Champions of social justice. They appeared together on stage in conversation for the first 20that democracy now s anniversary celebration. We will air that conversation and Noam Chomskys address on donald trump and the dire threat facing our planet. At this point, the two major threats to survival can converge. One is an environmental catastrophe and the other is nuclear war. Another threat is increasing right before our eyes. Amy today, noam chomsky, a belafonte, and more coming up. This is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. On december 5, over 2300 people packed into the Historic Riverside Church here in manhattan to celebrate the 20th anniversary of democracy now democracy now first went on the air on the eve of the 1996 New Hampshire primary. The date was february 19, 1996. The show began as a radio show on nine Radio Stations. Today, over 5000 episodes later, democracy now airs on over 1400 Public Television and Radio Stations across the globe. Among those who spoke at the celebration of democracy now was noam chomsky, worldrenowned political dissident, linguist, and author. He is Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of technology and author of more than 100 books. Courts for the young people you will, special word be facing problems that have never risen in the 200,000 years hard demandingy, problems. Its a burden that you cant ignore. And well all you, in particular, and all the rest of us will have to be in there struggling hard to save the human species from a pretty grim fate. Well, my wife and i happened to 8, thatrope on november fateful day in fact, in barcelona, where we watched the results come in. Now, that had special personal resonance for me. The first article i wrote, or at least that i can remember, was in february 1939 at the it was about the fall of barcelona to francos fascist forces. And the article, which im sure it was not very memorable, was about the apparently inexorable spread of fascism over europe and maybe the whole world. Im old enough to have been able to listen to hitlers speeches, the nuremberg rallies, not understanding the words, but the tone and the reaction of the crowd was enough to leave indelible memories. And watching those results come in did arouse some pretty unpleasant memories, along with what is happening in europe now, which, in many ways, is pretty frightening, as well. Well, the reaction to november 8 in europe was disbelief, shock, horror. It was captured pretty eloquently in the on the front cover of the major german weekly, der spiegel. It depicted a caricature of donald trump presented as a meteor hurtling towards earth, mouth open, ready to swallow it up. And the top headline read das ende der welt the end of the world. Small letters below, as we have known it. There might be some truth to that concern, even if not exactly in the manner in which the artist, the authors, the others who echoed that conception, had in mind. It had to do with other events that were taking place right at the same time, november 8, events that i think were a lot more important than the ones that have captured the attention of the world in such an astonishing fashion, events that were taking place in morocco, marrakesh, morocco. There was a conference there of 200 countries, the socalled cop 22. Their goal at this conference was to implement the rather vague promises and commitments of the preceding International Conference on global warming, cop 21 in paris in december 2015, which had in fact been left vague for reasons not unrelated to what happened on november 8 here. The paris conference had the goal of establishing verifiable commitments to do something about the worst problem that humans have ever faced the likely destruction of the possibility for organized human life. They couldnt do that. Aey could only reach nonverifiable commitment promises, but not fixed by treaty and a real commitment. And the reason was that the Republican Congress in the United States would not accept binding commitments. So they were left with something much weaker and looser. The morocco conference intended to carry this forward by putting teeth in that loose, vague agreement. The conference opened on november 7, normal way. November 8, the World Meteorological organization presented an assessment of the current state of what is called the anthropocene, the new geological epoch that is marked by radical human modification, destruction of the environment that sustains life. November 9, the conference basically ceased. The question that was left was whether it would be possible to Carry Forward this global effort to deal with the highly critical problem of environmental catastrophe, if the leader of the free world, the richest and most powerful country in history, would pull out completely, as appeared to be the case. Thats the stated goal of the president elect, who regards Climate Change as a hoax and whose policy, if he pursues it, is to maximize the use of fossil fuels, end environmental regulations, dismantle the Environmental Protection agency established by richard nixon, which is a measure of where politics has shifted to the right in the past generation and, in other ways, accelerate the race to destruction. Well, that was essentially the end of the marrakesh conference. It terminated without any issue. So that might signal the end of the world, even if not quite in the intended sense. And, in fact, what happened in marrakesh was a quite astounding spectacle. The hope of the world for saving us from this impending disaster was china authoritarian, harsh china. Thats where hopes were placed. At the same time, the leader of the free world, the richest, most powerful country in history, was acting in such a way as to doom the hopes to total disaster. It is an astonishing spectacle. And it is no less astounding that it received almost no comment, something to think about. Well, the effects are quite real. Cop21, the paris negotiations, could not reach a verifiable the refusal ofof the Republican Congress to accept binding commitments. The followup conference, cop 22, ended without any issue. We will soon see, in the not very distant future, even more dangerous, horrifying consequences of this failure right here to come to term to address in a serious way this impending crisis. So, say, take the country of bangladesh. Within a few years, tens of millions of people will be fleeing from the lowlying coastal plains simply because of the rise of sea level with the melting of the huge antarctic glaciers much more quickly than was anticipated and the Severe Weather associated with global warming. That is a refugee crisis of a kind that puts todays crisis, which is more a moral crisis of the west than an actual refugee crisis it will put this Current Crisis into a it will seem like a footnote to a tragedy. And its the leading climate scientist in bangladesh has reacted by saying that these migrants should have the right to move to the countries from which all these Greenhouse Gases are coming. Millions should be able to go to the United States [applause] United States and, indeed, the other rich countries that have grown wealthy, as we all have, while bringing this new geological epoch bringing about this new geological epoch, which may well be the final one for the species. And the catastrophic consequences can only increase. Just keeping to south asia, temperatures which are already intolerable for the poor are going to continue to rise as the himalayan glaciers melt, also destroying the water supply for south asia. In india already, 300 Million People are reported to lack water to drink. And it will continue both for india and pakistan. And at this point, the two major threats to survival begin to converge. One is environmental catastrophe. The other is nuclear war, another threat that is increasing right before our eyes. India and pakistan are Nuclear States, Nuclear States with Nuclear Weapons. They were already almost at war. Any kind of real war would immediately turn into a nuclear war. That might happen very easily over water over struggles over diminishing water supplies. A nuclear war would not only devastate the region, but might actually be terminal for the species, if indeed it leads to Nuclear Winter and global famine as many scientists predict. So the threats of survival to survival converge right there, and were going to see much more like it. Meanwhile, the United States is leading the way to disaster, while the world looks to china for leadership. Its an incredible, astounding picture, and indeed only one , piece of a much larger picture. The u. S. Isolation at marrakesh is symptomatic of broader developments that we should think about pretty carefully. They are of considerable significance. U. S. Isolation in the world is increasing in remarkable ways. Maybe the most striking is right in this hemisphere, what used to be called our little region over here henry stimson, secretary of war under roosevelt, our little region over here, where nobody bothers us. If anybody gets out of line, we punish them harshly. Otherwise they do what we say. , thats very far from true. During this century, latin america, for the first time in 500 years, has freed itself from western imperialism. Last century, thats the United States. The International Monetary fund, which is basically an agency of the u. S. Treasury, has been kicked out of the of south america entirely. There are no u. S. Military bases left. The International Organizations [applause] the hemispheric organizations are beginning to exclude the United States and canada. In 2015, there was a summit coming up, and the United States might have been excluded completely from the hemisphere over the issue of cuba. That was the crucial issue that the hemisphere on which the hemisphere opposed u. S. Policy, as does the world. Thats surely the reason why obama made the gestures towards normalization, that were at least some step forward and could be reversed under trump. We dont know. On a much more farreaching scale, something similar is happening in asia. As you know, one of obamas major policies was the socalled pivot to asia, which was actually a measure to confront china, transparently. One component of the pivot to asia was the tpp, the transpacific partnership, which excluded china, tried to bring in other asiapacific countries. Well, that seems to be on its way to collapse, for pretty good reasons, i think. [applause] but at the same time, theres another International Trade agreement that is expanding and growing. Namely chinas what they call , the regional comprehensive economic partnership, which is now drawing in u. S. Allies from peru to australia to japan. The u. S. Will probably choose to stay out of it, just as the United States, virtually alone, has stayed away from chinas Asian Infrastructure development bank, a kind of counterpart to the world bank that the u. S. Has opposed for many years, but has now been joined by practically all u. S. Allies, britain and others. Thats at the same time, china is expanding to the west with the shanghai cooperation organization, the chinabased silk roads. The whole system is an integrated system of Energy Resource sharing and so on. It includes siberia with its rich resources. It includes india and pakistan. Iran will soon join, it appears, and probably turkey. This will extend all the way from china to europe. The United States has asked for observer status, and its been rejected. Not permitted. And one of the major commitments of the shanghai cooperation organization, the whole of the Central Asian states, is that there can be no u. S. Military bases in this entire region. Another step toward isolation may soon take place if the president elect carries through his promise to terminate the Nuclear Weapons the nuclear deal with iran. Other countries who are parties to the deal might well continue. They might even europe, mainly. That means ignoring u. S. Sanctions. That will extend u. S. Isolation, even from europe. And in fact, europe might move under these circumstances towards backing off from the confrontation with russia. Actually, brexit may assist with this because britain was the voice of the United States in nato, the harshest voice. Now its out, gives europe some opportunities. There were choices in 1990, 1991, time of the collapse of the soviet union. Mikhail gorbachev had a what he called a vision of a common european home, an integrated, cooperative system of security, commerce, interchange, no military alliances from the atlantic to the pacific. The u. S. Insisted on a different vision. Namely soviet union collapses, and nato remains and, indeed, expands right up to the borders of russia now where very serious threats are evident daily. Well, all of this, these are significant developments. They are related to the widely discussed matter of decline of american power. There are some conventional measures which, however, are misleading in quite interesting ways. I will just say a word about it because there is no time, but something to seriously think about. By conventional measures in 1945, the United States had reached the peak of global dominance nothing like it in history. It had perhaps 50 of total worlds wealth. Other industrial countries were devastated or destroyed by the war, severely damaged. The u. S. Economy had gained enormously from the war, and it was in and the u. S. , in general, had a position of dominance with no historical parallel. Well, that, of course, couldnt last. Other industrial countries reconstructed. By around 1970, the world was described as tripolar. Three Major Economic centers a germanbased europe, a u. S. Base north america, and the northeast asian area. At that time, japanbased, now china had moved in as a partner, conflict then partner. By now by that time, u. S. Share in Global Wealth was about 25 . And today it is not far below that. Well, all of this is highly misleading because it fails to take into account a crucial factor, which is almost never discussed, though theres some interesting work on it. That is the question of ownership of the world economy. If you take a look at the corporate the multinational corporations around the world, what do they own . Well, that turns out to be a pretty interesting matter. In virtually every this increasingly during the period of neoliberal globalization of the last generation, corporate wealth is becoming a more realistic measure of global power than national wealth. Corporate wealth, of course, is nationally based, supported by taxpayers like us, but the ownership has nothing to do with us. Corporate ownership, if you look at that, it turns out that in virtually every economic sector manufacturing, finance, services, retail, and others u. S. Corporations are well in the lead in ownership of the global economy. And overall, their ownership is close to 50 of the total. That is roughly the proportion of u. S. National wealth in 1945, which tells you something about the nature of the world in which we live. Of course, that is not for the benefit of american citizens, but of those who own and manage these private publicly supported and private, quasitotalitarian systems. If you look at the military dimension, of course, the u. S. Is supreme. Nobody is even close. No point talking about it. But it is possible that europe might take a more independent role. It might move towards Something Like gorbachevs vision. That might lead to a relaxation of the rising and very dangerous tensions at the russian border, which would be a very welcome development. Well, theres a lot more to say about the fears and hopes and prospects. The threats and dangers are very real. There are plenty of opportunities. And as we face them, again, particularly the younger people among you, we should never overlook the fact that the threats that we now face are the most severe that have ever arisen in human history. They are literal threats to survival nuclear war, environmental catastrophe. These are very urgent concerns. They cannot be delayed. They became more urgent on november 8, for the reasons you know and that i mentioned. They have to be directly and soon if the human experiment is not to prove to be a disastrous failure. Amy m. I. T. Professor noam chomsky speaking december 5 at Riverside Church as part of a celebration marking 20 years of democracy now after a short break we air a , historic conversation between noam chomsky and Harry Belafonte. This is democracy now back in a minute. [music break] amy that is patti smith speaking at democracy now s 20th anniversary here in manhattan at Riverside Church. This is democracy now , the war and peace report. I am amy goodman. We turn now to noam chomsky and Harry Belafonte, together in conversation for the first time, recorded at democracy now s recent 20th anniversary celebration at Riverside Church. Noam chomsky is a worldrenowned political dissident, linguist and author who gained fame in the 1960s for his critique of the vietnam war and u. S.