Surviving the 21st Century by Professor Noam Chomsky

well welcome to you all welcome to those here in the Great Hall to those in the common Center to those in Queens where we are live-streaming this evening welcome to you all and particularly of course welcome to Nome as we know him Noam Chomsky Noam Chomsky needs no introduction so I'll be very very brief he's of course probably the one academic who is known throughout the world for his scholarship and public engagement currently immerses professor in the Department of linguistics and philosophy at MIT know was born in Philadelphia in 1928 and has worked for nearly all his career at one institution where he started in 1955 there's loyalty mit sometimes described as the father of linguistics he's also a major figure in the philosophy of mind language politics and ethics he was named the world's top public intellectual by one poll but we hardly needed reminding Noam has written over a hundred books and has made massive contributions of course to the fields in which he's engaged for years he's been one of the most prominently cited academics he is lectured in many of the most prominent lecture series of the world and now he can add the Dharam Castle lecture series to his list his list of awards and honors is extraordinary and one hardly knows where to start I counted honorary degrees from at least 38 of the most distinguished universities in the world in Germany this would be a nightmare because of the tradition and convention of introducing important speakers by all of their degrees so it'd be welcome here professor doctor doctor doctor doctor till you get to 38th among his most impressive honors at least impressive to me that I could find was a newly described species of bee that has been named after him his talk surviving the 21st century will be for about 3540 minutes or so and then we will take questions from here and also from the other lecture theatres which will somehow arrive on my iPad again to remind you hashtag Chomsky if you wish to tweet it's an incredible pleasure to have you here and please join with me in giving Noam Chomsky a better welcome than he's ever had before [Applause] when I think about the announced title will we survive the 21st century there's an irresistible image it's the image of the proverbial lemmings marching towards the cliff cheering their intrepid leaders as we should all be aware for the first time in history humans are now poised to destroy the prospects for decent existence and much of life the rate of species destruction right now is about at the level of 65 million years ago and when a huge asteroid hit the that the earth entered ended the age of the dinosaurs opened the way for the proliferation of mammals the difference is that today we're the asteroid and the way may well be open to beetles and bacteria when we've concluded our work the geologists break the history of the planet into IRA's of relative stability Pleistocene lasted several million years followed by the Holocene about 10,000 years ago that coincided with the introduction of Agriculture and now geologists are adding a new era a new epoch the Anthropocene beginning with the Industrial Revolution roughly 200 years ago the and it has radically changed the natural world and the light of the pace of change one hates to think about when the next epoch will begin and what it'll be one effect of the Anthropocene is the extraordinary rate of species extinction another's the threat to ourselves no literate person can fail to be aware that we're facing a prosper of severe environmental disaster effects they were already detectable and that might become dire within a few generations if current tendencies are not reversed just to give a few examples a couple of weeks ago two leading scientific journals published a new study of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet it's long been understood that if it collapses it will lead almost inevitably to a rise in global sea level of at least 10 feet within a few generations wipes out civilization in any recognizable form the reports the new studies reported that it is collapsing leading scientists who are familiar with the study warned that continued release of greenhouse gases will almost certainly make the situation worse destabilizing other parts event art as well as the Greenland ice sheet causing many of the world's coastal cities to be abandoned with horrifying consequences for the poor inhabitants of coastal plains and probably millions in Bangladesh alone the leading done us scientific society the triple-a s which is usually quite conservative that did issue a study a few days earlier reporting I'm quoting it the overwhelming evidence of human-caused climate change with both current impacts and extraordinary future risks to society and natural systems the report expressed particular concern over quoting again the disconnect between scientific knowledge and public perception they're talking about the United States and that's not an accident the leading sectors of the business world are quite openly running a major propaganda campaigns to convince the public that humans are not responsible for global warming if it's occurring at all some of the leading business journals like The Wall Street Journal Forbes responded to the latest IPCC report with the article saying that the real problem is global cooling and there's some effect there are recent studies that show the polling studies that show that concern about global warming in the United States is well below the global norm and it's stratified among Republicans it's far below the global norm among Democrats slightly below and that's not untypical of the contemporary Republican Party which is no longer a conventional parliamentary party as a more accurate description that was given by one of the very few remaining genuine conservatives the respected political analysts of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute Norman Ornstein he describes the former Republican party as a radical insurgency which has pretty much abandoned the domain of parliamentary politics and although he didn't add this we can say that the reason is that's in virtual lockstep service to extreme wealth and privilege and one aspect of this is denial of climate change or at least the human role in this terrifying development the current issue of the premier journal of media criticism the Columbia Journalism Review has an interesting article about this topic it attributes this outcome to a media doctrine that's called fair and balanced thus if a journal publishes an opinion piece reflecting the opinion of 97 percent of scientists that has to run alongside the piece counter piece expressing the claims of the energy corporations so the public's ends up confused and that is indeed what happens but there's certainly no doctor and a fair and balanced know this if a journal say runs an opinion piece that denouncing Putin once again for the criminal act of taking over Crimea it surely does not have to run a piece along sided pointing out that while this act is indeed criminal Russia has a far stronger case than the u.s. does in having taken over southeastern Cuba over a hundred years ago including Cuba's major port rejecting the demand of Cuba since independence to have it returned with no justification at all unlike the Russians only the justification that this contributes to the fifty year program of terrorists warfare which was quite extreme and economic strangulation of Cuba and there are quite a few other current cases but they don't have to be mentioned under the doctrine of fair and balanced so there is an actual media doctrine it has to be fair and balanced when the concerns of concentrated private power are involved as surely not elsewhere but although obvious enough this cannot be perceived in the elite culture so it appears there's no much exuberance in the United States about what's called a hundred years of energy independence lying ahead as we become the Saudi Arabia of the next century President Obama overrated about the matter with his usual eloquence two years ago quote him he proclaimed with pride to animal applause that now under my administration America is producing more or than at any time in the last eight years that's important to know over the past three years I've directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states we're opening up more than 75% of our potential oil reserves resources offshore that we've quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high we've added an enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the earth and then sum up lifting the applause that tells us something important about our social and moral malaise the president was speaking in Cushing Oklahoma that's an oil town as he announced in creating his appreciative audience in fact it's the oil town it's described as the most significant trading hub for crude oil in North America and industry profits are sure to be secured in the short term as producing more oil and gas here at home and the president's words will continue to be a critical part of energy strategy that's the president promised let's go to the media a couple of weeks ago the New York Times published an energy supplement eight pages mostly euphoria about the bright future for the United States and poised to be the greatest producer of fossil fuels the missing in the eight pages is any reflection on what kind of world were exuberantly creating that one might recall George Orwell's observation in his unpublished introduction to Animal Farm about how in free England ideas can be suppressed without the use of force not least because immersion in the elite culture having a good education instills the understanding that there are certain things it wouldn't do to say or we can add even to think in the moral calculus of contemporary anglo-american state capitalism profits and bonuses in the next quarter that greatly outweigh concern for the welfare of one's grandchildren well much remains uncertain we can assure ourselves with fair confidence that future generations will not forgive us for our silence and our apathy we might in fact wish to consider a remarkable paradox of the current era there are some who are devoting themselves seriously to try to avert impending disaster in the lead or the most oppressed segments of the global population those considered to be the most backward and primitive the indigenous societies of the world First Nations in Canada aboriginals in Australia tribal tribal people in India and others like them and in countries with influential indigenous populations like Bolivia and Ecuador there are by now even legislative proposals legislative recognition of Rights of nature the government of Ecuador actually proposed to leave their supplies of oil in the ground where they should be if the European countries would provide them development aid amounting to a small fraction of what they would sacrifice by not exploiting their oil resources and of course the European countries refused they didn't bother asking the United States while indigenous people are trying to avert the disaster in sharp contrast the race to the cliff is led by the most advanced educated wealthy privileged societies in the world notably North America others not far behind few exceptions like Germany but not many unless there's a significant change of course and soon the prospect for decent survival is quite slim and that's not all for the past 70 years we've been living under the threat of incident and virtual virtually total destruction at our own hands those familiar with the shocking record and if you're not too familiar with it I urge looking at it but those familiar with it and the record continues to the present would find it hard to contest the conclusions of the General Lee Butler he's the last commander of the Strategic Air Command which has responsibility for nuclear weapons 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 the greatest proportion it's actually a near miracle that we've escaped destruction so far and the longer we tempt fate the less likely it is that we can hope for divine intervention to save us from our folly in this context it's worth taking a close look at the factors that drive policy there is a receive standard version it's common to academic scholarly discourse public discourse diplomatic commentary so I'll just quote a few leading figures but it's almost universal it takes a George Kennan one of the creators of the modern world him government is created to assure order and justice internally and to provide for the common defense coming to the present and the current issue of the journal national interest leading realist scholar that John Mearsheimer formulates the doctrine as holding that the structure of the international system forces countries concerned about concerned about their security to compete with each other for power leading scholar of US Middle East policy William quanto long diplomatic experience writes that the driving force of US policy is to ensure security and well-being of the population and so on pretty much endlessly we can put aside the standard Pyatt ease about justice and well-being of the population what is emphasized throughout is concern for security which sounds plausible enough but there's a few unanswered questions for example security for whom well one answer is security for state power now there are many illustrations of that so take current one from a couple of days ago the United States agreed and this is unusual to support a Security Council resolution calling on the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes in Syria but there was a proviso no inquiry is will be tolerated into possible war crimes by Israel or of course by the United States that's the explicit proviso and it's routine the United States is uniquely self immunized from the international legal system it's a very interesting topic I don't have time to pursue it but it does illustrate the importance of protecting the security of the state security of state power to protect the security of state power from home well enemies of course but who are the enemies it turns out that one prime enemy is the domestic population that fact is demonstrated over and over very clearly recently very clearly quite generally by government secrecy as it very rarely has a genuine security motivation that much should be familiar to anyone who's plowed through declassified documents and almost never find anything related to genuine security it it but there is a fact the effect is to keep the population in the dark the enemy they have to make sure they don't know what's going on and they're good reasons some of these were explained by the professor of the science of government I was like that title the professor of the science of Government at Harvard Samuel Huntington prominent the rural scholar government adviser he instructs us that the architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen power remains strong when it remains in the dark exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate that was in 1981 that when the Cold War was again heating up and Huntington went on to explain that you may have to sell intervention or other military action in such a way as to create the misimpression that it's the Soviet Union that you're fighting that's what the United States has been doing ever since the Truman Doctrine of 1947 1981 was another critical year in this regard it was the year when Reagan declared the first war on terror plague of the modern age returned the barbarism in our time etc etc and ever since then particularly after the disappearance of the Russian threat or temporary disappearance as a concocted ogre terror you have to create the misimpression that its terror that you're fighting there are other candidates narco traffickers crazed mullahs number of others all of this is rarely acknowledged but it's very accurate and it's a good insight into state power and policy has plenty of reverberations right to the present moment so state power that surely has to be secured from dangerous enemies like the domestic population but in sharp contrast the public is not secure from state power the first striking illustration of that right now President Obama's current radical attack on the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution which quoted protect citizens from unreasonable search and seizure that protects their the privacy of their persons homes papers and effects the defense of this right in Boston helped spark the American Revolution that's why it was written into the Constitution into the Bill of Rights at that time the tyrant was the British government and now the tyrant is the American government of course referring to the extraordinary surveillance campaign Obama's surveillance campaign which seeks to monitor everything without exception that you say or do and anyone connected in any way to the electronic culture cell phone computer the landline is vulnerable to this inquiry and Britain agrees the government remains tyrannical the British government does perhaps you know authorized the United States National Security Agency actually requested it and quotes to analyze and retain any British citizens mobile phone and tax numbers emails and IP addresses that are swept up in the NSA dragnet which is colossal picks up essentially everything you should also be happy to know that the NSA routinely receives or intercepts the routers servers computers other computer network devices that are being exported from the United States so that it can implant surveillance tools make sure that the NSA knows every keystroke you're making and presumably China does the same which kind of exhausts the range all of this is justified by security in accord with the standard doctrine but it's worth remembering that the claim to of justification for security carries no information whatsoever literally even the technical sense it's completely predictable for virtually all actions of states when they're caught in some crime or malfeasance and if something's perfectly predictable it simply carries no information in the case of the Snowden revelations the first reaction of the US government was the reflexively security of the president the head of the NSA informed the public that numerous terrorist plots were stopped by these surveillance methods and that first the claim was 54 were stopped that was later reduced to a dozen there was later a government commission established which investigated exactly how many had been stopped and it turned out that was one somebody sent $8,500 to Somalia that so far as the total yield of this colossal effort to monitor and control the population the domestic enemy there is another concern security for private power of major current illustration are the huge trade agreements that are now being negotiated during specific and transatlantic their secret but not completely they're not secret to the hundreds of corporate lawyers and lobbyists who are writing the detailed regulations you can guess what they are and why they're secret there are other illustrations throughout the Snowden documents one of the interesting parts of them is that they reveal extensive economic espionage in the interests of US corporations actually when this is brought to the attention of the government they say well we don't choose particular corporations which is correct it's just the general corporate sector that has to be whose security must be protected by state intervention well there are other examples there actually too numerous to mention and they shouldn't be surprising because one a recent study just came out from Princeton University two leading political scientists Martin gilens Benjamin Page who studied hundreds of policy decisions and conclude with very careful analysis all quote economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy while average citizens and massbay interest groups have little or no independent influence these results they say provides substantial support for theories of economic elite domination and for theories of biased pluralism but not for theories of majoritarian electoral democracy or majoritarian pluralism to put it simply it's a pretense that we live in democracies there plutocracies other work by these and other scholars particularly Martin gilens has shown pretty convincingly that in the United States about 70 percent of the population the lower 70 percent on the income scale have no influence at all on policy that's one of the reason why most of them vote why bother doesn't matter what they think as you move up the scale you get a little more influence and at the very top which means a fraction of 1% basically that's where policy is written so it's not surprising that the security of private interest is a major commitment of of the state and this is this goes way back there's nothing new about it it's getting kind of grotesque by now but those far back the closest most careful inquiry into this is done by for a good political scientist Thomas Ferguson University of Massachusetts he studied the effect of the relation between campaign spending and policy choices back into the 19th century and it turns out it's an extremely good predictor take a look at the distribution of campaign spending you can pretty well predict the policies that will be enacted this runs right through the New Deal as very few exceptions actually there was a over a century ago the most prominent in American history the most prominent campaign manager Mark Hanna around the turn of the 19th century was asked but what are the most important things that are necessary for running a campaign and he said there are three the first ones money the second ones money and I forgotten what the third one is that was well over a hundred years ago now it's well beyond nevertheless it's useful to have a new and very careful confirmation by Gillan's and Paige effects that are so obvious that in a free society they'd be taught in elementary school well if the United States is actually an unusually free and open society in a number of respects crucial ones and one of them relevant here is the accessibility of internal state records secret records Declassified and they provide a very revealing account of the actual motives of state policy fortunately no time to review the matter here but there are a few persistent themes we find consistently that one major driving factor in policy choices is concern about what Henry Kissinger called viruses that spread contagion he was referring specifically to a n days Chile which threatened to spread the contagion of a peaceful parliamentary path towards independent development than social welfare you know the outcome in that case and it's duplicated in case after case throughout Latin America and Southeast Asia Africa and the Middle East it's the most prominent theme of Cold War history in general there's ample evidence that security of state power crucially security from the population and security of concentrated economic power private power that these are driving forces in policy formation the furthermore that's entirely natural and to be expected when you look into how policy is formulated of course it's not quite that simple there are some interesting cases some quite current in fact when these commitments conflict it's interesting to see what happens in those cases but this is an extremely good first approximation and radically opposed to the received standard doctrine what your thought and what you read well let's turn to another question what about security the population it's very easy to demonstrate that this is at most a marginal concern of policy planners so take two very prominent examples who I mentioned global warming and nuclear weapons both dire threats to the security of the population turned the state policy in both cases it systematically attempts to accelerate the threat in the interests of its primary concerns protection of state power and protection of concentrated private power of namely the power that largely sets determined state policy in the case of global warming the conclusion is too obvious even the Terry on so I'll drop it but it's quite instructive to see that even instant destruction by nuclear weapons has never ranked high among the concerns of state authorities the record reveals that quite quite clearly let me run few through a few examples start in the early days of the Atomic Age around 1950 at that time the United States was overwhelmingly powerful that enjoyed remarkable security there was nothing like it in history it controlled the Western Hemisphere and pro-growth oceans controlled the opposite sides of both oceans had half the work wealth just incomparable power and security actually there was a potential threat ICBMs with hydrogen bomb warheads they didn't exist at the time but it was potential threat there is a standard scholarly review of nuclear policies that's undertaken access to high-level sources declassified documents by McGeorge Bundy he was the national security adviser for Kennedy and Johnson administration's former Harvard Dean and he writes that quote him the timely development of ballistic missiles during the Eisenhower administration the 50s is one of the best achievements of those eight years 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 that adds an instructive comment he says I am aware of no serious contemporary proposal in or out of government that ballistic missiles should somehow be banned by agreement so in short there was apparently no thought of trying to prevent the sole serious threat to the United States the threat of instant water destruction and this striking fact merits barely a phrase in this massive standard comprehensive history and it's also passed unnoticed well could it have been prevented can't be sure of course but there are some indications that it might have been possible one suggestive indication is remarkable proposal by Stalin in 1952 he offered to permit Germany to be unified with free elections which of course the communist lose but on condition one condition that it not joined a hostile military alliance that's hardly an extreme condition if you look at the history of the preceding half century Stalin's proposal was ignored or ridiculed but recent scholarship has begun to take a different view especially with the release of Russian archival records there's a bitterly anti-communist Harvard scholar Adam alum leader Mullah specialist on the Bolshevik period he takes the status of Stalin's proposal to be an unresolved mystery he writes that Washington 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 would have been enormous that remains an open question that one of the most prominent cold war scholars of Melvin Lafleur has reviewed recent research and Soviet archives and he writes that many scholars including him were surprised to discover that the Lavrentiy Beria the sinister brutal head of the secret police proposed that the Kremlin offer the West a deal on unification and neutralization of Germany agreeing to sacrifice the East German communist regime to reduce east-west tensions and of course him for them improve internal political and economic conditions opportunities that were squandered in favors by the West in favor of securing West German participation in Nate under the circumstances actual circumstances is not the propaganda ones it's not impossible that agreements might have been reached what would have protected the security of the population from the gravest threat on the horizon instant total destruction but the option the possibility was apparently not considered recognized but dismissed or ridiculed it's another indication of how slight a role authentic security plays in state policy contrary to standard doctrine as actually that was revealed again repeatedly in the years that followed couple years later in Nikita Khrushchev took office he understood that Russia could not compete militarily with the United States the richest most powerful country in history incomparable advantages if Russia hoped to escape its economic backwardness and the devastating effect of the second world war he concluded it would be necessary to sharply reverse the arms race and he in fact proposed sharp mutual reduction in offensive nuclear weapons the incoming Kennedy administration considered the offer and rejected it it turned instead the rapid military expansion as a review of this by one of the most respected IR international relations scholars Kenneth waltz recently died he wrote that the Kennedy administration undertook of the largest strategic and conventional peacetime military buildup the world has ever seen even as first chef was trying at once to carry out a major reduction in the conventional forces and to follow a strategy of minimum deterrence and we the United States did so even though the balance of strategic weapons greatly favored the United States again decisions that harm national security harm the security of the people and while enhancing state power a major Kennedy as you may recall barely squeaked to victory in 1960 in the election mainly by fraud but one of the ways he squeaked to victory was his charge that the opponent Eisenhower and Nixon had permitted the Russians to leap ahead and offensive weaponry that creating what was called a missile gap that severely threatened US security and that frightened the population the reality was the United States was far in the lead the Russians actually had four operational ICBM which were exposed to attack tiny fraction of the u.s. Arsenal that was recognized by the Kennedy administration McGeorge Bundy National Security Adviser speaking for the administration he explained that they had nevertheless been right in emphasizing a fake missile gap and the reason he gave was that the phrase had a useful shorthand effect of calling attention to our basic military posture the namely the posture of rapidly expanding the overwhelming US dominance and threat while rejecting security and the prospects for survival normal there was a Soviet reaction it was to place missiles in Cuba in October 1962 that move was motivated as well by Kennedy's quite immense a huge terrorist campaign against Cuba was very serious and it was scheduled to lead to invasion in October 1962 as Russia and Cuba may will have known that brought us to what historian Arthur Schlesinger called the most dangerous moment in history and it was extremely dangerous the crisis peaked in late October 1962 over 26 27th Kennedy then received a letter or secret letter from first RUF offering to end the crisis by simultaneous public withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba and US Jupiter missiles from Turkey these were obsolete missiles for which withdrawal order had already been given because they were being replaced by much more dangerous and timing the vulnerable pull our submarines so that was the author offer Russia would remove the missiles from Cuba the US would continue to remove missiles which are already being withdrawn because they're being replaced by more dangerous ones Kennedy's subjective estimate was that if he refused the probability of nuclear war would be 1/3 to 1/2 that's a war that would have destroyed the northern hemisphere according to Eisenhower President Eisenhower's warning Kennedy refused it's hard to think of a more horrendous decision in history and worse he's greatly praised for it for his cool courage his statesmanship 10 years later Henry Kissinger called a nuclear alert it was the last days of the 1973 Israel Arab War and there was a purpose the purpose was to warn the Russians not to interfere with his delicate diplomacy diploma yet was carrying out delicate diplomatic maneuvers which were designed to ensure an Israeli victory in the war but a limited victory so that the United States would still remain in total control of the region unilaterally and the maneuvers were delicate the United States and Russia had jointly imposed a ceasefire but Kissinger turned had secretly informed Israel that they could ignore the ceasefire therefore there was a need to call a nuclear alert to frighten the Russians away the security of the population had its usual status zero ten years after that the Reagan administration came in and they launched operations to probe Russian air defenses that meant simulating air and naval attacks calling the highest level nuclear alert into Russian waters and territory and these were taken at a very tense moment right at that time pursing two strategic missiles had were being deployed in Europe a few minutes flight time to Moscow Reagan had announced the Star Wars program SDI at which the Russians understood to be effectively a first-strike weapon that's a standard interpretation of so-called missile defense on all sides and other tensions were rising well naturally these actions caused considerable alarm in Russia unlike the United States Russia is quite vulnerable repeatedly been invaded and practically destroyed actually that led to a major war scare in 1983 newly released archives Russian archives revealed that the danger was much more severe even then historians of the nuclear interactions had previously assumed there's a recent CIA study which is called the war scare was for real it concluded that US intelligence had underestimated Russian concerns and the threat of a Russian reaction these exercises I'm quoting almost became a prelude to a preventive nuclear strike an account in the recent issue of the journal of Strategic Studies and it turns out it was even more dangerous than that we learned that last September the BBC reported that right in the midst of these really world threatening developments that Russia's early warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the United States sending off the highest level automated alert as a protocol for Soviet military same with the US and that is to retaliate at once with a nuclear attack of its own can't wait any longer there was an officer on duty miss Donna Slav Petrov and he decided to disobey the orders and not to report the warning to his superiors he received an official reprimand and thanks to his dereliction of duty we're around to talk about it security of the population was no more a priority for Reagan planners than for their predecessors and that continues until the present even putting aside the numerous near catastrophic accidents which are really quite shocking they're reviewed in a chilling new book by Eric Schlosser plans for the future are hardly promising congressional US Congressional Budget Office just reported that the US nuclear arsenal will cost 350 billion dollars over the next decade and that costs of expanding and modernizing it will quadruple from 1924 to 1930 there's a detailed study about the center for nonproliferation of the Monterey Institute for International Studies estimated the US will spend a trillion dollars on the nuclear arsenal in the next 30 years as they put it that's a percentage of the military budget comparable to spending for Precure of new strategic systems in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan and of course the u.s. is not alone as general Butler observed it's a near miracle that we've escaped destruction so far and the longer we tempt fate the less likely it is that we can hope for divine intervention to perpetuate the miracle in the background is a legal obligation that has determined by the World Court that the nuclear powers undertake good-faith efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons well that's far in the background legal obligations are not for the powerful this review only scratches the surface there are numerous other ways to evaluate the conventional doctrines about the goals of policy the forces that shape policy decisions I think if you inquire into the minutes quite worth doing you'll find that they converge in the conclusions that I just mentioned quote Gillan's and page again policy is largely set by economic elites and organized groups representing business interests with little concerns for public attitudes or public safety as long as the public remains passive and obedient frightened by concocted ogre's security is to be sure prime concern security of power and profit not security the population marginal concern these have never been small problems and that's particularly true right now so let me end by stressing again what we should all know very well we now face the most ominous decisions in human history there are many problems of the world but two are overwhelming and their significance environmental destruction and nuclear war for the first time in history we face the prospects of destroying the possibility for decent existence and not in the distant future and for this reason alone it's imperative to sweep away the ideological clouds face honestly and realistically the question of how policy decisions are made in our societies and what we can do to alter them before it's too late well now now to you all I'd like to take questions in clusters of three so that we can get a few remarks out I'll take three from the Great Wall now before we go to other lecture theatres and bring them in so I do I see any hands that we have a roaming mic and you'll need it so there's a gentleman back there hi mr. Chomsky Paris Katrina so behalf of the Greek editorial journal and on behalf of the xray Greek BBC I have many questions to ask you can you can you put the mic just opportunity to away from your way from a story for the feedback and you hear me clearly yes thank you I had many questions to ask you one one yes one one just one but I chose one many people I told me to ask you but I chose the question of a 55 year old Borman he works the doors here in the clubs in Newcastle it's a very simple question and I would like your answer please sir and this gentleman asked me why politicians lie okay well that was that's a straightforward question why politicians lie yes we'll come back to that rather brutal question let's just take from the back anyone let's go right to the back thank you dr. Chauncey you talked quite a bit about how governments seek to perpetuate their own power even if it's directly against the interests of their own people and you listed a bunch of examples about how the US government has done so through expanding militarily how important do you feel is a military industrial complex where by private corporations seek to expand and provide military equipment to the government how important do you feel that is in causing this problem do you have that question it's yeah okay we'll move on it's more men so far sure we can do better than that yeah and I was wondering you talked about the role of the media in sort of perpetuating a gap between public knowledge and scientific knowledge and I wondered if you thought that you know the growing force of the Internet and the power of any person to reach a worldwide audience might do something to negate that and to try and improve that and sort of narrow that gap do you want to put that into a short question gone I wondered if you thought that through the internet people might be able to narrow the gap between scientific knowledge and the internet narrow the gap between you know ideology and knowledge as it were all right let's take those three to begin with I think that that relates to the first question why politicians lie the simple answer is because we let them we have the power to prevent it but if you don't use the power if you sit back and say I don't care then they'll lie and they have good reasons to I mean would it make sense for Tony Blair say to stand up now and say please set up a war crimes tribunal to try me for the for the supreme international crime of aggression would that make sense or for him to say please throw me out of my position as Special Representative for the Middle East quartet because I'm doing absolutely nothing for peace but enriching myself or would it make sense for and you can run down the line now there's very good reasons either to lie or just not to tell the truth if politicians told the truth I think you decide for yourselves I think they would be saying what I was just talking about they would be saying we don't care at all about your security or your safety or your survival we care about our power and about the power of the concentrated concentrated domestic power which in our societies means basically the corporate sector that's not a hundred percent the case of course but it will be you know the strong tendency for it to be the case for the people who reached the top that's how they reach the top but the real answer is we let them and that's our that's up we film about ourselves no good the look into the mirror can the Internet help it's one of the ways in which the general population that can try to counter the extraordinary power of of concentrate mostly concentrated economic power but again only if you use it and you could say this is it's true whether there's an Internet or not I'm the Internet as offer some new meant new options it also offers new options for controlling and suppressing technology pretty much tends to be neutral you can use it the liberate you can use it to a press and the answer to which happens is in our hands the military-industrial complex that's of course Eisenhower's phrase interestingly his phrase when he left office after having created through his eight years a huge military-industrial complex I can't honestly complain about it that's one of the reasons I have a job teach at MIT which is right at the center of it 1950s and 60s practically the whole academic budget was paid by the Pentagon but that tells you something there was almost no military work in fact the only military work on campus was in the political science department political science department had something called a Peace Research Institute and anyone who read or will knows exactly what that means it was an Institute working on counterinsurgency and Vietnam and other such benign actions but outside the political science department there was no military work on campus but it was funded by the Pentagon and that tells you something about the Pentagon and the so-called military-industrial complex that is kept quiet the Pentagon in the United States and comparable systems here and elsewhere are - they have a military function but they also have another function they create the economy of the future they are systems by which taxpayers are misled as Huntington says you have to create misimpressions taxpayers are misled to create for profits of corporations for the future you have mostly have save iPhones or something like that in your pocket take a look at them they for example they have in the GPS where the GPS come from it's created by the US Navy the Navistar program that has micro electronics software hardware created almost all created for decades well mostly in the state sector under often in the u.s. Pentagon funding here the counterpart taxpayers pay for this because they think they're protecting their security that's what they're told but in fact the government doesn't care about your security what it cares of is about its own power and security for corporate power and the way the system works is the taxpayer takes the risks carries out the investment for decades literally decades finally something may come out which is profitable and then the profit goes to the private sector if if we had anything remotely like capitalist systems we don't they would they would adhere the capitalist principle that if an investor takes risks and you know invests and waits and picks worse key steps and if something comes out of it the profit goes back to the investor that's not the way it works here the profit goes the people had nothing to do with it the risks are taken by you often through the Pentagon and comparable systems and if anything comes out the profits go to Microsoft and Apple now they didn't create it they bar they take it it's given to them and it literally is decades so computers were the first the computer market personal computer market became viable in 1977 I think it was Apple was the first that was about 30 years after the development of computers almost all in the state sector like in the building where I work and it's the said if you buy pharmaceuticals let's say the research the basic research and development is pretty much done in the state sector the place is like probably the biology lab right here probably gets government funding grants and that's all across the board when you look back at these I mentioned the trans-pacific partnership one part of that was leaked by WikiLeaks it's secret except for the corporate lawyers and lobbyists but one part was leaked it was not the part on intellectual property intellectual property is a polite term a kind of a euphemism for government instituted monopoly pricing rights that's what it really means it means extraordinarily high patent rights which have never existed in history for the pharmaceutical corporations and some other corporations that's to keep the price of drugs up and make profits astronomical now there's a pretext of the pharmaceutical corporation say look we need that for research and development that's been investigated turns out that it's probably at least half of the R&D is not done by the pharmaceutical corporations at all it's done by the state sector and so on and that's an under estimate because if you take a close look the part but stunned by the pharmaceutical corporations is towards the marketing end like you know flip around the molecule to get a new drug but the basic research the hard costly risky research that's done by people like you you pay for it through your taxes and the pharmaceutical corporations rip off the profit actually there is a study by a one study by a very good American economist Dean Baker who suggested and what would happen if R&D was a hundred percent funded by the public and the pharmaceutical corporations were compelled to go on the market to sell what they produce it turns out that be a colossal saving for the public and of course a sharp reduction in profits of the big industries that's intellectual property that's the part of the trans-pacific partnership that was leaked but going back to the military-industrial complex it's a kind of a misleading term it really refers to most of the advanced economy which in our societies is substantially state based and instantly that goes back hundreds of years you take a look at British economic development it wasn't through the market it was through powerful state intervention same with the United States same with Germany Japan France every developed society Asian Tigers and so on well we have a few questions already from elsewhere so here I'll just edit them apologies to those whose questions are not read out you'll get this quite quickly how long before the chickens come home - how long before the chickens come home to roost is one question another one is the late Robert ow argued but we live in a polyarchy not a democracy do you agree and the final question I all mentioned here is that the IPC IPCC wrote recently that climate change mitigation is unachievable if individual agents advanced own interests independently do you agree well we know the answer to that question I'll say it anyway the first then the third question are pretty similar according to the IPCC the study the studies that followed it I quote quoted a couple of them the chickens are coming home to roost already and they're gonna it's going to be pretty serious within a generation or two very serious I mean it just imagine what a 10-foot rise in sea level would be most cities would be gone the real danger the pasture fee would be for the poor as always so Bangladesh for example is a coastal plain is millions tens of millions of people we wiped out what kind of civilization could survive a rise of ten feet and sea level just ask yourselves and that's within sight you know your grandchildren it's not that far is a change but evil technically yes but is it feasible as the question and whether it's feasible or not goes back to your decisions will people make decisions that will do what ought to be done most of the fossil fuels ought to stay in the ground just as Ecuador proposed and efforts should be made to develop alternatives now that's not inconceivable I mentioned Germany the Germany's on a path to get to about 70% sustainable energy within a short term now that might be impeded if you read the us business press they're very excited now about the fact that thanks to enormous use of fossil fuels in the United States energy prices are going down in the United States and that will make the European manufacturing uncompetitive and therefore Europe will have to back off on its conservation measures that's a great thing because then we'll make even more profit and the steps that are taken towards saving our grandchildren will be a drop off that is the moral calculus of an anglo-american state capitalism we should recognize that but it is technically feasible there are all sorts of other possibilities that can be exploited but not without decisions and if decisions are left in the hands of state and private power there is no reason to expect any immiseration of this it's just getting worse like the quotes from Obama that I read polyarchy Polly Ark is a it's kind of a play I think he's basically right but why not simply say it it's a pact recei the very rich make decisions in their own interests and most of the population is irrelevant actually it's worse in Europe than in the United States Europe what's happened in Europe in the past 10 or 20 years is just astonishing I mean even the Wall Street Journal is astonished they pointed out recently in an article that which is correct that in Europe no matter what government is elected you know far left far right anything else follow exactly the same policies because they have no role in setting policy the policies are set in the and by the bureaucrats and Brussels under the shadow of the Bundesbank so it doesn't matter what people think in fact there are some dramatic illustrations of that couple years ago the Greek Prime Minister Papandreou meekly suggested that maybe there should be a referendum in Greece so that people could say whether they had wanted to accept the policies that were being dictated through them he was denounced across the spectrum everybody denounced him is totally crazy a happen you dare ask the population that what policies ought to be in Europe we know that policies have to be set by the bureaucrats and the bankers polyarchy isn't probably the right term for that are you ok for one more round of questions alright let's just see what we can find [Music] I'm afraid my choices are gonna be pretty arbitrary thank you my questions about your final statement you said something like we have to face our two major problems and consider what we can do to avoid destruction think about what we can do what would you advise we do when we leave this room because I feel quite what would you advise practically yes given given what you have talked about and the imminence this century as it were disaster would you advise people to do all right let's bet some you mentioned that the richest countries in the world are amongst those who most disregard the true security of their people in place of the interests of the wealthy and the powerful however it could be argued that the poorest countries in the world are doing exactly the same thing how can we explain the explain these differences in fortune given that each seems to pursue similar policy strategies and is it a question of balance do you want to put that in a slightly simpler way don't read it just saying the richest and the poorest countries in the world each seem to disregard the the true security of their people yet they seem to experience completely different fortunes how can we explain this yeah is that clear good let's just try and take a few more because this will be the last cluster go on rich at random in any talk you talked mainly about the US and about Europe but like what do you think about the rise of China in terms of like you know the the futures right right you said sure all right I think we'll have to we'll just all I'll just take one last question over there and then we have to stop can I ask you a personal question how do you square having your views by working in MIT oh that's easy all right but as a PhD since I got my PhD from MIT declare a conflict of interest here I've got a last question for you which is this how do you imagine democracy the shape and form of a democracy that would be open pluralist responsive it would have to be a very different kind of democracies to standard electoral short term competitive democracy but we also know that forms of direct democracy produce their own internal difficulties so the question is when you imagine a world beyond as it were a state capitalism and competitive elite democracy what do you imagine okay let me run through them in order the first question is as individuals what can we do the answer is practically nothing what what could be done and always has been done in history is by people who are organized organized groups the labor movement civil rights movement women's movement anti-war movement environmental movements these can do things but if and that's one of the reasons why powerful systems are so intent on atomizing people it's a very striking take the now there's a lot of propaganda about the wonders of markets actually we only have very limited markets but there are markets markets are supposed to be magnificent because they increase your choices actually they restrict your choices you think about it for a minute suppose I want to get home from work at night ok the market offers me a choice I can have a four-door Toyota it does not offer me the choice of a subway what I want what's good for me what's good for the environment what's good for my children but that's not offered in the market markets offer individual consumption and the enormous stress on the importance of markets is part of the way to drive people towards looking for yourself amassing there's many commodities you can forget everything else in fact if you think about it for every one of you is picking an economics course or read about it then you know what markets are supposed to be markets are supposed to be systems in which informed consumers make rational choices right I'm sure every one of you has turned on a television set what do you see when you turn on a television set you see that there's a huge industry public relations industry which began in the United States and Britain incidentally huge industry which is designed to undermine markets every ad is an attempt to create an uninformed consumer will make an irrational choice all right a huge effort on the part of the business world the undermined markets but to keep the aspect that's useful for profit and power namely separating people from one another focusing on individual choices not working with your neighbor so to get back to what you can do as an individual not a lot except what's always worked in the past and can work in the future the second question pointed out that the rich and the powerful of the states act pretty much the same way mostly that's true not entirely I mentioned the case of Ecuador which did make an effort to do with its fossil fuels what ought to be ought to be done but by and large it's doubtless true that's why I didn't really talk about States when I said these sectors of the world population that are leading the effort to try to avert the disaster are not States they're organized groups they're the indigenous populations the First Nations in Canada let's say are not a state they're the ones who are trying to stop the tar sands development which is really lethal in Australia the Aboriginal people are very battered and beaten the those who have survived the onslaught are in the lead and trying to stop the uranium gold the other mining in India there's a war going on with the tribal people trying to protect the reserves from destruction by developmental projects you know mining and so on which will destroy them and but keep keeping just countries it's true that you can't expect States to behave very differently from the way they in fact do under our general kinds of organizations and structures but of course what the powerful states do is just a lot more significant it doesn't matter that much what Ecuador does matters a lot what England in the u.s. do so that's and that's up to us and that gets to the next question what about China China's and it's an interesting case it's it's a complex case China in the last China gained independence in 1949 from 1949 to 1979 about that was roughly the Maoist period there's a lot of developed there were a lot of Horrors than a real atrocities took place a huge famine killed maybe 3040 million people but there are some interesting things that happen that aren't discussed very much there are interesting studies of comparing China and India it's an interesting comparison attained independence same time two huge countries that both very poor they were pretty similar in 1949 late 40s and they developed differently terrain during the next 30 years the majors one of the major studies of this is by a leading economist on March SN Nobel laureate in economics and specialist on India he and his associate Jean drehs economists didn't bail a very good economists did a study of the of mortality in China and India between 1949 and 1979 when China shifted course turned out in this period according to their calculation a hundred million people were killed in democratic capitalist India as compared with China because of what India didn't do it didn't introduce rural reforms health clinics barefoot doctors affected almost nothing for the peasant population and the difference in mortality amounts to a hundred million people it's a pretty interesting in itself it's pretty striking but it's particularly striking because what was happening in the propaganda system right at this time a book came out in France first then translated in English called the Black Book of communism which is part of the huge propaganda onslaught against how terrible communism wasn't it was pretty terrible that's true the book claimed that a hundred million people had been killed by communism okay so here we have two studies one of them says a hundred million people were killed by the communists the most of it not based on any date at a much just thought but let's say it's true another a careful study saying that one democratic capitalist country killed a hundred million people as compared with China that what was the reaction to the to the black book of communism and front page reviews all over articles everybody knows about it tells us how horrible communism is the syndra's study I wrote about it when I Marcus and got the Nobel Prize I had a lot of interviews and I tried to convince journalists to mention it one did Indian journalists actually mentioned that you're gonna look pretty hard to find any reference to it well that's one fact about China a since China began its shift towards a kind of a whatever you call it a state market system there has been substantial growth mortality on the other hand is level a health of the population has not improved barely improved it so you look at the rates it went mortality improved very sharply up till 79 kind of levels off but there's been a lot of development China's raised more people out of poverty than the rest of the world combined by a long shot in the last generation or two and China's busy destroying the environment they now produce more the the the there are emissions rates or get total emissions are now higher than the US they are making some efforts to cut it back like China is the world leader in solar panel production and not just the massive but even high technology solar panels but it's a pretty hard slog China still a very poor country there's a lot of talk about China taken over the world and so on but if you look at the actual measures say Human Development Index and of the United Nations China's I think around 90th or something it's extremely poor country it has enormous internal problems that the West doesn't have it's had some spectacular successes many much of what it's doing is harmful that's we can't do much about China we can do something about ourselves but I think we should be pretty cautious about the speculations of China become the great superpower of the future in fact if you look closely at Chinese Chinese exports and ask how much value is added in China you get quite a different picture of Chinese economic success so like to say an iPhone if that's exported from China we call it a Chinese export but actually the the technology and the the high technology and the software on the design mostly come from the peripheral industrial countries that Japan South Korea and Taiwan and China ads the assembly and the west of course which invests in China it's the thing I don't remember the numbers of a fan but the figures are very high the actual value added in China is pretty slight well that's going to increase over the years China's climbing a technology ladder but it's not a simple path and I think we should keep those things in mind there's some good studies of this working at MIT I don't find a problem with it I don't have any objection to the fact that people have computers internet iPhones and so on I don't like the way it's done it's been very undemocratically like people in the 1950s we're not asked do you want your your taxes to go into a profits for Apple 30 years from now and maybe an iPhone for your great-grandchildren or do you want your taxes to go into a health education mass transportation decent Society and so on people weren't offered that choice the choice they were told is do you want to be destroyed by the Russians or not and if you don't want to be destroyed by the Russians put the money into the Pentagon as hunting didn't point it out that was a misimpression but it's one that did lead to the economy however this has nothing to do with MIT you know if I didn't work at MIT the same thing at that I worked there because I think it's a great university I like it they never thought of going anywhere else but I don't see a conflict it's kind of the other way around went being a place like MIT or being in a country like England that gives you a chance to influence policy what you couldn't do if you were elsewhere that's significant so if you have a choice of what country to live in and you want to try it if you're interested making it a better world the best country live in the United States even it's if it's maybe the most destructive country in the world because that's where you can change policy if you live in the don't know where Ecuador let's say you can complain about policy but you can't do much about it so I don't see that as much of a conflict what would a democracy look like well my own feeling is that thinking about the various kinds of technical ways in which representation can take place it don't really carry us very far almost because what really matters is what kind of socio-economic arrangements are there now here we go back to I think you have to start with something more fundamental there plenty of hierarchic relations in society all kinds from family to international affairs I think we should always ask the question wherever there is such a structure is it legitimate and and there's a burden of proof it has to prove its legitimacy it's not automatically self legitimating so wherever there's a structure of authority domination hierarchy patriarchal family International Affairs anything in between the question of legitimacy of the structure arises sometimes you can justify a structure of dominance but very rarely and wherever you can't it ought to simply be dismantled and that's across the spectrum and it can be done in many different ways so say the the feminist revolution of the last roughly generation had a big impact on certain kinds of dominant structures okay that's quite significant the worker owned enterprises set the basis up for a different kind of economic and political structure and they exist as some of them in fact are quite substantial the Mondragon conglomerate in Spain is first of all economically quite successful it's one of the few parts of the Spanish economy that's going to survive this austerity devastating austerity policies but it also is democratic in a way which doesn't show up in method of voting and so on and I think those are kind of the major factors that have to be looked at the kinds you mentioned are important and I don't you could debate exactly how it could be done but I mean I don't see how any complex system can avoid some sort of representative democracy and we just can't have a vote on everything but the representatives should be accountable recallable subject to constant surveillance and control and interchangeable and that does have you know there can be negative aspects to that but I can't see that much can be avoided well thank you I mean you've made an extraordinary contribution as an academic as a litigation to linguistics to philosophy to public life for a very very long time and the fact that you're here today aged 85 is an extraordinary testament to your vitality and your energy and your and the crowd and the number of people that were excited about your visit is really striking it was the Twitter excitement the number of times we were asked for tickets I've never seen so much passion arise when we declare that the tickets are already all gone that was yuria the gates of the castle and that's because everybody wanted to get into here you and we know why so many many thanks on behalf of everybody here [Applause]

Channel: DurhamUniversity

Views: 705,659

Rating: 4.4654632 out of 5

Keywords: Prof Naom Chomsky, Durham Castle Lecture Series, political activist, linguisitics, global policy, american foreign policy

Id: wJtfWZGxnGI

Length: 92min 47sec (5567 seconds)

Published: Wed May 28 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/Boustrophe]

47 comments in and 46 of them are fighting about whether we should even listen to this guy because he might have voted for Obama once. There is one comment about the content of the video.

[u/redditor3000]

The title is somewhat flawed. Chomsky has said that humanity could go extinct or that we'll survive in much smaller numbers than we are now. I'm not sure if he said this would happen before 2100 ether, maybe more like the 21st and 22nd.

You'll find many other climate scientists saying the same thing, so I don't think it's too radical.

[u/redguava]

Stop calling Obama and the Democrats the "lesser evil", they are the more effective evil, Obama has neutered the anti war movement. If Bush/Republicans were doing stuff that Obama has done (drone strikes, NSA spying, prosecution of whistleblowers, assaninating Americans, force feeding prisoners and continuation of Guantanamo, continued occupations, record number of deportations etc etc....) The liberals and progressives would be outraged, but hey Obama says some nice things about gay rights so it's all good, ugh....

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_COCK_]

Starts at 2:47

[u/redguava]

I heard an interview Chomsky did with Bob McChesny on his old show Media Matters, there's no doubt Chomsky's hatred of Bolshevism and the USSR, but when asked what country comes closest to socialism, Chomsky states the USA....

[u/JasonMacker]

As Luxemburg said, the options are socialism or barbarism.

[u/TheSecondAsFarce]

How can you say he is getting more radical? As /u/LumpyLang has noted, he has had no problem with supporting Democrats as the "lesser" of two evils. For example, his support for Kerry in 2004:

Chomsky offers up yet another version of the “lesser-of-two-evils” argument, which for decades has helped keep American workers in thrall to the big business parties and paralyzed in the face of the ruling class assault on their social conditions and living standards.

In an interview given to Britain’s Guardian on March 16, Chomsky remarks that “Kerry is sometimes described as Bush-lite, which is not inaccurate, and in general the political spectrum is pretty narrow in the United States, and elections are mostly bought, as the population knows. But despite the limited differences both domestically and internationally, there are differences. And in this system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes.”

Chomsky expresses admiration for Ralph Nader and Democratic Party congressman Dennis Kucinich, “insofar as they bring up issues and carry out an educational and organisational function.” He acknowledges that the election comes down to a “choice between the two factions of the business party,” but that this “does sometime...make a difference.”

[u/jufnitz]

Noam Chomsky's major role as a political philosopher in mainstream US discourse is to demarcate that the farthest acceptable leftward stance is still grounded in liberalism, idealism, and antiradicalism/anti-Marxism. Getting more bombastic, or getting more loud, or expressing your liberal philosophy in more controversial-sounding terms, does not equate to getting more radical.

[u/[deleted]]

I was a devote chomskyite until I found out what he invests in for his private tax free trust fund. He invests in blue chip defense contractors, big pharma, oil companies and the like. What a disgrace.

For a man of his intellectual stature and authority he should know better than to do something like that. His defense is that he's saving money for his daughter's future but why couldn't he consult with people at MIT about profitable tech sector investments? Surely he could have done better research but obviously he's a sellout..