Noam Chomsky et Juan Branco - Sur la Surveillance [ANGLAIS]

Je voulais vous demander de vous parler de la continuité entre les pratiques des États-Unis qui ont été prises dans les Philippines dans le 20e siècle et qui est aujourd'hui en masse surveillance. Et vous avez aussi parlé du fait que le contrôle des populations et plus généralement de la confrontation entre les États-Unis et les populations étaient très rooted dans les fondations des États-Unis avec le génocide des États-Unis et les autres événements. Je voulais savoir si vous considérez que la masse surveillance est juste un autre tool de gouvernement, par exemple, si vous utilisez le mot Foucault, qui n'ont pas de différence, n'ont pas de différence en scale et n'ont pas de différence.

Les différences en quantité sont parfois des différences en qualité. Ma impressione est que c'est une différence en scale. Les pratiques qui ont été développées en détail et qui ont mis en effet une puissance des pays-là qui ont été développées.

Ils ont été développées en détail des pays-là, et qui ont été développées en causer des pays-là. Nous sommes très vite dans les pays-là. Ils ont été développés dans le pays-là.

Ils ont été développés dans le pays-là. Il était donc un système de politique que nous sommes développées par les États-Unis. Je pense que je l'ai mentionné, que les Philippines sont un outlier dans l'East et l'East-Est-East-Asia, une région qui n'a pas vraiment développée, et qui n'a pas beaucoup de struggles et beaucoup de brutales.

Donc, après la Seconde Guerre, le U.S. a fait une avance contre-insurgency operation pour crushes des rebellions, mais justement, le système s'est rendu compte.

Et c'est l'appliant à l'Homme, en 1910, puis 1918, 1919, un peu plus les mêmes systèmes ont été appliquées à l'Homme, en ce qui est, en fait, la plus repressive période de l'Histoire, le Woodrow Wilson's Red Scare, qui était assez vissue et a un long temps d'impact. Et puis, il continue. Le FBI a utilisé les mêmes techniques, qui, en tant qu'aimant, à la politique élite, à essayer de s'assurer que les senators, les représentants de l'Homme, et autres, ne pas s'assurer que les représentants, parce qu'ils avaient un tonne de information, et qu'ils avaient un peu de salle, de s'assurer, de libel à l'Homme, de initier les stories, et ainsi de suite.

Mais les années 60 et 70, c'était été directe contre l'ensemble des populations. C'était donc très sérieux, dans notre mouvement, le mouvement des gouvernementaux et les actions, en ce qui s'assurer, c'est-à-dire dans la partie des activités des activités, des activités des activités des activités, et tout ce qui s'assurer, par le court, mais des activités des activités, en ce qui s'assurer, Le mouvement directe contre les Native Americans, les Nouveaux-Left, les Nouveaux-Lefts, les Nouveaux-Lefts, les Nouveaux-Lefts. C'était très sérieux.

C'était à cause des politiciens, de l'assassinatisation, de la force de suicides, de la groupes. C'était une grande operation. C'était très difficile de penser, d'ailleurs, à l'East-Germanie.

C'était difficile de penser que c'était une operative de l'Operation dans la société, et c'était le national de la police, c'est ce que le FBI était, qui était en train d'exécution des ordres, en train de break-up et disrupte popular activisme, qui était une forte forte en les 60s et les 70s, et c'était une grande réussite. C'est ce qui s'est passé sur une approdée. Mais c'est ce que vous souhaitez le système de pouvoir de faire.

Le plus information qu'ils ont, le plus important qu'ils ont, le plus important qu'ils ont sur les choses, à l'assassinatisation, à l'entendiner et à l'assassinatisation, et à l'assassinatisation, à l'assassinatisation, si nécessaire. Vous pensez qu'il existe cette idée que l'information est un pouvoir et que votre activisme est très lié à cette idée que vous devriez à l'empowerment d'accueillir les informations sur le monde et sur les différents structures de pouvoir. Vous pensez que secret est nécessaire pour former un pouvoir ?

Secrecy est valable. Les États-Unis sont un peu d'open society. Nous avons plus d'accès à l'internel planning records dans les États-Unis que nous connaissons.

C'est sans doute parfaitement, mais c'est substantial. Et quand vous lez sur ces masses d'internel documents, secret documents, comme je l'ai fait dans beaucoup de cas. Une chose qui est très utile, c'est que très peu a l'internel relation à la sécurité.

C'est-à-dire que la sécurité des États-Unis, c'est-à-dire que la sécurité des États-Unis, c'est-à-dire que les gens ne veulent pas savoir ce qu'ils font. C'est-à-dire que c'est secret. Mais il y a très peu de secret dans le record qui aurait été de valeur, à l'internel, à l'internel, à l'internel, à l'internel, à l'internel, à l'internel, à l'internel, à l'internel, à l'internel, à l'internel.

Ils ont toujours le fait parfaitement sur ce qu'ils font sur le terrain. Mais il faut maintenir la sécurité des populations. Et le tacit assumption est, c'est parfois ouvert, que les gens ne doivent pas savoir ce qu'ils font.

Il y a, après-all, c'est-à-dire que c'est-à-dire une élément de la politique, progressive, démocratique, qui dit que les gens ne doivent pas savoir. Vous trouvez ça souvent souvent dans certains de les leaders. Il y a le but public intellectuel du 20e siècle de l'Université, Walter Lipmann, qui était un très distingué figure.

Il était un Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy-style, un président de l'université de public affairs. Il était aussi l'auteur de ce qu'ils ont appelé « Essays « Progressive Democratic Theory» Quand vous lez, il dit qu'il dit, il dit qu'il dit, « Le public est un peu d'ignorant et d'oublier des outsiders. Ils doivent être mis en place.

Les décisions doivent être mis par les responsables de l'homme, comme nous. Les gens qui sont toujours dans les responsables de l'homme. Nous, les responsables de l'homme, doivent être protégés par la trompe et la roar de l'homme, de l'homme, de l'homme et d'oublier des outsiders.

Le travail de l'homme, de l'homme, de l'homme, de l'homme, de l'homme, de l'homme, de l'homme. Ils peuvent être spectateurs, mais non participants. Ils ont un rôle dans la politique.

Il y a quelques années, ils peuvent être obligés à l'homme de l'homme à l'homme de l'homme, et ensuite ils doivent rester dans l'homme et rester tranquille. Et c'est le founder de modern political science, Harold Lasswell, qui est aussi un progresseur, qui est un progresseur de l'U.S. standards, un progresseur.

Il a dit qu'il ne doit pas être mislead par des démocraties dogmatismes pour les gens qui sont les plus juges de leur propre intérêts. Ils ne sont pas. Ils sont trop stupides, trop ignorants.

C'est un progresseur de leur permettre de faire des décisions. C'est un peu comme les 3 ans. Ils ne sont pas capable.

Donc, pour leur propre bénéfice, nous devons contrôler, limiter ce qu'ils font, c'est le statut d'observer, spectateur de ce qu'il se passe dans la politique. Et c'est presque la façon que les choses fonctionnent. Donc, si vous regardez l'académie politique science dans les États-Unis, l'un des principaux topics que les étudiants, et étudiants très bien, c'est la relation entre public attitudes et public policy. c'est une très bonne enquête.

Public policy, vous voyez, public attitudes, c'est disponible par extensive polling. Polling n'est pas parfait, mais c'est très bon et très reliable, et souvent polls sont faits très sensibles. Et il y a beaucoup de information sur public attitudes et public policy. et il y a des résultats dans les major gold standard works de la science.

Le résultat est que environ 70% de la population, ou moins 70% de la population, ou moins 70% de la population, est complètement disenfranchise. Et leurs attitudes ont absolument n'affecte sur la politique. Et leurs représentants ne payent pas attention, donc ce qu'ils pensent, est désagréable.

à partir du haut niveau, vous commencez à obtenir un peu plus d'influence. plus d'attitudes et policies. Et tu te partirai à la tête, c'est une fraction de 1%, ils sont en train de faire des choses.

Donc ils ne veulent pas dire ce qu'ils sont els. C'est-où la petite fuzziness à l'éditer, c'est-où la base. Just recently, a study released by Princeton University, which got a little publicity to leading political scientists who've worked on these things for years, investigated, I think, about 1,700 major public policy decisions to investigate who had influence.

The same result. Basically, the public was irrelevant, almost all of it. And when you get to the business world, extreme wealth and so on, they have enormous influence.

Actually, creation of policy, because they usually staff the executive, either they or their representatives. Somebody like, say, Henry Kissinger, a representative of the corporate system, a state corporate system. But this is the way it works, and that's considered appropriate in progressive democratic theory for the good of the population.

Always, it's out of benevolence. You cannot let these ignorant and meddlesome outsiders make bad decisions. It would be terrible.

When you look at the secrecy system, that's what a lot of it is about. I'd say the overwhelming majority. Keeping the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders in the dark.

It's not their business. Because you think that, for example, what happened with Snowden, that he leaked all these documents, you think that the fact that if this information reaches the masses, which is not true also, we don't know if they're really aware of the full extent of the political implications, you think it could empower them? Or do you think they're in any way marginalized by the system, and it would be maybe the upper classes that need also this information?

Well, I think the passionate attack on Snowden, you know, as soon as this started with high-level claims that we're going to hunt him to the end of the world and we'll catch him wherever he is and we'll pressure, I mean, it shows that they're really afraid. Now it could be that the fear is paranoia. So, for example, if at the highest level, say, you know, the White House and so on, if they had simply disregarded him, it might have just disappeared, possible.

So their own paranoia may be feeding their own demise in a sense. But it does reflect the attitudes. How much effect it can have, we're not sure.

So, for example, there were effects. Brazil, for example, withdrew a presidential visit. Didn't quite break relations, but certainly harmed them.

And remember, a lot of these Snowden revelations are not just about surveillance of people. They're also about support for corporate efforts to undermine business in other countries. So spying on, you know, the negotiators and energy deals to make sure that American corporations have a head up on it and so on.

Now, you know, big corporations in other countries don't like that. Just like Merkel doesn't like the fact that somebody's reading their email, you know. But powerful people and powerful institutions are being harmed sufficiently, so there was a reaction.

Congress did start to get concerned when it turned out that the Senate committees responsible for this were being spied on. I should say there's absolutely nothing new about this. So, for example, you go back to the foundation of the United Nations.

There was a conference in San Francisco, I think it was 1947, which established the United Nations. Well, it turned out pretty soon that they discovered that the FBI had been bugging the offices of the foreign delegations, so that American negotiators could have a step up on trying to get what they wanted. It's a huge fuss made when the Russians do this to the American embassy, of course, but it's done all the time.

At this geopolitical scale, I have a question, coming back to what you said about the Philippines and the fact that the strategy put in place by the U.S. has still effects more than 100 years later.

How can we explain that Latin America has had one of the strongest reactions to all these mass surveillance, whereas we know that the U.S. has always had a very...

Actually, it's a very significant phenomenon, really historic significance. For 500 years, Latin America had been pretty much in the hands of foreign powers and elite, mostly white elites, tiny elites inside Latin America who accumulated enormous wealth huge, horrendous poverty in basically rich societies, and always under the hands of the imperial powers. For a long time was England, and last century or so it's the United States.

Latin America was so taken for granted in U.S. planning that they really hardly even had plans for it.

So there were some. So for example, in 1945, when the U.S. was beginning the Organization of the World, at the end of the Second World War, the U.S. did call a hemispheric conference in Mexico, and the Latin American states came, and the United States imposed, at that point the U.S. could actually impose what it wanted, imposed what was called an economic charter for the Americas, which banned economic nationalism in all its forms.

The Latin American countries had to follow, had to be completely open societies, which of course, in fact, meant open to U.S. penetration and control.

Incidentally, the U.S. itself did not accept these principles.

On the contrary, it had a high level of economic nationalism. That's why you have your computer and you're using the internet and so on, or largely state sector actions. And this was, they were concerned at the time, with what the State Department called the new nationalism in Latin America, which is driven by the idea that the people of the country ought to be the beneficiaries of their resources.

Now we have to smash this down. No new nationalism. It's foreign investors who were the beneficiaries, not the people of the country.

It was pretty explicit. And at that point, you could just legislate it, and they'd do what they were told. And so it continued.

And not without violence. So for example, in the post-Stalin period, violence and repression in the U.S. dependencies in Latin America was much worse than Eastern Europe.

Much worse. I've seen an indication of it up there. The depiction of the murder of an archbishop in El Salvador.

And ten years later, the murder of six leading Latin American intellectuals by forces pretty much armed and trained by the United States. East Europe was bad enough, but things like that didn't happen. And there were vicious neo-Nazi dictatorships installed and massive torture and so on.

That was Latin America, until about ten or fifteen years ago. And since then, there's been a short term. Partly it was the effect of the neoliberal policies of the 1980s and 90s.

Latin America followed the rules, and it was smashed. The rules are very destructive. Countries that didn't follow the rules, like South Korea and Taiwan and so on, they did fine.

But Latin America observed them. And it was a very harsh couple of decades, and there was a reaction. There was also finally a reaction to the U.S.-backed or sometimes U.S.-imposed dictatorships.

And for a variety of reasons, in the last roughly decade, twenty years maybe, Latin America has for the first time in its history moved towards, first of all, integration. Some degree of integration of the countries. They were very separate from one another.

And the degree of independence. And it's pretty remarkable. What you describe here in the NSA is one example.

But there are many others. One of the most striking examples had to do with the CIA torture programs. The worst torture programs, by far, were what was called the Extraordinary Rendition.

That's a program where you take somebody you're interested in, you suspect him or you think he has information, or something. You send him to your favorite dictatorship, Assad in Syria, Mubarak in Egypt, Gaddafi in Libya, and make sure that he's tortured sufficiently so that he comes out with something. And then, you know, maybe have some information, maybe not.

There was a study recently, about a year ago, of the countries that participated in Extraordinary Rendition. Most of Europe, England, Sweden, all participated. Probably Italy, I don't remember.

The Middle East, of course, because that's where you sent them to be tortured. And most of the rest of the world. One exception.

No participation from Latin America, which is doubly significant. First of all, because Latin America used to be the backyard. They did what they were told.

Secondly, because during the period of U.S. control, Latin America was one of the world's centers of torture.

Now they refuse to participate in U.S.-run torture.

It's pretty significant. Even Colombia? Even Colombia.

You take a look at the, there are now hemispheric, hemispheric conferences used to be, the U.S. gave the orders and everybody followed them.

The latest ones, the U.S. and Canada are isolated.

It's Latin America against the U.S. and Canada.

And there's already organizations formed CELAC, which exclude North America, just the Latin American, Caribbean countries. That's a remarkable change. And the U.S. has simply lost control of the region.

And it's interesting for a European, because on the contrary, I mean, it's maybe a perception that we see Europe down every time getting more...

Europe is becoming Latin Americanized. It was pretty dramatic with the case of the Morales Plan. This is Bolivia, the worst country in the hemisphere outside of Haiti, a country with an indigenous majority.

The President went to Russia, talked to Snowden, flew back. The European countries are so terrified of the United States that they wouldn't let them cross their airspace. They're cowering in terror, the Europeans, because the master might be angry at them.

Meanwhile, Latin America, the poorest country in South America, is defying the United States. It's pretty remarkable. It's very troubling, by so forth.

It should tell Europeans something about their cowardice. That's...

Yeah, especially since we come from...

I mean, there was a period...

And during the...

Because you can understand that in the Cold War, there could be a barrier, like a legitimizing...

I mean, could legitimize the influence of the U.S. But it's...

For example, in France, it's especially since the end of the Cold War, that there's been this alignment, like they entered NATO without...

And it's difficult to understand what happened, actually. What was the...

First of all, during the Cold War, remember that part of the reason for NATO, a significant part, was to keep Europe under control. Yeah. As long as you had NATO, Europe's dependent on the United States, and efforts to move in an independent direction, which did exist.

De Gaulle, Willy Brandts, Ostpolitik, others, were very much feared in the United States. There was fear of what was called a third force. You know, Russia, the United States, and Europe had become a third independent force.

In which it could have. Europe's population is bigger than the United States, and advanced industrial societies, in many ways more advanced than the United States. If Europe wanted to, it could become an independent force, and the U.S. didn't want that.

And that's, I think, a large part of the reason why NATO remains, and is even expanding. Though there's no Russian threat. I mean, they can try to concoct one, but it's ludicrous.

It's, you know, partly to just keep Europe under control. So, yes, there was, you know, pressure to...

You could imagine the effectiveness of propaganda about legitimizing U.S. influence, but if you look into it, it's pretty shaky.

What's happened since? I'm going to say take France. France is quite interesting.

Until the 1970s, the French intellectuals were the last Stalinists in the world. Fanatic Stalinists and Maoists. I mean, nobody in the world, in the West, believed any of this, but they were still mouthing all the slogans, I remember.

They were giving talks in France. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, talking to the leading French intellectuals about the genius Mao and so on and so forth. In the mid-70s, this radically changed.

As far as I can tell, it changed. The event that changed it was probably Solzhenitsyn's Gulag. That was translated into French.

Everybody read it. And since the French intellectuals have to be in the lead in the world, because, after all, it's France, they suddenly presented themselves as the first people in the world who understood the evils of Stalinism. And these great intellectuals were writing articles with great self-praise about things that I knew when I was ten years old, because everybody knew them.

I mean, there were obviously factors behind it, but there was a shift among the intellectual classes from a weird form of Stalinism, Third Worldism, Maoism, and so on. Not everyone, of course, but a substantial part, to becoming the most reactionary sector of the Western intellectuals. And, of course, praising themselves for their magnificence and discovering what everybody always knew. in fact, it's kind of comical when you look at the productions.

And it continues like that. It's a very strange, there's this kind of a strain of hysteria in the culture, which is interesting to investigate. I think a lot of the postmodern, sometimes, say, excesses, grow out of that.

And you had similar things happening in the other countries. What the reasons are? Well, interesting to investigate.

But the tendencies are clear. I wanted to ask you about, coming back to this question of, we talked yesterday also about the way, can we resist legally, or do we have to resist legally? And there is a question, for example, secret services escape by nature to the public's retinal.

And in a way, is it possible to control them through democratic means? The secret services? Yes.

There is like a contradiction between the democracy and...

There should be control. And not just the secret services, but things like, say, Gladio, which is still largely secret. And some bits and pieces of it have come out.

It did appear to be involved in the neo-fascist terror in Italy in the 70s and so on, and probably other things. There's not much research. Danielle Gonser in Switzerland, one of the few researchers.

But that doesn't...

It should get publicly exposed and under public control. And the same with the secret services. In the United States, after the NSA exposures, there were some measures passed in Congress to limit or restrict the right of the executive to, say, spy on Americans.

But very limited. But that's really a question of public pressure. If there's enough, it can be eliminated.

But you still believe that in a broader way, I mean, because we have learned in an era in which the state is a universal form. Did you ever question the fact that we needed a state as a...

A state altogether? Yes. Or at the national...

Or just at the national level? I think...

All my life. That's why since childhood I've been very much attracted by anarchist ideas. The nation-state is not some kind of universal property.

It's a special construction, mainly in Europe, spread over the world with European imperialism and settlement. And it's in many ways a very destructive system. So take the Middle East, which is falling apart and raging chaos.

Largely this is a long-term effect of the imposition of the nation-state system by the European imperial powers, mostly England and France, for their own interests, not for the interests of the people. So take, say, Iraq. Iraq was patched together by the British after the Second World War, the First World War, when they were kind of parceling out the former Ottoman Empire.

It was put together in such a way as to...

The boundaries were drawn by Britain to ensure that England, not Turkey, would have control of the oil fields near the Turkish border. And Kuwait was established as a British-run principality primarily in order to bar Iraq's free access to the sea. So it was mechanism control.

And that put together Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, and other minorities, Turkmen, who weren't particularly hostile but had basically not much to do with each other. This was done for imperial interests. The same was true.

The French took Syria in Lebanon and did the same thing. The British took Palestine for geostrategic reasons primarily. It was kind of like a cover of the Bible that said this and that.

And the whole reason is in turmoil. And if you look around, say, look at Africa, there's violence everywhere. Almost all of it, when you look at it, has to do with the nation-state systems that were imposed by the European powers for their own interests.

Drawing lines that broke tribes in half, let's say, and putting people together who were hostile. Take say, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The British, during the days when they ruled India, drew a line, the Durand Line, for their interests.

That was going to be British India, separate from the rest. The Durand Line now separates Pakistan from Afghanistan. It cuts right through the Pashtun territories.

Right through. Some of them are in Pakistan, some are in Afghanistan. When a tribesman, say, goes from Pakistan to Afghanistan to visit relatives, we can call it a terrorist attack and send drones to kill them.

But from their point of view, that's their country. Imperial powers broke it in half. In fact, the same is true of the U.S. and Mexico.

The U.S. Congress conquered about half of Mexico in a brutal war of aggression in the mid-19th century.

The border was pretty artificial. The same people lived on both sides. It was a very permeable border.

All kinds of developments. But it wasn't until pretty recently, late 80s and 1990s, that the border started to get started. It was a very permeable border.

All kinds of developments. But it wasn't until pretty recently, late 80s and 1990s, that the border started to get started. to get militarized.

And the militarization of the border, in fact, took a big step forward when NAFTA was enacted. In 1994, when Clinton ran through NAFTA over public opposition, he also started militarizing the border because planners could easily understand that NAFTA is going to create a huge number of refugees in Mexico. Mexican campesinos can be quite efficient, but they can't compete with highly subsidized U.S. agribisms.

And the same is true more generally. If you're going to get a flow of refugees, you have to militarize the border. Now, the issue of people crossing the border, shoot them, send them back, and so on.

And this is all over the world. So there's nothing natural about the nation-state system. I mean, you can see how unnatural it is by looking at European history.

The centuries during which this system was imposed were some of the most savage centuries in human history. in human history. In the Thirty Years' War, maybe a third of the population of Germany was slaughtered.

This is all part of imposing nation-state systems. And finally, in 1945, Europeans did recognize that the next time they play their favorite game of slaughtering each other, it's going to be the end. So Europe did finally move towards some kind of integration which began to somewhat erode the nation-state borders which were generally pretty artificial.

And I think that's positive direction should take place elsewhere in the world. But at the same time it creates even more important distance between the people of course because your thoughts are always about this relationship of power between power established power and society. And for example we can see in Europe how the distancing between both has created even more difficulties to grasp politics for the society.

Because other developments are taking place. One of the things that's happening in the more integrated Europe is a very sharp attack on popular democracy. Decisions are being made in Brussels by the bureaucrats and the Bundesbank and are imposed on the countries.

When Monti was elected in Italy the population had almost nothing to do with them. It came from Brussels. When the Greek prime minister Papandreou had the effrontery to suggest that you might ask the population do they want the policies. there was fury all over Europe how dare you ask the population this is decided by the responsible men in Brussels.

I mean even the Wall Street Journal had an article pointing out that no matter what political party took power in Europe right to left they always follow the same policy because they're not coming from the country. so that's another tendency. Things don't happen just mechanically.

There's a lot of things going on. It's very interesting because in the L.E. or in the best universities there is quite a debate in particular less with Snowden who has quite an executive figure like is really well considered in general more about people like Assange and there's a lot of controversy about if their action is good if they can be supported or not there was a lot of debates and doubts but I What kinds of criticism come on?

They're very skeptical about the reasons that we entered each other and for example they consider that the French countries can justify that people and that but really in the narrow very elitist and the further you go into society deeper in the country and the more admired they are without compromise I'm asking because just small experiment with my own grandchildren who were in their twenties they didn't seem to care they said yeah kind of interesting but we put everything on Facebook anyway so what do we care it's about that you know you know how do we arrive on that you know how do we arrive in this kind of you know acceptance of the society of all the control that any of us now know that we this sort of teenage teenage society is so exhibitionist that they just don't seem to care if anyone is there is also a distinction between the fact that many young people know even when they are not qualified and they treat them as heroes but it doesn't provoke any kind of mobilization yeah it just stays as a perception and more people were surprised by what was revealed the discourse of people like Kassan for what's similar and yes there is knowledge about this but it was considered a bit paranoid and all the discourses that that was I think that's I don't know what you think about it but I think that's why Snowden's was so important the discourse the discourse of those who were warning about its echelon about its master or something or something they didn't know what they did why did you find the I mean I thought I designed a few weeks ago a mindset and a few for Snowden why did you decide to enter into this and started right away and I thought what it was doing was fine and how do you I mean do you see it as an American a problem of American hegemony or a more global problem or to some extent or other Snowden revelations I do mainly and I thought that in England the government was requesting the United States to use its advanced technology to spy on British and any system of power is going to want to have total information about its enemies and the domestic population is one of the main enemies of this way back I don't know if you've studied the history but if you had a major book to look at as Albert McCoy's that was in that he studied both and the United States pioneer of these things a hundred years ago after the U.S. conquered the Philippines killed a couple hundred thousand people but there's a pacifier using the highest technology of the day they tried to gather massive information Philippine elites basically didn't have to recognize that if they knew enough information about them they could use it to undermine organization to discredit people incite conflicts it's so successful that if you take a look at East Asia today in the Southeast and East Asia there's a kind of famous Asian miracle with one exception the Philippines was not participated it's been under U.S. control for a century and it's remains dependent third world society and furthermore in a pretty astonishing achievement of propaganda the Philippines have been so indoctrinated that they tend to support the U.S. and its crimes beyond other people even though they are the main victims that's a real achievement and it's now over a hundred years and as McCoy discusses as soon as these methods were developed for the Philippines they were immediately transferred back home and so Woodrow Wilson used the same techniques in the right scare you know the big repression in the post war it took over one period and they're picked up by the FBI and it sort of goes on from there the same happened in England a system of power is very much created around populations and with good reason and gaining information and using it to control people or kind of to do and undermine them that sort of standard technique that's an interesting that's a question I want you to ask incidentally if you had read the reports in the last couple of days about these 42 Israeli intelligence agents and you saw that take a look at what they're describing the work that they were doing is exactly what McCoy was describing in the Philippines a hundred years ago and of course they can now cover everybody and how do you explain that and so the U.S. has started to master the public propaganda twenty years ago twenty years ago and have developed this thing and now they're adding to that this mass surveillance mechanism new technology yeah any technology is coming along and it's strengthening it and at the same time you can see someone like Edward Snowden for example that comes out alone denombed the issue and in a way McCoy is dangerous too but it's a real obscure if they don't call it yeah it's a major figure in scholarship so you know but the question would be how I mean how we understood that someone as Snowden could counter these massive these two massive tools that are joining together and counter the discourse the public escape discourse he's playing quite close yeah he remember when Evo Morales to Russia to see the European countries are so frightened of the United States I mean the European power this is unbelievable so frightened that countries like say France wouldn't allow the plane to cross their airspace for fear that the United States might be angry at them when the plane was finally forced to land in Austria or the Austrian police sent a police then this is a presidential complaint or it's violation of every imaginable diplomatic principle that nobody complained because they're just terrified of the United States but at the same time you can see that the discourse of Snowden the discourse of Snowden the denunciation of this method is very pervasive and has and the counter discourse of this case doesn't seem to be working in the end and the UN as we said it to some extent is working people I think it is real now right now these reservists are being denounced across the spectrum almost everyone I mean not everyone is going to find a friend but maybe 20 years ago it was popular to have a public today and and and what what brings that change how can them and and so he's a traditional Jewish culture nothing matters except what's true to the Jews I had interviews with him and he was dearly condemned in the occupation and I asked him about the effect on the Arabs in the Pharisees they're going to become like Nazis because when you have your poop on somebody's neck you have to find a way to justify it and pretty soon you make up the justification and then you internalize the justifications and pretty soon you're already in places that's what he predicted in 1967 or 68 and you can see what happened the dynamics are perfectly predictable and that's what happens when you are crushing someone you don't say I'm a monster so I'm going to crush you for their good and they're the ones who are causing the problem and the problem is that they're resisting otherwise you get people like the Oldamount mayor doing a statement about how she hates the Arabs because they're forcing us wonderful Jews to shoot them if you don't want to do push yourself and by now that's it's critical part of the dynamics of oppression it was the same it's like in fact it's the same for parents and children who can look in the mirror and say I'm a monster they wanted to look in the mirror and say I'm benevolent and do something and I'm sort of forced to do unpleasant things with each other you know and did you see a nerve-treater moment with the U.S. not yet with the U.S. that was way back to the origins of society I mean after all this society the United States was based on two fundamental principles one is extermination of the native population and the other was slavery and both were just about you picked up when I was growing up and I was growing up in a kind of aggressive environment today you know the problem with blacks is they just have a bad culture and why because after the 500 years in which of slavery in its aftermath it was going never ended I don't know it's because there's something bad about them you know that's the way you deal with it and it's I think it's universal I mean I was back in the 1960s a friend of mine who worked for the Wren Corporation you know in the future he was later involved in releasing Canada on paper a couple years earlier he sent me a pile of documents which were quite interesting the Wren Corporation had translated Japanese counterinsurgency literature from the 1930s that they were interested in counterinsurgency techniques were and it was pretty interesting it was of course the same as the ones the US was then using in Vietnam but what was interesting about them was that I wrote about these are internal documents not for the public and they describe themselves and the Japanese were carrying out horrifying atrocities and all of them had to be massacred and all kinds of things in China and Nigeria but they were describing themselves as noble the most noble people who were trying to bring an earthly paradise to the Chinese and to defend the Chinese people against the Chinese bandits nationalists and of course communists who were trying to prevent Japan from bringing the advantages of high technology and they were sacrificing themselves for the claws and so on it's the same in the U.S.

I read a review recently in the Times Literary Supplement by a good historian of imperialism for her to mention he was reviewing a couple of books on the British Empire up until the mid-nineteenth century and he pointed out that if we are ever willing to face the history of our own empire we will rank our bureaus alongside the genocide of the 20th century long time and just without you something that for me is very strange without you you know the acceptance by for example sanitary and progress now the idea that they are being controlled and nothing happened before you know do you remember what to do something like that or something like that you know something you know from you know in a way that he was not illegal was completely you know one but now they know exactly they are being controlled and they don't react at home they just because they are being controlled if they are being controlled by private corporate cattle they are not being controlled they can't do very much to them in fact take a look to Waterdeep why was Waterdeep considered such a scandal because Nixon was a crook Nixon had an enemies list which was terrible happening they are having enemies list I was on that nothing ever happened that thing in the atmosphere but it wasn't the fuss because I was on it it was because people like the head of IBM were on it and how can you call important people bad names they broke into they had a bunch of crows who broke into Daniel Altenberg and said ok that's a crime but it was a major crime take a look at what Nixon was doing at that time and there were major crimes they didn't figure in Waterdeep so right at the time that Waterdeep was exposed at the very same time someone else was exposed programmed by the national political police the FBI through board administration and Eisenhower went through Kennedy and Johnson under Nixon it was a program that began by a subversive attack on the communist party that spread the Puerto Rican independence movement the Native American movement pretty soon to the left the women's movement and it was a program just of the kind we're talking about using every technique possible to undermine and discredit and destroy and dissent and it was pretty serious one of the main parties was black nationalists and they were simply massacred right at the point one of the worst cases was which was exposed right to Waterdeep was the murder of a black act organized in Chicago by the Chicago police police in a typical Gestapo grave literally the police attacked at 4 o'clock in the morning murdered him in bed he was probably drugged murdered somebody else who was good who was good this was all set up by the FBI and the FBI had tried to get some other black group to kill him they wouldn't do it so they set it up with the police that's a Gestapo style assassination of somebody organizing in the black community I mean that single event is incomparably worse than the whole war against story I mean I wrote about it anybody else in fact even that was nothing I mean the worst problem of the Nixon administration was the bombing of Cambodia I mean rural Cambodia was bombed literally at the level of all allied bombings during all the entire Pacific area during World War II rural Cambodia Nixon's orders transmitted by his loyal servant Henry Kissinger were anything that flies against anything that moves I mean that's a call for genocide of a kind you just can't find in this article record and if they found anything like that for let's say for Milosevic you know everybody would be overjoyed but you can't you only find it for Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon is anybody here no I mean Watergate was considered a crime because important people were mildly harmed very mildly harmed and mild harm to important people is a means the foundation to the Republic of the collapse and I don't think that now they feel that I've been controlled by NSA as well How are they controlled? I mean I like controlled by NSA but you controlled? yeah okay so they picked if they want they picked up all my emails I don't like it but I'm not paying attention to it and there's no reason for anyone to be controlled I mean they were controlled by the FBI but that's long before the NSA I mean Hoover was using the techniques devised in the Philippines to get information about everyone in Washington so he would get masks that's one of the main things the FBI was doing trying to get information about people in the political class so he could blackmail them you could come to a senator and tell him look if you do so and so I'm going to be a hint and tell them oh do the hint that you'll release the fact that he's having an affair with that kind of control that's been going on for all of the weekend to come back in the races and as they add just add scale it's just an extension of our movement that has been going on before you don't see any great breaking scale it's different but the scale reflects the availability of the technology if you know if there's if they either develop techniques to say pick up your brain waves you know the brain produces what what maybe someday in class fiction they'll pick up a way to pick up your brain waves and then blackmail you because you're thinking that's why systems of power in the life that's why the philippines story is so interesting and to do it to study and that's the first modern modern version i mean you know close way back but the first modern version which the high technology today was the philippines and it's been fantastically effective for one thing it came back immediately to the united states and it was used for the worst progression in history but also as i say after 110 years the philippines are still controlled uniquely in the region tonight tonight and you think that any power I mean that power can only I mean this asymmetra and mass propaganda and control of the masses is inherent to power or do you think it's inherent to power or you try it's not inherent to succeed that depends on whether people adjust it and that yeah that's because you were saying before that it's a universal you think it's a universal it's universal to try and I think it's extremely hard to find any structure of power and hierarchy and domination where those who wield the club won't try to be as effective as possible I mean it's not totally universal where there are people it's a strong tendency and do you think uh individual tend to take seriously and try to in the future in the future and that's what other movements have always been about it starts with organized groups of individuals I mean that's how every you know we have a lot more rights than we had you know fifty years ago but it wasn't gifts from above always popular struggle it's good whether you're talking about abolitionism and uh rights of women and opposition to oppression and concerned that is why it's always popular activism in some sort of way so this popular activism do you think they should want to gain like to obtain or protect by or and do you think this because there is a trend in this resistance movement it's a physical or not to gain power in order to obtain these results but that's a mistake because if they gain power they don't understand what they ought to be trying to do is to defuse power so nobody has power so you think you can stay outside the power I think really not I think the transition from say kings to parliamentary democracy is an important step it doesn't eliminate power but it's uh it it parliamentary say the government of the United States has much less power than the kings that have had four centuries ago but did this power come into the people back or there are popular controls over what the women can do and they work maybe not well but they work so it takes a hit on more uh if you take a look at the map there was at the beginning there was no opposition but finally by the late sixties opposition developed at that point the Johnson administration the problem was they had to do in the other war they had to keep the population quiet there was so much opposition to the war that they had to not pass it to people to pass it by one result of that is they could never call a national mobilization during the second world war where people were committed to the war there was a national mobilization so people were willing to accept village controls you know rationing the kitchen drive the meat meat and so on and so forth because they wanted to win the war if Johnson had been able to call a national mobilization the Vietnam was just not a total crush on this type of spirit anyway if they had been crushed he couldn't do it too much opposition the result was what was called stagnation a combination of stagnation and inflation the business world didn't like that and in fact by 1968 after it had offenses which indicated the war was going on for a long time where the business classes turned against the war and were influential in forcing Johnson in some kind of negotiation that's the way they how our systems look at it they say well that's not what happened they began to harm their interests and the reason it harmed their interests is because of popular opposition and actually goes beyond that take a look at Penningham paper one of the most interesting parts is the very end where the Penningham paper ends in mid-1968 history and all this that's after the Ted Francis the Ted Francis is a remarkable event among other things today for Johnson president that wanted to send more troops to Vietnam what they said is if we do that we won't have domestic problems we're going to need those troops for population control in the United States there's going to be an uprising of young people and women and minorities and other reasons that we'll need them for civil control to be honest and that's something that could have been affected but it was thought to have happened was probably enough could have been a lot worse in fact if we look back say a Nazi German that felt carrying the speech we find it pretty much the same thing some days if they haven't done it read the the memoir Albert Trier in the case the Nazi economics or the memoir is kind of interesting what he says is probably accurate it says that the military effort was imputed by the fact that the population couldn't it wasn't really that too much committed to the war so we had to carry out a gun but a war we had to pacify them and that put resources away from the war and the claims is that I think it said that it maybe lost a year or something that exactly but he was right that was the difference between victory and defeat Germany was technologically much more advanced than the West I mean jet planes rockets all sorts of things but they were kind of overwhelmed by sheer mass much of the Russian that they had more time well that's a popular opposition in the totalitarian state population just can't be totally disregarded and after the achievements like a lot of people are fighting names you think that did these you know these individual you know action of the snorling and assault not individual the community can we change something in the future in terms of other things or things or they did what they could from now on it's up to the people who've got inside do nothing change in the states nothing changed do you think until now nothing some has so for example well I know there are some constraints on action not much but some and there could be more but that's up to the up to the people like us the same in the press and they never would send up anywhere else I mean the other governments are doing the same things just not on the scale 50 years ago you were a public candidate you were a public candidate a few years ago today you know them as an author then the public candidate from the inside which didn't work you think there will be still another one in 50 years you think it's a permanent same answer but you think there can be a society in which we would not know anything there can be a freer society in fact in an earlier period maybe you know you were just being assassinated yeah that's the question I wanted to ask you for example for an example for an example for an example for an example but mostly out of revenge a lot of it is just plain revenge I mean you could tell with what happened with say Dan Ellsbury they tried to convict him but the trial fell apart and incidentally it fell apart because of Nixon's criminality actually I saw it myself I was testifying at the trial when the judge called the recess back in and declared it a mistrial what had happened is that Nixon had tried it a mistrial and what had happened is that Nixon had tried to bribe him by offering him a I think head of the FBI or something out of the FBI or something like the FBI or something like that he could no longer decide it a mistrial but he had tried to bribe him by offering him a head of the FBI or something like that quand le juge s'occupe de récession et déclaré que c'est un mistrial.

Ce qui s'est passé, c'est que Nixon a essayé de bribes d'offrir à l'enquête de la F.B.I. ou quelque chose d'un autre.

Il n'y a pas d'enquête. Il n'y a pas d'enquête. Il n'y a pas d'enquête.

Il n'y a pas d'enquête. Il n'y a pas d'enquête. Il n'y a pas d'enquête.

Il n'y a pas d'enquête. Il n'y a pas d'enquête. Il n'y a pas d'enquête.

Il n'y a pas d'enquête. Et c'est une question de légalité, ou est-il légitimité ? de ne pas seulement à ce moment, mais maintenant, de ne pas changer la system.

Nous devons respecter la légalité de la loi. Un changement. Un changement.

Un autre hypothèse. Il y a un autre. Si je drive à la nuit et il y a un traffic light, et il y a un stop.

On the other hand, if I see that across the street somebody's being murdered and they'll go through it and I won't stop, you do normally obey the laws unless there are reasons not to, and a lot of the laws are unacceptable, they shouldn't exist. So many do you return now? In fact, the worst of lawbreakers by far.

A couple of friends and I have a letter today in the New York Times which is pointing out the obvious that all the discussion about whether Obama should approach Congress for authorization of the war, especially at the side of the country, there are higher laws, real laws, under the U.S. Constitution.

There are no valid treaties of the supreme law of the land. The major valid treaties, the U.N.

Charter, that bans the threat for use, of course, of a law-abiding state that would not be able to discuss these issues, but a rogue state like the United States. We're never kidding about the law.