Chomsky on Democracy Now, November, 2018: Full Playlist

All parts already posted on this blog, but I've taken them down to declutter now that the whole interview is up. Here's the full playlist. And as a public service, here's the full transcript from all five parts in order:

AMY GOODMAN: As President Trump escalates his attacks and threats against the Central American migrant caravans making their way to the U.S.-Mexico border, the Trump administration unveiled new sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba Thursday. National security adviser John Bolton declared Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua to be part of a “troika of tyranny” and a “triangle of terror.” Bolton was speaking in Miami, Florida.

JOHN BOLTON: We will no longer appease dictators and despots near our shores. We will not reward firing squads, torturers and murderers. We will champion the independence and liberty of our neighbors. And this president and his entire administration will stand with the freedom fighters. The troika of tyranny in this hemisphere—Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua—has finally met its match.

AMY GOODMAN: As John Bolton spoke in Miami on Thursday, Democracy Now!'s Nermeen Shaikh and I spoke with the world-renowned professor, linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky. He joined us from Tucson, Arizona, where he now teaches at the University of Arizona. Noam Chomsky is also institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he's taught for more than 50 years. His recent books include Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy, Who Rules the World? and Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power.

I began by asking Professor Chomsky to respond to NSA, national security adviser, John Bolton’s remarks on Latin America.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, that, of course, immediately brings to mind the “axis of evil” speech of George Bush back in 2002, which was the precursor, laying the groundwork, for the invasion of Iraq, the worst crime of this century, with horrendous consequences for Iraq, eliciting ethnic conflicts that are tearing the region apart—a major atrocity. John Bolton was behind that. And his new troika—I doubt that the U.S. will dare to do something similar, but that’s what it brings to mind. 

It’s kind of interesting to see this hysterical raving alongside of another astonishing propaganda campaign that Bolton and his colleagues are carrying out with regard to the caravan of poor and miserable people fleeing from severe oppression, violence, terror, extreme poverty from three countries: Honduras—mainly Honduras, secondarily Guatemala, thirdly El Salvador—not Nicaragua, incidentally—three countries that have been under harsh U.S. domination, way back, but particularly since the 1980s, when Reagan’s terror wars devastated particularly El Salvador and Guatemala, secondarily Honduras. Nicaragua was attacked by Reagan, of course, but Nicaragua was the one country which had an army to defend the population. In the other countries, the army were the state terrorists, backed by the United States.

The most extreme source of migrants right now is Honduras. Why Honduras? Well, it was always bitterly oppressed. But in 2009, Honduras had a mildly reformist president, Mel Zelaya. The Honduran powerful, rich elite couldn’t tolerate that. A military coup took place, expelled him from the country. It was harshly condemned all through the hemisphere, with one notable exception: the United States. The Obama administration refused to call it a military coup, because if they had, they would have been compelled by law to withdraw military funding from the military regime, which was imposing a regime of brutal terror. Honduras became the murder capital of the world. A fraudulent election took place under the military junta—again, harshly condemned all over the hemisphere, most of the world, but not by the United States. The Obama administration praised Honduras for carrying out an election, moving towards democracy and so on. Now people are fleeing from the misery and horrors for which we are responsible.

And you have this incredible charade taking place, which the world is looking at with utter astonishment: Poor, miserable people, families, mothers, children, fleeing from terror and repression, for which we are responsible, and in reaction, they’re sending thousands of troops to the border. The troops being sent to the border outnumber the children who are fleeing. And with a remarkable PR campaign, they’re frightening much of the country into believing that we’re just on the verge of an invasion by, you know, Middle Eastern terrorists funded by George Soros, so on and so forth.

I mean, it’s all kind of reminiscent of something that happened 30 years ago. You may recall, in 1985, Ronald Reagan strapped on his cowboy boots and called—got in front of television, called a national emergency, because the Nicaraguan army was two days’ march from Harlingen, Texas, just about to overwhelm and destroy us. And it worked.

I mean, this spectacle is almost indescribable. Even apart from noticing where they’re coming from, the countries that we have crucially been involved in destroying, it’s—the ability to carry this off repeatedly is quite an amazing commentary on much of the popular culture.

But the troika, just like the “axis of evil,” are those who just don’t obey U.S. orders. Colombia, for example, has the worst human rights record in the hemisphere for years, but they’re not part of the troika of tyranny.

All of this rings very familiar bells. It’s a long—it’s been a long-standing element of the U.S. propaganda system on the—mostly on the far right, but not only, which goes way back and which is a kind of pathological feature of the dominant political culture that should be understood, analyzed and dismantled.

AMY GOODMAN: World-renowned professor, linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky. When we come back, he’ll share his reaction to the Pittsburgh massacre in the synagogue. This is Democracy Now! Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. The nation is continuing to grieve the 11 Jewish worshipers who were gunned down at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh Saturday in what’s being described as the worst anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history. Funerals were held Thursday for three more victims of the shooting: husband and wife Sylvan and Bernice Simon, and Richard Gottfried.

Robert Bowers, who’s accused of the mass shooting, pleaded not guilty Thursday. He’s charged with 44 counts—including murder and hate crimes—over 30 of which could be subject to the death penalty. Bowers has a history of posting anti-Semitic and xenophobic content and was posting on the far-right social media site Gab until just before the shooting. He referred to the migrant caravan as an “invasion,” repeating the words that President Trump uses.

We continue our conversation now with Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned professor, linguist and dissident. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—Chomsky was. I asked him about the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh and other recent right-wing attacks.

NOAM CHOMSKY: When I was a child, the threat that fascism might take over much of the world was not remote. That’s much worse than what we’re facing now. My own locality happened to be very anti-Semitic. We were the only Jewish family in a Irish—mostly Irish and German Catholic neighborhood, much of which was pro-Nazi, so I could see it better on the ground.

What we’re now seeing is a revival of hate, anger, fear, much of it encouraged by the rhetorical excesses of the leadership, which are stirring up passions and terror, even the ludicrous claims about the Nicaraguan army ready to invade us—Ronald Reagan—the caravan of miserable people planning to kill us all. All of these things, plus, you know, praising somebody who body-slammed a reporter, one thing after another—all of this raises the level of anger and fear, which has roots.

The roots lie in what has happened to the general population over the past 40 years. People really have faced significant distress. An astonishing fact about the United States is that life expectancy is actually declining. That doesn’t happen in developed societies, apart from, you know, major war or huge famine. But it’s happening because of social distress, and not necessarily impoverishment. The people who are demonstrating this fear and resentment may be even moderately affluent, but what they see is they’re stagnating. In the past, there was—you had this dream: You worked hard, you could get ahead, your children would be a little better. Now it stopped. It stopped for the last 40 years as a result of very specific socio and economic policies, which have been designed so that they sharply concentrate wealth, they enhance corporate power, that has immediate effects on the political system in perfectly obvious ways, even to the point where lobbyists literally write legislation. This onslaught has literally cast a bunch of the population aside. They’re stagnating. They are not moving forward. They see no prospects. And they’re bitter and angry about it.

And this anger and bitterness can take pathological forms. It could take very constructive forms. It could lead to popular organized movements, which would dedicate themselves to overcoming these blows against decent human existence, which certainly can be done. The groundwork for that has been severely undermined, for example, by the destruction—careful, planned destruction—of labor unions, the main force, historically, for leading the way towards more progressive, humane policies. All of these are a package. They’ve all gone together for 40 years—there’s precursors, of course—and it has led to a situation where you get an outburst of what Gramsci once called morbid symptoms, pathological developments, of the kind that you mentioned, growing out of a soil that is rich in incitement to such things happening.

AMY GOODMAN: So, and then, if you could talk about specifically the targeting of the Jewish worshipers, I mean, and the clear connection that the shooter made between this temple and HIAS, what’s formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the group that has helped to resettle refugees of any religion for well over a hundred years? And he repeated words that Trump has begun using more and more about, you know, they’re helping the “invaders” come in. If you could respond specifically to that?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I think it’s pretty clear that he’s whipping up terror about invasions, people pouring across the border to plan to kill us all, to destroy our civilization. You take people who are already somewhat disturbed and living under harsh conditions, this can incite them to acts of extreme violence against targets like the Jewish temple.

All the anti-Semitic tropes are pointing in that direction, but most—also against Afro-Americans, immigrants, any vulnerable population or population that’s easy to target for lots of cultural and historical reasons, all this amplified by the loud speaker up in the White House and his minions, who are doing what they can to terrorize the population, create the conditions under which you can get something like the attack on the synagogue.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I wanted to turn, then, to a clip of the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, who was interviewed by Ayman Mohyeldin on MSNBC on Sunday, so it was soon after the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. Dermer was asked if Trump’s rhetoric is in part to blame for the massacre.

RON DERMER: I see a lot of bad people, on both sides, who attack Jews. This is not the first time that a Jewish community has been attacked. It is the worst anti-Semitic attack in, oh, 200 years in the United States, that you have 11 dead.

AMY GOODMAN: Dermer said no world leader had made stronger statements against anti-Semitism than Trump. And then he went on to blame both sides.

RON DERMER: To simply say that this is because of one person or it only comes on one side is to not understand the history of anti-Semitism or the reality of anti-Semitism. One of the big forces in college campuses today is anti-Semitism. And those anti-Semites are usually not neo-Nazis on college campuses. They’re coming from the radical left.

AMY GOODMAN: This is right after the white supremacist attack on the synagogue, and the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. is now injecting, saying this comes from both sides. If you could respond to this? Interestingly, two days later, when Trump and his family went to Pittsburgh, the only—and this is pointed out in The New York Times—the only public official standing there to greet him was Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer. People like the Pittsburgh mayor and the others said this was not the time to come.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I think it’s quite easy to understand. There is an alliance of reactionary repressive states developing under the U.S. aegis. Israel is a leading member of it. Saudi Arabia is another, one of the most brutal, regressive, harsh states in the world; United Arab Emirates; Egypt under the harsh, brutal dictatorship; the United States; Israel.

And the United States, of course, very—especially under this—the alignment goes way back, but the Trump administration has gone way out of its way to lend support to Israeli crimes, Israeli expansion. And the Israeli right wing, of course, which is increasingly dominant, is delighted. So, the fact that, say, the Israeli ambassador would come out and say that is really no more surprising than the fact that John Bolton would praise the election of a strong advocate of torture, murder and repression. It all fits the same pattern.

AMY GOODMAN: This issue of the number of people who died this weekend, the horrific massacre—11 Jews died. The model of the coverage, of knowing who each person was, hearing their names, their life stories, their ages, who their families were, knowing when the funerals are taking place through the week—what about this being a model for what’s happening in Gaza? I mean, for example, on, I think it was, Friday, six Palestinians were killed, with those ongoing protests near the separation wall. Israeli military has gunned down more than 200 Palestinians. That was Friday. Six Palestinians died. And on Sunday, three Palestinian teenagers were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip. Your thoughts on Dermer trying to make this connection to get away from the issue of white supremacy and, somehow, someway, blame the left?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, remember, all of this in Gaza is being done with overwhelming U.S. support, even U.S. weapons, literally.

Gaza is on the verge of becoming, literally, uninhabitable. The international monitors—U.N. and others—have warned that within just a few years, it may be literally unlivable. I mean, right now, there’s virtually no potable water. The sewage pours into the sea, because Israel has bombed and destroyed the power plants and the sewage plant.

Back in 2005, when Israel withdrew its illegal settlers in Gaza and moved them to illegal settlements in the West Bank, it imposed a siege on Gaza. The official terms for that—official, not making this up—are “We have to impose a diet on Gaza, not harsh enough so they’ll all die”—implication being that wouldn’t look very good—”but harsh enough so that they can barely survive.”

And there have been—quite apart from the brutal siege, there have been repeated attacks on Gaza by the Israeli army. Gaza is virtually defenseless. This is one of the strongest armies in the world, lashing out to devastate Gaza.

There’s always pretexts. There are pretexts for everything. Hitler had a pretext for invading Poland: He was protecting Germany from the wild terror of the Poles. And the Israelis, with U.S. backing, have concocted pretexts—no time to go through it here, there’s plenty in print about it. Every one of them collapses on inspection. It’s just a punching bag.

And the effect on the people of Gaza is to create utter desperation. The current march is just an attempt to somehow break the siege, make life possible. The problem could be overcome easily, simply by providing them with the opportunities for survival. That’s it. Not trying to block every attempt at political unification of the factions. It’s often been a pretext for another attack.

Some of what’s gone on—parts of it we’ve seen—are just grotesque, like when a highly trained Israeli sniper murders a young woman far from the border who’s trying to help—a Palestinian volunteer medic, young woman, who’s trying to help a wounded man, and a sniper murders her. Highly trained snipers. They know what they’re doing. The international monitors who have gone through the hospitals are shocked by the kinds of wounds they’re finding, purposely designed to maim people so they’ll barely—not kill them, but maim them, so they won’t be able to have a—even take part in the minimal life that exists there.

Actually, Trump had a solution to this, to the misery of Gaza and the prospect that 2 million people, half of them children, will soon be in a situation of, literally, beyond the possibility of survival. They had a lifeline, what’s called the UNRWAsupport, international support, which was barely keeping them alive. So, Trump’s reaction is to cut it, cut support for it. And he even had a reason. He said, “They’re not being grateful enough to me for my efforts to give them the ultimate deal that I’m planning.” Ultimate deal, which means give up all your rights and forget it.

Two leading American political analysts, specialists on the Middle East, with long government service, Robert Malley, Aaron David Miller, really encapsulated the Trump program very simply, said the Trump message is to the Palestinians, “You have lost. Forget it. Go away. You’re done. And because the people of Gaza are not sufficient—on the West Bank—or, sufficiently appreciative, let’s cut the lifeline.” In fact, let’s even—as he did—cut support for underfunded Palestinian hospitals in the West Bank. Let’s cut the funding for the UNRWA school in the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon, still reeking from the hideous Israeli-run massacre there back at the end of their invasion in '82. You see little kids playing in the mud in dark alleys. They'll never get out. Their children will be there, and so on. They had one hope: the UNRWA school. Good, let’s kill that. All of this, these things are, just one after another, taking place. Indescribable.

I mean, the war in Yemen, which finally, at last, is getting a little bit of attention, has been a major horror story. The most careful estimates of the killing, that are now just coming out, show that there may be seven or eight times as high as what has been—the numbers that have been given. They’re on the order of 70,000 or 80,000. The analysis of these Saudi-Emirate programs, a long study that came out of the Fletcher School of International Diplomacy at Tufts University recently, showed, quite persuasively, that the policies of the attackers are aimed at destroying the food supplies, making sure the population starves to death. They’re also trying to close the port through which some supplies come.

All of this is fully backed by the United States. U.S., and Britain secondarily, supply the arms. The U.S. supplies the intelligence for the Saudi Air Force, which is carrying out massive atrocities. All of these things are happening. For years, they’ve barely been discussed. Now, finally, you’re seeing pictures on the front page of starving Yemeni children, even a call for a ceasefire—much belated, little attention to our crucial responsibility for it.

Just like our responsibility, which is overwhelming, for the plight of the miserable people trying to escape from the troika—Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala—the three countries that have been completely under our thumb and are suffering bitterly for it, now trying to escape. So we turn them into an invasion mob planning to destroy us. All of this is surreal. It only is overshadowed by the failure to attend even minimally to the literal existential threats, that are not remote.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you consider this one of the gravest times, in your lifetime, in U.S. politics, Noam?

NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s one of the gravest times in human history. Humans have been around for 200,000 years. For the first time in their history, they have to decide—and quickly—whether organized human society is going to survive for very long. And that’s not in the remote distance.

Again, there are two—with all the problems and horrors in the world which should be attended to, there are two existential threats, both being increased. One is the threat of nuclear war, which is terminal. The other is the threat of severe environmental catastrophe, which doesn’t destroy all human life, but it does undermine the prospects for organized society.

And you mentioned earlier a third threat, also dating back to the end of the Second World War. The end of the Second World War was the opening of the nuclear age. And as I mentioned, it’s kind of a miracle that we’ve survived it. It’s also the opening of what geologists are now calling the Anthropocene, the age in which human activity is radically affecting the environment. There’s been debate about its origins. The World Geological Society more or less settled on the end of the beginning—the end of the Second World War, the late ’40s and on, where there was a sharp spike in damage to the environment.

The third is what’s called the sixth extinction, the extinction of species. The fifth extinction was around 65 million years ago, when it’s assumed that a huge asteroid hit the Earth and ended the age of the dinosaurs. It destroyed most of the species on Earth. We’re now in the midst of the sixth extinction, with very rapid destruction of other species and of the kind of environment in which they can survive, like wilderness, for example. We are pushing to the edge of not only our own survival, but that of much of the—much of life on Earth.

So, is it the most gravest moment in my life? Yes. But also in all of human history. And things like the election next week will have an impact on this.

AMY GOODMAN: World-renowned professor, linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky, speaking to us from Tucson, Arizona, where he is now teaching at the University of Arizona. He is the institute professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than 50 years, has written over 100 books, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We’ll air more of the interview with Noam Chomsky next week.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. With the U.S. midterm elections a day away, we continue our conversation with the world-renowned linguist, dissident, author Noam Chomsky. Democracy Now!'s Nermeen Shaikh and I interviewed him from Tucson, Arizona, where he now teaches at the University of Arizona. Noam Chomsky is also institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he's taught for more than 50 years.

During Part 1 of the conversation, that we played on Friday, Noam Chomsky talked about what’s at stake in tomorrow’s midterm elections.

NOAM CHOMSKY: So, is it the most gravest moment in my life? Yes. But also in all of human history. And things like the election will have an impact on this.

AMY GOODMAN: During our conversation on Thursday, I asked Professor Chomsky to outline some of the issues he thinks should be followed most closely.

NOAM CHOMSKY: What are the domestic policies of the Trump administration? They’re very straightforward: lavish gifts on the rich, powerful corporate sector and try to undermine and destroy anything that might be of benefit to the general population. That’s quite explicitly what’s happening before our eyes.

So, take the legislative achievement that the Republican Party is most proud of: their tax bill—as economist Joseph Stiglitz described it, the donor relief plan of 2017. It’s an enormous gift to wealth, corporate power, including real estate interests, incidentally. Enormous gift, frankly. And it has the secondary advantage—as the Republican leadership was quick to point out, it has the advantage of creating a huge deficit, which can be used as a pretext for getting rid of social spending. 

U.S. social spending is already very meager by world standards. We’re down at the bottom of the OECD, the 30 rich countries, along with Greece and Turkey, in social benefits spendings. But there’s something there, so let’s get rid of it. Let’s undermine Medicaid, which goes to the undeserving poor; let’s undermine Social Security, which working people just rely on for survival—all because we have to lavish gifts on the super-rich and ensure that the corporations have profits bulging out of their ears. The claim of the pretext for the tax scam was that it was going to sharply increase investment. That was pretty outlandish. To start with, corporations already have—are just overflowing with profits and wealth. And predictably, it did nothing of the sort.

Those are the domestic programs. Then come all of these international horrors that we’re talking about. I shouldn’t—don’t want to suggest that the mainstream Democrats are all that better in these respects. 

Somewhat. And there is a progressive wave among the sectors of the Democratic Party that could lead in a much more constructive direction. But the midterms next week are going to have a critical impact on how the country goes and, given the enormous power and wealth of this country, what happens to the world.

AMY GOODMAN: And on that issue, you have been extremely critical of Democrats. But with this whole discussion of whether the House will turn Democrat, and possibly the Senate, do you think it matters?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I think it matters. Yes, we have every reason to be critical of the Democrats. These policies of the last generation, the neoliberal policies that have led to these conditions we’ve been talking about, the so-called New Democrats, the Clinton Democrats, have been right at the forefront. Say, deregulation of financial institutions, one of Clinton’s great achievements, which led directly to the financial crisis, along with—one of the factors that led to it—his attack on the welfare program. Lots that we can blame them for.

In fact, I should say that some of the things that Trump has done, which are—which merit praise, are bitterly attacked by the Democrats and by the Republican hawks, in particular, with regard to Korea. In April, last April, the two Koreas, North and South, issued a historic declaration, Panmunjom Declaration, in which they laid out for the first time fairly detailed plans and moves towards a reduction of tension, reconciliation, a reduction of weaponry, denuclearization. Very sensible, detailed plans. And they virtually pleaded with the outside world, meaning the United States, not to interfere. What they said is, the two Koreas will proceed with these plans on their own accord—crucially. In other words, let us do it. Trump, to his credit, has not interfered. The Singapore summit, for which he was lambasted, was one of his more—one of his very few admirable achievements. He not only did not intervene, but he even withdrew what he correctly described as provocative U.S.-South Korean military operations. Well, all of that should be supported. I don’t know what his reasons were, maybe ridiculous reasons, but doesn’t matter. These are moves that should be supported. Those are the things for which he’s being bitterly attacked. So, it’s not an entirely, you know, sort of clear issue.

Nevertheless, overwhelmingly, the Republican Party is simply a major threat to—not only to the country, but to human survival. I’ve said in the past that I think they’re the most dangerous organization in human history, on the issue of climate change alone, and I think that’s worth repeating.

AMY GOODMAN: World-renowned linguist, dissident and author Noam Chomsky. We’ll return to our conversation with him in a minute to talk about the threats of nuclear war and climate change. But tune in Tuesday night for Democracy Now!'s live coverage of the midterm elections. We're teaming up with The Intercept for this special broadcast from 7 p.m. Eastern time to 1:00 in the morning. Check your local listings or simply go to democracynow.org. Back with Noam Chomsky in a minute.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, as we continue our conversation with the world-renowned linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky. We interviewed him Thursday in Tucson, Arizona, where he now teaches at the University of Arizona. I asked him to respond to President Trump’s recent decision to pull out of the INF, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, that landmark nuclear arms pact signed in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the INF treaty was a very important development. You may recall that in that period, in the early and mid-'80s, the short—this has to do with short-range nuclear missiles. They were being installed in Western Europe, Pershing II missiles in Western Europe, which had a few minutes' flight time to Moscow. If you think what that means, the Russian detection systems are, first of all, far more primitive than ours, but even sophisticated—if they had had sophisticated detection systems, it would have given them barely a few minutes’ warning before a possible heavy nuclear strike, even a decapitation strike, against Moscow. And the Russians were doing the same. They were building short-term missiles aimed at Western Europe. Notice the—not at the United States. This was internal to Europe, short-term—short-range missiles. Well, the 1987 INF treaty ended that extreme peril, sharply reduced it. Missiles were reduced and so on. This was an important step forward. Breaking the treaty reinstates that system.

Now, there’s an obvious way to deal with the problem. Namely, it’s called—it’s kind of a bad word; maybe I ought to spell it—it’s called diplomacy. There have been—the way to deal with the problem is quite straightforward: Do what has not been done as yet—have technical experts from both sides, and neutral ones, investigate the claims that are being made by both sides, and determine if they’re valid. And to the extent that there are, negotiate a way to overcome these violations of the treaty, and then enforce the treaty even further. Carry it further. We should be moving towards eliminating nuclear weapons. Remember that the New START treaty is coming up for renewal. That’s a very important one. START has led to the sharp reduction of nuclear weapons—by no means anywhere near far enough, but nevertheless quite significant.

We should also recall that Trump’s pulling out of the INF treaty has a precursor, namely, the Nuclear Posture Review of the Trump administration, which already called for developing new weapons, tactical nuclear weapons, which themselves greatly increase the threat of a possible war. A target of these missiles can’t know whether they’re conventional or nuclear, or whether they’re short-range or much more powerful missiles. You have a few minutes’ warning time to make these decisions. You look over the history of the nuclear age, and it is practically miraculous that we’ve survived this far. There’s been case after case where we came very—both sides came very close to making a decision to launch nuclear weapons, which means basically terminating human civilization. And miracles like that can’t go on forever. And enhancing the threat is just beyond insanity. Ending the INF treaty not only opens the door for the United States and Russia to develop more dangerous lethal weapons, but, of course, for others to join in, as well, greatly increasing the hazard to all of us. And there are diplomatic options that have not been pursued. And they are the ones that—they are the ones that should be uppermost, not vastly endangering ourselves and everyone else.

Trump also brought up the fact that China is not a partner to the INF. Yeah, they’re not. Well, the way that—that’s because of their particular geostrategic position and their defensive posture in the western Eurasia—eastern Eurasia. Eastern Eurasia. So, the way to deal with that problem is to bring them into the treaty, not to break the treaty and greatly increase the danger to the world.

We should bear in mind that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which has established, since 1947, beginning of the nuclear age—it’s established the Doomsday Clock, where the minute hand is a certain distance from midnight. Midnight means goodbye, termination of all of us. At the beginning, 1947, it was seven minutes to midnight. It’s oscillated up and back since. In last January, after a year of the Trump administration, it moved to two minutes to midnight. That’s the closest it’s been to terminal disaster ever, with one exception, 1953. The United States, then the Soviet Union, exploded thermonuclear weapons, demonstrating that, in our ingenuity, we had devised the means to destroy everything. At that point, the clock did move to two minutes to midnight. Hasn’t gone that close to disaster since. But it did last January.

And now it’s worse. The Nuclear Posture Review, the revelation, since that time, that the U.S. actually has developed a first-strike potential, which could prevent—could eliminate any deterrent to a first strike, then Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review, which calls for extending the nuclear threat, and now this latest step—this is a march to disaster, which is only paralleled by the moves of the administration to race towards the cliff of environmental destruction with eyes open. They know exactly what they’re doing. Trump himself is a firm believer in global warming; the others, as well. But just in order to fill a couple of overstuffed pockets with more dollars, they’re willing to threaten the existence of organized human life. There’s just no words to describe these two drives to destruction in parallel, or, in fact, to describe the fact that they’re barely discussed in the electoral season, as, surely, these are the two most important issues.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam, we want to turn to an issue that you have written about, that so many are so deeply concerned about, that hardly gets any play in this country, even in this critical midterm election. It’s the issue of climate change. Noam Chomsky, a new study has found that the world has massively underestimated the amount of heat absorbed by our oceans. The paper, published in the journal Nature, has concluded that for the past quarter of a century about 150 times the amount of energy used to generate electricity globally has been deposited into the seas, 60 percent more than previous estimates.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This comes days after leading meteorologist Eric Holthaus issued a dire warning following Jair Bolsonaro’s election win in Brazil. He tweeted, quote, “This is worth repeating over and over. The most horrific thing Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, has planned is privatization of the Amazon rainforest. With just 12yr remaining to remake the global economy and prevent catastrophic climate change, this is planetary suicide,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, in a report issued earlier this week, the World Wildlife Fund found that human beings have wiped out 60 percent of all mammals, birds, fish and reptiles on Earth since 1970. This is WWF executive director of science and conservation Mike Barrett.

MIKE BARRETT: What’s absolutely clear at the moment, looking at the declines of nature that we’re currently seeing, is that the planet does need to be put on life support. And frankly, the solutions we’re coming up with at the moment are merely sticking plasters. So, this is now at the point where, as people, we’ve got to take a choice: Are we going to let this continue? Are we going to do something about it? Globally, at the moment, we are completely failing to tackle the loss of nature on the planet. And that’s got to stop now.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Mike Barrett of the World Wildlife Fund. Noam, you are deeply concerned about this issue—and, of course, you’re not alone—climate change, the issue of climate change.

NOAM CHOMSKY: We can add to the list of your dire warnings, as if it weren’t horrendous enough, a few more examples. A couple of weeks ago, the IPCC, the international group of scientists monitoring climate change, came out with a very ominous report warning that the world has maybe a decade or two to basically end its reliance on fossil fuels if we’re to have any hope of controlling global warming below the level of utter disaster. And that, incidentally, is a conservative estimate. It’s a consensus view. There are—repeatedly, over the years, it has been shown that the IPCC analyses are much less alarmist than they should be.

Now comes this report in Nature that you mentioned, a couple of days ago, which shows that there has been a serious underestimate of the warming of the oceans. And they conclude that if these results hold up, the so-called carbon budget, the amount of carbon that we can spew into the atmosphere and still have a survival environment, has to be reduced by about 25 percent. That’s over and above the IPCC report. And the opening up of the Amazon to further exploitation will be another serious blow at the prospects of survival of organized human society.

I should—at the same time, the Trump administration, right now, is opening up new areas of the West for fracking, for increasing the use of fossil fuels. You’ve probably seen maybe discussed one of the most amazing documents I have ever seen. The Trump department of highway standards, whatever it’s called, just issued a long report, hundred-page report, urging that all regulations on automotive emissions should be ended. And they had a very logical argument. They said if we extrapolate current trends by the end of the century, the climate will have warmed several degrees centigrade, meaning a huge rise in sea level, which they underestimate. So, basically, we’re going over the cliff anyway, and automotive emissions really don’t add much to this, so there’s no point cutting them back. The assumption of the department is that everyone in the world is as criminally insane as we are, and isn’t going to do anything about it. And since—on that assumption, yeah, let’s just rob while the planet burns, putting Nero into the shade—he only fiddled while Rome burned. I can’t think of anything like this in human history. You just can’t find words to describe it. And at the peak of the monstrosity is, in fact, the Trump administration.

We should recall that Trump himself, as I mentioned, is a firm believer in global warming. Recently, he applied to the government of Ireland for permission to build a huge wall, one of his famous walls, this one to protect a golf course of his in Ireland, which, as his plea indicates, is threatened by sea level rise as a result of global warming. You take a look at the big banks, JPMorgan Chase and the others. They’re increasing their investments in fossil fuel development. The energy corporations are working all over the world to try to find new resources that destroy the environment.

The media are focusing on real outrages, like the ludicrous military preparation for this wave of mothers and children planning to invade us and destroy us—you know, they’re concentrating on that, but take a look at their coverage of these things. So, there was a big report, long front-page report, in The New York Times a couple days ago about the opening up of the West to further fossil fuel extraction. Discussed everything you can think of. Did mention some of the negative consequences, like it might harm water resources. It might make things harder for ranchers. Not one phrase, one phrase in this long report, on the effect on the environment. In the political campaign going on, every—all kinds of issues are not discussed, but not the two existential threats that human beings face, threats that have never arisen in human history.

We have to make decisions now which will literally determine whether organized human life can survive in any decent form. You can just imagine what the world would be like if the sea level rises, say, 10 or 20 feet or even higher, which is within the range—easily within the range of predictions. I mean, the consequences are unimaginable. But it’s as if we’re kind of like the proverbial lemmings just happily marching off the cliff, led by leaders who understand very well what they’re doing, but are so dedicated to enriching themselves and their friends in the near future that it simply doesn’t matter what happens to the human species. There’s nothing like this in all of human history. There have been plenty of monsters in the past, plenty of them. But you can’t find one who was dedicated, with passion, to destroying the prospects for organized human life. Hitler was horrible enough, but not that.

AMY GOODMAN: World-renowned linguist, dissident, author Noam Chomsky. You can visit our website for Part 1 of the interview, where Chomsky talks about U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, the migrant caravan, the crisis in Gaza and the white supremacist attack on the Pittsburgh synagogue.

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