[Peace-discuss] Chomsky talk in Boston

[C G Estabrook]

https://truthout.org/video/chomsky-on-confronting-ultranationalist-reactionary-movements-across-globe/

[From a friend who attended Chomsky's talk]

How can one not be impressed with a Chomsky talk! He needed assistance walking, but his voice is still very strong and his cadence is unmistakable - no sign of a 90 year old in that department.
The event started at 7:30 and the church was all but full - they could have squeezed maybe 50 more people in. As I mentioned Amy Goodman spoke forever or 30 minutes which ever comes first. She did a nice job of positioning the arrest of Assange and that took 20 minutes. Then she talked about climate catastrophe (counterpunch term) for a few minutes and introduced a 30 minute video of Chomsky’s speech at Old South Church from 2016. Interesting, but don’t understand why they showed a 3 year old video of Chomsky speaking while he just sat in the second pew and watched himself.

Then at 8:40pm, an hour and 10 minutes from the start of the program, he approached the lectern and dove into his remarks. The first part was about humanity’s propensity to eradicate itself with nuclear weapons. As usual he made a wonderful case about how we got here - the domesday clock is 2 minutes to midnight, closer than it has been since 1947 is what I think he said. And he isn’t too optimistic that we are going to resolve this political stalemate anytime soon. Then he went on to how humanity is determined to eradicate itself by polluting the planet until it becomes uninhabitable - of course blaming capitalism for getting us here and politicians unwilling to acknowledged the seriousness of the problem. He put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Republican party. He said something that absolutely stunned me: “The Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in (US?) history.” so unlike him to explicitly call out a US political party.
He also went through the litany of Republican presidents and how their transgressions have, and are, contributing to the current expansion of the nuclear arms race, and the catastrophic damage being done to the environment. He passed up the opportunity to take a shot at Obama. And, as usual, he backed up his comments with source information. His mind and your mind are amazing - 
every piece of data is absorbed, gets filed, and is instantly retrievable.

It seems to me that writers for counterpunch have to bash their favorite bogeyman in order to get their creds and article published - with not a word about the damaged done to humanity over the years by republicans. Each week I consider unsubscribing to, but then they publish a wonderfully written opinion. Wonderfully written opinions are of course opinions that I agree with.
It was a privilege and pleasure to hear him speak as always. Who knows how much longer he will be able to lecture.

--Stephen V Morgan