JOHN ORWANT: My
name is John Orwant.
I'm with the Google Cambridge
Tea Party Republicans Club.
And it's a pleasure and an honor
to introduce our guest today--
a man whose fame rises to a
level of the kind that renders
the standard introduction
pattern completely obsolete.
I could tell you
about his 123 books.
I counted.
The seven books
have been written
about him, the 38 doctoral--
honorary doctoral degrees--
that he's been granted.
I could tell you about
the species of bee
that has been named after him.
Instead, I'm actually going to
talk about tenure, because it's
actually the thing
I think of first
when I think about
our guest today.
We tend to think of tenure
today as an entitlement.
Right?
So, professors--
they work really hard
for some amount of time.
And then they're kind of
granted this lifetime protection
from being fired.
And, the institution of
tenure has been around
for many decades.
It really started to solidify
around the time of the McCarthy
era, where a lot of
professors in this country
were being asked to
take oaths of loyalty
as part of the
anti-communist fervor that
was sweeping the nation.
And it wasn't that the
University administrations
wanted them to take those oaths.
They were worried.
The universities were worried
about pressure from government.
They were worried about
wealthy donors saying,
I'll give you this check
for a million dollars,
but you have to fire that
professor over there.
And so that's why
universities kind of lept
into this institution
with gusto.
And yet, when you
look at professors
today, they very rarely
take advantage of tenure
to speak on popular views.
But of course, our
guest today, I think,
is the world's best
example of doing that.
And I think that getting
tenure perhaps today
should come with
a mild obligation
to speak truth to power.
So anyway, with that,
ladies and gentlemen,
I want to introduce a man who is
to the left of Julian Assange,
but with a less restrictive--
but with fewer travel
restrictions-- Noam Chomsky.
[APPLAUSE]
INTERVIEWER: Well we're
very glad to have you back.
You were here in 2008.
And now, Google's
grown considerably.
You have a
considerable audience.
And as was mentioned
earlier, the questions
I'm about to pose to
you are from Googlers.
So you guys went online
and you posted questions,
and you voted on them.
All right-- so the first one.
Your early view of
the potential abuse
of the internet as a political
medium seem to convey a wait
and see attitude.
How has your view
evolved, and where do you
think the balance
of power is headed?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the
internet is obviously
a tremendous research tool.
We use it all the time.
I assume by internet, you mean
more generally-- the whole kind
of IT system that's developed.
And, it's certainly useful
for activists and organizers.
Almost all activist
efforts and enterprises
involve intercommunication
through the internet.
On the other hand, we don't
have to talk about the fact
that it's a tremendous
tool for power systems
to control and dominate
in all sorts of ways.
I by now, hardly have to
mention the NSA revelations,
Edward Snowden's revelations.
Commercial institutions,
like Google, for example,
use it to undermine
privacy and independence
in all kinds of ways.
So the balance of power is where
it always was, and expending.
Any technology that's
around is going
to be used by systems
of concentrated power
to dominate and control.
And you can't open
a newspaper now
without new things appearing.
Take this morning.
If you happened to look at
this morning's newspaper,
there was an associated press
report on some revelations
that they've dug out
recently about efforts
to develop by the US government
through USAID, US aid, which
is supposed to be
a aid organization
to carry forward the intensive
US efforts to undermine
and overthrow the
government of Cuba.
Read the report.
It's interesting for what it
says and what it doesn't say.
What it says is that the
government through US aid
has set up-- tried to set
up-- a kind of social media
inside Cuba that could be
used to organize the crowds
to protest with the
people, not really knowing
who they're working
for what they're doing.
And the original AP
report, most of which
didn't get printed, at
least from what I saw,
says that this has
already been used
in many other places--
Philippines, Ukraine,
and so on-- to try to organize
anti-government protests,
which raises quite a few
questions about what's
going on around the world.
Well this is one of
the techniques that's
being used for subversion,
domination, control.
This is an Obama
program, incidentally.
Not Bush.
And what's said is interesting.
What isn't said is interesting.
And here, the power
of the internet
looms in the background.
You can quickly find out what
isn't said on the internet
if you look for it.
What isn't said is that
this program-- of course,
it's not called subversion.
It's called bringing
democracy and so on.
But this program of trying to
subvert the Cuban government
is part of a longstanding
war that the US
has been conducting
against Cuba.
Longstanding.
You look at the history
of the US and Cuba--
it starts in the 1820s.
Cuba was regarded by
the founding fathers
as the next conquest
that we have to make.
Cuba was waiting there.
We had to take it for ourselves
as we expand and become
the greatest empire
in the world.
Well we couldn't do it in 1823.
There was a deterrent--
the British.
They were too powerful.
The British were the main
enemy through the 19th most
of the 19th century
but the big thinkers,
like John Quincy Adams--
great grand strategist--
he recognized and said, while
we can acquire Cuba now,
it will fall into
our hands by the laws
of political gravitation,
just as an apple
falls from the tree.
Meaning, over time, the US
will become more powerful.
Britain's power will decline,
And we'll be able to take Cuba.
And in fact, that's
what happened.
In 1898, Cuba was liberating
itself from Spain,
and the US intervened in what's
called here Liberation of Cuba,
but in fact, was the prevention
of the liberation of Cuba
by Cubans.
The US took over the
island-- one of several.
Puerto Rico, Hawaii was
stolen from its inhabitants
the same year, and Cuba became
a colony-- a virtual colony.
Well, something
quite interesting
happened that's
highly relevant today.
Highly relevant.
But never mentioned, but you
can find it on the internet
if you like.
At gun point, the
US imposed a treaty
on Cuba, Platt
Ammendment, it's called,
in which Cuba granted
the United States control
over eastern Cuba-- so
what we call Guantanamo.
Happens to include
Cuba's major port-- it's
only port oriented
towards Europe,
which is where its
main trade would be.
Of course, the Cubans
had no voice in this.
We just took it over.
And we've had it for 110 years.
Cuba's been trying to get
it back, but we refuse.
The purpose has no
strategic interest for us.
It's used for
storage of refugees,
like if Haitians flee from
monstrous dictatorships
that we support in Haiti,
we're supposed to accept them
under international
law's refugees.
But instead, you send them
off Cuba-- to Guantanamo--
as a storage place, of course,
used as a torture chamber.
The Cubans want it back.
We won't give it to them.
Does this remind
you of something
that's happening in
world affairs right now?
Yeah.
Russia took over Crimea.
Just as we've taken over eastern
Cuba for 110 years at gun
point.
We don't formally annex
it, but we dominate it.
Russia has a much stronger case
than the United States does.
Crimea is primarily Russian.
Its population overwhelmingly
supports Russia.
It's got major
strategic significance.
It's Russia's only
warm water port.
It's the base for their fleet.
It's right on the
border of Russia.
Russia's surrounded by hostile
military alliance-- NATO.
And for them, it's of great
strategic significance.
Cuba for us is nothing.
Guantanamo.
It's just a means of
trying to undermine
Cuba-- prevent
Cuban development.
And the United
States, of course,
has been at war with
Cuba since 1959,
when Cuba finally
did liberate itself.
Immediately, the US began an
attack on Cuba under Kennedy.
A massive terrorist
operation was
organized "to bring the
terrors of the earth to Cuba,"
was Arthur Schlesinger's
phrase describing it
in his biography of
Robert Kennedy, who
was in charge of it.
It almost destroyed the world.
It was a major factor that
led to the missile crisis.
And it's gone on.
It went on afterwards.
The terror based in Florida has
gone on almost without a stop.
On top of that, there's
an economic embargo
to strangle the country,
opposed by the entire world.
Take a look at the votes--
annual votes in the General
Assembly, which don't
get reported here.
It's 180 to two-- US
and Israel sometimes.
The Marshall Islands
or something.
Well, all of this is part of
the background to the AP story
about today's effort to
subvert the government of Cuba.
Well, coming back to the
internet, what's interesting
is what is available, and
what isn't readily available,
because people don't see it.
Like, you won't find
a word about anything
I said in the press, or in
commentary, or discussion,
although it's all
extremely timely.
Very timely.
Not arcane scholarship.
But it's right in front of
our eyes, but not there.
And when you come back to
the power of the internet,
I think it comes back to us.
We don't use it.
We don't use the resource for
the purposes for which it could
be used-- to break through
the silence, oppression,
domination, terror,
violence, and bring
the reality of the
world to people.
So the internet, potentially,
is a wonderful tool,
but only if you
decide to use it.
If you decide to leave it in
the hands of private power,
of power systems whether
state or private,
sure-- it'll be used as a
way to oppress, undermine
and dominate.
But that's a choice.
Don't have to.
INTERVIEWER: Well,
on that note, we
will be posting this on YouTube.
NOAM CHOMSKY: What?
INTERVIEWER: We're going to be
posting this talk on YouTube,
so your comments will
be on the internet.
Happy to say.
NOAM CHOMSKY:
Internet-- but they
won't be in the New York Times.
Well our channel is getting
more and more popular,
so hopefully people
will find this.
Switching gears a
little bit, what
is the most interesting insight
the science of linguistics
has revealed, but that
the public at large
seems to not know
about or appreciate?
Well, there are a number of
dogmas about language, which
I think are being
systematically refuted.
And they're held by
linguists, too, I should say.
Not just in the general public,
which are probably false,
which I think are being
undermined by current research.
This is a minority view.
I'm not speaking
for the profession.
The introductory
comments said that I'm
supposed to be a contrarian,
so I try to keep to that.
But for example, one
general assumption
about language-- almost
a dogma in philosophy.
Common understanding, the
linguistics of psychology,
is that language is primarily
a means of communication,
and that it evolved as a
means of communication.
Probably, that's totally false.
It seems that language is
evolved and is designed
as a mode of creating
and interpreting thought.
It's a system of
thought, basically.
It can be used to communicate.
Everything people do can
be used to communicate.
You can communicate
by your hairstyle,
style of walk, everything.
And yes, language can
be used to communicate,
but it doesn't seem to
be part of its design.
It's design seems to
be radically different,
and in fact, even seems to
undermine communication.
If you look carefully at
the structure of language,
you find case after case, right
at the core of language design,
where there are
conflicts between what
would be efficient
for communication,
and what is efficient for the
specific biological design
of language.
And in every case that's
known, communicative efficiency
is sacrificed.
It just isn't a consideration.
I think that's a
conclusion that has
very widespread significance.
In order to establish it, you
have to look at technical work.
It's not the kind
of thing you can
explain in two
minutes of exposition.
But it's not profound.
It's not quantum physics.
A half an hour would
certainly suffice.
Suppliers And I think
it's a pretty far-reaching
consequence.
Another general
belief about language,
again, almost a dogma in all the
relevant fields-- philosophy,
linguistics, and so on--
is that the meaningful,
the minimal meaningful
elements in language,
sort of word-like
things, pick out
entities in the
extra-mental world.
So the word, say, river
picks out the Charles River,
and so on-- something that
a physicist could identify.
That turns out to be
true for animal systems--
animal communication systems.
The symbols that appear-- the
actions that are carried out--
do apparently have a
one to one correlation
with mind independent events.
So some particular
call of a monkey
will be related to
leaves fluttering,
predators coming, sort of-- I'm
hungry, some hormonal change.
It's just not true of language.
Linguistic elements do
not have that property.
Actually, this was
understood by Aristotle.
It was understood in the
17th and 18th centuries.
Interesting work on it.
The entities that we construct
in our communiques, discourse,
expression, interpretation--
are largely mental-- partially,
mental object.
There are ways in
which they are--
modes in which we
interpret phenomena.
But they don't pick out
entities in the world
that a natural
scientist could identify
without looking into our minds.
That tells us a lot about
the nature of language,
and about our own nature.
Language is the
core human property.
And this was
understood by Darwin,
by a long tradition before him.
And it's very different from
the way it's usually conceived.
I think those are among
really conclusions that
have pretty widespread
significance.
Let me stress again,
a very minority view.
Very few linguists
would agree with this.
But I think, over time, I
suspect it will become clear.
OK.
In hopes and prospects, you
mentioned your colleague
Kenneth Hale and his work
with Native Americans.
In your opinion, how
important is the problem
of language extinction?
That is, how important
is it for humanity
to preserve the current level
of linguistic diversity?
Well, Ken Hale, who was a
friend of Anne's as well.
The teacher was a fantastic
linguist and person, also.
He worked extensively
with indigenous languages
all over the world.
Australia-- he was
one of the founders
of Australian
linguistics-- worked
with Native American
languages, Central American,
African, and so on.
And he did really amazing work,
but this particular aspect
of his work was something
that greatly concerned
and interested him--
trying to protect.
And as he pointed
out, correctly,
when a language
disappears, a lot is lost.
A language is a repository
of cultural wealth.
It's a way-- this
actually relates
to what I was saying
before-- each language is
a way of understanding and
interpreting the world.
It carries the
wealth of tradition
in history, oral history,
which can be extremely rich.
Take the Bible, for example.
For years, that
was oral history,
before anything
was written down.
Homer is oral history.
And that's all over the world.
And we're losing those
treasures every time
a language disappears.
And for the people themselves,
they're losing their identity.
If English disappeared, we would
lose our cultural identity,
and the same is true if it's
a small group somewhere.
Well, one of Ken's
achievements in this regard,
which was quite spectacular,
was to take the language, which
was one of the major
languages spoken
right here before
the colonists came.
Remember, the
United States is not
an ordinary form of imperialism.
The United States is a
secular colonial society.
In fact, that's true
of the whole-- what's
called the Anglo sphere,
the countries that grew out
of Britain's
imperial domination.
The United States, Canada,
Australia, mostly New Zealand--
these are countries where
the settlers who came in
didn't just run the country the
way the British did in India.
British in India
provided the bureaucrats,
you know, the officer
corps, and so on.
But Indians ran the
country under British rule.
Secular colonial societies
are different, like ours.
If you go back to the founders
of the country-- like,
say George Washington.
He understood very well that
we have to, as he put it,
extirpate the Iroquois.
They're in our way.
We have to wipe them out.
They're and advanced
civilization.
They, in fact, were
the basis for much
of the American
constitutional system.
But we had to extirpate them.
They were in our way.
Thomas Jefferson said,
we have to exterminate
the native populations
because they're attacking us.
And why are they attacking us?
Well, because we're taking
everything away from them.
He didn't say that.
But in general, the
settler colonial societies
have to pretty much exterminate
the indigenous populations,
or else marginalize them.
Well that's happened here.
So where we're
sitting was a place
where the indigenous
population was
close to exterminated--
pretty close to it.
There are survivors.
One of the major languages
spoken was one Wampanoag.
It hadn't been
spoken for a century.
The last speaker
was a century ago.
Ken, and some students, and a
woman from the Wampanoag tribe,
which still exists,
Jessie Little Doe,
managed to reconstruct
the language using
comparative evidence
from other languages,
and missionary texts that
were taken and preserved.
And from this, they
were able to reconstruct
what the language
must have been.
And it now has its first native
speaker-- Jessie Little Doe's
daughter, who's a native
speaker of Wampanoag.
This has revitalized the tribe.
They're now studying it.
They're reconstructing
their history.
They're reviving.
It's a pretty
amazing achievement.
Jessie got her Ph.D. with
us, with Ken, her department,
it's the first time this
has ever happened, I think.
Now there are efforts to
do it In other places.
But if you can
revive-- right now,
there's enormous
destruction going on.
Species destruction,
for example,
is taking place at a
level that hasn't happened
for 65 million years,
literally-- the time
when an asteroid hit
the earth, apparently,
and wiped out the dinosaurs, and
the majority of living species
were destroyed.
Mammals survived.
That's why we're around.
But, right now, the
same thing's happening.
Species destruction is
happening, about at that level.
And now, we're the
asteroid, of course.
We're destroying the
species at a massive rate.
Language destruction
is kind of a little
like that at a cultural
and human level.
You're destroying the
richness of human civilization
and understanding of the world.
It's disappearing fast.
It's disappearing
in Europe-- not just
in indigenous cultures.
So if you go to,
say, Italy, there
are people all
over the place who
can't talk to
their grandmothers.
The grandmothers speak
a different language.
They're called dialects,
but they're actually
different languages.
The number of
languages in Europe
has contracted radically
over recent years
through the policies
of state formation.
When states are formed,
the formation of states
is an extremely violent process.
It imposes a rigid
form on societies,
bringing together
people who have nothing
to do with each
other, and separating
people who have everything
to do with each other.
That's why Europe was
the most savage place
in the world for centuries while
the process of state formation
was taking place.
You look around the world
today, and just about
every major conflict is based
on the imperial borders.
Borders were imposed
by the imperial powers
for their own interests,
forming states
which have no significance
for most of the people.
So take, say, Pakistan
and Afghanistan.
We talk about terrorists
crossing Pakistan
to Afghanistan.
They are, many of them,
are just Pashtun--
moving from one part
of Pashtun territory
to another part of
Pashtun territory,
which is separated by a line--
that the British imposed--
the Durand line-- which the
Afghans have never accepted
and the Pashtun
have never accepted.
Now that happens everywhere.
President Obama, one
of his achievements
has been to break all
records in deporting
undocumented immigrants--
almost two million.
They're crossing a border--
the Mexico US border--
which, like state
borders generally,
was established by brutal
violence and aggression.
The US conquered half of Mexico.
President Grant described
it as, who fought in it,
described it as the most
wicked war in history.
Well, OK, that
established the border.
It was a pretty open border.
The same kind of people
living on both sides
until pretty recently.
It's been heavily
militarized now.
Primarily since NAFTA.
When NAFTA, the North
American Free Trade Agreement,
was instituted, President
Clinton, his advisers,
understood very
well that this is
going to devastate Mexican--
the Mexican economy.
And it's going to destroy
Mexican agriculture.
It's going to undermine
small business, and so on.
Mexican compacinos can
be quite efficient,
but they can't compete
with highly subsidized U.S.
Agro-business.
So there's going to be
a flow of immigrants.
So we've got to militarize
the border to prevent them.
Send them back.
Right now, to this day,
right here near Boston--
right around us--
there are people
fleeing from the
Guatemalan highlands.
Mayan Indians, fleeing from
the Guatemalan highlands.
Their languages are
also being destroyed.
Why are they fleeing from
the Guatemalan highlands?
Well, under Ronald
Reagan, the US
supported a genocidal attacks
on the highlands, and the Mayan
Indians by the
military dictatorship
we were backing in Guatemala.
And the devastation
was so extreme
that they're still fleeing.
Well, they're fleeing.
We deport them.
They're coming
across from Mexico.
We deport them.
That's a state border.
That's the way borders work.
All over the world,
that's the way it works.
Take a look at the horror
stories all of the world.
Almost entirely, the result
of the imposition of state
borders, which also
has the consequence
of wiping out lots of languages.
When you impose a state
border, it constitutes, say,
France, or Italy, or
Germany, or Guatemala,
or whatever it may be, or the
United States for that matter,
you're wiping out huge
numbers of languages
which are internal to them.
Well, this is a kind of--
it's not species destruction,
but it's kind of
analogous to it.
And it's going on all the time.
And the effort to save species,
cultures, societies, languages
is a major effort.
Happening in Europe, too.
So right now
there's a referendum
coming up in Catalonia.
Another one in Scotland
asking about autonomy,
or independence.
That's dissolving the European
state system, something
which has been
going on for awhile,
and reconstructing
the languages.
Actually, I visited
Barcelona in the late '70s.
You couldn't hear
a word of Catalan.
It was spoken, but secret,
because under the dictatorship,
which the US backed,
it was barred.
10 years later, if
you go to Catalonia,
all you hear is Catalan.
It revived.
The Basque languages revived.
Other regional
languages are reviving.
If you walk around Wales,
kids walking out of school
are talking Welsh.
Things like this are happening.
Ken's achievement
was unique, but it's
a kind of a natural development.
I think it should be
stimulated myself.
But we should
recognize that there's
enormous loss when the cultural
wealth of a society disappears.
That's encapsulated
crucially in its language.
INTERVIEWER: All right.
So I'm going to change
gears a little bit again.
Can you comment on
the contribution
of research and statistical
natural language processing
to linguistics?
And that's a yes/no question,
I realize, but-- OK.
[LAUGHTER]
NOAM CHOMSKY: One of the
early proponents of it,
maybe the earliest
in 1955, when I
was working on
linguistic theory,
it seemed to me the
only possible way
in which a, let's say, a
child, could identify words
in continuous text-- you know,
you're not hearing single words
when you live in the world.
You're hearing continuous text.
It seemed to me the only
way that is could be done
was by detecting transitional
probabilities of sounds
or syllables.
If you get to a word
boundary, the predictability
of the next sound is lower
than if you're inside a word.
Right?
For obvious reasons.
So if you check these
transitional probabilities,
it looked as if you ought
to be able to detect words.
That's probably
the first proposal.
Maybe the first
proposal of literature.
It turns out not to be accurate.
Just in the last
couple of years,
there's been some
really careful work
on statistical
analysis of texts.
Charles Yang, who got
his Ph.D. At MIT-- he's
now at Penn, a computational
linguist cognitive
scientist-- he showed
that if you actually
use this technique on connected
text, that what you get
is syllables, not words.
So that doesn't work.
He also pointed out that if
you add a linguistic principle,
you do get a better
approximation to words.
Linguistic principle is that
a word-- well, real words,
tend to have stress
peak within them--
stress pitch peek inside them.
So if you add that
principle, and then you
do the statistical analysis,
you get a better approximation.
There's subsequent work by a
number of cognitive scientists
which has shown
that if you add what
are called the prosodic
structure-- the whole pitch
stress structure of a
sentence-- it goes up and down,
but really reflecting
phrases pretty much,
if you look at the
pitch structure.
If you add all of
that, and then you
do the statistical
analysis, you get
and even better approximation.
Now this is one of the very
few cases where there's
any results from
statistical analysis.
There has been-- there's
a kind of a industry
in computational cognitive
science and computer
science trying to
show that you can
get significant
knowledge of a language
by statistical analysis of text.
Antecedently, that's
extremely unlikely to succeed.
You do not get discoveries
in the sciences
by taking huge amounts of data,
throwing them into a computer,
and doing statistical
analysis of them.
Try to think it through in
the history of the sciences.
It just doesn't happen.
That's not the way
you understand things.
You have to have
theoretical insights.
You have to know what
kind of experiments
to carry out-- what kind of
data are worth looking at,
which kind of throw
away, and so on.
That's the way the sciences
have always worked.
If you wanted to, say,
study the laws of motion,
you could take a huge
number of videotapes
of what's happening
outside the window,
and subject them to
statistical analysis.
You could get a
pretty good prediction
of the next thing that's going
to happen outside the window--
actually, a better
prediction than what
the physics department can give.
But it's not science.
It's a way of matching data, and
maybe predicting some new data.
But that's not what
understanding is.
And it's very unlikely to
work for language, either.
And I think the record shows
that it really fails totally.
I could run through examples.
But every example that's
been carefully studied,
it simply doesn't work,
for pretty much the reasons
that Charles Yang and his
successors discovered.
You have to have the-- have to
understand the principles that
determine what
underlies the system.
And then if you look around
the edges of those principles,
you can find some sometimes
useful statistical data.
I think that's probably the
way it's going to continue,
but certainly is the
way it has so far.
INTERVIEWER: We're going
to change gears again.
What, in your opinion, are
the most effective strategies
for building a more and
just peace-- I'm sorry,
start over again-- for building
a more just and peaceful world,
and in your view, what are the
best-- the most significant
takeaways-- from
Occupy the Arabs bring,
and the Ukrainian
Euromaiden uprising.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, those are
all quite different events,
and I don't think you
can consolidate them.
Over time, there has--
you know, history
doesn't just go in
a straight line.
There's progress,
there's regression.
And they're often in parallel.
So say, take the last say, 50,
60 years in the United States.
There's been
significant progress
in developing a more peaceful
and just and equitable society.
Probably the most dramatic
example is women's rights.
Totally different from what
it was 50 or 60 years ago.
It may be kind of
hard to remember,
but if you look at US
history, at the time
of the American Revolution,
the women were not people.
They were property.
The United States took
over British common law.
And under British
common law, a woman
is the property of
her father, and it's
transferred to her husband.
So for example, one of the
arguments against giving women
votes was that it would be
unfair to unmarried men,
because a married man would
have two votes, since obviously
the property votes the
way the owner votes.
That was US law.
If you look at the
chipping away of this,
it literally was not until
1975 that this principle
was abandoned.
in 1975, the Supreme Court
ruled that women have the right
to serve as peers
in federal jury.
Peer means a person
just like you.
OK, that goes back to the Magna
Carta in the 13th century.
Women were accepted as
peers legally in 1975.
Now that was part of
a major change that's
taken place in American
culture since the 1960s--
one of the main outgrowths
of '60s activism.
And there are plenty of
other things like it.
So opposition to, say,
violent aggression
is far above what it
was 50 or 60 years ago.
Take, say, Kennedy's
invasion of South Vietnam.
It's a phrase you've
never heard, I suppose,
because it isn't
in consciousness.
It happened in the world,
but it wasn't reported
and it isn't part
of American history.
In the 1962, Kennedy sent
the American Air Force
to start bombing South Vietnam.
Authorized chemical
warfare to destroy crops,
so to drive the people
out of the countryside.
Began big programs to
concentrate people, and put
them out at the
concentration camps,
to prevent them from supporting
the guerrilla movement, which
was overthrowing the US
installed government.
That's an invasion.
It happened, but not
in our consciousness.
The reason it's not
in our consciousness
is there was no opposition.
It was recorded.
It was kind of known.
You know, like it wasn't a
total secret, but nobody cared.
You couldn't get people
to talk about it.
I mean, literally
I remember trying
to give talks in the early
'60s in people's living rooms.
You could get more people
than that together.
Well that was the early '60s.
In 2003, the United
States invaded Iraq.
It's the first time in the
history of the imperial world
that there have been massive
protests prior to the invasion,
prior to the invasion-- huge
protests all of the world.
Here, too.
My classes were called off
because the students wanted
to call them off to go
down to the demonstration.
That was 2003.
Well, it didn't end the
war, but it limited it.
It's often believed
that the demonstrations
didn't do anything.
That's a mistake.
The United States could not
begin to carry out the policies
that Kennedy and
Johnson could carry out
without a second thought.
It was bad enough, but
it wasn't B52 bombing
of heavily populated
urban centers.
It wasn't chemical
warfare destroying crops.
Many of the atrocities
of the Vietnam War
simply couldn't be contemplated.
Horrible enough, but not that.
OK, all of that is progress.
There's also a regression.
There's been a big
backlash from power centers
against the civilizing
effect of the '60s.
Now, that's the
neoliberal attack
on the population which has
been going on for a generation.
That's why, say,
real wages, real,
for male workers-- real wages
today are at the level of 1968
for the general public.
And real wages are about
the level of 30 years ago.
There's been some
stagnation or decline
for the majority
of the population.
Tremendous concentration
of wealth in tiny number
of-- tiny sector
of the population.
Mostly a fraction of 1%,
which feeds politics.
Political power
reflects economic power.
The Supreme Court just yesterday
just struck another blow
against democracy and
its committed effort
to try to undermine
the functioning
of a democratic system
by placing power
in the hands of those
who are super rich.
OK, that's going on.
That's the McCutcheon
case a couple days ago.
Well, that's regression.
And they're going
on in parallel.
That's the way history works.
So what's the way to go forward?
Well, you know, as
Martin Luther King
put it-- shift
the arc of history
by your own efforts in activism.
That's the only way
it's ever worked.
The arc of history bends the
way we decide to bend it.
INTERVIEWER: In
"Hopes and Prospects"
you compare Obama and Bush II.
That's four years ago.
What would you say today?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Like
what I just said
about the arc of history--
both better in some ways, worse
in others.
So, for example, I
mentioned Guantanamo.
Guantanamo is a
major torture center.
OK, today, probably
torture isn't
taking place in Guantanamo--
at least what we call torture.
Remember, the United States has
a special definition of torture
which is different from
the world's definition.
So for example, in the
world, a solitary confinement
is considered torture.
You take a look at the
torture convention--
international
torture convention.
Solitary confinement
is regarded--
and other forms of
mental torture--
are regarded as torture.
And they are.
You try to lock yourself up in
a room for a couple of days,
and you'll see what happens.
So it's kind of torture.
In the United States, it's
surely going on in Guantanamo.
But it's also a routine.
It goes on in the
prisons all the time.
You go to the maximum
security prisons,
they are torture chambers.
People are confined 23
hours a day in a small room.
It drives you insane.
So torture-- what
we call torture
isn't going on in Guantanamo.
What is torture is
going on, but it's
going on in the incarceration
system generally.
And that system is a real
international scandal
on scale [INAUDIBLE].
So that's an improvement.
No magnificent,
but an improvement.
On the other hand, there's
the surveillance programs,
which are-- I don't have
to talk to you about them.
You know about them.
They're mostly Obama.
The subversion of Cuba
that I mentioned-- that's
a new Obama program.
The worst global terrorism
campaign under way right
now is Obama's global
assassination campaign.
The Drone Campaign.
Notice that there's a
debate in the United States
when he decides to
murder Americans.
Like, [INAUDIBLE].
You know, is that
legitimate or not?
And what about the other people?
The people that are being
murdered are suspects.
Go back 800 years
again to Magna Carta.
We're going to commemorate
its 800th anniversary
next year-- probably
morn its disappearance.
The core concept
developed in Magna Carta
was what we call
presumption of innocence.
What it stated is that a
free man cannot be subjected
to state punishment
without due process--
without trial by
a jury of peers.
OK?
Now, free man was a very limited
concept in the 13th century.
Of course, it excluded women.
It excluded people who
weren't free and so on.
It gradually expanded
over the centuries.
So it's embedded
in the Constitution
also with limits-- the 14th
Amendment, other limits.
But now it's being contracted.
The Drone Campaign eliminates
presumption of innocence.
The way it works is,
Obama and his advisers
get together Tuesday
morning and decide
who they're going
to kill that day.
The concept guilty means
Obama decided to murder you.
That's the meaning of
the concept guilty today.
That's a regression that
goes back 800 years.
That's pretty serious.
And what's even more serious
is, it's not discussed.
The only thing that is discussed
is the killing of Americans.
Are Americans different species?
Who says you can
kill other suspects?
There's some talk about
collateral damage.
What about the people who are
just standing around and get
killed?
Well, yeah-- that's bad.
But what about the
people you're aiming at?
They are suspects.
You haven't shown a proof
of anything about them.
Just somebody the
government wants to kill.
That's true of
domestic law, too.
Actually, I'm one of
the plaintiffs in a suit
that I'm not entirely happy
about for this reason.
It's a suit about the NDAA
brought by Chris Hedges.
A couple of other
people are plaintiffs.
The NDAA legislation
under Obama--
he says he doesn't like
it, but he signed it.
It permits indefinite detention.
It extends the principle
of indefinite detention
for suspects who are, under
this relatively new legislation
under Obama.
In includes-- it is
written in such a way
that it could include
American citizens.
It's not explicit.
That's what the suit is about.
But the concept is-- it permits
indefinite detention of people
charged with providing support
for enemies of the United
States.
What's support?
Well, like saying maybe they got
a case, or something like that.
Is that support?
It's not a joke, incidentally.
The narrow case--
the very narrow case
is against one part--
the fact that is
might apply to
American citizens.
I think it's way too narrow.
It shouldn't apply to anybody.
There should never
be such a thing
as independent
indefinite detention.
It's criminal.
And the idea of
supporting enemies
is so meaningless, that such a
concept shouldn't exist as law.
But it's a narrow
case about Americans.
And that's the framework
of discourse here.
You shouldn't accept
it, I don't think.
In fact, take another
Obama case-- one
of Obama's major attacks
on civil liberties.
It's a case that probably most
of you haven't heard about,
but I'd look it
up if I were you.
It's a nice thing
about the internet.
Holder v. Humanitarian
Law Project-- case
brought by the government to the
Supreme Court Government One.
Holder is the Attorney General.
Humanitarian Law
Project was a group
that was giving legal
advice-- legal advice--
to a group that's on
the US terrorist list.
The group happened to be
the PKK-- Kurdish group.
The US government calls
it a terrorist group,
so it's on the terrorist list.
Humanitarian Law Project was
giving legal advice to them.
Obama's Justice
Department decided
to condemn that as material
assistance to terrorism.
Material assistance
of terrorism used
to mean giving a gun to
somebody in Al Qaeda.
But this extends it
to giving legal advice
to someone on the
government's terrorist list.
And if you look at the
court discussion colloquy,
it could maybe apply
to somebody who
has an interview with
Nasrallah, you know,
the head of Hezbollah.
Or just talks to,
maybe advises, a group
to turn to non-violence.
That could be regarded
as material assistance
under Obama.
That's a tremendous attack
on the freedom of speech,
and just ordinate
elementary justice--
passed almost without comment.
Now we might ask
ourselves-- why should
we even takes the
terrorist list seriously?
What's the terrorist list?
The executive branch
of the government
simply determines
you're a terrorist.
I put you on the list.
No review.
No judicial review.
No defense.
It's just an executive act
of an authoritarian state.
And if you look at the
history of the terrorist list,
it's mind-boggling.
Like, Nelson
Mandela, for example,
was on the terrorist list
because Reagan administration
condemned them as-- his group,
the African National Congress,
as one of the more notorious
terrorist groups in the world
because they were
opposing apartheid,
which Reagan supported.
OK, so that's the
terrorist list.
And Mandela was on until
about four years ago,
when it took a special
Act of Congress
to get him off the
terrorist list.
On the other hand, take,
say, Saddam Hussein.
He was taken off the
terrorist list in 1982,
because the Reagan
administration wanted
to provide arms to Iraq,
so in order to be legal,
he had to be off
the terrorist list.
Actually, that left a gap
in the terrorist list,
so they put Cuba in.
Why?
Because Cuba has been the target
of more terrorism than the rest
of the world combined
in the years before it,
mostly based in Florida.
That's the terrorist list.
So apart from being kind
of ludicrous in the way it
actually works, the very
concept is an abomination.
Why should the
state have the right
to determine unilaterally
who's a terrorist?
Do they have that right?
No, they don't.
Do they have the
right to murder people
who they put on
the terrorist list?
No they don't.
Do they have the right to
charge people with material
assistance to terrorism if
they give legal aid to somebody
that they've designated
as a terrorist?
This gets more and more
extreme as you go on.
These are Obama innovations.
Well, history doesn't
go straight line.
And I think, myself,
Bush would've been worse,
but not that there's much to
cheer about in this regard.
AUDIENCE: With cultures that
didn't have a written language
until another culture
came in that did,
and they adopted
their writing system.
Is there any systematic
effect on languages
that adopted someone
else's writing system?
NOAM CHOMSKY: There is a
systematic effect of literacy.
It's not so much adopting
the writing system
as using it for reading.
So if we actually want,
there's a-- Ken Hale,
same guy we talked
about before-- he
did a very important study in
the 1970s in which he showed
that-- an article that appeared
on what's called cultural gaps.
He studied the languages that
he worked on, mostly Australian,
and found that many of
them had all kind of what
looked like gaps.
Like, they didn't
have number words.
They didn't have color words.
Or they didn't have
relative clauses.
A lot of other things
they didn't have.
And what he showed
was that all of this
was just totally superficial.
The people had all the concept.
They had no problem with
dealing with any of them.
They used them all the time,
but just in more indirect ways.
So if they didn't
have number words,
they would still be
able to say five, ten.
They had no problem dealing
with market societies.
They may not have
had the color red,
but they could say blood-like.
And the same was true
even of structural things,
like embedded relative clauses.
Well, that was an
important study.
Ignored, like most
important studies.
But, shortly after it, somebody
else in our department, Wayne
O'Neil, another friend
of Anne's and mine,
who studies the
history of English,
he did a study of
middle English.
And he investigated, and if
he was looking for something
similar, he discovered that the
use of complex constructions,
which had embedded
elements in them,
increased as literacy increased.
There's a natural
reason for that.
When you speak,
you're constrained
by short term memory,
which is pretty small.
Short term memory is around
seven or something like that.
The same for humans
and other organisms.
And that means
you can't do much.
So ordinary speech tends to
be what's called para-tactic.
You just kind of tack things
on one after the other,
because you can't embed.
On the other hand, once
you move to literacy,
you begin to use capacities that
you always had but never used.
It's like, when
the people learn.
You go to school and, you
say, first grade or something,
and they teach you
how to multiply.
You begin to use a capacity
which you always had.
It's not taught.
It's part of your
intrinsic capacities
that you have the
capacity for number.
Every society has it.
Every human being has it.
It's kind of a mystery that
bothered Darwin and Wallace--
the founders of
evolutionary theory.
They asked, how could it
evolve since it's never used?
But it's true that
everyone has it.
But you can't do
it in your head.
Like, you can't multiply
big numbers in your head.
Right?
You'd collapse after
a very short period.
But you can multiply them
once you learn the technique,
because you've
got the knowledge.
You just have to exhibit it.
And the same thing
happens with literacy.
Once literacy spreads,
you get much more complex
linguistic usage, even in
speech, because it carries over
from writing to speech.
So that effect I think
is real and documented.
But the effect of just using.
If you just use the letters
to say, write things,
but you never read,
I'd doubt if it
would have much of an effect.
AUDIENCE: I'm curious as to
your thoughts, because I'm
standing now, as
to your thoughts
on-- I guess some
people have said
that the effect of technology
on certain languages
has made us dumber.
So like, texting,
LOL, or hash tags.
And if that's actually
true, or if it's
just the same as
any appendians, like
new words being
added to languages.
NOAM CHOMSKY: I think
the real question
about the, what might be
the cognitive effect--
the current kind of teenage
technology-- it does
have a very superficial
aspect to it.
So, that's true, for
example, of Facebook.
People think they
have lots of-- I
mean I know of
cases, teenagers, who
think they have lots of
friends, hundreds of friends.
Because if they write,
I've got an exam tomorrow,
they'll get 100 letters saying,
I hope you do well, and so on.
And the communication
is very restricted.
A simple formula is
things like that.
So does it have a
dumbing down effect?
I kind of doubt it, frankly.
But, you know, it is a
topic that could be studied.
It is being studied, in fact.
But as far as I know,
there are no real results,
and I think it
would be surprising,
because it's all
kind of superficial.
It does add a kind
of superficiality
to life, which may
not be a good thing.
I think it's probably
harmful in the long run.
But to try to-- I feel like I'm
bringing coals to Newcastle.
You people know a
lot more about this
than I do, because I don't
use any of this stuff,
except with my grandchildren,
when I have to.
Is there one last question?
We have time for
a quick question.
There.
Is the-- so the diversity
of languages and cultures
is wonderful, but if there is
on the other side, if you would
say anything, if you
would, sort of allow
that having a unified
language and common culture
helps communication and
may advance world peace?
Well I don't if
it advances peace.
In fact, it seems to have
the opposite, because you're
forcing people into
situations of conflict.
And the one language
that dominates
is just the most powerful
state in the world.
But there's an advantage,
to having, say,
a single language for science.
OK, so by now, English is pretty
much the language of science.
When I got to MIT
60 years ago, I
was teaching scientific French
and scientific German-- all
graduate students
in every field had
to pass an exam in
French and German.
It was a complete fake,
but that was kind of
like a residue of the
pre-second World War period.
But it was true.
You go back 70 years,
a civil engineer
had to know French or German.
OK now, that's all gone.
All around most of the world,
the language of science
is English.
That's helpful.
On the other hand,
exactly as you say,
there's also-- if that
extend from just some mode
of communication to the
actual languages of life,
it would be a real loss.
We would lose cultural wealth.
Actually, if you live
in the United States,
and you travel abroad,
you see it very quickly.
The United States is an
extremely insular society.
People don't know anything
about the outside world.
Students in colleges don't
know where France is.
It's just-- they
don't know anything.
It's remarkably different from
Europe and other countries.
And part of the
reason is that, you
can go 3,000 miles
in the United States,
and it looks exactly
like where you came from.
Go to Boston to Los Angeles, the
weather's a little different,
but everything else is the same.
The accent is
slightly different.
You go 100 miles in Europe, and
you're in a different society.
So you just kind
of automatically
gain comprehension of the
richness and complexity of life
that's missing when
societies are homogeneous.
Of course American society
isn't literally homogeneous.
But, comparatively
speaking, it is.
And I think that's
the kind of loss
you would get if,
in fact, you moved
towards a universal language.
Also, I just don't think
there's any possibility that's
happening.
As I said, in
Europe, there's now
actually a reaction against
the unifying tendencies
of the European Union--
more regionalization,
regional languages, cultures.
It's not just
languages, incidentally.
So take Catalonia,
which I mentioned.
Under the Franco dictatorship,
Catalonian language and culture
were totally suppressed.
They could not be
exhibited in public.
But, if you go to
Barcelona today,
let's say, you can
on Sunday morning,
if you're downtown in Barcelona,
take a look at the cathedral.
There's people swarming towards
the cathedral-- folk singers,
folk dances, Catalan
cultures being revived.
It's a rich culture
being revived.
It was kind of
there, underground.
Now it's open.
And I think that's
just healthy for life.
[APPLAUSE]
