As Far As Bernie Sanders Is Concerned, He Is A Decent, Honest Person, And I Supported Him. What He Means By Socialism Is New Deal Liberalism. In Fact, His Actual Policies Would Not Have Been A Great Surprise To General Eisenhower. The Fact That This Is Called A "political Revolution" Is A Sign Of How Far To The Right The Political Spectrum Has Shifted, Mainly In The Last 30 Years Since The Neoliberal Programs Began To Be Instituted. What He Was Calling For Was A Restoration Of Something Like New Deal Liberalism, Which Is A Very Good Thing.

-Noam Chomsky

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As Far As Bernie

Noam Chomsky

Topic

Mean

Political Revolution

Years

More From Noam Chomsky

The Republican And Democratic Parties Are Only Factions Of The Government Party.

Party

Government

Republican

At The Beginning Of His Administration, Reagan Tried Set The Basis For American Military Intervention In El Salvador - Which Is About What Kennedy Did When He Came Into Office In Regard To Vietnam. Well, When Kennedy Tried It In Vietnam, It Just Worked Like A Dream. Virtually Nobody Opposed American Bombing Of South Vietnam In 1962. It Was Not An Issue. But When Reagan Began To Talk Of Involving American Forces In El Salvador There Was A Huge Popular Uproar. And He Had To Choose A Much More Indirect Way Of Supporting The Collection Of Gangsters In Power There. He Had To Back Off.

Dream

Military

Issues

If You Believe In Democracy, Why Shouldn't You Know What The Government Is Doing?

Believe

Government

Democracy

There Isn't Much Point Arguing About The Word "libertarian." It Would Make About As Much Sense To Argue With An Unreconstructed Stalinist About The Word "democracy" - Recall That They Called What They'd Constructed "peoples' Democracies." The Weird Offshoot Of Ultra-right Individualist Anarchism That Is Called "libertarian" Here Happens To Amount To Advocacy Of Perhaps The Worst Kind Of Imaginable Tyranny, Namely Unaccountable Private Tyranny. If They Want To Call That "libertarian," Fine; After All, Stalin Called His System "democratic." But Why Bother Arguing About It?

Democracy

Want

Libertarian

Most Of Intellectuals Are False Prophets, Flatterers Of The Court. The Real Prophets Are The Exception And Treated Badly. How Badly They're Treated Depends On The Society. Like In Eastern Europe, They Were Treated Very Badly. In Latin America, They Were Slaughtered.

Real

Latin

Europe

I Wouldn't Say That The Efforts Of Academics To Critique The Media's Messages Are "half-hearted." As Far As I Am Aware, The Efforts Scarcely Exist: Very Few Even Pay Attention To The Question.

Media

Effort

Attention

Hamas Must Agree To First Recognize Israel, Second To End All Violence, Third To Accept Past Agreements. Try To Find A Mention Of The Fact That The United States And Israel Reject All Three Of Those. They Obviously Don't Recognize Palestine, They Certainly Don't Withdraw The Use Of Violence Or The Threat Of It - In Fact They Insist On It - And They Don't Accept Past Agreements, Including The Road Map.

Past

Israel

Agreement

Nobody Should Have Any Illusions. The United States Has Essentially A One-party System And The Ruling Party Is The Business Party.

Party

Should Have

United States

There Are Massive Efforts On The Part Of The Internet's Corporate Owners To Try To Direct It To Become A Technique Of Marginalisation And Control.

Effort

Trying

Technique

For Decades Israel Has Been Capturing, And Kidnapping Lebanese And Palestinian Refugees On The High Seas, From Cyprus To Lebanon, Killing Them In Lebanon, Bringing Them To Israel, Holding Them As Hostages. It's Been Going On For Decades, Has Anybody Called For An Invasion Of Israel?

Israel

Sea

Cyprus

On October 15, 1965, An Estimated 70,000 People Took Part In Large-scale Anti-war Demonstrations.

War

People

October

The New Crimes That The Us And Israel Were Committing In Gaza As 2009 Opened Do Not Fit Easily Into Any Standard Category—except For The Category Of Familiarity.

Israel

Gaza Strip

Fit

Unless That Happens, Unless You Get, You Know, Kind Of Integration Of Activists' Concerns And Movements, It Will Be, Each One Will Be 'preaching To The Choir'.

Movement

Kind

Choir

I Get Terrific Health Care.

Care

Health Care

Terrific

Welsh Is Now Almost A National Language In Wales. The Scottish Dialects Are Reviving To Some Extent. I Don't Think It's A Major Thing, But It's There, And It's Happening Elsewhere.

Thinking

Dialect

Language

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.

Intellectual

World

Crime

The Basic Principle Is That The Losers Have To Confess, Not The Victors. When They Do It, It's A Crime. When We Do It, It's Not. And More Generally, It's The Defeated Who Are Tried, Not The Victors.

Principles

Loser

Defeated

Education Is Not Just You Learn How A Mosquito Flies In The Rain, But You Learn How To Be Creative And Why It's Exciting To Learn Things And Create Things And Make Up New Things.

Rain

Creative

Exciting

If You Want To Scare People, You Talk About Evil.

People

Evil

Nihilism

There Was No Direct Way To Prevent The Boston Murders. There Are Some Easy Ways To Prevent Likely Future Ones: By Not Inciting Them. That's Also True Of Another Case Of A Suspect Murdered, His Body Disposed Of Without Autopsy, When He Could Easily Have Been Apprehended And Brought To Trial: Osama Bin Laden.

Boston

Trials

Body

It Was Declared By Congress That Marijuana Makes People Insane. But . . . Lawyers, Defense Lawyers, Got The Idea, Ok, I Can Use This For An Insanity Defense.

Marijuana

Ideas

People

While The State Can Coerce, With Some Exceptions (like North Korea) It Seems To Me Misleading To Think Of It As Capable Of "enslavement."

Thinking

Korea

States

Citizens Of The Democratic Societies Should Undertake A Course Of Intellectual Self Defense To Protect Themselves From Manipulation And Control, And To Lay The Basis For Meaningful Democracy.

Meaningful

Self

Intellectual

You Can Read It In History Books Now, But They Often Suppress The Fact That The U.s. Government Tolerated [nazi]. It's Really Remarkable Because They Claim That [franklin] Roosevelt Was Impeded By The Neutrality Act. On The Other Hand, He Bitterly Condemned A Mexican Businessman For Sending Several Guns To The Republic. If You Look Back, Oil Was The One Commodity That [francisco] Franco Could Not Receive From The Germans And The Italians, So That Was Quite Significant.

Book

Gun

Government

Unfortunately, You Can’t Vote The Rascals Out, Because You Never Voted Them In, In The First Place

Firsts

Vote

Rascals

Thomas Jefferson, The Leading Enlightenment Figure In The United States, Along With Benjamin Franklin, Who Took Exactly The Same View, Argued That Dependence Will Lead To "subservience And Venality", And Will "suffocate The Germs Of Virtue". And Remember, By Dependence He Meant Wage Labor, Which Was Considered An Abomination Under Classical Liberal Principles.

Views

Enlightenment

Principles

The Market Is Regarded As Democratic Because Everybody Has A Vote. Of Course, Some Have More Votes Than Others Because Your Votes Depend On The Number Of Dollars You Have, But Everybody Participates And Therefore It's Called Democratic.

Numbers

Dollars

Vote

In The Years Of The Reagan-bush Administration Alone, About 1.5 Million People Were Killed By South Africa Just In The Surrounding Countries. Forget What Was Happening In South Africa And Namibia.

Country

Media

Years

No One Seriously Doubts That If Piraha Children Are Brought Up In Boston They'll Be Speaking Boston English, That Is, That The Capacities Are Present, Unlike Other Animals, As Far As Is Known. There's No Challenge To The Theory - Not Mine, But Everyone's - That The Human Language Faculty Provides The Means For Generation Of An Infinite Array Of Structured Expressions.

Children

Mean

Animal

[ronald] Reagan Bitterly Hated Unions And Wanted Them Destroyed. This Began With The Air Controllers' Strike And Went On From There.

Air

Unions

Strikes

Technology Provides Means For Expression And Interchange And So On, So Yes It Should Be Free And Open, But There Are A Lot Of Constraints On How Its Used.

Mean

Technology

Expression

A Consistent Anarchist Must Oppose Private Ownership Of The Means Of Production, And The Wage-slavery Which Is A Component Of This System, As Incompatible With The Principle That Labor Must Be Freely Undertaken And Under The Control Of The Producer.

Mean

Principles

Slavery

In The Occupied Territories, What Israel Is Doing Is Much Worse Than Apartheid. The South African Nationalists Needed The Black Population. That Was Their Workforce. The Israeli Relationship To The Palestinians In The Occupied Territories Is Totally Different. They Just Don’t Want Them.

Israel

Black

Population

Capitalism Is A System In Which The Central Institutions Of Society Are, In Principle, Under Autocratic Control. Thus, A Corporation Or An Industry Is, If We Were To Think Of It In Political Terms, Fascist, That Is, It Has Tight Control At The Top And Strict Obedience Has To Be Established At Every Level. [...] Just As I'm Opposed To Political Fascism, I Am Opposed To Economic Fascism. I Think That Until The Major Institutions Of Society Are Under The Popular Control Of Participants And Communities, It's Pointless To Talk About Democracy.

Thinking

Community

Political

When Something Isn't Constantly Drummed-up By The Media, [people] Just Don't Know About It.

Media

People

Knows

A Bombing Was Planned [in Syria], Which Would Probably Make The Situation Worse, But Would At Least Establish Us Credibility.

Credibility

Situation

Syria

A Property Of An Organism Enters Into Its Life (and Survival) In Many Different Ways, Some More Salient Than Others. But There Is No Simple Notion Of Its Being "for" Some Function.

Simple

Survival

Different

To Speak Truth To Power Is Not A Particularly Honorable Vocation. One Should Seek Out An Audience That Matters - And Furthermore (another Important Qualification), It Should Not Be Seen As An Audience, But As A Community Of Common Concern In Which One Hopes To Participate Constructively.

Community

Important

Matter

The Corporations Plainly Want Academic Scholarship To Create A Web Of Mystification That Will Avoid Any Public Awareness Of The Way In Which Power Actually Functions In The Society, And The Faculty Has Caught The Message And They Do It Magnificently.

Power

Society

Want

The Media Is Uncritical, And Their So-called The Concept Of Objectivity Translates Into Keeping Everything Within The Beltway. However, Iraq Was Quite Different. Here, There Were Flat-out Lies, And They Sort Of Knew It. They Were Desperately Trying To Make Connections Between Saddam Hussein And 9/11.

Lying

Iraq

Objectivity

Nobody Can Successfully Defy The Master Of The Hemisphere [america], In Fact Of The World, Hence The Savagery.

America

Hemisphere

World

Historically, Several Policy Domains, Including That Of Foreign Policy Towards The Us And India, Budget Allocations Etc, Have Been Controlled By The Pakistani Military, And The Civil-military Divide Can Be Said To Be The Most Fundamental Fracture In Pakistan's Body Politic.

Military

Pakistan

Fundamentals

We Have Never Had Class-based Parties. We've Had Parties Run By The Business Classes. There's Slight Variations. Like In The New Deal Period, There Was A Lot Of Popular Activism, So Things Shifted Slightly, But Not Much.

Running

Party

Activism

It Is Reported That About 30% Of The World's Population Is Unemployed. That's Worse Than The Great Depression, But It's Now An International Phenomenon.

Population

World

Great Depression

You Know, We Have Little Bits Of Understanding, Glimpses, A Little Bit Of Light Here And There, But There's A Tremendous Amount Of Darkness, Which Is A Challenge. I Think Life Would Be Pretty Boring If We Understood Everything. It's Better If We Don't Understand Anything And Know That We Don't, That's The Important Part.

Thinking

Light

Challenges

Extensive Violations Of Human Rights (torture, Forced Reduction Of Living Standards For Much Of The Population, Police-sponsored Death Squads, Destruction Of Representative Institutions Or Of Independent Unions, Etc.) Are Directly Correlated With Us Government Support. The Linkage Is Not Accidental; Rather It Is Systematic. The Reason Is Obvious Enough. Client Fascism Often Improves The Business Climate For American Corporations, Quite Generally The Guiding Factor In Foreign Policy.

Independent

Violation Of Human Rights

Government

States Are Not Moral Agents, People Are, And Can Impose Moral Standards On Powerful Institutions.

Powerful

Hero

People

Remember That In Any Major Nuclear War, The First Strike Destroys The Country That Attacks; It's Been Known For Years. The First Strike Of A Major Power Is Very Likely To Cause What's Called Nuclear Winter, Leads To Global Famine For Years And Everything's Basically Gone. Some Survivors Straggling Around. Could [donald Trump] Do It? Who Knows.

Country

War

Winter

It's Not A Matter Of Public Relations And Rhetorical Style But Of Actions. It's The Actions And Policies Under George W.bush Administration That Have Left The Us Government Remarkably Isolated, Feared And Often Hated To An Extent With No Historical Precedent.

Historical

Style

Action

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.

Powerful

Moon

Green

Regulate The Banks, Get Money Out Of Elections; Raise The Minimum Wage, Environmental Issues. They're All Very Important And The Occupy Movement Made A Difference. It Shifted Not Only The Discourse But To Some Extent, Action On These Issues.

Differences

Issues

Environmental

When I Was A Boy, We Were The Only Jewish Family In A Terribly Anti-semitic Neighborhood. Those Streets Weren't Any Fun For Us But Our Parents Never Found That Out. In A Way, You Avoid Telling Your Parents What Happened To You During Those Days.

Fun

Boys

Parent

Cuba Has Become A Symbol Of Courageous Resistance To Attack. Since 1959, Cuba Has Been Under Attack From The Hemispheric Superpower.

Cuba

Resistance

Courageous

The Real Invasion Of South Vietnam Which Was Directed Largely Against The Rural Society Began Directly In 1962 After Many Years Of Working Through Mercenaries And Client Groups. And That Fact Simply Does Not Exist In Official American History. There Is No Such Event In American History As The Attack On South Vietnam. That's Gone. Of Course, It Is A Part Of Real History. But It's Not A Part Of Official History.

Real

Years

Groups

People Tend To Rally Around Power.

People

This Is Real. This Is The Real Mad Man Theory. We Have To Be Irrational And Vindictive, So People Don't Know What We're Up To. This Is Not [donald] Trump And [steve] Bannon, It's From The [bill] Clinton Era.

Real

Men

People

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

Worry

Independence

Islam

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.

Iran

America

Political

Terror Became A Big Issue When The Reagan Administration Came In. They Immediately Announced [their Plans] And Kind Of Disparaged Carter's Alleged Human Rights Programs. The Main Issue Is State-directed International Terrorism. Right At That Time That Big Industry Developed. That's When You Start Getting The Academic Departments On Terrorism.

Issues

Rights

Administration

[james] Madison Pointed Out In The Discussion Of The Constitutional Debates - The Constitutional Convention - That Democracy Would Be A Danger. He Used England Of Course As The Model And Said Suppose That In England Everyone Had The Free Right To Vote; The Poor, The Propertyless - Who Are The Great Majority - Would Use Their Voting Power To Take Away The Rights Of Property Owners To Carry Out What We Would Call Land Reform.

Rights

Land

Voting

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.

Government

People

Archives

Because The 1979 Strike Against U.s. Steel In Youngstown, Ohio Was An Occupation - And Actually, That's A Model That Really Should Be Pursued Now.they Went On From Striking To Trying To Have The Workforce And The Communities Take Over The Abandoned Factories That U.s. Steel Was Dismantling.

Ohio

Community

Trying

The More Privilege You Have, The More Opportunity You Have. The More Opportunity You Have, The More Responsibility You Have.

Responsibility

Opportunity

Privilege

Of Course, Everybody Says They're For Peace. Hitler Was For Peace. Everybody Is For Peace. The Question Is: What Kind Of Peace?

Kind

Courses

English Is A Second Language In Most Of The Educated Sectors Of Europe And Much Of The World. But Maybe In The Future Chinese Will Be. But I Doubt That National Languages Will Disappear. In Fact, To Some Extent They're Becoming More Diverse, Like In Europe.

Europe

Doubt

Chinese

Latin America Was The Most Obedient Follower Of The Neoliberal Regime That Was Instituted By The United States, Its Allies And The International Financial Institutions. They Followed It Most Rigorously. Almost Everyone Who's Followed Those Rules, Including The Western Countries, Have Suffered. And In Latin America They Suffered Severely.

Country

Latin

America

In This Possibly Terminal Phase Of Human Existence, Democracy And Freedom Are More Than Just Ideals To Be Valued - They May Be Essential To Survival.

Freedom

Hero

Democracies Have

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.

Real

College

Political

U.s. Analysts Estimate That Russian Military Expenditures Have Tripled During The Bush-putin Years, In Large Measure A Predicted Reaction To The Bush Administration's Militancy And Aggressiveness.

Military

Years

Administration

There Are By Now Declassified Documents From The 1950s That Tells You A Lot About What's Going On In Egypt And We Should Have Known It Then. It's About Exactly What's Happening, How We Can Disregard Public Opinion As Long As The Dictators We Support Are Capable Of Suppressing Their Populations. So To Hell With Public Opinion. That's All Right There In The 1950's. That's Not Security. That's Not Security Of The Government. That's, If Anything, Security From Its Own Population. And There's A Lot Of That.

Egypt

Should Have

Government

Some Of The Younger People Afford Hope For The Future. I Am Not Opposed To Reform Initiatives. For Example, If You Can Build Up Enough Popular Support In The United States To Put Through A Reasonable Health Care Program Or To Support The Rights Of The Working People Against The Version Of Nafta Which Was Rammed Through, These Can Be Good Things.

Rights

People

Support

Students Who Acquire Large Debts Putting Themselves Through School Are Unlikely To Think About Changing Society. When You Trap People In A System Of Debt, They Can't Afford The Time To Think.

Change

Education

Time

There's An Interesting Question, Whether The Anarchists Had Alternatives [in Spain]. If They Did Tend To Support The Government That Had Been Destroyed, What Were The Alternatives? There Was Actually A Proposal By Camillo Berneri, An Italian Anarchist Who Was In Spain At The Time, Which Is Not A Crazy Notion In My Opinion. He Opposed Participation In Government And Was Against The Formation Of An Army, Meaning A Major Army To Fight [francisco] Franco.

Crazy

Fighting

Army

I Remember At The Age Of Five Travelling On A Trolley Car With My Mother Past A Group Of Women On A Picket Line At A Textile Plant, Seeing Them Being Viciously Beaten By Security People. So That Kind Of Thing Stayed With Me.

Birthday

Mother

Past

It's A Near Miracle That Nuclear War Has So Far Been Avoided.

War

Miracle

Nuclear

For Thirty Years, Isreal Has Been Highjacking Ships In International Waters, Killing People, Taking Hostages, Bringing Them To Israel, Putting Them In Secret Prisons, All With The Help Of The United States. That's Serious Piracy.

Israel

Years

People

Destruction Of The Environment Is Not Only Rational; It's Exactly What You're Taught To Do In College.

College

Taught

Environment

I Am A Child Of The Enlightenment. I Think Irrational Belief Is A Dangerous Phenomenon, And I Try To Consciously Avoid Irrational Belief. On The Other Hand, I Certainly Recognize That It's A Major Phenomenon For People In General, And You Can Understand Why It Would Be. It Does, Apparently, Provide Personal Sustenance, But Also Bonds Of Association And Solidarity And A Means For Expressing Elements Of One's Personality That Are Often Very Valuable Elements. To Many People It Does That. In My View, There's Nothing Wrong With That.

Children

Mean

Thinking

Now, You Ban Not The Whole Muslim World. You Ban Seven States, Seven States That Have Not Been Responsible For A Single Terrorist Act. Those Are The Seven [donald Trump] Banned. But, You Leave The Ones That Really Are Responsible, Like Saudi Arabia, Which Is The Center For Propaganda And Funding And So On For Radical Islamic Jihadism, Well You Can't Touch Them Because Of Business Interests, Also They Have Oil And So On And So Forth.

Islamic

Oil

Arabia

The Us Is The Wrecking Machine That Is Destroying Everything. The World Is Hoping That China Will Somehow Come To The Rescue.

Machines

World

Destroying

In Mexico, A Poor Country, Higher Education Is Of Quite Good Quality -- And Is Free. Ten Years Ago The Government Tried To Impose Small Fees. There Was A National Student Strike And The Government Backed Down. High Tuition Is Not An Economic Necessity, As Is Easy To Show, But A Debt Trap Is A Good Technique Of Indoctrination And Control. And Resisting This Makes Good Sense.

Country

Government

Years

The Sanders Campaign, However, Broke Dramatically With Over A Century Of U.s. Political History. Extensive Political Science Research, Notably The Work Of Thomas Ferguson, Has Shown Convincingly That Elections Are Pretty Much Bought. For Example, Campaign Spending Alone Is A Remarkably Good Predictor Of Electoral Success, And Support Of Corporate Power And Private Wealth Is A Virtual Prerequisite Even For Participation In The Political Arena.

Support

Political

Election

As International Support For Obama's Decision To Attack Syria Has Collapsed, Along With The Credibility Of Government Claims, The Administration Has Fallen Back On A Standard Pretext For War Crimes When All Else Fails: The Credibility Of The Threats Of The Self-designated Policeman Of The World.

War

Government

Self

Academics Are Mostly Professionals, Involved In Their Work And Other Concerns Of Their Own, With No Particular Interest In The Workings Of The Ideological System.

Interest

Concern

Particular

The People I Find Most Impressive Are Generally Unknown At The Time Of Their Actions And Forgotten In History.

People

Action

Forgotten

Capitalism Would Self-destruct In No Time. So The Business Classes Have Always Demanded Strong, Straight Intervention To Protect The Society From The Destructive Effects Of Market Forces Because They Don't Want Everything Destroyed.

Strong

Self

Class

Hence, A Generative Grammar Must Be A System Of Rules That Can Iterate To Generate An Indefinitely Large Number Of Structures. This System Of Rules Can Be Analyzed Into The Three Major Components Of A Generative Grammar: The Syntactic, Phonological, And Semantic Components... The Syntactic Component Of A Grammar Must Specify, For Each Sentence, A Deep Structure That Determines Its Semantic Interpretation And A Surface Structure That Determines Its Phonetic Interpretation. The First Of These Is Interpreted By The Semantic Component; The Second, By The Phonological Component.

Numbers

Three

Firsts

The Country That Consistently Ranks Among The Highest In Educational Achievement Is Finland. A Rich Country, But Education Is Free. Germany, Education Is Free. France, Education Is Free.

Country

Educational

Rich Countries

The Truth Of The Matter Is That About 99 Percent Of Teaching Is Making The Students Feel Interestedin The Material. Then The Other 1 Percent Has To Do With Your Methods. And That's Not Just True Of Languages. It's True Of Every Subject.

Education

Teaching

Reading

There Are Historical Analogs, Which Are Not Exact, Of Course, But Are Close Enough To Be Worrisome. This Is A Whiff Of Early Nazi Germany. [adolf] Hitler Was Appealing To Groups With Similar Grievances, And Giving Them Crazy Answers, But At Least They Were Answers; These Groups Weren't Getting Them Anywhere Else. It Was The Jews And The Bolsheviks [that Were The Problem].

Crazy

Giving

Historical

Under Capitalism, We Can't Have Democracy By Definition. Capitalism Is A System In Which The Central Institutions Of Society Are In Principle Under Autocratic Control.

Democracy

Principles

Definitions

There Is No Reason To Accept The Doctrines Crafted To Sustain Power And Privilege, Or To Believe That We Are Constrained By Mysterious And Unknown Social Laws.

Believe

Law

Privilege

In Many Respects, The United States Is A Great Country. Freedom Of Speech Is Protected More Than In Any Other Country. It Is Also A Very Free Society.

Country

Freedom Of Speech

United States

Western Intellectuals, And Also Third World Intellectuals, Were Attracted To The Bolshevik Counter-revolution Because Leninism Is, After All, A Doctrine Which Says That The Radical Intelligentsia Have A Right To Take State Power And To Run Their Countries By Force, And That Is An Idea Which Is Rather Appealing To Intellectuals.

Running

Country

Ideas

In Turkey Also, For A Long Time, The Military Was The Decisive Force But In The Past 10 Years They Have Backed Off Somewhat And The Civilian Government Has Gained More Independence And Autonomy Even To Shake Up The Military Command. In Fact, It Even Arrested Several High-ranking Officers [for Interfering In Governmental Affairs]. Maybe Pakistan Can Move In A Similar Direction.

Military

Moving

Past

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

Unions

Said

Trotsky

It Is Only Natural To Expect That Guilds Will Tend To "protect Their Turf" And To Resist Challenge.

Challenges

Natural

Protect

I've Been Interested In The Reports On Rojava. It Seems Clear That There Are Positive Developments.

Development

Clear

Seems

With Regard To Nuclear Weapons, It's Kind Of Hard To Say. [donald Trump] Is Said Lots Of Things. The National Security Experts Are Terrified. But They're More Terrified By His Personality Than By His Statements.

Personality

Experts

Nuclear

Scientists Generally, Not Just Evolutionary Biologists, Don't Take Much For Granted.

Granted

Scientist

Biologist

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.

Issues

Mafia

Principles

Travel From What Is Called Pakistan To Afghanistan Has Been Made Increasingly Difficult And People Are Often Labelled Terrorists, Even Those Who Might Be Just Visiting Families.

People

Pakistan

Might

In Other Countries, Rich And Poor, Education Remains Substantially Free, With Educational Standards That Rank High In Global Comparisons. Even In The Us, Higher Education Was Almost Free During The Economically Successful Years Before The Neoliberal Reaction - And It Was A Much Poorer Country Then. The Gi Bill Provided Free Education To Huge Numbers Of People - White Men Overwhelmingly - Who Would Probably Never Have Gone To College, A Great Benefit To Them Personally And To The Whole Society. Tuition At Private Colleges Was Far Below Today's Exorbitant Costs.

Country

Educational

Successful

Anything That You Are Achieving That Undermines And Threatens Systems Of Power Will Meet With Oppression. Systems Of Power Don't Say 'thank You.' What's Important Is Not To Focus All Your Efforts On The Oppression, But To Continue The Constructive Work.

Focus

Effort

Important

Workers In Different Countries Can Easily Be Played Off Against Each Other.

Country

Different

Workers

If You Want Information About Sports, I Can Tell You Things From The 1940's, And The Couple Years That My Grandson Was Kind Of A Jock, But Nothing In Between.

Sports

Couple

Years

I Think That We Have Basically Nothing In The Field Of Human Behavior. Maybe That Is Just A Condition Of Temporary Ignorance. But It May Be That We Are Simply Not Intellectually Equipped To Develop Such A Theory.

Ignorance

Thinking

May

I Don't Encourage Socialists Or Anarchists To Accept Falsehoods, In Particular, To See Revolutionary Potential Where There Is None.

Revolutionary

Anarchist

Accepting

There's Very Little Dislike Of Americans In The World, Shown By Repeated Polls, And The Dissatisfaction - That Is, The Hatred And The Anger - They Come From Acceptance Of American Values, Not A Rejection Of Them, And Recognition That They're Rejected By The U.s. Government And By U.s. Elites, Which Does Lead To Hatred And Anger.

Acceptance

Government

Rejection

Isn't It Interesting That Eating A Banana Is Somehow Comical.

Interesting

Bananas

Eating

The Threat Of China Is Not Military. The Threat Of China Is They Can't Be Intimidated. Europe You Can Intimidate. When The Us Tries To Get People To Stop Investing In Iran, European Companies Pull Out, China Disregards It. You Look At History And Understand Why - They've Been Around For 4,000 Years, They Have Contempt For The Barbarians, They Just Don't Give A Damn.

Military

Iran

Years

My Suspicion Is That Those Who Seem Oblivious To Suffering, Whether It Is Nearby Or In Remote Corners, Are For The Most Part Unaware, Perhaps Blinded By Doctrine And Ideology. For Them, The Answer Is To Develop A Critical Attitude Toward Articles Of Faith, Secular Or Religious; To Encourage Their Capacity To Question, To Explore, To View The World From The Standpoint Of Others. And Direct Exposure Is Never Very Far Away, Wherever We Live - Perhaps The Homeless Person Huddling In The Cold Or Asking For A Few Pennies For Food, Or All Too Many More.

Religious

Attitude

Suffering

There's An Interesting Book By The Former Brazilian Ambassador Celso Amorim. In 2010, He Initiated An Effort Along With Turkey To Settle The Whole Iran Issue. Nobody Outside Of The United States Takes It To Be Much Of An Issue. They Made A Deal With Iran For Iran To Essentially Give Away Its Low Enriched Uranium To Turkey For Storage, And In Return, The Western Powers. It Was Immediately Scratched By Barack Obama And Hillary Clinton. And The Main Reason Was They Didn't Want Anybody Else To Be Involved In It. We Were Supposed To Run Things, But We Didn't Say That.

Running

Book

Giving

Language Is A Process Of Free Creation; Its Laws And Principles Are Fixed, But The Manner In Which The Principles Of Generation Are Used Is Free And Infinitely Varied. Even The Interpretation And Use Of Words Involves A Process Of Free Creation.

Language Words

Law

Generations

My Feeling Is That A Human Being Or Any Complex Organism Has A System Of Cognitive Structures That Develop Much In The Way The Physical Organs Of The Body Develop. That Is, In Their Fundamental Character They Are Innate; Their Basic Form Is Determined By The Genetic Structure Of The Organism. Of Course, They Grow Under Particular Environmental Conditions, Assuming A Specific Form That Admits Of Some Variation. Much Of What Is Distinctive Among Human Beings Is A Specific Manner In Which A Variety Of Shared Cognitive Structures Develop.

Character

Feelings

Environmental

You Might Recall, Perhaps, That We Were Probably The Only Commentators To Rely On The Most Knowledgeable Source, State Department Intelligence.

War

Might

States

Hume's Paradox Does Hold: Power Is In The Hands Of The Governed. If They Refuse To Accept It, You're In Trouble, No Matter How Many Guns You Have.

Gun

Hands

Doe

America Is A Very Fundamentalist Society. It's Like Iran In The Degree Of Fanatic Religious Commitment.

Religious

Commitment

Iran

That's Unfortunately Common - To Blame Immigrants, To Blame The African-americans Who Are Being Helped By Federal Programs, To Blame Anyone Available, To Direct Attention Away From The Roots Of The Distress Which You're Suffering. This Combines With Xenophobia, White Supremacy, Racism, Misogyny, And Other Quite Unpleasant Phenomena Which Are Far From Being Eradicated. All Of This Makes For A Pretty Dangerous Brew. But Economic Issues Are Right In The Center Of It. And You Can See This In The Fact That So Many Former Obama Voters Now Voted For Trump, Or Just Didn't Bother Voting.

Xenophobia

Roots

White

I Hope That A Move Toward Clemency With Judge Afiuni Would Be A Step Towards The Importance Of Maintaining A Properly Functioning Justice System.

Moving

Justice

Judging

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.

War

Cities

Occupation

The Indoctrination Is So Deep That Educated People Think They’re Being Objective.

Thinking

People

Indoctrination

Religion Is Based On The Idea That God Is An Imbecile.

Ideas

Imbeciles

Some May Remember, If You Have Good Memories, That There Used To Be A Concept In Anglo-american Law Called A Presumption Of Innocence, Innocent Until Proven Guilty In A Court Of Law. Now That's So Deep In History That There's No Point Even Bringing It Up, But It Did Once Exist.

Memories

Law

Presumption Of Innocence

Where Are The Drug Cartels Getting Their Weapons? They Are Being Provided By The United States. Cut Off That Flow Of Arms.

Cutting

Drug Cartels

United States

You Never Need An Argument Against The Use Of Violence, You Need An Argument For It.

Peace

War

Needs

There Are All The Activist Groups On Every Imaginable Topic - Solidarity Groups, Environmental And Feminist Groups - Sectors Of These Movements Do Very Valuable Work.

Feminist

Environmental

Groups

Syria Is Descending Into Suicide. It's A Horror Story And Getting Worse And Worse. There's No Bright Spot On The Horizon. What Will Probably Happen, If This Continues, Is That Syria Will Be Partitioned Into Probably Three Regions; A Kurdish Region - Which Is Already Forming - That Could Pull Out And Join In Some Fashion The Semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, Maybe With Some Kind Of Deal With Turkey.

Suicide

Fashion

Kind

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.

New York

Order

Miracle

The Respected Intellectuals Are Those Who Conform And Serve Power Interests.

Interest

Conform

The More There Is A Need To Talk About The Ideals Of Democracy, The Less Democratic The System Usually Is.

Democracy

Needs

Democratic

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.

Country

Real

Mutual Support

There Are Real Possibilities Of Reaching Many Of The Trump Voters: Many Of Them In Fact Voted For Obama, Believing His Rhetoric About "change," And Upon Realizing That They Were Deluded, Have Turned To Trump. And Will Find That They Are Again Deluded. That's An Opportunity That Can Be Grasped, By Organizing, Education, Activism Right Now.

Real

Believe

Opportunity

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

Inspirational

Simple

Discovery

For Us, We Are All Very Different, Our Languages Are Very Different, And Our Societies Are Very Different. But If We Could Extract Ourselves From Our Point Of View And Sort Of Look Down At Human Life The Way A Biologist Looks At Other Organisms, I Think We Could See It A Different Way.

Thinking

Views

Different

U.s. Domestic Drug Policy Does Not Carry Out Its Stated Goals, And Policymakers Are Well Aware Of That. If It Isn't About Reducing Substance Abuse, What Is It About? It Is Reasonably Clear, Both From Current Actions And The Historical Record, That Substances Tend To Be Criminalized When They Are Associated With The So-called Dangerous Classes, That The Criminalization Of Certain Substances Is A Technique Of Social Control.

Class

Goal

Historical

In Fact, Clinton-era Publications Of The Us Space Command Describe Control Over Space As A Parallel To Control Over The Oceans A Century Ago. Then, Countries Built Navies To Protect And Enhance Their Power In Commercial And Strategic Interests. Today, The Militarization Of Space Is Intended To Protect Us Investments And Commercial Interest And Us Hegemony Around The World.

Country

Ocean

Space

Radical Islamist Extremists Surely Hope That An Attack On Iraq Will Kill Many People And Destroy Much Of The Country, Providing Recruits For Terrorist Actions.

Country

Iraq

People

So Yes In Theory There Is A Kind Of A Formal Democracy And In Many Ways These Were Achievements And An Improvement Over The Feudal System And More Advanced Than Anything Else In The World, But Nothing That We Ought To Call Democracy.

Achievement

Democracy

Feudal System

The Us And Israel Have Demanded Further That Palestinians Not Only Recognize Israel's Rights As A State In The International System, But That They Also Recognize Israel's Abstract Right To Exist, A Concept That Has No Place In International Law Or Diplomacy, And A Right Claimed By No One. In Effect, The Us And Israel Are Demanding That Palestinians . . . Formally Accept The Legitimacy Of Their Expulsion From Their Own Land. They Cannot Be Expected To Accept That, Just As Mexico Does Not Grant The Us The Right To Exist On Half Of Mexico's Territory, Gained By Conquest.

Law

Land

Rights

It’s Pretty Ironic That The So-called ‘least Advanced’ People Are The Ones Taking The Lead In Trying To Protect All Of Us, While The Richest And Most Powerful Among Us Are The Ones Who Are Trying To Drive The Society To Destruction.

Powerful

People

Ironic

As Far As Dsa Is Concerned, I'm Perfectly Happy To Be Associated With It While Disagreeing With A Large Part Of The Leadership.

Concerned

Its True That Contemporary Technology Permits Decentralization, It Also Permits Centralization. It Depends On How You Use The Technology.

Technology

Use

Permit

The Point Of Advertising Is To Destroy Markets.

Advertising

I Grew Up In That, When I Was A Kid. My Friends And I Used To Play Cowboys And Indians. We Were Cowboys Killing The Indians, Following The Wild West Stories. All Of This Combined Into A Very Strange Culture, Which Is Frightened.

Kids

Cowboy

Play

The "end Of History" Has Been Proclaimed Many Times, Always Falsely.

Ends

Has Beens

Democracy, In The United States Rhetoric Refers To A System Of Governance In Which Elite Elements Based In The Business Community Control The State By Virtue Of Their Dominance Of The Private Society, While The Population Observes Quietly. So Understood, Democracy Is A System Of Elite Decision And Public Ratification, As In The United States Itself. Correspondingly, Popular Involvement In The Formation Of Public Policy Is Considered A Serious Threat. It Is Not A Step Towards Democracy; Rather It Constitutes A 'crisis Of Democracy' That Must Be Overcome.

Money

Community

Decision

The Washington Leadership Has Put Aside Non-proliferation Programmes And Devoted Its Energies And Resources To Driving The Country To War By Extraordinary Deceit, Then Trying To Manage The Catastrophe It Created In Iraq.

Country

War

Iraq

I Don't Feel That There Is Anything Deep In The Political Culture That Prevents "educating The Masses." I'm Old Enough To Recall Vividly The High Level Of Culture, General And Political, Among First-generation Working People During The Great Depression. Workers' Education Was Lively And Effective, Union-based - Mostly The Vigorous Rising Labor Movement, Reviving From The Ashes Of The 1920s. I've Often Seen Independent And Impressive Initiatives In Working-class And Poor And Deprived Communities Today.

Independent

People

Community

Growing Up In The Place I Did I Never Was Aware Of Any Other Option But To Question Everything.

Growing Up

Growing

You Ought To Teach Kids That Elections Take Place But That's Not Politics. If You Want To Know How Legislation Is Made It Doesn't Come From Elections.

Kids

Want

Election

The Target Of Preventive War Must Have Several Characteristics. It Must Be Virtually Defenceless; It Must Be Important Enough To Be Worth The Trouble; It Must Be Possible To Portray It As The Ultimate Evil And An Imminent Threat To Our Survival.

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.

Technology

Apples

People

'reform' Is A Word You Always Aughta' Watch Out For. 'reform' Is A Change That You're Supposed To Like. And Watch It - As Soon As You Hear The Word 'reform', You Should Reach For Your Wallet And See Who's Lifting It.

Reform

Watches

Politician

During The 1960s, Large Groups Of People Who Are Normally Passive And Apathetic Began To Try To Enter The Political Arena To Press Their Demands.... The Naive Might Call That Democracy, But That's Because They Don't Understand. The Sophisticated Understand That That's The Crisis Of Democracy.

People

Political

Democracy

The Us And Europe Are Committing Suicide In Different Ways. In Europe It's Austerity In The Midst Of Recession And That's Guaranteed To Be A Disaster. There's Some Resistance To That Now. In The Us, It's Essentially Off-shoring Production And Financialization And Getting Rid Of Superfluous Population Through Incarceration.

Suicide

Europe

Austerity

A Lot Of The People Involved In The Media Are Very Serious, Honest People, And They Will Tell You, And I Think They Are Right, That They Are Not Being Forced To Write Anything... What They Don't Tell You, And Are Maybe Unaware Of, Is That They Are Allowed To Write Freely Because Their Beliefs Conform To The... Standard Doctrinal System, And Then, Yes, They Are Allowed To Write Freely And Are Not Coerced.

Writing

Thinking

Media

In Many Respects, The United States Is The Freest Country In The World. I Don't Just Mean In Terms Of Limits On State Coercion, Though That's True Too, But Also In Terms Of Individual Relations. The United States Comes Closer To Classlessness In Terms Of Interpersonal Relations Than Virtually Any Society.

Country

Mean

United States

I Think The Activism Of The 1960s Had A Very Definite Civilizing Effect On The Whole Society In All Kinds Of Ways. So Lots Of Things That By Now Are Almost Taken For Granted Were Heretical In The 1960s. We Had Anti-sodomy Laws Until Not Many Years Ago.

Taken

Thinking

Years

Hypocrites Are Those Who Apply To Others The Standards That They Refuse To Accept For Themselves.

Hypocrite

Media

Politics

Whoever Sets The Agenda Controls The Outcome Of The Debate

Agendas

Outcomes

Debate

No Liberal Newspaper Ever Talked About The Invasion Of Vietnam; They Talked About The Defense Of Vietnam. And Then They Were Saying, "well, It's Not Going Well." Ok, That Make Them Liberal. It's Like, It's If We Were To Say, That Going Back To, Say, Nazi Germany, That Hitler's General Staff Was Liberal After Stalingrad Because They Were Criticizing His Tactics: "it Was A Mistake To Fight A Two Front War, We Should've Knocked Off Englad First," Or Something.

War

Mistake

Fighting

As Soon As Questions Of Will Or Decision Or Reason Or Choice Of Action Arise, Human Science Is At A Loss.

Loss

Choices

Decision

Now Take A Look At The Way The Drug War Is Conducted Over The Past 40 Years. It Goes Back Farther, But Start From 40 Years Ago: There's Very Little Spent On Prevention And Treatment. There's A Lot On Policing, A Ton Of Stuff On Border Control And A Lot On Out-of-country Operations. And The Effect On The Availability Of Drugs Is Almost Undetectable; Drug Prices Don't Change On Measures Of Availability. So There Are Two Possibilities: Either Those Conducting The Drug War Are Lunatics, Or They Have Another Purpose.

Country

War

Past

There's A Strange Myth Of Anglo-saxonism. When The University Of Virginia Was Founded By Thomas Jefferson, For Example, Its Law School Offered The Study Of "anglo-saxon Law." And That Myth Of Anglo-saxonism Carries Right Over Into The Early Twentieth Century.

School

Virginia

Law

Nobody Is Going To Pour Truth Into Your Brain. It's Something You Have To Find Out For Yourself.

Truth

Brain

That's A Point That Dan Ellsberg Has Made For Years. He Said It's Kind Of Like If You And I Go Into A Grocery Store To Rob It, And I Have A Gun. The Guy May Give You The Money In The Cash Register. I'm Using The Gun Even If I Don't Shoot. Well That's Nuclear Weapons - Essential To Post-war Deterrence - They Cast A Shadow Over Everything.

War

Gun

Years

I Am Opposed To The Accumulation Of Executive Power Anywhere.

Executive Power

Accumulation

Executives

Cuba Forces In Angola Gave A Real Shot In The Arm To The Liberation Movements, And It Also Was A Lesson To The White South Africans That The End Is Coming. They Can't Just Hope To Subdue The Continent On Racist Grounds.

Real

White

Cuba

The [ronald] Reagan Administration Told The Business World That They Were Not Going To Enforce The Labor Laws.

Law

World

Administration

There Could Be An Independent Labor-based Party, Which Might Over Time Become An Important Force The Way The Labor Party Did In England. To All Of These Things There Are Plenty Of Barriers, In The Culture And In The Social And Political Institutions, The Concentration Of Economic Power. But These Are Not Insuperable Barriers, I Think. They Can Be Overcome. And It Is Urgent That This Be Done, Because There Are Really Incredible Problems That Are Simply Not Being Addressed.

Party

Independent

Thinking

Now, The Libertarian Party, Is A *capitalist* Party. It's In Favor Of What *i* Would Regard A *particular Form* Of Authoritarian Control. Namely, The Kind That Comes Through Private Ownership And Control, Which Is An *extremely* Rigid System Of Domination - People Have To... People Can Survive, By Renting Themselves To It, And Basically In No Other Way... I Do Disagree With Them *very* Sharply, And I Think That They Are Not..understanding The *fundamental* Doctrine, That You Should Be Free From Domination And Control, Including The Control Of The Manager And The Owner.

Party

Thinking

People

[mikhail] Gorbachev Said That He Would Agree To The Unification Of Germany, And Even Adherence Of Germany To Nato, Which Was Quite A Concession, If Nato Didn't Move To East Germany. And [george] Bush And [james] Baker Promised Verbally, That's Critical, Verbally That Nato Would Not Expand "one Inch To The East," Which Meant East Germany. Nobody Was Talking About Anything Farther At The Time. They Would Not Expand One Inch To The East. Now That Was A Verbal Promise. It Was Never Written. Nato Immediately Expanded To East Germany.

Moving

East Germany

Talking

The United States Is Absolutely The Most Dangerous Country In The World.

Country

United States

World

Kaplan Can't Understand Trivialities. The Triviality Here Is That Nobody Except The Ultra Right-wing Jingoists Like Kaplan Are Comparing Atrocities By Various Countries. What Honest People Are Saying Seems To Be Incomprehensible: That We Should Keep To The Elementary Moral Level Of The Gospels. We Should Pay Attention To Our Own Crimes And Stop Committing Them. This Would Be True Even If We Were Killing One Person, Ok? And It's Even More True When We're Killing Millions Of People.

Country

Wings

People

The Federal Reserve, Has An Official Commitment To Two Different Policies. One Is To Prevent Inflation From Getting Too High. The Second Is To Maintain High Employment... The European Central Bank Has Only The First. It Has No Commitment To Keep Employment Up.

Commitment

Two

Different

There Is Nothing More Mysterious About The Concept Human Nature Than About The Concept Bee Or Chicken Nature, At Least For Those Who Regard Humans As Creatures In The Biological World.

World

Bees

Mysterious

...dissent, Protest, Presures Of A Wide Variety That Escape Elite Control Can Modify The Calculus Of Costs Of Planners, And Offer A Slight Hope That Washington Can Be Compelled To Permit At Least Some Steps Towards "justice, Freedom And Democracy" Within Its Domains.

Justice

Democracy

Cost

The Second World War Had Really Devastating Effects For Much Of Europe. It Really Didn't Take Them Very Long To Reconstruct State Capitalist Democracies Because It Was In People's Heads. There Were Other Parts Of The World That Were Pretty Much Devastated And They Couldn't Do It; They Didn't Have The Conceptions In Their Mind. A Lot Of It Is Human Consciousness.

War

Europe

Long

We Don't Live In Tyrannies, You Know, The King Doesn't Decide What's Legitimate, And There's Much More Freedom Than There Was In The Past.

Kings

Past

Tyranny

Governments Don't Control People Like They Used To.

Government

People

Used

There Are Questions As To Whether It Should Even Exist. Who Should Corporations Be Responsive To, The Management Of A Corporation? Theoretically They Are Responsive To The Shareholders, But I Why Not To The So - Called Stakeholders, The Work Force And The Community? Nothing In Economic Theory Opposes That. Those Are Social And Political Decisions.

Community

Decision

Political

The One State/two State Debate Is Irrelevant As Israel And The Us Consolidate Greater Israel.

Israel

Two

Debate

If You Don't Like What Someone Has To Say, Argue With Them.

Arguing

Ifs

If You Look Back To The Anti-intervention Movements, What Were They? Let's Take The Vietnam War - The Biggest Crime Since The Second World War. You Couldn't Be Opposed To The War For Years. The Mainstream Liberal Intellectuals Were Enthusiastically In Support Of The War. In Boston, A Liberal City Where I Was, We Literally Couldn't Have A Public Demonstration Without It Being Violently Broken Up, With The Liberal Press Applauding, Until Late 1966.

War

Boston

Years

My Linguistics Is Pretty Theoretical.

Linguistics

Theoretical

If You Accept The Institutional Lunacy, Then The Policies Are Rational.

Accepting

Rational

Policy

A Drone Strike Is A Terror Weapon, We Don't Talk About It That Way. It Is; Just Imagine You Are Walking Down The Street And You Don't Know Whether In 5 Minutes There Is Going To Be An Explosion Across The Street From Some Place Up In The Sky That You Can't See. Somebody Will Be Killed, And Whoever Is Around Will Be Killed, Maybe You'll Be Injured If You're There. That Is A Terror Weapon. It Terrorizes Villages, Regions, Huge Areas. It's The Most Massive Terror Campaign Going On By A Long Shot.

Sky

Long

Drones

We Could Not Bring Democracy To South Vietnam At A Cost That We Were Willing To Accept. So It Was A Disaster. That' Is The Left Extreme.

Democracy

Cost

Vietnam

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.

Engineering

America

Construction

There's An Interesting Book Called The Fugu Plan, Written By Marvin Tokayer And Mary Swartz, Which Describes The Circumstances When European Jews Came To Japan, A Semi-feudal Society.

Book

Japan

Interesting

The Dynamics Of The Taliban Now Appear To Be Very Different And Complex, In Both Afghanistan And Pakistan, As They Attack Governments And Mainstream Parties.

Party

Government

Different

It’s Not Going To Be Easy To Proceed. There Are Going To Be Barriers, Difficulties, Hardships, Failures - It’s Inevitable. But Unless The Spirit Of The Last Year, Here And Elsewhere In The Country And Around The Globe, Unless That Continues To Grow And Becomes A Major Force In The Social And Political World, The Chances For A Decent Future Are Not Very High.

Country

Political

Hardship

I Was In Mexico City. It's A Very Pleasant City In Many Ways. It's Vibrant, Lively, Pretty Exciting Society, But Also Depressing In Other Ways, And Sometimes Almost Hopeless, You Know. So It's A Combination Of Vibrancy And, I Wouldn't Say Despair, But Hopelessness, You Know. Doesn't Have To Be, But It Is. I Mean, There Is Almost No Economy.

Depressing

Mean

Cities

In Fact, It's Doing It All Over The World. Obama, First Of All, Is Running The Biggest Terrorist Operation That Exists, Maybe In History. The Drone Assassination Campaigns, Which Are Just Part Of It. All Of These Operations, They Are Terror Operations.

Running

Drones

Campaigns

There Are Two Problems For Our Species' Survival - Nuclear War And Environmental Catastrophe - And We're Hurtling Towards Them. Knowingly.

War

Two

Survival

Naming Our Murder Weapons After Victims Of Our Crimes: Apache, Tomahawk... It's As If The Luftwaffe Were To Call Its Fighter Planes 'jew' And 'gypsy.'

Weapons

Gypsy

Fighter

On Nuclear War, Actions In Syria And At The Russian Border Raise Very Serious Threats Of Confrontation That Might Trigger War, An Unthinkable Prospect. Furthermore, Trump's Pursuit Of Obama's Programs Of Modernization Of The Nuclear Forces Poses Extraordinary Dangers. As We Have Recently Learned, The Modernized U.s. Nuclear Force Is Seriously Fraying The Slender Thread On Which Survival Is Suspended.

War

Survival

Serious

The Elections Are Run By The Same Guys Who Sell Toothpaste. They Show You An Image Of A Sports Hero, Or A Sexy Model, Or A Car Going Up A Sheer Cliff Or Something, Which Has Nothing To Do With The Commodity, But It's Intended To Delude You Into Picking This One Rather Than Another One.

Sports

Sexy

Running

Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.

2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.

2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.

2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.

3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.

3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.

3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.

4. Proper Usage of Quotes

4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.

4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.

4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

5. Common Mistakes to Avoid

5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.

5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.

5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.

6. Quotes in Different Contexts

6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.

6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.

6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.

7. Punctuation and Formatting

Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:

Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.

Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.

Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.

8. Ethical Considerations

Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes

Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.

Conclusion

Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.

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