Noam Chomsky - Best Speech In 2018

thanks very much quite a number of interesting and important topics were raised by the students who invited me here and I wish there were time to talk about all of them I hope you'll feel free to bring them up in discussion but I thought what I would do rather than trying to review review those briefly is to focus on just one question the most important question that's ever been asked in human history a question that should be uppermost in one's mind it's been hanging over our heads like a kind of sort of Damocles for many years becoming more urgent every year and it has now reached the point that the question will be answered in this generation that's your challenge to answer it can't be delayed the question is whether organized human life will indeed survive and not in the distant future the question was raised clearly to everyone with eyes open on August 6 1945 I was then roughly your age happened to be at a summer camp I was counselor in the morning an announcement came over the loudspeaker saying that the United States had obliterated the city of Hiroshima with a single bomb the atom bomb people listened a few expressions of relief and then everyone went on to their next activity baseball game swimming whatever it might be ah I was horrified both by the news and also by the casual reaction so utterly horrified that I just took off and went off into the woods for a couple of hours to think about it it was perfectly obvious if you thought for a second not only about the horror of the events but that humans in their glory had achieved the capacity to destroy everything not quite at that time but it was clear that once the technology was established it would only be developed further escalate and would soon reached the point of becoming what Dan Ellsberg in his recent book central reading incidentally calls the doom a doomsday machine an automatic system set up so that everything becomes annihilated and as he points out we have indeed constructed such a machine we're living with it the coming forward until today leading specialists on these topics echo much the same double concern but now in more strong stark and urgent terms than in 1945 at one of the leading US nuclear specialists former defense secretary William Perry has been touring the country recently with the message that he is as he puts it doubly terrified terrified by the severe and mounting threat of nuclear war and even more so by the lack of concern about the possible termination of organized human life and he's not alone among others General Lee Butler formerly head of the US Strategic Command which controls nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons policy he recently reflected with deep remorse on his many years of service in implementing plans for what is sometimes called omnis I'd cream crime far surpassing genocide crime of wiping out every living organism he writes that we have so far survived the nuclear age by some combination of skill luck and divine intervention and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion and he adds a haunting question by what authority do succeeding generations of leaders in the nuclear weapons States usurp the power to dictate the odds of continued life on our planet and most urgently why does such breathtaking audacity persist at a moment when we should stand trembling in the face of our folly and United in our commitment to abolish its most deadly manifestations Dan Ellsberg in his recent book again I urge that you read it if you haven't describes the record that he reviews mostly from inside the government at the highest planning level for many years and he describes it as a chronicle of human madness and that's accurate enough repeatedly we have come very close ominously close to terminal disaster the record should really be studied carefully it's shocking sometimes it's due to the reckless acts of leaders sometimes our leaders very often through just sheer accident so I'll give you a couple of examples they're actually hundreds literally take one in 1960 when it was discover that the Russians might have missiles or soon might have missiles the first early warning system was set up to detect a missile attack the first day it went into operation it provided two high leaders the information that the Russians had launched the missile attack with 99.9% certainty fortunately people didn't react the way their its instructed to react and it turned out that there had been some miscalculations and radar hit the moon and actually bounced back wasn't expected to bounce back and that's one case a couple of years later 1962 came what's been called rightly the most dangerous moment in history Cuban Missile Crisis the background is worth studying I won't have time to go into it but it is reckless acts of leaders including our own leaders at the peak moment of threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis which came extremely close to terminal disaster at that moment there were Russian submarines outside the quarantine area that Kennedy had established and they were under attack by US destroyers were dropping depth bombs on them the conditions and the submarines were such that the crew could not really survive much longer they were not designed for service in the Caribbean they were designed for the far north the they had us didn't know it at the time but they had missiles with nuclear warheads and the crew at some point decided look since they're dropping bombs on us they had no contact with any there must be a nuclear war we might as well send off the ultimate weapon that would have been the end there would have been a retaliation and then were finished to send off the missiles that required the agreement of three submarine commanders - agreed one refused volley arkhipov one of the reasons why we're still here nineteen seven that many other cases 1979 a National Security Advisor speak Nayef Brzezinski was literally on the phone ready to call President Carter saying that there was definite information of a massive Russian missile attack when he got a call saying it was an error so he didn't call him a year later Ronald Reagan came into office and one of his first acts was to start a program to probe Russian defenses the objective was to determine what kind of Defense's the Russians had against our attack if we had one the official wording was to practice command and staff procedures with particular emphasis on the transition from conventional to non-conventional operations use of nuclear meaning use of nuclear weapons the idea was to simulate air and naval attacks on Russia with the all of this made as public as possible to the Russians because they wanted to see how they'd react including simulated nuclear attacks at the time it was thought the Russians would probably figure out that it simulated wouldn't react now that the Russian archives came out took turns out they took it pretty seriously just as we would certainly have done in fact one of the leading US intelligence analyses that recently appeared concludes from the record title is the war scare was for real they took it extremely seriously right in the midst of this the Russian detection systems which are far more primitive than ours did detect an ongoing u.s. missile attack the protocol is for the human being who receives it his name had to happen to be Vladimir Petrov he's supposed to take that information send it up to the Russian High Command and they decide whether to release totally destructive missile attack on us he just decided not to do it he decided it probably wasn't serious another reason why we're alive can add him to the role of Honor this goes on time after time there have been literally hundreds of cases that came very close The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists as you probably know established what they call a Doomsday Clock shortly after the atomic bombing the first what they do is every year a group of physicists nuclear specialists political a strategic analysts get together try to assess the state of the world the threats to the world and set the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock a certain number of minutes before midnight midnight means seg-y we're finished the first setting 1947 was seven minutes to midnight it reached the most frightening setting just two minutes to midnight in 1953 when what was easy to anticipate in 1945 had happened first the United States then the Soviet Union carried out tests of hydrogen bombs vastly more destructive than atom bombs in fact an atom bomb is just used as a trigger to set it off it's a huge destructive capacity that meant that human intelligence had reached the point where we could easily destroy all all life no no problem and the minute hand reached two minutes then since then it's oscillated but in recent years it's been approaching midnight again January 2017 right after Trump's inauguration the minute hand was advanced to two and a half minutes to midnight last January after a year from in office it was advanced another half minute to two minutes to midnight that's a sign that we have now matched the closest point the terminal disaster in the nuclear age ominously close that was January a couple months later president Trump's Nuclear Posture review was released raises the dangers further I presume if the clock was set now it might move another half minute to midnight well I'll return to current crises which are very real and how they're being handled and what we might do about them to avoid disaster but first something else since 1945 we have been somehow surviving the nuclear age actually miraculously and we can't count on miracles going on forever but we didn't know in 1945 was that humans were entering into another epoch a new one which is no less ominous it's what geologists called the Anthropocene a new geological epoch in which human activity is destroying the environment there have been debates among scientists about when to date the onset of the Anthropocene but last year the world geological society that Herman that a proper time to set it is right after world war two at the same time as the nuclear age the reason is because of the sharp escalation at that point in human activities which were significantly damaging and will soon destroy the environment for organized life that's you might add that the Anthropocene carries with it automatically a third major epoch which is called the sixth extinction you look through millions of years of history there have been periods when some event caused the mass extinction of animal life if the last one was 65 thousand years ago when an asteroid hit the earth destroyed about 75% of animal life and at the age of the dinosaurs actually opened a way for small mammals to survive they ultimately became us we are determined to become another asteroid intent on destroying all most animal life on earth and we will advanced in that process so there are three major epochs that we've been living with the nuclear age the Anthropocene the sixth extinction all accelerating so let's just ask how dangerous is the Anthropocene well give you a couple of recent illustrations from some of the leading scientific journals recent articles start with nature british journal the leading general scientific article the title of the article is global warming's worst case projections look increasingly likely now reading it a new study based on satellite observations finds that temperatures could reach could rise nearly 5 degrees centigrade by the end of this century the odds that temperatures will increase more than four degrees by that 2100 in this in the current scenario increased from 62% to 93% in other words pretty near certain you go back to the Paris agreement sparse negotiations December 2015 they hope was in the international negotiations that the temperature could be kept the temperature rise could be kept to 1.5 degrees centigrade rise and they considered that maybe 2% would be tolerable instead we're heading to four to five percent with very high confidence and here's one from the World Meteorological Organization a recent one concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surged that a record-breaking speed in 2016 last figures they have to the highest level in 800,000 years the abrupt changes in atmosphere witnessed in the past seventy years the Anthropocene are without precedent in the geological record that globally averaged concentrations of co2 reached over 400 parts per million up from just 400 parts per million in 2015 which has been sit considered the upper tolerable limit so we're now beyond that the concentrations of co2 are now 150 percent above the pre-industrial level rapidly increasing atmospheric levels of co2 and other greenhouse gases have the potential to initiate unprecedented changes in climate systems leading to severe ecological and economic destructions the last time the earth experienced a comparable concentration of co2 was somewhere around three to five million years ago at that point the temperature was two to three degrees centigrade above now and the sea level was thirty to sixty feet higher than it is now that's what we're moving to in the near future in fact we're going beyond because the prediction is the four to five degrees centigrade well I'll leave the effects to your imagination here's a final example general science of the leading American science journals even slightly warmer temperatures less than anticipated in coming years could start melting permafrost which in turn threatens to trigger the release of huge amounts of greenhouse gases trapped in ice there's twice as much carbon and permafrost as in the atmosphere the this will release huge amounts of methane which actually is far more lethal than co2 even though shorter persistence and that accelerates other processes now very clearly underway like the rapid melting of polar ice and polar ice as it melts it reduces the reflective surface surface for sun's rays and creates more absorbent surfaces the dark seas so that accelerates warming could lead to a nonlinear process in which everything blows up west and our it's leading among other things to the breaking up and the melting of a huge Antarctic ice caps at one of them West Antarctica contains enough ice to raise sea level more than 10 feet we're pretty easy continued and brief the prospects are extremely serious in fact they're really awesome which raises an obvious question what are we doing about how are we reacting well the world is actually taking some steps inadequate but at least something there's a commitment and states and localities in the United States are also taking steps which is quite important but what is of prime importance of course is the federal government the most powerful institution in human history so what is it doing it's withdrawn from the international efforts but beyond that it's committed to increasing the use of the most destructive fossil fuels so our federal government for which we are responsible is dramatically leading a race to destruction while we sit and watch that's pretty astounding that ought to be the screaming headline and every day's newspaper what will be the main topic you study in every class never been anything like it and it is astounding as is the lack of attention another doubly terrifying phenomenon and we should be asking among other things what this tells us about our society and about our culture what we are immersed in and remember all of this is imminent we're approaching this rapidly this century it's your task to do something about it and we're ignoring it it's going on we're racing towards it we're ignoring it meanwhile our chief competitor and destroying the planet the Saudi Arabian dictatorship has just announced plans to spend 7 billion dollars this year for seven new solar plants and a big wind farm it's part of an effort on its part to move from oil which destroys everything it's a solar renewable energy that how hot this is Saudi Arabia and that highlights how lonely we are in our race to destroy even the extreme reactionary dictatorship Saudi Arabia which lives on oil refuses to join us at our unique insanity which is dedicated to destroying organized human life and it's not just the current administration the entire Republican Party leadership agrees if you go back to the 2016 primaries every single candidate denied that what was happening is happening with the exception of those who were called the sensible moderates like Jeb Bush who said it's all kind of uncertain but we don't have to do anything about it because we're producing more natural gas thanks to fracking in other words making it worse the other sensible moderate the adult in the womb as it was called was John Kasich the government governor of Ohio he's the one person who agreed that anthropogenic global warming is taking place but he added that we're going to burn coal in Ohio and we're not going to apologize for it ethical grounds that's the worst of all think about it well what about the media they totally ignored this spectacle every crazy thing you and I can imagine was discussed extensively in the massive cover at coverage of the primacy the primaries but not the fact that the entire leadership of the party was saying let's quickly destroy ourselves nothing go back and check also no comment about it the denialism of the leadership is having an effect on public opinion so Republican voters have been climate change skeptics for a long time way beyond anything in the world but it's gotten far more extreme since Trump took office and the numbers are pretty shocking so by now half of Republican voters deny that global warming is taking place at all and only 30% think humans may be contributing to govern the to global warming I don't think you can find anything like that among any significant part of the population anywhere in the world and it should tell us something one thing that should tell us is that there's a lot to do for those who hope that maybe organized human life will survive and we're not talking about a remote future just think about the numbers I gave you before we're talking about something imminent well let's put that aside for a moment and go back to the growing threat of nuclear war are these ominous developments inexorable so should we just throw up our hands and despair say ok we're finished have a nice time goodbye that's not at all true there are very plausible answers in every single case that exists diplomatic options are always open and there are quite straightforward general principles that can be quite effective one principle is simple obey the law not a particular ad achill idea almost unheard of but it could have some consequences so what is the law well there is something called the US Constitution which people are supposed to honor and revere Constitution has parts as article 6 for example article 6 of the Constitution says that valid treaties are the supreme law of the land every elected official is required to observe them what's the most important treaty of the modern period unquestionably it's the United Nations Charter article 1 of the chart requires us to keep the peaceful means to resolve international tensions and disputes and to refrain from the threat or use of force in international affairs and I stress threat because that's violated all the time by every president and every high political leader every time you hear the phrase all options are open that's violating the supreme law of the land if anyone cares let's take a couple of examples and so take Iran it's a important example there's a good deal of talk about the possibility that Iran and may be violating the joint comprehensive agreement the jpz jcpoa and the Iran deal there's Emily no evidence for that a US intelligence says they're observing it the International Atomic Energy Agency carries out repeated expections say they're observing it completely now but there's a lot of discussion about it there's no talk about something else is the u.s. violating the agreement and try to check and see if anybody's talked about that well the answer is that's pretty simple u.s. is radically violating the agreement and has been all along the error the agreement states that all participants meaning us must us cannot are not permitted to impede in any way Iran's reintegration into the global economy particularly the global financial system which we pretty much control because everything works through New York we are not permitted to interfere in any way with the normalization I'm quoting it the normalization of trade and economic relations with Iran we're doing that all the time and in fact are proud of it all violations of the agreement but it's ignored on a principle that's kind of interesting the prevailing tacit assumption that the United States just stands above the law including its own laws so we don't have to observe our laws or any other laws because we're just unique we do what we like see if you can find an exception to that in the discourse on this topic well in a couple of days as you know we're a president Trump will probably withdraw from the treaty possibly that's a gift to the hardliners in Iran tells them then they should maybe return to nuclear programs that's an opening for the new National Security Advisor John Bolton for Benjamin Netanyahu both of whom have called for bombing Iran right away even while they fully respect the terms of the agreement that we violated publicly quite publicly there's no secret about it and the consequences could be horrendous but there happens to be a way of blocking those consequences namely by the very simple device of respecting our own law in fact the supreme law of the land again see if you can find a suggestion to that effect well are there peaceful options pretty obviously in this case we could join the rest of the world permit the agreement to continue to function or better we might turn to improvement of the agreement that's one thing that Trump has vociferously demanded and there's a good ways to do that but one obvious proposal for improving the agreement which is ignored entirely it's to move towards establishing a nuclear weapons free zone in the region there are such agreements in various parts of the world Latin America for example and it's a step towards mitigating the threat of disaster so what about a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East that were established it would end any conceivable Iranian threat that you can imagine so is there a problem of establishing it well actually there's one problem but it's not the one that comes to mind there's certainly no problem convincing Iran because they've been calling for this for years and vociferously certainly not any problem with the Arab world they're the ones who initiated the proposal 25 years ago the rest of the world agrees as well there's one exception the United States the United States refuses to allow it to proceed this comes you don't read this but it comes up every couple of years and the annual review meetings of the non-proliferation treaty countries where it's continually brought up continually vetoed by the United States most recently by President Obama in 2015 and the reasons are perfectly clear to everyone the US will not permit Israeli nuclear weapons to be even examined and by the a by the international agency alone to be dismantled so therefore we can't proceed with this very simple way of eliminating any nuclear threat from Iran or anyone else in the region and also not discussed is that the United States and Britain have a special obligation a unique obligation to pursue a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East the reason is a United Security United Nations Security Council resolution 687 and look it up on the internet which was initiated by the US this was the resolution that was initiated when the US and Britain were this is back in 1991 it's a resolution which called on Arak to terminate any nuclear weapons programs the US and Britain relied on this resolution in 2003 when they were trying to concoct some pretext for their planned invasion of Iraq so they appealed to this resolution and said we think Iraq is violating it which in fact they weren't and they knew they weren't but if you read that resolution go to article 14 it commits the signers to work for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East so the US and Britain are uniquely committed to working for this by the Security Council resolution that they initiated well again check to see if it's ever discussed and so in short the u.s. willingness to observe US law could bring this crisis to a very quick end and could even move on to a better solution for example if we were willing to observe Security Council resolutions that we ourselves instituted to end the illegal threats of force by every recent president and other high officials and to end our constant violations of the Iran nuclear agreement so the easy answers to this crisis really simple obey the law okay that would end the crisis again I advise you to search to see how often this is discussed and what that implies about our educational system our culture our media our universities and so on well let's turn to the other major threat North Korea there has been a proposal on the table for some years about how to reduce the threat in Northeast Asia it's called a double freeze it was initiated by China supported by North Korea by Russia general sport throughout the world the idea is that North Korea should freeze its weapons and nuclear programs and in return the United States should call off the threatening military maneuvers that the us constantly carries out on North Korea's border including flights on the border by our most advanced nuclear capable bombers warning of the threat of total obliteration of North Korea constantly happening and it's no joke for the North Koreans they have a little memory we may want to forget it but at the end of the Korean War when it was more or less settled a u.s. bombing was so intensive that there was nothing left to bomb literally so the Air Force general macarthur started destroying dams major dams and if you read the airforce histories they exalt about this happens to be a crime for which people are hanged at Nuremberg but again we're above the law but the North Koreans can remember and when these advanced nuclear capable bombing bombers are flying there they Vokes a memory so double freezes Impa is one possibility a double freeze could easily open the way to further negotiations and at this point the record becomes important and you can find it in the scholarly record not in the press but in the scholarly record there have been successes in negotiations the major one was in 2005 the Bush administration was pressured by international pressure to return to negotiations and the negotiations were extremely successful North Korea agreed I'm quoting the final document North Korea agreed to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing weapons programs and to allow national inspections in return for that the u.s. agreed to establish a consortium that would provide North Korea with a light water reactor for medical use it would also us would also issue a non-aggression pledge and an agreement that the two uncoding that the two sides would respect each other's sovereignty exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize relations instantly the Bush administration renewed the threat of force froze North Korean funds and foreign banks and disbanded the consortium that was to provide North Korea with a light water reactor the leading u.s. Korea scholar Bruce Cummings writes that the sanctions were specifically designed to destroy the September pledges and to head off an accommodation between Washington and Pyongyang that was 2005 well I've been searching the press for some time to see if these facts can even be reported breaking the constant refrain that North Korea has broken all agreements and so can't be trusted can't review it now but I urge you to try you'll learn a lot well that path could be pursued again but as we know there are even better options and it's worth taking a close look at them on April 27th North and South Korea signed a remarkable historic document it's the Panmunjom declaration for peace prosperity unification of the Korean Peninsula and it's worth reading carefully urge you to do it not the commentary the actual words in this declaration the two Koreas I'm quoting it affirmed the principle of determining the destiny of the Korean nation on their own accord on their a court to completely continuing to completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain to actively cooperate to establish a permanent and solid peace regime on the Korean Peninsula to carry out disarmament on a phased level manner to achieve the common goal of realizing through complete denuclearization a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula to strengthen the positive momentum towards continuous advancement of inter-korean relations as well as peace prosperity and unification of the Korean Peninsula and they further agreed to actively seek the support and cooperation of the international community which means the United States for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula now it's important to read those words their import is very clear what they're saying is the US should back off and allow the two Koreas to achieve peace disarmament unification and complete denuclearization on their own on their own accord in the words of the Declaration so we the United States should accept the call for support and cooperation in this endeavor by the two parts of the Korean nation to determine their destiny on their own accord okay to put it more simply the declaration is a polite letter saying dear mr. Trump declare a victory if you want to prance around in public but please go away and let us move towards peace disarmament and unification without disrupting the process now that plea could hardly be more clear and the general interpretation here is quite revealing the general interpretation is that this complicates Washington's strategy as the New York Times explains mr. quoting it mr. Trump will find it hard to threaten military action against the country that's extending an olive branch okay that's the liberal side it's entirely true that threatening military action which happens to be a criminal act is hard when the target is extending an olive branch so we have some problems well case after case I won't go through other cases we find that there are peaceful diplomatic options can't ever be certain that they'll work but we should always be prioritized in accordance with their international obligations in fact in accord with the supreme law of the land well is it hopeless no it's not hopeless far from it and we have plenty of evidence for that so let's go back to very important date in modern history November November 8 1916 huge coverage of that date and several events happened that are significant the least significant of them was the one that gets most of the coverage of the election of Donald Trump it's a little bit unusual but it's not that out of the norm if a billionaire with a huge amount of campaign spending and huge media support wins the presidency that's kind of within the norm but something really surprising did happen the Sanders campaign that broke with practically all of American political history for well over a century American elections have been mainly bought literally you can predict the outcome of an election with almost complete certainty by just looking at campaign funding there's extensive detailed academic study of this both for President and Congress what happened on November 16th was different for the first time a candidate came very close to winning the nomination and would have won the nomination probably if the Democratic Party managers hadn't manipulated Affairs to keep him out thus Bernie Sanders and he did it without any campaign funding from any of the major sources no corporate funding no wealth no media support he was either ignored or denigrated in the media that's a real breakthrough what's more he ended up becoming by far the most of the most popular political candidate in the country take a look at the polls as you can see on Fox News in fact well away well above any other political figure in popularity well you know in a Democratic Society the most popular political figure in the country who had just carried off a remarkable break and well over a century of political history you'd hear him every once in a while okay I urge you to take a look and didn't take your own decisions that's a more important event that took place on November November 2016 that is another one which didn't get covered but should at that time the world was carrying out the successor negotiations to the Paris negotiations the Paris negotiations on climate change in December 2015 aimed at a treaty a verifiable treaty to do something about this ominous threat they couldn't reach a treaty for one reason the American the Republican Party would not permit so they couldn't have a treaty it was a voluntary agreement the following year 2016 they were meeting again to try to put some teeth in the theory and the treaty on November 8 the day of the American elections the World Meteorological Organization this was taking place in Morocco Marrakech Morocco the World Meteorological Organization released the study on the very dire state of the climate kind of thing I gave a couple of samples of before then the election results came in the meeting basically stopped the question before the international world is can the world survive when the most powerful country in history is taken over by a political party that not already denies that what is happening is happening but it's committed to accelerate the race to destruction and they kind of hope that maybe China would save the world from disaster just think about that for a moment maybe China will save the world from the disaster that the Republican Party is bringing to the world let you think about that but the fact is there are plenty of things that can be done and the success of the Senators campaign and particularly the aftermath lots of things are going on the fed from it that could make a difference but it doesn't happen on its own and it takes serious engagement well go back to the beginning your generation that's you is facing the most awesome question that has ever arisen in human history the question is will organized human life survive and we're talking about the near future can't escape it there are plenty of opportunities like it or not it's up to you to determine the fate of the human species it's an awesome responsibility one that cannot be evaded okay thank you now it's your turn hello hello all right good afternoon everyone just wanted to give a quick thanks to everyone for coming out tonight and a great thanks to dr. Thompson tonight for this great delivery tonight we're gonna open it up about 20 15 minutes for discussion questions so if you'd like to come up here to give you a questions that'd be great thank you hi professor Chomsky first I just wanted to say thank you so much for being able to come here it's truly an honor to see you in person and I really mean that the question I have for you is in your opinion do you see a link between Islam as a set of ideas and Islamic radicalization or is the latter solely as a result of American foreign policy in your opinion do you see a link between Islam as a set of ideas and Islamic radicalization or is the latter solely as a result of American foreign policy Islamic ideas practice yeah the Prussian about Islamic ideas in practice I mean Islam is like Christianity Judaism Buddhism find all there's no such thing as Islamic ideas there are lots of different Islamic ideas just like Christian the real question we should be asking particularly here is what about Christianity that's something we can do about ok so that's the highest priority so what are Christian ideals well they vary all over the place people in high places now claim to be devout Christians and on the basis of Christian ideals they're saying let's proceed to destroy the world I don't know anybody in the Islamic world is doing that that's of course not all Christian ideals there are others too Martin Luther King expressed different Christian ideals and it's the same with the Islamic world you can find lots of things but the idea that there are fixed Islamic ideals which are a problem for the world that doesn't mean anything you have to look at take a look at individual cases so take say Iran in the United States both states in which the leadership is led claims to be deeply religious and committed to the faith and asking what the two of them are doing with regard to the leading issue that they're now in conflict over turns out that the Iranian leadership is calling vociferously for establishing a nuclear weapons free zone in the region which would end any threat on the Christian United States with its deeply Christian leadership is named sorry we can't because we have to preserve Israeli nuclear weapon from inspection well is it a problem about the Islamic faith thank you would it help if I approached you so you could hear my question better or you're okay I really loved the theme that was present throughout your entire speech where you talked about the necessity of following the law and I feel like a big problem is playing into that currently is that white-collar legal practices are not really being persecuted right now so people empower people of wealth or not submitting to the law and I was wondering if you have any ideas on how we could reform the judiciary system that allows people to be persecuted if they're in a place of power or in place of great wealth there are easy ways for the people in power to be prosecuted we have laws okay so we could implement the laws I mean I agree that it's kind of unthinkable but but that's within our power right it is within our power to compel the authorities who are technically under our control in a democratic society to do something simple like obey our own laws the every administration says no that's impossible so it takes a torture under the Bush administration that was a massive torture going on there's no debate about this when Obama came in he decided he determined that there would be no punishment for the torture I choose when you look back at the torture it's kind of interesting it's claimed that the bush massive torture by the bush regime Guantanamo and all sorts of other black sites around the world that that was in violation of US law it's not so clear the United States has never signed the literalism ever has really never signed that the International torture convention under Reagan 1984 the u.s. did sign it and ratify it but with reservations when the u.s. signs international agreements almost always with reservations and those are important to look at the reservations excluded the kind of torture that the CIA has determined is the most effective torture it's what's called mental torture not electrodes on the genitals but the kind of torture that doesn't leave a sign on the body which is miserable vicious torture that they've the term they picked it up from the KGB the Russian KGB that this is the kind of torture that really works and that kind of torture was excluded that when the u.s. signed and ratified the torture convention it was then clinton added further endorsement that something else we might want to think about and we might want to think about the fact that the new head of the CIA is a woman who was supervising this but that's only one example the case of the constant threat the constant threats of war the and it's case after case like one thing that the u.s. is very proud of talks about openly under obama was carrying out a cyber attacks against iranian nuclear systems which severely severely harm them another thing we're that happens to be the pentagon regards cyber attacks as an act of war the new Nuclear Posture review states that cyberattacks are a legitimate nuclear war in response but when we carry them out we're proud of it okay the drone campaign is a global assassination campaign we assassinate anybody we think might be planning to harm us I suppose that some other country did that they suppose that Iran started assassinating every president john bolton the national security adviser who writes in the main press that we should bomb Iran no question about the threat plenty of other people who they think is or harming them half the leadership in Israel how would we react and would we think you know that's fine every right to do it we have to reach a level of civilization in which we are able to think about ourselves and what we do it's really easy to blame others right but there's another question what about ourselves can we reach a level of culture in which we can ask ourselves really simple questions like the kind you're asking it's very hard you take a look at the discussion and across the spectrum and the intellectual culture the questions just aren't raised and that means a lot of work to do serious work starting right here in universities [Applause] because of time restrictions we only have time for four more questions so I apologize for everyone who came up but if you guys could please take your seats first of all thank you for coming and I thank you for the great talk so the political revolution that Bernie Sanders promotes is a bottom-up movement and historically bottom-up movements in the US that have succeeded have required the presence of a sympathetic government so in today's conditions when the government is unresponsive and can be quite threatening how can a grassroots movement be successful well just take a look at her own history and it takes a let's go back to the 1950s in the 1950s black people were being lynched in the south with celebrations black a black person couldn't sit in a bus a black student couldn't sit at a lunch counter I mean there were laws in the United States up with much later in fact against miscegenation which said that if anyone had one drop of black blood which means any remote black ancestor they couldn't marry a white person that was the 1950s after the 60s is it true today no why well one reason is a couple of black students in Greensboro North Carolina decided to sit-in at a lunch counter they were of course immediately arrested and dragged away I can't do a thing like that I could have ended it but it didn't a couple more black students came in the next day it was a bigger arrest pretty soon you had some white students coming down to the south yeah the formation of snake Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee he had Freedom Riders going to areas in the south which are really like Nazi Germany no you could just be slaughtered inferred trying to allow a black person to vote in fact I should say that when Germany Nazi Germany was searching around for some legal precedent for their racist laws the Nuremberg Laws the precedent they hit on was the United States the United States is the only country they could find which had laws like the miscegenation law they didn't quite accept US laws Coast us laws were too severe the Nazis didn't accept the one drop of blood law and they thought that was too harsh but that's the United States it's the problems aren't over by any means certainly not over but they're not what they were and that's grassroots movement same with a woman's movement same with just about any advanced and society that you can think of these are not gifts from above they come from activist movements often students are in the lead there's a good reason for that students not just in this country others to countries to students say you are our stage of their lives where they are uniquely free think about it you're sort of out of parental control you're not yet in a situation where you have to put bread on the table to survive so you have a lot of freedom they have a lot of free you can take you can think you can talk to each other you can go into that you're in a situation in a any reasonable University I'm sure here where you can explore you can acquire you if you have the resources it's a time when people can really think about things not just about how to make money tomorrow but about other more important things and one of the results says students are often in the lead that's why you had snick Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Riders and others and the same is true today so aggressive movements can do you know in a relatively free country like this almost anything I mean for fairly privileged people in the United States like anybody here it's a pretty free country by comparative standards not like other places so a lot of opportunities question is do you want to take them in both the doomsday machine and his early memoir secrets Daniel Ellsberg sort of describes a culture within military leadership just a general disregard and dismissal of sort of civilian officials Authority in the general public so that leads to the question of how are we able to effect change upon systems of power that ignore or reject our attempts as citizens to limit it how do you challenge the prevailing culture let's just take a look at the ways it's been done in the past I mean the prevailing culture in our you know in my lifetime in fact in recent years the lifetime of all the faculty here has changed attitudes towards lots of things have changed enormous ly as I say this country had miscegenation rules laws up into the late 60s I mean there was nowhere in the world where they had anything like that now even the Nazis didn't go that for okay it was changed the United States had anti sodomy laws into up until the 2000s okay that's changed how you change the take women's rights I'm in until you go back to America look take a look at American history when the country was founded women were not legally not people literally the United States took over British common law you read Blackstone British common law women are property not people a woman is the property of her father and the property is handed over to the husband okay in fact you look back at the Constitutional Convention some of the arguments against allowing women to vote were that would be unfair to unmarried men because a married man would have two votes his own vote in the vote of the property okay that's American law through almost all of American history in fact it wasn't until 1975 it's not that long ago that the Supreme Court determined that women are peers they have a legal right to serve on federal juries other things have happened to again problems aren't over but it's a huge change and case after case these are by no means the only ones you find out that we know exactly how to proceed exactly how to proceed it's been done over and over lots of opportunities it's just a matter of taking them thank you thank you so much for coming I was hoping you could talk about the neoliberal ization of Education where students such as myself have incurred thousands of dollars of debt where words such as diversity and inclusion are offered as hollow solutions to the effects of white supremacy and USNO hegemony and where student activists are punished more severely than racists and rapists on campuses [Applause] so how can we deal with the neoliberal programs specifically with the university is how that's being pushed universities well the neoliberal programs which really took off under Reagan and Thatcher there are few things before but these are we could go through exactly what they were but their consequences are very clear and they were designed to have those consequences so during the neoliberal period that's basically since Reagan well wealth as highly concentrated in very few hands and for working people it's been stagnation or decline literally real wages for American workers are actually literally lower than they were before the neoliberal programs began productivity per worker amount of output per worker has about doubled but wages have stagnated or declined that money is going somewhere it's going in there very few pockets a lot of its going into financial institutions we just exploded during this period and do nothing for the economy they probably arm it goes on and on like this now that's the this also incidentally undermines democracy but perfectly obvious means that once wealth becomes concentrated and corporate power becomes unleashed that one of the things they do is just take over the political system by pretty obvious means funding lobbying writing legislation and so on so the net effect is to make democracy much less functional and we see the effect snow in the United States but elsewhere democratic institutions are under attack the cover of the journal Foreign Affairs the main establishment Journal this month take a look at the cover it says is democracy dying it's the wrong question question is are we killing democracy an answer is yes we've designed systems which are killing democracy that's you see it in election after election not just in the United States but through most of the developed world anger fear contempt for centrist institutions they're collapsing the main parties are collapsing and so the democratic system is being undermined alone along with the rest now what's going on in the universities well that's pretty interesting since essentially the 1970s kind of neoliberal revolute number of very important things have happened remember that US higher educated 12 there's been radical defunding just killing the system and there are major efforts to destroy the public education system Koch brothers Alec the big lobbying organization for corporations are carrying out programs state-by-state systematically to try to get state legislators to pass laws which will essentially eliminate the public education system defund it make it private you know part of the neoliberal system massive public education is one of the great contributions of the United States that's one of the major u.s. contributions to modern democracy late 19th century the you know us initiated mass public education which is extremely important established at the now they're trying to kill it but what about universities same thing the US established public universities which were unknown in the world in Britain nearest analogy they didn't really start public universities until after the Second World War red brick university so cold it was elite universities so the land-grant universities were extended generally higher education was also under attack students are under attack students are now coming out of college with huge debts it's not an economic necessity of course not it's take a look at other successful industrial countries like say Germany most successful industrial country in education is free and it takes a Finland which ranks highest in all international tests education is free the same in case after case and the same is true in poorer countries so go south of the border this country called Mexico okay it's a poor country quite a good education system knowing that teachers are underpaid it's poor country but Unum major at university I've lectured there's very high quality free ok take the United States up internal Liberal programs higher education was pretty much free oh it was a much poorer country then remember we're wave richer than we were then but the GI Bill gave free education and subsidies to huge numbers of people who were would never have gone to college it was very good for them was very good for the country wasn't flawless it was racist remember almost everything was officially racist housing everything else the GI Bill didn't reach blacks because of the segregated army until too late you know but it certainly was a major advance in fact even the Ivy League colleges were pretty much free actually I went to one in 1945 University of Pennsylvania at the wishin was a hundred dollars a year and you could easily get a scholarship because they did okay so has anything changed I mean then we were much but we're still a rich country but much poorer than today so is there any economic reason for the explosion of tuitions no is there any reason why administration and universities as exploded while faculty decision making us declined yeah there's a reason imposition of business models when you impose business models on universities you get massive inefficiency that's what the business world is administration controlled testing and for okay so yes these things are happening I mean there are not laws of nature their decisions and decisions can be reversed but to reverse them you have to understand what's going on in the world have to find the sources and use all the means that are available to bring the understanding to people and reverse what's going on that's not that hard laws can be changed the Koch brothers don't have to succeed in getting state legislators to destroy the public education system they will if there's no resistance but they don't have to it's kind of interesting to look right now the teacher strikes and one of them is in Arizona where my wife and I live this is the state that has the lowest practically the lowest pay for teachers in the country teachers in the country are paid very low as compared to their skill levels and other occupations roughly 75% Arizona it's about sixty percent they are now all on strike okay West Virginia on strike Oklahoma on strike all the deep red states for good reasons that's where the budgets are cut in order to kill the educational system and other benefits for people and the teachers are not just striking for higher pay it's important therefore striking to improve the funding of Education so that teachers don't have to teach overcrowded classes so the class has chalk to draw on a blackboard that teacher doesn't have to bring it in so they're not just saying give us higher pay they're saying revive the educational system so children will be able to have a decent education and go on for better lives and to improve the country they're in the forefront of this and they can be helped I'm sorry we gotta cut it off right now so thank you everyone for coming that's it with the questions please give us special thanks to dr. Tom C for coming out and talking to us today [Applause]

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Keywords: Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky Lecture, Noam Chomsky Speech, Noam Chomsky 2018, Noam Chomsky - Best Speech In 2018

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Length: 79min 12sec (4752 seconds)

Published: Sun May 20 2018