A Conversation with Noam Chomsky on Trump, Capitalism, and the U.S. Role in the New Cold War

so good morning my name is eric wishart i'm the vice president of the foreign correspondents club and our journalist with afp news agency and it's my great honor and a pleasure this morning to introduce our very distinguished speaker professor noam chomsky um before i hand the discussion over to uh president judy schneider and professor chomsky i'd just like to remind you of a couple of upcoming zoom events um as part of our series of talks in the fcc on monday we have kishore mabu bani who's uh azure scholar and author he'll be talking about his new book has china one and then we'll be having a panel discussion on wednesday uh divorce decoupling of conflict sino-american relations and the new cold war um i know it's a bit of a cliche to say that our speaker doesn't need any introduction but um noam chomsky has been a reminder and i'm thinking an intellectual for for many years he's a laureate professor in the department of linguistics at the university of arizona and professor emeritus at the massachusetts institute of technology where he's taught for more than 50 years he's considered the founder of modern linguistics one of the most influential public intellectuals in the world and he's published on u.s foreign policy mideast politics and democratic society it's also written more than a 100 books several of which i can say i've purchased and read so i'm personally delighted to have professor chomsky as a speaker this morning so um welcome everybody there is a a function in the chat where you can ask questions um so without further ado i'll pass the microphone to judy schneider the club president and senior international editor at bloomberg news agency judy thank you thank you good morning everybody uh and good afternoon evening professor chomsky you're in arizona correct so we appreciate you uh you taking time out to talk to us uh and so i'll get right i'll get started right away and please do as eric said um send over questions and uh we will um and and if you tell us who you are we will uh ask professor chomsky your question uh with your name uh so uh on july 31st professor chomsky is the u.s passed sadly the uh very terrible milestone of 150 000 deaths from the coronavirus now i think we're up to about 160 000 in the us uh you were quoted as saying that you thought decades of neo-liberal policies had left the u.s uh soft social safety net in shambles and were at the root of the pandemic can you talk to us about that what evidence you see for that and how far back the u.s should have been preparing what do you think could have been done uh to prevent or at least to um uh to blunt what has now been one of the worst outbreaks and worse worst death tolls from the pandemic those are i should start by saying that those are very appropriate questions because the same situation is arousing is arising again right now in 2003 as you know the sars epidemic was contained scientists warned at the time that it's very likely that another coronavirus epidemic maybe pandemic would be coming told us exactly how to prepare for it exactly as they're telling us now with regard to the next likely one but it's not enough to know the facts somebody has to make use of them well the drug companies are the obvious candidate huge profits enormous labs but they're blocked they're blocked simply by ordinary capitalist logic they are profit-making institutions they want to make profit tomorrow not prepare for a possible catastrophe a few years down the road which probably won't be very profitable anyway so they're out well the government could step in at enormous laboratories rich resources actually the federal government in the united states does most of the basic research development for vaccines and drugs anyway before it hands the results over to private corporations but they're blocked they're blocked by neoliberalism you recall ronald reagan's pronouncement when he took office 40 years ago government is the problem not the solution that translates as meaning that decisions have to be removed from government which has the flaw that it's partly under popular influence and handed over to private power which is totally unaccountable to the public that's the foundation principle of neoliberalism so they're blocked that doesn't mean that nothing could be done there were many efforts despite these impediments so when president obama came into office on in january 2009 the first thing he did in fact was to call the presidential science and technology advisory board uh convene them first mission to lay out a program to prepare for a likely pandemic they came back a couple weeks later at the program he put it into practice there were some preparations made that lasted until january 2017 when donald trump took office his first act when he took office was to dismantle all the preparations so no preparations left he then proceeded to [Music] terminate programs in which u.s scientists were working with their chinese colleagues to try to investigate potential coronaviruses and the bat colonies and deep in the caves and province and elsewhere they were dismantled there were simulations run as late as october 2019 on the effects of the likely pandemic that they were ignored the united states was singularly unprepared when the pandemic finally struck then it got worse the there were countries mostly in east asia oceania which responded very quickly when china provided the identified the virus it provided the sequence the genome prevented presented it to the world health organization on the world january 10th at that point every virologist in the world knew exactly what was happening many acted east asia oceania primarily europe sort of dithered uh finally started to react some fairly effectively except for britain which was the outlier much worse off than the others the united states did nothing reports kept coming to the white house from u.s intelligence from health officials with no interest the this went on until mid-march by that time the stock market was starting to decline trump noticed that and began to take some very confused actions one thing one day one the next day won't go through the details but the united states is basically a wreck it has four percent of the world's population 25 of the cases if you look back at late march the united states was almost exactly comparable to europe in number of cases and deaths since then the european car curve has declined very sharply the u.s car the curve is flat slightly increasing it's where i live in arizona as has a governor who's a trump loyalist so he opened the state much too early arizona is now vying for the international record for the highest number of cases per capita and similar things are happening in different places some places mostly with democratic governors they're doing something but there's no national plan and trump has been flailing around desperately to find some scapegoat to cover up for the fact that he's responsible for killing over a hundred thousand americans can't calculate exactly so blame china blame the world health organization blame the democrats to blame anyone and that's the situation we're in now in the united states there is no progress being made it's getting worse would you do now if if you had the power and if you could you know talking about all these things that um could have been done earlier in terms of prevention and way back to when the us uh what the u.s was supposed to have learned from sars what would you do now if they put you in charge of this if president trump called you and said noam chomsky i want you to have the task force which i realize is unlikely to happen but um what would you do well i would do what every other country just about every other country is doing the exception of brazil one or two others follow the advice of american scientists now they're giving the advice that's followed to the whole by the whole world by the wrong scientists so we can certainly do at least what europe did if not with south korea taiwan new zealand did that much we can do it's necessary right now to impose a lockdown not open it prematurely just in order to foster trump's electoral prospects which is what's being done the lockdown can flatten the curve when it moves there it's much too late to do what more advanced countries did like south korea for example where they didn't have a lockdown they just did careful testing tracing and contacting so there will localize the epidemic in particular places china's doing the same with its appointed too late for that in the united states and probably in britain it's necessary to have a full lockdown the federal reserve has the resources to compensate for the costs u.s can print its own currency virtually without limit still remains there's no no inflation a threat remotely in sight so that's perfectly possible way out and it'll just have to wait until the couple weeks the curve will flatten as it did in europe then you can begin slow systematic openings key to the situation try to make sure that there's no major indoor events one thing that's happening now is that churches it's a very religious country churches all over the place they want to open and bring in people into the church the lockdown should prevent that there are churches suing the government and the states to try to prevent it uh young teenage parties have to be taken stop that can't go on something has to be done about the colleges and the schools they're in serious trouble it can't be opened just in order to make the country look good on election day which is trump's only concern so we basically know what to do problem is to do it and then comes the next step we can be very confident that another pandemic is coming if this is ever resolved we've been lucky so far so far the coronaviruses have either been highly contagious and not very lethal like this one or highly lethal and not very contagious like ebola we're not guaranteed that next time might be highly contagious and lethal we might be facing something like the black death we can prepare for it but it has to be done uh capitalist logic blocks it neoliberal assault prevents the alternative those have to be dismantled those are not acts of god they are human decisions that can be made differently but we should realize what we're facing that isn't done there'll be another pandemic which probably much worse than this one intensified by the impact of global warming and habitat destruction which is making it worse thank you well we have it we're starting to get some questions uh one is on the pandemic um it is we are approaching three times the number of debtors died in the vietnam war how can americans be made aware of the seriousness of the pandemic and um an interesting follow-up question there and should president trump face murder or manslaughter charges over his handling of the pandemic or i guess mishandling well it's a very difficult situation when you have a government and mass media trumpeting the same message it's not serious don't worry about it it's fake so on it's very hard to get people organized so just to give you some holy results about if you look at republicans which is it's a minority party but almost half the population they are being told by their revered leader that it's nothing much don't worry about it just like the flu it'll go away miraculously don't worry about all these alarmists they hear that then on trump's echo chamber fox news the murdoch cable station which is about the only source of information for republicans fox news just reiterates what trump says then comes more so there are all around the world there are crazy conspiracy theories circulating i'm sure you've seen them one of them is that the coronavirus was started by the bill gates george soros in order to control the world's population about 70 of the american population has seen that of republicans about half those who've seen it over half two-thirds of those who've seen it believe it i mean that's what we uh there there are other media new york times cnn washington post uh half of republicans think call them the enemy of the people following their master about half of republicans think that the government meaning trump should have the authority to close down media if they carry out bad behavior like producing fake news which is what they're told it's a serious problem to deal with not just on this issue i'll take a much more serious issue which we can't delay uh global warming that's not going to go away this will be overcome that won't about uh about 20 of republicans think that it's a serious problem in which humans have some role 20 they hear all the time it's just a left-wing conspiracy well that makes things difficult requires major cultural changes and it's being severely harmed by the most dangerous political figure in human history and that is not an exaggeration hitler wanted to kill all the jews 30 million slavs he wasn't trying to destroy organized human life on earth which is what trump is racing towards that's his climate policy let's maximize the use of fossil fuels including the most dangerous of them let's eliminate all the regulations that mitigate the consequences and that save americans by restricting pollution under the cover of the pandemic these are being quietly eliminated one after the other the investor class understands this they're very concerned that trump is declining in the polls you can read headlines in the major press so i think the fossil fuel industry is localized primarily in texas the texas press houston chronicle has headlines which ain't telling us that fossil fuel companies are extremely concerned that trump is declining in the polls they're writing massive checks to the republicans to ensure that somehow they can save him they want to maximize the use of fossil fuels out of good capitalist logic that's how you make money tomorrow the fate of the world is not their business none of this is a law of nature but that's the way capitalist societies work i want to ask one more question on uh related to this and then uh to move on to some of the things we are going to i do want to get to some press issues later so i'm glad to that you uh they started bringing it up but this is from eric who is our our resident fake news expert um so um as a linguist and cognitive scientist what is your analysis of why people turn to these fake cures and conspiracy theories which as you've noted president trump um seem to sometimes have a fondness for why did why are they um turning to these to find a way through the crisis and what do you think about the drum beat of misinformation from the white house on down about the pandemic well that's part of the answer to your question people are angry frightened desperate this is actually pre-trump 40 years of neoliberalism have left the victims of this assault angry resentful uh isolated contemptuous of government it's in europe it's in the united states see it everywhere that's fertile territory for demagogues you can see i can save you follow me it's also fertile territory for conspiracy theories now people want some understanding of what's happening but they're not getting it from the media they're not getting it from the intellectual classes certainly not getting it from the government so they search around for something that will explain it why is this happening to us you know that's the kind of situation in which you do get conspiracy theories this has happened with every major plague in history you know let's kill the jews let's uh do something somebody's responsible i didn't do anything wrong why is this happening to me so that's pretty natural it's one of the reasons why people turn to extremist religions so maybe uh two-thirds of the population in the united states is expecting the second coming of jesus maybe in their lifetimes okay maybe that'll save us when you're living in a intellectual environment in which there are no answers no coherent answers available you're suffering you don't see why you turn to you grasp onto something incidentally this is not just true in the united states let me give you a striking personal example when one of the things that happens on the internet surprised it doesn't happen more than it does is people put up fake postings attributed to somebody happens to me pretty often there was when the when the pandemic started somebody circulated a statement on the internet attributed to me describing in detail how the coronavirus was started in a u.s government biological laboratory and then released in order to take over the whole world once something's on the internet you can't do anything about it you can deny it you can say what you like but it's there i started getting letters from all over the world including europe including friends and colleagues educated people saying thank you for finally telling the truth i mean this is all over you know the united states particularly extreme examples but it's happening all over and i think you can trace a good deal of it to the effect of neo-liberalism it had a goal remember the goal of neo-liberalism was to transfer decisions away from the public to the hands of private power and to atomize the population you recall margaret thatcher there's no society just individuals tossed out in the market to somehow survive for themselves and she surely didn't know it but she was paraphrasing karl marx but he condemned the autocratic rulers of his day for trying to turn the public into what he called a sack of potatoes just isolated people who can't get together can't resist are subject to authority in this case it's the authority of concentrated private power the first acts first acts that both thatcher and reagan carried out was the demolished labor unions first move both cases reagan went as far as authorizing uh scabs strike breakers illegal in every country except at the time south africa did it right away the labor unions had been smashed in both countries why well that's one of the very few ways in which people can organize to protect themselves so we've got to get rid of them eliminate public schools under but do it by under funding don't give enough funding so they don't work then support private schools as an alternative all throughout the society eliminate the means for people to organize act collectively make decisions transferred into the hands of private power and the results are predictable and perfectly perfectly plain so you take a look at the united states uh right now 0.1 percent of the population not one percent 0.1 percent of 20 of the wealth that's twice as much as when reagan took over the majority of the population get by from week to week with nothing left over from one paycheck to the next until if anything goes wrong you're in trouble there's no universal health system unlike other countries that would be people getting together can't do that no associations can't protect itself with unions they're gone uh so you're you're alone so you get angry and resentful uh it's not that the democrats do that much better a lot of this is the responsibility of clinton picked up and pushed most of the destructive policies when obama came in there was a lot of hope among working people who were people that something would happen that nice rhetoric about hope and change take a look at what happened as he came in immediately there was a crash of the housing market huge housing bubble because of predatory actions of financial institutions let loose by the clinton administration and deregulation crashed everybody's wealth was lost led to a financial crisis congress passed legislation two had two parts one part was to bail out the perpetrators of the crisis the banks investment firms who had made the predatory loans we have to bail them out the other part of the legislation was to help the people who were victims the people who'd lost their homes who'd been foreclosed let's help them now you can guess which part of the legislation was enacted okay that left people pretty angry by 2010 two years in office obama and they were already voting republican even in massachusetts the most liberal state people are furious okay that's uh if this goes on well okay get it i mean it goes way back and a lot a lot of history i'm committing but this is the recent history is this it's had very dire effects i'd like to kind of move on to some global politics we've been discussing u.s largely here um we are obviously sitting here in hong kong uh in the center of this potential some would say emerging cold war between the u.s and china on a number of fronts um as a political activist and dissident and media watcher and critic how worried are you about this how worried are you that this could um is more than the saber-rattling uh and uh and propaganda i would presume you would call it on both sides uh and could it be something more and i'm also going to throw in there um that um we had a very sad anniversary in the past day actually it's still august 6 where you are the 75th anniversary of the uh a bomb being dropped on hiroshima and a few days later on nagasaki um and you know that's chilling uh so talk to us about your uh what you're thinking about the us and china and and how uh worried both countries the citizens of both countries should be about what could happen and have we had any lessons in the past 75 years have we learned anything um from the tragic events of august uh on 1945 well i'm old enough to remember august 6th very well um unforgettable memory and we've been living under that shadow ever since as i'm sure you know the every year the bullet of atomic scientists convenes a gathering of scientists political analysts to assess the world situation and try to capture it by setting what's called the doomsday clock how far is the minute hand from midnight midnight means termination when it was set first in 1947 it was seven minutes to midnight oscillated up and back since the worst was 1953 when the united states and the soviet union exploded thermonuclear weapons that told the world that human ingenuity has now reached the point where it can wipe out everything great success uh the minute hand moved two minutes to midnight moved around since didn't return to two minutes to midnight until two years ago every year that trump has been in office it's moved closer to midnight two years ago it moved to two minutes to midnight this past january the analysts abandoned minutes they turned to seconds uh it's now a hundred seconds to midnight it's january before the pandemic was well known they gave three reasons one is the growing threat of nuclear war which is increasing uh trump is dismantling the arms control regime which gave some limited protection by now there's virtually nothing of it left it's refusing to renew the new start treaty which is the last remnant uh that's one the other is the failure to deal effectively with the threat of environmental catastrophe again much of the world is doing something sometimes a lot the united states is almost the only country that's racing in the opposite direction under trump not under obama under trump the disaster one of the reasons why the texas press is no reporting that investors are pouring money into the trump campaign is that biden under a lot of popular pressure has moved towards the most effective climate policy of practically anyone it's not enough but it's very good they hate it so they want trump to get back in because he's racing towards maximizing destruction by fossil fuels now that's the second the third was deterioration of democracy now it sounds at first as if that doesn't belong but if you think for a moment it does because a vibrant democracy of informed engaged public the only way to deal with these major crises which takes us back to hong kong where democracies being undermined by the regional power china china is trying to reassert its traditional role as the dominant force in asia it's not a imperial power in the western sense didn't invade and conquer countries but it insisted on they're paying tribute to china you know the story better than i do don't run through it trying to reestablish that position the united states won't tolerate it the world whatever you may learn in your course in international relations theory the fact is that the world is run like the mafia very similar to the mafia the mafia dawn the godfather does not tolerate any interference it doesn't tolerate states that might challenge it it doesn't even challenge small states that get out of line if you're the godfather and some small store store keeper doesn't pay protection money you don't need the money but you don't let it go you send in your goons to smash them up and destroy this door that's international affairs if some small country carries at what an official terminology is called successful defiance that's government internal documents referring to cuba in this case if a country carries out successful defiance has to be stopped that's like the small storky that's why the us invaded into china invaded grenada you know case after case it's not a new invention the american revolution was treated the same way and the great statesmen of europe were terrified about the spread of what was called republican ideology not today's sense of republic just not democratic ideology could undermine the british empire could undermine authority civilization and have to stop it that's the way the world works okay right now china's a rising power it's nowhere near the united states way behind i mean if you take any dimension you like in the military dimension it's not even worth talking the united states is the higher military expenses than about the 10 late lower powers put together and technologically far more advanced and russia's way more advanced than china but it is increasing far behind but increasing it's uh there's economic growth but it remains a very poor country you take a look at the human development index of the united nations it's ranked around 90s or so has serious internal problems that the richer countries don't have it's uh if you look at world wealth there's a really outstanding political economist in hong kong one of the best in the world sean stars teaches in hong kong he's done the major work on a very important topic he has a book coming out on it right now he's the first person to look carefully at a pro a different measure of national wealth economists usually measure national wealth by gross domestic product which is something but it's not a very good measure the stars has looked at something else i think for the first time how much will of the world's wealth is in the hands of nationally based multinational corporations so how much of the world's wealth is held by us-based multinationals the figure is stunning it's about 50 and just about every category retail manufacturing and finance the u.s corporations are either first or sometimes second china's way behind if you look at china has grown economically but most of the wealth that's produced doesn't go to china so if you take apple you know apple phones china assembles them but the problem most of the profit goes to fox not other taiwanese conglomerates that control it and most of the profit the great bulk goes back to apple that's where the profits go and apple makes sure that it doesn't have to pay taxes by setting up an office in ireland probably about the size of this room maybe a secretary comes in every once in a while so it's based in ireland now that was facilitated by reagan prior to reagan that was illegal reagan opened the doors we have to have free markets so it doesn't have to pay taxes it makes most of the profit these days major corporations like apple find it more profitable to devote resources to financial manipulations other than to research and development that was not true under steve jobs then they worked on research and development now that's declined under tom cook and they act like most capitalist corporations moving into financial markets which if they have an effect on the economy it's probably negative but these are the developments of the neoliberal system well going back to the cold war between china and the united states that's a disaster for the world this is a moment more than ever we have to have international cooperation the crises that we face are all international all the ones that are that we've mentioned pandemic is obviously international it's uh if a vaccine is developed it should be a public good like the salk vaccine for polio 70 years ago just given to the public uh the that's what should be done by a vaccine today actually china is the one country that's called for that they claim i don't know if they're really gonna do it but they at least claim that if a chinese scientists develop a vaccine they'll offer free to the public okay that's the right stance to take west is taking the opposite and trying each country is trying to maximize to not even monopolize if possible the products that can be used for the remedy in the crisis united states try to take all the there's one drug runs into the ear which seems to be a palliative if they're trying to collect all of it now they're all trying to make sure that they control the patents and they're in the hands of private corporations which can gouge they can discharge whatever they like because of the rules of the world trade organization which is called free trade but it's a joke highly protectionist uh intellectual pro what are called intellectual property rights are exorbitant patents have never existed in history if they had existed the united states would never have developed or other countries but it's a way to what economists call kicking away the latter that we borrow technology from other countries and we block it the exorbitant patent rights permit the drugs mostly monopolized by now under the market conditions that allows them to charge ridiculous prices uh way beyond what the drug or vaccine requires none of this is necessary again this mostly goes back to reagan and the neoliberal years pandemic is an international problem countries should be cooperating and dealing with it same is true of global warming the polar ice caps are going to keep melting no matter who's at war with each other and with all the effects that has nuclear war is the same all the countries with nuclear weapons have to radically contain them or get rid of them it's not just russia and the united states it's the worst case they have way too many uh india and pakistan could go to war over a water crisis that's the himalayan glaciers milk israel has a huge store of nuclear weapons threatened to use might again that these things could break out anywhere the nuclear issue is an international issue the global warming is an international issue pandemic obviously is there has to be cooperation on these things allowing conflict to develop is first of all unnecessary and secondly catastrophic now right now the united states is um there are confrontations between china and the united states but they're not off the coast of the of california they're not in the caribbean and they're off the coast of china china's doing things it shouldn't be doing there it's doing there what the united states does over most of the world shouldn't be doing it but that confrontation has to be dealt with by negotiation and diplomacy there's no way to do it by force unless we want to all destroy ourselves and the same is true of other confrontations uh the united st the united states is quite open publicly in fact publicly trying to prevent china from developing that's not only cruel but senseless if china develops it's to everybody's benefit if china manages to develop the best solar panels in the world we all benefit china happens to develop a vaccine we all benefit and reciprocally that's the way things ought to work now they can but not if leaders are pursuing their own interests of power prestige and insisting on creating crises where they don't have to exist um i wanted to ask about hong kong we have several good questions on that i'm going to combine them uh one is from um florence de shanje who's our our former president of the club who's asking um what do you think of the open support that the u.s has brought to uh the hong kong protesters and how has that influenced what's been happening here also from angel kwan with apple daily one of the bigger news organizations here in hong kong uh how will hong kong likely be affected under the increasing tension between the us and china and after the new national security law has been imposed how do you foresee the future of hong kong obviously this is a of major interest to all of us sitting here uh including uh those of us within the forum correspondence club who who are covering this well it's always worth remembering the old saying that when the elephants fight the grass gets trampled hong kong's the grass if the elephants start fighting hong kong's lost uh hong kong taiwan other countries in the chinese periphery vietnam have much to lose if the confrontation continues it's in their enormous interest to see it resolved by diplomacy negotiations and same policies there's the pressure on hong kong to undermine its democratic procedures and practices and opportunities is wrong nefarious anything should that's possible should be done to prevent it but force isn't going to prevent it the only thing that'll ease these measures is a reduction in international tensions which is the one factor that can bring china to reducing repression that's not only china and hong kong i'll take a much older one take say the united states and cuba cuba gained its independence in uh 19 december uh 1959 60 years ago within months the united states planes were bombing cuba from u.s territory a couple months later there was a formal decision in the government to overthrow the government of cuba that was eisenhower kennedy came in invaded invasion failed then launched a major terror campaign very substantial terror campaign to bring the terrors of the earth to cuba that's the way it was described internally to try to force cuba to overthrow its government that went on that's what helped bring on the missile crisis the cuban missile crisis part of the reason is to protect against it almost destroyed the world terror continued has been a economic strangulation there's a small poor country off the coast of the major superpower economic strangulation extremely severe when the united states imposes economic warfare it's third party warfare it's against everybody else too nobody's allowed to violate u.s sanctions if they do they get thrown out of the international financial system go back to the mafia so europe doesn't like the sanctions but they observe they have to in fact we know the world opinion on this comes up in the united nations every year general assembly security council use just eat this everything comes up in the general assembly the vote is unanimous literally against the u.s embargo one exception israel votes with the united states because it has to it's a client but as it barely even gets reported in the united states doesn't matter we do what we like and the official reason i started quoting it goes back to the kennedy years is internal documents declassified uh cuba's successful defiance of u.s policies that go back 150 years that means to the monroe doctrine 1823 in which president monroe declared the u.s policy of basically ruling the western hemisphere couldn't implement it at that time britain was too powerful over the years it was basically implemented cuba is defying it can't have that have to destroy them i can mention much else in the world but these are the kinds of things cuba hong kong not being oppressed to that extent but it's bad enough but these things have to stop but they can be done in the case of a powerful state like the united states the world can't do a thing has to come from within and can't come from within unless people at least know about what i've just said probably defined one in a thousand americans ever heard all we know is cuba is somehow bad can't believe but it has to come from within and for countries like hong kong it's going to have to come from reduction of international tensions which can bring about relaxation on the part of chinese efforts to establish their uh asian hegemony if there's another way i've never heard of it do you see any uh signs of optimism anything where you go okay this is going in the right direction i know this is different than the doomsday over the clock the hong kong protests for example were a major site of optimism i mean you know they didn't totally succeed but they laid the seeds for future progress uh take the united states right now the biggest social movement in american history developed quickly suddenly right after the murder of george floyd enormous popular movement all over that has overwhelming popular support about two-thirds of the public supports it nothing like that for social movements ever not way beyond what martin luther king achieved at the peak of the civil rights movement and it's very serious movement a lot of solidarity black weight solidarity uh trump is trying to crush it sent federal truth he sent troops to portland i read about that notice not federal troops he didn't send the army and there's a reason for that the army probably would have disobeyed when he tried to use the army in washington to disperse protesters the military command we threw them he doesn't have total control over the army so what he sent was basically paramilitaries the groups that he sent were tactical uh units it's a group called bortak i know it very well because it operates a few miles from where i live i live in arizona not that far north from the border and the border very harsh desert uh refugees are fleeing and misery from the destruction of their countries by the united states mainly gradient but also following the border patrol cortex tactical unit are free to do anything they want they're unsupervised their orders are to attack and disperse the refugees somebody leaves a bottle of water for them smash it up so they don't get it a couple of days after portland it probably wasn't reported in hong kong but after trump was compelled to withdraw the paramilitaries from portland the paramilitaries in portland had to face first of all white people and then women the portland moms they were called the women who lined up and said we don't want you to invade our city that's not good publicity sending paramilitaries to attack middle-class women so they withdrew the powers from there but they continued to work south of the border two days later two days after the they were withdrawn from portland right south of where i live they attacked a humanitarian aid center it was set up in the desert to provide medical aid false water to refugees who were able to straggle in if they were able to survive the desert 100 degrees fahrenheit degrees heat very harsh vision so they entered that with a big show of force armored vehicles come in and tie up the hands of all the medical workers and disperse the refugees and take them into custody and take them out of the beds that's vortech you couldn't do that importantly but they can do it here well these things can be stopped like in the town where i live tucson arizona in a pretty conservative town conservative state uh the humanitarian aid workers have tremendous support you see on some signs on all the lawns la la land saying uh humanitarian aid is not a crime uh when they've been brought up for federal charges for crimes like uh leaving bottles of water in the desert helping a refugee who makes its way to your cabin felony and be in jail for 20 years when they come up for crimes they're released by juries juries won't convict them local people so if you want to ask about optimism yes plenty of signs and we have time for just a quick question um and so i'm going to ask what you're reading what should we give us a couple book recommendations we had the pan america uh ceo on the other day and she gave us some good ones uh so um what should we be reading we have we have a little bit more time on our hands these days i'm asked that all the time and i can never answer too many options too many dimensions give us a couple individual interesting concerns i have huge piles of books all around me i don't know probably can't see them that's the urgent reading you're not seeing so i don't know depends what you're interested in well name one of your books that you would recommend you've be what have written more than hundreds that were 100 or so so uh name was a book that uh particularly us in the media would be uh would be interested in for our list this summer the media had a couple of books specifically on the media one is called manufacturing consent it's written with a late friend edward hermann died a couple years ago there's another one called necessary illusions which is a kind of a follow-up to it but there's some small path more readable pamphlets like forget the names of them a couple of them around but they're they're a couple years old but it's pretty much the same story but the media now it's very scary i mean when half of republicans think that the government should have the right to close down media if it doesn't like them that's dangerous well thank you i wanted to thank professor chomsky for this wide-ranging talk it will be on the uh soon it will be on our website at fcchk.org and post it on youtube i also want to thank everybody who sent in questions we had a lot of them and we sorry we couldn't get to them all but maybe we can invite professor chomsky to join us again and we'll uh we'll get to some of those other questions so thank you very much uh stay safe and uh again thank you all and thank you all for attending our zoom event it's my pleasure bye bye

Channel: FCC HK

Views: 140,820

Rating: 4.7464175 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: uiCeqySVhCE

Length: 58min 45sec (3525 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/dhawk64]

Listen to 47:00. He articulates a view that the best way that activists in the West can contribute to ending any repression that may exist in China and other official western enemies is to walk back tensions with those countries.

[u/RaindropsInMyMind]

This was great! He’s still sharp! Thanks for posting