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1Speaker 1:          00:00:00       From the KP Pfk studios in southern California. It's the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scroll van along with my cohost David Feldman. Hello David. Hello Sir, and we also have the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello Ralph.
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3Speaker 2:          00:00:24       Good day to all of you.
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5Speaker 1:          00:00:26       And by the way, happy birthday Ralph, just want to throw that in. Thank you. Now on the show today we have a special show professor Noam Chomsky. We'll be making his third visit to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. The first time he was on the show was actually the first time these two progressive leaders at ever had an on the record public conversation. Yeah, so let's get right to it. David. Our guests theory of transformational grammar, revolutionize the scientific study of language. He is also one of the most influential public intellectuals in the world having written more than 100 books, many of which target the role of the mainstream corporate mass media, which he maintains manufacturers consent in favor of the capitalist system and the political powers that supported. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Professor Noam Chomsky,
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7Speaker 3:          00:01:12       very glad to be with you.
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9Speaker 2:          00:01:14       Preston Chomsky says, David mentioned linguistics. The press has been full of denunciations of people who say things and some considered to be racist or unkind. We have the situation that has dominated the news here in Washington. Governor Northam of Virginia who used black face when he was a medical student in 1984 to play Michael Jackson and a play at the medical school, and an uproar occurred and people in the legislature were demanding his resignation. Members of Congress and presidential candidates, Democratic Party were demanding his resignation. On the other hand, these are the same people that supported the slaughter of civilians all over the world and you asses imperial policies. They slaughtered the Gazans and Palestinians and didn't denounce these people. So there's a real split between words and infuriating people and deeds that are far more consequential escaping condemnation. I'm sure you've thought about this. It's the way the press crowds out very serious issues on the ground, and the battle is, would you apologize? Do you regret? How dare you have said something like this 30 years ago? Can we have your views on on this cause I don't think it's a minor matter.
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11Speaker 3:          00:02:39       Well first of all, I should say that linguistics has absolutely nothing to do with it, so it's just so we can draw a plot, but the sure there's an, in fact it's no only deans. It's also words, deeds of course, or for worse, but take words since we're talking about, but there happens to be something called the US Constitution. Conservatives are supposed to honor that. It has an article, article six saying that treaties entered into by the federal government or the supreme law of the land. The major modern treaty having to do with international affairs is the United Nations Charter, which states explicitly that the threat of force is banned in international affairs. Every president violates that constantly. Every time anyone says all options are open. In the case of Iran or Venezuela, whatever, they're issuing a major threat of force in violation of the u s constitution. Anybody care about that?
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13Speaker 3:          00:03:46       And of course his essays beads or far more extreme as we speak. John Bolton, national security advisor to Trump and the Michael pump peo secretary state. They're going all over the world threatening military force military intervention without ever mentioning international law or the constitution. This is quite extraordinary. These are graduates of Yale and Harvard law school, by the way, and there's no mention in the media coverage. They never say, well, Mister Bolton's is this legal and what you're threatening just lawful what you're going around threatening the secretary on Pale always. Well, let's take it a step further. The threat of force is band, but also the use of force, which is a force. Far more extreme. Does the US use force in international affairs without the narrow exceptions granted by the charter? Of course, all the time, take the invasion of Iraq. It's a textbook example of aggression without any credible pretext.
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15Speaker 3:          00:04:55       What the norm or try being an old coal, the supreme it or national crime differing from other war crimes only in that it includes all the evil that follows terror, isis, everything else. Have you seen a word in the media since 2003 saying, we have committed the supreme it or national crime and it should be condemned. In fact, the harshest criticism you ever see is say Obama. It was a strategic blunder, kind of like what the Russian generals said when Russia invaded Afghanistan. Shouldn't have done it. It was a blunder, but do we say it's a gross violation? Not just as international law, but of our own constitution matters. Frankel, former judge and upon a Tano who was the commentator on Fox in an interview I had with him, said, what are the prosecutors in Obama's justice department waiting for? They ought to indict George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes.
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17Speaker 2:          00:06:01       Instead, these two men are going around getting honorifics that some democratic leaders are embracing George W. Bush and contrast to Trump and there is no law enforcement.
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19Speaker 3:          00:06:15       I agree with that, but I think didn't go a step further. How about the people who refuse? Now we're talking about virtually 100% of common theaters who refuse to describe it as a war. Who say that the worst problem was it was a blunder like Nazi generals after the failure of the two front war criticize Hitler for carrying out a strategic blunder by not knocking out England first and do we praise them for that?
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21Speaker 2:          00:06:46       Yeah. Hillary Clinton's sad. Well, she regrets voting for the war in Iraq, which is destroyed over a million. [inaudible] called it. She called it a mistake.
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23Speaker 3:          00:06:57       Take where Rock Obama. It was a strategic blunder. In fact. Can you find anyone who's called it a war crime?
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25Speaker 2:          00:07:06       Well, some of us have obviously, but we're not
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27Speaker 3:          00:07:11       the fringe anyone. One comment in an editorial and a mainstream journal,
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29Speaker 2:          00:07:17       it is astonishing. They don't come to the conclusion even of their own editorials. The New York Times is famous for this. They lay the case for war crimes and for impeachment and they don't draw the conclusion based on prior paragraph.
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31Speaker 3:          00:07:33       I think oral will hug the right insight into this. In his introduction to, I don't know if farm which was not published, it was filmed years later in his unpublished archives. He did write an introduction and interesting one in which he said, it's addressed to the people of England. He says, look, this book is obviously a satire on the totalitarian enemy, but the people of England shouldn't be too self righteous about it because in England, no, virtually quoting unpopular ideas can be suppressed without the use of force. And he doesn't say much about the mechanisms as about two sentences. One is that the pressure's on by wealthy men who have every interest in not having certain ideas expressed. And second, and I think more important if you basically have a good education, you know, you have internalized the understanding that there are certain things it wouldn't do to say, I don't, I think we can add it wouldn't even do to think. And I think he's pretty much on target there. There are certain things that the intellectual culture simply in cocaine send to you as an understanding that there are certain things it wouldn't do to say, um, it should never even come into your mind.
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33Speaker 2:          00:09:02       You see that all the time on NPR and PBS all the time. Nevermind the commerce by networks. Why do you think the left has abandoned the public airways struggle and the struggle too retained some sanity to cable channels. There are 600 cable channels and full of junk. There's no cable channel devoted to foreign and military policy or to labor or to consumer health issues on and on, and then the, the networks, the over the air and supposed to be modestly regulated in the public interest, convenience and necessity by the Federal Communications Commission. It's beyond caricature just seems that progressive groups have given up that fight they gave up. When the fairness doctrine was overturned, the right of reply was overturned. That help to keep you off the public airwaves. Why do you think they've given up this fight here? The public areas belonged to the people. There's the landlords and they're giving it away free without a resistance. 24 hours a day to the broadcast radio and TV industry.
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35Speaker 3:          00:10:10       Well, there's some, as I'm sure you know, it was a long and interesting history of this. When radio came along and the 1920s there was a struggle about whether that public domain, the public airways should be used for the public interest or should be handed over to private corporations for profit. And at that time, the church groups, liberal groups, progressive activists and others did struggle hard to try to have it at least partially, significantly handed over to the public who walked actually the only or with, well they lost unlike almost every other major country, the US term, the airwaves over almost entirely to private commercial interests. That repeated itself in the late 1940s when total vision was coming along and again the same struggle, the same defeat was handed over to private corporations. There's a kind of a fringe operation that's hopefully nothing like public Rokus, nothing like say the BBC every, every other country.
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37Speaker 3:          00:11:25       Furthermore, as you say, then the fairness doctrine was overturned under Reagan and we can even on heart of the establishment of the cable networks, of course a gift too. Private corporations was a requirement that the cable companies and stole fairly reasonable television installation in communities and they're, they're like Cambridge mass. Almost any community has a small public cable broadcast, you know, option which reaches a large part of the community. Even those haven't been exploited but progressive and they should have been. That's at least something, you know, it doesn't impinge on the overwhelming gift to private power that's been given in the transfer commercial rights to the entire airwave spectrum, but it's at least something, these are opportunities that have not been properly exploited. And as you say, it should go way beyond that. There should be a real effort to ensure that popular organizations, mass puppet organization and so on have really unimpeded and large scale access to the media that the airway is that the public in fact don't.
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39Speaker 2:          00:12:49       In that context, Professor Chomsky, we had a public hearing chaired by then, representative Edward Markey, Democrat, Massachusetts over 20 years ago, but our proposal to create an audience network which would program several hours a day, returned to the public by the radio and TV stations under direct of the Federal Communications Commission. And that the commercial broadcasters would be charged rent. They pay nothing now for controlling the public spectrum. There'd be charged rent and the money would go to support studios, reporters, producers, commentators, all around the country on the two or three hours of the audience network. Well, you can't imagine how the broadcasters reared up on Congress and they got calls from television station owners back home and it never saw the light of day other than a printed transcript. So I think people have got to start thinking about what they own because the people on the greatest wealth in the country, they don't seem to know it. They own trillions of dollars of pension funds and mutual funds. The owned the Public Airways, they own one third of America, which is the public lands they own. The research and development that comes out of Washington is built most of these modern industries from silicon valley and you just don't have a sense of ownership. Do you see this upcoming presidential campaign given there's so many different candidates throwing their hat in the ring, raising the issue of the Commons, which is really a ultimate shift of power from the few to the many.
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41Speaker 3:          00:14:27       I think you're absolutely right and we can cover it considerably further. Take the modern high tech economy, computer internet, lasers are satellites, iPhone, the whole spectrum of where does that come from? Well, if you look back, very substantial part of it and in fact the core part comes from public spending, but can the the 1950s and sixties the risky creative work on developing what became the high tech economy was mostly done by public funding, but universities research Leb funded through taxpayer funding and so on. Well, you know, suppose you had a functioning capitalist system. If somebody makes a risky longterm investments and ultimately after several decades there's some profit, they're supposed to get something from it. Does that happen? No. The profit goes to the private corporations that were able to pick up on work that was done substantially under public funding and they make the profit from it.
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43Speaker 3:          00:15:41       What's more, they make exorbitant profits. So take right now, for example, there's a huge attack on China across the board for not allegedly not honoring the intellectual property rights. Well, these are established in the World Trade Organization rules designed of course by the investor class. They give huge patent Royce way beyond anything in history to pharmaceutical corporations to Microsoft and so on. So why should anyone honor those rights? Um, in all of this goes back to major public contributions. Uh, suppose for example that China or somebody doesn't accept Microsoft's patent on windows. Okay. And that means that Bill Gates gets a little less money and the public gets a cheaper computers. Same with pharmaceuticals. I in this whole system is so fundamentally corrupt that it has to be investigated from bottom up. I should mention another aspect of the transfer of radio until a vision to private hands. It has a big impact on the political system.
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45Speaker 3:          00:17:04       Quite a big impact. And say, take television as soon as television Campbell, it offered an opportunity for candidates to reach a large public through television, which you have to pay for that. So it's one of the factors that led to a situation in which our political system is based on essentially bought elections. Um, it didn't begin then, but it took a quantum leap forward. With that point. It meant that you needed an enormous amounts of money to run a political campaign. Will, where do you get that enormous amount of money from corporate wealth, private wealth? We ended up with a situation in which you can predict the outcome of an election with Congress or a president with remarkable precision and simply by looking at campaign spending. There's excellent work on this primarily by a political scientist, Thomas Ferguson. And although his work shows it goes far back, it did take a major leap forward simply with the transfer of television right into private hands. Meaning that to run a campaign is very costly. Of course, this has been expedited by the decisions of the most reaction or a supreme court and living memory. But simply this one element that you bring up of the transfer of the public airways to private hands happens not only as a a range of malicious consequences, but one of them is these simple undermining of the political system. These things should be part of general discourse, understanding activism and a significant change.
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47Speaker 2:          00:18:59       I'm still waiting for a mass rally around a two story television station somewhere in America just before evening news making these kinds of domains because now people like rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity can attack a political candidate and that candidate has no more right of reply, which they had before late 1980s and it's where it was reversed. And the same for the fairness doctrine. That's why someone like rush can promote nuclear power and the other side has no right to go on to station and give the downside of nuclear power. One thing about your writings fresh, the Trump skis, you don't just deal with discriminatory injustice, you deal with non discriminatory injustice that affects everybody. So let's turn to the climate disruption. Climate catastrophe. I don't like the word climate change is to benign and refer to a comment you made, which was quote and a couple of generations organized human society may not survive and quotes and of course leading the race toward on the side are these giant corporations refusing to convert to renewable energy and energy efficiency and they want to push more fossil fuels and more nuclear plants.
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49Speaker 2:          00:20:24       Something very positive happened the other day down at the Senate office building, I don't know if you're aware, but there's a new group of youngsters that's called the sunrise movement. It's just nine 10 11 year olds, Margaret Meade, the anthropologist told me on more than one occasion she thought youngsters could really have an effect because of their moral authority, their innocence and the fact that they're going to inherit the country and the world. In a way. They confronted Senator Feinstein outside her office and asked her a number of questions and it was a very patronizing put down by the senator. She didn't really know how to handle nine year old questions any more than Ronald Reagan did. They tend to be direct. They tend to be uncensored and politicians are not used to it. They're used to professional reporters with marbles in their mouth. I think that a mobilization of pre teenage youngsters who really get it and they know what the fundamental questions are and they don't abide political rhetoric and evasive responses could really begin to mobilize at the level that's necessary. Youngsters would tell their parents, why aren't you using your seatbelt? Youngsters would tell him the past, their parents, why are you smoking? How long are you going to be around if you don't stop? What do you think of that? Cause we're all looking for ways to elevate the level of urgency, which is simply not coming close to the kind of description you're portraying around the globe. No, well actually what that session with the children and Senator Feinstein was quite revealing. They kept trying to point out to her, look,
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51Speaker 3:          00:22:18       we're the ones who are going to be impacted by the disaster or that you're hoping to create this slow reformist steps of the kind you're advocating simply aren't commensurate at all with the scale of the problem. These kids were making that point very forcefully and she basically had no answer. No. The sunrise movement is done pretty remarkable things. This is mostly young kids. They're the ones who were, have a major responsibility for putting the green new deal on the public agenda. That's a pretty remarkable change. A couple of years ago, this was unheard of. It was the sunrise movement who were joined with the few new women, progressive candidates, acquisio Cortez and particular. We're able to press to get the green new deal idea on the public agenda. Of course it's mocked, it's ridicule. Even Nancy Polosi dismissed it, but it's there and it's getting support. Maybe not in the precise detailed forum that was proposed, but something like it, which is as very significant first step towards trying to address this crisis.
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53Speaker 3:          00:23:38       Now with regard to children in Europe particularly, there has been a series of large skill children's strikes and of users walking out of striking, leaving school, protesting against the failure to deal with a major crisis that is going to severely impact their lives and coming generations and it's important to recognize just how serious this is. We're coming pretty close on the, you know, the discussions are mostly about the storms and so on. Okay, that's bad enough, but we're coming pretty close to the level of warming of 125,000 years ago when the sea level was about 30 feet higher than it is today. I simply imagine that now, right now the huge Antarctic ice sheets are melting and more rapidly than had been expected. There's a huge amount of water there that could easily bring us to something like what the world was like 125,000 years ago.
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55Speaker 3:          00:24:49       What happens to organize life at that point? It can you even imagine the consequences of the sea level rises that time? Well, it's kind of interesting to see the way across the spectrum how this is being dealt with. I'm in at the right say the Trump administration produced one of the most astonishing documents that has ever existed in human history. I'm not exaggerating at bureaucracy. Naturally, the transportation bureau came out with a long detailed document which was arguing. It was leading to the conclusion that we shouldn't have any constraints on emissions in transportation, cars, trucks, and so on. Just let them be mid everything, you know, no matter what, and they had a very interesting argument. The argument was, look at the rate of global warming now taking place by the end of the century. It will be, maybe they estimated seven degrees or something like that a higher and by then we're, we basically over the cliff anyway.
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57Speaker 3:          00:26:00       There's no chance of survival after that. So what the hell? Why not just enjoy it while we can? Of course the tacit assumption is that everyone in the world is as criminally insane as we are, as they are, you know, and will not try to do anything about it. Can you find any document like that in human history? I mean, you know, neuro is supposed to have filled while Rome burned. These guys are saying, let's enjoy ourselves while the planet berms to make more profit for the next couple of years. It invites the phrase institutional insanity. The evidence is all around us. It's no longer just models of climate
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59Speaker 2:          00:26:44       scientists. It's devastating. Floods. It's devastating hurricanes. It's rising sea levels. It's spreading disease because of habitat changes, its extinction of species and these people who are in power, we've got their heads in the sand or their minds are so monetized by Exxon Mobil and others that they refuse to see what's coming up. I mean the water is going to start lapping up and Mara logo or whatever the place is called it. Trump is in Florida. So we're led to here in a moment of maximum urgency by the worst leaders collaborating with the worst CEOs of global corporations who have no allegiance to any community in the country or any country other than to exploit them. And our political system is simply not up to it. You've taken a dim view of third parties because we live in a winner take all two party duopoly that basically tells the American people it's either Republican or Democrat get in line.
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61Speaker 2:          00:27:51       But in the 19th century, there was easier opportunity to get on a ballot and antislavery liberty party in 1840 to women's suffrage party that Labor farmer parties, they never won an election, but they pushed one or two of the major parties and that direction. The same is true for progressive taxation, Medicare, social security. That was Norman Thomas Socialist Party, Eugene debs, the Labour party. If the straight jacket is such that the Democrats and Republicans cannot put a halt to this on this side, and we're going to talk about the nuclear arms race that's getting underway and speeding up. How do you get out of this electoral straight Jack?
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63Speaker 3:          00:28:38       Well, I think we have to think about the time skills involved. Um, and we're facing urgent problems too urgent to await a radical transformation of the political and economic system. So let's take for example some concrete cases. The tech, the JP Morgan Chase, biggest bank, the CEO Jamie Diamond, I'm sure knows about everything we're talking about concerning the devastating impact of global warming. So how does he react by investing more funds in fossil fuels, including the most lethal of them? The Canadian Tar Sands? No. Why is he doing that? Let's ask about the choices that he has in the institutional structures that exist. He basically has two choices. One to do exactly what he's doing to try to maximize profit with a certain knowledge that this is going to have devastating effects in the short term. The other choice he has is to resign and be replaced by somebody who will do exactly the same thing.
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65Speaker 3:          00:29:51       Those are the choices isn't as you mentioned before, is a deep institutional problem. Now, the way to confront that in the present situation is pretty much the way the sunrise movement is doing and other popular movements are doing and public citizens do. It tried to develop mass popular action, which will compel people within the existing institutions to act differently and of course at the same time try to educate the public to understand that there are deep institutional problems that have to be changed. Now with regard to the moral law of God and the sea level rise, president Trump has already given the answer to that. He's a firm believer in global warming. We know that he recently petitioned the government of Ireland is business did for permission to build a wall. You know those walls to build a wall to protect his fancy golf course and our lend from rising sea levels. Okay. So that they understand, they know.
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67Speaker 2:          00:31:04       So the bottom line is they become very pragmatic. This gets us into the nuclear arms race because years ago, what you just suggested mass mobilization occurred at a significant scale. There were mass rallies and marches in New York City and Washington, San Francisco and Ronald Reagan looked out the window of the White House and you said, you know, there's some well dressed Republican's marching down Pennsylvania Avenue or in New York City demanding nuclear arms agreements and suspension of nuclear tests and the relationship with the Soviet Union. And you know, while people can say it wasn't enough, these nuclear arms reduction accords did lead to the dismantling of over half of the nuclear weapons that the US and Soviet Union has and their inspectors in the US from Russia right now and inspectors in Russia who are Americans right now supervising this gradual dismantling. But it's the same time the Trumpsters, the boltens and palm payos are pushing to scrap these accords, not to renew the start treaty and to get out of the inf Trump has done, I don't know whether you're familiar with professor Ted Postal Ameritus of Mit, but it's just come out with a major article in the bulletin of atomic scientists saying that both the US and Russia have violated
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69Speaker 3:          00:32:40       this intermediate nuclear treaty. It isn't true that Trump and others say that the US has not violated it and this and other things can unleash another massive nuclear arms race, which is another wing of the on the sidled trends on this tormented planet. What's your view of this? Well, I think what you say is extremely important. The mass mobilizations in the early eighties did provide the background for a very important treaty. The Inf Treaty, which was signed by Reagan and Gorbachev shortly after that in 1987 now that was of critical importance because what was happening at that time was that the United States was installing Pershing two missiles in western Europe, which nuclear tip missiles, which have a about a five to 10 minute flight time to Moscow, meaning devastating first strike can happen before anyone even notices it. Now. This was in response to the Russians developing similar missiles which could hit western Europe.
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71Speaker 3:          00:33:57       Okay. Now that were enormous protests in Europe. There were these massive practice your that you mentioned and it did lead to the inf treaty, which eliminated a major threat of nuclear war, total nuclear war, and we have to understand that nobody survives and nuclear war. It's been clearer for decades that a first strike because of its consequences, including nuclear winter would probably destroy the attacker along with everyone else. These are just unthinkable for us. The Inf Treaty did sharply reduced the danger of war. There are three such treaties, major treaties with the first one is the ABM Treaty Addict Lipstick Missile Treaty, which Bard ABM systems. Now they sound defensive, but every strategic analyst knows that they're basically first strike weapons. Most imaginable ABM system would ever stop it first strike. Conceivably it might stop a week retaliatory strike though. People like postal, you know and that, but that's at most what it could do, which means essentially it's a threat of first strike.
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73Speaker 3:          00:35:13       The ABM treaty was the US withdrew from the ABM treaty under w Bush 2000 to now the US is withdrawing from the inf treaty and as you mentioned, Trump and Bolton or indicating that they would probably withdraw from the third the new start treaty. That's the treaties that did lead to the sharp reduction of nuclear weapons on both sides. You know, beyond words. I'm an anyone who's taking the trouble to look at the record of the nuclear age becomes quickly aware that it's almost a miracle that we survived. Oh, there's case after case, literally hundreds of examples that you know where we came pretty close to having a nuclear war sometimes stop within minutes by human intervention. Some of it is highly adventurous factions of political leaders, but most of it is just accident or the systems, you know, the detection systems just consistently fail. That's true of ours and it's where we have a lot of records. It's surely true of the Russian zoo systems are much more primitive than ours.
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75Speaker 2:          00:36:31       We need a new wave here that gets into the electoral process. So the candidates which have been uniquely ignoring the much of military and foreign policy, the progressive democratic case, they don't like to talk about the military budget or nuclear arms race or the whole Middle East situation other than support these really position the Saudi position. But you're right, this mass rallies, and it never was more than one 10th of 1% the American people, but they represented the yearning, desire for arms control by huge numbers of American people. And in 1988 that's what these children are doing now. That's right.
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77Speaker 3:          00:37:16       Sunrise movement as you know, a couple of dozen people, but they have managed to bring it to the public in a way which is placing the need for a green new deal. Right on the major legislative agenda.
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79Speaker 2:          00:37:31       It has to be achieved. They had 250 of them in front of the office of Mitch Mcconnell, the Senate majority leader. He, he was not there of course to talk with them. But let's talk about in the concluding time we have available, we're talking with fresh and Noam Chomsky, which everybody listening to this program knows many books, standup positions that facts matter. You've written a lot about the Middle East. What's going on now is that descent both within the Democratic Party and what's left of the Republican Party on the US Israeli position in the Middle East and the role of the oil industry and so on. It's just been stifled. People on Capitol Hill now are scared to criticize the secular government of Israel because there'll be accused of antisemitism. Two new members to leave and Omar were denounced by Pelosi and Steny hoyer and other leaders of the Democratic Party. Now House, one of them mentioned whose interests should be focused on and the Israeli us relationship and and the other said something about Apac money affecting decisions in the house.
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81Speaker 2:          00:38:49       Dozens of small apex around the country who contribute to campaigns and then they were denounced his anti Semites by people like Pelosi and Sawyer, who again and again by word, by deed, by supporting funding and military weapons back the slaughter of Palestinians, and especially in Gaza and hundreds of children. So this is crazy. What's going on. I want to tell our listeners that you wrote this book with the eminent Israeli historian Yellen pop pay. That's norm Trask in of Hey Gaza and crisis reflections on the U S has really war on the Palestinians. About 1520 years ago, the head of the Arab American Institute, Jim Zogby, gave a speech at a Israeli University, a symposium called the other antisemitism. And the racist commentary over the years by Israeli political leaders against Palestinians is mind boggling. I mean, one would not even want to mention the vicious racist comments by prime ministers and heads of Israeli political parties, except to say that years ago, the founder of modern Israel, David, Ben Gurion told Nam Goldman and a widely quoted phrase, it was their land and we took it.
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83Speaker 2:          00:40:13       And then the racist comments, there's never talk about anti Semitism against Arabs. So this is a huge censorship now on Capitol Hill and the only person who seems to be breaking through on this is Bernie Sanders who is Jewish and feels freer to talk. And just the other day he decried the rise of authoritarianism by talking about Aragon and Turkey, Orban in Hungary, Putin and Russia and he included Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel. So what is your forecast is whether we can have a national debate on this, which you've led but have been kept off the mass media? Well I think
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85Speaker 3:          00:40:55       it's were important things have been changing. You don't see it in Congress yet except for tiny cases like those you mentioned. But it's happened. I know among the population of very significantly including any of the Jewish population we saw at one striking example just a couple of days ago, the latest move as the meth Tanya who government as to what's on your own self is facing an election. Then serious corruption charges and he's reaching out to wherever he can and he just introduced into his coalition it group, which is inheritor of the infamous rabbi Kahana who uh, kind of an openly racist virtual neo Nazi who was banned from the Israeli political system. Welcome the 1980s because of his extremist racist policies. The successor of his group, which has the same policies, was just admitted into the Natanya who coalition that lid to protest even. But many of the major strong Zionist groups like the American Jewish Committee and so on, the Israeli government is moving so far to the right, not only including their practices with regard to the occupied territories that it's come to be donating much of the moderately liberal, including Jewish population.
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87Speaker 3:          00:42:27       Uh, right now among Democrats, people who identify as Democrats actually more indicate more sympathy for the Palestinians. Then for Israel, that's a massive change. Or the main support for Israeli policies now in the United States is Christian evangelicals who are deeply Semitic themselves in a profound way. We could get talk about and the right wing and some rich Jewish donors, it'll son the rest. And this is happening all over the world. The Gaza situation has been instrumental and I've been giving talks on these issues for 50 years until fairly recently at university campuses, including my own. In fact, I literally had death police protection. Police would even accompany me back to my car afterwards. Meetings were held under airport security, you know, investigating people's handbags when they walked in. Meetings were disrupted and broken up. That right in Boston and the most liberal city in the country and that changed, changed dramatically.
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89Speaker 3:          00:43:37       One of the things that changed that you can almost time it where's the Israeli operations and gas operation cast lead was so vicious and brutal little, the kind of Obama glossed over it. A lot of the public didn't and that's continued. Now the situation in Gaza know is literally catastrophic. I mean international monitors predict that within a couple of years guys, it will literally be uninhabitable. Well, 95% of the water's polluted. People are living in essentially caged, have been there actually being in a prison. The sewage plants, power plants have been repeatedly bombed, often destroyed by Israeli bombing. People are mounted well the fish more than two or three a few kilometers off and polluted waters. The main lifeline for gas, which has sort of kept people alive, barely his own raw, the UN Relief and Works Agency, the Trump administration has just cut off funding for them. The situation is really desperate. Well, people here or may not know all the details.
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91Speaker 3:          00:44:54       There's enough that seeping through to arouse considerable opposition. Meanwhile, in the West Bank almost daily, some atrocity takes place by settlers, by the Israeli army. It doesn't get reported here most of the time, but the general picture you can see as the illegal settlements expand. Now W I think although it has not as yet had an impact on Congress, sooner or later will sooner or later there will be recognition that our arms sales to Israel or illegal under US law. There is a u s law called the lay little Patrick Lee, which bands arms sales to any military units that are involved in systematic human rights abuses. Well, you know, the record of human rights abuses by the Israeli army is just overwhelming, which means that the military aiders basically illegal. Later. There'll be recognition of that.
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93Speaker 2:          00:46:01       We'll see some changes when the peace groups can persuade a congressional committee to have the first hearing and over 60 years represented by the Israeli peace movement, which includes former generals, former heads of national security, and the Israeli FBI who have turned against Netanyahu and favor a viable two state solution. There hasn't been the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees, any movement on that direction, but as you suggest, that would be the next breakthrough. In a few minutes we have left. Professor jumps it can. We talk about Venezuela and in a different kind of way. We know that Trump wants to overthrow the Maduro government. We know what Bolton and pump payer we're doing. We know what tense is doing and the Colombian border. We know the history of intervention and South America by the U s we know the books by people like Smedley, Butler wars, Iraq, how he was represented, the Bank of National Bank in New York and Cuba and the oil companies elsewhere.
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95Speaker 2:          00:47:07       But what is very troubling is that people are really progressive who spent a lot of time and Venezuela have basically said that the Chavez Maduro regime has given the left a terrible reputation, that the cronyism, the corruption, the colossal mismanagement, Chavez and Maduro have been so deep that you can't simply write it off as a consequence of foreign intervention. And I just like to read very briefly the comment by someone who's been there for years and then you'll see where he's coming from. He says, quote Chavez nationalized companies and left them to ruin and looting. He destroyed thousands of small farmers in favor of Brazilian factory chicken and meat. He imported black beans from China and consider for a moment all of his meddling and squandering of cash early in his presidency, his criminal negligence directly cost at least 10,000 lives of poor people and amply foreign Warren landslides.
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97Speaker 2:          00:48:11       On the coast because he wanted the population stay put and vote in an election. This is an eye witness account. What he and Maduro have done is to serve the country up to the neo liberal elite that will once again rule when Trump, Bolton and Abrams are long gone, Venezuelans have endured so much pain for so long with 10 times the murder rate, total stagnation, abrupt decline and hospital infrastructure before and especially during 2000 to the present that they will be forced to accept as saviors the foreign oil mining and timber companies so long rubbing their hands over Venezuela's riches, not to mention IMF style austerity measures that will seem like a picnic next to Maduro is madness. This is the diabolical result we can anticipate for one of the most beautiful and wealthy countries on earth and quotes. And also you went to talk about the sweetheart deals that Chavez and Maduro has developed with Chevron and other us and foreign oil companies. And when as a whale,
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99Speaker 3:          00:49:17       what do you think of this commentary? Well, you know, we'll take a good bit of time to go through it sentence by sentence and take it apart, but there's a few comments that we can begin with. For one thing, there were plenty of problems during the Chavez years, but on the other hand, poverty was very sharply reduced. Educational opportunities are greatly expanded. There are regular polls taken of Latin American countries by the major Latin American polling agency, Latino Borama trow. It's in Chile, not at all sympathetic to take a look at their poles through the, through the Chavez years, Venezuela ranked right at the top along with Uruguay in public popular support for democracy and popular support for the government. It was a reason for that. There was election after election, a referendum after referendum. Carefully monitor the Carter Monitoring Foundation among others. I determined that event as well and elections were among the most tree in the world.
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101Speaker 3:          00:50:30       Okay. That's a record of how the population filled and there were reasons for it. There were serious errors. Actually, I've been criticizing for years. One was failure to change the colonial economy. The U s has been running then as well as for a century, essentially kicked out the British under Woodrow Wilson when oil was discovered, the u s expelled Britain unceremoniously in essentially took over the country and since then it's been pretty much dominating it. Lots of hideous atrocities have to go through that, but one effect was that the economy was almost entirely based on oil. Now, one of Chavez errors was not to change that the economy is still overwhelmingly based on oil. It was not diversified. A second error here on quoting the chief opposition economist Francisco Rodriguez, that's a spokesman for the opposition, serious economist. He says, a serious error of the Chavez government was not to put aside reserves during the period of high oil prices or other two expense spend.
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103Speaker 3:          00:51:48       The reserves that were spent on social programs and others inside the country that were spent on internationalist efforts to say provide a cheap oil to Haiti, which obviously could, couldn't barely survive, and many others. Also, despite the crazy talk about socialism, he left the capitalist class untouched, allowed them to enrich themselves. In fact, during this whole period to that limited extent, the critique you mentioned is correct. What all that meant was that when the, after his death, the oil couple of years after the oil price declined and the government did not have reserves on hand to try to deal with the crisis, so they had to go to the international credit markets. I don't have to tell you who runs them, so you can guess what the reaction is. Then came the sanctions, which are harsh, brutal, devastating the population all again, quote Rodriguez, the chief opposition economist on a serious economist.
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105Speaker 3:          00:52:58       He points out that the sanctions have turned a crisis into a humanitarian catastrophe and by now the latest sanctions, literally a bar of the government from almost any resources in an effort to starve the population into submission. Now Maduro has his own policies have been awful in many respects, economic repression and others, but this is in the face of constant subversion. Talk about the media that again, for ever since the beginning of the Chavez years, the media has been virtually an open voice for the Eddie Chavez opposition in ways that are almost unimaginable. So for example, in 2002 at the beginning of the Chavez as yours, and there was a military coup, it was a coup, which throughout the government throughout the president dismantled the parliament throughout the supreme court, us of course openly supported it. Take a look at the media as the New York Times. They applauded it and they thought, hey, this is wonderful.
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107Speaker 3:          00:54:11       We're getting back to freedom and democracy. Well, the who was pretty quickly overthrown by a popular uprising, has anyone ever withdrawn their praise for the military coup? And after that came years of subversion sabotage, internal problems and errors or some of them very serious. I could say that I was personally one of the people, it was actually very active in opposing human rights violations, but to disregard the achievements of those years and the popular support for them and not only in the polls, but election, a fair election after election. And that's ridiculous. And I chose the banality media barely even pretend to be covering situation and their opposition, the New York Times or the Washington Post. It's true of the European major meeting there simply journals for the opposition. That's what they described and there's a lot to be said. There's no time here to go into the full details, but it's a really atrocious situation and what is happening as you mentioned is a soft who a stranglehold which will lead to somehow the overthrow, the government and return of Venezuela to the kinds of circumstances that you see in the other, the u s run countries of the region and you want to look at atrocities, crimes and so on.
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109Speaker 3:          00:55:41       Simply look at the countries that the u s has maintained where it's maintained control of the Central American countries and Colombia, which is the most dangerous country in the world for a union activists and human rights activists and has been during. Again, there's just no time to go through the detail. Thank you very much for the discussion who always say to be continued, but years of Voice of towering intellect and reason and factual rendition, which is a rare today in public discourse and we hope to see you up more on the mass media to reach more people. Thanks very much. No,
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111Speaker 1:          00:56:23       glad to be with you.
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113Speaker 1:          00:56:25       We've been speaking with Noam Chomsky. We will link to his work@ralphnaderradiohour.com. I want to thank our guests again, Professor Noam Chomsky, so those of you listening on the radio, that's our show for you. Podcast listeners. They tuned for some bonus material we call the wrap up where we pick up on this sunrise movement, viral video and and Ralph comments not only on that but on some of the adult reaction on the cable news shows. Join us next week on the Ralph Nader radio ad where when we speak to Darren Jamal, author of end of ice and ray Metcalf, author of the bribery stops here. Thank you very much Ralph. Thank you everybody. And people are ordering the wrap book five at a time and I have a proposal. Anybody who orders 10 for discussion in their living room. I'll do a squawk box discussion with him for 20 minutes.
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115Speaker 4:          00:57:18       Hi, this is Jimmy Lee work producer of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Welcome to the wrap up where Steve Plays for Ralph the confrontation the young people of the sunrise movement had in Senator Dianne Feinstein's office as they deconstruct the reaction of the commentators on meet the press.
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117Speaker 1:          00:57:37       Now Ralph, I wanted to pick up on something that you talked to Professor Chomsky about in terms of that video that went viral from the sunrise movement when they confronted Senator Dianne Feinstein in her office and I'm just going to play a little bit of that for our audience and get your comments. Then I want to talk about the commentary that I heard on meet the press the following Sunday that had me yelling at the time TV so much actually scared my wife, so here's a little sample of that video. For those who are not familiar with it.
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119Speaker 5:          00:58:16       The green, new, we have our own. Well what we can do, the faces of the people who are going to be interesting about this group. I've been doing this for 30 years. I know what I'm doing. You come in here and you say it has to be my way or the highway. I don't respond to that. I've gotten elected. I just ran. I was elected by almost a million votes for reality and I know what I'm doing so you know, maybe people should listen a little bit. I hear what you're saying, but where are the people who voted you? You're supposed to listen to us. That's here.
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121Speaker 5:          00:59:20       Didn't for me. I have seven grandchildren. I understand it very well. The cost of not taking this action is far higher than the cost of what the green new deal will be and there is enormous popularity for this bill around the whole country here and we're asking you to be brave and do this for us and for your grandchildren. I'm trying to do the best I can, which was to write a responsible resolution plan that doesn't take full transformative action is not going to be what we need. Well you know better than I do. So I think one day you should run for the Senate. Great. Meantime, that time there's
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123Speaker 2:          01:00:26       politically, of course, it's 30 years of ignoring the need for transforming shift to renewables and energy efficiency from fossil fuels and nuclear. She has supported the fossil fuel industry and she has taken money from the fossil fuel industry for her campaign. So she basically was more than patronizing. She demonstrated to these young people how much more vigorous they have to be and how much more focus they have to be to replace the ancient regime of indentured corporatist politicians like Dianne Feinstein.
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125Speaker 1:          01:01:12       And here's the thing that had me cursing at the TV, which was the following Sunday on meet the press on NBC. Real enemy of the people according to Trump. And it's chuck Todd. He's introducing the video and this is what Chuck Todd said,
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127Speaker 6:          01:01:33       less tone deaf and how to talk to the kids and who are the adults that are using kids to to practice politics. It was the whole thing was uncomfortable, very uncomfortable and let me just say, I think first of all, she is a leader on this subject, so why didn't they go after someone who's against climate change? She has legislation. She's saying, I don't want to sign on to the new green deal because it's aspirational. It's not legislation. I'm working on something that's real. Also, who are the adults who bring their kids who don't understand this stuff? Seven, eight, nine, 10 year olds. I understand the passion of children and how important it is, but to ambush senator this way,
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129Speaker 2:          01:02:16       very similar, no surprise. The problem was corporate indentured politicians is they don't understand the clarity that is being communicated to them by these youngsters. These youngsters don't have the baggage that be cloud, the conscience and intellect in factual urgency of politicians. They don't have that. They don't have an ax to grind. That's why they have great moral authority. That's why this should be tens of thousands of nine, 10, 11, 12 year olds mobilize to confront the 535 members of Congress and their state legislators. And maybe the politicians will be surprised at some of these 10 year olds actually have more factual knowledge and content than the soul called politicians with all their years of experience. It's just amazing to see the lack of the elderly politicians sensitivity to these youngsters. They don't even have a sense of an arm around their shoulder. They don't even have a sense of conveying wisdom.
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131Speaker 2:          01:03:23       They get up on their high horse and become very defensive and start saying, well, maybe when you run for the Senate, you can do it your way. There's no doubt that Senator Feinstein recognizes the climate crisis and she's not a denier, but over the years she has not ruffled many feathers and the, um, the saturation of the planet with greenhouse gases by the fossil fuel industry. And she wasn't a leader and opposing nuclear power, the nuclear power plants in California were being shut down and are being shot down in spite of the senator from California. This is a relatively recent phenomenon, David, Steve, in the old days when politicians were confronted by youngsters like this, they assumed a more wise air. They assumed a more grandfatherly or grandmotherly air so to speak. They didn't get so defense. It's all part of this generation gap. I think our generation has spent too little time with the younger generation, and I'm not just talking about millennials, I'm talking about kids in grade school and by the same token, because of the iPhone and all the screen time, children today have spent less time with adults including their own parents. Then any generation in human history, and we're, we're seeing the results of that
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133Speaker 1:          01:04:52       short clip problem that I have, which is the condescension and the idea that children should not be concerned with politics. This was another person meet the press. He's a republican political strategist named Al Cardenas and this is what he said. I mean, I can't agree more that we need to have focus on climate change. I just acid ash, a father
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135Speaker 7:          01:05:18       of five children would a very much recentered anybody in this school, uh, pounding my kids with propaganda either left or right as to any political issue. Teach them civility, teach him the art of listening, teach them the art of, of developing a PR but not standing for Ireland. I liked the official,
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137Speaker 2:          01:05:40       we've heard from these people on the Sunday corporate and shows that have pretty much fungible people coming on the same people, the same topics, whether it's ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN or Fox. That's what happens when people like Chuck Todd don't have a program where they bring these children on. Why not a panel of 10 11, 12 year olds express their sentiments? You might be surprised to how much they know factually how much they know in terms of their responsibility, how much they can tell people who are five times older than them, that they were going to suffer the results of an overheated planet. Far More than people who are not going to be on the planet that many years. There needs to be a jolt here. This idea is how dare they speak. UNCIVILLY I didn't see any swearing words. Did you stay? Basically, these are at best guilt ridden people on the mass media. They know that they've looked the other way too long. They know that they've been wined and dined by the core partners too long. They know that their bread and butter is not on the side of the people they know they want to be invited back by NBC or CBS, so they can't make too many waves and they camouflage it by saying how, how dare these uppity ten-year-olds challenge these political representatives.
138
139Speaker 1:          01:07:14       Yeah. The whole idea that they both go to the fact that there are adults supposedly using these children and filling their minds with, God forbid, political sought. That was just so offensive to me.
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141Speaker 2:          01:07:32       Well, it's even worse than that, Steve. My experiences, the best questions ask politicians are asked by 10 year olds are 11 year olds. You remember the one when a 10 year old ass Ronald Reagan about air pollution? Well, most of air pollution comes from trees.
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143Speaker 1:          01:07:51       Well,
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145Speaker 2:          01:07:51       you see, that would never be a question asked by a White House reporter. If you had 10 and 11 year olds in the White House press corps and the seasoned reporters took a week or two off and didn't show up, the press briefings would be much more exciting, much more relevant, much more truthful, and the president would never come into the press briefing room.
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147Speaker 1:          01:08:12       I love that idea idea. The parklands students prove that with Rubio. Exactly.
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149Speaker 2:          01:08:19       Yeah. 10 year olds or idealism, but teenagers can challenge partitions very directly, so she after the harrowing experience then down there and they just cut right through the bs that these politicians have been using year after year successfully to circumvent the inhibited professional press corps from getting it the truth.
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151Speaker 1:          01:08:45       Yeah. Well, thanks Ralph for commenting that that had really innovated me this weekend because I thought that my son sent me that video and I was very impressed with it and very impressed with the south possession and then knowledge that the children showed supported by some older people. But the reaction to it, bye. My generation, our generation was just infuriating to me. So, um, thanks for commenting on it.
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153Speaker 4:          01:09:15       And that's a wrap. Join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour when we continue on the climate theme with Dark Jamal, author of the end device.