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I Think A Decent Society Should Protect Rights To Private Property Within Limits, But Not Concentrations Of Private Power That Infringe On The Freedom And Rights Of Others, Including Exploitation Of Labor, And That Convert Any Democratic Forms Into What Have Been Called Sometimes "hierarchical Democracies," Like Ours, In Which Some Have Vastly Greater Influence Over Public Policy Than Others. Spelling All Of This Out Is A Complex Matter That Raises Many Issue And Problems That Are Impossible To Address Here.
-Noam Chomsky
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I Think A Decent

Noam Chomsky
I Think A Decent Society Should Protect Rights To Private Property Within Limits, But Not Concentrations Of Private Power That Infringe On The Freedom And Rights Of Others, Including Exploitation Of Labor, And That Convert Any Democratic Forms Into What Have Been Called Sometimes "hierarchical Democracies," Like Ours, In Which Some Have Vastly Greater Influence Over Public Policy Than Others. Spelling All Of This Out Is A Complex Matter That Raises Many Issue And Problems That Are Impossible To Address Here.
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Topic
Thinking
Democracy
Impossible
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The Very Design Of Neoliberal Principles Is A Direct Attack On Democracy.
Design
Democracy
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Every Book That Comes Out, Every Article That Comes Out, Talks About How - While It May Have Been A "mistake" Or An "unwise Effort" - The United States Was Defending South Vietnam From North Vietnamese Aggression. And They Portray Those Who Opposed The War As Apologists For North Vietnam. That's Standard To Say. The Purpose Is Obvious: To Obscure The Fact That The United States Did Attack South Vietnam And The Major War Was Fought Against South Vietnam.
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It May Be Beyond The Limits Of Human Intelligence To Understand How Human Intelligence Works.
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Part Of The Nafta Legislation Required Studies Of Labor Practices, And There Was Quite A Good Study That Came Out By A Labor Historian On The Use Of Nafta To Undermine And Destroy Unions.
Practice
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Greece, Alone, Is In A Very Vulnerable Position. If The Greeks Had Had Support From Progressive Left And Popular Forces Elsewhere In Europe They Might Have Been Able To Resist The Demands Of The Troika, But They Had Almost No Support. Not Even From Portugal, Spain, Or Other Left Forces. They Were Left Alone.
Europe
Support
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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
If You Look At The Associated Press Wires, There's A Constant Flow Of Information Coming In. At That Time I Happened To Have Direct Access To Ap Wires. The Day The Marines Landed In Haiti And Restored [ Jan Bètran] Aristide There Was A Lot Of Excitement About The Dedication To Democracy And So On. But The Day Before The Marines Landed, When Every Journalist Was Looking At Haiti Because It Was Assumed That Something Big Was Happening, The Ap Wires Reported That Then [bill] Clinton Administration Had Authorized Texaco To Ship Oil Illegally To The Military Junta.
Military
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The [barack] Obama Administration Has Pressured Mexico To Keep Them Away From The Mexican Border, So That They Don't Succeed In Reaching The United States. Pretty Much The Same Thing Europeans Have Done To Turks And Syrians.
Mexican Border
United States
Borders
The Book Manufacturing Consent, Which I Co-authored With Edward Herman, Begins With A Description Of The Structure And Institutional Setting Of The Commercial Media, And Then Draws Some Rather Simple-minded Conclusions About What We Would Expect The Media Product To Be, Given These (not Particularly Controversial) Conditions.
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The Rich And Powerful Countries Are Trying To Wreck As Much As Possible. You Know, Go Off The Cliff As Soon As You Can. Extract Every Drop Of Hydrocarbons Off The Ground And Destroy The Environment. At The Opposite Extreme Are Countries Like Bolivia And Ecuador, Indigenous People Around The World, And First Nations In Canada And Tribal People In India, Campesinos In Colombia... They're Trying To Save The Commons.
Country
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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
They, Students Have A Degree Of Freedom That Nobody Else Has.
Degrees
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United States Has Comparative Advantage In Military Force. It Tends To React To Anything At First With Military Force, That's What It's Good At. And I Think They Overdid It. There Was More Military Force Than Was Necessary.
Military
Thinking
United States
You Have To Love That Government, But Hate The Government That Might Work In Your Interest And That You Could Control. That's An Interesting Propaganda Task, But It's Been Carried Out Very Well.
Hate
Government
Interesting
When Nazi Emissaries Came To The United States, They Were Welcomed At Harvard.
United States
Nazi
Harvard
Since Jimmy Carter, Religious Fundamentalists Play A Major Role In Elections. He Was The First President Who Made A Point Of Exhibiting Himself As A Born Again Christian. That Sparked A Little Light In The Minds Of Political Campaign Managers: Pretend To Be A Religious Fanatic And You Can Pick Up A Third Of The Vote Right Away. Nobody Asked Whether Lyndon Johnson Went To Church Every Day. Bill Clinton Is Probably About As Religious As I Am, Meaning Zero, But His Managers Made A Point Of Making Sure That Every Sunday Morning He Was In The Baptist Church Singing Hymns.
Christian
Religious
Atheist
Sea Level Rise And Destruction Of Water Resources As Glaciers Melt Alone May Have Horrendous Human Consequences.
Sea
Water
Levels
Any Incident Could Instantly Blow Up. Both Sides [usa And Russia] Are Modernizing And Increasing Their Military Systems, Including Nuclear Systems.
Military
Blow
Russia
We Have To Be A Little Cautious About Not Trying To Kill A Gnat With An Atom Bomb. The Performances Are So Utterly Absurd Regarding The "post-truth" Moment That The Proper Response Might Best Be Ridicule.
Trying
Moments
Absurd
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
As Soon As Questions Of Will Or Decision Or Reason Or Choice Of Action Arise, Human Science Is At A Loss.
Loss
Choices
Decision
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
Younger People Who Are Being Indoctrinated Into The Contemporary System Of Falsification - They Really Have To Do Some Research To Find Out What Is The Truth. In The General Population, People Forget Or Don't Care That Much. And Gradually What You Hear Drilled Into Your Head Everyday Comes To Be Believed. People Don't Understand What You're Talking About Any More If You Discuss The American War On South Vietnam.
War
Talking
People
From A Comparative Perspective, The United States Is Unusual If Not Unique In The Lack Of Restraints On Freedom Of Expression. It Is Also Unusual In The Range And Effectiveness Of Methods Employed To Restrain Freedom Of Thought... Where The Voice Of The People Is Heard, Elite Groups Must Insure Their Voice Says The Right Things.
Unique
Expression
Voice
Africa's A Wreck And It's Not Because It Was Hit By An Asteroid. It's A Wreck Largely Because It Was Hit By Europe.
Europe
Wrecks
Asteroids
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
The Fact That All Normal Children Acquire Essentially Comparable Grammars Of Great Complexity With Remarkable Rapidity Suggests That Human Beings Are Somehow Specially Designed To Do This, With Data-handling Or 'hypothesis-formulating' Ability Of Unknown Character And Complexity.
Children
Character
Data
In General I Don't Think The Image Of The State As A Divinity Is Very Helpful.
Thinking
Divinity
Helpful
Colombia Has Been The Leading Western Recipient Of U.s. Arms And Training As Violence Has Grown Through The '90s.
Training
Arms
Violence
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
The Bush Administration Has Created An Unimaginable Catastrophe In Iraq. This Should've Been One Of The Easiest Military Occupations In History And They Succeeded In Turning It Into One Of The Worst Military Disasters In History. They Can't Control It And It's Almost Impossible For Them To Get Out For Reasons You Can't Discuss In The United States Because To Discuss The Reasons Why They Can't Get Out Would Be To Concede The Reasons Why They Invaded.
Military
Iraq
United States
The Labor Movement Can Be Rebuilt, As Has Happened Before After Sharp Declines.
Movement
Decline
Labor
The Worst Drug Of All By Far Is Tobacco; The Death Toll From Tobacco Is Just Overwhelming.
Drug
Tolls
Worst
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
Suppose I Try To Say The Us Carries Out Terror, In Fact It's One Of The Leading Terrorist States In The World. You Can't Say That Between Commercials. People Rightly Want To Know What Do You Mean. They've Never Heard That Before. Then You Have To Explain. You Have To Give Background. That's Exactly What's Cut Out.
Mean
Cutting
People
What Can You Do To Mitigate The Likelihood That Iran Will Develop Nuclear Weapons? There's A Very Simple Method: Move Towards Establishing A Nuclear-weapons-free Zone, Which Everybody In The World Wants, But The Us Blocks.
Block
Moving
Simple
If You Assume That There Is No Hope, You Guarantee That There Will Be No Hope. If You Assume That There Is An Instinct For Freedom, That There Are Opportunities To Change Things, Then There Is A Possibility That You Can Contribute To Making A Better World.
Courage
Freedom
Opportunity
September 11 Shocked Many Americans Into An Awareness That They Had Better Pay Much Closer Attention To What The Us Government Does In The World And How It Is Perceived. Many Issues Have Been Opened For Discussion That Were Not On The Agenda Before. That's All To The Good.
Government
Issues
September 11
With Government Deregulation And The Triumph Of Financial Liberalization, The Dangers Of Systemic Risks, The Possibility Of A Financial Tsunami, Sharply Increased.
Government
Risk
Triumph
The More There Is A Need To Talk About The Ideals Of Democracy, The Less Democratic The System Usually Is.
Democracy
Needs
Democratic
Most Of The Population In America Is Disenfranchised. It Doesn't Matter What They Think. Just Look At The Passionate Rhetoric About How We Can't Stand By When A Country Uses Weapons To Kill Innocent Civilians.
Country
Thinking
America
My Linguistics Is Pretty Theoretical.
Linguistics
Theoretical
In The Major State Capitalists Economies, Europe And The Us, It's Low Growth And Stagnation And A Very Sharp Income Differentiation A Shift - A Striking Shift - From Production To Financialization.
Europe
Growth
Income
There Are No Conservatives In The United States. The United States Does Not Have A Conservative Tradition. The People Who Call Themselves Conservatives, Like The Heritage Foundation Or Gingrich, Are Believers In -- Are Radical Statists. They Believe In A Powerful State, But A Welfare State For The Rich.
Powerful
Believe
People
Of Course All Such Conclusions About Appropriate Actions Against The Rich And Powerful Are Based On A Fundamental Flaw: This Is Us, And That Is Them. This Crucial Principle, Deeply Embedded In Western Culture, Suffices To Undermine Even The Most Precise Analogy And The Most Impeccable Reasoning.
Powerful
Principles
Western Culture
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
The Escalation To Attack Undefended Civilian Targets Is Just A Classic Illustration Of Terrorism.
Illustration
Target
Classic
We Use The Official Definitions Of Terrorism. The Definitions In The U.s. Code, In British Law, In U.s. Army Manuals And So On. And If You Use Those Definitions It Follows Instantly That The United States Is The Leading Terrorist State In The World.
Army
Law
United States
Pakistan Will Never Be Able To Match The Indian Militarily And The Effort To Do So Is Taking An Immense Toll On The Society. It's Also Extremely Dangerous With All The Weapons Development. The Two Countries Have Already Come Close To Nuclear Confrontation Twice And This Could Get Worse. So Dealing With The Relationship With India Is Extremely Important.
Country
Two
Effort
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
Anarcho-capitalism, In My Opinion, Is A Doctrinal System Which, If Ever Implemented, Would Lead To Forms Of Tyranny And Oppression That Have Few Counterparts In Human History. There Isn't The Slightest Possibility That Its (in My View, Horrendous) Ideas Would Be Implemented, Because They Would Quickly Destroy Any Society That Made This Colossal Error. The Idea Of 'free Contract' Between The Potentate And His Starving Subject Is A Sick Joke, Perhaps Worth Some Moments In An Academic Seminar Exploring The Consequences Of (in My View, Absurd) Ideas, But Nowhere Else.
Errors
Views
Ideas
If The United States Loses The Economic Weapons Of Control, It Is Very Much Weakened.
United States
Weapons
Economic
My Speculation Is That The U.s. Does Not Want To Establish The Principle That It Has To Defer To Some Higher Authority Before Carrying Out The Use Of Violence.
Use
Want
Violence
For The Last Couple Of Hundred Years, There Have Been Struggles About This. Even The Fifth And Sixth Amendments Of The Constitution Talk About Personal Rights.
Couple
Struggle
Rights
What's Called Obamacare Is An Effort To Mildly Change This [health-care System], Not Change It As Far As It Should Go Or As Much As The Population Wants It To Go, But To Make It A Little Better And A Little More Affordable.
Obamacare
Effort
Population
A Corporation Is A State Created Institution, State Supported Institution, Its Concentration Of Private Power, There Is No Reason Why It Should Have The Rights Of Persons.
Rights
Should Have
Corporations
In The Moral Calculus Of Currently Prevailing State Capitalism, Profits And Bonuses In The Next Quarter Greatly Outweigh Concern For The Welfare Of One’s Grandchildren, And Since These Are Institutional Maladies, They Will Not Be Easy To Overcome. While Much Remains Uncertain, We Can Assure Ourselves, With Fair Confidence, That Future Generations Will Not Forgive Us Our Silence And Apathy.
Grandchildren
Silence
Forgiving
If You Claim To Have A Theory That Deduces Unexpected Consequences From Nontrivial Principles, Let's See It.
Principles
Unexpected
Theory
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
A Fundamental Element Of Human Nature Is The Need For Creative Work, For Creative Inquiry, For Free Creation Without The Arbitrary Limiting Effects Of Coercive Institutions. A Decent Society Should Maximize The Possibilities For This Fundamental Human Characteristic To Be Realized.
Creative
Needs
Arbitrary
From The 1970s, There Has Been A Significant Change In The Us Economy, As Planners, Private And State, Shifted It Toward Financialization And The Offshoring Of Production, Driven In Part By The Declining Rate Of Profit In Domestic Manufacturing.
Significant Change
Economy
Driven
Latin America Is All Moving To The Left, From Venezuela To Argentina With Rare Exceptions, But There's A Good Left And A Bad Left.
Latin
Moving
America
I Had No Expectations About Barack Obama And I'm Not In The Least Disillusioned.
Expectations
Disillusioned
Barack
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
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 America, We Happen To Be Living In A Third World Country From The Point Of View Of Economic And Social Development. I Came Back From New York Yesterday And I Took The Fastest Train In The Country, The Acela. My Wife And I Took The New York-boston Train Sixty Years Ago - It Wasn't Called The Acela Then - And I Think It's Improved By About Fifteen Minutes Since Then. Any Other Country In The World Would Be About Half The Time. In Fact When It's Riding Along The Connecticut Turnpike It's Barely Keeping Up With Traffic, Which Is Just Scandalous.
Country
New York
Thinking
What Is Failure For Some Is Success For Others. It Depends On Where They Stand In The Struggles Over "democratic Governance" And Related Rights - Civil, Social And Economic, And Broadly Cultural, To Adopt The Framework Of The Universal Declaration That Is Formally Endorsed But Constantly Undermined.
Struggle
Rights
Economic
I Don't Even Know If I Ever Knew - Some Sweatshop In Baltimore. I Knew With My Other Relatives - Some Of The Women Were In The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union And Men Were Shop Boys And Things Like That. I Happened To Be In Philadelphia, But The Family Was In New York. I Could See What The Union Was Doing For Them.it Really Saved Their Lives.
New York
Boys
Men
The 50,000 Korean Mercenaries We Had In Vietnam Were Professional Killers And Just Massacred People Outright. And The American Army Did Plenty Of That Too, But It Couldn't Take It After Awhile. It's Not The Kind Of Job You Can Give To Conscripts Who Are Not Trained To Be Murderers.
Jobs
Army
People
Given Their Unusual Privilege, Western Intellectuals Can Realistically Accomplish A Great Deal. The Limits Are Imposed By Will More Than Objective Circumstances. And About Human Will Predictions Are Without Value.
Limits
Privilege
Unusual
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
The United States Is A Very Insular Society. Most People Know Very Little About The Outside World And Don't Care That Much. They're Concerned With Their Own Affairs.
People
Care
Littles
[francisco] Franco's Army Was Mainly Moorish. They Were Recruiting People From Morocco To Come To Spain. There Was An Uprising In Morocco At The Time Led By Abd El-krim (whose Tactics Influenced Ho Chi Minh And Che Guevara) That Sought Independence For Morocco And Northern Africa.
Army
Uprising
People
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
When I Arrived In Laos And Found Young Americans Living There, Out Of Free Choice, I Was Surprised. After Only A Week, I Began To Have A Sense Of The Appeal Of The Country And Its People - Along With Despair About Its Future.
Country
People
Choices
Pakistan Just Cannot Survive If It Continues To Do So (continue This Confrontation With India).
India
Pakistan
Confrontation
Now Financial Liberalization Is Just A Catastrophe Waiting To Happen, And There Are Very Well Understood Reasons For That.
Waiting
Financial
Reason
The Goal Is To Keep The Bewildered Herd Bewildered. It's Unnecessary For Them To Trouble Themselves With What's Happening In The World. In Fact, It's Undesirable - If They See Too Much Of Reality They May Set Themselves To Change It.
Reality
Goal
World
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
Intellectuals Of The Categories Happen To Enjoy Unusual Privilege, Unique In History, I Suppose. It's Easy Enough To Find Ugly Illustrations Of Repression, Malice, Dishonesty, Marginalization And Exclusion In The Academic World.
Unique
Illustration
World
All You Have To Do Is Read The Business Literature. In The 1930s They Were Very Frightened And They Were Concerned About How The Rising Power Of The Masses Was Hazardous To Industrialists.
Rising
Literature
Frightened
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
The Only Way We Can Put A Permanent End To Terrorism Is To Stop Participating In It.
Way
Terrorism
Ends
In A Moment Of Crisis, Of Which There Are All Too Many, Russian Military Planners May Conclude That Lacking A Deterrent, The Only Hope Of Survival Is A First Strike - Which Means The End For All Of Us.
Military
Mean
Survival
If You Are Giving A Graduate Course You Don't Try To Impress The Students With Oratory, You Try To Challenge Them, Get Them To Question You.
Giving
Challenges
Trying
In The Humanities And Social Sciences, And In Fields Like Journalism And Economics And So On, People Have To Be Trained To Be Managers, And Controllers, And To Accept Things, And Not To Question Too Much.
People
Humanity
Too Much
Sometimes The Former Forces Are In The Ascendance, And "democratic Governance" Is Eroded, Though Anyone Familiar With Intellectual History Would Expect That The Slogans Will Be Passionately Proclaimed As They Are Drained Of Substantive Content. We Happen To Be Living In Such An Era, But As Often Before, There Is No Reason To Suppose That The Process Is Irreversible.
Intellectual
Eras
Sometimes
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
[antonio] Gramsci's Words And Actions Explain Their Assessment, Though I Think We Should Refrain From Using The Term "model Intellectual" For Him Or Others.
Thinking
Assessment
Intellectual
In Western Europe, Turkey Is Regarded As Uncivilized, So They Can't Come In Into The European Union Until They're Civilized. I Think It's The Other Way Around. If You Could Achieve The Level Of Civilization Of, Say, Turkish Intelectuals, It Would Be Quite An Achievement.
Thinking
Europe
Turkeys
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
He Who Controls The Media Controls The Minds Of The Public.
Media
Media Control
Mind
We Need Not Stride Resolutely Towards Catastrophe, Merely Because Those Are The Marching Orders.
Order
Needs
Stride
The Kind Of Work That Should Be The Main Part Of Life Is The Kind Of Work You Would Want To Do If You Weren't Being Paid For It. It’s Work That Comes Out Of Your Own Internal Needs, Interests And Concerns.
Needs
Want
Kind
It Is Only Natural To Expect That Guilds Will Tend To "protect Their Turf" And To Resist Challenge.
Challenges
Natural
Protect
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
It Is The Worst Atrocity Underway [in Rwanda]. But It's Barely In The Media, And People Just Don't Know About It. And That's Quite Generally True.
Media
People
Atrocities
Humans May Be Destroying Their Chances For Decent Survival. It Won't Kill Everybody, But It Would Change The World Dramatically.
Survival
World
May
I Don't Say You're Self-censoring - I'm Sure You Believe Everything You're Saying; But What I'm Saying Is, If You Believed Something Different, You Wouldn't Be Sitting Where You're Sitting.
Believe
Self
Different
The Term 'globalisation' Is Conventionally Used To Refer To The Specific Form Of Investor-rights Integration Designed By Wealth And Power, For Their Own Interests.
Rights
Wealth
Used
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
If You Want To Find Weapons Of Destruction, You Can Find Them All Over The Place. Take, Say, Israel. There Is A Very Great Concern Right Now About Proliferation Of Nuclear Weapons, As There Should Be. Israel Has A Couple Of Hundred Nuclear Weapons And Also Chemical And Biological Weapons. This Stockpile Is Not Only A Threat In Itself But Encourages Others To Proliferate In Reaction And In Self-defense. Is Anybody Saying Anything About This?
Couple
Israel
Self
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
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
Technology Is Basically Neutral. It's Kind Of Like A Hammer. The Hammer Doesn't Care Whether You Use It To Build A House, Or Whether A Torturer Uses It To Crush Somebody's Skull.
Crush
Technology
Skulls
In Fact, A Rather Striking Aspect Of Business Propaganda In The United States Is The Demonization Of Government, Starting After The Second World War.
War
Government
United States
Hypocrites Are Those Who Apply To Others The Standards That They Refuse To Accept For Themselves.
Hypocrite
Media
Politics
Donald Trump And Sean Spicer Do One Thing After Another To Keep The Media Attention Focused On Them. And It Works. These Legislative Achievements Are Being Made Which Are Chipping Away At Anything The Government Has That's Of Any Use To Anybody. Paul Ryan, I Think, Is The Most Dangerous Guy In The Government. He Knows What He's Doing. And It's Very Systematic. I Presume He's Behind The Cabinet Appointments, But It's Pretty Amazing That Every Single Cabinet Appointment Is Somebody Devoted To Destroying That Part Of Government.
Thinking
Achievement
Guy
If Current Tendencies Persist, The Outcome Will Be Disastrous Before Too Long. Large Parts Of The World Will Become Barely Habitable Affecting Hundreds Of Millions Of People, Along With Other Disasters That We Can Barely Contemplate.
Long
People
World
Stability Means You Do What We Say, And What We Say Is That Colombia And The Resources Of The Andean Region Shall Be Freely Available To The Rich And Powerful Of The World, Particularly Us-based Multinational Corporations.
Powerful
Mean
World
It Seems Self-evident That We Should Want People To Be Free, To Be Able To Play An Active Part In Making Decisions About Matters Of Concern To Them, To The Largest Possible Extent.
Self
Play
People
So If You Look At The Writings Of Intellectuals, There Are Two Kinds. One Said, L"look, If We Fought Harder We Could Have Won.but The Others, Who Were Way At The Left, People Like Anthony Lewis Of The New York Times, Way Out In Left Stream, His View In 1975 Was The Vietnam War Began With Blundering Efforts To Do Good. But By 1969, It Was Clear That It Was A Disaster, That Was Too Costly To Us.
New York
War
Writing
Far From Creating Independent Thinkers, Schools Have Always, Throughout History, Played An Institutional Role In A System Of Control And Coercion. And Once You Are Well Educated You Have Already Been Socialized In Ways That Support The Power Structure, Which, In Turn, Rewards You Immensely.
School
Independent
Creating
It Is Familiar To Mainstream Academic Scholarship. One Very Prominent Political Scientist, In His Standard Text American Politics 20 Years Ago, Observes That "the Architects Of Power In The United States Must Create A Force That Can Be Felt But Not Seen."
Years
Political
United States
You Never Know How [donald Trump] Is Going To React. When He Learned For Example That He'd Lost The Election By About Three Million Votes, His Instant Reaction Was Insanity; You Know, Three To Five Million Illegal Immigrants Somehow Were Organized In Some Incredible Fashion To Vote.
Fashion
Insanity
Example
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
It Is ... Necessary To Whip Up The Population In Support Of Foreign Adventures. Usually The Population Is Pacifist, Just Like They Were During The First World War. The Public Sees No Reason To Get Involved In Foreign Adventures, Killing, And Torture. So You Have To Whip Them Up. And To Whip Them Up You Have To Frighten Them.
War
Adventure
Media
Karl Marx Said, “the Task Is Not Just To Understand The World But To Change It.” A Variant To Keep In Mind Is That If You Want To Change The World You’d Better Try To Understand It. That Doesn’t Mean Listening To A Talk Or Reading A Book, Though That’s Helpful Sometimes. You Learn From Participating. You Learn From Others. You Learn From The People You’re Trying To Organize. We All Have To Gain The Understanding And The Experience To Formulate And Implement Ideas.
Book
Reading
Mean
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
I Think That What's Actually Happening Is The Collapse Of The Center - The Centrist Semi-coalitions, Mildly Social-democrat, Mildly Conservative, That Have Been Running The Countries For Years. They Are Severely Declining. You Can See It In Voting; You Can See It Also In Popular Attitudes: Contempt For What Are Called "the élites," The Experts, The People In Charge.
Running
Country
Attitude
I'm Into Eating As Little As Possible... I Never Cook. Never Use The Stove Or Anything.
Use
Littles
Eating
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
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
There Is Pakistan's Relationship With Afghanistan Which Will Also Be A Very Tricky Issue In The Coming Years. Then There Is A Large Part Of Pakistan Which Is Being Torn Apart From American Drone Attacks. The Country Is Being Invaded Constantly By A Terrorist Superpower. Again, This Is Not A Small Problem.
Country
Small Problems
Years
Anti-americanism Is A Pure Totalitarian Concept. The Very Notion Is Idiotic.
Idiotic
Notion
Pure
Colombia Was A Big Wheat Producer In The 1950's. That Was Eliminated By What Sounds Like A Nice Plan, Called "food For Peace. " It's A Plan By Which Us Taxpayers Subsidized Us Agribusiness To Send Food To Poor Countries. This, Of Course, Destroyed The Domestic Agricultural Markets Of These Countries, Opening These Markets To Us Agribusiness.
Country
Nice
Sound
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
The People We Call The Prophets I Think Are The Earliest Dissident Intellectuals, And They're Treated Like Most Dissident Intellectuals - Very Badly. They're Imprisoned, Driven Into The Desert. King Ahab, The Epitome Of Evil In The Bible, Condemned Elijah As A "hater Of Israel." This Is The First Self-hating Jew, The Origin Of The Term. It Goes Right Up To The Present. That's The History Of Intellectuals.
Kings
Hate
Thinking
Whether The Person Should Then Be Called "an Intellectual" Seems To Reduce The Issue To A Question Of Terminology.
Issues
Intellectual
Should
If North Korea Doesn't Have A Deterrent, They Will Be Wiped Out.
Korea
North Korea
Deterrent
A 1998 Study Was Done In Hebrew By An Israeli Scholar, Yosef Grodzinsky, And The English Translation Of The Title Is Good Human Material. That's What They Wanted Sent To Palestine For Colonization And For The Eventual Conflict That Took Place Some Years Later. These Policies Were Somewhat Complementary To The U.s. Policy Of Pressuring England To Allow Jews To Go To Palestine, But Not Allowing Them Here. The British Politician Ernest Bevin Was Quite Bitter About It, Asking, "if You Want To Save The Jews, Why Send Them To Palestine When You Don't Admit Them?"
Years
Titles
Asking
One Might Ask Why Tobacco Is Legal And Marijuana Not. A Possible Answer Is Suggested By The Nature Of The Crop.
Marijuana
Answers
Might
My Position Is That We Should Not Succumb To Irrational Belief.
Belief
Should
Irrational
The Iraq War Was The First Conflict In Western History In Which An Imperialist War Was Massively Protested Against Before It Had Even Been Launched.
War
Iraq
Firsts
The Obvious One, In A Market System, In A Really Functioning One, Whoever's Making The Decisions Doesn't Pay Attention To What Are Called Externalities, Effects On Others. I Sell You A Car, If Our Eyes Are Open We'll Make A Good Deal For Ourselves But We're Not Asking How It's Going To Affect Her [over There.] It Will, There'll Be More Congestion, Gas Prices Will Go Up, There Will Be Environmental Effects And That Multiplies Over The Whole Population. Well, That's Very Serious.
Eye
Car
Decision
An Unstated But Crucial Premise Is That The "responsible Men" Achieve That Exalted Status By Their Service To Authentic Power, A Fact Of Life That They Will Discover Soon Enough If They Try To Pursue An Independent Path.
Independent
Men
Soon Enough
My Memory - Faded, As I Say - Is That Paul Johnson Was Trying To Vilify All Intellectuals Who Were At All Critical Of The States He Worships, And Of Power Generally (except, Of Course, The Power Of Enemies, Which We Must Denounce, Imitating The Commissars Who Are His Models, Though He Doesn't Understand It).
Memories
Enemy
Trying
The Reason Academic Disputes Are So Vicious Is That So Little Is At Stake.
Littles
Academic
Reason
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
If Commissars In Soviet Russia Agreed To Subordinate Themselves To State Power, They Could At Least Plead Fear In Extenuation. Their Counterparts In More Free And Open Societies Can Plead Only Cowardice.
Russia
Cowardice
States
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
Iraq Has The Second Largest Oil Reserves In The World, It Is Right In The Midst Of The Major Energy Reserves In The World. Its Been A Primary Goal Of Us Policy Since World War Ii To Control What The State Department Called "a Stupendous Source Of Strategic Power" And One Of The Greatest Material Prizes In History.
War
Goal
Energy
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
[with] Military Threats, You Can See Them Actually, You Can Imagine It. People Don't Think About It Enough. But If You Think About It For A Minute, You Can See That A Nuclear Attack Could Be The End Of Everything.
Military
Thinking
People
We Should Therefore Be Opposed To Institutional Barriers To That Freedom: Military Dictatorships, For Example. Or States Run By A Central Committee.
Running
Military
Example
This Crazy Ban On The Seven States, Where We Can't Accept Immigrants, Almost Every Analyst Points Out The Obvious: It Just Increases The Threat Of Terror. It Lays The Basis For Terror. It's Just Like The Atrocities In Abu Ghraib And Bagram And Guantanamo. They're The Most Fabulous Recruiting Techniques For Al Qaeda And Isis.
Crazy
Isis
Atrocities
The Government Of Israel Doesn't Like The Kinds Of Things I Say, Which Puts Them Into The Same Category As Every Other Government In The World.
Government
Israel
World
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
People Don't Talk To Each Other. You're Alone With Your Television Set Or Internet. But You Can't Have A Functioning Democracy Without What Sociologists Call "secondary Organizations," Places Where People Can Get Together, Plan, Talk And Develop Ideas. You Don't Do It Alone.
Organization
Ideas
People
If [barack] Obama Or The Boss Or The Newspapers Or Anyone Else Tells You They're Doing This, That, Or The Other Thing, Dismiss It Or Assume The Opposite Is True, Which It Often Is.
Often Is
Opposites
Boss
[moral Responsibilities] Has Nothing Particular To Do With Academia, Except Insofar As Those Within It Tend To Be Unusually Privileged In The Respects Just Mentioned.
Responsibility
Academia
Moral
The Rise Of What's Called Islamic Fundamentalism Is To A Significant Extent A Result Of The Collapse Of Secular Nationalist Alternatives Which Were Either Discredited Internally Or Destroyed, Leaving Few Other Options. Something Like That May Be True Of American Society.
Islamic
Leaving
Alternatives
The Criminalization Of Black Life Was Something Specific To The United States In The Post-reconstruction Period And There's Something Like It Happening Today With Mass Incarceration, Directed Largely Against Black Males.
Black
Males
United States
Immediately After 11 September, The U.s. Closed Down The Somali Charitable Network Al-barakaat On Grounds That It Was Financing Terror. This Achievement Was Hailed One Of The Great Successes Of The 'war On Terror.' In Contrast, Washington's Withdrawal Of Its Charges As Without Merit A Year Later Aroused Little Notice.
War
Years
Achievement
As Any Good Teacher Knows, The Methods Of Instruction And The Range Of Material Covered Are Matters Of Small Importance As Compared With The Success In Arousing The Natural Curiosity Of The Students And Stimulating Their Interest In Exploring On Their Own.
Teacher
Teaching
Curiosity
If [climate Change ] Became A Serious Proposal In The United States, There Would Be A Huge Propaganda Onslaught By The Business Community, The Energy Corporations And Many Others, To Try To Frighten The Population Into Opposing It - Claiming That If They Have It, All Sorts Of Terrible Things Will Happen, Like You Won't Be Able To Heat Your Home, Or Whatever The Story Is.
Home
Community
Trying
The Sanders Campaign Showed That A Candidate With Mildly Progressive Programs Could Win The Nomination, Maybe The Election, Even Without The Backing Of The Major Funders Or Any Media Support. There's Good Reason To Suppose That Sanders Would Have Won The Nomination Had It Not Been For Shenanigans Of The Obama-clinton Party Managers. He Is Now The Most Popular Political Figure In The Country By A Large Margin.
Country
Party
Winning
I Remember Talking To, 40 Years Ago, One Of The Leading People In The Government Who Was Involved In Arms Control, Pressing For Arms Control Measures, Détente, And So On. He's Very High Up, And We Were Talking About Whether Arms Control Could Succeed. And Only Partially As A Joke He Said, "well It Might Succeed If The High Tech Industry Makes More Profit From Arms Control Than It Can Make From Weapons-related Research And Production. If We Get To That Tipping Point Maybe Arms Control Will Work." He Was Partially Joking But There's A Truth That Lies Behind It.
Lying
Government
Talking
Labor #‎ Unions Are The Leading Force For #‎ Democratization And #‎ Progress .
Progress
Unions
Force
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
Real Wages For Male Workers In The United States Are About What They Were In The '60s.
Real
Males
United States
You Cannot Control Your Own Population By Force, But It Can Be Distracted By Consumption.
Population
Force
Consumption
One Of The Real Problems Of Society Is That Its Far Too Atomized, What Sociologists Call Secondary Associations.
Real
Association
Problem
Go Back To The Bible, The Old Testament. I Mean There Were People Who We Would Call Intelectuals, There, They Were Called Prophets, But They Were Basically Intelectuals: They Were People Who Were Doing Critical, Geopolitical Analysis, Talking About The Decisions Of The King Were Going To Lead To Destruction; Condemning Inmorality, Calling For Justice For Widows And Orphans. What We Would Call Dissident Intelectuals. Were They Nicely Treated? No, They Were Driven Into The Desert, They Were Imprisoned, They Were Denounced. They Were Intelectuals Who Conformed.
Kings
Mean
Talking
Workers In Different Countries Can Easily Be Played Off Against Each Other.
Country
Different
Workers
There's Actually An Article In The Washington Post, I Don't Know Whether It's Tongue In Cheek Or Not, Which Said The Criterion For Being On The List Of Banned States Is That [donald] Trump Doesn't Have Business Interests There.
Tongue
Lists
Criteria
Syntax Is The Study Of The Principles And Processes By Which Sentences Are Constructed In Particular Languages. Syntactic Investigation Of A Given Language Has As Its Goal The Construction Of A Grammar That Can Be Viewed As A Device Of Some Sort For Producing The Sentences Of The Language Under Analysis.
Goal
Principles
Analysis
If There Are Dollars To Be Made, You Destroy The Environment. The Reason Is Elementary. The People Who Are Going To Be Harmed By This Are Your Grandchildren And They Don't Have Any Votes In The Market. Their Interests Are Worth Zero. Anybody That Pays Attention To Their Grandchildren's Interests Is Being Irrational. Because What You're Supposed To Do Is Maximize Your Own Interests, Measured By Wealth, Right Now. Nothing Else Matters. So Destroying The Environment And Militarizing Outer Space Are Rational Policies, But Within A Framework Of Institutional Lunacy.
Zero
Grandchildren
Space
If You Go Back A Century In Europe, All Over The Place People Were Speaking Different Languages. There Were Dozens Of Languages In France And Italy, And They're All Called French [and Italian], But They Were Not Mutually Comprehensible. They Were Different Languages. And They Have Mostly Disappeared In The Last Century Or So. Some Are Being Preserved, Like Welsh, Some Are Being Revived, Like Basque Or Catelan To Some Extent. There Are Plenty Of People In Europe Who Can't Talk To Their Grandmother Because They Talk A Different Language.
Grandmother
Italian
Europe
As A Health Scientist At Columbia University, Les Roberts, Pointed Out, Sooner Or Later People Are Going To Be Looking At A Child In A Wheelchair Suffering From Polio And Will Say 'the Americans Did That To Him'. So They Continue Policies Which Have Similar Effects I.e. Organising The Taliban. This Will Come Back To Them Too.
Children
People
Suffering
It's Kind Of Interesting And Sick That The Intellectual Culture Called The 1960s, "time Of Troubles," A Dangerous Period In Which A Lot Of Harm Was Done To The Society. And The Reason Is Because We Were Civilized And That's Dangerous. That Increased The Commitment To Democracy, To Rights And So On, And This Left People Much Less Obedient.
Commitment
Rights
People
Markets Have Built In Inefficiencies, Serious Inefficiencies Which Are Well Known.
Serious
Well Known
Wells
There Are Big, Extremely Irrational Parts Of The Society, And They Have Now Been Mobilized Politically By The Republican Establishment, Hoping That These People Could Be An Electoral Base To Keep Them In Power.
People
Republican
Bigs
People Tend To Rally Around Power.
People
You Are Responsible For The Predictable Consequences Of Your Actions.
Action
Responsible
Predictable
I Don't Like The Intellectual Label.
Intellectual
Labels
The Ideal Is To Create A Completely Fragmented Atomized Society Where Everybody Is Totally Alone, Doing Nothing But Trying To Pursue Created Wants, And The Wants Are Created.
Trying
Doing Nothing
Want
It's True That Language Is In A Sense Linear But That Is As Obvious As Perceptual Space Is Three-dimensional.
Space
Three
Language
That's The Standard Technique Of Privatization: Defund, Make Sure Things Don't Work, People Get Angry, You Hand It Over To Private Capital.
Hands
People
Technique
How It Is We Have So Much Information, But Know So Little?
Littles
Information
Knows
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
If We Choose, We Can Live In A World Of Comforting Illusion.
Hero
Comforting
Anarchy
Policy Is Largely Set By Economic Elites And Organized Groups Representing Business Interests With Little Concern For Public Attitudes Or Public Safety, As Long As The Public Remains Passive And Obedient.
Attitude
Long
Safety
Most Of What Is Done I Think Is To Kept Secret So The Public Won't Know. The Same Is True Of What Wikileaks Exposed.
Thinking
Secret
Done
Ontological Questions Are Generally Beside The Point, Hardly More Than A Form Of Harassment.
Form
Harassment
To Understand How People Organize Social Systems, We Have To Discover The Principles That We Create To Make Some Societies Intelligible.
People
Principles
Social
It's Quite Extraordinary To Hear A Supposedly Learned Person Call The United States A Leading Terrorist Nation, One Of The Leading Terrorist Nations In The World. It's False And Very Treacherous Teaching.
Teaching
Learned Person
United States
If You Don't Like What Someone Has To Say, Argue With Them.
Arguing
Ifs
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
Peter Kropotkin Was Surely On The Left. He Was One Of The Founders Of What Is Now Called 'sociobiology' Or 'evolutionary Psychology' With His Book Mutual Aid, Arguing That Human Nature Had Evolved In Ways Conducive To The Communitarian Anarchism That He Espoused.
Book
Psychology
Way
Stakeholders - Meaning Workers And Community - The Ceo Could Just As Well Be Responsible To Them. This Presupposes There Ought To Be Management But Why Does There Have To Be Management? Why Not Have The Stakeholders Run The Industry?
Running
Community
Doe
As We [with Edward Herman] Discuss There [in Manufacturing Consent] And Elsewhere, Recognition Of The Importance Of "manufacturing Consent" Has Become An Ever More Central Theme In The More Free Societies.
Recognition
Theme
Importance
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
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
I Think There Is A Good Reason Why The Propaganda System Works That Way. It Recognizes That The Public Will Not Support The Actual Policies. Therefore It Is Important To Prevent Any Knowledge Or Understanding Of Them.
Thinking
Support
Understanding
The Times Are Too Difficult And The Crisis Too Severe To Indulge In Schadenfreude. Looking At It In Perspective, The Fact That There Would Be A Financial Crisis Was Perfectly Predictable: Its General Nature, If Not Its Magnitude. Markets Are Always Inefficient.
Indulge In
Perspective
Would Be
Globalization Is The Result Of Powerful Governments, Especially That Of The United States, Pushing Trade Deals And Other Accords Down The Throats Of The World’s People To Make It Easier For Corporations And The Wealthy To Dominate The Economies Of Nations Around The World Without Having Obligations To The Peoples Of Those Nations.
Powerful
Government
People
There Is A Noticeable General Difference Between The Sciences And Mathematics On The One Hand, And The Humanities And Social Sciences On The Other. It's A First Approximation, But One That Is Real. In The Former, The Factors Of Integrity Tend To Dominate More Over The Factors Of Ideology. It's Not That Scientists Are More Honest People. It's Just That Nature Is A Harsh Taskmaster. You Can Lie Or Distort The Story Of The French Revolution As Long As You Like, And Nothing Will Happen. Propose A False Theory In Chemistry, And It'll Be Refuted Tomorrow.
Integrity
Real
Lying
I Do Not See How We Can Rationally Oppose High Speed Rail Because Of The Environmental And Other Costs Without Considering The Social And Human Consequences Of The Radical Elimination Of Transportation That This Entails.
Environmental
Cost
Speed
A Person Who Issues That Charge That Someone Adheres To The Principle "do As I Say, Not As I Do" Has Three Options: Produce An Example; Withdraw The Charge; Take The Coward's Way Out And Slink Away Silently.
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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