GUERRA NA UCRÂNIA: ENTREVISTA COM NOAM CHOMSKY (não confundir com Boaventura de Sousa Santos)

Conversa com o jornalista Jeremy Scahill, um dos fundadores de The Intercept, para ler, ver ou ouvir.

«... And then Putin gave the United States a tremendous gift. The war in Ukraine was criminal, but also from his point of view, utterly stupid. He gave the United States the fondest wish; it could have handed Europe to the United States on a golden platter. 

I mean, throughout the whole Cold War, one of the major issues in international affairs was whether Europe would become an independent force in international affairs, what was called a third force, maybe along the lines that Charles de Gaulle outlined, or that Gorbachev outlined when the Soviet Union collapsed; common European home, no military alliances, cooperation between Europe and Russia, which had become integrated into peaceful commercial blood. That’s one option. 

The other option is what’s called the Atlanticist program, implemented by NATO. The United States calls the shots and you obey, that’s the Atlanticist program. Of course, the U.S. has always supported that one, and has always won. Now Putin solved it for the United States. He said: OK. You get Europe as a subordinate. Europe goes ahead and arms itself to the teeth to protect itself from an army, which Europe says gleefully, is incapable of conquering cities 20 miles from its border. So therefore, we have to arm ourselves to the teeth to defend ourselves from the onslaught of this extraordinarily powerful force against NATO. I mean, if anybody’s observing this from outer space, they’d be cracking up in laughter. But not in the offices of Lockheed Martin. They think it’s terrific. Even better in the offices of Exxon Mobil. 

That’s the interesting part. There were some hopes, not major hopes, but some hopes of dealing with a climate crisis that is gonna destroy organized human life on Earth. Not tomorrow, but in the process of doing it. Current, most plausible projections are three degrees Centigrade increase over pre-industrial levels by 20 by the end of the century. That’s catastrophic. I mean, doesn’t mean everybody dies, but it’s a total catastrophe. Well, there were moves to stop that. Now they’ve been reversed.

You look at the stuff that’s coming out of the energy corporations, they’re euphoric. First, we’ve got all these annoying environmentalists out of our hair. They don’t bother us anymore. In fact, now we’re being loved for saving civilization. And that’s not enough. They say: We want to be “hugged” — their word — we want to be hugged by saving civilization, by rapidly expanding the production of fossil fuels, which will destroy everything, but put more cash in our pockets during the period that remains. That’s what somebody from outer space would be looking at. That’s us, OK? (...)»