi Arabia. It was another lie, like his son told in the run-up to the 2003 invasion. So, it was a war built on half-truths, evasions, lies. No one is denying Saddam invaded. But what George Bush told the nation was not the full truth.
And even after he went to war, as you mentioned in your introduction, how many civilians were killed? The United States government bombed an air-raid shelter in Baghdad, the Amiriyah shelter, killed more than 400 civilians. Human Rights Watch called it a serious violation of the laws of war, because the U.S. knew—the U.S. had been told beforehand—the U.S. intel knew that that was a place where civilians were congregating. They didn't just bomb an air-raid shelter, Amy. They bombed power stations, electricity-generating facilities, food-processing plants, flour mills—the civilian infrastructure of Iraq. And this was not collateral damage. Planners from the United States government told The Washington Post, told Barton Gellman, in 1991, that they were doing this on purpose so that they would have leverage with a postwar Iraq which would be forced to supplicate in the international arena for foreign assistance. And we know what happened next, with the sanctions, with the devastation that came in the '90s and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi kids who died. That all started on George Bush Sr.'s watch.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to go back to the election of George H.W. Bush.
MEHDI HASAN: Oh, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: During his 1988 presidential bid, his campaign released a now-notorious television ad called "Weekend Passes."
NATIONAL SECURITY PAC AD: Bush and Dukakis on crime. Bush supports the death penalty for first-degree murderers. Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison. One was Willie Horton, who murdered a boy in a robbery, stabbing him 19 times. Despite a life sentence, Horton received 10 weekend passes from prison. Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man and repeatedly raping his girlfriend. Weekend prison passes: Dukakis on crime.
AMY GOODMAN: That was the ad that Lee Atwater—Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater, top aides to George Bush at the time—
MEHDI HASAN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —would apologize for on his deathbed. Explain how significant this was.
MEHDI HASAN: Hugely significant, Amy. And even today, in media journalism classes across the country, that ad is taught, that ad is studied. Until Donald Trump came along, until the migrant caravan ad came along, it was considered to be the most racist ad in modern American political history. It was the 1988 election, and George Bush Sr. and his team decided that they were going to tie Michael Dukakis, the Massachusetts liberal, to this black rapist who had been released on a weekend furlough program. I think Atwater—there's a quote from Atwater where he said, "We're going to talk about Willie Horton so much that people are going to think he's Michael Dukakis's running mate." And this was—Bush Sr. approved of this campaign ad. Bush Sr. talked about Willie Horton in press conferences.
And he never apologized. He never—you know, Atwater, on his deathbed, apologized. Bush Sr. never apologized. Roger Stone, Amy, one of the most vile political operatives of our time, close adviser to Donald Trump, former adviser to Richard Nixon, he went up to Atwater and the Bush campaign and said, "You will regret this, because this is a clearly racist ad." When Roger Stone is telling you that you're too racist, you know you've gone too far. And yet, on Saturday, on Sunday, I heard former Bush aides and advisers going on cable news saying, "He was a thoroughly decent man. He believed in civility. He didn't believe in rancor. He wanted, you know, to unify Americans." And I have two words in response to that: "Willie Horton."
AMY GOODMAN: In fact, as you quote, Lee Atwater bragged at the time, "By the time we're finished, they're going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis's running mate."
MEHDI HASAN: Exactly.
AMY GOODMAN: And he was talking about a policy that was actually a law in a number of states—
MEHDI HASAN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —including California.
MEHDI HASAN: Yes, indeed. I think Reagan had signed off on a similar thing, if I'm not correct. But, you know, it was a deliberate attempt to stoke racial division, to scare white voters into thinking that Michael Dukakis was going to release a bunch of black murderers and rapists who were going to come and kill and rape them. It was vicious. And even recently, Amy, what's so ironic is the same cable news hosts who have been kind of, you know, praising George Bush Sr. to the hilt since Saturday morning, a few weeks ago they were all referring to Willie Horton when they were condemning Donald Trump's migrant caravan ad, you know, the ad that came out during the midterms about the Democrats let in this murderer, cop killer. We were all reminded of Willie Horton back then, but it seems like we won't make the logical collection which says that Willie Horton, that ad, came from the Bush Sr. campaign, this guy who was supposed to be a throwback to an era of civility and decency, yet he had no problem running this racist election campaign. Nor did he have a problem escalating a racist drug war.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's talk about that drug war and what George H.W. Bush did, especially around the issue of crack.
MEHDI HASAN: Yeah. So, he sat in the White House, in the Oval Office, in 1989, and he held up a bag of crack cocaine, which he said, famously, "Well, this was found just outside the White House, in a park across from the White House. That's how bad the drug problem is." It was a great dramatic visual prop. And yet, we discovered, thanks to reporting from The Washington Post, that that drug dealer, the drug seller, had been arrested by federal agents, yes, in Lafayette Square, but he had been "lured" there, to quote The Washington Post, by those federal agents. He was told to come and sell his—by an undercover operative. And he's even heard on tape, I believe, saying, "Well, where is the White House? What's the address? I have no idea how to get there."
This was—I mean, this is pure cynicism, Amy, to use this prop in this fake stunt basically to mislead the nation, from this supposedly honest Republican president, which then led to a $1.5 billion increase in spending, which is what Bush Sr. called for. He called for more prosecutors, more jails, more prison, more courts. And we know how that story ends, Amy: mass incarceration, the imprisonment, disproportionately, of young black men, lives lost, thousands of innocent lives lost in the so-called drug war both at home and abroad. And today you have people like Rand Paul, a Republican senator, who will admit, Republican senators who will admit—Chris Christie—will say this was a failed and racist drug war.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Mehdi Hasan, I want to thank you for being with us, columnist for The Intercept, host of the Deconstructed podcast. Most recent piece for The Intercept, we'll link to, "The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice." Tomorrow we'll look at what happened in Panama, George H.W. Bush's invasion of Panama, and the thousands of people who died there, as this week we continue to honor the dead.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Monday, July 30, 2018

Chomsky, Border, etc., Part 1




THE ABSURD TIMES



Noam Chomsky, Part 1

Here is an informative history and analysis of just about everything.  It seems that Noam is simply too informative for so many people that they simply cannot absorb it all.  They find it boring.  Those who can follow either agree or attack violently.  It is simply the truth about what is happening and what will happen.

I see no need to add to it.  I can only say that it was late that I realized anything about his political work.  Retreating from current events, I had decided to study the past, even learning Latin, and having to learn Anglo-Saxon.  Then I had to take Linguistics.  There I first came into contact with him and had to write an in-class test answer on him.  I thrashed the theories on several grounds and pointed them out.  Fortunately, the Professor, very knowledgeable, told me that I was wrong because Chomsky had revised his theories completely and that the text was hopelessly out of date.  So, we were both right, I guess.  The point is, I found out about his political work much later.  He really is quite a genius.




Federal officials say 711 children remain separated from their parents despite Thursday's court-imposed deadline for the Trump administration to reunite all migrant children separated from their parents by immigration officials at the border. More than 400 parents have been deported back to their home countries while their children remain in U.S. custody in facilities scattered across the United States. For more on the Trump administration's family separation policy and the roots of today's refugee crisis, we speak with world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author and professor Noam Chomsky.


Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Federal officials say 711 children remain separated from their parents, despite Thursday's court-imposed deadline for the Trump administration to reunite all migrate children separated from their parents by immigration officials at the border. More than 400 of the children have parents who have already been deported from the United States.
Well, on Thursday, I spoke with world-renowned political dissident, author and linguist Noam Chomsky. He is a laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught for more than 50 years. His recent books include Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy and Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power. He joined us from Tucson, Arizona, and I began by asking Noam Chomsky about the Trump administration's family separation policy.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, it's a major scandal, of course, and properly condemned throughout the world. Taking children away from their parents, sending them off somewhere, losing track of them, you know, it's hard to think of a more brutal and sadistic policy. Here in Tucson, there's a lot of—there's a good deal of activism concerned with immigrants. There are groups that set up camps in the desert to try to help people fleeing. And, of course, it's a very live issue. It's not very far from the border. In fact, when I give talks here, I often refer to the area as "occupied Mexico," which actually is a good designation. But the immigration policy altogether is a grotesque moral scandal here, and in Europe, I should say.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to President Trump speaking earlier this month.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I have a solution: Tell people not to come to our country illegally. That's the solution. Don't come to our country illegally. Come like other people do. Come legally.
AMY GOODMAN: That's President Trump. We were on the border recently in Brownsville, going back and forth over the bridge to Matamoros, Mexico. We saw a Guatemalan mother with her child, a Guatemalan father with his child. The Guatemalan mother had been at the legal port of entry at the bridge for days, on two different bridges, told that America is full, told this by the U.S. government. The question is: Who's being legal? Who's being illegal? What about what the U.S. is doing and where these migrants are desperately fleeing from—Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador? If you can talk about the history of U.S. involvement in these countries and what President Trump is saying—do it legally?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, actually, these people are fleeing from the wreckage and horrors of U.S. policies. So, take Guatemala. No need to go through the whole history, but back in 1954, the U.S. intervened, sponsored a military coup, overthrew a mildly reformist elected government. Since then, the country has been a complete horror story—hundreds of thousands of people killed, all kinds of atrocities, every imaginable sort of torture. It peaked in the 1980s under Reagan. In fact, some of the places where people are fleeing from, the Mayan areas, there was literal genocide going on, carried out by the man who Reagan called a stellar exponent of democracy, a really good guy. When Congress imposed some limits on direct U.S. military aid to this—to Ríos Montt, the person who was—general who was implementing the genocidal attacks, Reagan set up an international terrorist network.
The U.S. does not hire terrorists, it hires terror states—it's much more effective—so, Taiwan, Israel, Argentina—as long as it was under the rule of the neo-Nazi generals. Unfortunately, they were overthrown. They had the good news, Argentina. The people are still fleeing from the destruction there. It's been a horror story ever since. Same with El Salvador, where about 70,000 people were killed during the 1980s, almost all by the security forces, armed, trained, directed by the United States. Again, horror story since.
In Honduras, which not long ago had the plurality of refugees, the refugee flow started to peak after a military coup threw out the elected government, the Zelaya government, condemned by the entire hemisphere and the world, with the usual exception of President Obama. Hillary Clinton refused to call it a military coup, because that would have meant terminating military aid to the junta, which the U.S. continued to do. There had always been a severe repression and atrocities. They mounted sharply. Honduras became maybe the homicide capital of the world, and refugees started fleeing. There were so-called elections, which were mocked by almost everyone except the United States. It continues.
You'll notice there's one—there's two countries in the region from which there haven't been refugee flows. One is Costa Rica, which happens to be the one country that sort of functions, and not by accident, the one country that the United States has not—in which the United States does not intervene militarily to overthrow the government and run a military regime. The other is Nicaragua, which differed, which also suffered severely in the 1980s from Reagan's assaults. But Nicaragua was unlike the other countries of the region: It had an army to defend it. In the other countries, the army were the terrorists. In Nicaragua, the army could, to some extent, defend the population from Reagan's terrorist forces. And though there's plenty of problems in Nicaragua, it hasn't been the source of refugee flow.
So, essentially, what President Trump is saying is, we'll destroy your countries, slaughter you, impose brutal regimes, but if you try to get out, you're not going to come here, because America is full.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
The 2018 midterm election season has been roiled by the internal divisions between the Democratic Party's growing progressive base and the more conservative party establishment. In New York City, this division came to a head with the most shocking upset of the election season so far, when 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez handily defeated 10-term incumbent Representative Joe Crowley, the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House. Ocasio-Cortez ran a progressive grassroots campaign as a Democratic Socialist advocating for "Medicare for All" and the abolition of ICE. For more on her victory and what it means for the Democratic Party, we speak with Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author.


Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, as we turn back to my interview with world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky, now at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's go to the upcoming midterm elections and the increasing number of Democratic Socialist candidates running, who raise the issue of immigration as one of the top issues. I recently sat down with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democratic congressional candidate, whose recent primary victory upended the 10-term incumbent Congressman Joe Crowley, the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House, who was being talked about as the next House speaker to succeed Pelosi. And I began by asking her how she achieved her staggering primary victory.
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: I do think that the way that we won in New York 14 is a model for how we can win almost anywhere. I knew from the outset that—you know, I had no misconceptions of the fact that the New York political machine was not going to be doing me any favors. And so I didn't—I tried to kind of come in as clear-eyed as possible. And I knew that if we were going to win, the way that progressives win on an unapologetic message is by expanding the electorate. That's the only way that we can win strategically. It's not by rushing to the center. It's not by trying to win spending all of our energy winning over those who have other opinions. It's by expanding the electorate, speaking to those that feel disenchanted, dejected, cynical about our politics, and letting them know that we're fighting for them. So I knew that I had to build a broad-based coalition that operates outside of the traditional Democratic establishment, and that I had to pursue kind of an uphill journey of convincing activists that electoral politics is worthwhile.
AMY GOODMAN: And the issues you ran on?
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: And the issues I ran on were very clear, and I think it was an important part to us winning: improved and expanded Medicare for all; tuition-free public colleges and universities, as well as trade schools; a Green New Deal; justice for Puerto Rico; an unapologetic platform of criminal justice reform and ending the war on drugs; and also speaking truth to power and speaking about money in politics not just in general, but how it operates in New York City.
AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, I'm going to play her clip talking about immigration activism. Yes, Alexandria Cortez—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to the border right before Election Day. In fact, her plane was delayed. I was concerned she wouldn't be back in New York for the Primary Day. But if you could start by responding to this? And then we'll hear what she has to say about immigration activism.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I think there's—her victory was a quite spectacular and significant event. I think what it points to is a split in the Democratic Party between the—roughly speaking, between the popular base and the party managers. The popular base is increasingly, essentially, social democratic, following, pursuing the—concerned with the kinds of progressive objectives that she outlined in those—in her remarks, which should be directed not only to expanding the electorate but to the general working-class, poor population of the world, of the middle-class population of the country, for whom these ideals are quite significant. They can be brought to that. That's one part of the party. The other part of the party is the donor-oriented, managerial part of the New Democrats, so-called, the Clintonite Democrats, who are pretty much what used to be called moderate Republicans. The Republican Party itself has drifted so far to the right that they're almost off the spectrum. But the split within the Democratic Party is significant, and it's showing up in primary after primary. Will the party move in the direction of its popular base, with a, essentially, social democratic, New Deal-style programs, even beyond? Or will it continue to cater to the donor class and be essentially a moderate wing—a more moderate wing of the Republican Party? And unless that issue is resolved, I don't think they have a very good chance in the forthcoming elections.
I think she was right in saying that the policies she's outlined should have broad appeal to a very large segment of the population. We should bear in mind that, for now almost 40 years, since the neoliberal assault began, taking off with Reagan, on from there, a large majority of the population are living in conditions of stagnation or decline. Real wages are—for, say, male real wages—are about what they were in the 1960s. It's been—there has been productivity growth. Hasn't gone to working people. It's gone into the very few extremely overstuffed pockets. And that continues. So, the Labor Department just came out with its report for wages in the year ending May 2018. Now, they actually slightly declined. All sorts of talk—real wages, that is, wages measured against inflation. And it's apparently continuing, with an even further drop. This is a time when a lot of crowing about the marvelous economy, you know, full employment and so on, but wages continue to stagnate. And furthermore, it's plainly going to get worse. The Republicans are on a binge of pursuing the most savage form of class warfare. The tax scam is a good example, the attacks on workers' rights, on—Public Citizen just came out with a report on corporate impunity, which is almost comical when you read it. The administration has simply cut back radically on any kind of dealing with corporate crimes. And, of course, the EPA has practically stopped working. It's as if grab whatever you can, stuff it in your pocket, before—while you have a chance. Under those conditions, the kind of appeal that she was talking about should mean a lot to the general population.
Notice, as everybody's well aware, the tax scam was a purposeful effort not only to enrich the super-rich and the corporate sector—corporate profits, of course, are overflowing—but it was also an effort to sharply increase the deficit, which can be used—and Paul Ryan and others kindly announced to us right away what the plans were—the deficit could be used to undermine any elements of government structure which benefit the general population—Medicare, Social Security, food for poor children. Anything you can do to shaft the general population more can now be justified under the argument that we have a huge deficit, thanks to stuffing the pockets of the rich. This is an astonishing phenomenon. And under those conditions, a properly designed progressive program should appeal to a large majority of the population. But it has to be done correctly and not shaped in ways which will appease the donor class.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to the interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has really upended the Democratic Party, and the kind of message this candidate of Puerto Rican descent in New York has sent to the entire party, I think the Republican Party, as well. But this is what she says about immigration.
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: We have to occupy all of it. We need to occupy every airport, we need to occupy every border, we need to occupy every ICE office, until those kids are back with their parents, period.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, the right-wing media—for example, Fox News and others—have kept—have written about this over and over since she made this comment about occupying airports. Interestingly, her area of Queens and Bronx include Rikers Island and LaGuardia Airport. Noam Chomsky?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I think we just had a very dramatic illustration of what courageous opposition to these atrocious policies can do—namely, the young Swedish woman who prevented an airplane from taking off because it was deporting an Afghan man to almost certain murder.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, let me go to the young Swedish woman, the student who you just raised, who stood up—
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —on the plane, this flight from Gothenburg, Sweden, to Istanbul, because she understood that an Afghan refugee was on the flight, as you pointed out, and she live-streamed what she did next. This is what Elin Ersson had to say.
ELIN ERSSON: I'm not going to sit down until this person is off the plane, because he will most likely get killed if he is on this plane when it goes up.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Elin Ersson. And when one of the angry passengers threatened her, threatened to take her phone away, and then a flight attendant grabbed it back, she went on to say—when passengers talked about being inconvenienced, she said, "They're not going to die. He's going to die." And there were many on the plane, actually, who supported her in her protest, until the Afghan refugee was removed from that flight on orders of the pilot.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, that was a very inspiring act and an indication of what could be achieved by really large-scale civil disobedience. Here's one young woman standing up alone to try to prevent a person from being killed in difficult and hostile conditions. Large-scale civil disobedience could achieve a great deal more. But I would again urge that we think in broader terms. We should be considering why people are fleeing from their homes. Not because they want to live in slums in New York. They're fleeing from their homes because their homes are unlivable, and they're unlivable, largely, because of things that we have done. Overwhelmingly, that's the reason. That tells you right away what the solution to the crisis is: rebuild what we've destroyed, compensate for the atrocities that we've carried out. Then the flow of refugees will decline. And for those who come with asylum pleas, they should be accommodated in a humane and civilized way. Maybe it's impossible to imagine that we can reach the level of civilization of the poor countries that are absorbing refugees. But it doesn't—it shouldn't seem entirely out of reach.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky is now linguistics professor at the University of Arizona, speaking to us from Tucson. Clearly, resistance is in the air. When we come back, we move from resistance in airplanes to resistance on the air—that's on Fox, an unexpected interruption. Noam Chomsky will respond. Stay with us.
International human rights groups say that over 300 people have died in Nicaragua since the protests erupted in April and that the vast majority have been killed by pro-government forces. Earlier this week, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega rejected calls to step down from power, amid mounting protests and civil unrest. We speak to Noam Chomsky about the current crisis and the role of the U.S. in Nicaragua in the 1980s.


Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to continue on the situation in Nicaragua. In a rare interview, the Nicaraguan president, Daniel Ortega, recently rejected calls to step down from power amidst mounting protests and civil unrest. This is President Ortega speaking on Fox News on Monday.
PRESIDENT DANIEL ORTEGA: [translated] We were elected by the voters. So, there have been electoral periods, there are term limits, and our electoral period ends with the elections of 2021, when we will have our next elections. And then we'll have to see who will be voted in for the new administration.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that's President Daniel Ortega. Nicaragua's main business association has been demanding Ortega hold early elections, to which Ortega has responded Nicaragua "is not private property." International human rights groups say over 300 people have died since their protests erupted in April, anti-austerity protests, and that the vast majority have been killed by pro-government forces. In June, we spoke with former Sandinista leader Alejandro Bendaña, who served as the Nicaraguan ambassador to the United Nations and secretary general of the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry during Ortega's rule, during the Sandinista rule in Nicaragua, from 1979 to 1990. This is what Bendaña had to say on Democracy Now!
ALEJANDRO BENDAÑA: One has to remember key historical facts. The Sandinista revolution began in 1979 and ended in 1990 with the electoral defeat of Daniel Ortega. But this has not spelled the end of Ortega, because for 17 years he worked tenaciously to get back into power. But to do this, he got rid of his potential competitors and many old Sandinista backers. He embraced corporate capital in Nicaragua. He adopted the most retrograded positions of the church and entered into an alliance, and reached an understanding with the U.S., so that he was able to barely win the presidency in 2007. But by that time, he himself is no longer a Sandinista. Yes, the trappings, the colors are still there, but his entire government has been, in essence, neoliberal. Then it becomes authoritarian, repressive.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Alejandro Bendaña, who served as President Ortega's, Nicaragua's ambassador to the United Nations, as well as secretary general of Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry during the Sandinista rule first time around, '79 to '90. Students are saying that, overwhelmingly, it's the government that's killed the people. What are your thoughts, Noam?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, in 1990, it's true that the—first of all, there were plenty of problems even in the '80s, but by the standards of the region it stood out as almost a stellar record—bad but by the standards of the region. In 1990, the President Bush, first President Bush, essentially informed the population of Nicaragua that either you vote for our candidate, or else the Contra war, the terrorist war, continues, and harsh sanctions will strangle the country. And, indeed, at the point of a gun, the population voted the Sandinistas out, and partially for internal reasons. There were many things they were doing they shouldn't have. Since then, it hasn't been anywhere near as bad as the other Central American countries, the ones that are, more or less, overwhelmingly, influenced by the U.S. But there's been a lot of corruption, a lot of repression. It's autocratic, undoubtedly. The opposition is nothing to write home about, either, for the most part. So, it's by no means a pretty situation. One would hope that negotiations could reduce the tensions. And my own view is that I think it would be a good thing for Nicaragua if Ortega were to call early elections and allow them to be run without corruption and brutality. But that doesn't look as if it's—it's hard to hard to see a simple way out at this point. It's a very unfortunate situation.
We should bear in mind that in the early 1980s the situation was extremely hopeful in Nicaragua. Even the international institutions, like the World Bank and others, were praising the progressive steps being taken by the Sandinistas. The country was full of hope, excitement, literacy campaigns, dealing with poverty. With the almost—U.S. intervention actually began in the mid-19th century and had been horrible all the way through, but they were beginning to pull themselves out of it—until the U.S. terrorist war began. We should bear in mind that the United States is the only country ever to have been condemned by the International Court of Justice for international terrorism—technically, unlawful use of force—and ordered to pay substantial reparations to Nicaragua for the attack that it was carrying out. Of course, the U.S. refused, refused the World Court's jurisdiction. The World Court was condemned not only by the government, but even by the press. New York Timescondemned it as a hostile forum because it had ruled against the United States, so of course you don't have to pay any attention to it. The U.S. even vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law. And then the Contra war went on, the sanctions went on, the other forms of subversion continued, and the hopes were pretty much smashed. You could just see the changes in expectations and attitudes. And one result was internal corruption, repression, and then it's now imploding. But again, it's a very ugly and unfortunate situation—nothing remotely comparable to the countries that have been under the U.S. thumb throughout the period.
But I think the point that—going back to the immigration crisis, which is actually a moral crisis in the United States, and comparably in Europe, we should bear in mind that the immigrants do not want to leave their countries. They would be very happy to stay in their own countries instead of coming here to unpleasant and harsh situations. They can't, because we have ruined their countries. So, the first step in dealing with the immigration crisis should be to help reconstruct and rebuild what we have destroyed, so they won't be fleeing from the homes where they would like to live. Now, that's certainly within the means of a super-rich country like the United States with incomparable advantages. That's step one in dealing with the immigration crisis—again, a moral crisis, not an immigration crisis.
Secondly, conditions should be established so that legal—what's called legal immigration—I don't like the term, but what's technically called that—would be facilitated, with decent conditions, plenty of entry points, lawyers provided pro bono with U.S. support for immigrants so they could plead their cases, and decent conditions for the applicants to survive—nothing like putting them in camps and stealing their children away from them—and facilitating the kind of appeals for asylum that are granted under international law. That should be automatically assumed in a—certainly in a rich country like ours. That's the second step.
We might also recognize that there are countries that have somehow managed to deal with the huge flood of immigrants, poor countries. So, take Lebanon, poor country. Probably 40 percent of the population are refugees at this point, driven out from Israel by the Israeli—several Israeli wars, '48, '67, Syrian refugees, Iraqi refugees fleeing from the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It's a poor country, and there are plenty of internal problems, but they're somehow surviving with 40 percent of the population refugees. The same is true of Jordan, another poor country. Kenya, Africa, another poor country, has a huge number of refugees. Bangladesh has taken in huge numbers of refugees fleeing from Burma. But the rich countries of the world—the United States, European Union—the ones who have an overwhelming responsibility for the circumstances from which the refugees are fleeing, they can't help with it. They can't deal with it. Too much for us. Go somewhere else. Go to a poor country, but not go to the countries of the perpetrators of the conditions from which you're fleeing. I mean, it's a grotesque moral crisis throughout the industrial world.
AMY GOODMAN: We'll be back with Professor Noam Chomsky on the shakeup of the Democratic establishment and the news you're not getting, in 30 seconds.
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The New York Times reports special counsel Robert Mueller is scrutinizing President Trump's tweets as part of Mueller's expanding probe into Trump's ties to Russia. This latest revelation in the Mueller investigation is part of a nearly 24-hour stream of headlines about Trump, Russia and the administration's various scandals. But is the mainstream media missing the real stories amid its obsession with "Russiagate"? For more, we speak with world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author and professor Noam Chomsky on media manipulation in the Trump era.


Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We continue our interview with Noam Chomsky, world-renowned dissident, linguist and author, now in Tucson at the University of Arizona. I asked him about a recent mix-up on Fox & Friends, in which the hosts thought they were interviewing former Democratic congressional candidate, a current one, Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, who supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, but, in fact, they were actually speaking to a Massachusetts Democratic congressional candidate, Barbara L'Italien, who opposes ICE. Here is how the interview started.
SENBARBARA L'ITALIEN: Good morning. I'm actually here to speak directly to Donald Trump. I feel that what's happening at the border is wrong. I'm a mother of four. And I believe that separating kids from their parents is illegal and inhumane. I'm actually Barbara L'Italien. I'm a state senator representing a large immigrant community. I'm running for Congress in Massachusetts. I keep thinking about what we're putting parents through, imagining how terrifying that must be for those families, imagining how it would feel not knowing if I'd ever see my kids again. We have to stop abducting children and ripping them from their parents' arms—
ROB SCHMITT: OK—
SENBARBARA L'ITALIEN: —stop putting kids in cages—
ROB SCHMITT: You want to—
SENBARBARA L'ITALIEN: —and stop making 3-year-olds defend themselves in court.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Barbara L'Italien said a lot there, but she was then cut off, with the shock of the Fox & Friends crew in the morning that they had the wrong Democratic congressional candidate. But this kind of media activism also just goes to the whole issue of the media, Noam Chomsky, the issue of Fox News becoming really state media, with—you have the person who supported the sexual harasser Roger Ailes, Bill Shine, now a top aide to President Trump in the White House. That's gotten little attention. So you have Fox being a mouthpiece for Trump and a place for him to hear what people have to say, and the other networks very much running counter to Trump, on certain issues, CNN and MSNBC. But your thoughts?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, my frank opinion is that—I must say I don't pay much attention to television, so I don't know a great deal about it. But, in general, I think the media—first of all, Fox News is, by now, basically a joke. It's, as you said, state media. The other media, I think, are focusing on issues which are pretty marginal. There are much more serious issues that are being put to the side. So, the worst of—even on the case of immigration, once again, I think the real question is dealing with the roots of immigration, our responsibility for it, and what we can do to overcome that. And that's almost never discussed. But I think that's the crucial issue. And I think we find the same across the board.
So, of all Trump's policies, the one that is the most dangerous and destructive, in fact poses an existential threat, is his policies on climate change, on global warming. That's really destructive. And we're facing an imminent threat, not far removed, of enormous damage. The effects are already visible but nothing like what's going to come. A sea level rise of a couple of feet will be massively destructive. It will make today's immigration issues look like trivialities. And it's not that the administration is unaware of this. So, Donald Trump, for example, is perfectly aware of the dangerous effects, in the short term, of global warming. So, for example, recently he applied to the government of Ireland for permission to build a wall to protect his golf course in Ireland from rising sea levels. And Rex Tillerson, who was supposed to be the adult in the room before he was thrown out, as CEO of ExxonMobil, was devoting enormous resources to climate change denial, although he had, sitting on his desk, the reports of ExxonMobil scientists, who, since the '70s, in fact, were on the forefront of warning of the dire effects of this accelerating phenomenon. I don't know what word in the language—I can't find one—that applies to people of that kind, who are willing to sacrifice the literal—the existence of organized human life, not in the distant future, so they can put a few more dollars in highly overstuffed pockets. The word "evil" doesn't begin to approach it. These are the kinds of issues that should be under discussion. Instead, what's being—there is a focus on what I believe are marginalia.
So, take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that's almost a joke. First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies—what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to—calling on them to reverse U.S. policy, without even informing the president? And that's just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence. So if you happen to be interested in influence of—foreign influence on elections, there are places to look. But even that is a joke.
I mean, one of the most elementary principles of a functioning democracy is that elected representatives should be responsive to those who elected them. There's nothing more elementary than that. But we know very well that that is simply not the case in the United States. There's ample literature in mainstream academic political science simply comparing voters' attitudes with the policies pursued by their representatives, and it shows that for a large majority of the population, they're basically disenfranchised. Their own representatives pay no attention to their voices. They listen to the voices of the famous 1 percent—the rich and the powerful, the corporate sector. The elections—Tom Ferguson's stellar work has demonstrated, very conclusively, that for a long period, way back, U.S. elections have been pretty much bought. You can predict the outcome of a presidential or congressional election with remarkable precision by simply looking at campaign spending. That's only one part of it. Lobbyists practically write legislation in congressional offices. In massive ways, the concentrated private capital, corporate sector, super wealth, intervene in our elections, massively, overwhelmingly, to the extent that the most elementary principles of democracy are undermined. Now, of course, all that is technically legal, but that tells you something about the way the society functions. So, if you're concerned with our elections and how they operate and how they relate to what would happen in a democratic society, taking a look at Russian hacking is absolutely the wrong place to look. Well, you see occasionally some attention to these matters in the media, but very minor as compared with the extremely marginal question of Russian hacking.
And I think we find this on issue after issue, also on issues on which what Trump says, for whatever reason, is not unreasonable. So, he's perfectly right when he says we should have better relations with Russia. Being dragged through the mud for that is outlandish, makes—Russia shouldn't refuse to deal with the United States because the U.S. carried out the worst crime of the century in the invasion of Iraq, much worse than anything Russia has done. But they shouldn't refuse to deal with us for that reason, and we shouldn't refuse to deal with them for whatever infractions they may have carried out, which certainly exist. This is just absurd. We have to move towards better—right at the Russian border, there are very extreme tensions, that could blow up anytime and lead to what would in fact be a terminal nuclear war, terminal for the species and life on Earth. We're very close to that. Now, we could ask why. First of all, we should do things to ameliorate it. Secondly, we should ask why. Well, it's because NATO expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in violation of verbal promises to Mikhail Gorbachev, mostly under Clinton, partly under first Bush, then Clinton expanded right to the Russian border, expanded further under Obama. The U.S. has offered to bring Ukraine into NATO. That's the kind of a heartland of Russian geostrategic concerns. So, yes, there's tensions at the Russian border—and not, notice, at the Mexican border. Well, those are all issues that should be of primary concern. The fate of—the fate of organized human society, even of the survival of the species, depends on this. How much attention is given to these things as compared with, you know, whether Trump lied about something? I think those seem to me the fundamental criticisms of the media.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, author and linguist, now a laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He taught for 50 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tune in next week when we continue our conversation with Noam Chomsky about Gaza, Israel's new nationality law, the recent Trump-Putin summit, Iran, North Kora, the war in Yemen and more. In December, Noam Chomsky will be celebrating his 90th birthday.