Original subtitles

[audience applauding]

- It is such a great honor to be here tonight

to make this introduction.

As we're standing here, I was thinking back 14 years ago.

It was 1995.

It was mid-November.

There was a forum on globalization

that was taking place here at Riverside.

And it was there that I heard the announcement

that Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists

had been executed in Nigeria.

Ken Saro-Wiwa, who is the writer-environmentalist

who had dared to take on the nexus

of corporate and military power,

the military dictatorship of Nigeria, and Shell Corporation,

which had crisscrossed his land in the Niger Delta,

Ogoniland, with gas pipelines above the ground

burning off the gas in flares

the size of apartment buildings,

the children of the Niger Delta never knowing a dark night,

and yet not profiting from the drilling

and taking the power out of the Earth

and giving it to the most powerful on Earth,

disempowering the host communities from which it had come.

I had met Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1994, when a Nigerian activist

brought him into the studios of WBAI.

We were doing Wakeup Call that morning

and Bernard White and I sat there as Ken Saro-Wiwa,

who was not one of the scheduled guests that morning,

held forth.

And he told the story of what he was confronting in Nigeria,

saying the world had to know,

and ending by saying, "I am a marked man."

He returned to Nigeria, was imprisoned,

was tried, and he was executed.

Last week, as we sat in the studios of Democracy Now,

we broadcast the voice of Ken from those days on WBAI

and we broadcast his son, Ken Wiwa,

who was announcing that they had just won

a settlement with Shell that took 14 years,

but they would then win $15.5 million for the Wiwa family

and other victims and the people of Ogoniland.

[audience applauding]

We also played the words of Ken Saro-Wiwa's father,

Jim Wiwa, who Jeremy Scahill and I got to meet

in the Niger Delta in Ogoniland

when we visited three years after Ken's death,

when Jim Wiwa said directly to us,

"Shell is responsible for my son's death."

And as we sat there listening to the father,

the son, and the grandson,

I was sitting next to Judith Brown Chomsky;

she was our guest for the hour.

Judith Brown Chomsky was one of the leading attorneys

in this case that led to this landmark settlement.

When I asked Noam tonight

how he would like to be introduced, he said,

"Tell them I'm the brother-in-law of Judith Brown Chomsky."

[audience laughing]

[audience applauding]

Judith is married to Noam's younger brother, David.

Noam was born December 7th, 1928, in Philadelphia.

By the age of 10, he was writing an extended essay

against fascism and about the Spanish Civil War.

[audience laughing]

Don't be discouraged.

[audience laughing]

At 14, he was getting his education, as he tells it,

in the back of the 72nd Street subway station

here in New York.

You go out the front, that's where you go buy newspapers

in the front newspaper stand where people would rush by,

buy their papers and go.

But it was the back, less-populated stand

where the stragglers would be,

where his uncle ran that newspaper stand,

and they would sit and debate and discuss politics.

That's where Noam says he was getting his education.

I hear that they just opened the back again

about four years ago,

the south side of the 72nd Street subway station,

but I understand they removed the newspaper stand.

Maybe they're a little concerned about some young Chomskys

getting educated for the future.

[audience laughing]

Well, within two years, that education clearly got him far,

because, at 16, he was at the University of Pennsylvania,

he went on to the Harvard Society of Fellows,

where he continued his research into linguistics.

By 1953, Chomsky had broken almost entirely

from the field as it existed.

He became a professor at the University of Massachusetts,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955

at the age of 26.

I forgot to say he'd already gotten his Ph.D. again

at the University of Pennsylvania.

And while he broke ground as a world-renowned linguist,

shattering all previous paradigms in linguistics,

in a world I know very little about--

[audience applauding]

He was also taking on the war in Vietnam,

so much so that his lifetime partner, his wife Carol,

went back to school to get her graduate degree

in linguistics so that she could be, if need be,

the breadwinner if Noam was imprisoned.

That's how she described it.

She went on to be a professor

at the Harvard Graduate School of Education of linguistics

and also broke ground on child language acquisition.

Noam and Carol have known each other

since I think he was three

and he only lost Carol a few months ago,

this lifetime partnership a great model for relationships,

his personal life also a model for all of us

of what it means to live a life of integrity.

On Democracy Now, we have interviewed Noam many times

and I think about 2002;

it was about midnight, it was May 20th.

Journalist Allan Nairn and I were in East Timor.

It was a momentous time.

After a quarter of a century of slaughter, of genocide,

the people of East Timor were celebrating their freedom,

those who had survived.

The Indonesian military had killed off

a third of the population.

And I remember that night clearly as Kofi Annan,

then-UN Secretary General, took the stage

as they were handing over the power

from the United Nations to the people of East Timor

and then Xanana Gusmao, the rebel leader of East Timor,

the founding president of East Timor,

ascended to the podium and unfurled the flag

of the Democratic Republic of East Timor.

The light of the fireworks was reflected

in the tear-stained faces of the people of Timor.

They had resisted and they had won,

at an unbelievably high price, but they had won.

We were broadcasting this historic moment

over the airwaves of Pacifica Radio

throughout the United States.

And at that moment, we called Noam,

because it was Noam Chomsky, since 1975,

actually on his birthday, on December 7th,

when Indonesia invaded East Timor,

who never let this story die, in so many of his books,

so much of his writing, so many of his speeches,

often introducing to people this point on a map

so many thousand miles from us,

and he let people know what was happening in your name.

It was Noam who told us about what was happening in Timor

and led us to take us those trips

to try to expose what was happening.

And I bet almost everyone here tonight in this sanctuary

has a story about discovering Noam's writings

or his voice or his words and how it has changed your life.

When I am most affected as I travel the country

are the young soldiers who come up to me.

And when I ask them what made the difference,

why they turned, how they could be so brave and courageous

and resisting war, so often these young men and women

will say, "Someone handed me a book of Noam Chomsky."

[audience applauding]

Arundhati Roy said something wonderful about Noam

in her book, War Talk.

Arundhati Roy, who spoke here in May of 2003.

She has a chapter, The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky,

where she writes, "When I first read Noam Chomsky,

"it occurred to me that his marshaling of evidence,

"the volume of it, the relentlessness of it,

"was a little, how shall I put it, insane.

[audience laughing]

"Even a quarter of the evidence he'd compiled

"would've been enough to convince me.

"I used to wonder why he needed to do so much work.

"But now, I understand that the magnitude

"and intensity of Chomsky's work

"is a barometer of the magnitude, scope, and relentlessness

"of the propaganda machine that he's up against.

"He's like the woodborer who lives

"inside the third rack of my bookshelf.

"Day and night, I hear his jaws crunching through the wood,

"grinding it to fine dust.

"It's as though he disagrees with the literature

"and wants to destroy the very structure on which it rests.

"I call him Chompsky.

[audience laughing]

"Being an American working in America

"writing to convince Americans of his point of view

"must really be like having to tunnel through hard wood.

"Chomsky is one of a small band of individuals

"fighting a whole industry,

"and that makes him not only brilliant, but heroic."

[audience applauding]

His work so prolific,

his personal support for so many so important.

Just this afternoon, Norm Finkelstein was telling me

how he had visited Noam one summer at the beginning,

went away, came back at the end,

and Noam had already written two books.

[audience laughing]

And so he said to a friend, "Noam just finished two books."

And his friend said, "So, I read two books this summer too."

[audience laughing]

He said, "No, but he wrote them."

[audience laughing]

And I think of calling Noam Chomsky in Turkey.

It was February of 2002.

He had not just gone there to speak,

but to stand with a young publisher named Fathi Tas,

who was facing years in prison

for publishing Noam Chomsky's work.

I called Noam to interview him before he went to court,

not knowing what would happen to him as well.

When I rang him up, he answered the phone and he said,

"Amy, do you know what time it is?"

I thought I had calculated correctly.

He said, "It's 4:00 in the morning."

I said, "I can call you back."

He said, "No, I'm up now.

"Let's talk."

But it's that bravery, that courage,

Noam's resistance to the war in Vietnam

and his writing about the wars in Vietnam,

the death squads in Latin America,

what happened to Vietnam and Cambodia,

what is happening today in Israel and Palestine,

his opposition to the wars in Iraq,

his relentlessness that is such an inspiration to us all.

I think--

[audience applauding]

Looking at The Essential Chomsky, edited by Anthony Arnove,

this bookcase that is on the cover

is filled with Noam Chomsky's books.

He's written over a hundred of them.

And it's not just writing,

because when he explodes the lies, he is saving lives,

because the lies take lives.

I don't know who said this quote,

but someone once said,

"I think back on my life at all the times

"I thought I went too far,

"and I realize now I didn't go far enough."

Well, I think Noam Chomsky has clearly gone the distance.

And as we celebrate his 80 years,

I am encouraged by a woman who told me about celebrating

her grandmother's 106th birthday.

And her grandmother stood up at her party and said,

"Ah, to be 100 again."

[audience laughing]

We look forward to hearing Noam Chomsky

for many years to come, beginning with tonight.

Noam Chomsky.

[audience applauding]

- Thanks.

It was really exciting to watch Amy a couple of days ago

when she was interviewing Judy.

It's an amazing achievement.

I won't go into the whole story,

but it took a lot of courage and effort

to win a completely unprecedented case.

I don't think there's ever been a case

of a settlement like that that was, where the evidence was,

which she had in fact gathered in Nigeria,

was so strong that the corporation not only settled,

but even allowed the settlement to be public,

indicating their concern

that they might be exposed in a trial.

Well, let me say a couple of words about the title,

which, as always, is shorthand.

There's too much nuance and variety

to make any sharp distinction between us and them.

And, of course, neither I nor anyone else

can presume to speak for us, but I'll pretend it's possible.

There's also a problem about the word crisis.

Which one do we have in mind?

There are numerous very severe crises.

Many of them will be under discussion here

in a couple of weeks at the United Nations

and their conference

on the world financial and economic crisis.

And these crises are interwoven in very complex ways

which preclude any sharp separation.

But again, I'll pretend otherwise for simplicity.

Well, one way to enter this morass was helpfully provided

by a current issue of the New York Review, dated yesterday.

The front cover headline reads,

"How to Deal with the Crisis,"

and features a symposium of specialists.

And it's worth reading,

but with attention to the definite article, the crisis.

For the West, the phrase "the crisis"

has a clear enough meaning.

It's the financial crisis that hit the rich countries

and therefore is of supreme importance.

But in fact, even for the rich and privileged,

that's by no means the only crisis

or even the most severe of those they face.

And others see the world quite differently.

For example, the newspaper New Nation in Bangladesh,

there we read, "It's very telling that trillions

"have already been spent to patch up

"leading world financial institutions,

"while out of the comparatively small sum

"of $12 billion pledged in Rome earlier this year

"to offset the food crisis,

"only $1 billion has been delivered.

"The hope that at least extreme poverty

"can be eradicated by the end of 2015,

"as stipulated in the UN's Millennium Development Goals,

"seems as unrealistic as ever, not due to lack of resources

"but to a lack of true concern for the world's poor."

They're talking about approximately a billion people

facing starvation, severe malnutrition,

even 30-40 million of them

in the richest country in the world.

That's a real crisis and it's getting much worse.

In this morning's Financial Times, British business press,

it's reported that the World Food Program

just announced that they're cutting food aid and rations

and also closing operations.

The reason is that the donor countries

have been cutting back funding because of the fiscal crunch

and they're slashing contributions.

So, there's a very close connection

between the horrendous food crisis

and poverty crisis and the significant,

but less significant, fiscal crisis.

They're ending up closing down operations

in Rwanda and Uganda, Ethiopia, many others.

They have to 20-25% cut in budget

while food prices are rising and the financial crisis,

the general economic crisis,

is bringing unemployment and cutting back remittances.

That's a major crisis.

We might incidentally remember that when the British landed

in what's now Bangladesh,

they were stunned by its wealth and splendor.

And didn't take long for it to be on its way

to become the very symbol of misery, not by an act of God.

Well, the fate of Bangladesh should remind us

that the terrible food crisis is not just a result

of Western lack of concern.

In large part, it results from very definite

and clear concerns of the global managers,

namely for their own welfare.

It's always well to keep in mind the astute observation

by Adam Smith about policy formation in England.

He recognized that what he called

the principle architects of policy,

in his day the merchants and manufacturers,

make sure that their own interests

are most peculiarly attended to,

however grievous the impact on others,

including the people of England,

but far more so those who were subjected

to what he called the savage injustice of the Europeans

and particularly in conquered India, his own prime concern.

We can easily think of analogs today.

His observation, in fact,

is one of the few solid and enduring principles

of international and domestic affairs.

Well to keep in mind.

And the food crisis is a case in point.

It erupted first and most dramatically

in Haiti in early 2008.

Like Bangladesh, Haiti is a symbol of utter misery.

And like Bangladesh, when the European explorers arrived,

they were stunned because it was

so remarkably rich in resources.

Later, it became the source of much of France's wealth.

I'm not gonna run through the sordid history,

it's worth knowing, but the current food crisis

traces back directly to Woodrow Wilson's invasion of Haiti,

which was murderous and brutal and destructive.

Among Wilson's many crimes

was to dissolve the Haitian Parliament at gunpoint

because it refused to pass

what was called progressive legislation

which would allow US businesses to take over Haitian lands.

Wilson's Marines then ran a free election

in which the legislation was passed by 99.9% of the vote.

That's of the 5% of the population permitted to vote.

All of this comes down to us

as what's called Wilsonian idealism.

Later, USAID instituted programs in Haiti

under the slogan of turning Haiti

into the Taiwan of the Caribbean

by adhering to the sacred principle of comparable advantage.

That is, they should import from the United States,

while working people, mostly women,

slaved under miserable conditions

in US-owned assembly plants.

Haiti's first free election in 1990

threatened these economically rational programs.

The poor majority made the mistake

of entering the political arena

and electing their own candidate,

Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a populist priest.

And Washington instantly adopted

standard operating procedures,

moving at once to undermine the regime.

A couple of months later came the military coup,

instituting a horrible reign of terror

which was backed by Bush, Bush I,

and even more so by Clinton.

By 1994, Clinton decided that the population

was sufficiently intimidated

and he sent US forces to restore the elected president,

that's now called a humanitarian intervention,

but on very strict conditions,

namely that the president had to accept

a very harsh neoliberal regime;

in particular, no protection for the economy.

Haitian rice farmers are quite efficient,

but they can't compete with US agrobusiness

that relies on a huge government subsidy,

thanks to Ronald Reagan's free market enthusiasms.

Well, there's nothing at all surprising

about what followed next.

In 1995, USAID wrote a report pointing out,

and I'm quoting it, "That the export-driven

"trade and investment policy that Washington mandated

"will relentlessly squeeze the domestic rice farmer."

In fact, the neoliberal policies rammed down Haiti's throat

destroyed, dismantled what was left of economic sovereignty,

drove the country into chaos.

That was accelerating by Bush II's

banning of international aid on totally cynical grounds.

In February 2004, the two traditional torturers of Haiti,

France and the United States,

combined to back a military coup

and send President Aristide off to Africa.

The US denies him permission to return to the entire region.

Haiti had, by then, lost the capacity to feed itself,

making it highly vulnerable to food price fluctuation.

That was the immediate cause of the 2008 food crisis,

which led to riots and enormous protests,

but not getting food.

The story's familiar,

in fact quite similar in much of the world.

So, going back to the Bangladesh newspaper,

it's true enough that the food crisis

results from Western lack of concern;

a pittance by our standards

would overcome its worst immediate effects.

But more fundamentally, it results from the dedication

to Adam Smith's principles of business-run state policy.

These are all matters that we too easily evade.

They happen daily, along with the fact

that bailing out banks is not uppermost in the minds

of the billion people now facing starvation,

not forgetting the tens of millions

enduring hunger in the richest country in the world.

Well, also sidelined is an easy way to make

a significant dent in the financial and the food crises.

It's suggested by the publication a couple of days ago

of the authoritative annual report on military spending

by Cypriot and Swedish Peace Research Institute,

the scale of military spending is phenomenal,

regularly increasing, this last year as well,

that the US is responsible for almost as much

as the rest of the world combined,

seven times as much as its nearest rival, China.

No need to waste time commenting.

This distribution of concerns reflects another crisis here,

kind of a cultural crisis; that is,

the tendency to focus on short-term parochial gains.

That's a core element of our socioeconomic institutions

and the ideological support system on which they rest.

One example, now prominent,

is the array of perverse incentives that are devised

for corporate managers to enrich themselves.

For example, what's called the too-big-to-fail

insurance policies that are provided

by the unwitting public,

and deeper ones that are just inherent

in market inefficiencies.

One such inefficiency, and now recognized

to be one of the roots of the financial crisis,

is the underpricing of systemic risk,

a risk that affects the whole system.

So, for example, and that's general.

Like if you and I make a transaction, say you sell me a car,

we may make a good deal for ourselves,

but we don't price into that transaction the cost to others,

and there's a cost.

Pollution, congestion, raising the price of gas,

all sorts of other things, killing people in Nigeria

because we're getting the gas from them.

That doesn't count, we don't count that in.

That's an inherent market inefficiency,

one of the reasons why markets can't work.

And when you turn to the financial institutions,

it can get quite serious.

So, it means that if, say, Goldman Sachs,

if they're managed properly, if they make a risky loan,

they calculate the potential cost to themselves

if the loan goes bad,

but they simply don't calculate the impact

on the whole financial system,

and we now see how severe that can be,

not that it's anything new.

In fact, this inherent deficiency of markets,

this inefficiency of markets, is perfectly well-known.

10 years ago, at the height of the euphoria

about efficient markets, two prominent economists,

John Eatwell and Lance Taylor, they wrote an important book

called Global Finance at Risk in which they spelled out

the consequences of these market inefficiencies,

which we now see, and they outlined means to deal with them.

These proposals were exactly contrary

to the deregulatory rage that was then being carried forward

by the Clinton Administration under the leadership of those

who Obama has now called upon to put Band-Aids

on the disaster that they helped create.

Well, in substantial measure,

the food crisis plaguing much of the South

and the financial crisis of the North have common roots,

namely the shift towards neoliberalism since the 1970s

that brought to an end the post-Second World War

Bretton Woods system that was instituted

by the United States and Britain right after World War II.

It had two architects, John Maynard Keynes of Britain

and Harry Dexter White in the United States,

and they anticipated that its core principles,

which included capital controls and regulated currencies,

they anticipated that these principles

would lead to relatively balanced economic growth

and would also free governments to institute

the social democratic programs, welfare state programs

that had enormous public support around the world.

And to a large extent,

they were vindicated on both counts.

In fact, many economists call the years

that followed until the 1970s the golden age of capitalism.

That golden age led not only to unprecedented

and relatively egalitarian growth,

but also the introduction of welfare state measures.

Keynes and White were perfectly well aware

that free capital movement and speculation

inhibit these options.

Professional economics literature

points out what should be obvious,

that the free flow of capital creates

what is sometimes called a virtual senate

of lenders and investors who carry out

a moment-by-moment referendum on government policies.

And if they find that they're irrational,

meaning they help people instead of profits,

then they vote against them by capital flight,

by attacks on a country, and so on.

So, the democratic governments have a dual constituency:

their own population and the virtual senate,

who typically prevail.

And for the poor, that means regular disaster.

In fact, one of the reasons for the radical difference

between Latin American and East Asia

in the last half-century

is that Latin America didn't control capital flight.

In fact, in general, the rich in Latin America

don't have responsibilities.

Capital flight approximated the crushing debt.

In contrast, during South Korea's remarkable growth period,

capital flight was not only banned

but could bring the death penalty,

one of many factors that led to the surprising divergence.

Latin America has much richer resources.

You'd expect it to be far more advanced than East Asia,

but it had the disadvantage

of being under imperialist wings.

From the 1970s, the golden age faded.

When neoliberal rules were observed,

insofar as they've been observed,

economic performance deteriorated

and social democratic programs

have been substantially weakened.

We see that right here.

The United States partially accepted these rules.

And for the past 30 years,

real wages for the majority of the population

have stagnated.

Up 'til then, they essentially tracked growth.

Work hours have increased, now well beyond Europe.

Benefits, which have always lagged, have declined.

Social indicators, a kind of general measure

of the health of the society,

they also tracked growth until the mid-1970s,

when they began to decline,

reaching the 1960 level by the end of the millennium.

Well, there has been economic growth,

but it's finding its way into very few pockets,

increasingly into the financial industries,

which have grown enormously

while productive industry has significantly declined,

and we're seeing it right now.

And with the decline of productive industry,

of course that means a decline in living standards;

in fact, even opportunities to survive

for much of the workforce.

The economy has also been punctuated by bubbles,

financial crises, and public bailouts.

So, the huge bailout of Citigroup right now is nothing new.

Something quite similar happened

in the early-'80s to its predecessor, Citibank,

thanks to the US taxpayer.

And these results were described

all through this period and explained

by a few really outstanding international economists;

David Felix is one.

But the mythology about efficient markets

and rational choice prevail,

and that's not at all surprising.

These myths were highly beneficial

to very narrow sectors of privilege and power,

what Adam Smith called the principle architects of policy.

That's another very severe institutional

and cultural crisis which persists.

Actually, the phrase "golden age of capitalism"

is a little misleading.

It might more accurately be called state capitalism.

It's worth bearing in mind that the dynamic state sector

was and remains a primary factor

in development and innovation through a variety of measures:

research and development,

procurement, government procurement,

public subsidy, regular bailouts, and other means.

It's particularly true in the United States.

It was done here under a Pentagon cover.

As long as the cutting edge of high-tech industry advanced,

economy was electronics-based.

For that, the Pentagon served as a good cover.

In recent years, if you look at government spending,

it's shifting more towards

the health-oriented institutions of the government.

That's a reflection of the fact

that the cutting edge of the economy

is becoming more biology-based.

That includes computers, the internet, satellites,

most of the rest of the IT revolution

that finally exploded in the late-'90s in a tech bubble,

but also much else;

civilian aircraft, advanced machine tools,

pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and a lot more.

The crucial role of the state in economic development

should be kept in mind when we read, these days,

dire warnings about government intervention

in the financial system,

after private management has once again driven it to ruins,

this time an unusually severe crisis

and one that harms the rich and not just the poor,

so it merits special concern.

It's also worth recalling

that large-scale state intervention

in the economy is nothing new.

On the contrary, it's always been a central factor

in economic development.

It's a matter, I wish I had time to,

there's no time to review it here,

but the history, which I'll skip, is quite instructive.

These state-guided modes of economic development

require considerable deceit in a society

where the public can't be controlled by force,

so people can't be told that the advanced economy

relies heavily on the principle

that the population pays the cost and takes the risks,

and that the profit is eventually privatized,

and eventual can be a long time, sometimes decades,

as in the case of computers and the internet, for example.

After World War II, Americans were told

that their taxes were going to support defense

against monsters about to overcome us.

That's why it was under Pentagon cover.

So, for example, in the mid-'60s,

when LBJ warned that there are only 150 million of us

and there are three billion of them

and if might makes right,

they're gonna sweep over us and take what we have,

so we have to stop 'em in Vietnam.

And if that sounds familiar, it's because it is.

For those who are concerned to understand the realities

of the whole Cold War system of controlling the public,

there's a very obvious moment to inspect carefully.

That's just 20 years ago,

at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall

and what followed later.

Now, the celebration of the 20th anniversary this November,

it's already begun with ample coverage,

and it's surely gonna increase as the date approaches.

But the very revealing policy implications of what followed

have been ignored, as in the past

and probably this coming November, except on Democracy now.

[audience laughing]

What happened after the Berlin Wall fell?

Well, the Bush I Administration reacted immediately.

It issued a new national security strategy

and a budget proposal which laid out

what our new course will be after the collapse

of what Kennedy called the monolithic

and ruthless conspiracy to conquer the world,

Reagan's Evil Empire, was gone.

And now that it was gone,

the whole framework of propaganda collapsed.

So, what was the response of the planners

in the Bush Administration?

Very straightforward.

In brief, everything will go exactly as before,

but with new pretexts.

So, we still need same huge military system,

but for a new reason,

literally because of the technological sophistication

of Third World powers.

And nobody laughed.

[audience laughing]

We have to maintain what they called

the defense industrial base.

It's a standard euphemism for high-tech industry,

the system whereby the public pays the cost

and takes the risks and high-tech industry gets the profits.

We also have to, they said,

"Have to maintain intervention forces,

"directed mostly at the Middle East."

And then comes this interesting phrase.

"Directed at the Middle East,

"where the threats to our interests

"that required military intervention

"could not be laid at the Kremlin's door."

In other words, "Sorry, folks, we've been lying to you

"for 50 years, but now the clouds have lifted,

"so you can see if you choose to," and few chose to.

Actually, the fate of NATO is very instructive

and highly pertinent right now.

Prior to Gorbachev, NATO's announced purpose

was to deter a Russian invasion of Europe.

That was often a little hard to take seriously;

for example, in 1945.

In May 1945, Winston Churchill ordered war plans

to be drawn up for what they called Operation: Unthinkable.

It was aimed at, "The elimination of Russia."

The plans, which were declassified 10 years ago,

I'll quote it, called for a surprise attack

by hundreds of thousands of British and American troops,

joined by 100,000 rearmed German soldiers,

while the RAF, British air force, would attack Soviet cities

from bases in Northern Europe.

And pretty soon, nuclear weapons were added to the mix.

All of this was declassified 10 years ago.

Well, the official stand also wasn't very easy to take

about 10 years later, when Khrushchev took over in Russia

and he very soon proposed a very sharp mutual reduction

in offensive military weaponry.

He understood very well that the much weaker Soviet economy

couldn't possibly sustain an arms race

with the United States and still hope to develop.

Well, when the US dismissed the offer, as it did,

he carried out the reduction unilaterally.

And Kennedy did react to that.

He reacted with a very sharp increase in military spending,

which the Russian military later tried to match.

That's tanking the economy, as Khrushchev had anticipated.

Actually, that was the crucial moment

in the Soviet collapse; its economy stagnated since then.

Well, whatever one thinks of the defensive pretext for NATO,

at least it had some credibility.

But what happens when the Soviet Union is gone

and the pretext disappears?

Well, it got more extreme.

Gorbachev made an astonishing concession

and he permitted a unified Germany

to join a hostile military alliance

run by the global superpower.

That is astonishing in the light of history;

Germany alone had practically destroyed Russia

twice in the century.

Now, there was a quid pro quo.

This is Bush I and James Baker.

It had been thought, up until a couple of months ago,

that Bush and Baker promised not to expand NATO

to the Eastern European former Soviet satellites.

But the first careful study of the original documents

just came out by Mark Kramer, Cold War historian.

He believes that he's refuting charges of US duplicity.

But in fact what he shows is that it's much more cynical

than what had been assumed.

It turns out that Bush and Baker promised Gorbachev

that NATO wouldn't even fully extend to East Germany.

Quote them, they told Gorbachev no NATO forces

would ever be deployed on the territory

of the former German GDR or East Germany.

NATO's jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward.

They also assured Gorbachev

that NATO would be transforming itself

into a more political organization.

Well, there's no need to comment on that promise,

but what follows tells us a lot more

about the Cold War and its aftermath.

Right after that, Clinton came into office.

And one of the first things he did

was to begin the expansion of NATO to the east,

in radical violation of the commitment.

The process accelerated

with Bush's general aggressive militarism.

These are severe security threat to Russia.

It naturally reacted by developing

more offensive military capacity.

All of this is a serious threat to human survival.

Obama's national security advisor, James Jones,

he has a still more expansive conception.

Now, he calls for expanding NATO

further to the east and the south,

becoming in effect a US-run global intervention force,

as it is today in Afghanistan.

The Secretary General of NATO,

Dutch officer de Hoop Scheffer,

he informed a NATO meeting that NATO troops

have to guard pipelines that transport oil

and gas that's directed for the West.

And more generally, NATO has to protect sea routes

used by tankers and other crucial infrastructure

of the global energy system.

All of that just opens up a new phase

of Western imperial domination.

Actually, the polite term for it is

"bringing stability and peace."

That's what's happening now.

In AfPak, Afghanistan and Pakistan,

as the region's now called,

Obama is building enormous new embassies

and other facilities on the model

of the city within a city in Baghdad.

These are like no embassies anywhere in the world

and they are signs of an intention

to be there for a long time.

Right now in Iraq, something interesting's happening.

Obama's pressing the Iraqi government

not to permit the referendum

that's required by the status of forces agreement.

That's an agreement that was forced down the throats

of the Bush Administration,

which had to formally renounce its primary war aims

in the face of massive Iraqi resistance.

Washington's current objection to the referendum

was explained two days ago

by New York Times correspondent Alissa Rubin.

"Obama fears that the Iraqi population might reject

"the provision that delays US troop withdrawal to 2012.

"They might insist on immediate departure of US forces."

An Iraqi analyst in London--

[audience applauding]

The head of the Iraqi Foundation

for Democracy and Development in London

is quite pro-Western.

He explained, this is an election year for Iraq.

No one wants to appear that he's appeasing the Americans.

Anti-Americanism is popular now in Iraq,

as indeed it's been throughout in the facts

that are familiar to anyone

who's read the Western-run polls,

including Pentagon-run polls.

Well, the current US efforts to prevent

the legally-required referendum are extremely revealing.

Sometimes they're called democracy promotion.

Well, while Obama's signaling very clearly

his intention to establish a firm

and large-scale presence in the region,

he's also, as you know, sharply escalating the AfPak war,

following Petraeus's strategy

to drive the Taliban into Pakistan,

with potential awful results

for this extremely dangerous and unstable state,

which is facing insurrections throughout its territory.

These are the most extreme in the tribal areas,

which cross the AfPak border.

It's an artificial line imposed

by the British called the Durand Line

and the same people live on both sides of it,

Pashtun tribes, and they've never accepted it.

In fact, the Afghanistan government never accepted it either

as long as it was independent.

Well, that's where most of the fighting's going on.

One of the leading specialists on the region,

Selig Harrison, he recently wrote

that the outcome of Washington's current policies,

Obama's policies, might well be what he calls

an Islamic Pashtunistan,

Pashtun-based separate kind of quasi-state.

The Pakistani ambassador had warned

that if the Taliban and Pashtun nationalism emerge,

we've had it, and we're on the verge of that.

The prospects become still more ominous

with the escalation of drone attacks

that embitter the population with their huge civilian toll

and, more recently, just a couple of days ago in fact,

with the unprecedented authority

that has just been granted to General Stanley McChrystal.

He's taking charge.

He's a kind of a wild-eyed special forces assassin,

has been put in charge of heading the operations.

Petraeus's own counterinsurgency advisor in Iraq,

General David Kilcullen, colonel, I think,

he describes the Obama-Petraeus-McChrystal policies

as a fundamental strategic error

which may lead to the collapse of Pakistan.

He says it's a calamity that would dwarf

all other current issues, given the country's size,

strategic location, and nuclear stockpile.

It's also not too encouraging that Pakistan and India

are now rapidly expanding their nuclear arsenals.

Pakistan's nuclear arsenals were developed

with Reagan's crucial aid

and India's nuclear weapons program

just got a major shot in the arm

with the recent US-India nuclear agreement.

It's also a sharp blow to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The two counties have twice come close

to nuclear war over Kashmir and they're also engaged

in a kind of proxy war in Afghanistan.

These developments pose a very serious threat

to world peace, even to human survival.

Well, a lot to say about this crisis, but no time here.

Coming back home, whether the deceit here

about the monstrous enemy was sincere or not,

Johnson's case might well have been sincere,

suppose that say 50 years ago,

Americans had been given a choice

of directing their tax money

to development of information technology

so that their grandchildren could have iPods

and the internet or else putting the same funds

into developing a livable

and sustainable socioeconomic order.

Well, they might very well have made the latter choice.

But they had no choice, and that's standard.

There's a striking gap between public opinion

and public policy on a host of major issues,

domestic and foreign, and, at least in my judgment,

public opinion is often a lot more sane.

It also tends to be fairly consistent over time,

which is pretty astonishing,

because public concerns and aspirations,

if they're even mentioned, are marginalized and ridiculed.

It's one very significant feature

of the yawning, a democratic deficit,

as we call it in other countries.

That's the failure of formal democratic institutions

to function properly, and that's no trivial matter.

Arundhati Roy has a book soon to come out

in which she asks whether the evolution

of former democracy in India and the United States,

in fact, not only there, her words,

"Might turn out to be the endgame of the human race,"

and that's not an idle question.

It should be recalled that the American republic

was founded on the principle

that there should be a democratic deficit.

James Madison, the main framer of the constitutional order,

his view was that power should be in the hands

of the wealth of the nation,

the more responsible set of men,

who have sympathy for property owners and their rights.

And Madison sought to construct a system of government

that would, in his words,

protect the minority of the opulent from the majority.

That's why the constitutional system that he framed

did not have coequal branches.

The executive was supposed to be an administrator

and the legislature was supposed to be dominant,

but not the House of Representatives, rather the Senate,

where power was vested

and protected from the public in many ways.

That's where the wealth of the nation would be concentrated.

This is not overlooked by historians.

Gordon Wood, for example,

summarizes the thoughts of the founders,

saying that the Constitution was intrinsically

an aristocratic document designed to check

the Democrat tendencies of the period,

delivering power to a better sort of people

and excluding those who were not rich, well-born,

or prominent from exercising political power.

All through American history,

there's been a constant struggle

over this constrained version of democracy,

and popular struggles have won a great many rights.

Nevertheless, concentrated power and privilege

clings to the Madisonian conception.

It changes form as circumstances change.

By World War II, there was a significant change.

Business leaders and elite intellectuals

recognized that the public had won enough rights

so that they can't be controlled by force,

so it would be necessary to do something else,

namely to turn to control of attitudes and opinions.

These were the days when the huge public relations industry

emerged in the freest countries in the world,

Britain and the United States,

where the problem was most severe.

The public relations industry was devoted

to what Walter Lippmann approvingly called

a new art in the practice of democracy,

the manufacture of consent.

It's called the engineering of consent

in the phrase of his contemporary, Edward Bernays,

one of the founders of the PR industry.

Both Lippmann and Bernays had taken part

in Woodrow Wilson's state propaganda agency,

which, Committee on Public Information,

that was its Orwellian term,

it was created to try to drive a pacifist population

to jingoist fanaticism and hatred of all things German.

And it succeeded, brilliantly, in fact.

And it was hoped that the same techniques could ensure

that what are called the intelligent minorities would rule

and that the general public,

who Lippmann called ignorant and meddlesome outsiders,

would serve their function as spectators, not participants.

These are all very highly respected

progressive essays on democracy

and by a man who was the leading public intellectual

of the 20th century

and was a Wilson-Roosevelt-Kennedy progressive,

as Bernays was.

And they capture the thinking of progressive opinion.

So, President Wilson, he held that an elite of gentlemen

with elevated ideals must be empowered

to preserve stability and righteousness,

essentially the perspective of the founding fathers.

In more recent years,

the gentlemen are transmuted into the technocratic elite

and the action intellectuals of Camelot,

Straussian, neocons, other configurations.

But throughout,

one or another variant of the doctrine prevails.

The quote from Samuel Huntington

that you heard is an example.

And on a more hopeful note,

a popular struggle continues to clip its wings,

and quite impressively in the wake of 1960s activism,

which had quite a substantial effect

on civilizing the society and raised the prospects

for further progress to a much higher plane.

It's one of the reasons why it's called the time of troubles

and bitterly denounced: too much of a civilizing effect.

Well, what the West sees as the crisis,

namely the financial crisis,

that'll presumably be patched up somehow or other,

but leaving the institutions that created it

pretty much in place.

A couple of days ago, the Treasury Department,

as you read, permitted early TARP repayments,

which actually reduce capacity,

it was touted as giving money back to the public.

In fact, as was pointed out right away,

it reduces the capacity of banks to lend,

although it does allow them to pour money

into the pockets of the few who matter.

And the mood on Wall Street was captured

by two Bank of New York employees

who predicted that their lives and pay would improve,

even if the broader economy did not.

That's paraphrasing Adam Smith's observation

that the architects of policy protect their own interests,

no matter how grievous the effect on others,

and they are the architects of policy.

Obama made sure to staff his economic advisors

from that sector,

which has been pointed out too.

The former chief economist of the IMF, Simon Johnson,

pointed out that the Obama Administration

is just in the pocket of Wall Street.

As he put it, "Throughout the crisis,

"the government has taken extreme care

"not to upset the interests of the financial institutions

"or to question the basic outlines

"of the system that got us here

"and the elite business interests

"who played a central role in creating the crisis

"with the implicit backing of the government.

"They're still there

"and they're now using their influence

"to prevent precisely the set of reforms that are needed,

"and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive."

He says, "The government seems helpless

"or unwilling to act against them, which is no surprise,

"considering who constitutes and who backs the government."

Well, there's a far more severe crisis,

even for the rich and powerful.

It happens to be discussed in the same issue

of the New York Review that I mentioned,

article by Bill McKibben.

He's been warning for years

about the dire impact of global warming.

His current article, worth reading,

that relies on the British Stern Report,

which is sorta the gold standard now.

On this basis, he concludes, not unrealistically,

that 2009 may well turn out to be the decisive year

in the human relationship with our home planet.

The reason is that there's a conference in December

in Copenhagen which is supposed to set up

a new global accord on global warming,

and he says it'll tell us whether or not

our political systems are up to the unprecedented challenge

that climate change represents.

Now, he thinks that the signals are mixed.

To me, that seems kind of optimistic,

unless there's really a massive public campaign

to overcome the insistence of the managers

of the state corporate sector

on privileging short-term gain for the few

over the hope that their grandchildren

might have a decent future.

Well the picture could be a lot more grim

even than the Stern Report predicts, and that's grim enough.

A couple days ago, a group of MIT scientists

released the results of what they described

as the most comprehensive modeling yet carried out

on the likelihood of how much hotter

the Earth's climate will get in this century,

which shows that without rapid and massive action,

the problem will be about twice as severe

as previously estimated a couple years ago.

And it could be even worse than that

because their model does not fully incorporate

positive feedbacks that can occur.

For example, the increased temperature

that is causing melting of permafrost in the arctic regions,

which is gonna release huge amounts of methane.

That's worse than CO2.

The leader of the project says there's no way

the world can or should take these risks

and he says the least-cost option to lower the risk

is to start now and steadily transform

the global energy system over the coming decades

to low or zero greenhouse-gas-emitting technologies,

and there's very little sign of that.

Well, furthermore, while new technologies are essential,

the problems go well beyond that.

In fact, they go beyond the current technical debates

about just how to work out cap-and-trade devices

being discussed in Congress.

We have to face something much more far-reaching.

We have to face up to the need to reverse

the huge state-corporate and social engineering projects

of the post-Second World War period.

We very consciously--

[audience applauding]

And they very consciously promoted an energy-wasting

and environmentally destructive fossil fuel economy.

It didn't happen by accident.

That the whole massive project of suburbanization,

then destruction, and later gentrification of inner cities.

The state-corporate program began with a conspiracy

by General Motors, Firestone Rubber,

Standard Oil of California to buy up

and destroy efficient electric transportation systems

in Los Angeles and dozens of other cities.

They were actually convicted of criminal conspiracy

and given a tap on the wrist, like a $5,000 fine.

The federal government then took over.

It relocated infrastructure

and capital stock to suburban areas

and also created a huge interstate highway system

under the usual pretext of defense.

Railroads were displaced

by government-financed motor and air transport.

The public played almost no role, apart from choosing within

the narrowly-structured framework of options

that are designed by state-corporate managers.

They are supported by vast campaigns

to fabricate consumers with created wants,

borrowing Veblen's terms.

One result is the atomization of the society

and the entrapment of isolated individuals with huge debts.

These efforts grew outta the recognition

that I mentioned a century ago,

that democratic achievements have to be curtailed

by shaping attitudes and beliefs;

as the business press put it,

directing people to superficial things of life,

like fashionable consumption.

All of that's necessary to ensure that the opulent minority

are protected from ignorant and meddlesome outsiders,

namely the population.

Let me just add a personal note on that.

I came down here this afternoon by the Acela;

you know, the jewel in the crown

of new high-speed railroad technology.

The first time I came from Boston to New York

was 60 years ago, and there was improvement since then.

It was five minutes faster today than it was 60 years ago.

[audience laughing]

[audience applauding]

While state-corporate power

was vigorously promoting privatization of life

and maximal waste of energy,

it was also undermining the efficient choices

that the market doesn't and can't provide.

That's another highly destructive

built-in market inefficiency.

So, to put it simply,

if I wanna get home from work in the evening,

the market does allow me a choice

between, say, a Ford and a Toyota,

but it doesn't allow me a choice between a car and a subway,

which would be much more inefficient.

And maybe everybody wants it,

but the market doesn't allow that choice.

That's a social decision.

And in a democratic society,

it would be a decision of an organized public,

but that's just what the elite attack

on democracy seeks to undermine.

Now, these consequences are right before our eyes

in ways that are sometimes surreal.

A couple of weeks ago,

the Wall Street Journal had an article

reporting that the US transportation chief is in Spain.

He's meeting with high-speed rail suppliers.

Europe's engineering and rail companies

are lining up for some potentially lucrative US contracts

for high-speed rail projects.

At stake is $13 billion in stimulus funds

that the Obama Administration is allocating

to upgrade existing rail lines and build new ones

that would one day rival Europe's.

So, think what's happening.

Spain and other European countries

are hoping to get US taxpayer funding

for high-speed rail and related infrastructure.

And at the very same time, Washington is busy dismantling

leading sectors of US industry

and ruining the lives of workers and communities

who could easily do it themselves.

It's pretty hard to conjure up a more damning indictment

of the economic system that's been constructed

by state-corporate managers.

Surely, the auto industry could be reconstructed

to produce what the country needs

using its highly-skilled workforce.

[audience applauding]

But that's not even on the agenda.

That's not even being discussed.

Rather, we'll go to Spain

and we'll give 'em taxpayer money for them to do it

while we destroy the capacity to do it here.

It's been done before.

So, during World War II,

it was kind of a semi-command economy,

government-organized economy.

That's what happened.

Industry was reconstructed

for the purposes of war, dramatically.

It not only ended the Depression,

but it initiated the most spectacular period of growth

in economic history.

In four years, US industrial production

just about quadrupled as the economy was retooled for war,

and that laid the basis for the golden age that followed.

Well, warnings about the purposeful destruction

of US productive capacity have been familiar for decades,

maybe most prominently by the late Seymour Melman,

who many of us knew well.

Melman was also one of those who pointed the way

to a sensible way to reverse the process.

This state-corporate leadership, of course,

has other commitments, but there's no reason for passivity

on the part of the public, the so-called stakeholders,

workers and community.

I mean, with enough popular support,

they could just take over the plants

and carry out the task

of restricted construction themselves.

[audience applauding]

It's not a very exotic proposal.

One of the standard texts on corporations

in the economics literature points out

that nowhere is it written in stone

that the short-term interests

of corporate shareholders in the United States

deserve a higher priority

than all other corporate stakeholders,

workers and community.

That's a state-corporate decision.

That has nothing to do with economic theory.

It's also important to remind outselves

that the notion of workers' control

is as American as apple pie.

[audience applauding]

It's kinda been suppressed, but it's there.

In the early days of the Industrial Revolution

in New England, working people just took it for granted

that those who work in the mills should own them.

And they also regarded wage labor as different from slavery

only in that it was temporary, also Abraham Lincoln's view.

There have been immense efforts

to drive these thoughts out of people's heads

to win what the business world calls

the everlasting battle for the minds of men.

Now, on the surface, they may appear to have succeeded,

but I don't think you have to dig too deeply

to find out that they're latent and they can be revived,

and there have been some important concrete efforts.

One of them was undertaken 30 years ago in Youngstown, Ohio,

where US Steel was going to shut down

a major facility that was at the heart of this steel town.

And there were substantial protests

by the workforce and by the community.

Then there was an effort led by Staughton Lynd

to bring to the courts the principle

that stakeholders should have the highest priority.

Well, the effort failed that time,

but with enough popular support it could succeed.

And right now is a propitious time to revive such efforts,

although it'd be necessary and we have to do this

to overcome the effects of this concentrated campaign

to drive our own history and culture out of our minds.

There was a very dramatic illustration

of the success of this campaign just a few months ago.

In February, President Obama decided to show

his solidarity with working people.

He went to Illinois to give a talk at a factory.

Now, the factory he chose was the Caterpillar Corporation.

Now, that was over the strong objections of church groups,

peace groups, human rights groups,

who were protesting Caterpillar's role

in providing what amounted to weapons of mass destruction

in the Israeli occupied territories.

Apparently forgotten, however, was something else.

In the 1980s, after Reagan had dismantled

the air traffic controllers union,

Caterpillar managers decided to rescind their labor contract

with the United Auto Workers and to destroy the union

by bringing in scabs to break a strike.

That was the first time that had happened in generations.

Now, that practice is illegal in other industrial countries,

apart from South Africa at the time.

Not now.

No, the United States is in splendid isolation,

as far as I'm aware.

Well, at that time, Obama was a civil rights lawyer

in Chicago and he certainly read the Chicago Tribune,

which ran quite a good

and very careful study of these events.

They reported that the union was stunned

to find that unemployed workers

crossed the picket line with no remorse,

while Caterpillar workers found little moral support

in their community.

This is one of the many communities

where the union had lifted

the standard of living for entire communities.

Wiping out these memories is another victory

in the relentless campaign

to destroy workers' rights and democracy,

which is constantly waged

by the highly class-conscious business classes.

Now, the union leadership had refused to understand.

It was only in 1978 that UAW President Doug Fraser

recognized what was happening

and criticized the leaders of the business community,

I'm quoting him, for waging a one-sided class war

in this country, a war against working people,

the unemployed, the poor, the minorities,

the very young and the very old,

and even many in the middle class of our society,

and for having broken and discarded

the fragile unwritten compact previously existing

during a period of growth and progress.

That was 1979.

And, in fact, placing one's faith

in a compact with owners and managers is a suicide pact.

The UAW's discovering that right now,

as the state-corporate leadership proceeds to eliminate

the hard-fought gains of working people

while dismantling the productive core of the economy

and sending the transportation secretary to Spain

to get them to do what American workers could do,

at taxpayer expense, of course.

Well, that's only a fragment of what's underway

and it highlights the importance

of short- and long-term strategies

to build and part-resurrect the foundations

of a functioning democratic society.

One short-term goal is to revive

a strong independent labor movement.

In its heyday, it was a critical base

for advancing democracy and human and civil rights.

It's a primary reason why it's been subjected

to such unremitting attack in policy and propaganda.

An immediate goal right now is to pressure Congress

to permit organizing rights,

the Employer Free Choice Act legislation that was--

[audience applauding]

That was promised, but now seems to be languishing.

And a longer-term goal is to win the educational

and cultural battle that's been waged with such bitterness

in the one-sided class war

that the UAW president perceived far too late.

That means tearing apart an enormous edifice

of delusions about markets, free trade,

and democracy that's been assiduously constructed

over many years and to overcome the marginalization

and atomization of the public.

Now, of all the crises that afflict us,

I think, my own feeling is that

this growing democratic deficit may be the most severe.

Unless its reversed,

Arundhati Roy's forecast might prove accurate,

and not in the distant future.

The conversion of democracy to a performance

in which the public are only spectators

might well lead inexorably to what she calls

the endgame for the human race.

Thanks.

[audience applauding]