Noam Chomsky on Masters of Mankind (2015)

[Applause] it's now 70 years since the end of the most horrific war in history it ended with the use of an ultimate weapon which can bring human history to an end a day which I happened to remember very well we've been living under that shadow ever since 20 years later two of the leading figures of 20th century intellectual life Bertrand Russell Albert Einstein issued an appeal to the people of the world calling on them to face a choice that is stark and dreadful and inescapable shall we put an end to the human race or shall mankind renounce war they recognized of course that work and very quickly turned into terminal nuclear war in 1947 The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists established its famous Doomsday Clock setting at 7 minutes to midnight midnight is the end last January it was advanced to three minutes before midnight that's a threat level that had not been reached for thirty years at a grim moment to which I'll return the accompanying explanation invoked the two major threats to human survival nuclear war nuclear weapons and unchecked climate change the call condemned world leaders who are endangering every person on earth by failing to perform their most important duty insuring and preserving the health and vitality of human civilization the Russell Einstein appeal differs from the current declaration in two crucial respects one is that it did not include the threat of environmental Astra fee which 50 years ago was not sufficiently understood and secondly it directly addresses the people of the world not the political leadership that is the difference is of some significance there's substantial evidence that on climate change nuclear weapons planning international policies generally the population seems much more concerned than the political leadership who do not regard their most important duty to be ensuring and preserving the health and vitality of human civilization as ample evidence reveals it's hardly a secret that even in the most free and democratic societies the governments respond only in limited ways to popular will for the United States it's well-established in academic scholarship that a considerable majority of the population at the lower end of the income wealth scale are effectively disenfranchised their views are simply ignored by policymakers influence increases slowly as one moves up the scale and at the very top which means a fraction of 1% the policy is pretty much determined that being the case the attitudes at the top of the ladder are of very great significance these are revealed dramatically in a poll of CEOs that was released last January at the Davos conference in Switzerland the conference of Masters of the Universe as the business press describes them by rather ominous coincidence this was just at the moment when the Doomsday Clock was advanced to three minutes to midnight the poll revealed that climate change did not merit inclusion among the top 19 risks that concern CEOs worse still at the top of their ranking of perceived risks was regulation that that is the prime method for addressing environmental catastrophe their overriding concern was with growth prospects for their companies that's not surprising whatever their individual beliefs in their institutional role the CEOs are constrained to adopt policies that are designed to pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity in the words of the Doomsday Clock declaration and given their enormous role in determining state policy it's less surprising that policy lags behind public opinion on the concerns that move the clock so close to midnight the effects are before our eyes every day so take last Sunday's Wall Street Journal typical example there's a weakened review section it's it features an article entitled fossil fuels will save the world really the lead story in the news section is headlined US producers ready new oil wave the article glory is in the thought of what they call an ocean of oil from US shale as American energy companies are poised to unleash a further flood while they lead us exuberantly to the precipice scientists are well aware that most of the oil must be left in the ground if there's to be some hope for a decent life for our grandchildren but who cares as long as there are spectacular profits for tomorrow on international affairs as well a popular opinion diverges significantly from that of the decision-making classes among many other examples a considerable majority in the United States have held that the United Nations not the US should take the lead in international crises such views are so remote from Aelita opinion that they're barely even articulated publicly a good part of the reason is the nature of a lead opinion and as often is the case it's the critical end of the spectrum that's the most informative so here's an example from a featured article by the former director of the Carnegie Endowment for international peace in the current issue of the New York Review of Books leading u.s. intellectual journal rather left liberal and orientation here's what she writes American contributions to international security global economic growth freedom and human wellbeing have been so self-evidently unique and have been so clearly directed to others benefit that Americans have long believed that the u.s. amounts to a different kind of country where others push their national interests the u.s. tries to advance universal principles well comment should be superfluous but in what's important is that this is what many in so-called enlightened circles actually believe it's quite an astonishing fact in a free society where information is readily available and the impact on policy is not obscure nuclear weapons policy reveals very dramatically how governments and also the concentrated domestic concentrations of power that largely dominate governments how both regard the principle that ensuring and preserving the health and vitality of human civilization is their most important duty when we inquire we discover that regrettably governments have consistently and not even considered security of their own populations as a particularly high priority it's rather enlightening to review the record I'll begin with some high points or maybe low points so let's begin with the early days of the ultimate weapon at a time when the United States had overwhelming wealth and power the remarkable security there was however a potential threat International ICBMs with nuclear warheads there's a standard scholarly review of nuclear policies spy McGeorge Bundy he was the national security adviser for presidents Kennedy and Johnson he had access to the highest level documents he's in quoting him now he says the timely development of ballistic missiles during the Eisenhower administration is one of the best achievements of those eight years yet yet it is well to begin with a recognition that both the United States and the Soviet Union might be in much less nuclear danger today if these missiles had never been developed and he then adds a remarkable comment he says I'm aware of no serious contemporary proposal in or out of either government that ballistic missiles should somehow be banned by agreement in short there was apparently no thought of trying to prevent the sole serious threat to the United States the threat of utter destruction rather the institutional imperatives of state power prevailed much as in the case of the CEOs for whom the fate of the species is of such little concern that it does not even enter into the ranking of risks furthermore these shocking facts seem to arouse little interest or comment in fact I've never seen a reference to them it could the development of these missiles have been prevented there might have been opportunities one suggestive indication is a proposal by Stalin in 1952 offering to allow Germany to be unified with free elections on condition that it not join a hostile military alliance which was hardly an extreme condition in the light of the history of the preceding half-century Stalin's proposal was taken seriously by the respected political commentator James Warburg but apart from him it was ignored or ridiculed actually recent scholarship has just begun to take a different view the bitterly anti-communist Soviet scholar autumn Fulham Harvard takes the status of Stalin's proposal to be an unresolved mystery Washington he said wasted little effort in flatly rejecting Moscow's initiative on grounds that were embarrassingly unconvincing leaving open the basic question was Stalin genuinely ready to sacrifice the newly created German Democratic Republic East Germany on the altar of real democracy with consequences for world peace and for American security that could have been enormous Melvin Lafleur is one of the most respected Cold War scholars that recently published a review of research in released Soviet archives he observes that many scholars were surprised to discover quoting him now that Lavrentiy Beria the sinister brutal head of the secret police proposed that the Kremlin offer the West to deal on the unification and neutralization of Germany agreeing to sacrifice the East German communist regime to reduce east-west tensions and improve internal political and economic conditions in Russia opportunities that were squandered in favor of securing German participation in NATO it's actually a shocking decision that is being relived right now under the circumstances of the early 50s it's not impossible that agreements might have been reached that would have protected the security of the US population from the gravest threat on the horizon but the option apparently was not even considered and possible opportunities were dismissed with ridicule another indication of how slight a role authentic security plays in state policy and to heighten the extraordinary significance of this failure it was just at that time that the Doomsday Clock was moved to two minutes to midnight the closest it has ever been these events from the early days of the Cold War have considerable resonance right now and right at the borders of Russia in Ukraine four serious crises that traces right back to the end of the Cold War a crucial issue at that time around 1990 had to do with the fate of NATO now that the alleged threat of Russian invasion had disappeared one might have believed that NATO would have dissolved quite the contrary expanded radically mikhail gorbachev agreed to allow a unified germany to join nato rather significant concession but there was a quid pro quo namely that nato would not expand one inch to the east that was the phrase that was used in high-level internal discussions referring to East Germany and NATO at once expanded to East Germany Gorbachev naturally objected but he was informed by Washington that these were only verbal commitments and nothing in writing the kind of unspoken implication is that if you're naive enough to accept the verbal gentlemen's agreement with the United States it's your problem Clinton came along and expanded NATO to the borders of Russia and as another leading international relations scholar John Mearsheimer recently pointed out in the major establishment journal Foreign Affairs he pointed out that the indications that Ukraine might be assimilated into the Western system possibly even into NATO could not fail to be threatening to any Russian leader we need only imagine how the United States would have reacted at the height of Soviet power if the Warsaw Pact had taken over most of this hemisphere and now Mexico were preparing to join the Russian run military alliance last December the western-backed Ukrainian Parliament voted 303 to 8 to rescind the policy of non-alignment that had been adapted adopted by the ousted President and they committed Ukraine in their words to deepen cooperation with NATO in order to achieve the criteria required for membership in this organization the growing crisis concerning Ukraine is no slight threat and it is an avoidable one by diplomatic steps to guarantee Ukrainian neutrality steps which regrettably are not being taken well returning to the 1950s other developments reveal the low priority assigned to authentic security when Nikita Khrushchev took over after Stalin's death he recognized that Russia could not compete militarily with the United States and that if Russia hoped to escape its economic backwardness and the devastating effect of the war of the arms race would have to be reversed accordingly he proposed sharp mutual reductions in offensive weapons the incoming Kennedy administration considered his offer and rejected it instead turning to rapid military expansion the policies are summarized by distinguished international relations scholarly Kenneth waltz pointed out that the Kennedy administration undertook the largest strategic and conventional peacetime military buildup the world has yet seen even as first Jeff was trying at once to carry through a major reduction in conventional forces and to follow a strategy of minimum deterrence and we did so even though the balance of strategic weapons greatly favored the United States well once again the decision u.s. decision severely harmed national security while enhancing state power how severely it harmed national security was revealed in 1962 when Khrushchev sent missiles to Cuba partially that was a foolhardy attempt to write the balance partially it was because of the very clear threat of US invasion in the course of a major terrorist campaign that Kennedy was waging against Cuba kind of erased from our history but very much alive in real history khrushchev effort set off what arthur schlesinger called the most dangerous moment in history and what happens happened then emeritus clear careful consideration no time to go through the details but it's worth remembering that at the peak moment of the crisis October 26th and 27th 1962 Kennedy received a letter from Khrushchev offering to end the crisis peacefully by simultaneous public withdrawal of Cuban of Russian missiles from Cuba and u.s. missiles from Turkey these were Jupiter missiles liquid propelled meaning slow to set in motion which means that they were first strike weapons not intended for a deterrent they were also obsolete weapons the US had already issued an offer and had a Tory issued in order to withdraw them because they were being replaced by even more lethal weapons invulnerable Polaris submarines so that was Kennedy's choice shall we publicly withdraw obsolete missiles from first strike missiles from Turkey on the border of Russia which are being replaced by even more lethal mass missiles or shall we refuse he refused his own estimate subjective estimate of nuclear war at the time was between 1/3 and 1/2 that's in my view one of the most appalling decisions in history and even more appalling is that Kennedy is praised for his cool courage and handling the crisis well 10 years later Henry Kissinger called a nuclear alert this was in the last days of the 1973 Israel Arab War the purpose of the alert was to warn the Russians not to interfere with his delicate diplomatic maneuvers these were designed to ensure an Israeli victory but a limited victory so that the US would still be in control of the region unilaterally and the maneuvers were delicate we've learned a lot about them from recent Declassified sources the United start out the United States and Russia had jointly imposed a ceasefire but Kissinger secretly informed Israel that they could ignore it hence the need for a nuclear alert to frighten the Russians away unfortunately they were frightened away security of the population was a matter of little concern as usual ten years after that the Reagan administration launched operations to probe Russian defenses that meant simulating air and naval attacks against Russia that these actions were undertaken at a very tense moment right at that time pursing two missiles were being installed in Western Europe these at a five to ten minute flight time to Moscow very destructive missiles also Reagan had announced his so-called Star Wars program which is presented here as if it were defensive but every strategic analyst on all sides understands that missile defense is a first-strike weapon if missile defense ever worked which it might not it could not stop a first strike but it conceivably might stop a retaliatory strike which means it's a first strike weapon and that was being installed at the time all of this very seriously caused great alarm in Russia especially with the simulated attacks that led to a major war scare in 1983 that was the last time that the Doomsday Clock reached three minutes three minutes before midnight 1984 newly released Russian archives reveal that the danger was even more severe than historians had previously assumed there's a recent comprehensive US intelligence study which runs through the evidence now available and concludes in its words the war scare was for real and they conclude he concludes that US intelligence underestimated Russian concerns and underestimated the threat of a Russian preventive nuclear strike which would have been the end recently we've learned that it's was even more dangerous than that in the midst of these world threatening developments Russia's early warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the United States sending the highest level alert the officer on duty the Russian officer on duty stanislav petrov decided that it was a false alarm and he did not transmit the warnings violating protocol that was the difference between survival and extermination a Russian air defense systems are much less sophisticated than those of the United States they pretty much rely on radar which means line-of-sight recta detection of incoming missiles u.s. systems rely on satellites we can detect them at the point of launch so the Russian systems are on much more tense alert of great danger to us of course well twenty years before that back in the Cuban Missile Crisis a Russian submarine commander named Vasili arkhipov blocked the launching of nuclear-tipped torpedoes which could have set off a terminal nuclear war - there were three submarines Russian submarines the two other commanders had authorized the launch when the three submarines were under attack by u.s. destroyers during the Missile Crisis according to the protocol the agreement of all three was required arkhipov refused to agree yet another sign of how thin is the thread that we grasped for survival there are chilling estimates about failures of us systems which as I mentioned are surely far more reliable than the Russian ones there's a recent review in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of several years of data on us accidental reports of Soviet military launches by the automated systems aborted by human intervention the hundreds of these these were right in those years of the greatest dangers 1979 to 1983 the author of the review Seth bomb concludes that nuclear war is the Black Swan we can never see except in that brief moment when it's killing us we delay eliminating the risk at our own peril now is the time to address the threat because now we are still alive the former commander of Stratcom General Lee Butler recently reviewed his long career as a strategic weapons planner and he wrote that he had been among the most avid of these keepers of the faith in nuclear weapons but now it is his burden to declare with all of the conviction I can muster that in my judgment they served us extremely ill and he outlines the reasons like the ones I've mentioned and he then raises a haunting question by what authority through succeeding generations of leaders in the nuclear weapons States usurped the power to dictate the odds of continued life on our planet 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 general Butler went on to conclude that we have so far survived the nuclear age by some combination of skill let luck and divine intervention and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion looking over the record one can understand his judgment that plainly these are not risks that would be accepted by any sane decision-maker they are being accepted by decision-makers who are perfectly sane just as the devastating risks of environmental catastrophe are being faced with eyes open and ignored by the Masters of the Universe all of them are trapped by an institutional logic that is deeply pathological and that must be cured and quickly if we are not to put an end to the human race in Russell and Einstein's words thanks [Applause] again these lights are super bright well what's it like being a Sufi sage or what's it like like being a Sufi sage Sufi save just I promise do something different and introducing him but you ended that very cheerful talk did I miss something all are trapped by an institutional logic that is deeply pathological and that must be cured and quickly if we are not to put an end to the human race how do we go about doing that it's easy it's all in our hands in the case of nuclear weapons actually the answer is known there are ways to end the threat of nuclear weapons furthermore as many of you know it's a an obligation of the nuclear weapon states to carry out good-faith measure efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons totally that's article 6 of the non-proliferation treaty of 1970 that's furthermore a legal obligation as the International Court of Justice ruled some years later in 1996 and those efforts could be carried out in unfortunately we're going in the opposite direction so President Obama has recently announced a trillion dollar program to modernize and upgrade our nuclear weapons at capacity our attack capacity other other powers are acting more or less similarly they there are policies being conducted right now I mentioned Ukraine but it's not the only one that are bringing the global situation to the point where it might lead to perhaps accidental cracks perhaps intended nuclear strike incidentally it's been known for many years decades that if a power launches a nuclear strike first strike it will be destroyed by the effects of the nuclear explosions so there's no escape it's any nuclear war that between any powers with any capacity will lead to the virtual extermination we know how to end it but the steps that are being conducted are in the opposite direction and there have been some potential unfortunately aborted efforts to implement steps that would reduce the danger so one major threat right now has to do with Iran in the United States it's commonly claimed by high officials commentators and others that Iran is the greatest threat to world peace it's kind of interesting to compare this with global opinion there are polls of global opinion taken by US polling agencies Gallup hold major one the most recent about a year ago did ask people around the world which country is the greatest threat to world peace the United States won by a huge margin nobody else was even close a second was Pakistan which was probably inflated by the Indian vote but that's but fortunately Americans are spared knowledge of these facts the press refused to report them but they're facts nevertheless anyway here it's Iran that's the greatest threat to world peace there's interesting questions that one can ask about just what the threat is but let's say there's a threat whatever it may be is there a way to end it yeah there are ways to end it if I don't you want me to go into it but the kind of stick to the five five minute lecture but but there have been potential steps which have been blocked by the United States that's unfortunate anyway in the case of nuclear weapons we know how to end the problem it's feasible it's a matter of implementing policies that are understood and they could be carried out if they were sufficient popular pressure to compel them to be carried out the populations of the world care about survival their leaders typically don't they care about power and we can influence those decisions particularly in countries like this more free and open societies with regard to an environmental catastrophe it's not so obvious that there's a solution there are measures that can be undertaken to mitigate the threats and maybe to overcome them that's an open question but again policy is going in the opposite direction what I quoted from The Wall Street Journal is unfortunately pretty typical you read it in the business presses of the business pages of the press across the spectrum New York Times Financial Times others plenty of euphoria about how the United States can become the Saudi Arabia of the 21st century it can achieve energy independence we can flood the world with oil all great and one the price of oil is going down which is great means good for American consumers who can drive more and all of these marvelous things are simply very straightforwardly driving us towards a precipice which will fall over which will be extremely harmful may be devastating for generations not very far away the generation of our grandchildren much worse of course for the poorer countries but also here well senator cotton of Arkansas is one of the many intellectual Giants in that esteemed legislature legislative body recently announced that we do have a great deal to fear from Iran because they control Tehran I know that's pretty super but you should add that if you read The Washington Post this morning you'll discover that Senator cotton was got a real pedigree even graduated from Harvard is positioning himself to be the future foreign policy specialist of the Republican Party taking the mantle of McCain and Graham he has other interesting warnings I don't know how much he followed his career but when he was running for Senate in Arkansas he warned the citizens of Arkansas that the Mexican drug cartels are linked to Isis and joined together they are working to send terrorists across the border into the United States where they can kill citizens of of Arkansas and of course all of this is the forum full of fault of President Obama with leaving a porous order and so on if that's true we should move that clock to two minutes to midnight yeah election in Israel Netanyahu won a third consecutive term his fourth overall Haymarket author and Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah says Netanyahu's good for the Palestinians why because he's very clear no Palestinian state no compromise Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass sees only cosmetic differences between the two major Israeli parties and she says that the now moribund two-state solution is actually a tenth stage solution a bunch of bantu styles she says inside the West Bank what's your view on what happened in Israel well what happened is that one question is how much difference there is between the camp between the parties and they're all pretty much on the right others.the there was a very minor sort of peace party merits got four seats barely made past the admissions point the there is the Arab party which is the third largest but that's pretty much excluded from any coalition just on racist grounds no coalition will accept the Arab party as a important constituent but there are some differences one difference is if you read Netanyahu's appeal to the electorate which that carried him to victory after a rather tepid polling results it was a combination of outright racism and extreme fear mongering so you've probably read in the papers he warned the electorate that Arabs Arab citizens of Israel are being driven to the polls by leftists with support from foreign governments all in an effort to undermine his policy of defending Israel from you know terrorists so on and so forth and that combination of fear-mongering and racism does work it worked in Israel we're not unfamiliar with it here and it's a very it's a very dangerous sign about the nature of Israeli society which has been drifting very far to the right and it's a this is a this is a major nuclear weapons state it's a violent state that's carried out lots of aggression it's a direct violation of international law and the occupied territories that's accepted essentially by the entire world with the exception of Israel in the United States and it can be an extremely danger it is already a very dangerous state can be much more so as to the a benign on Amira Hass conclusions I think they're slightly I don't think they're analyzing the situation quite accurately the there's it's widely argued not just by them across the board by you know Israeli analysts Palestinians others that there are two options either a two-state settlement in accord with the overwhelming international consensus which includes essentially everyone outside the United States and Israel that's one possibility and the other possibility is supposed to be what's called a one state solution Israel takes over the whole of the former Palestine Jordan to the sea and then there will be what in Israel is called a demographic problem too many Arabs in a Jewish state that pretty soon in fact maybe majority from the Palestinian Palestinians who and Palestinian supporters like the one used you mentioned who regard this positively say well then it'll be possible to carry out an anti-apartheid struggle a civil rights struggle to call for the rights of Palestinians within this one state the problem with that analysis is that these are not the two options the two options are quite different one up this second option one state is not an option there is no possible the reasonable possibility that Israel will take over the whole territory and face this demographic problem they don't want it the second option alternatives to States is something quite different it is what is exactly happening before our eyes there are policies being implemented daily right before our eyes we can see them we can see where they're directed now they've been in motion for almost half a century and their purpose is clear what they're doing the policies take Oh first of all they Israel is taking over has taken over at what it calls Jerusalem that's an area about five times the size of historic Jerusalem that includes substantial areas of the West Bank many former our villages supposed to be an internationalized territory Israel's taken it over in all the parties except for the very far out ones are saying yes this is an indivisible permanent capital of Israel that's one thing then if you look at the development programs which are pretty systematic very obvious the one of them developed is developing a corridor extending east of Jerusalem to include a large town mollado Miam was built mostly during the Clinton years its purpose is to subdivide the West Bank to part virtually partition it the borders of mala domain reach virtually to Jericho which will be left in Palestinian hands that's right at the border so as a corridor extending to the east pretty much bisecting the West Bank if you look at the map there are other corridors to the north including other new Israeli towns REO whom they break up the region further in addition Israelis taking over it's committed to taking over everything that's within the so-called separation wall it's an annexation wall declared illegal by the World Court by international opinion but the US continues to support the policies doesn't matter that's a large part of the arable land that excludes the Palestinians from their farms orchards and so on furthermore Israel is systematically taking over the Jordan Valley that's roughly a third of the West Bank much of its arable land Palestinians are being steadily expelled by one or another pretext sometimes simply thrown out the Jewish settlements are being established that wells are sunk and so on the traditional method for a hundred years now of ultimately incorporating some region inside Israel well you look at that pattern and you can see what's happening the the Israel is carrying out a perfectly reason Dan telogen program intended to integrate into Israel everything that might be of any value in the West Bank but to exclude the Palestinian population the areas that Israel's taking over don't have many Palestinians and those were there are being largely expelled that will leave the Palestinian population in some kind of limbo not not within Israel no no demographic problem no one state Palestinians lose everything that's the live alternative there is no serious alternative that anyone has made any meaningful case for to think that there could be one state unfortunately this is the assumption that's made across the board but if you think it through you can see that it's extremely unlikely of the likely alternative to astute state settlement is what I just described the policies that are now being implemented what could stop them actually one thing it's in the hands of the United States as long as the you know the United States officially objects to these policies so the official US policy says it's unhelpful to peace but the u.s. continues to support them it's providing the military economic diplomatic support for them even the ideological support for them by the way the issues are framed in the United States which is quite different from the rest of the world as long as the United States continues to support the policies there is no reason to expect Israel to withdraw from them whether it's Netanyahu or Isaac Hara or anyone else there are some differences in the policies the racist and extremely alarmist rhetoric of Netanyahu who's not chaired by others so there's some differences but a mirror House is correct and saying that they're not fundamental differences in New Mexico under US law Native American and Spanish land grant heirs have lost common lands and acequia water rights have been separated from the land for commercial use what hope for the future do you see from traditional people's continuing to defend the rights of the Commons and the shared use of natural resources rather than exploitation for profit well again same story it's up to you these are decisions that the American population can make in the case of the United States and of course as we all know this has been going on for 500 years 400 years ever since the first English settlers came there's been a steady attack on the Indian nations driving them out of their lands exterminating them expelling them sending them the reservations that's been well that's American history there are two fundamental profound crimes in American history the one is expulsion or extermination of the indigenous population the others of course slavery with its impact still remaining the United States is as is what's called a separ colonial society that's an unusual form of imperialism it's a form of imperialism in which the imperial power originally England settles the country that is being taken over drives out or exterminates the population that's a extreme form of imperialism it's true of the what's called the Anglosphere the countries that sort of extend it out of England through the United States Canada Australia New Zealand almost they didn't quite exterminate the indigenous population that's an unusual form of imperialism very for the indigenous people a very dangerous one and yes they're fighting back needs support however there's another point that ought to be made about preservation of the Commons that's back to climate change the Commons are the environment in which we live if the Commons are privatized if they're handed over to Exxon Mobil and Chevron and so on and we're dead for the reasons that I've just mentioned we're pretty obvious if the Commons are preserved for the common good we have a possibility of surviving if you look around the world almost everywhere it's the indigenous populations which are in the lead in trying to protect the Commons from destruction by the industrial capitalist powers primarily China others so in Canada it's the First Nations in Australia is the Aboriginal people in India it's tribal people all around the world the countries that have substantial indigenous majorities and populations have actually taken steps towards trying to preserve the Commons Bolivia for example which actually has rights of nature written into its constitution Ecuador made an interesting effort to keep some of its oil in the ground where it ought to be if the rich countries the European countries would pay Ecuador a fraction of the profit that it would have received from us marketing the fossil fuels the rich countries refused so now they're doing also destroying valuable forests it's a pretty striking fact which what they're really shame us that it's the indigenous peoples who have been driven to the margins of survival who are in the lead in trying to protect us from the folly that we are now carrying out which is very likely to destroy the possibilities of decent survival that's the most crucial aspect of protecting the Commons the day after the big climate March in New York and September the very next day the Rockefeller Brothers fund the Rockefeller Brothers fund disinvested from fossil fuels you can't miss the significance of that given John D Rockefellers background is is this the start of a major movement in terms of divestment from fossil fuel corporations I was in Portland Oregon recently and an activist told me this is one of the hottest issues on campuses from Stanford to Harvard yeah MIT my on campus it's hot issue on campuses and yes it's important it's in a way symbolic but significant these are some of the steps that can be made to impede the race to the precipice how important it is will like everything else depends on people like you would you do something about it I want to talk to you about two ships one fictional and one real the Pequod and Moby Dick and the Titanic I think it was Edward Sayid right on this stage who years ago talked about the monomaniacal urge of Ahab to destroy Moby Dick no matter what and to take the crew down with him it was of no concern to him and what do you think about that metaphor that Moby Dick is nature and that a hob is out there's an out-of-control kind of capitalism and that when it comes to the Titanic the reforms that are offered up by the centers of power are merely cosmetic they're moving deck chairs on the Titanic recycle your cardboard driver Prius and things like that sorry - Prius drivers well like any kind of models and metaphors there's some point but some differences the crucial we are not being I mean you might say that Hitler was an Ahab let's say he was especially toward the end of the war he was dedicated to continuing in the war even if Germany was totally destroyed and it was the fault of the Germans if they didn't succeed in winning the war okay that's a hab like in a way but the in our case it's somewhat different it really is institutional logic it's not a matter of individuals those CEOs who voted in the Davos poll if you asked them personally maybe they contribute the Sierra Club and maybe they're in favor of divestment could be but in their institutional role as managers of major corporations they have a duty in fact a requirement even a legal requirement to maximize profit and market share and to ignore what economists call externalities the impact of a transaction on others that doesn't enter into market calculations well in this case the externality happens to be the survival of the grandchildren but they cannot in their institutional role attend to that problem because their task is to maximize profit and market share there's some range of choices of course and there's some variation among corporations as to how they operate but this overwhelming institutional property happens to be lethal in its nature it cannot continue if we are going to serve and survive in the case of state power it's not dissimilar quite typically States governments regard their own populations as a major enemy the Snowden revelations for example will reveal the extent to which the u.s. government regards the u.s. population as an enemy which has to be monitored and controlled the pretext of defending terrorism is very weak as you may recall when the Snowden revelations came out at first it was claimed by the government that 50 over 50 terrorist acts had been prevented by the NSA surveillance under inquiry they reduced it to maybe a dozen or so under further inquiry it was finally reduced to one one case someone had sent $8,500 to Somalia that was the net yield of this massive program which is a program aimed at the population to ensure their control and obedience and that's very typical of governments and understandable the leadership is committed to power the state power if you think through the record of nuclear policy I sampled it if you look in detail it's much worse but the record is one of an astonishing record of disregard for the safety welfare of the population and steps in order to enhance state power that's the way powerful institutions function and these things have to be a to overcome institutional pathologies is a lot harder than overcoming an individual pathology in the case of Ahab you know you can throw them into the ocean or you submit them to psychoanalysis or institutionalize them there are remedies but in the case of institutional pathology it's far more serious as for rearranging the deck chairs on the it's it's not a bad image but but there are some steps being taken that are not insignificant the development of the solar energy for example is proceeding there are major efforts to try to block it but it's proceeding unfortunately this is not the center of where it's proceeding the major production of solar panels is in China and this means sophisticated ones they're at the cutting edge of advanced technology and solar panel production should be here but some steps are being taken there are some environmental rules but by and large the primary thrust of policy is in the wrong direction years ago the philosopher John Dewey said politics is the shadow cast on society by big business how would you evaluate that shadow today in light of citizens united and McCutcheon vs. FEC and other Supreme Court rulings well Dewey's comment was accurate it extends way back back in the 1950s somebody will remember there was a Equipe I think maybe it came from Seawright Mills I don't remember which said that the United States is a one-party state of the business party which has two factions Democrats and Republicans and that was that's pretty accurate at the time but it's less accurate today the United States is still a one-party state the business party but there's really only one faction the Republican Party has pretty much departed from being a functioning parliamentary organization but that's not just my judgment the very highly respected conservative political analyst Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute right wing think-tank pointed out recently I think accurately that the Republican Party has been witty has become what he called a radical insurgency no longer committed to parliamentary participation there's a lot of truth to that we've seen it pretty dramatically in the last couple of years we're seeing it right now just take a look at the today's newspaper the description of the House Budget basically the Ryan budget what is the Ryan budget through an all kind of sleight of hand which economists just mocking about balancing the budget but what it actually does is undermine Medicare by moving to privatize it which means - it's the one part of the health care system that more or less works because it's not privatized it's inefficiencies and costs are due to the fact that it has to work through the in highly inefficient bureaucratized privatized system in the United States so privatizing moving to privatize Medicare or saying let's undermine the one system the more or less works cutting back Medicaid under the guise of federalism repealing the Affordable Care Act which sends not a wonderful legislation but nevertheless an improvement which will send tens of millions of people into the onion word lists cutting back food stamps and so on in other and enriching the wealthy that's the one policy of the Republican radical insurgency do anything he can to enrich the wealthy and powerful and attack the general population well you can't win votes that way so what's happened is over the last years the Republican Party managers have mobilized sectors of the population which have always been around but have never been mobilized into a significant political force one part is Christian evangelicals major component of part of the base of the Republican Party today you see it in the Iowa primaries coming up but quite generally another is nativists people who are afraid that they are taking our country away from us which has a basis in fact the white population is a beacon will become a minority pretty soon and for extreme ultra-nationalists nativists this is a crime that can't be tolerated people who are sectors of the population who are so frightened that they have to carry guns into Starbucks because who knows will come after them in fact there's legislation in Nevada right now being debated to allow guns to be brought into daycares matters and maybe some of these three-year-olds were trained by Isis so notes but these are you know these are not small parts of the population it's a very strange country in many ways that's a large part of the population people can be mobilized on those issues and not notice that the policies that their leaders are pursuing are attacking them and supporting the super-rich and the corporation's well that's one that's one of the former two factions what's the other faction it's not Democrats its what used to be called moderate Republicans if you take a look at the Democratic Party programs there are a few exceptions like Bernie Sanders and others but if you take the the core of the Democratic Party Democratic Leadership Council and so on these are the policies that used to be called moderate Republicans in fact somebody like Richard Nixon would be kind of at the left of American politics today Eisenhower would be off the spectrum Eisenhower went so far as to say that nobody insane could think of dismantling New Deal programs namely the ones that are being dismantled right now the current Republican programs are efforts to dismantle programs that were initiated under Nixon the drift to the right during this whole neoliberal period roughly since Reagan is pretty extreme actually see it's pretty strikingly in the public attitudes towards health towards the health programs of the unites the u.s. health system is an international scandal it has about twice the per capita costs of comparable countries and relatively poor outcomes furthermore the US government spends about as much per capita as comparable countries but that's a small part of the health costs because it all has to work through the privatized health system which is inefficient bureaucratized and in the hands of tons of bookkeeping administration and so on and so forth and in the hands of institutions we have no interest in the health an insurance company is not dedicated to health it's dedicated to making money so not surprisingly they do things try to make money well this if you look back at the there's an extensive polling record of public attitudes on health care and for a long period since the Second World War there have been substantive considerations or ities you know a lot of the polls depend on exactly how the question is asked but a large part of the population often a majority has been in favor of national health care they go back to the late 1980s a majority of the population thought that there ought to be a constitutional guarantee for health care national health care and in fact I think it was 40% of the population thought it already was in the Constitution that's the late 80s and take a look today when Obama presented his affordable health care program you'll recall that at the very beginning one of the part of the program was a public option allowing people to make the choice of something like Medicare national health care at the time almost two-thirds of the population was in favor of that but it was dropped without discussion it never entered the discussion the United States has a very unusual maybe unique law which bars the government from negotiating drug prices you can negotiate other things but not drug prices so of course drug prices are way out of sight much higher than in comparable countries the population is overwhelmingly opposed yes there haven't been many polls but the only ones I've seen show over 80 percent opposition there was never even a attempt to deal with this the power of the pharmaceutical corporations is so enormous that there wasn't even an effort to try to introduce it into the so-called Obamacare if you look at the attitudes towards the so-called Obamacare they've been pretty negative most of the population has been opposed even though for years the population has been strongly in favor of national health care and this of course isn't national health care now some of that opposition is because it didn't go far enough we don't know how much because the questions aren't asked in the polls but a lot of it is the kind of thing you see reflected in this famous Town Hall comment where somebody got up and said I'll keep your keep your hands off my Medicare you know that kind of thing people don't understand that what the government is doing and what the private corporations are doing and the effect is a significant change in expressed attitudes towards the policies that's a remarkable triumph of propaganda if you think about it especially considering how vital health care is to everyone's life well those numbers have been at zero for quite some time and there's a light up there that says exit but I'm going to take a moderators privilege here and just go on for a minute or two more if I may on this that's okay well on this long journey you've been on did you ever imagine the kind of crowds you routinely draw or having your books on display at airports well actually started giving public talks on these issues much too late in the early 1960s early days of the Vietnam War I started giving talks about the Vietnam War and as it you know it was talks to three people as somebody's living room or a church with three or four people or something like that and that was never and none of us who were involved ever had it could have guessed at the time that a couple of years later there would be a major anti-war movement but there was and the same has happened on other issues with all of the negative things that have happened over the past years this neoliberal reaction since Lee Carter primarily the Reagan years there's also been plenty of progress audiences are very different than they were in the past concerns are different lots of issues that were fighting issues back in the 60s you could barely discuss them are now accepted and taken for granted women's rights gay rights there was no concern for environmental issues in the 60s now there's substantial concern of the years there have been mount periods of extensive popular activism to try to terminate the nuclear weapons lunacy the the general atmosphere of the public has changed a lot and you know audiences kind of reflect that well all of this is positive there's basically two trajectories there's one trajectory which one just been describing which is a constructive positive offers hope there's another trajectory which I talked about which is going in the opposite direction and the question is which one will prevail but again as I've said several times and as you all know without my saying it that's in your hands you were just in Argentina and met with some you were just in Argentina and you met with some activists from the podemos movement in Spain what were your impressions well this was an international conference of activists from around the world mostly South America but some from Spain some from Greece Arisa and others and it reflects some of the positive developments in the world one of the major positive developments internationally in the past for a long time long what's he like has been what has taken place in South America over the past roughly 15 years South America for 500 years since the early conquest had been dominated by foreign powers the South American countries themselves were the typical structure was a small Europeanized mostly white elite extremely wealthy in a sea of misery and poverty the elites were oriented towards the outside they had their second homes in the Riviera they sent their money to Zurich you know and so on there were very little interaction among the South American countries of the South American countries were the most religious students of the neoliberal policy structural adjustment policies of the World Bank and the IMF and the Treasury Department and they were the ones who suffered most naturally but in the last 10 or 15 years they pulled out of this for the first time it's a major change in world affairs South America used to be regarded here as what was called our backyard they did whatever we told them we don't pay any attention to them now South America is out of control you take a look at the hemispheric conferences the United States is isolated in fact the primary reason why Obama made some steps towards normalizing relations with Cuba is that the u.s. was utterly isolated on that issue in the whole hemisphere they were trying to get some kind of arrangements before the summit of Americas which is coming up soon they didn't quite make it but that's the goal this is a huge change and that's why the conference was in South America but there were participants from particularly podemos and syriza these are in Greece Europe has been subjected to a program of a kind of a savage economic program which is seriously undermine European democracy it's been devastating for the weaker the peripheral countries it's beginning to dismantle Europe's major post-second world were achieving it the Social Democratic welfare state programs and I think that's the purpose of the policies it's economically destructive this is these are the policies of austerity under recession even the International Monetary Fund's is it crazy from an economic point of view but they are they make some sense from the point of view of class war they are enriching the big banks they're dismantling social programs and so on well there's a reaction the reaction was pumped first in Greece which has suffered most and the German banks which are basically responsible for these crises are reacting in an absolutely savage way to try to prevent Greece from taking steps that might extricate itself from the disaster that's been imposed Greece's calling for restructuring of its debt you know delaying debt payments and so on this is particularly ironic because Germany in 1953 was permitted by the European countries to about to cancel its major debts that's the basis for German recovery that's why it's the dynamic center of Europe secondly Germany practically destroyed Greece during the Second World War well put all this together the Greece is now asking for a limited element of what Germany was granted in 1953 and the German the powers in Germany the bank the Bundesbank are just flatly refusing in a very savage way now they may get away with it in Greece because Greece is a pretty weak country Spain is going to be harder nut to crack that's a bigger country a more powerful economy and in Spain in the last couple of years two or three years a new political party developed for them us which by now is running first in the polls and it is also a policy a party has dedicated in a pretty pragmatic sensible way to reversing the austerity programs sustaining rebuilding the the the social economy the welfare state programs and moving the country thoughts and constructive development in Spain as well the the criminals the ones who caused the crisis were the banks the Spanish banks and the German banks but they want the population to pay notice that none of them believe in capitalism in a capitalist society say if I lend money to you and since I know you I know it's a risky loan and I therefore and I therefore get a lot of interest and make a lot of money out of it if at a certain point you can't pay it's my problem in a capitalist society but not in the societies in which we live the problem is your problem and your neighbors problem your neighbors didn't take the debt the debt but they got to pay for it that's the way our system works radically anti-capitalist makes sense on class warfare grounds but no resemblance to markets or capitalism and that's what's been going on but there is a struggle against it and podemos I worth keeping an eye on they have sensible programs might win the next election which is coming up soon and it's not a it's not going to be easy for the Brussels bureaucrats and the German banks northern banks to crush Spanish initiatives one last question you grew up in the 30s at a time when solidarity meant something there was mutual support there was an active labor movement what is it going to take in 2015 to rekindle that spirit of solidarity well remember what happened in the 30s the labor movement was in fact in for from there was CIO organizing sit-down strikes so on they had a sympathetic administration so the Roosevelt administration was willing to accommodate to the some extent to the pressures developing among the public labor movement spearheading it which did lead to the New Deal legislations which were very beneficial to the population and to the economy but go back to the 1920s the labor movement had been destroyed there was nothing left practically nothing left of it one of the leading labor historians David Montgomery died recently has a book full of the Fall of the House of labor and it's about the 1920s there had been a lively vibrant active pretty radical American labor movement but it had been crushed by a brutal attack this is very much a business run society and the business classes are highly class conscious constantly fighting a class war have state power supporting them and they were able to crush and destroy the labor movement but it revived and it can revive again and other popular movements can as well too and there's a basis for it the basis for it is the quite positive changes that have taken place since the 1960s in many ways it's a much more civilized society than it was at that time and many issues and I think that is a basis for recreating the kind of solidarity mutual aid working together dedication commitment that is very necessary today and we can't overlook the fact that we're at a moment of human history which is entirely unique for the first time in human history we are at a position where the decisions that we will make will determine whether the species survives it's not been true in the past it's very definitely true now these are not small questions it's quite a sobering note and as we bring this evening to a close in Hindi there's a word called Saiva it means service and I can think of no one who has performed more savor more service for humankind than you thank you very much you

Channel: Manufacturing Intellect

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Length: 83min 58sec (5038 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 09 2017