Video: How to Resist Trump’s Shock Doctrine

Video

By Naomi Klein

Shock. It’s a word that has come up a lot since November— for obvious reasons.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about shock. Ten years ago, I published “The Shock Doctrine,” an investigation that spanned four decades from Pinochet’s U.S.-backed coup in 1970s Chile to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

I noticed a brutal and recurring tactic by right wing governments. After a shocking event – a war, coup, terrorist attack, market crash or natural disaster – exploit the public’s disorientation. Suspend democracy.  Push through radical “free market” policies that enrich the 1 percent at the expense of the poor and middle class.

The administration is creating chaos. Daily. Of course many of the scandals are the result of the president’s ignorance and blunders – not some nefarious strategy.

But there is also no doubt that some savvy people around Trump are using the daily shocks as cover to advance wildly pro-corporate policies that bear little resemblance to what Trump pledged on the campaign trail.

And the worst part? This is likely just the warm up.

We need to focus on what this Administration will do when it has a major external shock to exploit.
Maybe it will be an economic crash like 2008. Maybe a natural disaster like Sandy. Or maybe it will be a horrific terrorist event like Manchester or Paris in 2015.
Any one such crisis could redraw the political map overnight, giving Trump and his crew free rein to ram through their most extreme ideas.

But here’s one thing I’ve learned over two decades of reporting from dozens of crises around the world: these tactics can be resisted.

And for your convenience, I’ve tried to boil it down to a 5-step plan.

 

The U.S. Government Has Become the Ultimate Extension of Donald Trump’s For-Profit Brand

By Naomi Klein

In a lawsuit filed today, the attorneys general of the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia claim that by accepting millions of dollars and countless more perks from foreign governments, President Trump is at the center of an “unprecedented constitutional violation.” Whether it’s $270,000 in payments from a lobbying firm working for the Saudi government or praise from the Ambassador of Georgia (also a paying customer), Trump’s hotels and properties continue to rake it in from governments across the globe, from Turkey to Kuwait to India to Afghanistan to Qatar.

The attorneys general claim that “President Trump’s personal fortune is at stake,” whenever he makes a policy decision, whether it be about taxes, climate change, or foreign relations — a troubling notion, to say the least. According to the lawsuit, Trump’s continued entanglement in his business violates the constitutional emolument clause that, in theory, prevents the president from taking payments from foreign governments. The lawsuit is damning, saying, “never before has a President acted with such disregard for this constitutional prescription.”

Trump, of course, still profits directly from his business dealings, since he has not divested from his business holdings in any way.

I’ve spent the last five months researching the Trump family’s global brand-based empire and the various ways that the president has turned the U.S. government into the ultimate extension of his for-profit brand, so far without any repercussion. So it’s good to see the law starting to catch up. But the lawsuit touches on a fraction of the ways in which Trump is actively profiting from the presidency. As I write in the introduction to “No Is Not Enough,” we are seeing this unprecedented level of self-dealing because Trump’s business model is itself relatively new, and certainly a first for a sitting president:

Trump was never the head of a traditional company but has, rather, long been the figurehead of an empire built around his personal brand — one that has, along with his daughter Ivanka’s brand, already benefited from its merger with the U.S. presidency in countless ways (membership rates at Mar-a-Lago have doubled; Ivanka’s product sales, we are told, are through the roof). The Trump family’s business model is part of a broader shift in corporate structure that has taken place within many brand-based multinationals, one with transformative impacts on culture and the job market.

What this model tells us is that the very idea that there could be – or should be – any distinction between the Trump brand and the Trump presidency is a concept the current occupant of the White House cannot begin to comprehend. The presidency is the crowning extension of the Trump brand.

We are in entirely uncharted territory, because let’s face it: human megabrands are a relatively new phenomenon. There’s no rulebook that foresaw any of this. People keep asking — is he going to divest? Is he going to sell his businesses? Is Ivanka going to? But it’s not at all clear what these questions even mean, because their primary businesses are their names. You can’t disentangle Trump the man from Trump the brand; those two entities merged long ago.

There’s a whole web of ways the Trumps can make money off their names and their official and unofficial roles in the White House. Patronage at Trump hotels and resorts by foreign governments and corporations is probably the least of it. Here’s an extract from another relevant chapter:

The conflicts tipped into self-parody on April 6, 2017, when, the Associated Press reported, “Ivanka Trump’s company won provisional approval from the Chinese government for three new trademarks, giving it monopoly rights to sell Ivanka brand jewelry, bags and spa services in the world’s second-largest economy.”

But that’s not the only thing that happened that day. “That night, the first daughter and her husband, Jared Kushner, sat next to the president of China and his wife for a steak and Dover sole dinner at Mar-a-Lago.” A political summit whose details had been arranged by none other than Jared Kushner. This goes well beyond nepotism; it’s the U.S. government as a for-profit family business.

And a new twist since the book went to press. In China, three labor activists were detained by the government in May while investigating conditions at factories that make shoes for Ivanka Trump’s brand. This news came not long after the U.S.-based China Labor Watch alleged that some workers in factories that produced for Ivanka’s brand were paid what amounted to less than a dollar an hour, while being forced to work 12.5-hour days, six days a week. Despite mounting international condemnation, the activists have yet to be released. Could it be that the Chinese government decided to provide the ultimate service to the Trump family of brands: silencing whistleblowers who were exposing ugly corporate truths?

A New York Times reporter wrote earlier this month that, upon visiting Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, she was given a (now-discontinued) brochure dangling the possibility of a treat from Trump himself: “If he is on-site for your big day, he will likely stop in.” Despite protestations to the contrary, the idea that Trump-the-man is still deeply involved in Trump-the-business is very much a part of the whole offer of Trump-branded hotels and clubs. And nowhere more so than at Mar-a-Lago:

Mar-a-Lago has already increased its membership fees, to $200,000 from $100,000. And why not? Now, for your fee, you might find yourself witnessing a high-stakes conversation about national security over dinner. You might get to hobnob with a visiting head of state. You might even get to witness Trump announcing that he has just launched an air assault on a foreign country.

And, of course, you might even get to meet the president himself, and have the chance to quietly influence him. (No public records are kept of who comes and goes from the club, so who knows?) For decades, Trump has been selling the allure of proximity to wealth and power — it is the meaning of his brand. But now he’s able to offer, to his paying customers, the real deal.

Anything that increases Donald Trump’s visibility, and the perception of him as all-powerful, actively increases the value of the Trump brand, and therefore increases how much clients will pay to be associated with it — to slap it on their new condo development, say, or, on a smaller scale, to play on his golf courses or buy one of his ties.

Meanwhile, the Trump Organization has worked relentlessly to expand its global reach. And why not? The brand is more visible now than ever before, and customers are willing to pay. As the lawsuit states, Trump’s “high office gives the Trump brand greater prominence and exposure.” And this is the heart of what we need to understand about how dangerous it is to have a president who is in the business of selling not any one particular product but his name:

Given that what the Trump sons — Eric and Donald Jr. — are selling is ephemeral (a name), a buyer could pay $6 million for it or could pay $60 million. Who’s to judge what constitutes a fair market-value price? More worryingly, who’s to say what services are being purchased when a private company pays millions to lease the Trump brand? Do they really think it’s that valuable to their condo tower, or do they think that by throwing in an extra $5 million, they might be looked on more favorably in other dealings that require a friendly relationship with the White House? It’s very difficult to see how any of this can be untangled. A brand is worth whatever buyers are willing to pay for it. That’s always been the appeal of building a business on this model — that something as ephemeral as a name could be vested with such real-world monetary value.

What’s extraordinary about Donald Trump’s presidency is that now we are all inside the Trump branded world, whether we want to be or not. We have all become extras in his for-profit reality TV show, which has expanded to swallow the most powerful government in the world.

The Trumps aren’t going to stop coming up with new ways to cash in on the presidency anytime soon. Since I finished writing “No Is Not Enough,” they’ve announced yet another creative new way to turn the White House into a for-profit family business, which I wrote about last week.

Enter American Idea, “a new midscale brand” hotel chain whose first properties will be in Mississippi, a red state where Trump won 18 percentage points more of the popular vote than Hillary Clinton. This is not just an attempt at crashing the Comfort Inn niche by wrapping it in stars and stripes. It’s also the most vivid window yet into the myriad ways the Trump family is transforming the presidency into a for-profit family business, annihilating the line between government and their web of brands.

It turns out that while the Trump kids were on the campaign trail last year, they weren’t just stumping for their father — they were conducting market research on ways to profit from Trump voters. The sons would return to Trump Tower and report on the quaint and old-timey tastes enjoyed in “real America,” as Eric Trump described it on “Good Morning America.”

As Donald Jr. put it, he realized “there’s something here, there’s a market here that we’ve been missing our entire lives by focusing only on the high end.” And there were more perks to tagging along on the campaign trail. They also met people who donated to the Trump campaign, and some of those very people are now the first partners for this new venture.

So let’s unpack that a bit. In Trump’s world, voters are future customers, campaign donors are future investors, and election results are a rich vein of consumer data.

The new lawsuit, though welcome, is only the first step of understanding the merger of the Trump Organization and the White House – with its almost infinite possibilities for corruption and influence peddling.

Noam Chomsky says Republican Party is the 'most dangerous organisation in human history'

By  Ben Kentish

The US Republican Party is “the most dangerous organisation in human history”, Noam Chomsky has said. 

The academic and author made the claim during an interview with the BBC.

“It’s an outrageous statement and when I said it, I said ‘Look, this is a very outrageous statement’”. he said. “But it’s true.”

Asked by Newsnight host Evan Davis whether the party was really worse than an organisation like Isis, the author and academic replied: “Is Isis dedicated to trying to destroy the prospects for organised human existence?

“What does it mean to say not only are we not doing anything about climate change but we’re trying to accelerate the race to the precipice?

“It doesn’t matter whether they genuinely believe it or not… if the consequence of that is ‘let’s use more fossil fuels, let’s refuse to subsidise developing countries, let’s eliminate regulations that reduce greenhouse gases’. If that’s the consequence, that’s extremely dangerous.”

The academic has previously claimed the Republicans are “overwhelmingly” committed to destroying human life on earth.

Asked about the consequences of Donald Trump’s presidency, Mr Chomsky replied: “The main damage he’ll do is to the world, and it’s already happening.

"The most significant aspect of the Trump election – and it’s not just Trump, it’s the whole Republican Party – is their departing from the rest of the world on climate change.

“It’s a crucial issue. It’s an existential threat. Now we have this astonishing spectacle of the United States alone in the world, not only refusing to participate in efforts to deal with climate change but dedicated to undermining them.

“It’s not just Trump - every single Republican leader is the same…In the Republican primaries, every single candidate either denied that climate change was happening or, when you get to the so-called moderates like Jeb Bush or [John] Kasich, they say ‘well maybe it’s happening but we shouldn’t do anything about it’. It’s 100 per cent refusal.”

Explaining the popularity of Mr Trump to US voters, the academic said: “The Democrats gave up on the working class 40 years ago. The working class is just not their constituency. 

“The Republicans claim to be but they’re basically their class enemy. However, they can appeal to people on the basis of non-economic claims about religion, white supremacy…identity politics.

“White supremacy is very deeply rooted in the United States… it ranks higher than even South Africa. There’s no doubt there was a racist motivation behind [Mr Trump’s victory].”

Trump’s radical departure from postwar foreign policy

By Fareed Zakaria

We now have a Trump Doctrine, and it is, at least in its conception and initial execution, the most radical departure from a bipartisan U.S. foreign policy since 1945. In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and national security adviser H.R. McMaster say that President Trump has “a clear-eyed outlook that the world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.” The senior officials add: “Rather than deny this elemental nature of international affairs, we embrace it.” That embrace has now led the United States to withdraw from the Paris accord on climate change, signed by 194 other parties.

The “elemental” aspect of international relations has existed for millennia. The history of the human race is one of competition and conflict. U.S. foreign policy has amply reflected this feature. The United States has the world’s largest military and intelligence apparatus, troops and bases in dozens of countries around the world, and ongoing military interventions on several continents. This is not the picture of a nation unaware of political and military competition.

But in 1945, the world did change. In the wake of two of the deadliest wars in human history, with tens of millions killed and much of Europe and Asia physically devastated, the United States tried to build a new international system. It created institutions, rules and norms that would encourage countries to solve their differences peaceably — through negotiations rather than war. It forged a system in which trade and commerce would expand the world economy so that a rising tide could lift all boats. It set up mechanisms to manage global problems that no one country could solve. And it emphasized basic human rights so that there were stronger moral and legal prohibitions against dehumanizing policies such as those that led to the Holocaust.

It didn’t work perfectly. The Soviet Union and its allies rejected many of these ideas from the start. Many developing nations adopted only some parts of the system. But Western Europe, Canada and the United States did, in fact, become an amazing zone of peace and economic, political and military cooperation. Certainly there was competition among nations, but it was managed peacefully and always with the aim of greater growth, more freedom and improved human rights.

The “West” that emerged is, in historical terms, a miracle. Europe, which had torn itself apart for hundreds of years because of the “elemental nature” of international competition, was now competing only to create better jobs and more growth, not to annex countries and subjugate populations.

President Trump has decided to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement. Here's what you need to know (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post) .

This zone of peace grew over the years, first encompassing Japan and South Korea, and later a few countries in Latin America. It was always in competition and conflict with the Soviet bloc, in traditional geopolitical ways. Then in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and large parts of the world gravitated toward this open international order.

At the heart of the system was the United States, which had tried to create such an enterprise after World War I but failed. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, learning from those mistakes, advanced a new set of ideas as World War II was drawing to a close. This time, it worked.

Since then, every president of either party has recognized that the United States has created something unique that is a break from centuries of “elemental” international conflict. In the past two-and-a-half decades, it has tried to help incorporate hundreds of millions of people, from Mexico to Ukraine, who want to be part of this liberal — meaning free — international order.


From the start of his political career, Trump has seemed unaware of this history and ignorant of these accomplishments. He has consistently been dismissive of the United States’ closest political, economic and moral allies. He speaks admiringly of strongmen such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sissi and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte but critically of almost every democratic leader of Europe.

The consequences of Trump’s stance and his actions are difficult to foresee. They might result in the slow erosion of the liberal international order. They might mean the rise of a new, not-so-liberal order, championed by China and India, both of them mercantilist and nationalist countries.

But they could also result, in the long run, in the strengthening of this order, perhaps by the reemergence of Europe. Trump has brought the continent’s countries together in a way that even Putin could not. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Europe must look out for itself and, as if to underscore that fact, the same week welcomed the prime minister of India and the premier of China. French President Emmanuel Macron upheld Western interests and values face to face with Putin, in just the way an American president would have done in the past.

Trump might not cause the end of the Western world, but he could end the United States’ role at its center.

James Comey Statement Describes Unsettling and Awkward Meetings With Trump

By Mattathias Schwartz, Ryan Devereaux

Former FBI Director James Comey offered the first glimpse of what President Donald Trump looks like through his eyes in a seven-page “statement for the record” previewing his live testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. In the prepared remarks, released Wednesday, Comey narrates a pattern of encounters with Trump that he considered awkward and unsettling.

Most importantly, in Comey’s telling, is the threat that Trump posed to the independence of the FBI. The FBI has an ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, particularly those of Michael Flynn, who served as Trump national security adviser for the administration’s first 24 days. Comey’s statement suggests that Trump tried to quash that investigation in their meetings. Interference with the investigation could be considered obstruction of justice, a potentially impeachable offense, depending on how Congress interprets what transpired.

In his letter announcing Comey’s firing, Trump wrote that Comey had informed him “on three separate occasions” that he was not under investigation. Comey’s statement appears to verify Trump’s claim — though his version of events suggests a more complicated situation than the president’s letter let on. According to Comey, Trump was keenly interested in having the FBI director publicize that he was not under investigation.

In a March 30 phone call, Comey said Trump “repeatedly” told him, “We need to get that fact out.” Comey declined to do so, adding, “I did not tell the president that the FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change.”

In his Wednesday statement, Comey described his meetings with Trump one by one. In a January meeting at the White House, the pair’s second, Comey said Trump asked him if he wanted to keep the job of FBI director. That’s a question Comey “found strange,” with six years left in his 10-year-term, because he and Trump had already discussed that he was staying on.

“My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship,” Comey wrote in his statement. “That concerned me greatly, given the FBI’s traditionally independent status in the executive branch.”

The awkward moments — and the questioning of Trump’s motives by Comey — keep coming after that.

The Trump who emerges is the familiar persona from Trump’s reality television career — a ham-handed operator who uses carrots and sticks to extract loyalty from subordinates. Comey’s first face-to-face meeting with the president-elect took place at Trump Tower in January, two weeks before Trump was sworn in. In Comey’s account, it was his job to stay behind after other intelligence officials had left and brief Trump on what he described as “some personally sensitive aspects” of the government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

From that point forward, as Comey tells it, Trump repeatedly asked him to back off on the Russia investigation, at one point calling it a “cloud” that was “interfering with his ability to make deals for the country.” Comey repeatedly demurred.

“I need loyalty, I expect loyalty,” Trump said, according to Comey’s statement, in a description of a January 27 one-on-one dinner that hews closely to a New York Times account of the encounter. “I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed,” Comey wrote. “We simply looked at each other in silence.” When the topic came up again, Comey responded by offering his “honest loyalty.”

“It is possible,” he wrote, “that we understood the phrase ‘honest loyalty’ differently, but I decided it wouldn’t be productive to push it further.”

Indeed, their understanding appears to have been different. On April 11, the last time Comey and Trump spoke, Comey wrote that Trump agreed to go through more traditional channels — the White House counsel and the Department of Justice — with his concerns about the Russian investigation. Trump said, “Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know.” There was no thing, and no deal. Three weeks later, Trump fired Comey.

Tomorrow, at his much-anticipated congressional testimony, Comey will tell more of his side.

Noam Chomsky in Conversation with Amy Goodman on Climate Change, Nukes, Syria, WikiLeaks & More

AMY GOODMAN: In this Democracy Now! special, we spend the hour with the world-renowned linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky. In a public conversation we had in April, we talked about climate change, nuclear weapons, North Korea, Iran, the war in Syria and the Trump administration’s threat to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. We also talked about Noam Chomsky’s new book, Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power. Hundreds of people packed into the First Parish Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for our public conversation.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about this comment that you made that the Republican Party, you said, is the most dangerous organization in world history. Can you explain?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I also said that it’s an extremely outrageous statement. But the question is whether it’s true. I mean, has there ever been an organization in human history that is dedicated, with such commitment, to the destruction of organized human life on Earth? Not that I’m aware of. Is the Republican organization—I hesitate to call it a party—committed to that? Overwhelmingly. There isn’t even any question about it.

Take a look at the last primary campaign—plenty of publicity, very little comment on the most significant fact. Every single candidate either denied that what is happening is happening—namely, serious move towards environmental catastrophe—or there were a couple of moderates, so-called—Jeb Bush, who said, "Maybe it’s happening. We really don’t know. But it doesn’t matter, because fracking is working fine, so we can get more fossil fuels." Then there was the guy who was called the adult in the room, John Kasich, the one person who said, "Yes, it’s true. Global warming’s going on. But it doesn’t matter." He’s the governor of Ohio. "In Ohio, we’re going to go on using coal for energy, and we’re not going to apologize for it." So that’s 100 percent commitment to racing towards disaster.

Then take a look at what’s happened since. The—November 8th was the election. There was, as most of you know, I’m sure, a very important conference underway in Morocco, Marrakech, Morocco. Almost roughly 200 countries at the United Nations-sponsored conference, which was—the goal of which was to put some specific commitments into the verbal agreements that were reached at Paris in December 2015, the preceding international conference on global warming. The Paris conference did intend to reach a verifiable treaty, but they couldn’t, because of the most dangerous organization in human history. The Republican Congress would not accept any commitments, so therefore the world was left with verbal promises, but no commitments. Well, last November 8th, they were going to try to carry that forward. On November 8th, in fact, there was a report by the World Meteorological Organization, a very dire analysis of the state of the environment and the likely prospects, also pointed out that we’re coming perilously close to the tipping point, where—which was the goal of the—the goal of the Paris negotiations was to keep things below that—coming very close to it, and other ominous predictions. At that point, the conference pretty much stopped, because the news came in about the election.

And it turns out that the most powerful country in human history, the richest, most powerful, most influential, the leader of the free world, has just decided not only not to support the efforts, but actively to undermine them. So there’s the whole world on one side, literally, at least trying to do something or other, not enough maybe, although some places are going pretty far, like Denmark, couple of others; and on the other side, in splendid isolation, is the country led by the most dangerous organization in human history, which is saying, "We’re not part of this. In fact, we’re going to try to undermine it." We’re going to maximize the use of fossil fuels—could carry us past the tipping point. We’re not going to provide funding for—as committed in Paris, to developing countries that are trying to do something about the climate problems. We’re going to dismantle regulations that retard the impact, the devastating impact, of production of carbon dioxide and, in fact, other dangerous gases—methane, others.

OK. So the conference kind of pretty much came to a halt. The question—it continued, but the question was: Can we salvage something from this wreckage? And pretty amazingly, the countries of the world were looking for salvation to a different country: China. Here we have a world looking for salvation to China, of all places, when the United States is the wrecking machine that’s threatening destruction, in—with all three branches of government in the hands of the most dangerous organization in human history.

And I don’t have to go through what’s happened since, but the—in general, the Cabinet appointments are designed to—assigned to people whose commitment and beliefs are that it’s necessary to destroy everything in their department that could be of any use to human beings and wouldn’t just increase profits and power. And they’re doing it very systematically, one after another. EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, has been very sharply cut. Actually, the main department that’s concerned with environmental issues is the Department of Energy, which also had very sharp cuts, particularly in the environment-related programs. In fact, there’s even a ban on posting and publishing information and material about this.

And this is not just at the national level. The Republican Party, whatever you want to call it, has been doing this at every level. So, in North Carolina, a couple of years ago, where the Legislature, mostly thanks to gerrymandering, is in the hands of the Republicans, there was a study. They called for a study on the effect of sea level rise—on what sea level rise might be on the North Carolina coast. And there was a serious scientific study, which predicted, in not—I forget how many years—not a long time, about roughly a meter rise in sea level, which could be devastating to eastern North Carolina. And the Legislature did react, namely, by passing legislation to ban any actions or even discussion that might have to do with climate change. Actually, the best comment of this—I wish I could quote it verbatim—was by Stephen Colbert, who said, "If you have a serious problem, the way to deal with it is to legislate that it doesn’t exist. Problem solved." You know, this is going on all over the country.

And it’s not just—it’s not simply climate change. That’s bad enough. But there’s another huge specter that we’re kind of trying to survive under, and that’s nuclear war. That’s a whole other story. Here, both the Obama administration and, increasingly, Trump are radically increasing that danger. This—the threat of the new developments is captured very effectively in the best, simple monitor of the state of the world, established at the beginning of the nuclear age by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. I’m sure you all know about this, but the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists regularly brings together a group of scientists, political analysts, other very serious people, to try to give some kind of estimate of what the situation of the world is. The question is: How close are we to termination of the species? And they have a clock, the Doomsday Clock. When it hits midnight, we’re finished. End of the human species and much else. And the question every year is: How far is the minute hand from midnight?

Well, at the beginning, in 1947, beginning of the nuclear age, it was placed at seven minutes to midnight. It’s been moving up and back ever since. The closest it’s come to midnight was 1953. 1953, the United States and Russia both exploded hydrogen bombs, which are extremely serious threat to survival. Intercontinental ballistic missiles were all being developed. This, in fact, was the first serious threat to the security of the United States. There’s an interesting story behind that, but I’ll put it aside, unless there’s time to talk about it. But then, it came to two minutes to midnight. And it’s been moving up and back since.

Two years ago—2014, I think it was—the analysts took into account for the first time something that had been ignored: the fact that the nuclear age—the beginning of the nuclear age coincided with the beginning of a new geological epoch, the so-called Anthropocene. There’s been some debate about the epoch in which human activity is drastically affecting the general environment. There’s been debate about its inception. But the World Geological Organization has recently determined that it’s about the same time as the beginning of the nuclear age. So we’re in these two eras in which the possibility of human survival is very much at stake, and, with us, everything else, too, of course, all living—most living things, which are already under very severe threat. Well, a couple of years ago—I think it was 2014—the Bulletin began to take that into account and moved the minute hand up to three minutes to midnight, where it remained last year.

A couple of—about a week into Trump’s term, the clock was moved again, to two-and-a-half minutes to midnight. That’s the closest it’s been since 1953. And that means extermination of the species is very much an—very much an open question. I don’t want to say it’s solely the impact of the Republican Party—obviously, that’s false—but they certainly are in the lead in openly advocating and working for destruction of the human species. I agree that’s a very outrageous statement. So I therefore simply suggest that you take a look at the facts and see if it has any merit or if it just should be bitterly condemned. That’s up to you. My view, the facts are pretty clear.

AMY GOODMAN: At this point, as President Trump nears his 100th day, North Korea and Iran have been a major focus. Are you concerned that with the president at the lowest popularity rating, I think, in any president’s history at this point, that he will focus abroad, as he has in the last few weeks, dropping the MOAB, the "Mother of All Bombs," in Afghanistan, bombing the Syrian government, and yet focusing specifically on North Korea and Iran—in North Korea, McMaster, General McMaster, the national security adviser, saying tensions with North Korea are coming to a head. Do you think there is a possibility that the U.S. would attack North Korea?

NOAM CHOMSKY: I mean, this administration is extremely unpredictable. Trump probably has no idea what he’s going to do five minutes from now, so you can’t—literally—so you can’t really make predictions with much confidence. But I doubt it very much. The reason is very simple: An attack on North Korea would unleash—no matter what attack it is, even a nuclear attack, would unleash massive artillery bombardment of Seoul, which is the biggest city in South Korea, right near the border, which would wipe it out, including plenty of American troops. That doesn’t—I mean, I’m no technical expert, but as far as I can—as I read and can see, there’s no defense against that. Furthermore, North Korea could retaliate against American bases in the region, where there’s plenty of American soldiers and so on, also in Japan. They’d be devastated. North Korea would be finished. You know, so would much of the region. But if attacked, presumably, they would respond, very likely. In fact, the responses might be automatic. McMaster, at least, and Mattis understand this. How much influence they have, we don’t know. So I think an attack is unlikely.

But the real question is: Is there a way of dealing with the problem? There are a lot of proposals: sanctions; a big new missile defense system, which is a major threat to China, it’ll increase tensions there; military threats of various kinds; sending an aircraft carrier, the Vinson, to North Korea, except by accident—it happened to be going in the opposite direction, but we’ll forget that. But these are—those are the proposals, that kind of proposals, as to how to solve.

Actually, there’s one proposal that’s ignored. I mean, you see a mention of it now and then. It’s a pretty simple proposal. Remember, the goal is to get North Korea to freeze its weapons systems, weapons and missile systems. So one proposal is to accept their offer to do that. Sounds simple. They’ve made a proposal. China and North Korea proposed to freeze the North Korean missile and nuclear weapons systems. And the U.S. instantly rejected it. And you can’t blame that on Trump. Obama did the same thing a couple of years ago. Same offer was presented. I think it was 2015. The Obama administration instantly rejected it.

And the reason is that it calls for a quid pro quo. It says, in return, the United States should put an end to threatening military maneuvers on North Korea’s borders, which happen to include, under Trump, sending of nuclear-capable B-52s flying right near the border. Now, maybe Americans don’t remember very well, but North Koreans have a memory of not too long ago, when North Korea was absolutely flattened, literally, by American bombing. There was—there was literally no targets left. And I really urge people who haven’t done it to read the official American military histories, the Air Quarterly Review, the military histories describing this. They describe it very vividly and accurately. They say, "There just weren’t any targets left. So what could we do?" Well, we decided to attack the dams, the huge dams. That’s a major war crime. People were hanged for it at Nuremberg. But put that aside. And then comes an ecstatic, gleeful description of the bombing of the dams and the huge flow of water, which was wiping out valleys and destroying the rice crop, on which Asians depend for survival—lots of racist comment, but all with exaltation and glee. You really have to read it to appreciate it. The North Koreans don’t have to bother reading it. They lived it. So when nuclear-capable B-52s are flying on their border, along with other threatening military maneuvers, they’re kind of upset about it. Strange people. And they continue to develop what they see as a potential deterrent that might protect the regime from—and the country, in fact—from destruction. This has nothing at all to do with what you think about the government. So maybe it’s the worst government in human history. OK. But these are still the facts that exist.

There are similar questions to raise about Iran. So, Iran is, you know, the—again, the adults in the room, like Mattis and so on, say it’s the greatest threat to peace, you know, the greatest sponsor of terrorism, on and on. How is it a sponsor of terrorism? Well, could go through that. So, for example, in Yemen, it’s claimed that they are providing some aid to rebel tribesmen, Houthi tribesmen, in Yemen. OK, maybe they are. What is the United States doing in Yemen? It’s providing a huge flood of arms to its Saudi Arabian ally, who are destroying the country, who have created a huge humanitarian crisis, huge numbers of people killed, massive starvation. They’re threatening now to bomb a port, which is the only source of aid for surviving people. But Iran is the major source of terrorism.

AMY GOODMAN: MIT professor emeritus Noam Chomsky in a public conversation we recorded in April at the First Parish Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When we come back, we’ll talk about Syria, WikiLeaks and more.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Patti Smith, singing at Democracy Now!'s 20th anniversary at the Riverside Church in New York. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, as we return to my public conversation with Noam Chomsky, the acclaimed linguist and dissident, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We recorded this in April at the First Parish Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hundreds of people packed into the church.

AMY GOODMAN: I last interviewed you on April 4th, just a few weeks ago, on Democracy Now!. It was the 50th anniversary of Dr. King giving his "Beyond Vietnam" speech, why he opposed the war in Vietnam, where he called the U.S. "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world." And I wanted to turn from North Korea and Iran to Syria. It was the day of the gas attack in Syria, so we didn’t get to talk about it very much. And I’m wondering your thoughts on what you think happened, and then the ensuing U.S. bombing that President Trump would later talk about, saying he was having chocolate cake with the Chinese president—very, very good chocolate cake—when they launched the Tomahawk missiles into Iraq, he said. And he was corrected by the interviewer—right?—who said it was actually Syria.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Bunch of "ragheads"; it’s all about the same. But, well, there are some things we know for sure. There was a serious chemical weapons attack. Nobody doubts that. It’s plausible that it was the Syrian government, which does raise some questions. It’s not so obvious why the Assad regime would have carried out a chemical warfare attack at a moment when it’s pretty much winning the war, and the worst danger it faces is that a counterforce will enter to undermine its progress. So it does raise some questions. It also—even though maybe you can think up some reason why the Assad regime, which is a murderous, brutal regime, might have done it, there’s even another question as to why the Russians would have allowed it. Now, remember, this is a—the air base is a joint Russian-Syrian base. Russia has plenty of clout in Syria. And for them, it’s a total disaster. They have global concerns, not just local concerns in Syria. So there are some concerns.

And there are further concerns. There has been—the White House did put out a careful—you know, a justification, an intelligence report, to explain and account for, showing why they had absolute confidence that it was a Syrian government attack. This was analyzed closely by a very serious and credible analyst, Theodore Postol, professor at MIT, who has a long record of highly successful, credible analysis. He’s a highly regarded strategic analyst and intelligence analyst. And he gave a pretty devastating critique of the White House report. You might—you can pick it up online and take a look at it. So there certainly are some questions.

That there’s—that Syria is capable of a monstrous act like that, the Syrian government, that much is not in doubt. But one question that arises is: Before doing something, could you find out what happened? OK? I mean, let’s have an inquiry, take a look and see what in fact actually happened. There are plenty of cases where things—where it looked as though things happened, but they didn’t. And remember that reporting from Syria is extremely difficult. If reporters go into the rebel-held areas and don’t do what they’re told, you know, get your head cut off. Patrick Cockburn and others have written about this. You just can’t seriously report from those areas. There are obvious questions when you’re reporting from the government side. So the reporters are—there are very good reporters doing a serious, courageous job, but there’s not much you can do. So we just don’t know a lot. Well, those are the circumstances in which the 59 Tomahawk missiles were launched. That’s pretty easy. It’s easy to sit in Washington and push a button and say, "Go kill somebody." That’s considered courage, you know, macho, showing how strong we are.

What did they actually do? Well, apparently, the Tomahawk missiles were targeting a part of the airfield that doesn’t seem to be used. And, in fact, the next day, planes were taking off. And, in fact, the village that was attacked by the chemical weapons has been even more heavily attacked by straight bombing from the Assad government after the 59 Tomahawk missiles. So whatever they were intended to do doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Syria. I suspect that what they were intended to do was pretty much what you described, to shore up Trump’s image as—I think it was Nikki Haley at the U.N., said, "There’s a new sheriff in town." So now we’ve got Wyatt Earp, you know, pulling out his gun and getting rid of the bad guys. No more of this soft stuff. So, it was probably an attempt to shore up that image.

Pretty much like the bomb in Afghanistan. Nobody knows what it was for, what it had to do with. Probably destroyed a large part of Afghanistan. Shortly after that, there was a mass—an incredibly brutal and successful Taliban attack, which killed a couple hundred recruits, most of them unarmed. The young draftees didn’t know what they were doing. It was so bad, the defense minister resigned. Doesn’t seem to have any effect on—it was supposedly aimed at ISIS. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. They don’t seem to be affected by it.

So these look like—there doesn’t seem to be any strategic analysis behind any of these actions, as far as anyone can tell. They seem like kind of about at the level of the twitters that keep coming out: something that kind of occurs to me, so why not do it? It’s cheap. It may kill a lot of people, makes me look good and, you know, makes it seem as if I’m defending the country, and so on. It’s hard to see it as anything but that. That these things help the people of Syria and Iraq is very hard to imagine.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think has to be done to solve the crisis, the humanitarian catastrophe, in Syria?

NOAM CHOMSKY: In Syria, it’s a terrible catastrophe. And, you know, unfortunately, there isn’t a lot that can be done about it. There are some things that can be done. I mean, the idea that you can send in the Marines and bomb and so on, that has a small problem. If you do, you probably set off a nuclear war, and not only is Syria destroyed, the rest of Syria, but the rest of the world, too. So there’s a little difficulty in that scenario, whatever one thinks about the justification for it.

So what can be done? Well, one thing that can be done, which is really easy, very easy, is to take care of the people fleeing from this disaster. I mean, there are huge numbers of people fleeing from the disaster. What do we do about them? Make sure they don’t come here, you know, kind of like people fleeing from—you know, my relatives, in fact, fleeing, trying to flee from Eastern Europe under the—before when the Nazis were coming along. "We don’t want ’em. Not here." You know. So the Syrians don’t come—maybe a tiny trickle, but very few come here. Europe’s not that much better—in fact, pretty horrible, too. So one thing you could do is just take care of the people who are fleeing the disaster.

Another thing you can do is provide humanitarian aid for those in the region. Now, there are countries who are absorbing refugees, remember, like take Lebanon. It’s not a rich country like us. Poor country. About 40 percent of the population are refugees, many of them fleeing from the Israeli wars as far back as '48, many—huge number of Syrians. Jordan, another poor country, has absorbed a huge number of refugees. Turkey has a couple of million. Iran has accepted refugees. So there are very—there are poor countries that are accommodating refugees, but not the rich countries. The rich countries, it's not our business, certainly not us. It’s even a more serious problem with regard—for us, moral problem, with regard to Central America, but let’s keep to Syria. So another thing you could do is provide badly needed aid and assistance for those who have succeeded in fleeing the disaster, or who remain in parts of Syria where survival is possible, but are living under horrible conditions. Now, that’s all cheap and easy, a tiny fraction of increasing the military budget to cause more destruction.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam, I wanted to, before we get to your book, your latest book, ask you about this latest development in the United States. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency gave his first major address, and he focused on WikiLeaks. And it looks like now the U.S. is preparing an arrest warrant for Julian Assange, who’s been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for almost five years now. Pompeo calling WikiLeaks a "hostile non-state intelligence service," calling Julian Assange himself a "demon," and said he’s not protected by the First Amendment. Your thoughts?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I think it speaks for itself. WikiLeaks has released lots of information that governments don’t like. It’s overwhelmingly information that citizens should have. It’s information about what their governments are doing. And perfectly natural that systems of power don’t want to be exposed, so they’ll do what they can to prevent exposure. I think it’s a disgraceful act. In fact, I think it’s disgraceful even to keep Julian Assange holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy. I did visit him there once, but you can guess yourself. It’s, in many ways, worse than imprisonment. At least if you’re in prison, you can see other prisoners, and you can get out and look at the sunshine now and then. He’s in a small apartment, where he can’t go out. You know, he can go to the balcony, but that’s about it, a small—basically, a couple of rooms inside a small apartment. It’s not a big embassy. The embassy is like a kind of an apartment in London, surrounded by police and so on. There’s been no credible basis for any of this. And to go on to try to raise it to the level of criminal prosecutions, I think, is, again, one of these efforts to look tough at home, and the kind of effort that a government would carry out that is dedicated to trying to protect itself from exposure of facts that citizens should have, but systems of power don’t want them to have. I think that’s the crucial issue.

AMY GOODMAN: The suggestions are it has to do with his aiding and abetting perhaps Chelsea Manning and also Edward Snowden, doing that with Edward Snowden, which he openly admits, while he’s trapped in the Ecuadorean Embassy.

NOAM CHOMSKY: If the charge is true, he should be honored for it. Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden carried out heroic, courageous acts. They fulfilled the responsibility of somebody who takes citizenship seriously—that is, who believes that the people of a country ought to know something about what their government is up to. OK? Like if their government is carrying out murderous, brutal attacks in Iraq, people should know about it. Takes us back to Martin Luther King’s talk in 1967. If the government is, and corporations, too, incidentally, are listening in to your telephone conversations and what you’re doing, you know, tapping this discussion and so on, we should know about it. Governments have no right to do things like that. And people should know about it. And if they think it’s OK, fine, let them decide, not do it in secret. And I think people wouldn’t agree to it. That’s why it’s kept secret. Why else keep it secret? You know? And these are people who exposed it at great risk to themselves. So those are heroic, courageous acts. If WikiLeaks was abetting them, more power to them. That’s what they should be doing.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, President Trump endorsed WikiLeaks, right? He said, "I love WikiLeaks," during the campaign.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, when it was releasing things that he liked, yeah. Any system of power will do that. "You release information that I like, it’s great. But I don’t want to be exposed."

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Noam Chomsky in conversation in April at the First Parish Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When we come back, he’ll talk about the media’s coverage of the Trump administration, and his new book, Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power. We’ll be back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Alynda Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff singing "Rican Beach," here in our studios at Democracy Now! This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we return to our public conversation with the acclaimed linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky. It was recorded in April at the First Parish Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of entities that President Trump doesn’t like, he calls the press the enemy of the American people, the enemy of the people. Can you assess, as the media assesses President Trump in his first a hundred days, the media’s behavior?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I think the media has fallen over backwards to try to give him some protection and leeway. I mean, you know, there are things that are so ludicrous and outrageous that a reporter simply can’t keep from saying something about them, like there’s one ridiculous claim after another that comes out of the tweets—you know, 3 million illegal undocumented refugees voted for Clinton, Obama wiretapped the Trump Tower, you know, one after another.

My sense is—this is just a guess—that this is a media strategy, that it’s the Bannon-Trump-Spicer strategy to try to keep attention focused on one or another form of lunacy, but not look at what’s actually happening. And what’s actually happening is that Paul Ryan and his associates behind the scenes are systematically and carefully dismantling every element of government that is of any benefit to people and that doesn’t maximize corporate power and profit. I mean, the dedication of the Republican leadership, especially the Ryan-type leadership, their dedication to slavish servility to corporate power and wealth is just phenomenal. I mean, read this morning’s business pages. Their latest step is to try to prevent exposure of complaints against banks that carry out improper activities. It is possible now, thanks to the Consumer Protection Act, for people to criticize when they think a bank has carried out some improper activity. But we’ve got to keep that silent, you know, because we have to protect corporations from any exposure of criminal activities they might carry out. I mean down to that level, in fact, everywhere you look.

I mean, the healthcare proposal was so shocking that, I mean, it was a proposal basically to cut taxes for the rich and to ensure that poor and middle-class people—the people who voted for Trump, in fact—don’t get medical aid. As you saw, of course, the Congressional Budget Office estimated 24 million additional people uninsured. There was an analysis of that by Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, two health specialists, just studying the relationship between lack of insurance and deaths. There’s plenty of evidence about that. And it turns out that would have meant about 45,000 additional deaths a year. Well, that’s OK, as long as you cut taxes for the rich.

And step by step, that’s what’s happening behind the façade of Trumpisms and, you know, Spicer antics before the press. And the press is pretty much falling for it. That’s what they focus on, not what’s being carried out. There is, of course, criticism—mild criticism—of outrageous lies, but I think that just plays the game. That’s what the lies are for. Then you can yell about the liberal press that is trying to undermine us. It’s all a kind of a desperate effort to keep a con game going. Trump does have a base, a voter base. He’s kicking them in the face with abandon. And the idea is: How do you hold onto them while you’re doing this? Not an easy trick. And this, I think, is part of the con. And there are people in the press who are pointing it out—Paul Krugman, for one—but nothing like it should be.

AMY GOODMAN: Which takes us to your latest book, Requiem for the American Dream, where you talk about the 10 principles of the concentration of power and wealth, how it’s happening, what to watch out for.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, credit for the 10 principles should go to the producers of the film. What they did was take a lot of interviews and discussions about all sorts of things and put them in a coherent and, I think, pretty effective form, including formulating 10 principles—that’s their contribution—and including material that discusses them. And you can look at the film and see, or the book, but my feeling is they did a really good job. I’m impressed by it.

AMY GOODMAN: So the book is accompanying this film that is now out on Netflix. But you talk about, for example, principle one, reducing democracy; principle two, shaping ideology; and principle three, redesigning the economy.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, all of those fall together, and they’re part of a pretty remarkable development that’s taking place in—actually, in human history. Humans, in the last 60 or 70 years, have succeeded in creating a kind of a perfect storm, literally. Two—there’s a kind of a pincers movement that we’ve created, two major attacks on the prospects for survival: global—global warming, nuclear weapons, the Anthropocene, the nuclear age.

And the third is a set of socioeconomic policies designed to undermine the possibility of dealing with the problems. The problems could be dealt with only in a functioning democracy of engaged, informed people, who could make decisions, who would be informed and could make decisions to deal with the crises. But the so-called neoliberal programs of the past generation, the sort of somewhat market-oriented programs, designed to undermine the institutions, the governmental and popular institutions, that might deal with these issues, it’s all a unit. One result is a very significant decline in democracy. You can see it in the—which is almost built into the policies. It’s perfectly built—you can’t carry out economic policies of the type that have been—that have been implemented in the past generation in a functioning democracy. That’s impossible. I mean, just take a look at the numbers.

So, the neoliberal programs were basically taking off right around 1980. It escalated—started a little with the late Carter, escalated under Reagan, went on more under Clinton and so on. 2007 was the peak of supposed success. This is right before the crash. A lot of euphoria among economists, political analysts about the great achievements of neoclassical economics, of the great moderation, you know, the neoliberal programs, a dismantling of regulations—all these great successes, 2007. What was happening to American working people at that time? In 2007, wages, real wages, were lower than they had been in 1979 when the experiment took off. In fact, for the majority of the population, it’s a period of stagnation or decline. Benefits have declined.

People had been—some of the reasons were explained by Alan Greenspan, head of the Federal Reserve, who was in charge pretty much of managing the economy. He testified to Congress that part of the success of the economy, the low inflation and so on, was due to what he called growing worker insecurity. Working people were insecure. They were intimidated. They knew that they were in a dangerous situation, precarious situation. As a result, they didn’t press for increase in wages and—for decent wages and benefits. They were willing to accept, in fact, an effective decline in their living standards. And Greenspan, who was a close observer of the economy, pointed out that this continued, even when jobs were increasing in the late Clinton period. It was deeply embedded in the nature of the policies being carried out, that working people are intimidated, they’re living precarious lives, many of them are part-time, they’re losing security, their unions are being destroyed, and their wages are declining. So it’s all great. The economy is wonderfully healthy. Can you carry out policies like that in a democracy? I mean, are people going to vote for it?

Same in Europe, even worse in many ways. The so-called austerity programs, even the economists of the International—the IMF, International Monetary Fund, their own economists say—report that these policies make no economic sense. But the IMF bureaucrats, the ones who are part of the decision-making apparatus, they vote for them. How do you—and the effect on Europe is the same thing, as far as democracy is concerned. Just like in the United States, there’s anger, contempt for major—for centrist—you know, for the major governing institutions. Here, it’s Congress; there, it’s the political parties. You just saw it in France yesterday: The two major parties were barely visible in the election. And it’s happening all over Europe, same kind of thing that’s happening here. I mean, here, it’s happening in a way which is almost farcical because of the—you know, the kind of actions carried out by the leadership. In Europe, it’s being—it’s being pursued in a way which is really ominous. I mean, you don’t have to look far back to find a time when fascist parties actually had power in Europe. And we know what happened. And now there are neofascist parties, with fascist roots often, which are pretty close to power, even in places like Austria and Germany, which have some memories about. France, as well, was—under the Nazis, was a very pro-Nazi country, the Vichy government. It was rounding up Jews faster than the Germans wanted them. A really ugly record. And seeing these things come back, or just seeing a situation in which, according to recent polls, a majority of Europeans think there should be no more Muslims in Europe, I mean, that evokes some memories, not nice ones.

And a lot of—you can’t attribute it all to the neoliberal economic policies, but a lot of it does follow from that. When you impose on people circumstances of this kind, you have to make sure that they have no way of responding politically. In Europe, it’s done pretty straightforwardly. The main decisions about socioeconomic policies are made by the so-called troika—IMF, European Central Bank and the European Commission, which is unelected. So three unelected bodies, they make the decisions. They do listen to voices, the voices of the northern banks, mostly German banks. And the people suffer. And they get—they are angry, frightened, often reacting in dangerous ways. We see similar phenomena here.

So, to go back to the pincers movement, what’s happened is we’ve created two huge threats to survival. We have systematically—not you and me, but the leadership has systematically created socioeconomic policies, which have as a consequence, almost immediate consequence, the undermining of functioning democracy—the one thing that might deal with the disasters. Like I said, it’s a kind of perfect storm. Real credit to the human species to have contrived something like this.

AMY GOODMAN: Principle four is shift the burden onto the poor and the middle classes. Principle five, attack the solidarity of the people. Six, let special interests run the regulators. Seven, engineer election results. Eight, use fear and power of the state to keep the rabble in line.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Is it necessary to comment? I think you’re all familiar with it.

AMY GOODMAN: Nine is manufacture consent, and principle 10 is marginalize the population.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, in fact, that’s exactly what’s happening. And it’s the—and there’s a reason for it. You cannot carry out the kinds of policies that have been developed in the last generation, and have the population function democratically. In Europe, you can’t get people to vote for policies which are undermining their lives; which are leaving especially younger people without any hopes of decent employment; which are driving people to precarious existences; which are undermining wages, reducing benefits; in England right now, undermining, threatening what had been the world’s most—by far, the world’s most effective and efficient national health system. You can’t get people to vote for things like this.

So what you have to do is marginalize them in one way or another, turn them against each other, aim—turn their anger against vulnerable people—that’s standard technique—get people to—don’t look at the people who are really doing this to you. Look at the ones who are more vulnerable: immigrants, the poor, you know, Muslims, blacks—anybody. We’re familiar with that, too. There’s not a slight history about it.

So, sure, that just—it’s like—it’s like an almost logical consequence of the socioeconomic policies, which have been imposed and lauded, in fact, by elites, including liberal elites. A lot of this was done by—say, by the Clinton administration. It was hailed, the deregulation, for example, which very quickly led to one after another financial crisis. That was initiated by liberal economists, who were telling us how wonderful it is. And there’s actually, you know, a theory, neoclassical economic theory, which says, "Yeah, it’s fine."

Actually, there were people who warned against it. There were people who knew, a lot of left independent economists, but even people right out of the mainstream, like Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate. Back around 1995 or so, he wrote an article, actually in a World Bank research journal, in which he warned against what he called the "religion that the market knows best." He says that’s the religion, as he put it, that’s being followed by economists. And he says you’ve got to take a look at that religion. Like a lot of religions, it just doesn’t work. Economic history and even logic show us lots of things that are wrong about it.

But that was pursued with abandon on the basis of theories of efficient markets, you know, rational behavior, rational expectations and so on—none of which had any empirical basis or founding. But they were the—the doctrines were accepted for the very simple reason that they were highly beneficial to wealth and power. That makes them acceptable.

And you get the results that you have: the undermining of the only means possible to try to deal with the existential crises that we have created. So, again, it’s a kind of perfect storm, part—all sorts of sources, including just socioeconomic policies of a bipartisan nature.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, speaking April 24th at the First Parish Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His latest book, Requiem for the American Dream.

Obama’s harsh words for Trump after Paris withdrawal

By Peter Holley




The Paris climate agreement was a step forward. President Trump's decision to withdraw from the landmark agreement was several giant steps in the opposite direction. 

That's the underlying message of former president Barack Obama's statement on his successor's controversial move.

Brief and to the point, Obama never mentions Trump by name. Instead, he pointedly refers to the “absence of American leadership,” a jabbing phrase that for many Trump critics extends beyond the climate agreement.

Statement from President Barack Obama on the Paris climate agreement:

A year and a half ago, the world came together in Paris around the first-ever global agreement to set the world on a low-carbon course and protect the world we leave to our children.

It was steady, principled American leadership on the world stage that made that achievement possible.

[Transcript: President Trump’s remarks on leaving the Paris climate deal, annotated] 
 

It was bold American ambition that encouraged dozens of other nations to set their sights higher as well. And what made that leadership and ambition possible was America’s private innovation and public investment in growing industries like wind and solar — industries that created some of the fastest new streams of good-paying jobs in recent years, and contributed to the longest streak of job creation in our history.

Simply put, the private sector already chose a low-carbon future. And for the nations that committed themselves to that future, the Paris Agreement opened the floodgates for businesses, scientists, and engineers to unleash high-tech, low-carbon investment and innovation on an unprecedented scale.

[Trump announces U.S. will exit Paris climate deal] 
 

The nations that remain in the Paris Agreement will be the nations that reap the benefits in jobs and industries created. I believe the United States of America should be at the front of the pack.

But even in the absence of American leadership; even as this Administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future; I’m confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got.

US President Can't Escape Troubles on the Road

Mired in a web of scandal and lies back home, Donald Trump embarked on his first international trip this week to the Middle East and Europe. It was seen by the administration as a possible new beginning. But it hasn't worked out that way.

By Christoph Scheuermann

Perhaps the trip didn't first begin on board Air Force One or with the King of Saudi Arabia, but instead back in the restroom at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, where a Fox News reporter exclaimed euphorically: "This is gonna be epic!"


Outside, an early summer thunderstorm poured down on Washington, the kind that is dazzling and loud, but which does little to bring down the stifling temperature. Some 60 journalists, camera crews and technicians, in addition to a handful of White House staffers and Secret Service agents, were waiting inside the terminal of the military airport. The president would first depart on Air Force One a day later, after the storm passed. But the press had to travel ahead on a charter jet in order to prepare for his arrival in Riyadh. The flight from Washington, with a stopover in Frankfurt, took 15 hours, but the New York Times wore a tie nonetheless.

Riyadh, Jerusalem, Rome, Brussels and, in the end, the G-7 summit in Sicily -- five stops in nine days. Donald Trump is discovering the world. Expectations for the trip, it should be noted, weren't particularly high. When it comes to Trump, a lot can happen, especially disasters. Recent weeks have shown just how unpredictable this man is, how thin-skinned and intractable -- and how poor he is at gauging moods and people. But what happens if he meets with national leaders who don't fawn over him? What if he feels as though he is on the defensive or has to deal with some kind of crisis that, for once, isn't of his own making?

Trump's hope had been to escape the Russia scandal and the ensuing turbulence -- and to attempt a fresh start. As it turned out, that hope dried up during the trip. The new revelations about Trump aren't slowing down and ongoing hearings in Congress continue to generate headlines.

It was a tour of the kind that few other presidents have undertaken. For Trump, a man who abhors anything foreign to him, detests anything unusual and would prefer to sleep in his own bed or at least one of his hotels, it has been a feat of endurance.

He reportedly even asked his advisers if the trip could be made shorter. Perhaps just five days instead of nine?

From the very beginning, Trump was the most unlikely of tourists. The man who wanted to prevent Muslims from traveling into the United States took part in a sword dance in the royal court of the King of Saudi Arabia. He joined the leaders of Kazakhstan, Burkina Faso and Somalia for a meal. The "America First" man who wanted to withdraw from conflicts promised peace to the Israelis and Palestinians. A man who swears by revenge met the pope in Rome before joining the leaders of the European Union in Brussels, an institution he hopes will fail. What could possibly go wrong?

Wall Street Journal, Saturday, May 20, Page 1:
 
'Fired FBI Director James Comey To Testify in Public'
 
In Saudi Arabia, the king arrived in a golf cart as Donald Trump disembarked from Air Force One in Riyadh. It was shortly before 10 a.m., but the air was already hot and dry at 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit). The sound of cannons echoed over the runway and a military band played. For a few minutes, American domestic policy, the chaos in the White House and the Russian scandal, seemed to have evaporated in the shimmering heat. Military jets roared in from the left at a frighteningly low altitude. Trump looked to the skies and peered on as the aircraft trailed red, white and blue smoke. The message from King Salman to Trump was clear: You are safe here. Nobody will harm you. It was as though the king were welcoming an equal: King Donald.

Trump's most recent scandal began two weeks ago when he fired the head of the FBI. James Comey had spent months investigating Russian influence on the U.S. presidential election, including contacts between Trump's team and people close to Vladimir Putin. From Trump's perspective, it made sense to can Comey because he thought it would mean one less problem for him. Unfortunately for Trump, however, the FBI director had written up notes after a meeting with Trump indicating the president had requested he suspend the investigation.

Three days before Trump departed on his trip, came the news of the appointment of a special counsel to conduct the investigation. The pressure on the president was increasing by the day. That was the background to this trip.


Washington Post, Sunday, May 21, Page 1: 
 
'A GOP congressman from Kentucky wonders: Is 'this Trump thing' sustainable?'
 
Trump -- a well-known critic of Islam -- planned to give a speech in Riyadh outlining his approach to the religion. First, though, came the banquet and the appearances -- as though in a theater -- of the secondary characters in this drama. Stephen Bannon, Trump's chief ideologist, sauntered through a side door into the auditorium of the King Abdullah Conference Center. He was followed by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the glamorous couple. Then came Trump's press secretary Sean Spicer, a tragicomic figure if there ever was one -- half liar and half court jester.

People reveal a lot about themselves when they enter a room that isn't familiar to them. Spicer's eyes were glassy and peering out at a middle distance. He held onto a black folder with several documents protruding from it. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner resembled Hugo Boss models as they floated by.

The only person who appeared to be looking around with interest was Bannon, the man whose radicalism helped Trump win the election -- and on whom Trump has soured, as has been the fate of so many others.

Trump thrives on chaos. His preferred working method is to have a dozen staffers in the Oval Office who he can summon or kick out at any time, like a petty king. No one is safe from his rage, not Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and not National Security Adviser Herbert Raymond McMaster, who also traveled with the delegation. Trump enjoys having people fight for his favor, even during this trip. And soon, Bannon would no longer be part of his traveling entourage.

Back in the conference center, though, his eyes were roaming across the white tables, where diplomats and leaders from Muslim countries were sitting in front of gold plates, silver bowls of chicken, roasted vegetables, rice in grape leaves, figs, tartlets and chocolate. All around the room, men could be seen in white robes, but there were no women at all. Bannon had paved the way for Trump's "America First" strategy, and now, here he was, the White House's most adamant hater of Islam, right in the heart of the Muslim world.


'Not a Hint of a Protester'
 
He could see the Koran surahs on the walls, crystal chandeliers as heavy as small cars and the dome in the center. The expression on his face said: What the hell am I doing here?

Trump is not the first president to have sought refuge by traveling abroad. In 1974, Richard Nixon also traveled to Saudi Arabia and Israel in order to temporarily escape the Watergate scandal. The trip had been intended as a way to divert attention and present Nixon as a dignified statesman. But the plan failed miserably and he resigned not long after his return.

Trump was then invited up to the stage, where a number of men were seated in leather chairs. They included kings, princes, emirs and even a few democrats from 50 different countries in the Muslim world. A frown crept onto Trump's face and his shoulders slouched forward. That morning at 9 a.m., he'd had a meeting with the King of Bahrain, followed by one with the Emir of Qatar. There were smiles, handshakes and small talk, something Trump hates. "Love your shoes. Boy, those shoes.

Man," Trump told Egypt's president.

For trip preparation's, Trump had relied more heavily than ever on his son-in-law. For months, Kushner had been in close contact with the Saudi royal house. He had worked almost obsessively to ensure that his father-in-law's trip would be a success and to avoid the impression that it was a pleasure trip. In March, Kushner had invited the deputy crown prince to the White House. The prince now returned the favor with an opulent dinner in Riyadh.

Trump got up from his chair to give a speech on Islam, a rhetorical tight rope act. On one hand, he had to cater to a subset of people back in the United States who hate the Muslim religion. On the other, he had to avoid alienating Arabs with whom he would like to do business.

Stephen Miller, a 31-year-old adviser to Trump who, together with Bannon, had planned and implemented the entry ban for Muslims, wrote the speech. The big question had been whether or not Miller would be able to include the term "Islamist terrorism." The term irks many Muslims because it directly ties their religion with terrorism. Kushner and McMaster also opposed using it.

Although he said he was not there to lecture, Trump did say that Muslim nations "must be willing to take on the burden, if we are going to defeat terrorism." He also sharply criticized Iran, a country that has just re-elected moderate President Hassan Rohani. Trump spoke of a "battle between good and evil." Then he said that "Islamist extremism" must be confronted. The fact that he avoided the formulation the hardliners had wanted indicated that he was seeking to strike a milder tone.

The most surprising thing about Trump's speech was its harmlessness. He emphasized the war on terror and sought to build trust. George W. Bush could have given the same speech. The problem is that for every sentence uttered by Trump, you can find a polar opposite statement from the campaign trail. In Riyadh, he described Islam as "one of the great faiths." But last year, speaking of the United States, he said, "Islam hates us." That's indicative not of fickleness, but of a lack of interest in politics.

The fact that Trump is leading an administration centered around his family is something that appeals to people in the Persian Gulf. The Saudis value the fact that the new American president isn't as bothered by human rights as some of his predecessors. Trump needed success and the leaders in the Gulf region have money. In the end, he left with $110 billion in defense contracts in his hands. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also promised to provide $100 million for Ivanka Trump's proposed Women Entrepreneurs Fund, which is to be administered by the World Bank.

The visit went excellently. "Not a single hint of a protester," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said, pleased. The fact that protests are prohibited in Saudi Arabia didn't even seem to cross his mind.


New York Times, Monday, May 22, Page 1: 

'Comey Drama'
 
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin laughed as Trump descended the gangway in Tel Aviv. "We are happy to see that America is back in the area," he said. Many of Rivlin's compatriots have not forgotten how, during his first visit to the Middle East as president, Obama visited Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but snubbed Israel.

During the trip, a change became palpable in Trump. He appeared to become more secure and more disciplined -- and he held back any possible outbursts, initially at least. Instead of the threats he often tweets out, this time he stuck to links to his speeches. His advisers seem to have him under better control when traveling. Besides, to this point, he had largely been well-received with little criticism, aside from a few newspaper editorials that criticized his weapons deals and what they saw as his excessive closeness with the Saudi ruling family.

But when he spoke, Trump's voice sounded is if he were on Valium. It wasn't that long ago that he criticized Obama for using a teleprompter, saying nobody wanted a scripted president. But it is Trump who is the teleprompter man now -- and he seldom goes off script.

Regardless, even if his staff is learning from his mistakes, they still haven't succeeded in making Trump eloquent. After his short tour through the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, he wrote in the guestbook: "So amazing & will never forget!" It's something he could have written of a visit to Disneyland.


Breaking News, Politico, Tuesday, May 24:
 
'Former FBI Director John Brennan: Russia may have successfully recruited Trump campaign aides.'

The Palestinians also know how to win Trump over. Like the Saudis, they hung up huge banners prior to the U.S. president's visit showing him and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas flanking the slogan: "The city of peace welcomes the man of peace." They were clearly visible to Trump as he drove in his convoy to Bethlehem, past a wall of the kind he would like to build on the American border with Mexico. Once in the city, he visited the Church of the Nativity and announced his intention to help the Palestinians boost their economy and combat terrorism.

The afternoon found him, arms crossed, on a podium in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was standing at the lectern next to him, gushing with praise for his new friend, but Trump seemed absent. He turned his head from side to side, squinted into the audience and rocked back and forth in his chair. The corners of his mouth curled up into a smile, which vanished just as suddenly as it had appeared. As always happens when he is forced to sit by as attention is lavished elsewhere, Trump was getting restive. He tapped his fingertips together and looked as though he had to exert significant amounts of self-control to prevent himself from jumping up and shoving Netanyahu aside.

When it was finally his turn to step up to the microphone, Trump's agitation disappeared. He expressed gratitude for the Israeli premier's hospitality, saying we had "a very unforgettable dinner. We had a great time. We talked about a lot of very, very important things." He added that the bond between the U.S. and Israel was "unshakable" -- and was forced to pause several times during his speech because of the applause.

Trump and his delegation didn't make the preparations for this stage of his journey easy. First, it was announced that Trump would speak at Masada, the historic Jewish fortress on the Dead Sea. But when it became clear that he would be unable to land at the site in his helicopter, the visit was called off, apparently because Trump didn't want to have to ride in the cable car to the mountaintop citadel.

Later, the Americans abruptly cancelled a dinner that the Israeli defense minister had planned for Monday. And then it emerged that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had had to order his cabinet to appear on the tarmac for the arrival of Air Force One after some members had indicated they would not attend.

Back in the museum, Trump said that the Palestinians were ready for peace. "I know you've heard it before. I am telling you -- that's what I do. They are ready to reach for peace." Suddenly, the audience wasn't clapping quite as enthusiastically as it had been before. The appearance demonstrated just how dependent Trump is on applause, how eagerly he laps up approval. He is almost like a junkie whose euphoria and pleasure at the apex of his high knows no bounds, but once it quickly begins to fade, he immediately needs a new fix.

What, though, is the mood like on board Air Force One? "Good," says the Los Angeles Times.

"Okay," says Reuters.

A dozen reporters have been allowed to ride along in the president's official plane, the so-called pool, which includes news agencies and the largest newspapers and television channels. The rest of the press travels ahead in a chartered plane, in which there is a clear pecking order. In the front the plane to the left of the aisle, correspondents from CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox News and CNN can be found. On the right are the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, AFP, AP and Reuters. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary, usually sits in seat 4D, across from the restroom and next to the Bloomberg correspondent. Sean Spicer is traveling on Air Force One. Everybody else has seats further back, including Sky News, Politico and Vanity Fair, along with technicians, camera operators and foreign media representatives. The costs for the charter are divided up among the journalists, with everybody paying the same price regardless of where they sit.


Fantastic for Sales
 
Attitudes toward Trump on board range between skepticism and hostility. The prevailing view seems to be that, for democracy, the administration is a catastrophe, but from a journalistic perspective, it is a fantastic story, measurable in rising click rates, circulation and television ratings. Indeed, the New York Times had its best quarter in years at the end of 2016, with over 276,000 new digital subscriptions. Trump is fantastic for sales.

The problem is that most of the journalists traveling along with Trump hardly ever get any facetime with the president. Those who aren't part of the 13-member media pool that constantly accompanies Trump sit in a windowless press room and watch CNN or read Twitter, along with the summaries of fellow reporters who are closer to the action. They only realize they are in a different country when the hotel personnel greet them with "buon giorno" instead of "salam aleikum."

On one evening at about 10 p.m., a young man stuck his head through the door of the hotel press room. He was wearing a perfectly cut suit and looked as though he had just stepped out of an ice bath following two hours of ab training. "Hey guys, how are you? Still jetlagged?" Jared Kushner asked. "How's the trip so far? Are you enjoying it?"

He then spoke of short-term and long-term possibilities, ambitious goals and paradigm shifts in the Middle East. He sounded like his own Power Point presentation. Leaning against the wall to the right was Ivanka Trump, clutching her handbag. After about 10 minutes, she gave a thumb's up, the Trump family's favorite gesture, and disappeared with Jared into the night.

Donald Trump is a creation of the media age: Without journalists and television, he would never have become famous and likely would not have ascended to the presidency. As a result, Trump's relationship to the media is obsessive. It is his mirror, into which he gazes several times each day, his echo chamber, the justification for his existence. He watches a lot of television, showing a distinct preference for Fox News, and reads newspapers primarily to confirm his suspicion that they write nothing but tripe.

Trump's White House predecessors used to hold regular press conferences during extended trips to keep journalists informed. But Trump's team has decided that the risk is too great that their boss might lose his temper in the face of an uncomfortable question. Breitbart and other right-wing news outlets that are fans of Trump, after all, remained at home in the United States. Softball questions wouldn't be likely.


New York Times, Wednesday, May 24: 
 
'Top Russian Officials Discussed How to Influence Trump Aides Last Summer'
 
And then she did it again. As Melania Trump stepped out of Air Force One at her husband's side in Rome, she pulled her hand away from him just as she had done in Tel Aviv. It looked as though she was trying to avoid holding hands with the president. It was just a brief scene, lasting hardly even a second, and it wasn't even particularly noticeable.

But the First Lady usually exhibits impeccable self-control. It seems unlikely that she simply forgot that half the world was watching. Perhaps it was intentional, a signal to demonstrate that she isn't the kind of woman who can be ordered around. But her husband won't likely have been particularly pleased by such images. Still, the trip had gone largely according to plan to that point. The Saudi Arabians were taken by the first lady's dignified demeanor and, of course, by the fact that she constantly remained in the background and left the stage to her husband. Her appearance in a dress that was rather short for Saudi tastes seemed of little concern.

During the visit to Pope Francis, however, Melania wore a black veil over her hair, making her look like a widow attending her deceased husband's funeral. And the pope wore a facial expression as though he were standing across from the devil incarnate. It was just Donald Trump. It was the moment at which the president must have realized that the pleasant, uncomplicated portion of his trip had come to an end. Now, he was in Europe, and he could no longer be sure that everybody he met actually liked him. Not after the campaign he ran and not after the delight he expressed following last year's Brexit referendum.

Trump's daughter Ivanka, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson were also on hand for the meeting with the pope. Missing, however, was Sean Spicer, who is Catholic and who had reportedly been greatly looking forward to the opportunity to kiss the pope's ring. His absence was apparently a bit of diplomatic spitefulness on the part of the Holy See. Steve Bannon and Reine Priebus had been sent back to Washington earlier.

Pope Francis presented Trump with three books upon departure, one on family, another on the joy of the gospel and, finally, a copy of his 2015 encyclical on the need for urgent measures to combat climate change. "Well, I'll be reading them," said Trump, a man who has bragged in the past of having only ever read a single book to completion in his life -- his own.

How was your meeting with the pope, Mr. President? an AP journalist called out to him during a photo op. "He is something," Trump replied. "We had a fantastic meeting."


Report on CNN.com, Thursday, May 25:
 
'AG Sessions did not disclose Russia meetings in security clearance form, DOJ says.'
On Thursday morning, Trump arrived at a place he never wanted to be. He climbed out of his armored Cadillac and stepped into the 320-million-euro Europa Building in Brussels, where the European Council meets -- the heart of the EU. His trip back to reality was now complete, following his brief excursion to the Orient, where people received him as a savior -- or at least as someone who could sell high-quality weapons of war.

Trump was there for a meeting with Council President Donald Tusk and Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, held in a nondescript conference room. The two Europeans were eager to elaborate to Trump on how they see the world and the trio talked for three-quarters of an hour behind closed doors. Later, Tusk would say that there was broad agreement on many issues, but he added: "I'm not 100 percent sure that we can say today -- we, meaning Mr. President and myself -- that we have a common position, common opinion about Russia." He said that he had wanted to deliver a message to Trump, that the friendship between Europe and the U.S. is based on values such as freedom, human rights and the respect for human dignity. It was a diplomatic slap in the face, similar to the one German Chancellor Angela Merkel had delivered shortly after Trump's election.

Afterward, Trump joined newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron, of all people, for lunch. Trump, after all, had seemed to support Macron's opponent, right-wing populist Marine Le Pen, in the election. When the two men shook hands for a closing photo op, the Frenchman grabbed Trump's hand and squeezed hard. Trump squeezed back. For a moment, they looked like opponents locked in a wrestling match. Trump wanted to let go, but Macron squeezed even harder until his knuckles turned white.

Not long later, the two met again for the opening ceremony of NATO's new headquarters. Behind him was a piece of twisted metal from the World Trade Center while next to him stood Angela Merkel.

While Merkel gave a ceremonious speech about the historical importance of NATO, Trump spoke again about alliance funding -- about the "massive amounts of money" that 23 of the 28 NATO member states allegedly owe the United States. He then said: "I never asked once what the new NATO headquarters cost. I refuse to do that. But it is beautiful." The others stood next to him like schoolchildren. Merkel repeatedly looked at the ground while Macron grinned. The applause was reserved. To make sure that he was in the front row for the joint photo following the event, Trump rudely shoved aside the prime minister of Montenegro.

The leaders then enjoyed a meal together before Trump flew onward to Sicily in the evening for the G-7 summit starting on Friday. Prior to departure, Trump received word that a U.S. federal appeals court had refused to lift a temporary block on his revised travel ban for Muslims.

It was a reminder that he really can't get home quickly enough. There is plenty to do in Washington.