Just like the Energizer, not only does Noam Chomsky keep on going, he
sounds about the same as when I first heard him. Which is to say that
he sounded like he would not make it to the end of his talk.
Today will be another cloudless, hot day. Anything over 90 degrees is
a heat wave, here on the Olympic Peninsula. For several days
now...maybe two weeks...we've had more days over 90 than not. Cathy
and I headed into Sequim yesterday to deliver a refurbished Braille
Writer to a client who is doing some serious writing. He is turning
70 later this Fall, and over the years had been a very active
organizer in the NFB. His wife just retired as an O&M instructor.
Last weekend Sequim held their annual Lavender Festival. The town has
just over 8,000 residents, but during the weekend the numbers of
visitors rise up over 30,000. We stay far, far away. The road into
Sequim, part of highway 101, is jammed clear back to the Hood Canal
bridge, and beyond. The town streets are littered with sidewalk
booths selling everything from Lavender Ice-Cream, Lavender Soap,
Dried Lavender, to Lavender Paintings(using lavender fragrance in the
paints). When the Lavender is growing in the Lavender Fields, Cathy
has no problem. But once cut and dried she is highly allergic to it.
So is her sister. Too bad for me. I love the sweet smell
Well, finally it appears the paperwork is in order and Cathy's mom is
covered by Medicaid. We thought she needed to be put on SSI, too, but
the Senior Advisor at the Belmont Terrace tells us that we should wait
until we know Dorothy's long term situation. As long as she's in the
nursing home, she is fully covered under Medicaid. It's a clean,
cheery facility, with a staff that seems to take pride in their work.
Peaceful gardens and a large pool with a fountain are scattered around
the grounds and there is an attitude of positiveness in the air. But
not too much in Dorothy's room at this time. We usually find her
crying, loudly. She does cheer up while we are there, but the staff
tell us that crying is her normal activity. Meanwhile the woman in
the other half of the room is constantly calling out, "Can someone
please help me? Help!" The staff bustle in and out, but tell us that
the woman is not really aware of calling out. Still, they try to
comfort her rather than ignore her.
It's still cool, not yet 65 degrees outside, and I'm enjoying it while
it lasts. Naturally we have no air conditioning. But with all doors
and windows open and the large fan blowing a cool breeze down the hall
from the bedrooms to the living room, we keep the house between 80 and
85 degrees in the late afternoon and evening. But the coolest room is
our office. It has a floor to ceiling window that cranks out, and
faces the hill and the forest beyond. With a small fan on the work
table, Cathy and I spend the heat of the day sitting in our
comfortable office chairs listening to talking books and sipping ice
water. Yesterday we drove into Quilcene on our way home from seeing
Dorothy, and I bought a huge chocolate, peanut butter ice-cream cone.
90 degrees outside, and even with the truck's air conditioner going
full blast, I now have ice-cream splotches all over my shirt.
Cathy and Marlene and Shylo just finished their morning coffee(I'm the
coffee maker), and headed over to feed and water their horses...and
put on the fly masks. We have a bumper crop of bugs this year, but
fortunately not so many around the house.
I hope that all is well for you today.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/28/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
He also has a new job, at the University of Arizona. Amazing?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2018 11:49 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession With
Russia and the Stories Not Being Covered in the Trump Era
On December 27, Noam Chomsky turns 90 years old. Not only is he still
active, but continues to have one of America's greatest minds. Those
wishing a more Progressive view of the news can listen to Democracy Now, at:
www.democracynow.org
Carl Jarvis
On 7/27/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession With Russia and the Stories Not
Being Covered in the Trump Era By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Published July 27, 2018
TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: We continue our interview with Noam Chomsky,
world-renowned dissident, linguist and author, now in Tucson at the
University of Arizona.
I asked him about a recent mix-up on Fox & Friends, in which the hosts
thought they were interviewing former Democratic congressional
candidate, a current one, Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, who supports
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, but, in
fact, they were actually speaking to a Massachusetts Democratic
congressional candidate, Barbara L'Italien, who opposes ICE. Here is how
the interview started.
SEN. BARBARA L'ITALIEN: Good morning. I'm actually here to speak
directly to Donald Trump. I feel that what's happening at the border
is wrong. I'm a mother of four. And I believe that separating kids
from their parents is illegal and inhumane. I'm actually Barbara
L'Italien. I'm a state senator representing a large immigrant
community. I'm running for Congress in Massachusetts. I keep thinking
about what we're putting parents through, imagining how terrifying
that must be for those families, imagining how it would feel not
knowing if I'd ever see my kids again. We have to stop abducting
children and ripping them from their parents' arms -
ROB SCHMITT: OK -
SEN. BARBARA L'ITALIEN: - stop putting kids in cages -
ROB SCHMITT: You want to -
SEN. BARBARA L'ITALIEN: - and stop making 3-year-olds defend
themselves in court.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Barbara L'Italien said a lot there, but she was
then cut off, with the shock of the Fox & Friends crew in the morning
that they had the wrong Democratic congressional candidate. But this
kind of media activism also just goes to the whole issue of the media,
Noam Chomsky, the issue of Fox News becoming really state media, with
- you have the person who supported the sexual harasser Roger Ailes,
Bill Shine, now a top aide to President Trump in the White House.
That's gotten little attention. So you have Fox being a mouthpiece for
Trump and a place for him to hear what people have to say, and the
other networks very much running counter to Trump, on certain issues,
CNNand MSNBC. But your thoughts?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, my frank opinion is that - I must say I don't pay
much attention to television, so I don't know a great deal about it.
But, in general, I think the media - first of all, Fox News is, by
now, basically a joke. It's, as you said, state media. The other
media, I think, are focusing on issues which are pretty marginal.
There are much more serious issues that are being put to the side. So,
the worst of - even on the case of immigration, once again, I think
the real question is dealing with the roots of immigration, our
responsibility for it, and what we can do to overcome that. And that's
almost never discussed. But I think that's the crucial issue. And I
think we find the same across the board.
So, of all Trump's policies, the one that is the most dangerous and
destructive, in fact poses an existential threat, is his policies on
climate change, on global warming. That's really destructive. And
we're facing an imminent threat, not far removed, of enormous damage.
The effects are already visible but nothing like what's going to come.
A sea level rise of a couple of feet will be massively destructive. It
will make today's immigration issues look like trivialities. And it's
not that the administration is unaware of this. So, Donald Trump, for
example, is perfectly aware of the dangerous effects, in the short
term, of global warming. So, for example, recently he applied to the
government of Ireland for permission to build a wall to protect his
golf course in Ireland from rising sea levels. And Rex Tillerson, who
was supposed to be the adult in the room before he was thrown out, as
CEO of ExxonMobil, was devoting enormous resources to climate change
denial, although he had, sitting on his desk, the reports of
ExxonMobil scientists, who, since the '70s, in fact, were on the
forefront of warning of the dire effects of this accelerating
phenomenon. I don't know what word in the language - I can't find one
- that applies to people of that kind, who are willing to sacrifice
the literal - the existence of organized human life, not in the
distant future, so they can put a few more dollars in highly
overstuffed pockets. The word "evil"
doesn't begin to approach it. These are the kinds of issues that
should be under discussion. Instead, what's being - there is a focus
on what I believe are marginalia.
So, take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections.
Did
the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming
concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that's almost a
joke. First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in
our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or
weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does,
openly, brazenly and with enormous support.
Israeli intervention in US elections vastly overwhelms anything the
Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime
minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even
informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming
applause, to try to undermine the president's policies - what happened
with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to
the joint sessions of Congress trying to - calling on them to reverse
US policy, without even informing the president?
And that's just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence. So if you
happen to be interested in influence of - foreign influence on
elections, there are places to look. But even that is a joke.
I mean, one of the most elementary principles of a functioning
democracy is that elected representatives should be responsive to
those who elected them.
There's nothing more elementary than that. But we know very well that
that is simply not the case in the United States. There's ample
literature in mainstream academic political science simply comparing
voters' attitudes with the policies pursued by their representatives,
and it shows that for a large majority of the population, they're
basically disenfranchised. Their own representatives pay no attention
to their voices. They listen to the voices of the famous 1 percent -
the rich and the powerful, the corporate sector. The elections - Tom
Ferguson's stellar work has demonstrated, very conclusively, that for
a long period, way back, US elections have been pretty much bought.
You can predict the outcome of a presidential or congressional
election with remarkable precision by simply looking at campaign
spending. That's only one part of it. Lobbyists practically write
legislation in congressional offices. In massive ways, the
concentrated private capital, corporate sector, super wealth,
intervene in our elections, massively, overwhelmingly, to the extent
that the most elementary principles of democracy are undermined. Now,
of course, all that is technically legal, but that tells you something
about the way the society functions. So, if you're concerned with our
elections and how they operate and how they relate to what would
happen in a democratic society, taking a look at Russian hacking is
absolutely the wrong place to look. Well, you see occasionally some
attention to these matters in the media, but very minor as compared
with the extremely marginal question of Russian hacking.
And I think we find this on issue after issue, also on issues on which
what Trump says, for whatever reason, is not unreasonable. So, he's
perfectly right when he says we should have better relations with
Russia. Being dragged through the mud for that is outlandish, makes -
Russia shouldn't refuse to deal with the United States because the US
carried out the worst crime of the century in the invasion of Iraq,
much worse than anything Russia has done. But they shouldn't refuse to
deal with us for that reason, and we shouldn't refuse to deal with
them for whatever infractions they may have carried out, which
certainly exist. This is just absurd. We have to move towards better -
right at the Russian border, there are very extreme tensions, that
could blow up anytime and lead to what would in fact be a terminal
nuclear war, terminal for the species and life on Earth. We're very
close to that. Now, we could ask why. First of all, we should do
things to ameliorate it. Secondly, we should ask why. Well, it's
because NATO expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in
violation of verbal promises to Mikhail Gorbachev, mostly under
Clinton, partly under first Bush, then Clinton expanded right to the
Russian border, expanded further under Obama.
The US has offered to bring Ukraine into NATO. That's the kind of a
heartland of Russian geostrategic concerns. So, yes, there's tensions
at the Russian border - and not, notice, at the Mexican border. Well,
those are all issues that should be of primary concern. The fate of -
the fate of organized human society, even of the survival of the
species, depends on this. How much attention is given to these things
as compared with, you know, whether Trump lied about something? I
think those seem to me the fundamental criticisms of the media.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, author
and linguist, now a laureate professor in the Department of
Linguistics at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He taught for 50
years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Tune in next week when we continue our conversation
with Noam Chomsky about Gaza, Israel's new nationality law, the recent
Trump-Putin summit, Iran, North Kora, the war in Yemen and more. In
December, Noam Chomsky will be celebrating his 90th birthday.
Oh, and happy birthday to Rob Young here at Democracy Now! And
Democracy Now! has a job opening for a broadcast engineer in our New York
studio.
Find
out more at democracynow.org.
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