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A 1998 Study Was Done In Hebrew By An Israeli Scholar, Yosef Grodzinsky, And The English Translation Of The Title Is Good Human Material. That's What They Wanted Sent To Palestine For Colonization And For The Eventual Conflict That Took Place Some Years Later. These Policies Were Somewhat Complementary To The U.s. Policy Of Pressuring England To Allow Jews To Go To Palestine, But Not Allowing Them Here. The British Politician Ernest Bevin Was Quite Bitter About It, Asking, "if You Want To Save The Jews, Why Send Them To Palestine When You Don't Admit Them?"

-Noam Chomsky

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A 1998 Study Was

Noam Chomsky

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A 1998 Study Was Done In Hebrew By An Israeli Scholar, Yosef Grodzinsky, And The English Translation Of The Title Is Good Human Material. That's What They Wanted Sent To Palestine For Colonization And For The Eventual Conflict That Took Place Some Years Later. These Policies Were Somewhat Complementary To The U.s. Policy Of Pressuring England To Allow Jews To Go To Palestine, But Not Allowing Them Here. The British Politician Ernest Bevin Was Quite Bitter About It, Asking, "if You Want To Save The Jews, Why Send Them To Palestine When You Don't Admit Them?"

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South America Goes Its Own Way Dramatically In International Affairs.

Peter Kropotkin Was Surely On The Left. He Was One Of The Founders Of What Is Now Called 'sociobiology' Or 'evolutionary Psychology' With His Book Mutual Aid, Arguing That Human Nature Had Evolved In Ways Conducive To The Communitarian Anarchism That He Espoused.

Wikileaks Is Providing Information On What Ambassadors Are Sending To Washington And Things Like That. Maybe Some Of That Has A Right To Some Kind Of Secrecy, But There Is A Heavy Burden And I Think Its Pretty Hard To Meet. I Haven't Read Everything From Wikileaks By Any Means But The Parts That I Have Read And Seen I Think Are Things The Public Should Know.

The [ronald] Reagan Administration Picked Up The Rhetoric Of The Anti-nuclear Movement; They Said "yyeah, You're Right." We Have To Eliminate Nuclear Weapons.

The Idea That People Should Be Allowed To Decide Something About Their Own Fate Is Just Anathema To European Elites.

It's Not Radical Islam That Worries The Us -- It's Independence

Human Physical Structures And Intellectual Structures Are Generally Studied In Different Ways. The Assumption Is That Physical Structures Are Genetically Inherited And Intellectual Structures Are Learned. I Think That This Assumption Is Wrong. None Of These Structures Is Learned. They All Grow; They Grow In Comparable Ways; Their Ultimate Forms Are Heavily Dependent On Genetic Predispositions.

If Current Tendencies Persist, The Outcome Will Be Disastrous Before Too Long. Large Parts Of The World Will Become Barely Habitable Affecting Hundreds Of Millions Of People, Along With Other Disasters That We Can Barely Contemplate.

People Have No Human Rights, Only The Rights That They Can Gain On The Labour Market. Above All, Wealth And Power Have To Be Protected.

The Bolshevik Revolution Was A Counter-revolution. Its First Moves Were To Destroy And Eliminate Every Socialist Tendency That Had Developed In The Pre-revolutionary Period. Their Goal Was As They Said; It Wasn't A Big Secret. They Regarded The Soviet Union As Sort A Backwater. They Were Orthodox Marxists, Expecting A Revolution In Germany. They Moved Toward What They Themselves Called "state Capitalism," Then They Moved On To Stalinism. They Called It Democracy And Called It Socialism. The One Claim Was As Ludicrous As The Other.

The American Claim That The Bombing Of North Vietnam Was Directed Against Military Targets Does Not Withstand Direct Investigation.

Barron And Paul...rely On 'specialists' At The State And Defense Departments...elsewhere In The Media, Similiar Figures Are Bandied About, With Equal Credibility.

You've Just Got To Get People Organized And Tell Them The Truth. There Aren't Any Magic Tricks To It. You Know, Sometimes It's Pretty Amazing. Actually, I Mentioned A Pretty Striking Case Of This In "crisis And Hope," Which Was The Caterpillar Case In The Early 1990s.

Israel Has A Couple Of Hundred Nuclear Weapons And Also Chemical And Biological Weapons. This Stockpile Is Not Only A Threat In Itself But Encourages Others To Proliferate In Reaction And In Self-defense. Is Anybody Saying Anything About This?

Trump's Principal Policies Make Clear What's Going To Happen. This Gives An Opportunity. Right Now It's Going To Take Hard Work, But It's Possible That There Could Be A Real Revival Of The Labor Movement.

American Society Is Now Remarkably Atomized. Political Organizations Have Collapsed. In Fact, It Seems Like Even Bowling Leagues Are Collapsing. The Left Has A Lot To Answer For Here. There's Been A Drift Toward Very Fragmenting Tendencies Among Left Groups, Toward This Sort Of Identity Politics.

Identity Politics

Independent Development Can Be A Virus That Can Infect Others.

In November 2004, U.s. Occupation Forces Launched Their Second Major Attack On The City Of Falluja. The Press Reported Major War Crimes Instantly, With Approval.

[moral Responsibilities] Has Nothing Particular To Do With Academia, Except Insofar As Those Within It Tend To Be Unusually Privileged In The Respects Just Mentioned.

A Lot Of Countries Break (or Go Against) The International Law.

The War Against Working People Should Be Understood To Be A Real War…. Specifically In The U.s., Which Happens To Have A Highly Class-conscious Business Class…. And They Have Long Seen Themselves As Fighting A Bitter Class War, Except They Don’t Want Anybody Else To Know About It.

The Kind Of Work That Should Be The Main Part Of Life Is The Kind Of Work You Would Want To Do If You Weren't Being Paid For It. It’s Work That Comes Out Of Your Own Internal Needs, Interests And Concerns.

What I've Called "the Mafia Doctrine" In Many Publications: When The Godfather Issues An Edict, Others Must Obey, Or Else. It's Too Dangerous To Allow Disobedience. A Leading Principle Of World Affairs - Though, Of Course, Officials And Commentators Put It More Politely.

When I Am At Home, I Never Watch Tv, But When I Am Abroad In A Hotel I Take A Look At The Bbc To Find Out What's Going On.

A Lot Of Association On The Internet Is Highly Constructive. There Are People Interacting, Interchanging Ideas, Making Plans, Coordinating Activities; Take Any Of The Popular Movements, A Lot Of The Organization Is Through The Internet. We Want To Have A Demonstration Or We Want To Have A Meeting, Its Done Through The Internet. I Think That's All To The Good.

Another Recollection Is That [ Paul Johnson] Mostly Kept Away From Ideas And Dedicated Activism, And Concentrated On Sex Lives And Other Gossip.

I Admire Ralph Nader And Denis Kucinich Very Much, And Insofar As They Bring Up Issues And Carry Out An Educational And Organisational Function - That's Important, And Fine, And I Support It.

I Pretend No Originality In Observing That Mass Education Was Motivated In Part By The Perceived Need To "educate Them To Keep Them From Our Throats," To Borrow Ralph Waldo Emerson's Parody Of Elite Fears That Inspired Early Advocates Of Public Mass Education.

The Us Is A Country [in Which] Eighty Percent Of The Population Thinks The Bible Was Written By God. About Half Think Every Word Is Literally True. So It's Had To Appeal To That - And To The Nativist Population, The People That Are Frightened, Have Always Been... It's A Very Frightened Country And That's Increasing Now With The Recognition That The White Population Is Going To Be A Minority Pretty Soon, "they've Taken Our Country From Us."

The Sanders Campaign Showed That A Candidate With Mildly Progressive Programs Could Win The Nomination, Maybe The Election, Even Without The Backing Of The Major Funders Or Any Media Support. There's Good Reason To Suppose That Sanders Would Have Won The Nomination Had It Not Been For Shenanigans Of The Obama-clinton Party Managers. He Is Now The Most Popular Political Figure In The Country By A Large Margin.

In Europe There's Kind Of A Reaction To The European Union, Kind Of A Move Towards Some Kind Of Regionalization. It's More Advanced In Some Regions Than Others, Like In Spain For Example. Catelan Was Repressed Under Franco. People Spoke It, But Not Publicly. It's Now The Language Of Catelonia. The Basque Language Is Being Revived, Not Just The Language But The Culture, The Folk Music And Everything Else. So You're Getting More Diverse Societies, And It's Happening In Britain As Well.

Diverse Society

Students Typically Are At A Period Of Their Lives When They're More Free Than At Any Other Time. They're Out Of Parental Control. They're Not Yet Burdened By The Needs Of Trying To Put Food On The Table In A Pretty Repressive Environment, Often, And They're Free To Explore, To Create, To Invent, To Act, And To Organize. Over And Over Through The Years, Student Activism Has Been Extremely Significant In Initiating And Galvanizing Major Changes. I Don't See Any Reason For That To Change.

Should A Community... Be Free To Enact Legislation To Say They Don't Want Blacks? Now That's Illegal. Fifty Years Ago It Was Legal. Is That Progress Or Is That Regress?

I Know Some Really Outstanding Turkish Journalists, And Have Been Pleased And Honored To Be Able To Join With Them A Few Times In Their Courageous Protests Against State Terror And Repression.

If You're In Favour Of Any Policy - Reform, Revolution, Stability, Regression, Whatever - If You're At Least Minimally Moral, It's Because You Think It's Somehow Good For People. And Good For People Means Conforming To Their Fundamental Nature.

Some Kind Of Settlement In Kashmir Is Crucial For Both India And Pakistan. It's Also Tearing India Apart With Horrible Atrocities In The Region Which Is Controlled By Indian Armed Forces. This Is Feeding Right Back Into Society Even In The Domain Of Elementary Civil Rights.

India And Pakistan

On Intervention Under The Un Framework, I Think That Sometimes That's Legitimate, In Fact Even Helpful.

Contemporary Technology Could Be Used To Eliminate Ownership And Management Of Corporations. It Could Be Used To Provide - Lets Say Apple Computers. In Principle Information Technology Could Be Used To Provide Direct Information To The Work Force On The Ground So That They Could Democratically Decide What The Company Would Do, Eliminating The Role Of Management. It Could Be Used For That. People Aren't Developing Technology For That Purpose.

One Might Ask Why Tobacco Is Legal And Marijuana Not. A Possible Answer Is Suggested By The Nature Of The Crop. Marijuana Can Be Grown Almost Anywhere, With Little Difficulty. It Might Not Be Easily Marketable By Major Corporations. Tobacco Is Quite Another Story.

I Think There Is A Good Reason Why The Propaganda System Works That Way. It Recognizes That The Public Will Not Support The Actual Policies. Therefore It Is Important To Prevent Any Knowledge Or Understanding Of Them.

It Is Not That I Am Not A Fan Of American Exceptionalism. That Is Like Saying I Am Not A Fan Of The Moon Being Made Out Of Green Cheese - It Does Not Exist. Powerful States Have Quite Typically Considered Themselves To Be Exceptionally Magnificent, And The United States Is No Exception To That. The Basis For It Is Not Very Substantial To Put It Politely.

Expressing Criticism Of Society Is Not Being A Grouch.

It [the Internet] Probably Has The Effect Of Weakening Personal Associations.

My Proposal Happens To Be Very Mainstream.

There Was A Free Election In Palestine, But It Came Out The Wrong Way. So Instantly, The United States And Israel With Europe Tagging Along, Moved To Punish The Palestinian People, And Punish Them Harshly, Because They Voted The Wrong Way In A Free Election. That's Accepted Here In The West As Perfectly Normal. That Illustrates The Deep Hatred And Contempt For Democracy Among Western Elites, So Deep-seated They Can't Even Perceive It When It's In Front Of Their Eyes. You Punish People Severely If They Vote The Wrong Way In A Free Election.

If You Have Worker-owned And Worker-managed Enterprises, You've Got A Different Sociopolitical System.

In Western Europe, Turkey Is Regarded As Uncivilized, So They Can't Come In Into The European Union Until They're Civilized. I Think It's The Other Way Around. If You Could Achieve The Level Of Civilization Of, Say, Turkish Intelectuals, It Would Be Quite An Achievement.

Throughout History, Even The Harshest And Most Shameful Measures Are Regularly Accompanied By Professions Of Noble Intent - And Rhetoric About Bestowing Freedom And Independence.

Take A Look At The Supreme Court Decision That Just Authorized An Effort By U.s. Claimants Against Iran For Terrorist Acts. What Are The Terrorist Acts? The Terrorist Acts Are Bombings Of U.s. Military Installations In Lebanon And Saudi Arabia, Which Iran Is Claimed To Have Something To Do With. Well Suppose They Did. That's Not Terrorism. I Mean If We Have A Military Base In Lebanon That While We're Shelling Lebanese Naval Ships, The Navy Is Shelling Lebanese Installations And Somebody Attacks [that's Not Terrorism].

There's A Good Reason Why Nobody Studies History, It Just Teaches You Too Much.

Some Of The Most Moving Experiences I've Had Are Just In Black Churches In The South, During The Civil Rights Movement, Where People Were Getting Beaten, Killed, Really Struggling For The Most Elementary Rights.

If You Assume There Is No Hope, You Guarantee There Will Be No Hope.

As A Tactic, Violence Is Absurd. No One Can Compete With The Government In Violence, And The Resort To Violence, Which Will Surely Fail, Will Simply Frighten And Alienate Some Who Can Be Reached, And Will Further Encourage The Ideologists And Administrators Of Forceful Repression.

The United States Is Off The International Spectrum In Religious Extremism.

The Neo-cons Constitute A Radical Reactionary Fringe Of The Planning Spectrum, But The Spectrum Is Narrow.

Pakistan Will Never Be Able To Match The Indian Militarily And The Effort To Do So Is Taking An Immense Toll On The Society. It's Also Extremely Dangerous With All The Weapons Development. The Two Countries Have Already Come Close To Nuclear Confrontation Twice And This Could Get Worse. So Dealing With The Relationship With India Is Extremely Important.

You Go Into A Hospital Now, It's Dangerous. We Can Get Diseases That Can't Be Dealt With, That Are Moving Around The Hospital. A Lot Of That Traces Back To Industrial Meat Production. These Are Really Serious Threats, All Over The Place.

Anatomically Modern Humans Are Found Up To 200,000 Years Ago; Behaviourally Modern Humans Appear Very Recently In Evolutionary Time, As Far As Evidence Now Exists, Perhaps Within A Window Of 50-100,000 Years Ago, A Flick Of An Eye In Evolutionary Time.

Jamie Kilstein And Allison Kilkenny Have Created An Important Political Radio Show That Balances Humor And Unreported News. At A Time When Media Conglomerates Dominate The Airwaves, Independent Media Like Citizen Radio Is Vital To National Discourse.

Palestinians Have No Wealth Or Power.

In America, We Will Use Force Whenever We Like Against Anyone We Regard As A Potential Threat, And Maybe We Will Delegate That Right To Clients, But It's Not For Others.

We Live In This World, Not Another One That We'd Prefer, And Sometimes It's Necessary To Follow Painful Paths If We Hope To Provide At Least A Little Help For Suffering People.

To Pay Attention To The Actual Core Of The Movement - That Would Be Pretty Hard. Can You Concentrate For Example On Either The Policy Issues Or The Creation Of Functioning Democratic Communities Of Mutual Support And Say, Well, That's What's Lacking In Our Country That's Why We Don't Have A Functioning Democracy - A Community Of Real Participation. That's Really Important. And That Always Gets Smashed.

Control Of Thought Is More Important For Governments That Are Free And Popular Than For Despotic And Military States. The Logic Is Straightforward: A Despotic State Can Control Its Domestic Enemies By Force, But As The State Loses This Weapon, Other Devices Are Required To Prevent The Ignorant Masses From Interfering With Public Affairs, Which Are None Of Their Business… The Public Are To Be Observers, Not Participants, Consumers Of Ideology As Well As Products.

Ignorant Masses

Melting Of The Huge Antarctic Glaciers, Proceeding More Rapidly Than Anticipated, Threatens A Rise In Sea Level That Will Drive Tens Of Millions From The Low-lying Plains Of Bangladesh Alone, With Disastrous Consequences Elsewhere.

Very Commonly Substances Are Criminalized Because They're Associated With What's Called The Dangerous Classes, You Know, Poor People, Or Working People.... Actually, The Peak Of Marijuana Use Was As I Said, In The Seventies, But That Was Rich Kids, So You Don't Throw Them In Jail. And Then It Got Seriously Criminalized, You Know, You Really Throw People In Jail For It, When It Was Poor People.

In Fact, When Drugs Are Legalized, Use Sometimes Goes Down, It's Been Claimed. Part Of The Reason Is That Teenage Kids Use Illicit Drugs Because They Are Illicit. They Are Thumbing Their Noses At Society. If They Were Legal, They Might Not.

You Can Imagine A Different World In Which A Number Of Species Developed With Different Genetically Determined Linguistic Systems. It Hasn't Happened In Evolution. What Has Happened Is That One Species Has Developed, And The Genetic Structure Of This Species Happens To Involve A Variety Of Intricate Abstract Principles Of Linguistic Organization That, Therefore, Necessarily Constrain Every Language, And, In Fact, Create The Basis For Learning Language As A Way Of Organizing Experience Rather Than Constituting Something Learned From Experience.

We Should Recall That During The Second World War And The Great Depression There Was An Upsurge In Popular, Radical Democracy. In All Over The World. It Took Different Forms, But It Was There, Everywhere. In Greece It Was In The Greek Revolution, And So On. And It Had To Be Crushed. In Countries Like Greece, It Was Crushed By Violence. In Countries Like Italy, Where The Us Forces Entered In 1943, It Was Crushed By Attacking And Destroying The Anti-german Partisans And Restoring The Traditional Order.

The Intellectual World Is Deeply Conformist... We Talk A Lot About The Crimes Of Others. When It Comes To Our Own Crimes, We Are Nationalists In The Orwellian Sense.

All You Have To Do Is Read The Business Literature. In The 1930s They Were Very Frightened And They Were Concerned About How The Rising Power Of The Masses Was Hazardous To Industrialists.

What's Called "liberal" In The Intelectual Culture Means Highly Conformist To Power, But Mildly Critical.

If There Had Been A Charismatic Figure In The United States Who Could Mobilize Fears, Anger, Racism, A Sense Of Loss Of The Future That Belongs To Us, This Country Could Be In Real Danger. We're Lucky That There Never Has Been An Honest, Charismatic Figure. Mccarthy Was Too Much Of A Thug, You Know? Nixon Was Too Crooked. Trump, I Think, Is Too Much Of A Clown. So, We've Been Lucky.

If You Claim To Have A Theory That Deduces Unexpected Consequences From Nontrivial Principles, Let's See It.

I Have Often Thought That If A Rational Fascist Dictatorship Were To Exist, Then It Would Choose The American System.

William R. Polk Discusses The Spanish Guerrilla War Against Napoleon [ Bonaparte] And Other Cases Where The Conflict Turns Into A Political War, And The Invader, Who Usually Has Overwhelming Power, Loses Because They Can't Fight The Political War.

As In The Past, The Costs And Risks Of The Coming Phases Of The Industrial Economy Were To Be Socialized, With Eventual Profits Privatized.

In A Capitalist System, There's A Principle That If You Invest, Especially In A Long-term Risky Investment, If Something Comes Out Of It, You're Supposed To Get The Profit. It Doesn't Happen In Our System. The Taxpayer Paid For It And Gets Nothing - Assumes All Of The Risk, Gets Zero. The Money Goes Into The Pockets Of Bill Gates And Steve Jobs, Who Are Ripping Off Decades Of Work In The Public Sector.

A Corporation Is A State Created Institution, State Supported Institution, Its Concentration Of Private Power, There Is No Reason Why It Should Have The Rights Of Persons.

The Most Dramatic Case Is That Of The Central Americans. Why Are People Fleeing Central America? It's Because Of The Atrocities The U.s. Committed There. Take Boston, Where There's A Fairly Large Mayan Population. These People Are Fleeing From The Highlands Of Guatemala, Where There Was Virtual Genocide In The Early 1980s Backed By Ronald Reagan. The Region Was Devastated, And People Are Still Fleeing To This Day, Yet They're Sent Back.

The Republicans Have Picked That As The One Thing That They Want To Hang On To To Try To Gain Some Political Stand, So They Have To Destroy What They Call Obamacare. This Is Now Not All The Republicans, It's A Wing Of The Republican Party, Which Is Called Conservative But In Fact Is Just Deeply Reactionary.

Democracy Is Always Harmful To Elite Interests. Almost By Definition.

Moral Cowardice And Intellectual Corruption Are The Natural Concomitants Of Unchallenged Privilege.

There Was Very Little International Support, Even England Wouldn't Support [bombing Of Syria], Which Is Amazing.

Growth Is A Funny Sort Of Concept. For Example, Our Gnp Increases Every Time We Build A Prison. Well, Okay, It's Growth In A Sense.

Say The Pentagon Papers, - That Material Went Much Deeper. It Went Into Internal Government Planning Back For Twenty - Five Years. Those Are Things That The Public Should Have Known About. In A Democracy They Should Have Known What Leaders Thinking And Planning About Major Enterprises Like The Vietnam War. It Was Kept Secret From Them.

I Don't Buy Much. Almost Buy Nothing. I Buy What I Need, Do It The Easiest Way Possible.

There Was A Really Monstrous And Almost Literal Genocide In The Mayan Area, Specifically Under Ríos Montt. By Now It Has Been Recognized Somewhat By Guatemalan Society. In Fact, Montt Was Under Trial For Some Crimes. But The U.s. Prohibits People From Fleeing Here.

In The Late 1990s, Some Of The Worst Terrorist Atrocities In The World Were What The Turkish Government Itself Called State Terror, Namely Massive Atrocities, 80 Percent Of The Arms Coming From The United States, Millions Of Refugees, Tens Of Thousands Of People Killed, Hideous Repression, That's International Terror, And We Can Go On And On.

I Have Not Suggested That The Emergence Of Language Is Instantaneous. Rather, That The Rewiring Of The Brain Enabling An Infinite Array Of Structured Expressions Was In Effect Instantaneous. I Have Never Heard Of An Alternative To This Suggestion.

We Don't Have Polls From The Business World, But It's Pretty Clear That The Energy Corporations In America Would Be Quite Happy To Be Given Authorization To Go Back Into Iran Instead Of Leaving All That To Their Rivals. But The State Won't Allow It. And It Is Setting Up Confrontations Right Now, Very Explicitly. Part Of The Reason Is Strategic, Geo-political, Economic, But Part Of The Reason Is The Mafia Complex. They Have To Be Punished For Disobeying Us.

The Social System Is Taking On A Form In Which Finding Out What You Want To Do Is Less And Less Of An Option Because Your Life Is Too Structured, Organised, Controlled And Disciplined.

If We Choose, We Can Live In A World Of Comforting Illusion.

Discovery Is The Ability To Be Puzzled By Simple Things. Noam Chomsky

There Is A Considerable Polarization Taking Place Here, Increasing The Gap Between Rich And Poor. It's Most Dramatic In Third World Countries, Of Course, But In The Rich Countries It's Also Very Noticeable.

U.s. International And Security Policy . . . Has As Its Primary Goal The Preservation Of What We Might Call "the Fifth Freedom," Understood Crudely But With A Fair Degree Of Accuracy As The Freedom To Rob, To Exploit And To Dominate, To Undertake Any Course Of Action To Ensure That Existing Privilege Is Protected And Advanced.

I Was Told By Journalists Who Can't Publish It That There Are In Mexico, Close To The U.s. Border, Big Areas That Used To Be Devoted To Agriculture That Are Now Devoted To Poppies. They Say You Can't Get In There Because They're Guarded, First By The Cartels, But Also By The Army, Which Goes Hand In Hand With The Cartels.

The Occupy Movement Did Create Spontaneously Communities That Taught People Something: You Can Be In A Supportive Community Of Mutual Aid And Cooperation And Develop Your Own Health System And Library And Have Open Space For Democratic Discussion And Participation. Communities Like That Are Really Important.

I Remember Talking To, 40 Years Ago, One Of The Leading People In The Government Who Was Involved In Arms Control, Pressing For Arms Control Measures, Détente, And So On. He's Very High Up, And We Were Talking About Whether Arms Control Could Succeed. And Only Partially As A Joke He Said, "well It Might Succeed If The High Tech Industry Makes More Profit From Arms Control Than It Can Make From Weapons-related Research And Production. If We Get To That Tipping Point Maybe Arms Control Will Work." He Was Partially Joking But There's A Truth That Lies Behind It.

There Are Plenty Of Things That Are Unknown, But Are Assumed Reasonably To Exist, Even In The Most Basic Sciences. Maybe 90 Percent Of The Mass-energy In The Universe Is Called "dark," Because Nobody Knows What It Is.

Long Before The Technology Revolution There Was Declassification Of Documents And I've Spent Quite A Lot Of Time Studying Declassified Internal Documents And Written A Lot About Them. In Fact, Anybody Who's Worked Through The Declassified Record Can See Very Clearly That The Reason For Classification Is Very Rarely To Protect The State Or The Society From Enemies. Most Of The Time It Is To Protect The State From Its Citizens, So They Don't Know What The Government Is Doing.

The Childcare Tax Credit Makes Some Sense.

... The Media Serve The Interests Of State And Corporate Power, Which Are Closely Interlinked, Framing Their Reporting And Analysis In A Manner Supportive Of Established Privilege And Limiting Debate And Discussion Accordingly.

In General I Don't Think The Image Of The State As A Divinity Is Very Helpful.

They Are Involve In Producing Products And There Are Different Kinds Of People Running Them, But The Principle Is The Same. A Corporation Shouldn't Have The Right. Under American Law As Its Developed Over The Past Century, Corporation Do Have Personal Rights, But I Think That's A Very Negative Development.

To Object That The Facts About Human Nature Set Limits On Our Ability To Change The World And Ourselves Makes About As Much Sense As The Lament That Our Lack Of Wings Sets Limits On Our Ability To 'fly' As Far As Eagles Under Our Own Power.

France Has Not Been Able To Come To Terms With The Fact That It's Not A Major Power Anymore. I Mean Even Before The Second World War Paris Was One Of The Main Centers Of Intellectual And Cultural Life. But Now Paris Is A Kind Of Subsidiary Of Germany, Their Traditional Enemy And They Can't Come To Terms With It.

We Do Not For Example Say That The Person Has A Perfect Knowledge Of Some Language L Similar To English But Still Different From It. What We Say Is That The Child Or Foreigner Has A 'partial Knowledge Of English' Or Is 'on His Or Her Way' Towards Acquiring Knowledge Of English, And If They Reach This Goal, They Will Then Know English.

There Are Very Interesting Books About These Events, For Instance One By A Very Well-known American Historian Named William R. Polk Called Violent Politics. It's A Record Of What Are Basically Guerrilla Wars From The American Revolution Right Up Through The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq.

The Social And Physical Construction Of Suburban America Really Was Quite Complex. It Was A Very Elaborate System, And Clearly A Massive Social Engineering Project That Has Changed U.s. Society Enormously.

When Geologists Announced The Beginning Of A New Geological Epoch, The Anthropocene, Humans Destroying The Environment, One Of The Main Things They Pointed To Is The Use Of Plastics In The Earth.

The United States Is Going To Continue To Punish Iran Because Of Its Defiance.

The Andes Region Is Not Stable. So We Can Expect To See More Us Intervention. It Could Be Under Any Kind Of Pretext. We Can No Longer Use The Russians As An Excuse, As We Did In Central America In The 1980's, So Drugs Will Have To Do.

I Mean, It’s True, Nobody Talks About Them, But When You Bring It Up, The Idea That You Have To Rent Yourself To Somebody And Follow Their Orders, And That They Own And You Work There, And You Built It But You Don’t Own It, That’s A Highly Unnatural Notion. You Don’t Have To Study Any Complicated Theories To See That This Is An Attack On Human Dignity.

It Was During The Reagan Years That Defiance Of International Law And The U.n. Charter Became Entirely Open.

I Organized Tax Resistance In 1965, With A Friend. I Kept At It For About Ten Years. I Don't See It As A Principle, It's A Tactic. And I Felt I Had Exhausted Its Potential As A Tactic Right About Then, So I Stopped.

[according To The Rigid Dogma] We Have To Believe The United States Would Have So-called Liberated Iraq Even If Its Main Products Were Lettuce And Pickles And The Main Energy Resource Of The World Were In Central Africa.

If You Read People Like Say Bruce Blair One Of The Leading, Most Sober, Knowledgeable Specialists, He Says, Look, [donald Trump] Statements Are All Over The Map, But His Personality Is Frightening, He's A Complete Megalomaniac.

The Fact That All Normal Children Acquire Essentially Comparable Grammars Of Great Complexity With Remarkable Rapidity Suggests That Human Beings Are Somehow Specially Designed To Do This, With Data-handling Or 'hypothesis-formulating' Ability Of Unknown Character And Complexity.

Adam Smith Is An Egalitarian, He Believed In Equality Of Outcome, Not Opportunity. He Is An Enlightenment Figure, Pre-capitalist. He Says, Suppose In England, One Landowner Got Most Of The Land And Other People Would Have Nothing To Live On. He Says It Wouldn't Matter Much, Because The Rich Land Owner, By Virtue Of His Sympathy For Other People Would Distribute Resources Among Them, So That By An Invisible Hand, We Would End Up With A Pretty Egalitarian Society. That Is His Conception Of Human Nature.

We Use The Official Definitions Of Terrorism. The Definitions In The U.s. Code, In British Law, In U.s. Army Manuals And So On. And If You Use Those Definitions It Follows Instantly That The United States Is The Leading Terrorist State In The World.

Peace Is Preferable To War. But It’s Not An Absolute Value, And So We Always Ask, “what Kind Of Peace?

Remember, The U.s. Is A Powerful State, It's Not Like Libya. If Libya Wants To Carry Out Terrorist Acts, They Hire Carlos The Jackal Or Something. The United States Hires Terrorist States.

Colombia Has Been The Leading Western Recipient Of U.s. Arms And Training As Violence Has Grown Through The '90s.

Latin America Wants To Decriminalize At Least Marijuana (maybe More Or Course;) The Us Wants To Maintain It. An Interesting Story. There Seems To Me No Easy Way Out Of This.

Since Jimmy Carter, Religious Fundamentalists Play A Major Role In Elections. He Was The First President Who Made A Point Of Exhibiting Himself As A Born Again Christian. That Sparked A Little Light In The Minds Of Political Campaign Managers: Pretend To Be A Religious Fanatic And You Can Pick Up A Third Of The Vote Right Away. Nobody Asked Whether Lyndon Johnson Went To Church Every Day. Bill Clinton Is Probably About As Religious As I Am, Meaning Zero, But His Managers Made A Point Of Making Sure That Every Sunday Morning He Was In The Baptist Church Singing Hymns.

Presented With The Claims Of Nineteenth-century Racist Anthropology, A Rational Person Will Ask Two Sorts Of Questions: 'what Is The Scientific Status Of The Claims?' 'what Social Or Ideological Needs Do They Serve?'

There Is A Kind Of Nonlinguistic Thought Going On Which We Are Trying To Represent In Language, And We Know That Sometimes We Fail.

Donald Trump And Sean Spicer Do One Thing After Another To Keep The Media Attention Focused On Them. And It Works. These Legislative Achievements Are Being Made Which Are Chipping Away At Anything The Government Has That's Of Any Use To Anybody. Paul Ryan, I Think, Is The Most Dangerous Guy In The Government. He Knows What He's Doing. And It's Very Systematic. I Presume He's Behind The Cabinet Appointments, But It's Pretty Amazing That Every Single Cabinet Appointment Is Somebody Devoted To Destroying That Part Of Government.

An Unstated But Crucial Premise Is That The "responsible Men" Achieve That Exalted Status By Their Service To Authentic Power, A Fact Of Life That They Will Discover Soon Enough If They Try To Pursue An Independent Path.

There Had Been A Free And Open Election In Haiti In The Early 1990s And President Jean-bertrand Aristide Won, A Populist Priest. A Few Months Later Came The Expected Military Coup - A Very Vicious Military Junta Took Over, Of Which The United States Was Passively Supportive. Not Openly, Of Course, But Haitians Started To Flee From The Terror And Were Sent Back And On Towards Guantanamo Bay. Of Course, That Is Against International Law. But The United States Pretended That They Were "economic Refugees."

Take A Look At The Bombing Of Serbia In 1999. The Us Was Quite Open About The Reasons For The Bombing. A Main Reason Was To Preserve Stability And Credibility. Serbia Was Interfering With Stability, Meaning That It Was The One Part Of The Balkans That Was Not Integrated Into The Western-dominated (mostly Us-dominated) System.

The Term "globalization," Like Most Terms Of Public Discourse, Has Two Meanings: Its Literal Meaning, And A Technical Sense Used For Doctrinal Purposes. In Its Literal Sense, "globalization" Means International Integration. Its Strongest Proponents Since Its Origins Have Been The Workers Movements And The Left , Which Is Why Unions Are Called "internationals", And The Strongest Proponents Today Are Those Who Meet Annually In The World Social Forum And Its Many Regional Offshoots.

It Was Right After Woodrow Wilson's First Serious Post-world War I Repression, Which Deported Thousands Of People, Effectively Destroyed Unions And Independent Press, And So On. Right After That, The Anti-immigration Law Was Passed That Remained In Place Until The 1960s.

It's A Lesser-known Story, But The Japanese Government (after The Russian-nazi Pact, Which Split Poland) Did Allow Polish Jews To Come To Japan, With The Expectation That They Would Then Be Sent To The United States. But They Weren't Accepted, So They Stayed In Japan.

When Reagan Left Office, He Was The Most Unpopular Living President, Apart From Nixon, Even Below Carter. If You Look At His Years In Office, He Was Not Particularly Popular. He Was More Or Less Average. He Severely Harmed The American Economy.

It Is The Responsibility Of Intellectuals To Speak The Truth And Expose Lies.

Everyone Engaged In Research Must Have Had The Experience Of Working With Feverish And Prolonged Intensity To Write A Paper Which No One Else Will Read Or To Solve A Problem Which No One Else Thinks Important And Which Will Bring No Conceivable Reward - Which May Only Confirm A General Opinion That The Researcher Is Wasting His Time On Irrelevancies.

If You Are Working 50 Hours A Week In A Factory, You Don't Have Time To Read 10 Newspapers A Day And Go Back To Declassified Government Archives. But Such People May Have Far-reaching Insights Into The Way The World Works.

As Far As Marx's Analysis Of Capitalism, There's A Lot Of Very Useful Ideas In It, But He's Developing An Abstract Model Of 19th Century Capitalism. It's Abstract And It's Changed.

The Point Of Public Relations Slogans Like "support Our Troops" Is That They Don't Mean Anything ... That's The Whole Point Of Good Propaganda. You Want To Create A Slogan That Nobody Is Going To Be Against And I Suppose Everybody Will Be For, Because Nobody Knows What It Means, Because It Doesn't Mean Anything. But Its Crucial Value Is That It Diverts Your Attention From A Question That Does Mean Something, Do You Support Our Policy? And That's The One You're Not Allowed To Talk About.

It Doesn't Matter What We Cover, It Matters What You Discover.

Just As I'm Opposed To Political Fascism, I'm Opposed To Economic Fascism. I Think That Until Major Institutions Of Society Are Under The Popular Control Of Participants And Communities, It's Pointless To Talk About Democracy.

If Humans Are Organisms Like Every Other Organism - Which They Are - Then We Should Expect That If There Are Some Domains Where Real Scientific Progress Is Possible, Then There Are Others Where It Is Not.

That's Our Nuclear Weapons Strategy [going To Frighten People], As Of The Early Post-cold War Years. And I Think This Is A Real Failure Of The Intellectual Community, Including Scholarship And The Media. It's Not Like You Had Headlines All Over The Place. And It's Not Secret, The Documents Are There. And I Think That's Probably The Right Picture.

The Task For A Modern Industrial Society Is To Achieve What Is Now Technically Realizable, Namely, A Society Which Is Really Based On Free Voluntary Participation Of People Who Produce And Create, Live Their Lives Freely Within Institutions They Control, And With Limited Hierarchical Structures, Possibly None At All

The Bush Administration Has Created An Unimaginable Catastrophe In Iraq. This Should've Been One Of The Easiest Military Occupations In History And They Succeeded In Turning It Into One Of The Worst Military Disasters In History. They Can't Control It And It's Almost Impossible For Them To Get Out For Reasons You Can't Discuss In The United States Because To Discuss The Reasons Why They Can't Get Out Would Be To Concede The Reasons Why They Invaded.

What Wikileaks Exposed Is Kind Of Superficial In A Way.

It Is The Worst Atrocity Underway [in Rwanda]. But It's Barely In The Media, And People Just Don't Know About It. And That's Quite Generally True.

The People Who Were Really Important Are The Ones Whose Names Are Forgotten. And That's True Of Every Movement That Ever Existed.

Democracy Doesn't Mean Much If People Have To Confront Concentrated Systems Of Economic Power As Isolated Individuals. Democracy Means Something If People Can Organize To Gain Information, To Have Thoughts For That Matter, To Make Plans, To Enter Into The Political System In Some Active Way, To Put Forth Programs And So On. If Organizations Of That Kind Exist, Then Democracy Can Exist Too. Otherwise It's A Matter Of Pushing A Lever Every Couple Of Years; It's Like Having The Choice Between Coca-cola And Pepsi-cola.

Part Of The Nafta Legislation Required Studies Of Labor Practices, And There Was Quite A Good Study That Came Out By A Labor Historian On The Use Of Nafta To Undermine And Destroy Unions.

The Desire For Hope And Change Is Easily Understandable. In Many Ways It's Even More Dramatic In Europe.

One Might Ask Why Tobacco Is Legal And Marijuana Not. A Possible Answer Is Suggested By The Nature Of The Crop.

You Can't Get Votes That Way. So [the Republicans] Have Been Compelled To Mobilize A Base Of Voters And Gone To Elements Of The Country That Have Always Been There But Were Kind Of Marginal To The Political System, For Example, Religious Extremists.

There's One White Powder Which Is By Far The Most Lethal Known, It's Called Sugar. . . . The Caribbean Back In The 18th Century Was A Soft Drug Producer: Sugar, Rum, Tobacco, Chocolate. And In Order To Do It, They Had To Enslave Africans.

He Who Controls The Media Controls The Minds Of The Public.

What The [james] Monroe Doctrine Stated, In Effect, Is That The Us Should Dominate The Hemisphere.

Reagan Was Extreme. Beginning Of His Administration, One Of The First Things Was To Call In Scabs - Hadn't Been Done For A Long Time, And It's Illegal In Most Countries - In The Air Controller Strike.

I Just Went Along With Political Activists And Interested In Other Intellectual Interests Which I Pursued Kind Of At Random. I Never Had A Real College Education. I Got A Degree, But It Was Just Patching Together Courses Here And There.

Some [people] May Be "servants Of The Power Structure," But That Has To Be Shown. I Think It Often Can Be Shown, But The Burden Of Proof Is On The Critic Who Puts Forth That Thesis In Particular Cases.

Burden Of Proof

I've Already Supported Bernie Sanders In The Primaries.

There's Never Been Anything Like The So-called Vietnam Syndrome: It's Mostly A Fabrication.

With Regard To Freedom Of Expression There Are Basically Two Positions: You Defend It Vigorously For Views You Hate, Or You Reject It In Favor Of Stalinist/fascist Standards.

The Obvious One, In A Market System, In A Really Functioning One, Whoever's Making The Decisions Doesn't Pay Attention To What Are Called Externalities, Effects On Others. I Sell You A Car, If Our Eyes Are Open We'll Make A Good Deal For Ourselves But We're Not Asking How It's Going To Affect Her [over There.] It Will, There'll Be More Congestion, Gas Prices Will Go Up, There Will Be Environmental Effects And That Multiplies Over The Whole Population. Well, That's Very Serious.

Those Are Possibilities For Technology, Which Don't Tend To Be Used, Because Of The Way Power Is Concentrated. There Are All Kinds Of Possibilities, Including For Coercion. In China, Technology Is Used To Control And Coerce. Here Too, To An Extent, But Not To That Extent.

What Happened In Syria Was, President [barack] Obama Had Made A Statement Announcing What He Called His "red Line": You Can't Use Chemical Weapons, You Can Do Anything Else But [use] Chemical Weapons.

Policy Is Largely Set By Economic Elites And Organized Groups Representing Business Interests With Little Concern For Public Attitudes Or Public Safety, As Long As The Public Remains Passive And Obedient.

In Fact If You Look At Reagan's Global War On Terrorism It Very Quickly Turned Into A Massive Terrorist War: [by Us] Central America, South Africa, The Middle East, All U.s.-backed Terrorism. That's One Of The Reasons Why It Disappeared From History And Why The Standard Line Is That Bush 43 Declared The War On Terror. Actually He Just Repeated What Reagan Had Said 20 Years Earlier.

The Fact Is That If You Have Not Developed Language, You Simply Don't Have Access To Most Of Human Experience, And If You Don't Have Access To Experience, Then You're Not Going To Be Able To Think Properly.

Workers And Their Families May Starve To Death In The New World Order Of Economic Rationality, But Diamond Necklaces Are Cheaper In Elegant New York Shops, Thanks To The Miracle Of The Market.

Democracy, In Any Rational Form, Also Imposes Conditions On Majority Rule. That's What The Bill Of Rights Is About, For Example.

Evaluating Countries Is Senseless And I Would Never Put Things In Those Terms, But That Some Of America's Advances, Particularly In The Area Of Free Speech, That Have Been Achieved By Centuries Of Popular Struggle, Are To Be Admired.

Iran Is Independent And Independence Is Not Tolerated.

There's A Very Committed Effort To Convert The Us Into Something Resembling A Third World Society, Where A Few People Have Enormous Wealth And A Lot Of Others Have No Security.

When Something Like This [2003 Invasion Of Iraq] Takes Place, The International Law Professionals Have A Complicated Task. There Is A Fringe That Just Tells The Truth: Look, It's A Violation Of International Law. But Most Have To Construct Complex Arguments To Justify It As Defense Counsel. That's Basically Their Job, Defense Counsel For State Power.

One Substitute For The Disappearing Evil Empire (the Soviet Union) Has Been The Threat Of Drug Traffickers From Latin America. In Early September 1989, A Major Government-media Blitz Was Launched By The President. That Month The Ap Wires Carried More Stories About Drugs Than About Latin America, Asia, The Middle East And Africa Combined. If You Looked At Television, Every News Program Had A Big Section On How Drugs Were Destroying Our Society, Becoming The Greatest Threat To Our Existence, Etc.

For The Last Couple Of Hundred Years, There Have Been Struggles About This. Even The Fifth And Sixth Amendments Of The Constitution Talk About Personal Rights.

The Basic Idea Which Runs Right Through Modern History And Modern Liberalism Is That The Public Has Got To Be Marginalized. The General Public Are Viewed As No More Than Ignorant And Meddlesome Outsiders, A Bewildered Herd.

Its Minority Rule And Majority Limited Rights. In Fact It's Set Up That Way. If You Read The Framers Of The Constitution, Including James Madison, He Was Pretty Clear About It.

I Think The Use Of Language Is A Very Important Means By Which This Species, Because Of Its Biological Nature, Creates A Kind Of Social Space, To Place Itself In Interactions With Other People. It Doesn't Have Much To Do With Communication In A Narrow Sense; That Is, It Doesn't Involve Transmission Of Information. There Is Much Information Transmitted But It Is Not The Content Of What Is Said That Is Transmitted.

Real Popular Culture Is Folk Art - Coalminers' Songs And So Forth.

Israel Produces And Stores Chemical Weapons. So Therefore The Us Will Prevent The Chemical Weapons Convention From Being Imposed On The Middle East. But It's Necessary To Evade This By Misrepresenting The Convention, And I Think Maybe 100 Percent Of The Media, Or Close To It, Go Along. But That's A Critical Issue. Actually, Syria's Chemical Weapons Were Developed Largely As A Deterrent To Israeli Nuclear Weapons. Also, Not Mentioned.

You Have To Rely On Yourself And Your Associates - Gifts Don't Come From Above; You're Going To Win Them, Or You Won't Have Them.

Rely On Yourself

The House Of Representatives, Which Was Closer To The Population, Had Much Less Power. The Executive Was More Or Less An Administrator, Not An Emperor Like Today.

There Is A Phrase In Trade Theory; It's Called "kicking Away The Ladder." First You Violate The Rules - The Market Rules - And Then By The Time You Succeed In Developing, You Kick Away The Ladders So Others Can't Do It Too, And You Preach About "free Trade."

The Iraq War Was The First Conflict In Western History In Which An Imperialist War Was Massively Protested Against Before It Had Even Been Launched.

We Should Certainly Not Be Perpetuating Further Harm To Others Or To The Environment. Suppose That Workers At Exxonmobil Are Trying To Unionize. We Have Two Choices: To Help Them Improve Their Lives, Or To Keep Away So That Their Lives Will Be Worse. Neither Choice Has Any Effect On Use Of Fossil Fuels. So Radical Organizers Can Both Help Them Unionize And Improve Their Lives, And Convince Them To Find A Different Way To Survive And Work For Ending The Use Of Fossil Fuels.

It's Easy To Put [serious Threats] Aside, And The Media Don't Talk About Them. Other Things Are More Important. How Am I Going To Put Food On The Table Tomorrow? That's What I've Got To Worry About, And So On. It's Very Serious, But It's Hard To Bring Out The Enormity Of These Issues, When They Do Not Have The Dramatic Character Of Something You Can Show In The Movies, With A Nuclear Weapons Falling And Everything Disappears.

The Attack On Unions Has Been Far More Extreme Here [in U.s], And It Has Been Much More Successful.

Pakistan Is Not A Unified Country. In Large Parts Of The Country, The State Is Regarded As A Punjabi State, Not Their (the People's) State.

The Us Intervened In The Philippines To Uplift And Christianize The Backward People, Killing A Couple Of Hundred Thousand Of Them And Destroying The Place. The Same Thing Happened In Haiti, The Same Thing Happened With Other Countries.

...if You Ask Me Whether Or Not I'm An Atheist, I Wouldn't Even Answer. I Would First Want An Explanation Of What It Is That I'm Supposed Not To Believe In, And I've Never Seen An Explanation.

There Is Massive Propaganda For Everyone To Consume. Consumption Is Good For Profits And Consumption Is Good For The Political Establishment.

Putting It In Plain Terms, The General Public Must Be Reduced To Its Traditional Apathy And Obedience, And Driven From The Arena Of Political Debate And Action, If Democracy Is To Survive.

I Think Individuals Have A Right To Privacy, But That Ought To Include The Right To Prevent Private Institutions From Monitoring What You Do And Building Up A Personal Profile For You So That They Can Direct You In Particular Ways By Their Effective Control Over The Internet, And That Doesn't Happen Of Course.

The Soviet Union Was Pretty Much What Lenin And Trotsky Said It Was.

The Smart Way To Keep People Passive And Obedient Is To Strictly Limit The Spectrum Of Acceptable Opinion, But Allow Very Lively Debate Within That Spectrum.

I've Occasionally Been Asked To Talk On Israel-palestine. Sometimes It Works, And Sometimes It Elicits Hysteria In The Community.

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