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.

-Noam Chomsky

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Hamas Must Agree To

Noam Chomsky

Topic

Past

Israel

Agreement

More From Noam Chomsky

Of Course, We [ With Edward Herman] Have A Purpose: Namely, To Encourage Readers To Undertake What Might Be Called "a Course In Intellectual Self-defense," And To Suggest Ways To Proceed; In Other Words, To Help People Undermine The Dedicated Efforts To "manufacture Consent" And To Turn Them Into Passive Objects Rather Than Agents Who Control Their Own Fate.

Fate

Self

People

The Educational System Is Pretty Much Geared To Passing The Next Exam. You're Educated To Pass Tests And Not To Understand.

Educational

Tests

Israel Uses Sophisticated Attack Jets And Naval Vessels To Bomb Densely-crowded Refugee Camps, Schools, Apartment Blocks, Mosques, And Slums To Attack A Population That Has No Air Force, No Air Defense, No Navy, No Heavy Weapons, No Artillery Units, No Mechanized Armor, No Command In Control, No Army And Calls It A War.

War

Block

Islamic

The Atrocities In Cambodia Are A Direct And Understandable Response To The Violence Of The Imperial System.

War

Atrocities

Violence

[for Business After Wwii ] Democracy Means Getting People To Regard Government As An Alien Force That's Robbing Them And Oppressing Them, Not As Their Government. In A Democracy It Would Be Your Government.

Mean

Government

People

I Would Feel No Hesitation In Saying That It Is The Responsibility Of A Decent Human Being To Give Assistance To A Child Who Is Being Attacked By A Rabid Dog, But I Would Not Intend This To Imply That In All Imaginable Circumstances One Must, Necessarily, Act In Accordance With This General Responsibility.

Dog

Children

Responsibility

Government Grew Under [ronald] Reagan. He Was The Strongest Opponent Of Free Markets In The Post-war History Among Presidents. But It Doesn't Matter What The Reality Is; They Concocted An Image That You Worship.

War

Reality

Government

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

You Also Have To Get Beyond That To Dismantle The System Of Production For Profit Rather Than Production For Use. That Means Dismantling At Least Large Parts Of Market Systems.

Mean

Use

Profit

...the Mass Media. What Are They? They're Huge Corporations, Massive Corporations, Linked Up With Even Bigger Corporations. They Sell Audiences To Other Businesses, Namely Advertisers. So When You Turn On The Television Set, Cbs Doesn't Make Any Money. They Make Money From The Advertisers. You're The Product That They're Selling, And The Same Is True Of The Daily Newspaper. They're Huge Corporations, Selling Audiences, Potential Consumers, To Other Businesses, All Linked Up Closely To The Government, Especially The Big Media. What Picture Of The World Do You Expect Them To Present?

Government

Media

Political

Anarcho-syndic Alism Took For Granted That Working People Ought To Control Their Own Work, Its Conditions, The Enterprises In Which They Work, Along With Communities, So They Should Be Associated With One Another In Free Associations, And Democracy Of That Kind Should Be The Foundational Elements Of A More General Free Society.

People

Community

Democracy

It's True That Many Say That [they] Object To The Idea Of "human Nature," But It's Not Clear What That Is Supposed To Mean. Are We Different From Ants?

Mean

Ideas

Different

In The Mid To Late Nineteenth Century, The Gun Manufacturers Recognized That They Had A Limited Market. Remember That This Is A Capitalist Society, You've Got To Expand Your Market. They Were Selling Guns To The Military. That's A Pretty Limited Market. What About All The Rest Of The People? So What Started Was All Kinds Of Fantastic Stories About Wyatt Earp And The Gunmen And The Wild West, How Exciting It Was To Have These Guys With Guns Defending Themselves Against All Sorts Of Things.

Military

Gun

People

As Far As U.s. Intelligence Knows, Iran Is Developing Nuclear Capacities, But They Don't Know If They Are Trying To Develop Nuclear Weapons Or Not. Chances Are They're Developing What's Called 'nuclear Capability,' Which Many States Have. That Is The Ability To Have Nuclear Weapons If They Decide To Do It. That's Not A Crime.

Iran

Trying

Nuclear

In 1962, War Was Avoided By Khrushchev's Willingness To Accept Kennedy's Hegemonic Demands.

War

Demand

Accepting

George Kennan Is Another Extreme Case. He Was The American Consul In Berlin Until The War Between Germany And The United States Broke Out In December 1941. And Until Then He Was Writing Pretty Supportive Statements Back Stressing That We Shouldn't Be So Hard On The Nazis If They Were Doing Something We Didn't Agree With - Basically Repeating The Idea That They Were People We Could Do Business With.

War

Stress

Writing

The Two Tendencies Are Antithetical In Significant Respects. These Are Distinctions That Should Be Kept In Mind, However One Feels That The Problems And Dilemmas That Constantly Arise Should Be Resolved.

Two

Mind

Problem

In The 1960s, There Was A Point, 1968, '69, When There Was A Very Strong Antiwar Movement Against The War In Vietnam. But It's Worth Remembering That The War In Vietnam Started - An Outright War Started In 1962.

Strong

War

Vietnam

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

Colombia Is Potentially A Very Wealthy Country. It Has Tremendous Resources, But Its Wealth Is Highly Concentrated. Most Of The Population Lives In Misery, Which Has Led To Violent Confrontation Throughout The Century.

Country

Population

Misery

Silicon Valley Benefits, As All Of Industry, From Highly Protectionist Policy - Patent Policies And Things Like That - Which Come Out Of The Government.

Government

Valleys

Benefits

That Was The Reason Why Very Few People Fleeing The Rise Of Fascism In Europe, Especially In Germany, Could Get To The United States. And There Were Famous Incidents Like With The Ms Saint Louis, Which Brought A Lot Of Immigrants, Mostly Jewish, From Europe. It Reached Cuba, With People Expecting To Be Admitted To The United States From There. But The Administration Of Franklin D. Roosevelt Wouldn't Allow Them In And They Had To Go Back To Europe Where Many Of Them Died In Concentration Camps.

Europe

People

Fleeing

The Human Species Is Now At A Point Where It Has To Make Choices That Are Going To Determine Whether Decent Survival Is Even Possible. Environmental Catastrophe, Including War, Maybe Pandemics, These Are Very Serious Issues And They Can't Be Addressed Within The Current Structure Of Institutions. That's Almost Given. There Have To Be Real Significant Changes, And Only Really Effective Popular Mass-based Movements Can Introduce And Carry Forward Such Initiatives, As Indeed Did Happen During The 1930s.

Real

War

Choices

I Didn't Pay My Taxes For Years.

Years

Pay

Taxes

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

[isaiah] Berlin's Observation Is Accurate Enough, And Applies At Home As Well, And Even More Harshly For The Reasons Already Mentioned: The Apparatchiks And Commissars Could At Least Plead Fear In Extenuation.

Home

Berlin

Enough

Boards Of Directors Are Allowed To Work Together, So Are Banks And Investors And Corporations In Alliances With One Another And With Powerful States. That’s Just Fine. It’s Just The Poor Who Aren’t Supposed To Cooperate.

Powerful

Working Together

Directors

Ever Since I've Had Any Political Awareness, I've Felt Either Alone Or Part Of A Tiny Minority.

Political

Minorities

Tiny

Nothing In These Abstract Economic Models Actually Works In The Real World. It Doesn't Matter How Many Footnotes They Put In, Or How Many Ways They Tinker Around The Edges. The Whole Enterprise Is Totally Rotten At The Core: It Has No Relation To Reality.

Real

Economic Models

Rotten

I Try To Encourage People To Think For Themselves, To Question Standard Assumptions... Don't Take Assumptions For Granted. Begin By Taking A Skeptical Attitude Toward Anything That Is Conventional Wisdom. Make It Justify Itself. It Usually Can't. Be Willing To Ask Questions About What Is Taken For Granted. Try To Think Things Through For Yourself.

Wisdom

Attitude

Taken

If You Listen To The Talk Shows, Which Are Rabid Right-wing, And Very Interesting, An Important Fact About The United States, They Reach A Huge Audience. And They're Very Uniform. So Right Wing, I Don't Think You Can Even Find An Analog In Your, But They Reach A Mass Audience, And Their View Is That The Corporations Are Liberal. Their Appeal To The Population Is, "the Country Is Run By Liberals, They Own The Corporations, They Run The Government, They Own The Media, And They Don't Care About Us Ordinary People."

Running

Country

Thinking

The Us Does Not Observe The Free-trade Principles. Those Are For The Weak. So Agribusiness Is Highly Subsidized And Pours Product Into Mexico And Drives Out Mexican Farmers. Maybe They Have To Go Into The Cities, And They Don't Have Jobs To Support Them, So They Flee Across The Border.

Jobs

Cities

Mexican

To Use The Terms That Are Reserved For Official Enemies, It Is The Commissars And Apparatchiks, Not The Dissidents, Who Are Respected And Privileged Within Their Own Societies.

Enemy

Use

Term

As Long As Each Individual Is Facing The Television Tube Alone, Formal Freedom Poses No Threat To Privilege

Long

Television

Privilege

Syria Is Bad Enough, It's A Pretty Terrible Atrocity. But There Are Much Worse Ones In The World. So For Example, The Worst Atrocities In The Past Decade Have Been In The Congo, The Eastern Congo, Where Maybe 5 Million People Have Been Killed.

Past

People

Atrocities

One Of The Problems Of Organizing In The North, In The Rich Countries, Is That People Tend To Think - Even The Activists - That Instant Gratification Is Required. You Constantly Hear: 'look I Went To A Demonstration, And We Didn't Stop The War So What's The Use Of Doing It Again?'

Country

War

Thinking

If We Understood, As We Do Not, The Physical Bases For Intellectual Structures, I Have Little Doubt That We Would Find Structures In The Brain For Social Interactions, Or Language, Or Analysis Of Personality - A Whole Variety Of Systems Developed On The Basis Of A Specific Biological Endowment.

Personality

Doubt

Brain

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.

Running

Ideas

Ignorant

The Republican Party Has Pretty Much Abandoned Any Pretense Of Being A Traditional Political Party. It's In Lockstep Obedience To The Very Rich, The Super Rich And The Corporate Sector. They Can't Get Votes That Way So They Have To Mobilize A Different Constituency. It's Always Been There, But It's Rarely Been Mobilized Politically. They Call It The Religious Right, But Basically It's The Extreme Religious Population.

Religious

Party

Political

Three Quarters Of The American Population Literally Believe In Religious Miracles. The Numbers Who Believe In The Devil, In Resurrection, In God Doing This And That - It's Astonishing. These Numbers Aren't Duplicated Anywhere Else In The Industrial World. You'd Have To Maybe Go To Mosques In Iran Or Do A Poll Among Old Ladies In Sicily To Get Numbers Like This. Yet This Is The American Population.

Religious

Believe

Iran

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

Growing Up

Growing

There's A Split In The Us About How This [split] Will Be Resolved. The Main Point To Look At Is The Split Within The Republican Party. The Republican Establishment, And Wall Street, And The Bankers, And The Corporate Executives And So On, They Don't Want This. They Don't Want It At All. It's The Part Of The Base That Is Mobilized That Wants It.

Wall

Party

Bankers

To Summarize, Draft Resistance Can Make Use Of The Inegalitarian Nature Of American Society As A Technique For Increasing The Cost Of American Aggression, And It Threatens Values That Are Important To Those In A Decision-making Position.

Decision

Important

Technique

The Developing World Voice Can Be Amplified Enormously By Support From The Wealthy And The Privileged, Otherwise It's Very Likely To Be Marginalized.

Voice

Support

World

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

Years

Law

Defiance

I Did Not Say That Language As A Completed System Emerged In An Individual In An Instant. But I Cannot Think Of A Coherent Alternative To The Idea That Mutations Take Place In Individuals, Not Communities, So That Whatever Rewiring Of The Brain Yielded The Apparently Unique Properties Of Language, Specifically Recursive Generation Of Hierarchically Structured Expressions, Would Therefore Have Taken Place In An Individual, And Only Later Been Used Among Individuals Who Had Inherited This Capacity.

Taken

Unique

Thinking

After World War Ii There Were Many Jews Who Remained In Refugee Camps...president Harry F. Truman Called For The Harrison Commission To Investigate The Situation In The Camps And It Was A Pretty Gloomy Report. There Were Very Few Jews Admitted Into The United States.

War

President

United States

Put Yourself In The Position Of A Person, Sort Of An Ordinary American, "i'm A Hard-working, God-fearing Christian. I Take Care Of My Family, I Go To Church, I, You Know, Do Everything 'right'. And I'm Getting Shafted. For The Last Thirty Years, My Income Has Stagnated, My Working Hours Are Going Up, My Benefits Are Going Down. My Wife Has To Work Two [jobs] To, You Know, Put Food On The Table. The Children, God, There's No Care For The Children, The Schools Are Rotten, And So On. What Did I Do Wrong? I Did Everything You're Supposed To Do, But Something's Going Wrong To Me.

Christian

Jobs

Children

Thanh Hoa Itself Is A Rich Agricultural Province. Rice Fields, A Pattern Of Many Shades Of Green, Stretch Far Into The Distance Along The Road, Which Also Winds Through Foothills And The Fringes Of Heavy Jungle Where Tigers Are Said To Roam. The Vegetation, Wild Or Cultivated, Is Lush.

Distance

Wind

Patterns

A Woman Was The Property Of Her Father Or Her Husband And That Remained True Right Into The Twentieth Century. It Wasn't Until 1975 That Women Had A Guaranteed Right To Serve On Federal Juries.

Husband

Father

Century

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

Association

Internet

Weakening

Modern Science And Technology Can Relieve Men Of The Necessity For Specialized, Imbecile Labor. They May, In Principle, Provide The Basis For A Rational Social Order Based On Free Association And Democratic Control, If We Have The Will To Create It.

Technology

Men

Order

Industrial Production Of Meat Makes A Huge Contribution To Global Warming.

Meat

Global Warming

Contribution

... 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.

Media

Supportive

Analysis

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.

Thinking

Burden Of Proof

Often Can

In The Literal Sense, There Has Been No Relevant Evolution Since The Trek From Africa. But There Has Been Substantial Progress Towards Higher Standards Of Rights, Justice And Freedom - Along With All Too Many Illustrations Of How Remote Is The Goal Of A Decent Society.

Rights

Illustration

Justice

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

Hypocrite

Media

Politics

The Us Is A Business-run Huckster Society, And Its Primary Value Is Deceit.

Running

Deceit

Primaries

The Lessons Are, Unfortunately, That A Small Weak Country That Is Facing An Extremely Hostile And Very Violent Superpower Will Not Make Much Progress Unless There's A Strong Solidarity Movement Within The Superpower That Will Restrain Its Actions. With More Support Within The United States, I Think The Haitian Efforts Could Have Succeeded.

Country

Strong

Thinking

I Don't See Much Use In General Slogans. Sometimes It Is Worth Resisting Evil With Lesser Evil, Very Commonly In Fact.

Evil

Use

Facts

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

Let's Take Pravda In The 1980s. I Mean You Could Have Read Things In Pravda Saying That It Was A Stupid Error To Invade Afghanistan: "it Was A Dumb Thing To Do, We Have To Get Out, It's Costing Us Too Much." I Mean That U.s. Analog Of That Would Be "extreme Liberalism," And It Has Been Pretty Well Studied.

Stupid

Mean

Errors

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 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 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.

Years

Principles

Tactics

I Think The Christian Coalition Could Be Extremely Dangerous. We Should Always Be Concerned When Any Group Wants To Impose Their Doctrinal Concerns On All. To An Extent That's What They Are Trying To Do.

Christian

Thinking

Trying

George Washington Hated The Guerrillas. He Wanted To Imitate The British Red Coat Armies, Fighting As Gentlemen Are Supposed To Fight.

Fighting

Army

Gentleman

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.

Eye

Israel

Europe

Independence Of Mind, Enthusiasm, Dedication To The Field, And Willingness To Challenge And Question And To Explore New Direction. There Are Plenty Of People Like That, But Schools Tend To Discourage Those Characteristics.

School

Dedication

People

If You Care About Other People, You Might Try To Organize To Undermine Power And Authority. That's Not Going To Happen If You Care Only About Yourself.

People

Trying

Care

There Are Some Very General Ideas That People Can Keep In Mind; They're Kind Of Truisms. It's Only Worth Mentioning Them Because They're Always Denied.

Ideas

People

Mind

Selfish-gene Theory Tells Us Nothing About The Value Of Interacting Through Language.

Selfish

Language

Genes

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

Accepting

Rational

Policy

In The West, You Don't Get In Any Trouble If You Tell The Truth, But You Still Can't Do It. Not Only Can't You Tell The Truth, You Can't Think The Truth. It's Just So Deeply Embedded, Deeply Instilled, That Without Any Meaningful Coercion It Comes Out The Same Way It Does In A Totalitarian State.

Meaningful

Thinking

Doe

A Dramatic, Evocative, Thoughtful And Very Accessible Account Of One Of The Most Important Stories Of The Century - And One Of The Most Ominous, Unless Citizens Are Aroused To Action To Rein In Abusive State Power.

Thoughtful

Important

Citizens

The Invasion Of Iraq Was Simply A War Crime. Straight-out War Crime.

War

Iraq

Invasion

I'm Sorry To Say It Has Some Historical Analogs. It's Kind Of Reminiscent Of What Happened In Germany In The Late Weimar Years.

Sorry

Years

Historical

We [ With Edward Herman] Believe That The Empirical Evidence We Review There - And Elsewhere, In A Great Deal Of Joint And Separate Work - Lends Substantial Support To The Conclusions; Whether That Is True Is For Others To Judge.

Believe

Judging

Support

What Right Does The Us Have To Do Anything In Colombia? Does Colombia Have The Right To Bomb North Carolina? There Are More Colombians Dying From Tobacco Than Americans Dying From Heroin.

Dying

North Carolina

Doe

Radical Activists Can't Ignore The Fact That We Live In This World, Like It Or Not, And Have To Make Difficult Decisions About Which Paths Are The Best - Or Sometimes, The Least Harmful. There Are No Abstract Formulas. Have To Think Through Each Case On Its Own.

Thinking

Decision

World

I Don't See How One Can "believe In Organized Religion." What Does It Mean To Believe In An Organization? One Can Join It, Support It, Oppose It, Accept Its Doctrines Or Reject Them. There Are Many Kinds Of Organized Religion. People Associate Themselves With Some Of Them, Or Not, For All Sorts Of Reasons, Maybe Belief In Some Of Their Doctrines.

Believe

Mean

Organization

Credible Reports Came Through That Syria Had Used Chemical Weapons. Whether It's True Actually Is Still Open To Question, But It's Very Probably True. At That Point, What Was At Stake Was What Is Called Credibility. So If You Read The Political Actors, Political Leadership, Foreign Policy Commentary, They Constantly Point Out Accurately That Us Credibility Was At Stake, And We Have To Maintain Us Credibility. So Therefore Something Had To Be Done To Show You Can't Violate Our Orders.

Order

Political

Done

The Big Change, The Really Radical Change In Communication, Was In The Late 19th Century. The Shift From Sailing Ships To Telegraph Is Astronomical. Everything Since Then Has Been Small Increments, Including The Internet. So You Don't Have To Wait For A Letter To Get To England In Six Weeks, You Have Almost Instant Communication. That Was An Enormous Shift.

Communication

Waiting

Sailing

If Palestinian Authority Refuse To Join The Us-run Negotiations, Their Basis For Support Would Collapse. They Survive On Donations Essentially. Israel Has Made Sure That It's Not A Productive Economy.

Support

Donation

Economy

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.

Looks

Reason

Balkans

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.

Jobs

Law

Iraq

Public Opinion Can Be Influential, The Media Can Be Influential.

Media

Public Opinion

Opinion

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

If Some Small Storekeeper Somewhere Decides He's Not Going To Pay The Money, The Godfather Doesn't Let Him Get Away With It. The Money Doesn't Mean Anything To Him, But He Sends In His Goons To Beat Him To A Pulp. You Have To Establish Credibility, Otherwise Conformity To Your Orders Will Tend To Erode. International Affairs Runs In Much The Same Way.

Running

Mean

Order

I've Never Seen A Study, But My Sense Is That These Are People Who Feel Really Aggrieved. These People Think, "i've Done Everything Right All My Life, I'm A God-fearing Christian, I'm White, I'm Male, I've Worked Hard, And I Carry A Gun. I Do Everything I'm Supposed To Do. And I'm Getting Shafted." And In Fact They Are Getting Shafted. For 30 Years Their Wages Have Stagnated Or Declined, The Social Conditions Have Worsened, The Children Are Going Crazy, There Are No Schools, There's Nothing, So Somebody Must Be Doing Something To Them, And They Want To Know Who It Is.

Christian

Children

Crazy

Looking At Polls Of Arab Public Opinion, You Look At Popular Figures, The Most Popular Figure Is The Prime Minister Of Turkey, Erdogan, And Then It Goes Down The List. You Get Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, You Don't Get Obama, Or In Fact Any Western Leader. The Public Doesn't Want The Whole Imperial Project. So If You Had Democracy, It Would Be All Over.

Turkeys

Leader

Democracy

There's A Very Striking Fact About The Elections Which You Can't Miss If You Looked At The Red-and-blue Electoral Map The Next Day: It's The Same Political Landscape That You Saw During The Civil War - Nothing Much Has Changed Except The Party Names.

War

Party

Political

The Crimes Committed Against The People Of West Papua Are Some Of The Most Shameful Of The Past Years. The Western Powers Have Much To Answer For, And At The Very Least Should Use Their Ample Means To Bring About The Withdrawal Of The Occupying Indonesian Army And Termination Of The Shameful Exploitation Of Resources And Destruction Of The Environment And The Lives And Societies Of The People Of West Papua, Who Have Suffered Far Too Much.

Mean

Army

Past

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.

Country

Religious

Political

Capitalism’s Concept Of Competitive Man Who Seeks Only To Maximize Wealth And Power, Who Subjects Himself To Market Relationships, To Exploitation And External Authority, Is Anti-human And Intolerable In The Deepest Sense

Men

Wealth

Authority

The Change Between Horse And Buggy To Automobile Is A Big Change And There Hasn't Been A Major Change Since.

Horse

Bigs

Automobile

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

Hope

Guarantees

Assuming

Nicaragua Was Destabilizing Central America, Meaning Moving In A Direction The Us Didn't Like. So Nicaragua Was Crushed.

Moving

America

Nicaragua

Take The Iraq War,it's The Second Worst Crime After The Second World War. It's The First Time In History, In The History Of Imperialism, There Were Huge Demonstrations, Before The War Was Officially Launched.

War

Iraq

World

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

War

People

October

In The Academic World, Most Of The Work That Is Done Is Clerical. A Lot Of The Work Done By Professors Is Routine.

Routine

Done

World

Intellectuals Are In A Position To Expose The Lies Of Governments, To Analyze Actions According To Their Causes And Motives And Often Hidden Intentions.

Lying

Government

Causes

The Fourteenth Amendment, After The Civil War, In Principle Brought Former Slaves Into The Category Of Persons, Theoretically. But If You Actually Look, Almost All The Cases Brought Up For Personal Rights Under The Fourteenth Amendment Were By Corporations. Freed Slaves Couldn't Do It. In Fact They Were Pretty Much Driven Back Into Something Like Slavery By A North - South Compact, That Allowed Former Slave States To Criminalize Black Life, Which Made A Criminal Force That Was Basically Used As A Forced Labor Force, Up Until The 1930s.

War

Labor Force

Rights

Because They Don't Teach The Truth About The World, Schools Have To Rely On Beating Students Over The Head With Propaganda About Democracy. If Schools Were, In Reality, Democratic, There Would Be No Need To Bombard Students With Platitudes About Democracy. They Would Simply Act And Behave Democratically, And We Know This Does Not Happen. The More There Is A Need To Talk About The Ideals Of Democracy, The Less Democratic The System Usually Is.

School

Reality

Democracy

One Of The Greatest Dangers Is Secular Religion - State Worship.

Worship

Danger

States

The 'corporatization Of America' During The Past Century Has Been An Attack On Democracy.

Past

America

Democracy

There Are Women (some Men, Too, But Mostly Women) Who Are Going To The Occupied Palestinian Territories To Stand With The Victims Of Israeli Occupation. These Are Very Courageous Israeli Women And Some British And American Women. That's Something Quite New.

Men

Israeli Occupation

Territory

The Process Of Shaping Opinion, Attitudes, And Perceptions Was Termed The 'engineering Of Consent' By One Of The Founders Of The Modern Public Relations Industry, Edward Bernays.

Attitude

Engineering

Perception

We Are Entering A Period Of Human History That May Provide An Answer To The Question Of Whether It Is Better To Be Smart Than Stupid.

Smart

Stupid

Entering

I Don't Have Any Oratory Skills. But I Would Not Use Them If I Had.

Skills

Use

Oratory

Armed Attack Has A Definition In International Law. It Means Sudden, Overwhelming, Instantaneous Ongoing Attack.

Mean

Law

Ongoing

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

Interest

Conform

Look At The Ozone Story. As Long As It Was The Southern Hemisphere That Was Being Threatened, There Was Very Little Talk About It. When It Was Discovered In The North, Very Quickly Actions Were Taken To Do Something About It. Right Now There's Discussion Of Putting Serious Effort Into Developing A Malaria Vaccine, Because Global Warming Might Extend Malaria To The Rich Countries, So Something Should Be Done About It.

Country

Taken

Rich Countries

...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

I Think That Sooner Or Later The White Working-class Constituency Will Recognize, And In Fact, Much Of The Rural Population Will Come To Recognize, That The Trump's Promises Are Built On Sand. There Is Nothing There.

Thinking

Promise

Sand

It's Not A Free Trade Agreement. It Has Virtually Nothing To Do With Free Trade... It's A Protectionist Agreement; It's Anti Free-trade.

Agreement

Trade

Free Trade

The Responsibilities Of Someone In A More Free And Open Society Are, Again Obviously, Greater Than Those Who May Pay Some Cost For Honesty And Integrity.

Honesty

Integrity

Responsibility

The United States Is The Godfather When It Establishes Edicts. Others Had Better Live Up To Them, Or Else. We Have To Demonstrate That. So That's What The Bombing Of Syria Was To Have Demonstrated.

United States

Syria

Bombing

Actually, My First Article, It Wasn't About The Anarchists; It Was About The Fall Of Barcelona And The Spread Of Fascism Over Europe, Which Was Frightening. But A Couple Of Years Later I Became Interested In The Anarchist Movement.

Couple

Fall

Years

Private Companies Can Make A Personal Profile, Direct You To Things - They Will Say - That You Would Be Interested In, But That's Their Choice Not Your Choice.

Choices

Would Be

Profile

I Can Understand The Idea That There Is A Conspiracy. In Fact, In Much Of The World There Is A Sense Of An Ultra-powerful Cia Manipulating Everything That Happens, Such As Running The Arab Spring, Running The Pakistani Taliban, Etc. That Is Just Nonsense. They [cia] Created A Monster And Now They Are Appalled By It.

Running

Powerful

Spring

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."

Military

Law

President

There's An Interesting Book About That Called The Third Reich And The Ivory Tower, Written By Stephen H. Norwood. It Has A Long Discussion About Harvard, And Indeed The School's President, James Conant, Did Block Jewish Faculty. He Was The One Who Prevented European Jews From Being Admitted To The Chemistry Department - His Field - And Also Had Pretty Good Relations With The Nazis.

Block

Book

School

There Is A Big Difference Between Tweeting To Your Friend About Something That Is Happening And Having A Real Personal Relationship With People.

Real

Differences

People

America Has Always Been The Richest And Most Secure, And Sometimes The Most Dangerous Country In The World. In The Early Years, The Danger Was To Everybody Near Us, Slaves, Native Americans, Mexicans. It Finally Expanded In 1898 To The Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, And The Philippines.

Country

Native American

Years

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

Credibility

Situation

Syria

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.

Eagles

Wings

World

I Mean You Look Back At American History And American Culture, It's Pretty Striking. I Mean This Has Been The Safest Country In The World Forever, And The Most Frightened Country In The World.

Country

Mean

Forever

Concentration Of Executive Power, Unless It's Very Temporary And For Specific Circumstances, Let's Say Fighting World War Two, It's An Assault On Democracy.

War

Fighting

Two

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

If You Want To Become A Biologist, It Doesn't Help To Go Into The Harvard Biology Library And All The Information Is There For You. You Have To Know What To Look For And The Internet Is The Same, Just Magnified.

Library

Looks

Want

Greece Has Been, In Many Ways, A Partially Dysfunctional Society. For Example, The Wealthy Barely Pay Taxes... To An Extent, That's True Elsewhere, Including The United States, But It's Been Pretty Extreme In Greece.

United States

Example

Pay

There Was A Striking Example Of This In Pakistan When The Us Sent In Special Forces, To Be Honest, To Kill Osama Bin Laden. He Could Easily Have Been Apprehended And Caught But Their Orders Were To Kill Him.

Order

Special

Example

The Point Of Advertising Is To Destroy Markets.

Advertising

Anton Pannekoek Didn't Encourage Radical Workers And Other Activists Of The Anti-bolshevik Left To See Revolutionary Potential In His Work In Astronomy, For The Simple Reason That He Was Honest, And Knew There Was None To Speak Of.

Simple

Honest

Speak

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

Science Talks About Very Simple Things, And Asks Hard Questions About Them. As Soon As Things Become Too Complex, Science Can't Deal With Them... But It's A Complicated Matter: Science Studies What's At The Edge Of Understanding, And What's At The Edge Of Understanding Is Usually Fairly Simple. And It Rarely Reaches Human Affairs. Human Affairs Are Way Too Complicated.

Simple

Understanding

Matter

If There Was An Observer On Mars, They Would Probably Be Amazed That We Have Survived This Long.

Interesting

Long

Mars

What Happened In The Missile Crisis In October 1962 Has Been Prettified To Make It Look As If Acts Of Courage And Thoughtfulness Abounded. The Truth Is That The Whole Episode Was Almost Insane.

Insane

Looks

October

Why Was The United States So Afraid Of An Independent South Vietnam? Well, I Think The Reason Again Is Pretty Clear From The Internal Government Documents. Precisely What They Were Afraid Of Was That The "takeover" Of South Vietnam By Nationalist Forces Would Not Be Brutal. They Feared It Would Be Conciliatory And That There Would Be Successful Social And Economic Development - And That The Whole Region Might Work.

Independent

Successful

Thinking

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.

Smart

Passivity Is

People

It [the Internet] Should Be Publicly Controlled But Washington Is Not A System Of Public Control, It's Mainly A System Of Corporate Control. We Ought To Have A Free Internet, But That Means Having A Free Society, And There Is Fundamental Questions There.

Mean

Fundamentals

Internet

Modern China; One Also Finds Many Things That Are Really Quite Admirable.

Modern

China

Admirable

The Iranian Issue I Don't Think Has Much To Do With Nuclear Weapons Frankly. Nobody Is Saying Iran Should Have Nuclear Weapons nor Should Anybody Else. But The Point In The Middle East, As Distinct From North Korea, Is That This Is Center Of The World's Energy Resources. Originally The British And Secondarily The French Had Dominated It, But After The Second World War, It's Been A U.s. Preserve. That's Been An Axiom Of U.s. Foreign Policy, That It Must Control Middle East Energy Resources.

War

Thinking

Issues

We Have To Recognize That There Is A Range Of Interests, Like There Isn't A Single Corporate Interest And A Single State Interest, So There's A Range. In Addition To That, There Is The Fact Of Professional Integrity.

Integrity

Facts

States

Dissidents Are Not Imprisoned As In The Domains Of The Kremlin, In The Old Days. They Do Not Have Their Brains Blown Out By Elite Forces Armed And Trained By The Reigning Superpower, As Happens In Washington's Domains - With No Particular Concern At Home - An Important Fact, One Of Many That Help Us Learn About Ourselves, If We Choose.

Home

Brain

Important

Somebodys Paying The Corporations That Destroyed Iraq And The Corporations That Are Rebuilding It. Theyre Getting Paid By The American Taxpayer In Both Cases. So We Pay Them To Destroy The Country, And Then We Pay Them To Rebuild It. Those Are Gifts From U.s. Taxpayer To U.s. Corporations.

Country

Iraq

Pay

When [ Paul Johnson] Got To Me He Was In Trouble, Because I'm An Old-fashioned Conservative: Married When I Was 21, Stayed Married, 3 Kids, Live In The Suburbs, No Scandals, So Nothing To Write About. So What He Did Is Concoct One Of The Nuttiest Claims I've Ever Seen.

Writing

Kids

Scandal

Intellectuals (in The Standard Sense Of The Term, Not [ Edward] Said's Prescriptive Sense) Are The People Who Write History.

Writing

People

Said

Libertarian Socialism Is Properly To Be Regarded As The Inheritor Of The Liberal Ideals Of The Enlightenment.

Enlightenment

Libertarian

Socialism

One Of The Dangers [that Donald Trump Poses, Due To The Augmented Risk Of Nuclear War] Is Unquestionable. Of The Two Existential Threats - The Threats To The Termination Of The Species Basically And Most Other Species - One Of Them, Climate Change, On That I Think There's No Basis For Discussion.

War

Thinking

Two

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.

Country

Rich Countries

World

Virtually All Informed Observers Agree That A Fair And Equitable Resolution Of The Plight Of The Palestinians Would Considerably Weaken The Anger And Hatred Of Israel And The Us In The Arab And Muslim Worlds - And Far Beyond, As International Polls Reveal. Such An Agreement Is Surely Within Reach, If The Us And Israel Depart From Their Long-standing Rejectionism.

Israel

Agreement

Long

One Should Be Cautious About "general Conceptions." I Think A Strong Case Can Be Made That Activism Today Is As High As Ever, Perhaps More So, And Is Also Taking New And Significant Forms. There Has Never Been Anything Like The International Solidarity Movements That Began To Take Shape In The 1980s, Right In The Mainstream, Or The Global Justice Movements That Have Become A Very Powerful Force In Later Years. It's True That The Society Is Highly Atomized, Which Does Induce A Sense Of Hopelessness Often - Quite Mistakenly I Think.

Strong

Powerful

Thinking

Universities Are Less Constrained By Authority And Rigid Doctrine In The United States Than In Most Other Societies, To My Knowledge.

United States

Doctrine

Authority

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

When I Look At Public Opinion, I'm Not Far Out Of The Mainstream. I'm In It, In Many Respects. In Some Respects, Public Opinion Goes Beyond Anything I've Ever Said.

Public Opinion

Looks

Mainstream

The "prophets" Were What We Would Call Dissident Intellectuals. They Provided Critical Geopolitical Analysis, Condemned The Crimes Of The Powerful, Called For Justice And Mercy For Those Who Needed Help, Etc. I Wouldn't Personally Endorse Everything They Said, Any More Than I Would For Critics Of Power And Its Crimes Today. But Rather Generally I Think They Played An Honorable Role - And Suffered Accordingly.

Powerful

Thinking

Justice

The Communists Basically Acted As The Police Force Of The Security System Of The [spain] Republic And Were Very Much Opposed To The Anarchists, Partially Because [joseph] Stalin Still Hoped At That Time To Have Some Kind Of Pact With Western Countries Against [adolf] Hitler. That, Of Course, Failed And Stalin Withdrew The Support To The Republic. They Even Withdrew The Spanish Gold Reserves.

Country

Security Systems

Support

Death And Genitals Are Things That Frighten People, And When People Are Frightened, They Develop Means Of Concealment And Aggression. It Is Common Sense.

Mean

People

Common Sense

What Is Important To Us Is To Reverse The Shameful Course Being Pursued By America. It Won't Be Easy, But It Must And Can Be Done.

America

Important

Done

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.

Government

Japan

Expectations

In The Sciences Particularly The Large Public Universities Must And Do Take An Active Role In Fostering Creativity And Independence; Otherwise The Fields Will Wither, And Along With Them Even The Aspirations Of Wealth And Power.

Creativity

Independence

Fields

Why Not Stakeholder Action? There's No Economic Principal That Says That Management Should Be Responsive To Shareholders, In Fact You Can Read In Texts Of Business Economics That They Could Just As Well Have A System In Which The Management Is Responsible To Stakeholders.

Why Not

Facts

Action

Ug [universal Grammar] May Be Regarded As A Characterization Of The Genetically Determined Language Faculty. One May Think Of Thisfaculty As A 'language Acquisition Device,' An Innate Component Of The Human Mind That Yields A Particular Language Through Interaction With Present Experience, A Device That Converts Experience Into A System Of Knowledge Attained: Knowledge Of One Or Another Language.

Thinking

Yield

Mind

President Barack Obama, To His Credit, Has Given - Issued Personal Pardons In Deserving Cases. But He Should Go Far Beyond. He Should Proceed To What Is In Fact An Urgent Necessity: To Grant A General Pardon To 11 Million People Who Are Living And Working Here, Productive Citizens In All But Name, Threatened With Deportation By The Incoming Donald Trump Administration. This Would Be A Horrible Humanitarian Tragedy, A Moral Outrage.

People

Tragedy

President

Resource Extraction Impacts A Global Environment That Is Increasingly At Severe Risk.

Impact

Risk

Environment

Work Can Be Undertaken To Create An Authentic Independent Political Party, A Real Party, Based On Popular Participation From The Ground Up, Not A Top-down Candidate Producing Organization Like The Two Official Parties, Working From School Boards To State Legislatures And Beyond. Not Easy In The Regressive U.s. Political System, But Not Impossible.

Real

Party

School

Take Like, Say, Obama, He's Called "liberal" And He's Praised For His "principled Objection To The Iraq War". What Was His "principled Objection"? He Says It Was A "strategic Blunder," Like Nazi Generals After Stalingrad.

War

Iraq

Nazi

Since November 8, 2017 The United States Is Literally Alone In The World In First Of All Refusing To Join In Efforts To Do Something About Climate Change, But Even Worse, Dedicated To Making The Situation Worse. Every Part Of The World Is Trying To Do Something. The United States Alone Is Trying To Destroy It, And It's Not Just Trump, It's The Whole Republican Party. You Just Can't Find Words For It. And It's Not Reported. It's Not Discussed.

Party

Effort

Trying

Jingoism, Racism, Fear, Religious Fundamentalism: These Are The Ways Of Appealing To People If You're Trying To Organize A Mass Base Of Support For Policies That Are Really Intended To Crush Them.

Crush

Religious

Racism

The Irish Sea Is A Chasm, And It Just Depends Who's Been Holding The Whip For 800 Years And Who's Been Under It For 800 Years.

Years

Sea

Chasms

Finally Irish Were Accepted Into Society And Became Part Of The Political System, And There Were Kennedys, And So On. But The Same Is True About Other Waves Of Immigrants, Like The Jews In The 1950s.

Political

Wave

Accepted

You Can’t Have Meaningful Political Democracy Without Functioning Economic Democracy.

Meaningful

Political

Democracy

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

Political

Propaganda

Profit

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.

Mean

Thinking

People

John Lewis Gaddis Is Not Only The Favorite Historian Of The Reagan Administration, But He's Regarded As The Dean Of Cold War Scholarship, The Leading Figure In The American Cold War Scholarship, A Professor At Yale.

War

Yale

Administration

Suppose That, Say, China Established Military Bases In Colombia To Carry Out Chemical Warfare In Kentucky And North Carolina To Destroy This Lethal Crop [tobacco] That Is Killing Huge Numbers Of Chinese.

Military

Kentucky

Numbers

Millions Of People Are Getting The Vote, And We Have To Educate Them To Keep Them From Our Throats. In Other Words, We Have To Train Them In Obedience And Servility, So They're Not Going To Think Through The Way The World Works And Come After Our Throats.

Thinking

People

World

Take, For Example, There Is A Right-wing Populist Uprising. It's Very Common, Even On The Left, To Just Ridicule Them, But That's Not The Right Reaction. If You Look At Those People And Listen To Them On Talk Radio, These Are People With Real Grievances.

Real

Uprising

Wings

French Intellectual Life Has, In My Opinion, Been Turned Into Something Cheap And Meretricious By The 'star' System. It Is Like Hollywood. Thus We Go From One Absurdity To Another - Stalinism, Existentialism. Lacan, Derrida - Some Of Them Obscene ( Stalinism), Some Simply Infantile And Ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida). What Is Striking, However, Is The Pomposity And Self-importance, At Each Stage.

Stars

Self

Intellectual

It's Very Common For The Victims To Understand A System Better Than The People Who Are Holding The Stick.

War

People

Sticks

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.

Needs

Originality

Inspired

[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

In The United States, The Political System Is A Very Marginal Affair. There Are Two Parties, So-called, But They're Really Factions Of The Same Party, The Business Party.

Party

Two

Political

Well Before September 11, It Was Understood That With Modern Technology, The Rich And Powerful Will Lose Their Near Monopoly Of The Means Of Violence And Can Expect To Suffer Atrocities On Home Soil.

Powerful

Home

Mean

A Default Of The Us Government Would Not Only Be Very Harmful Here, It Would Probably Send The Country Back Into Deep Recession, But It Just Might Crash The International Financial System.

Country

Government

Might

Predatory Capitalism Created A Complex Industrial System And An Advanced Technology; It Permitted A Considerable Extension Of Democratic Practice And Fostered Certain Liberal Values, But Within Limits That Are Now Being Pressed And Must Be Overcome. It Is Not A Fit System For The Mid-twentieth Century.

Technology

Practice

Political

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

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

Democracy

Definitions

Interest

I Mean, The Liberal Democrats Aren't Going To Tell The Average American, "yeah, You're Being Shafted Because Of The Policies That We've Established Over The Years That We're Maintaining Now." That's Not Going To Be An Answer. And They're Not Getting Answers From The Left.

Mean

Average

Years

There Is Undoubtedly Much To Learn About The Social Uses Of Language, For Communication Or For Other Purposes. But At Present There Is Not Much In The Way Of A Theory Of Sociolinguistics, Of Social Uses Of Languages, As Far As I Am Aware.

Communication

Purpose

Use

Take Any Country That Has Laws Against Hate Crimes, Inspiring Hatred And Genocide And So On. The First Thing They Would Do Is Ban The Old Testament. There's Nothing Like It In The Literary Canon That Exalts Genocide, To That Extent. And It's Not A Joke Either. Like Where I Live, New England, The People Who Liberated It From The Native Scourge Were Religious Fundamentalist Lunatics, Who Came Waving The Holy Book, Declaring Themselves To Be The Children Of Israel Who Are Killing The Amalekites, Like God Told Them.

Country

Religious

Children

Anti-union Propaganda Has Been Considerably More Successful Here [ In The U.s.] Than In Europe, Even Among Working People Who Would Benefit [from] Unions.

Successful

Europe

People

The Press Is Owned By Wealthy Men Who Only Want Certain Things To Reach The Public.

Men

Want

Certain

Sports Plays A Societal Role In Engendering Jingoist And Chauvinist Attitudes. They're Designed To Organize A Community To Be Committed To Their Gladiators.

Sports

Peace

Attitude

During The 1990's, Colombia Was The Leading Recipient Of Us Military Aid And Training In The Hemisphere. Approximately Half Of All Us Aid In The Hemisphere Went To Colombia. Colombia Was Also Far And Away The Leading Human Rights Violator In The Hemisphere.

Military

Rights

Training

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

There Is A Reason Why Nelson Mandela Went To Cuba To Praise Castro And Thank The Cuban People Almost As Soon As He Got Out Of Jail. That's A Third World Reaction And They Understand It. Cuba Played An Enormous Role In The Liberation Of Africa And The Overthrow Of Apartheid, Sending Doctors And Teachers To The Poorest Places In The World, To Haiti, To Pakistan After The Earthquake, Almost Everywhere. The Internationalism Is Just Astonishing. I Don't Think There Has Been Anything Like It In History.

Teacher

Thinking

Doctors

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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