Excerpt: "The coronavirus crisis could have been prevented because there was enough information available to the world, according to Noam Chomsky."
Noam Chomsky. (photo: e-flux)
Noam Chomsky: 'Coronavirus Pandemic Could Have Been Prevented'
04 April 20
Chomsky slams US's handling of virus as he warns nuclear war, global warming threats will remain after pandemic is over.
he coronavirus crisis could have been prevented because there was enough information available to the world, according to Noam Chomsky, who has warned that once the pandemic is over, two critical challenges will remain - the threats of nuclear war and global warming.
Speaking from his office in self-isolation to Croatian philosopher and author Srecko Horvat, the celebrated 91-year-old US linguist offered a stark perspective on how the pandemic has been managed by different countries.
"This coronavirus pandemic could have been prevented, the information was there to prevent it. In fact, it was well-known. In October 2019, just before the outbreak, there was a large-scale simulation in the United States - possible pandemic of this kind," he said, referring to an exercise - titled Event 201 - hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
"Nothing was done. The crisis was then made worse by the treachery of the political systems that didn't pay attention to the information that they were aware of.
"On December 31, China informed the World Health Organization (WHO) of pneumonia-like symptoms with unknown origins. A week later, some Chinese scientists identified a coronavirus. Furthermore, they sequenced it and provided information to the world. By then, virologists and others who were bothering to read WHO reports knew that there was a coronavirus and knew that had to deal with it. Did they do anything? Well yes, some did.
"China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore began to do something, and they have sort of pretty much seemed to have contained at least the first surge of the crisis."
He explained that the way the West prepared for the crisis differed between countries.
"In Europe, to some extent, it's happened. Germany ... did have spare diagnostic capacity and was able to act in a highly selfish fashion, not helping others but for itself at least, to evident reasonable containment.
"Other countries just ignored it. The worst was the United Kingdom and the worst of all was the United States.
"One day [US President Donald Trump] says, 'There is no crisis, it's just like flu.' The next day, 'It's a terrible crisis and I knew it all along.' The next day, 'We have to go back to the business, because I have to win the election'. The idea that the world is in these hands is shocking."
The US has the world's highest number of infections with more than 250,000 cases, while more than 6,500 have died with the virus.
Globally, there are more than a million cases across at least 180 countries, and more than 53,000 people have died of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, which has origins in China.
Describing the US president as a "sociopathic buffoon", Chomsky said while the coronavirus was serious, "it's worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching. We are racing to the edge of disaster, far worse than anything that's happened in human history.
"Donald Trump and his minions are in the lead in racing to the abyss. In fact there are two immense threats that we're facing - one is the growing threat of nuclear war ... and the other of course is the growing threat of global warming."
While the coronavirus can have "terrifying consequences, there will be recovery", said Chomsky, but regarding the other threats, "there won't be recovery, it's finished".
He also blasted Trump for continuing punishing sanctions on Iran, a country which is struggling to contain the virus with more than 3,000 deaths, as a way to make people suffer bitterly.
"When the US imposes devastating sanctions - it's the only country that can do that, everyone has to follow ... the master. Or else they are kicked out the financial system," said Chomsky.
The conversation with Horvat took place online on March 28 as part of a series by Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, a political party launched by Greece's former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, to discuss the world after the pandemic.
Other speakers have included Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek and German-Croatian theatre director and author Angela Richter.
Looking ahead, Chomsky said there could be reason for hope as he made a case against neoliberalism.
"Possibly, a good side of the coronavirus, is it might bring people to think about what kind of a world do we want.
"We should think about the emergence of this crisis, why is there a coronavirus crisis? It's a colossal market failure. It goes right back to the essence of markets exacerbated by the savage neoliberal intensification of deep social-economic problems.
"It was known for a long time that pandemics are very likely and it was underestimated. It was very well understood there were likely to be coronavirus pandemics, modifications of the SARS epidemic 15 years ago.
"At the time, it was overcome. The viruses were identified, sequences to the vaccines were available.
"Labs around the world could be working right then on developing protection for potential coronavirus pandemics. Why didn't they do it? The market signals were wrong. The drug companies. We have handed over our fate to private tyrannies called corporations, which are unaccountable to the public, in this case, Big Pharma. And for them, making new body creams is more profitable than finding a vaccine that will protect people from total destruction."
Remembering the polio epidemic in the US, Chomsky noted that it was ended by the discovery of the Salk vaccine by a government institution. The vaccine was available by the early 1950s.
"No patents, available to everyone. That could have been done this time, but the neoliberal plague has blocked that."
Asked for his view on the current "war-time" language used during the crisis, which has seen medical workers described as being on the "front line" and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warning of the biggest challenge since World War II, Chomsky said the rhetoric was justified to mobilise people.
But post-pandemic options, he warned, "range from the installation of highly authoritarian brutal states all the way over to radical reconstruction of society and more humane terms concerned with human need and no private profit.
"We should bear in mind that highly authoritarian vicious states are quite compatible with neoliberalism."
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Re. Lockheed Martin, I'll never forget meeting and having an amazing conversation, while back in the Chesapeake putting my trawler on the market, with the lead 'offense' attorney in the case against Lockheed Martin. Seems that LM defrauded the govt. wrongfully, in an astonishing amount of well over a billion dollars.
Then, upon return to Colorado Springs and in an open office meeting of a U.S. fed. congressional rep., I told of what I'd learned re. LM, and had a totally surprised response from a family member of an LM administrative employee in Colo. Springs, stating that she had never heard anything about any of this LM defrauding.
My point - total corruption has overtaken us, here in the U.S, of (greed and need for power over all) A.(ddiction), as I saw again, firsthand, as a man, seated with attendees at the first open to the pubic city hall meeting following election of new city council members, announced his name and stated that: "I represent Prosperity for America". PFA is the Koch Brothers lobby/buyoff pols. machine.
The PFA then ordered vs. recommended city council on how they were to vote - council had to vote against keeping in place any and all solar gardens. New members automatically complied.
Time to put into place fed./state/coun try/city funding only for elections. Period.
''How to Disrupt the Military-Indust rial-Congressio nal Complex''
Now.., how do we disrupt the Prison Industrial Complex..?
.......... and the Highway Industrial Complex..?
.......... and the Oversight Industrial Complex..?
.......... and the Banking Industrial Complex..?
.......... and the Corporate Media Industrial Complex..?
.......... and the Lobby Industrial Complex..?
.......... and the entire Privatized Government Industrial Complex..?
.
. . . . . Pharmaceutical Bureaucratic Complex
. . . . . and the Pesticeutical Nuclearistic Complex
. . . . . the Agrigressive Disingenuous Industry
. . . . . the Foundation for the Destruction of Life on Earth
. . . . . etc."
As I strongly supported impeachment procedures against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, as well as Barack Obama and Joe Biden, I fully support in addition their indictment as war criminals before the respected international tribunal established since Nuremberg for this purpose under international law, the International Criminal Court.
Indictment of Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Lindsey Graham, John Kerry (as well as other supporters of pre-emptive wars of aggression and crimes against humanity) for aiding and abetting in the commission of war crimes against the Afghan, Pakistani, Syrian, Libyan, and Iraqi peoples should also be undertaken by these international jurists.
The murderous tyrant Barack Obama has continued (and enhanced) the fascist Bush policies of waging aggressive, undeclared and unconstitutiona l pre-emptive wars abroad, murdering untold numbers in vicious drone attacks.
Via executive orders and presidential kill lists, he has vastly centralized presidential executive authority by claiming the extra-constitut ional power not merely to detain citizens without judicial review and legal counsel but to assassinate them.
He knows damn well that the judicial and executive branches are part of the Complex, but he is stirring up some trouble for the Complex by potentially setting the various branches at each other's throats, hoping some of their excesses and abuses might somehow self-destruct via "acute indigestion in the Belly of the Beast."
If he wrote and acted as radically as you and I do, he would have ZERO chance of effecting change from inside the system, perhaps as a member of a future administration.
Perhaps he was a tool of Bill Clinton - I haven't researched that possibility yet, so I cannot comment on that. But it is also possible that behind closed doors he argued for the American Working Man. Labor Secretaries are pretty far down the White House pecking order / food chain, and it may be naive to think he had a truly significant amount of power and influence.
But many former White House officials have changed their tune after they left office and time and study have shown them the error of their ways. What is so obvious to us now was not likely so obvious to many back then. Hell- ten years ago I wasn't half the ass-kicker I am today... how about you?
Why have elections when the national debt could be retired in a short time by selling political offices? Even better, more money could be raised by auctions than by charging fixed prices... "How much do I hear for this distinguished Senate seat?"...and so forth. ;>)
Isn't that exactly what our "election process" has already become? With a cartel of corporations acting through member-owned moneylaundering divisions called "Media."
And you thought there were laws against treason, trusts, bribery and corruption.
There are tons of evidence for that statement, and assuming that you are neither blind nor a fool, you know that I am right. ALL of the above components are deeply interconnected, and all of them are deeply represented at the yearly since 1876 Boys Only Bohemian Grove "festivities" that will start yet again in a matter of days. Check out this incomplete list of Bohemian Grove camps to see how well represented every component of the M/I/F/M/A/C/J/E complex is there, my friend:
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_bohemiangrove08.htm
Here is a RSN Godot article I wrote on the topic:
http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/31-31/30265-is-it-time-to-shut-down-the-power-elites-bohemian-grove-boys-club
The only reform is people power --just don't pay taxes to the military. Follow the lead of the War Resister's League and don't pay taxes to support war and the military. Refuse and Resist. If enough people cut off the money supply, then things would change. The military contractors are after the money and when that is gone, they too will go.
Robert discussed the executive and judicial branches, but did not include them in the Complex. Banks' roles obvious, 6 media corps control 90% of what we see, hear and read, 75% of college grants provided by gov departments and corps that own them, and the rest of the components of the military industrial financial media academic judicial congressional executive complex are too obvious to point out.
People pay most of the US tax bill. The US regime borrows money to make up the deficit. It is not going to tax its rulers in the corporate world.
Let's be honest. Military contracts are nothing more than a transfer of wealth from people to corporations and their investors. The Bush family has been in the weapons provision business since the Civil War. That is how J.P. Morgan started out. Weapons dealers sell junk and worthless killing machines to governments as a way to loot a nation of its wealth. There's never a shortage of money to buy criminal killing devices. Just don't pay these mother fuckers. That's the only way to stop them. They only want your money. When you don't pay, they will go away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America:_Freedom_to_Fascism
But if you re-read my post, I said, "Individual income taxes only cover the interest on the U.S. National Debt," not the yearly cost of running our empire. National Debt approx. $19 trillion and receipts from individual income tax approx $1 trillion, or 5.26% of National Debt.
Interest we paid on National Debt in 2014 was $430,812,121,37 2.05 , or approx 44% of individual federal income tax payments
Now.., how do we disrupt (all the other banking, trading and other industrial complexes)?
that's simple, shining light on money in politics DISRUPTS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! but it helps spur bernie's movement to get private money out of politics - it also helps spur the narrower movement of alot of dems to let congress decide whether or not to, and if so how much, limit money in politics, or, in other words, back to the bad old days before CU, that gave us a whole hellofa lot of money in politics, so much so that almost all members of congress eagerly spent the vast majority of their time begging the rich 1% for campaign contributions, rather than working for we the people
in other words the only way SURE to "disrupt" private money in politics is a constitutional amendment that publicly funds, only, all federal, state and local elections - no one but a candidate for office can advertise anything political - no one can give any money or thing of value to any candidate or officeholder - in every campaign, a candidate can only spend public money
reich, what is so good about dem and repub members of congress getting together and deciding whether or not to disrupt money in politics and, if so, by how much? who does this serve - members of congress or we the people - it cannot serve both!
what do you say, reich, will you please stop shilling for business as usual, albeit business as usual before CU?
that plague the National Budget, Treasury, and Fostered Immorality
I remember when George Schultz left Bechtel as C.E.O. to succeed Alex Haig as Reagan's Secretary of State, this made Bechtel an easy shoe-in as a government contractor, including the failed attempts at containing the filthy, deadly spawn of the Manhattan Project, via Hanford's faulty toxic sludge storage tanks, now seeping towards the Columbia River through groundwater seams.
Like Torquemada Cheney's former position at KBR/Haliburton got them no-bid contracts for the Green Zone in Baghdad and many shoddily-built military installations in which at least two soldiers were electrocuted in the showers from ungrounded sockets. -Plus the "Missing Iraqi Billions!
Apart from Lockheed, Raethon and Westinghouse have fingers in the deep jelly jar and are as cynical, crooked and inefficient as they are allowed by their congressional puppets and SCOTUS's activist cronyism.
No wonder they love the "Continual War" somewhere, anywhere, even if they have to manufacture crimes like 9-11 to inflame the somnambulate population into a froth of "Patriotic" howling for wars of attrition and revenge against the wrong country -and will kill anybody trying to curb such activities.
Obama's probably aware of this but I'm not optimistic about his chances; after all, he's bucking against those who REALLY run this country!
Is there ANY way that such massive, almost blatant nepotism can be curbed by we "Little people" who fund them, other than a national tax revolt?!