Noam Chomsky: US Is the "Most Dangerous Country in the World"

World-renouned intellectual Noam Chomsky. (Photo: Andrew Rusk)

By Dan Falcone, Truthout | Interview

Nuclear proliferation and climate change are subjects of acute concern in the current moment, driven into an all-out state of emergency by the new Trump administration. In this exclusive interview for Truthout, world-renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky discusses the media coverage of these two major issues, highlighting US tensions with Russia, Iran and North Korea, as well as discussing the recent US airstrike on Syria's Air Force base.

Daniel Falcone: What do you make of the distressing lack of discussion on climate change and nuclear proliferation in the mainstream media?

Noam Chomsky: If you want to learn something about nuclear weapons and why these issues are not being reported, take a look at the March 1 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, where there is an absolutely spectacular article by two real experts -- Hans M. Kristensen and Ted Postol from MIT. They discuss the new targeting systems that have been invented under the Obama Modernization Program that's now being escalated by Trump, and it's extremely dangerous. What they claim based on disclosed information is that the US missile systems have been improved by such a huge factor that they are now capable of instantly wiping out the Russian deterrent.

This is massive overkill and nuclear stability is gone, and of course, the Russians know this. What that implies is that if they ever feel a threat, they're just going to be compelled to launch a preemptive strike because otherwise they're dead, you know? And that means we're all dead. This is the most important news that's come out in I don't know how long.

The New York Times and other mainstream outlets followed through on their conventional habits of praising the US and Trump's latest strike of Syria but went on to lament that his foreign policy doctrine is improvisational. And, in some ways, based on the Cabinet appointments, it reminds me of Bush 43, where they select defenseless targets. Meanwhile they claim they're trying to fight terrorism and nuclear proliferation, but it seems like they're just enhancing it.

They certainly are not fighting nuclear proliferation. Well, if they want to fight nuclear proliferation, there are things they can do. Iran, which was never really an issue, could have been settled years ago. There's an interesting book by the former Brazilian ambassador Celso Amorim. In 2010, he initiated an effort along with Turkey to settle the whole Iran issue. Nobody outside of the United States takes it to be much of an issue.

Here, it's the worst threat in human history, but they made a deal with Iran for Iran to essentially give away its low enriched uranium to Turkey for storage, and in return, the Western powers (meaning the US) would provide them with ice tubs for their medical reactors. That basically would have ended it. It was immediately scratched by Obama and Clinton. And the main reason was they didn't want anybody else to be involved in it. We were supposed to run things, but we didn't say that. The ostensible reason was that Clinton was just on the verge of pressing for additional sanctions against Iran at the Security Council and didn't want it undermined, so that shows the attitude toward proliferation. And the same is happening with North Korea. [Recently] they announced more offensive actions against North Korea.

Naval missiles are going to raise the level of [danger], [but] is there a diplomatic option? Yes, there is. North Korea and China have proposed what sounds like a pretty sensible option that North Korea should end its development of nuclear weapons -- just no more, just keep it the way it is -- and in return, the US should stop carrying out hostile military maneuvers on the North Korean border -- nuclear capable B-52s and so on. The US immediately rejected it. And the press and everyone else said [little]….

This modernization program is a very clear example of how security doesn't matter. There is no gain in security but massive overkill of the adversary's deterrent capacity. The only consequence of it is to elicit the likelihood of a preemptive attack. And a preemptive attack leads to a nuclear winter world.

Please continue this interview here: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/40319-noam-chomsky-us-is-the-most-dangerous-country-in-the-world

Dahr Jamail: Great Barrier Reef Reaches "Terminal Stage" as CO2 Levels Rise at Record Rate

It is imperative that increasing numbers of us become utterly courageous and passionately dedicated to informing ourselves and standing up to this madness that is causing so much suffering, death, and destruction and that is increasingly putting all life on Earth at risk. - Molly

Species and ecosystems continue to suffer the consequences of climate disruption caused by humans. Many are paying with their very existence, including the the single largest coral ecosystem on the planet: the Great Barrier Reef.

 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report

I've been writing these climate dispatches every month for over three years, and each successive dispatch becomes more difficult to write than the last, as the impacts of anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) become increasingly severe.

Species, ecosystems, glaciers, sea ice and humans themselves continue to absorb and pay for this human experiment of industrialization gone horribly awry. Many are paying with their very existence.

Two months ago, I spent some time researching and writing in Australia. I visited the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), where I reveled in the majesty of intact towering coral structures flourishing with marine life. Yet I was also devastated during this visit -- again and again, I happened upon bleached out and silently dead areas of barren coral wasteland, which not long ago teemed with living beings. Roughly 20 percent of the coral on the outer reef were already bleached, and on their way towards death.

To see more stories like this, visit "Planet or Profit?"

While snorkeling on the reef during the last afternoon I was there, the signal from the boat to return was given. It was late afternoon, and time to head back to land. I took several long deep breaths, supersaturated my lungs with sea air, and dove down 30 feet to the coral. I swam alongside mostly intact coral structures in all their brilliant colors, teeming with fish. Having interviewed and snorkeled with GBR experts all day, I was preparing to break the story of this year's GBR bleaching event. I knew the reef was likely on its way out of existence, stunning as that may seem, given that the GBR is the single largest coral ecosystem on the planet, spanning 1,400 miles and easily visible from space. Coral reefs can rebuild from bleaching events, but typically need 10-15 years between events in order to recover. This was the second mass bleaching event in the last two years, and there was no sign of a let up.

I swam with the coral, taking the scene into my soul, staying down until my lungs burned for air. I swam longer, holding my hands out towards the coral, feeling it, knowing this was most likely to be my farewell to the brilliant corals of the dying Great Barrier Reef.

Swimming up to the surface a deep gasp refilled my lungs. I peeled off my mask and wiped my tears, then began my swim back to the boat.

Several weeks later Eyewitness News in Australia reported on scientists giving the GBR a "terminal prognosis" unless ACD is slowed dramatically. By April, scientists were in shock, realizing that two-thirds of the entire reef was now bleached out. Some of them declared the GBR had reached a "terminal stage," describing the situation as "unprecedented."

Thanks to ACD, Earth has lost approximately half of all its coral reefs in just the last three decades. A quarter of all marine species depend on reefs. Reefs provide the sole source of protein for more than one billion people, and they are now vanishing before our eyes.

Scientists are now speculating that an era of terminal global coral bleaching might have already arrived, decades earlier than previously expected. The recent bleaching events are so severe, there is no analog in the thousands of years of ancient coral cores scientists use to study past bleaching events.

"This isn't something that's going to happen 100 years from now. We're losing them right now," marine biologist Julia Baum of Canada's University of Victoria told the AP. "We're losing them really quickly, much more quickly than I think any of us ever could have imagined."

Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization released its annual State of Global Climate report, stating that record-breaking ACD impacts have pushed the planet into "uncharted territory."

"Earth is a planet in upheaval due to human-caused changes in the atmosphere," glaciologist Jeffrey Kargel told The Guardian of the report. "In general, drastically changing conditions do not help civilisation, which thrives on stability."

Please continue this article here: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40311-great-barrier-reef-reaches-terminal-stage-as-co2-levels-rise-at-record-rate

Henry Giroux: Shutting Down American-Style Authoritarianism

Excellent and vital article. - Molly

A protest outside Trump International Hotel in Chicago. (Rob Walsh / CC 2.0)

 By Henry A. Giroux

It is impossible to imagine the damage Trump and his white nationalists, economic fundamentalists, and white supremacists friends will do to civil liberties, the social contract, the planet, and life itself in the next few years.

Rather than address climate change, the threat of nuclear war, galloping inequality, the elimination of public goods, Trump and his vicious acolytes have accelerated the threats faced by these growing dangers. Moreover, the authoritarian steam roller just keeps bulldozing through every social protection and policy put in place, however insufficient, in the last few years in order to benefit the poor, vulnerable, and the environment.

A neo-fascist politics of emotional brutality, militant bigotry, and social abandonment has reached new heights in the United States. Think about the Republican Party call to eliminate essential health benefits such as mental health coverage, guaranteed health insurance for people with pre-existing conditions, and the elimination of Meals on Wheels program that benefit the poor and elderly.

 

As the Trump regime continues to hollow out the welfare state, it builds on Obama’s efforts to expand the surveillance state but with a new and deadly twist. This is particularly clear given the Congressional Republicans’ decision to advance a bill that would overturn privacy protections for Internet users, allow corporations to monitor, sell, and use everything that users put on the Internet, including their browsing history, app usage and financial and medical information.

This is the Orwellian side of Trump’s administration, which not only makes it easier for the surveillance state to access information, but also sells out the American public to corporate demagogues who view everything in terms of markets and the accumulation of capital.

On the other side of the authoritarian coin is the merging of the punishing society and permanent warfare state with a culture of fear and cruelty. Under these circumstances, everyone is viewed as either a potential terrorist or narcissistic consumer making it easier for the Trump machine to elevate the use of force to the most venerable national ideal while opening up lucrative markets for defense and security industries and the growing private prison behemoth.

At the level of everyday life, the merging of corporate and political brutalism into a war culture were on full display in the savage beating of a United Airlines passenger who refused to give up his seat because the airlines over booked. Couple this with the Star War spectacle of the United States dropping a 21,600 pound non-nuclear bomb on the Achin district in Afghanistan, which has a population of around 95,000 people. Nobody on the plane came to the aid of the passenger as he was being assaulted and dragged from his seat as if he were a dangerous criminal suggesting that brutality, fear, and powerlessness have become normalized in America.

Moreover, the relative silence of the American public in the face its government dropping the “Mother of All Bombs” in Afghanistan and unloading endless weapons of death and destruction in Syria testify to the amnesiac state of the country and the moral coma which has settled like a dense fog on so many of its inhabitants. As historical memory is erased, public spheres and cultural spaces are saturated with violence and the endless spectacles of civic illiteracy. Pedagogies of repression now enable the suffering produced by those most vulnerable, who disappear amidst the endless trivialization produced by the mainstream media, which anxiously awaits for Trump’s next tweet in order to increase their ratings and fuel the bottom line.

The government propaganda machine has turned into a comic version of a failed Reality TV series. Witness the daily spectacle produced by the hapless Sean Spicer. Spicer dreams about and longs for the trappings of Orwell’s dystopia in which he would be able to use his position as a second rate Joseph Goebbels to produce, legitimate, and dictate lies rather than be in the uncomfortable scenario, in which he now finds himself, of having to defend endlessly Trump’s fabrications. For Spicer, the dream of the safety of Orwell’s dystopia has given way to the nightmare of him being reduced to the leading character in the Gong Show. Actually, maybe he is the confused front man for our stand-in-president who increasingly resembles the psychopath on steroids, Patrick Bateman, from the film, American Psycho—truly a symbol for our times. Ignorance is a terrible wound, when it is the result of systemic constraints or self-inflicted, but it is a pathology and plague when it is willful—the active refusal to know- and translates into power. Trump and his mostly incompetent and ignorant government appointees are not just stupid and offensive in their ideological smugness, they are a threat to the very act of thinking and its crucial connection to memory, justice and truth.

Neo-fascist policies and practices now feed a war culture and demand more than a political and moral outrage. At the very least, it must be recognized that neo-fascism must be restored as Paul Gilroy has argued “to its proper place in the discussions of the moral and political limits of what is acceptable.” This would suggest making visible not only the elements of neo-fascism that animate the new policies and political formations being produced in the Trump administration, but also unveiling how power is reproduced through those architects, managers, and intellectuals and institutions for hire that legitimate this distinctively American neoliberal-military machine.

Please continue this article here: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/toward_politics_ungovernability_american-style_authoritarianism_20170418

Henry Giroux: Thinking Dangerously In Dark Times

These are times that ask of us a great deal. Included is cultivating and strengthening our capacity to think dangerously. As Henry Giroux states, thinking dangerously is not only the cornerstone of critical agency and engaged citizenship, but also the foundation for a democracy that matters. Gratefully, there are also those visionaries, intellectuals, teachers and truth-tellers such as Henry Giroux who illuminate the journey we can commit to courageously walking together through these dark times. May our numbers grow. - Molly

 BY HENRY GIROUX

The conditions that produce the terrifying curse of totalitarianism seem to be upon us and are increasingly visible in President Trump’s denial of civil liberties, the stoking of fear in the general population, and a reckless hostility to the rule of law and a free and critical press. Totalitarian elements of the past are also evident in Trump’s contempt for the truth, and a willingness to create a new political formation through an alignment of religious fundamentalists, racists, xenophobes, Islamophobes, the ultra-rich, and unhinged militarists. Hannah Arendt once argued that all thinking is dangerous. This appears particularly true in an age when radical extremists who trade in hate-filled discourses, white nationalism, and racist policies move from the margins of society to the center of American politics.

Against the current assault on critical thinking and the institutions that nurture it, it is crucial for Americans to reclaim the call to think dangerously again and employ language in the service of compassion, justice, and civic responsibility. In part, this suggests learning how to hold authority accountable, search for the truth, make authoritarian power visible, and recognize that no society can escape self-reflection, deny the injuries of state induced injustice, or dispense with truth itself. Dangerous thinking should cause trouble, exercise its right to both understand and interrogate critically the major problems people face while being able to connect such issues to larger structural considerations. Thinking dangerously means refusing a culture of immediacy and sensationalism. Such thinking requires using historical memory as a resource and connecting private troubles to broader political, structural, and economic issues. Such thinking nurtures the social imagination and envisions a future in which the impossible becomes possible once again. 

What happens to democracy when the President of the United States labels critical media outlets as “enemies of the people” and derides the search for truth by disparaging such efforts with the blanket term “fake news”? What happens to democracy when individuals and groups are demonized on the basis of their religion? What happens to a society when critical thinking becomes an object of contempt and is disdained in favor of raw emotion or disparaged as fake news? What happens to a social order ruled by an “economics of contempt” that blames the poor for their condition and subjects them to a culture of shaming? What happens to a polity when it retreats into private silos and becomes indifferent to the use of language in the service of a panicked rage that stokes anger but not about issues that matter? What happens to a social order when it treats millions of illegal immigrants as disposable, potential terrorists, and criminals? What happens to a country when the presiding principles of a society are violence and ignorance? What happens is that democracy withers and dies, both as an ideal and as a reality.

How else to explain the present historical moment with its collapse of civic culture and the future it cancels out? What is to be made of the undermining of civic literacy and the conditions that produce an active citizenry at a time when massive self-enrichment and a gangster morality at the highest reaches of government undermine the public realm as a space of freedom, liberty, dialogue, and deliberative consensus? Americans are in the midst of a crisis of history, politics, and agency, made all the more obvious by a government populated by right-wing extremists attempting to implement death-dealing policies regarding health care, the environment, the economy, foreign policy, immigration, and civil liberties.

Democracy fails in an age when its leadership is stripped of credibility. As a habitual liar, Trump has attempted to obliterate the distinction between the facts and fiction, evidence-based arguments and lying, and in doing so has dangerously enlarged the landscape of distortion, misrepresentation, and falsification. Not only has he reinforced the legitimacy of what I call “right-wing disimagination machines” such as Breitbart News, he has also created among large segments of the public a distrust for both the truth and the institutions that promote critical literacy and informed judgment. Consequently, he has managed to organize millions of people who believe that loyalty is more important than the truth and in doing so has emptied the language and the horizon of politics of any substantive meaning, thus contributing to an authoritarian and depoliticized culture of sensationalism, immediacy, fear, and anxiety. Trump has put in motion all the anti-democratic forces that have haunted American society for the last forty years. The broader consequence of his campaign of distortion, lies, and falsification has been captured in an interview Hannah Arendt gave to the New York Review of Books in 1947 in the aftermath of the horrors of fascism. She writes:

 “The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”

Please continue this article here:  http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/thinking-dangerously-in-dark-times/