AMY GOODMAN: This month is the 15th
anniversary of Democracy Now! on the air, and it’s a real privilege to
have MIT professor, analyst, world-renowned political dissident,
linguist, Noam Chomsky with us.
I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez, and
we’ve been together for this whole 15 years, Juan. It’s really been
quite an amazing journey.
As we talk about this revolution that’s rolling across the Middle East,
we put out to our listeners and viewers on Facebook last night that,
Noam, you were going to be in. And so, people were sending in their
comments and questions.
We asked, on Facebook and Twitter, to send us
questions.
Here is one of the questions.
RYAN ADSERIAS: Hello, Professor Chomsky. My name is Ryan Adserias, and
I’m a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and also
the child of a long line of working-class union folks.
I don’t know if
you’ve been noticing, but we’ve been holding a lot of protests and
rallies here in our capital to protest Governor Scott Walker’s attempt
to break collective bargaining rights that Wisconsin workers worked hard
for over 50 years ago and have enjoyed ever since. We closed all the
schools around here for tomorrow - today and tomorrow, actually.
The
teaching assistants here at the university are staging teach-outs. The
undergraduates are walking out of class to show solidarity. And all of
this is because our governor and governors all around the country are
proposing legislation that’s going to end collective bargaining and
really break the unions.
I’ve also been noticing that there’s not a
whole lot of national representation of our struggle and our movement,
and it’s really been troubling me.
So my question to you is, how exactly
is it that we can get the attention of our national Democratic and
progressive leaders to speak out against these measures and to help end
union busting here in the United States?
AMY GOODMAN: That was a question from Ryan Adserias in Madison,
Wisconsin, where more than 10,000 - some say tens of thousands of people,
teachers, students, are protesting in the Capitol building, schools
closed, as Ryan said.
So, from Manama to Madison, from Manama, Bahrain,
to Madison, Wisconsin, Noam Chomsky?
NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s very interesting. The reason why you can’t get
Democratic leaders to join is because they agree. They are also trying
to destroy the unions. In fact, if you take a look at - take, say, the
lame-duck session. The great achievement in the lame-duck session for
which Obama is greatly praised by Democratic Party leaders is that they
achieved bipartisan agreement on several measures.
The most important
one was the tax cut. And the issue in the tax cut - there was only one
issue - should there be a tax cut for the very rich?
The population was
overwhelmingly against it, I think about two to one. There wasn’t even a
discussion of it, they just gave it away. And the very same time, the
less noticed was that Obama declared a tax increase for federal workers.
Now, it wasn’t called a "tax increase"; it’s called a "freeze."
But if
you think for 30 seconds, a freeze on pay for a federal workers is
fiscally identical to a tax increase for federal workers. And when you
extend it for five years, as he said later, that means a decrease,
because of population growth, inflation and so on. So he basically
declared an increase in taxes for federal workers at the same time that
there’s a tax decrease for the very rich.
And there’s been a wave of propaganda over the last couple of months,
which is pretty impressive to watch, trying to deflect attention away
from those who actually created the economic crisis, like Goldman Sachs,
Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, their associates in the government
who -
Federal Reserve and others - let all this go on and helped it.
There’s
a - to switch attention away from them to the people really responsible
for the crisis - teachers, police, firefighters, sanitation workers, their
huge pensions, their incredible healthcare benefits, Cadillac healthcare
benefits, and their unions, who are the real villains, the ones who are
robbing the taxpayer by making sure that policemen may not starve when
they retire.
And this is pretty amazing, like right in the middle of the
Madison affair, which is critical.
The CEO of Goldman Sachs,
Lloyd Blankfein, got a $12.5 million bonus,
and his base pay was more than tripled. Well, that means he - the rules of
corporate governments have been modified in the last 30 years by the
U.S. government to allow the chief executive officer to pretty much set
their own salaries. There’s various ways in which this has been done,
but it’s government policy.
And one of the effects of it is - people talk
about inequality, but what’s a little less recognized is that although
there is extreme inequality, it’s mostly because of the top tiny
fraction of the population, so like a fraction of one percent of the
population, their wealth has just shot through the stratosphere.
You go
down to the - you know, the next 10 percent are doing pretty well, but
it’s not off the spectrum.
And this is by design.
AMY GOODMAN: The New York Times coverage of Madison?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, that was very interesting. In fact, I urge people to
take a look at the February 12th issue of the New York Times, the big
front-page headline, you know, banner headline,
"Mubarak Leaves," its
kind of subheadings say, "Army Takes Over."
They’re about 60 years late
on that; it took over in 1952, but - and it has held power ever since.
But then if you go to an inside page - I don’t know what page it
is - there’s an
article on the Governor of Wisconsin. And he’s pretty
clear about what he wants to do.
I mean, certainly he is aware of and
senses this attack on public workers, on unions and so on, and he wants
to be upfront, so he announced a sharp attack on public service workers
and unions, as the questioner said, to ban collective bargaining, take
away their pensions.
And he also said that he’d call out the National
Guard if there was any disruption about this. Now, that’s happening now
to Wisconsin. In Egypt, public protests have driven out the president.
There’s a lot of problems about what will happen next, but an
overwhelming reaction there.
And I was - it was heartening to see that there are tens of thousands of
people protesting in Madison day after day, in fact. I mean, that’s the
beginning, maybe, of what we really need here: a democracy uprising.
Democracy has almost been eviscerated. Take a look at the front-page
headlines today, this morning, Financial Times at least.
They
predict - the big headline, the big story - that the next election is going
to break all campaign spending records, and they predict $2 billion of
campaign spending. Well, you know, a couple of weeks ago, the Obama
administration selected somebody to be in charge of what they call
"jobs."
"Jobs" is a funny word in the English language. It’s the way of
pronouncing an unpronounceable word.
I’ll spell it: P-R-O-F-I-T-S.
You’re not allowed to say that word, so the way you pronounce that is
"jobs."
The person he selected to be in charge of creating jobs is
Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, which has more than half
their workforce overseas. And, you know, I’m sure he’s deeply interested
in jobs in the United States. But what he has is deep pockets, and also,
not just him, but connections to the tiny sector of the ultra-rich
corporate elite, which is going to provide that billion or
billion-and-a-half dollars for the campaign.
Well, that’s what’s going
on.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I’d like to ask you about this whole issue of the
assault on unions. Clearly, it has arisen in the last few months in a
coordinated way.
Here in New York State, all the major business people
have gotten together, raised $10 million to begin an ad campaign, and
they’re being supported by both the Democratic new governor, Andrew
Cuomo, and as well as the Republican-Independent Mayor Bloomberg. But
they seem to be going after the public sector unions after having
essentially destroyed most of the private sector union movement in the
United States.
They realize that the public sector unions are still the
only vibrant section of the American labor movement, so now they’re
really going after them in particular.
Yet, you’ve got these labor
leaders who helped get Obama elected and who helped get Andy Cuomo
elected, and they’re not yet making the stand in a strong enough way to
mobilize people against these policies.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. There has been a huge
attack against private sector unions. Actually, that’s been going on
since the Second World War.
After the Second World War, business was
terrified about the radicalization of the country during the Depression
and then the war, and it started right off -
Taft-Hartley was 1947 - huge
propaganda campaigns to demonize unions. It really - and it continued
until you get to the Reagan administration.
Reagan was extreme. Beginning of his administration, one of the first
things was to call in scabs - hadn’t been done for a long time, and it’s
illegal in most countries - in the air controller strike. Reagan
essentially - by "Reagan," I mean his administration; I don’t know what he
knew - but they basically told the business world that they’re not going
to apply the labor laws.
So, that means you can break unions any way you
like. And in fact, the number of firing of union organizers, illegal
firing, I think probably tripled during the Reagan years.
Then, in fact, by the early '90s, Caterpillar Corporation, first major
industrial corporation, called in scabs to break a strike of industrial
workers, UAW. That's - I think the only country that allowed that was
South Africa. And then it spread.
When Clinton came along, he had another way of destroying unions. It’s
called
NAFTA. One of the predicted consequences of NAFTA, which in fact
worked out, was it would be used as a way to undermine unions - illegally,
of course. But when you have a criminal state, it doesn’t matter.
So,
there was actually a study, under NAFTA rules, that investigated illegal
strike breaking organizing efforts by threats, illegal threats, to
transfer to Mexico. So, if union organizers are trying to organize, you
put up a sign saying, you know, "Transfer operation Mexico." In other
words, you shut up, or you’re going to lose your jobs.
That’s illegal.
But again, if you have a criminal state, it doesn’t matter.
Well, by measures like this, private sector unions have been reduced to,
I think, maybe seven percent of the workforce. Now, it’s not that
workers don’t want to join unions. In fact, many studies of this,
there’s a huge pool of workers who want to join unions, but they can’t.
And they’re getting no support from the political system.
And part of
the reason, not all of it, is these $2 billion campaigns. Now, this
really took off in the late '70s and the ’80s. You want to run for
office, then you're going to have to dig into very deep pockets. And as
the income distribution gets more and more skewed, that means you’re
going to have to go after Jeffrey Immelt and Lloyd Blankfein, and so on
and so forth, if you want to even be in office. Take a look at the 2008
campaign spending.
Obama way outspent McCain. He was funded - his main
source of funding was the financial institutions.
AMY GOODMAN: Now they’re saying he’s going to raise, Obama is going to
raise $1 billion for the next campaign.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, and it’ll probably be more than that, because
they’re predicting $2 billion for the whole campaign, and the incumbent
usually has advantages.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, we have to break. We’re going to come right back.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, world-renowned political dissident. Stay with
us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest for the hour is Noam
Chomsky. He has authored over a hundred books; his latest, Hopes and
Prospects, among others.
Professor Chomsky, I want to ask you about former President Ronald
Reagan. A very big deal is made of him now on the hundredth anniversary
of his birth.
Last year President Obama signed legislation establishing
a commission to mark the centennial.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: President Reagan helped, as much as any
president, to restore a sense of optimism in our country, a spirit that
transcended politics, that transcended even the most heated arguments of
the day.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, your response?
NOAM CHOMSKY: This deification of Reagan is extremely interesting and a
very - it’s scandalous, but it tells a lot about the country. I mean, when
Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart
from Nixon, even below Carter.
If you look at his years in office, he
was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely
harmed the American economy. When he came into office, the United States
was the world’s leading creditor. By the time he left, it was the
world’s leading debtor. He was fiscally totally irresponsible - wild
spending, no fiscal responsibility.
Government actually grew during the
Reagan years.
He was also a passionate opponent of the free market. I mean, the way
he’s being presented is astonishing. He was the most protectionist
president in post-war American history. He essentially virtually doubled
protective barriers to try to preserve incompetent U.S. management,
which was being driven out by superior Japanese production.
During his years, we had the first major fiscal crises. During the ’50s,
’60s and ’70s, the New Deal regulations were still in effect, and that
prevented financial crises. The financialization of the economy began to
take off in the ’70s, but with the deregulation, of course you start
getting crises.
Reagan left office with the biggest financial crisis
since the Depression: the home savings and loan.
I won’t even talk about his international behavior. I mean, it was just
abominable. I mean, if we gained our optimism by killing hundreds of
thousands of people in Central America and destroying any hope for
democracy and freedom and supporting South Africa while it killed about
a million-and-a-half people in neighboring countries, and on and on, if
that’s the way we get back our optimism, we’re in bad trouble.
Well, what happened after Reagan left office is that there was the
beginnings of an effort to carry out a kind of - this Reagan legacy, you
know, to try to create from this really quite miserable creature some
kind of deity.
And amazingly, it succeeded. I mean, Kim Il-sung would
have been impressed. The events that took place when Reagan died, you
know, the Reagan legacy, this Obama business, you don’t get that in
free
societies. It would be ridiculed. What you get it is in totalitarian
states.
And I’m waiting to see what comes next.
This morning, North
Korea announced that on the birthday of the current god, a halo appeared
over his birthplace. That will probably happen tomorrow over Reagan’s
birthplace. But when we go in - I mean, this is connected with what we
were talking about before.
If you want to control a population, keep
them passive, keep beating them over the head and let them look
somewhere else, one way to do it is to give them a god to worship.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, you’ve written about, over the years, COINTELPRO, FBI
raids. We’re seeing that today.
There’s almost no attention given to
what we have focused on a good deal on Democracy Now!, from Minneapolis
to Chicago, the FBI raids, activists being subpoenaed to speak about in
various cases.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, that’s a pretty - it’s not just - the raids are serious
enough, but what’s more significant is what lies behind them.
These are
the first actions taken under new rulings by the Supreme Court. A very
important case was six or eight months ago, I guess,
Holder v.
Humanitarian Law Project.
It was initiated by the Obama administration.
It was argued by
Elena Kagan, Obama’s new court appointment. And they
won, with the support of the far-right justices.
The case is extremely
significant. It’s the worst attack on freedom of speech since the
Smith
Act 70 years ago. The case determined that any material support to
organizations that the government lists on the terrorist list is
criminalized, but they interpreted "material support" - in fact, the issue
at stake was speech.
Humanitarian Law Project was giving
advice - speech - to a group on that’s on the terrorist list, Turkish PKK.
And they were also advising them on legal advice and also advising them
to move towards nonviolence. That means if you and I, let’s say, talk to
Hamas leaders and say, "Look, you ought to move towards nonviolent
resistance," we’re giving material support to a group on the terrorist
list.
Incidentally, the terrorist list is totally illegitimate. That shouldn’t
exist in a free society. Terrorist list is an arbitrary list established
by the executive with no basis whatsoever, by whim, for example, but no
supervision. And if you take a look at the record of the terrorist list,
it’s almost comical.
So, take Reagan again. In 1982, the Reagan
administration decided it wanted to aid their friend Saddam Hussein. He
had been - Iraq had been on the terrorist list.
They took it off the
terrorist list. They had a gap. They had to put someone in.
AMY GOODMAN: South Africa, ANC.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Put in Cuba. They put in Cuba, and I suppose in honor of
the fact that, in preceding several years Cuba had been the target of
more international terrorism than the rest of the world combined.
So,
Saddam Hussein goes off, Cuba goes on, no review, no comment. And now,
with the new Obama principle, giving - advising groups that are
arbitrarily put on this group is criminal.
And that was the background
for those raids.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, we’re going to continue this conversation
online and play it on the show again. Noam Chomsky, professor of
linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
NOAM CHOMSKY: We were talking about unions
before.
Union busting is criminal activity by the government, because
they’re saying, "You can go ahead and do it; we’re not going to apply
the laws," effectively. And the
COINTELPRO, which you mentioned, is
actually the worst systematic and extended violation of basic civil
rights by the federal government.
It maybe compares with Wilson’s Red
Scare. But COINTELPRO went on from the late ’50 right through all of the
’60s; it finally ended, at least theoretically ended, when the courts
terminated it in the early ’70s. And it was serious.
It started, as is everything, going after the Communist Party, then the
Puerto Rican Independence Party. Then it extended - the women’s movement,
the New Left, but particularly black nationalists. And it ended
up - didn’t end up, but one of the events was a straight Gestapo-style
assassination of two black organizers, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark,
literally.
The FBI set up the assassination. The Chicago police actually
carried it out, broke into the apartment at 4:00 in the morning and
murdered them. Fake information that came from the FBI about arms stores
and so on. There was almost nothing about it. In fact, the information
about this, remarkably, was released at about the same time as
Watergate.
I mean, as compared with this, Watergate was a tea party.
There was nothing, you know?
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you - we’re obviously entering very soon a
new presidential season, and for many of the progressives and liberals
who had placed some much hope in the Obama administration, they’re now
going to be faced with the quandary of what to do as they move into a
new administration.
On the one hand, they feel betrayed by many of the
things the administration has done; on the other hand, they see this
extreme right that is attempting to paint Obama as a socialist, as
destroying the Constitution and freedom in America. And they’re going to
have to figure out how they’re going to maneuver in this new reality,
especially with the Citizens United case, the enormous amount of money
that’s going to be poured into.
Your thoughts on what progressives who
are still glued to the ground and understand the reality of what’s
happening in the country should be doing?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, my feeling - actually, I had the same feeling in 2008.
I’m not disillusioned, because I didn’t have any expectations, just
looking at the funding, looking at his background.
Actually, I wrote
about it before the primaries even. But nevertheless, you know, when I
was asked in 2008, "Who should you vote for?" my own feeling was
- and it
will be next time - that if you’re in a swing state, you better vote
against the prehistoric monsters, because they’re going to cause much
more trouble.
Well, in our system, the only choice you have would be to
vote for Obama. Hold your nose and vote, but don’t expect anything.
Just take a look at where he’s coming from, where his funding is coming
from. Over a long period, like a century, you can pretty well predict
policies by just looking at concentration of campaign funding. Thomas
Ferguson, very outstanding political scientist, has done the main work
on this, and it’s convincing.
So, when you find that the core of the
funding is the financial institutions, you can pretty well expect that
the major policies will be to reward them. Yeah, OK, it’s pretty much
what happened. You shouldn’t be disillusioned. But if you have to make a
choice between that and, you know, Newt Gingrich, well, OK, you have to
make that choice. Don’t expect anything.
What has to be done is what’s happening in Madison, or what’s happening
in Tahrir Square in Cairo.
If there’s mass popular opposition, any
political leader is going to have to respond to it, whoever they are.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, I wanted to ask you about the situation in
Haiti. The country is preparing to hold a controversial runoff
presidential vote next month.
The U.S. has resumed deportations to Haiti
despite the earthquake-ravaged, cholera-ravaged country. And former
Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide has been given a passport that
would allow him to return home seven years after he was ousted in a
U.S.-backed coup. I wanted to go back just to a brief clip.
I spoke to
President Aristide at the time of the coup in 2004, and he talked about
the role of the United States in Haiti and in the world.
PRESIDENT JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: They went to Iraq. We see how is the
situation in Iraq. They went to Haiti. We see how is the situation in
Haiti.
Pretending imposing democracy, we saw people killing people. Why
don’t they change their approach to let democracy and the constitutional
order flourish, slowly, but surely?
After imposing an economic embargo
on us, being, from the cultural point of view, very rich, from an
historic point of view, very rich, but from an economic point of view,
very poor, because we are the poorest country of the Western hemisphere,
after imposing their economic embargo upon us, because the people wanted
one man, one vote, so equality among us.
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Aristide in 2004.
NOAM CHOMSKY: That’s right. I mean, in 2004 - I don’t have to tell you
- the
United States and France, the two traditional torturers of Haiti for
hundreds of years, joined by Canada, you know, plodding along, carried
out a military coup. They kidnapped the president, sent him off to
Central Africa. The United States has tried hard to keep him out of the
hemisphere ever since, blocked him from coming back to Haiti.
This last election, which is a complete farce, I think about less than a
quarter of the population voted even. By most accounts, Aristide is the
most popular figure in Haiti. He’s kept out of the election. His party,
Fanmi Lavalas, has easily won every election in which there was even a
modicum of sort of honesty.
They were kept out of the election by the
United States. So we have an election in which the most popular
political figure is out, most popular political party is out, country is
a total wreck, people can’t get registration cards. I mean, that’s a
total ruin.
A lot of money was pledged; very little of it has actually
been allocated. Having an election under those conditions, it doesn’t
rise to the level of a joke. There was an OAS, Organization of American
States, investigation, but if you look at the people on the commission,
it’s mostly the United States or its puppets, totally unserious.
You
can’t even laugh about it. I mean, Haiti, once again, is being denied
the possibility of having a democratic election.
Now, it’s not the first time. The first real democratic election in
Haiti was in, 20 years ago, 1990. To everyone’s amazement, Aristide won.
Everyone assumed - me, too - that the U.S. candidate would win. Former World
Bank official, he had all the money, all the elite support.
AMY GOODMAN: Marc Bazin.
NOAM CHOMSKY: He got 14 percent of the vote. You know, nobody was
- it’s
kind of like Egypt and what Marwan was saying about the Middle East.
Nobody is paying attention to what’s going on in the slums and the
hills, which happens to be where the population is.
They’re just paying
attention to what’s happening up in the rich sectors of Pétionville, you
know, where the rich people live. Well, it turns out a lot of popular
organizing was going on, a really impressive democratic achievement.
It’s something that I wish we could even come close to here: actual,
real, live democracy.
And they swept into office, with a big majority, a populist priest who
immediately initiated programs which were in fact pretty constructive.
They were in fact highly praised, even by the international financial
institutions, you know, which don’t usually go for this. He cut back
corruption. He fixed up the budget.
Well, you know, just kind of
waiting, and it took seven months for the military coup to come, which
threw him out.
The OAS declared an embargo. The U.S. technically joined the embargo,
but within weeks the government, that was
Bush number one, announced
that U.S. firms would be exempt from the embargo. I remember the New
York Times, that report, saying this is a very humanitarian gesture: the
embargo is being fine-tuned for the interests of the people of Haiti,
namely by exempting U.S. firms. It turned out - and trade increased.
Actually, I was there during - it was a horrible terror. I was right
during it. Maybe you were, too. It was just awful. The CIA was reporting
that all - to Congress, that no oil is coming in. You could see the oil
farms being built by the rich families. And in fact, it later turned out
that first Bush, then Clinton, had authorized the Texaco Oil Company to
ship oil to the military junta and to the elite in violation of
presidential orders. Barely mentioned.
The Wall Street Journal had an
article on it. And so it went on.
You know, every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to
overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter
attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.
And that’s
what’s happening now with this so-called election.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you one final question on the U.S.
situation. Yesterday the
Federal Reserve Bank upped its prediction for
growth in the United States. Corporations are getting record profits.
The banks are back in great shape. The Dow is back up before it was in
the crisis.
And yet, we still have massive unemployment, conservatively
estimated at nine percent, and we still have a huge mortgage crisis in
the country, more and more people losing their homes.
The disconnect
between what the indicators are saying and the reality of what the
American people are facing?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, actually, it depends how you look at the indicators.
I mean, for the last 30 years, for a majority of the population, real
incomes have pretty much stagnated. I mean, there’s growth. And the
growth is going to - and the wealth is going into very few pockets. That’s
by design. Tax laws are designed that way.
Take, say, the Bush tax cut. It was very cleverly done. It’s devastating
the economy, but not the rich. The tax cut was done so that at the
beginning, the first - right off, everyone got a check, you know, so it
looks,
"Oh, great. We’re getting a tax cut, couple hundred dollars."
But
it was designed so that over the years the cut would shift.
By the end,
over half the tax cut, I think, was going to maybe one percent of the
population. But by then, nobody notices anymore. Well, that’s the way
fiscal policy has been designed. It’s the way corporate governance rules
have been designed.
They come from the federal government. And they
effectively give the CEO the right to pick the panel that gives him the
salary, and all sorts of things like this, along with the deregulation,
which - bipartisan, incidentally - which has led to a situation where, you
know, maybe you can talk about growth on the average, but for most of
the population it’s not there.
For a large part, especially maybe the lower half of the population,
they’re basically living in the Depression. Not quite. I mean, I’m old
enough to remember the Depression. My family was mostly unemployed
working class. It was objectively worse than now, if you count, you
know, objective standards.
On the other hand, it was hopeful. There was
a sense that something is going to happen. You had a government which
was doing things that helped the population, because they were under
pressure.
In fact, Roosevelt famously talked to the labor leaders and
said,
"Make me do this. You know, so you go have sit-down strikes and
you protest and so on, then we’ll push this legislation through."
Well,
it happened.
So you had WPA. You had - Social Security was coming in.
There was a sense that we’re going to get out of this somehow. There was
hope for the future. Now there isn’t. The industrial workforce is living
in the Depression. Unemployment is at Depression levels.
And the jobs aren’t coming back, because policy is designed, by the man
in charge of jobs for the Obama administration and others like him, to
send production abroad. It’s cheaper. It’s more profitable for the banks
and the management.
Or to move from investment in production to
investment in finance, which does nothing for the economy, probably
harms it, but it is very profitable and has the nice feature that when
it crashes, as it’s going to do, the taxpayer will come in and bail you
out. It’s a great system. It’s a real racket.
We will - the regulations
are such so that we can take very risky transactions, make a lot of
money, it’s going to crash, but no problem, there’s that nice taxpayer.
They will come in and bail us out. We’ll be richer than before. And each
time it gets worse than it was the last time. Now, this one is really
bad. So whatever the growth figures show, for the population, that’s not
happening, except for a small sector.
So the numbers could be right, but
that’s not what it means for people’s lives.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you quickly about Vermont.
You have
Madison, Wisconsin. You have all of Wisconsin now, Scott Walker saying
they’ll break the unions, bring out the National Guard if the teachers
and other union workers protest. In Vermont, the new governor, Peter Shumlin, has run on a platform of instituting single-payer healthcare
immediately.
And in January, a landmark measure was introduced to revoke
the granting of personhood rights to U.S. corporations. The bill calls
for a constitutional amendment declaring corporations are not persons
under the laws of the United States.
You live next door in
Massachusetts. How significant is this whole movement?
NOAM CHOMSKY: The movement is significant, but of course it has to take
root and spread. I mean, take, say, the personhood goes back a century,
and it was not by law. No legislation saying corporations are persons.
That was by court decisions, a series of court decisions over time which
have given these fictitious legal entities - established by the state,
incidentally, and protected by the state; they’re basically state-based
organizations - giving these entities more and more rights. It was
bitterly attacked by conservatives when - because it was a big attack on
the classical liberal ideals a century ago.
Citizens United, which you
mentioned, is just the last state of it. So that’s quite right.
The other thing about single payer is extremely significant. I mean, you
know, we’re supposed to be upset about the deficit. Whether we should be
or not is another question. You should have a deficit in a recession.
But let’s say we’re worried about the deficit. Where is the deficit
coming from?
About half of it is military spending, which is out of
sight. You know, it’s as much as the rest of the world combined. It’s
not for defense. In fact, it probably increases dangers to the United
States. But it’s there. The other half is our totally dysfunctional
healthcare system. I mean, it costs about twice as much per capita as
comparable countries and doesn’t have - has pretty poor outcomes, plus 50
million uninsured and other scandals.
And it’s the only privatized,
virtually unregulated healthcare system. So costs are out of sight.
Administrative costs are very high. You have profits. You have cherry
picking, all sorts of things that cost money.
That’s about half the
deficit. In fact, if we had a healthcare system like comparable
countries, we’d probably have a surplus.
Well, if you look at the debate that’s going on - you know, you read New
York Times, anybody - they say the big problem is entitlements.
Entitlements means Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Well, Social
Security is just pure lies. I mean, Social Security doesn’t even add to
the deficit. It’s funded by payroll taxes.
And furthermore, it’s in quite good shape
for decades. So that’s just mentioned in order to try to destroy Social
Security. Social Security does nothing for the wealthy. It’s a means of
survival for working people and poorer people, so therefore let’s get
rid of it. Also, Social Security is dangerous. Social Security is based
on a principle which is frightening: namely, we care about each other.
So, Social Security is based on the idea
that you care if a disabled widow across town has food to eat, and you
have to drive that out of people’s heads. They’re supposed to care only
about themselves, not anybody else, like part of the reason for
attacking unions. So you’ve got to get rid of Social Security, so
therefore lie about it.
But what about Medicare and Medicaid? It’s
true, those expenses are going through the roof, and they’re going to
tank the federal budget.
But that’s because of the healthcare system.
I mean, Medicare -
AMY GOODMAN: So, what could Obama do right now?
NOAM CHOMSKY: He could do what the population has wanted for years: put
in a national healthcare system like every other industrial country has
in one form or another.
That was just given up during the
healthcare - they didn’t talk about it. There was one last residue of it
in the healthcare reform: namely, the public option.
The public was in
favor of that by I think about five to three or something,
substantially. That was just given away, you know? We’ve got to make
sure that the rich - financial institutions are richer and
richer - insurance companies, in this case.
Same with pharmaceutical corporations. Drug prices in the United States
are much higher than comparable countries, with one exception:
Veterans
Administration.
Veterans Administration has reasonable prices, and
there’s a reason. The government is allowed to bargain with
pharmaceutical corporations for the VA, but not for the rest of the
population. So, of course, the prices are out of sight. Well, yeah, the
public has views on this, too. In fact, actually, it’s only one poll. It
showed about 85 percent opposition. But it’s not even discussed.
So, yes, entitlements are a problem, but not the entitlements. What’s a
problem is paying off the insurance companies and paying off
Big Pharma.
That’s a problem.
And unless we do something about that, that problem is
going to get worse and worse, and you’ll have a bigger and bigger
deficit, plus the military. So what Vermont is doing is picking the
right problem. But, you know, it’s a small state.
What they can do
depends on how - if we have a popular uprising like, say, Tunisia or Egypt
or Bahrain, yeah, then you could get somewhere.
AMY GOODMAN: We just had this breaking news that the Obama
administration is making a call to Bahrain to use restraint. I mean,
again, we have the U.S. military base there.
But did you ever think
you’d see, Noam, in your lifetime, what we are seeing now in the Middle
East, this rolling revolution?
NOAM CHOMSKY: No, not really. But then, I never expected to see what’s
happened in Latin America for the past 10 years. Over the past 10 -
what’s happened in Latin America is very dramatic.
There’s 500 years of history here. And this
is the first time, since the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors came,
that Latin America has started to take its fate into its own hands.
They’ve kicked out all the American military bases. The countries are
integrating.
They’re beginning to deal with the absolute
scandal, that’s internal to each country, a tiny sector of extreme
wealth, Western-oriented -
JUAN GONZALEZ: The wealth gap is shrinking.
NOAM CHOMSKY: And it’s shrinking, and they’re doing something about it.
A long way to go, but at least being faced. And there also integration
of the countries, which is a prerequisite for independence.
Now, that’s
dramatic. It’s far more significant than what happened in Eastern
Europe. I mean, the comparisons to Eastern Europe I don’t think are very
convincing. First of all, in Eastern Europe, remember, you had
Gorbachev. Now, the person who was in charge, basically, and had the
guns was saying, "Go ahead."
You don’t have any Gorbachev in the West,
nothing like him. Furthermore, in the case of Eastern Europe, the major
power sectors in the world - the United States and Western Europe - were
supporting the uprising, of course, because it was undermining an enemy.
There’s nothing like that here.
In fact, about the only comparison to Eastern Europe that isn’t sort of
ridiculous is the one that’s never talked about: Romania.
Romania, which
had the worst dictator in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, he was a darling of
the West. The United States and Britain loved him. He was supported
until the last minute. They couldn’t support him anymore, so, you know,
turned against him - the usual game plan. But that’s about the only
analogy.
On the other hand, what happened in Latin America is extremely
significant, and what’s happening in the Middle East could turn into
something similar.
AMY GOODMAN: And the role of the U.S. in the Middle East, what it should
play right now? And I know you have to go after that.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, what it should do is say,
"OK, we’re out of here.
This is your country. You live there. You do what you want. We’re going
to support democracy. Or we’ll support whatever comes out."
But think
what’s involved in that.
Just take a look at Arab public opinion. You
take a look at Arab public opinion, you see democracy would be a
disaster for the U.S. leadership. I mentioned the figures, but the whole
of U.S. policy in the region would instantly collapse if you had
democracy.
Well, you know,
the Middle East is an important area. It goes back to
almost 90 years, since oil was discovered, especially since the Second
World War. Take a look at internal documents.
The Middle East oil was
regarded as the most important and strategic - the strategically most
important area of the world, because it’s got the major oil reserves.
And if you think what’s happened in the Middle East over the years, the
big - the United States and Britain have traditionally supported radical
Islamic fundamentalism.
The core of radical Islamic fundamentalism is
Saudi Arabia. That’s also the main fundamental of jihadi terror. That’s
our main ally.
In fact, in 1967, when U.S. relations with Israel took on
their current form, the primary reason was that there was a war going
on, literally, between Saudi Arabia and Egypt in Yemen. And Saudi Arabia
is the center of radical Islamic fundamentalism.
Egypt was the center of
secular nationalism. And secular nationalism is frightening, because - it
wasn’t democratic, it was autocratic, but it was secular and it was
nationalist. And Nasser was talking about using the resources of the
region for their own populations, not to enrich Western oil companies
and, you know, the Saudi elite. Well, that’s frightening.
So there was
this conflict going on, the U.S. and Britain of course supporting
radical Islamism. Israel won that battle for them. That’s when relations
were established in their current form, and that continues. It’s not 100
percent, but substantially the U.S. and Britain have supported and
continue to support radical Islam, because it’s a barrier against
democracy.
If it goes the wrong way, they don’t like it, but as long as
it’s going your way, fine.
Actually, during this entire crisis, I thought one of the most astute
comments was a two-sentence comment by Marwan Muasher. He’s a former
high Jordanian official who’s head of Middle East research for the
Carnegie Endowment.
He said,
"There’s an operative principle in the
Middle East." He said, "The principle is, as long as people are quiet
and passive, we’ll do whatever we like."
That’s a general principle of
statesmanship that applies here, too.
As long as people are quiet and
passive, we’ll do whatever we like. Now, of course, if they stop being
quiet and passive, we’ll have to adjust somehow. Maybe they’ll even
throw us out, but we’ll try to hang on as much as we can.
And that’s
what we see going on in the Middle East. That’s what we saw going on in
Latin America.
It’s what we see right here.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, thank you so much for spending this time.
