Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian: When Lunatics Run the Asylum

I’m proud to have lived through the last 20-odd years at TomDispatch with Noam Chomsky, now a remarkable 94. In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, I stumbled into creating this site and, in October 2003, first posted a piece of his about how the U.S. had for so long terrorized Cuba. It was taken from a book of his that had just been published. By 2007, he was writing directly for TomDispatch on the way the U.S. had brought a campaign of terror to Iran. (“What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico?“)

In February 2008, for another article of his, “The Most Wanted List,” in which he put the very idea of terrorism into perspective, I began my introduction this way: “One of Noam Chomsky’s latest books — a conversation with David Barsamian — is entitled What We Say Goes. It catches a powerful theme of Chomsky’s: that we have long been living on a one-way planet and that the language we regularly wield to describe the realities of our world is tailored to Washington’s interests.”

Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian: When Lunatics Run the Asylum

I’m proud to have lived through the last 20-odd years at TomDispatch with Noam Chomsky, now a remarkable 94. In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, I stumbled into creating this site and, in October 2003, first posted a piece of his about how the U.S. had for so long terrorized Cuba. It was taken from a book of his that had just been published. By 2007, he was writing directly for TomDispatch on the way the U.S. had brought a campaign of terror to Iran. (“What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico?“) In February 2008, for another article of his, “The Most Wanted List,” in which he put the very idea of terrorism into perspective, I began my introduction this way:

“One of Noam Chomsky’s latest books — a conversation with David Barsamian — is entitled What We Say Goes. It catches a powerful theme of Chomsky’s: that we have long been living on a one-way planet and that the language we regularly wield to describe the realities of our world is tailored to Washington’s interests.”

David Barsamian: On March 20th, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its latest report. The new IPCC assessment from senior scientists warned that there’s little time to lose in tackling the climate crisis. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “The rate of temperature rise in the last half-century is the highest in 2,000 years. Concentrations of carbon dioxide are at their highest in at least 2 million years. The climate time bomb is ticking.” At COP 27 he said, “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator. It is the defining issue of our age. It is the central challenge of our century.” My question to you is: You’d think survival would be a galvanizing issue, but why isn’t there a greater sense of urgency in addressing it in a substantial way?

Noam Chomsky: It was a very strong statement by Guterres. I think it could be stronger still. It’s not just the defining issue of this century, but of human history. We are now, as he says, at a point where we’ll decide whether the human experiment on Earth will continue in any recognizable form. The report was stark and clear. We’re reaching a point where irreversible processes will be set into motion. It doesn’t mean that everybody’s going to die tomorrow, but we’ll pass tipping points where nothing more can be done, where it’s just decline to disaster.

So yes, it’s a question of the survival of any form of organized human society…

https://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-savage-capitalist-lunatics/