I Think The Foreign Policy Is Really Not Donald Trump Administration Concern. Like The Syria Strike. I Mean, It Meant Almost Nothing. They Hit An Empty Air Base. Within A Day, It Was Functioning Again. Planes Were Flying Off It. It Was For A Domestic Show, You Know - Show What A Tough Guy I Am; I'm Not Barack Obama.

-Noam Chomsky

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I Think The Foreign

Noam Chomsky

Topic

Mean

Thinking

Guy

More From Noam Chomsky

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

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

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

Country

Media

Years

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

When Leaders Carry Out Policies For Decades That Have No Consequences For The Stated Goal And Are Very Costly, You Have To Ask Whether They Are Telling You The Truth Or Whether The Policies Are For A Different Goal, Because They Are Not Reducing Drug Use.

Drug Use

Goal

Leader

If We Don't Believe In Free Expression For People We Despise, We Don't Believe In It At All.

Inspirational

Relationship

Freedom

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

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

Marijuana

Answers

Might

The Capacity To Transfer Production Elsewhere Is A Weapon Against The Western Workers.

Weapons

Capacity

Workers

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

Children

Perfect

Goal

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

How People Themselves Perceive What They Are Doing Is Not A Question That Interests Me.

People

Interest

Perceive

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

Procurement Is A Major Technique Of State Subsidy.

Technique

Subsidies

States

If You're Worried About The Deficit, Pay Attention To The Fact That It's Almost All Attributable To Military Spending And The Totally Dysfunctional Health Program.

Military

Attention

Pay

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

Ends

Has Beens

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

Respect

Work

Mean

As Long As People Are Marginalized And Distracted [they] Have No Way To Organize Or Articulate Their Sentiments, Or Even Know That Others Have These Sentiments. People Assume That They Are The Only People With A Crazy Idea In Their Heads. They Never Hear It From Anywhere Else. Nobody's Supposed To Think That. ... Since There's No Way To Get Together With Other People Who Share Or Reinforce That View And Help You Articulate It, You Feel Like An Oddity, An Oddball. So You Just Stay On The Side And You Don't Pay Any Attention To What's Going On. You Look At Something Else, Like The Superbowl.

Crazy

Thinking

Oddities

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

War

Europe

Long

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

Don't Be Obsessed With Tactics But With Purpose. Tactics Have A Half Life.

Purpose

Half

Tactics

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

Depressing

Mean

Cities

It's As If We're Higher Apes Who Had A Language Faculty Inserted.

Apes

Language

Faculty

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

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

War

Miracle

Nuclear

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

Moving

East Germany

Talking

The Main Mineral In Your Cellphone, Coltan [a Black Metallic Ore], Comes From The Eastern Congo. Multinational Corporations Are There Exploiting The Very Rich Mineral Resources Of The Region. A Lot Of Them Are Backing Militias Which Are Fighting One Other To Gain Control Of The Resources Or A Piece Of The Resources.

Fighting

Black

Pieces

Let's Take Adam Smith, The Patron-saint Of Capitalism, What Did He Think? He Thought The Main Human Instinct Was Sympathy. In Fact, Take A Look At The Word "invisible Hand." Which, Of Course, You Learned About, Or You Think You've Learned About. Take A Look At The Actual Way In Which He Used The Phrase. There Is Almost No Relation To What Is Claimed.

Thinking

Invisible Hand

Hands

The Russian Ambassador At The United Nations Did Make Some Proposals For A Political Settlement In Which Bashar Assad Would Be Slowly Eased Out. The West Dismissed It Immediately, And We Don't Know If It Was Real, Because It Didn't Come From The Kremlin, And It Was Informal. But The Point Is Every Such Proposal Is Immediately Scotched. And You Just Don't Know If They're Real.

Real

Political

Proposal

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

War

Evil

Survival

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

Movement

Kind

Choir

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 British Had An Even Stronger [then America] Business Interest In Nazi Germany. And Benito Mussolini Was Greatly Admired.

America

Stronger

Germany

The Prescription For Endless War Poses A Far Greater Danger To Americans Than Perceived Enemies Do, For Reasons The Terrorist Organisations Understand Very Well.

War

Enemy

Reason

The Second World War Ended With A Radicalization Of The Population In The United States And Everywhere Else, And Called For All Kinds Of Things Like Popular Takeovers, Government Intervention, And Worker Takeovers Of Factories. Business Propagated A Tremendous Propaganda Offensive. The Scale Surprised Me When I Read The Scholarship - It's Enormous, And It's Been Very Effective. There Were Two Major Targets: One Is Unions, The Other Is Democracy.

War

Two

Government Intervention

The Republican Primaries Were Quite Interesting. The Establishment Had Its Candidate, [mitt] Romney, A Kind Of A Wall Street Lawyer And Investor, And They Wanted Him In. But The Base Didn't Want Him.

Wall

Interesting

Want

The Republican Establishment, The Mainstream Corporate Financial Wealth, Is Getting To A Point Where It Can't Control The Base It's Mobilized.

Financial

Republican

Wealth

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.

Effort

Tolls

Development

The Most Striking Aspect Of Linguistic Competence Is What We May Call The 'creativity Of Language,' That Is, The Speaker's Ability To Produce New Sentences, Sentences That Are Immediately Understood By Other Speakers Although They Bear No Physical Resemblance To Sentences Which Are 'familiar.

Creativity

May

Bears

My Proposal Happens To Be Very Mainstream.

Proposal

Mainstream

Happens

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

In Fact, By Universal Grammar I Mean Just That System Of Principles And Structures That Are The Prerequisites For Acquisition Of Language, And To Which Every Language Necessarily Conforms.

Mean

Facts

Principles

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

If The Authors And Custodians Of History Turn Out To Have An Attractive Image, It Is Only Reasonable To Look Beyond And Ask Whether The Image They Construct Is Accurate.

Custodians

Looks

Attractive

...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

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

I Don't Claim To Know A Lot About Mexico, But I Did Talk To Quite A Number Of Left Mexican Intelectuals, And They All Said The Same Thing. That There's A Lot Of Popular, Kind Of, Concern And Activism, But It Is Very Fragmented. That The Groups Have Very Specific, Narrow Agendas And They Don't Interact And Cooperate With One Another. Ok, That's Something You Have To Overcome To Build A Mass Popular Movement. And That's, Media Can Help, But They Also Benefit From It.

Media

Numbers

Mexican

That's A Large Part Of The Source Of The Gun Culture. You Have To Have A Gun When You Go Into Starbucks, Because Who Knows What's Going To Happen. It Just Doesn't Happen In Other Countries.

Country

Gun

Culture

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

War

Two

Survival

Our Minds Are Specifically Adapted To Developing Certain Theories, And We Have A Science If The Theories That Are Available To Our Minds Happen To Be Close To True. Well, There Is No Particular Reason To Suppose That The Intersection Of True Theories And Theories That Are Accessible To The Mind Is Very Large. It May Not Be Very Large.

Mind

May

Reason

I Think It Only Makes Sense To Seek Out And Identify Structures Of Authority, Hierarchy, And Domination In Every Aspect Of Life, And To Challenge Them; Unless A Justification For Them Can Be Given, They Are Illegitimate, And Should Be Dismantled, To Increase The Scope Of Human Freedom.

Thinking

Challenges

Hierarchy

If You Look At The Minutes Of The Constitutional Convention - Which We Have - Madison Who Was The Main Framer, Proceeded To Develop A System In Which - As He Put It - Power Would Be In The Hands Of The Wealth Of The Nation, The More Responsible Set Of Men And Who Recognize The Need To Protect The Rights Of Property Owners. That's Why In The Constitutional System, The Most Powerful Part Of The Whole System Is The Senate.

Powerful

Men

Rights

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

It's Like These People Are Programmed By Karl Rove. What He Wants Is To Have Liberal Critics Ridicule Bush Because He Says 'nucular' And 'misunderestimate' And Talks With A Probably Fake Texas Accent And So On, Because Then Can Come Back With The Big Propaganda Apparatus Saying, 'see, Those Elite Liberals Who Run The World And Are Sitting Around Drinking French Wine And Eating Quiche Don't Understand Us Ordinary Guys'; Regular Guys Like The Guy Working On The Assembly Line And George Bush, Who Is Going Back To His Ranch To Cut Brush.

Running

Drinking

Wine

Power Has To Be Protected From Scrutiny. That's The Principle Of Every Dictatorship, Of Every Autocracy. You Hear It From High Priests At Harvard And Every Government Department, That Power Has To Be Kept Secret Otherwise It Will Fade And It Won't Work. But Bradley Manning Is Violating That Principle.

Government

Secret

Principles

One Of The Christian Fundamentalists' Goals Seems To Be To Rebuild The Temple, Which Means Destroying The Al-aqsa Mosque, Which Presumably Means War With The Arab World - One Of The Goals, Perhaps, In Fulfilling The Prophecy Of Armageddon. So They Strongly Support Israeli Power And Expansionism, And Help Fund It And Lobby For It; But They Also Support Actions That Are Very Harmful And Objectionable To Most Of Its Population - As Do Jewish Fundamentalist Groups, Mostly Rooted In The Us, Which, After All, Is One Of The Most Extreme Religious Fundamentalist Societies In The World.

Christian

Religious

War

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 Happened To Go To A School When I Was A Kid And That's All We Did, Pursue Our Own Interests. It Was Kind Of Structured So You Ended Up Knowing Everything You Were Supposed To Know, Arithmetic, Latin, Whatever It Was. But Almost Always It Was Under Your Own Initiative.

Latin

School

Kids

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

Country

Real

Mutual Support

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

The General Population Doesn't Know What's Happening, And It Doesn't Even Know That It Doesn't Know.

Population

Knows

Happenings

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

Thinking

Intellectual

Way

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

Cutting

Drug Cartels

United States

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

No Honest Journalist Should Be Willing To Describe Himself Or Herseif As 'embedded.' To Say, 'i'm An Embedded Journalist' Is To Say, 'i'm A Government Propagandist.

Government

Honest

Embedded

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

Order

White

Chocolate

Concision Is A Technique Of Propaganda. It Ensures You Cannot Do Anything Except Repeat Clichés, The Standard Doctrine, Or Sound Like A Lunatic.

Technique

Sound

Doctrine

As The Capacity To Coerce Declines, It Is Natural To Turn To Control Of Opinion As The Basis For Authority And Domination - A Fundamental Principle Of Government Already Emphasized By David Hume.

Government

Principles

Fundamentals

Reparations - Not Just Aid - Should Be Provided By Those Responsible For Devastating Iraqi Civilian Society By Cruel Sanctions And Military Actions, And - Together With Other Criminal States - For Supporting Saddam Hussein Through His Worst Atrocities And Beyond. That Is The Minimum That Honesty Requires.

Honesty

Military

Together

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

Free Markets Are Based On The Free Circulation Of Labor. If You Don't Have Free Circulation Of Labor, You Don't Have Free Markets.

Free Market

Circulation

Labor

No One Is Concerned With Central America Anymore. If A Million People Are Facing Starvation In Northern Nicaragua And Honduras, It's None Of Our Business. Few People Even Recognize That This Situation Is In Part An Outgrowth Of Us Policies Going Back To The 1980's. Nobody Is Concerned Because Nicaragua Is Technically Stable.

America

People

Nicaragua

Bradley Manning Should Be Regarded As A Hero. He Is Doing What An Honest, Decent Citizen Should Be Doing: Letting Your Population Know What The Government, The People Who Rule You Are Doing. They Want To Keep It Secret Of Course.

Hero

Government

People

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

Meaningful

Political

Democracy

The Us Health-care System Is A Complete Scandal. It's Got Twice The Costs Of Comparable Countries And Some Of The Worst Outcomes.

Country

Cost

Care

There Are Many Cases Around The World In Which The Presence Of Un Peace-keeping Forces Has Had A Somewhat Beneficial Effect.

World

Force

Cases

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

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

Achievement

Democracy

Feudal System

We Can, For Example, Be Fairly Confident That Either There Will Be A World Without War Or There Won't Be A World - At Least, A World Inhabited By Creatures Other Than Bacteria And Beetles, With Some Scattering Of Others.

War

Example

World

The Only Justification For Repressive Institutions Is Material And Cultural Deficit. But Such Institutions, At Certain Stages Of History, Perpetuate And Produce Such A Deficit, And Even Threaten Human Survival.

History

Survival

Institutions

The September 11 Attacks Were Major Atrocities. . . . This Was A Horrendous Crime . . . The Primary Victims . . . Were Working People: Janitors, Secretaries, Firemen, Etc. It Is Likely To Prove To Be A Crushing Blow To Palestinians . . . It Is Also Likely To Lead To Harsh Security Controls, With Many Possible Ramifications For Undermining Civil Liberties And Internal Freedom.

Crush

Blow

People

International Affairs Is Very Much Run Like The Mafia. The Godfather Does Not Accept Disobedience, Even From A Small Storekeeper Who Doesn't Pay His Protection Money. You Have To Have Obedience Otherwise The Idea Can Spread That You Don't Have To Listen To The Orders And It Can Spread To Important Places.

Running

Order

Ideas

My Feeling Is That If Any Republican Was Elected It Would Be Almost A Death Knell For The Species Literally, Just Because Of Their Attitude On Climate Change.

Attitude

Feelings

Climate

Rush Limbaugh Has Answered - It's The Rich Liberals Who Own The Banks And Run The Government, And Of Course Run The Media, And They Don't Care About You - They Just Want To Give Everything Away To Illegal Immigrants And Gays And Communists And So On.

Running

Gay

Government

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

Rights

People

Support

I Have Never Suggested Any Principled Difference Between The Natural And Social Sciences.

Differences

Natural

Social

I Don't Think That Experience Is A Very Useful Or Convincing Attribute For A Sensible Foreign Policy. Henry Kissinger Had A Lot Of Experience.

Thinking

Henry Kissinger

Attributes

Maybe The Science Is Uncertain, Maybe We Don't Have To Worry About It. Climate Change Is The Worst, But There's Others.

Worry

Climate

Uncertain

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

Revolutionary

Anarchist

Accepting

I See No Anti-semitic Implications In Denial Of The Existence Of Gas Chambers, Or Even Denial Of The Holocaust.

Holocaust

Denial

Existence

I Had Two Spinster Aunts Who Were Seamstresses, And Of Course Unemployed In The 1930s, But The Union Gave Them A Life. They Had A Couple Of Weeks In The Country For A Union Installation And They Had Educational Programs And All Sorts Of Things. There Was A Life, You Know, A Real Community.

Country

Couple

Real

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

Thinking

Organization

Ideas

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

War

Cities

Occupation

The Ottoman Empire . . . The Rulers In Turkey Were Fortunately So Corrupt That They Left People Alone Pretty Much - Were Mostly Interested In Robbing Them - And They Left Them Alone To Run Their Own Affairs . . . With A Lot Of Local Self Determination.

Running

Determination

Self

The Tendencies Are Considerably Weaker In The Natural Sciences, Which, For The Past Several Centuries, Have Survived And Flourished Through Such Constant Challenge, And Therefore, At Best, Seek To Encourage It. Serving The Status Quo In Political And Socioeconomic Realms Is A Different Matter.

Past

Political

Challenges

Democracy Has Both Expanded And Declined Over The Years.

Democracies Have

Years

Democracy

I Still Think, Despite Everything, That The Us Is Very Unlikely To Attack Iran. It Could Be A Huge Catastrophe; Nobody Knows What The Consequences Would Be. I Imagine That Only An Administration That's Really Desperate Would Resort To That.

Thinking

Iran

Would Be

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

Association

Internet

Weakening

Anyone Who Studies Declassified Documents Soon Becomes Aware That Government Secrecy Is Largely An Effort To Protect Policy Makers From Scrutiny By Citizens, Not To Protect The Country From Enemies.

Country

Government

Effort

That Is What I Have Always Understood To Be The Essence Of Anarchism: The Conviction That The Burden Of Proof Has To Be Placed On Authority, And That It Should Be Dismantled If That Burden Cannot Be Met.

Burden Of Proof

Essence

Anarchy

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

Teenage

Kids

Drug

From The Late 1940s, Into And Through The '50s, There Developed A Complex Interaction Between Federal Government, State And Local Government, Real-estate Interests, Commercial Interests And Court Decisions, Which Had The Effect Of Undermining The Mass Transit System Across The Country.

Country

Real

Government

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

It's Only Terrorism If They Do It To Us. When We Do Much Worse To Them, It's Not Terrorism.

Terrorism

Ifs

Corporations Are Totalitarian Institutions. Board Of Directors At The Top Of Managers Give Orders, Everyone Follows Orders..... At The Very Bottom Of Command, If You Are Lucky You Can Rent Yourself To It And Get A Job , And If You Are Sufficiently Propagandized You May Even Buy Some Of The Junk They Produce And So On.

Jobs

Order

Giving

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

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

Money

Community

Decision

That's The Whole Point Of Good Propaganda. You Want To Create A Slogan That Nobody's Going To Be Against, And Everybody's Going To Be For. Nobody Knows What It Means, Because It Doesn't Mean Anything.

Mean

Want

Propaganda

The European Reaction To Obama Is A European Delusion.

Reactions

Delusion

Expressing Criticism Of Society Is Not Being A Grouch.

Criticism

Grouches

We Shouldn't Be Looking For Heroes, We Should Be Looking For Good Ideas.

Hero

Ideas

Should

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

Political

Minorities

Tiny

Private Sector Unionization Is Down To Practically Seven Percent. Meanwhile The Public Sector Unions Have Kind Of Sustained Themselves [even] Under Attack, But In The Last Few Years, There's Been A Sharp [increase In The] Attack On Public Sector Unions, Which Barack Obama Has Participated In, In Fact. When You Freeze Salaries Of Federal Workers, That's Equivalent To Taxing Public Sector People.

Years

People

Salary

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

In Much Of The World The U.s. Is Regarded As A Leading Terrorist State.

World

States

Terrorist

We're Supposed To Worship Adam Smith But You're Not Supposed To Read Him. That's Too Dangerous.

Worship

Adam

Dangerous

There Are Many Terrorist States In The World, But The United States Is Unusual In That It Is Officially Committed To International Terrorism.

Peace

War

United States

People Don't Have Knowledge And Understanding About The Outside World, Or About History [in The Usa].

Usa

People

Understanding

We Had One Or Another Form Of State Capitalism During An Extremely Brief Period Of Human History, Which Tells Us Essentially Nothing About Human Nature. If You Look At Human Societies And Human Interactions, You Can Find Anything. You Find Selfishness, You Find Altruism, You Find Sympathy.

Selfishness

Looks

Human Nature

But On The Other Hand, In Discussion And Debate Concerning Social Issues Or American Foreign Policy, Vietnam Or The Middle East, For Example, The Issue Is Constantly Raised, Often With Considerable Venom. I've Repeatedly Been Challenged On Grounds Of Credentials, Or Asked, What Special Training Do You Have That Entitles You To Speak Of These Matters. The Assumption Is That People Like Me, Who Are Outsiders From A Professional Viewpoint, Are Not Entitled To Speak On Such Things.

Hands

Issues

People

The Argument That Resistance To The War Should Remain Strictly Nonviolent Seems To Me Overwhelming.

War

Resistance

Argument

The Russians Were Doing A Lot Of Rotten Things, You Can Point To Them. But The Idea That If You Consider What Hans Morgenthau Called "i Called Abuse Of Reality," The Picture Of The World Was Almost The Opposite Of What They Presented. But Somehow This Sells And Is Continually Repeated, At Least In This Kind Of Situation.

Reality

Opposites

Ideas

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

Country

Ocean

Space

I Think The Most Important Work That Is Going On Has To Do With The Search For Very General And Abstract Features Of What Is Sometimes Called Universal Grammar: General Properties Of Language That Reflect A Kind Of Biological Necessity Rather Than Logical Necessity; That Is, Properties Of Language That Are Not Logically Necessary For Such A System But Which Are Essential Invariant Properties Of Human Language And Are Known Without Learning. We Know These Properties But We Don't Learn Them. We Simply Use Our Knowledge Of These Properties As The Basis For Learning.

Thinking

Important

Essentials

You Keep Plugging Away--that's The Way Social Change Takes Place. That's The Way Every Social Change In History Has Taken Place: By A Lot Of People, Who Nobody Ever Heard Of, Doing Work.

Taken

People

Way

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

Uplifting

Country

Couple

An Effective Regulatory System Today Would Be One Guided By A Few Basic Premises That Can Be Applied Flexibly But Also Universally.

Today

Technology Can Be Used That Way And It Can Also Be Used In Other Ways.

Technology

Way

Used

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

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

Suppose That The Us Really Is Trying To Get Rid Of Drugs In Colombia. Does Colombia Then Have The Right To Fumigate Tobacco Farms In Kentucky? They Are Producing A Lethal Substance Far More Dangerous Than Cocaine. More Colombians Die From Tobacco-related Illnesses Than Americans Die From Cocaine. Of Course, Colombia Has No Right To Do That.

Kentucky

Political

Drug

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

Lying

Sea

Melting

Free Speech Has Been Used By The Supreme Court To Give Immense Power To The Wealthiest Members Of Our Society.

Giving

Speech

Our Society

The Actual Consequences Of Plan Colombia Are To Devastate Peasant Communities, Which Have Been Driven To Drug Production. These Peasants Have No Particular Desire To Grow Coca, But Their Other Means Of Livelihood Have Been Wiped Out.

Mean

Community

Drug

If The United States Is Accommodating, The North Koreans Become Accommodating. If The United States Is Hostile, They Become Hostile.

United States

Korean

North Korea

American Decline Is Real, Though The Apocalyptic Vision Reflects The Familiar Ruling Class Perception That Anything Short Of Total Control Amounts To Total Disaster.

Real

Class

Perception

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

If You Want To Talk About Distributing Substances That Are Lethal, . . . Let's Be Serious. Tobacco Is Far Ahead Of Anything Else. Alcohol Is Second.

Alcohol

Substance

Want

Before The 1970s, Banks Were Banks. They Did What Banks Were Supposed To Do In A State Capitalist Economy: They Took Unused Funds From Your Bank Account, For Example, And Transferred Them To Some Potentially Useful Purpose Like Helping A Family Buy A Home Or Send A Kid To College.

Home

Kids

College

In The United States Everyone Is An Illegal Immigrant - Everyone Except The People In Indian Reservations. This Is An Immigrant Society.

People

United States

Illegal

Control Is The Source Of Strategic Power.

Source

Strategic

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

It Also Seems Beyond Controversy That Moral Responsibilities Are Greater To The Extent That People "have The Resources, The Training, The Facilities And Opportunities To Speak And Act Effectively."

Responsibility

Opportunity

People

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

Education

Teaching

Reading

In Fact, The Outer Space Treaty Of 1967 Bans Militarization. Potential Adversaries Of The Us, And Even Its Allies, Are So Far Behind That These Countries Are Very Interested In Maintaining The Treaty. Europe And The Rest Of The World Want A Strong Reaffirmation Of The Treaty And The Us Is Unilaterally Trying To Derail It. Termination Of The Treaty Would Mean That The Us Could Develop Satellite Weapons, Put Offensive Weapons In Space. It Would Probably Mean Using Nuclear Power In Space. All Of This Leads To Some Very Dangerous Scenarios, Including Destruction Of The Species.

Country

Strong

Mean

The Imf Economists Were Doubtless Shaken By The Extreme Failures Of Their Prescriptions Over Many Years, And By The Collapse Of The Intellectual Edifice Of Economic Theory On Which They Were Relying.

Years

Intellectual

Imf

If You Look At History, Even Recent History, You See That There Is Indeed Progress. . . . Over Time, The Cycle Is Clearly, Generally Upwards. And It Doesn't Happen By Laws Of Nature. And It Doesn't Happen By Social Laws. . . . It Happens As A Result Of Hard Work By Dedicated People Who Are Willing To Look At Problems Honestly, To Look At Them Without Illusions, And To Go To Work Chipping Away At Them, With No Guarantee Of Success — In Fact, With A Need For A Rather High Tolerance For Failure Along The Way, And Plenty Of Disappointments.

Disappointment

Hard Work

Law

To Construct A Scientific Theory From The Data And To Be Able To Recognize That It Is A Reasonable Theory Is Possible Only If There Are Some Very Sharp Restrictive Principles That Lead You To Go In One Direction And Not In Another Direction. Otherwise, You Wouldn't Have Science At All, Merely Randomly Chosen Hypotheses.

One Direction

Data

Principles

I Have Never Heard Of Anyone Who Was A "model Person" In All Aspects Of His Or Her Life, Intellectual Life Or Other Aspects; Nor Do I See Why Anyone Should Care. We Are Not Engaged In Idol Worship, After All.

Idols

Intellectual

Care

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

Growing Up

Growing

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

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

Granted

Scientist

Biologist

Imagine An Extrahuman Observer Looking At Us. Such An Extrahuman Observer Would Be Struck Precisely By The Uniformity Of Human Languages, By The Very Slight Variation From One Language To Another, And By The Remarkable Respects In Which All Languages Are The Same. And Then He Would Notice We Do Not Pay Any Attention To That Because For The Purpose Of Human Life It Is Quite Natural And Appropriate Just To Take For Granted Everything That Is Common. We Don't Concern Ourselves With That, All We Worry About Are Differences.

Differences

Worry

Would Be

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

Goal

Degrees

Might

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

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

Cuba

Resistance

Courageous

There's A Strong Nativist Tradition - Saying, "we Have To Protect Ourselves" - That Comes From The Founding Of The Country. If You Read Benjamin Franklin, Who Was One Of The Leading Figures Of The Enlightenment In The United States And The Most Distinguished Representative Of The Movement Here, He Actually Advised That The Newly Founded Republic Should Block Germans And Swedes Because They Were Too "swarthy" - Dark.

Country

Strong

Block

The Bush Administration Do Have Moral Values. Their Moral Values Are Very Explicit: Shine The Boots Of The Rich And The Powerful, Kick Everybody Else In The Face, And Let Your Grandchildren Pay For It. That Simple Principle Predicts Almost Everything That's Happening.

Powerful

Simple

Grandchildren

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

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

It Was Reported In The Left-wing Press In The Late 1930s That The Texas Company (texaco), Headed By The Nazi Sympathizer Torkild Rieber, Diverted Its Oil Shipments From The Republic, With Which It Had Contracts, To [francisco] Franco.

Texas

Wings

Oil

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

Country

Freedom Of Speech

United States

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

[after Vietnam] The Type Of Interventions That Are Carried Out Are Designed So As Not To Elicit Public Reactions.

Vietnam

Reactions

Type

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

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

Horse

Bigs

Automobile

In Any Institution-factory, University, Health Center, Or Whatever-there Are A Variety Of Interests That Ought To Be Represented In Decision-making: The Work Force Itself, The Community In Which It Is Located, Users Of Its Products Or Services, Institutions That Compete For The Same Resources. These Interests Should Be Directly Represented In Democratic Structures That Displace And Eliminate Private Ownership Of The Means Of Production Or Resources, An Anachronism With No Legitimacy.

Mean

Community

Decision

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

Thinking

Community

Political

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

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

Party

Thinking

People

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

Concerned

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

War

Boston

Years

Bolivia Is In The Lead Internationally In Talking About The Threat Of Environmental Catastrophe. It's Generally True Where There Are Indigenous Populations, There Are Important Things Happening; Where The Indigenous Populations Have Been Marginalized Or Exterminated, Things Go To A Disaster. This Is True Worldwide, And Bolivia Is Striking Because It's A Majority Population And In The Lead.

Talking

Environmental

Important

Women Didn't Have Rights. Under British Common Law, Women Were Property.

Rights

Law

Common

International Relations Bears More Than A Slight Resemblance To The Mafia.

Mafia

Bears

Relation

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

Training

Arms

Violence

Honduras Has Become A Murder Capital Of The World; There's Horrible Atrocities, Infanticide, Murder Of Women Is Way Up, And People Are Fleeing In Desperation. They Come To The Border, And We Put Them In Trucks And Send Them Back To Mexico To Die. And Here People Are Scared Of Illegal Immigrants - That's What We're Doing. It's Pretty Shocking.

People

Atrocities

Fleeing

Students Who Acquire Large Debts Putting Themselves Through School Are Unlikely To Think About Changing Society. When You Trap People In A System Of Debt, They Can't Afford The Time To Think. Tuition Fee Increases Are A Disciplinary Technique, And By The Time Students Graduate, They Are Not Only Loaded With Debt, But Have Also Internalized The Disciplinarian Culture. This Makes Them Efficient Components Of The Consumer Economy.

School

Thinking

People

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

If We Move Toward The Weaponisation Of Space, We Can Bid Farewell To The Planet. The Chances Of Survival Are Very Slight.

Moving

Farewell

Space

It's Designed To Carry Forward The Neoliberal Project To Maximize Profit And Domination, And To Set The Working People In The World In Competition With One Another So As To Lower Wages To Increase Insecurity

People

Insecurity

Competition

The Zionist Movement Based In Palestine Pretty Much Took Over The Camps And Instituted The Policy That Every Man And Woman Between The Ages Of Seventeen And Thirty-five Should Be Directed To Palestine - Not Allowed To Go To The West.

Men

Age

West

Education Must Provide The Opportunities For Self-fulfillment; It Can At Best Provide A Rich And Challenging Environment For The Individual To Explore, In His Own Way.

Teacher

School

Opportunity

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

Real

Hard Work

Opportunity

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

I Suspect Most Likely That More Nazis Came To America. I Was A Student At Harvard During The Early 1950s. There Was Practically No Jewish Faculty There.

America

Students

Nazi

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

By Accident Of Geography, The World's Major Oil Resources Are In Shi'ite-dominated Areas. Iran's Oil Is Concentrated Right Near The Gulf, Which Happens To Be An Arab Area, Not Persian. Khuzestan Is Arab, Has Been Loyal To Iran, Fought With Iran Not Iraq During The Iran-iraq War. This Is A Potential Source Of Dissension. I Would Be Amazed If There Isn't An Attempt Going On To Stir Up Secessionist Elements In Khuzestan.

War

Iran

Oil

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

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

Opportunity

Invisible Hand

Hands

The Idea That You Have To Drop Any Thing That You Might Be Interested In Doing Because You Have To Pass That Test Tomorrow And It's Something That You're Not Interested In, That's Just The Opposite Of Education. It's Also Harming Teaching, Because The Teachers Are Evaluated By The Results Of The Test.

Teacher

Teaching

Ideas

There Are A Lot Of Things That Can Be Done Within The Framework Of Existing Institutions Which Would Be Very Valuable For People.

People

Would Be

Done

I Am Thinking Of Actual Cases Of Adolescents, Lets Say, Who Think They Have Five Hundred Friends, Because There Are Five Hundred People On Their Facebook Account. But These Are The Kind Of Friends Whose Relation To You Is That If You Say 'i Bought A Sandwich'; They Say 'did It Taste Good?' You Know, That's A Kind Of Interaction, But Very Different To Having A Real Friend, Somebody Who You Can Actually Talk To.

Real

Thinking

People

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

Military

Years

Administration

For Example, The Insurance Industries And The Big Banks Are Absolutely Euphoric Now - On The Business Pages They Don't Even Conceal It - Because They've Succeeded In Coming Out Of The Crisis Even Stronger Than They Were Before, And In A Better Position To Lay The Basis For The Next Crisis. But They Don't Care, Because They'll Get Bailed Out Again. That's Class Consciousness With A Vengeance.

Class

Stronger

Example

It Makes Sense For Societies To Make Education Compulsory For Children. Children Are Vulnerable. They Can't Make Decisions. But The Decisions Can't All Be Left In The Hands Of The Parents. They Can Be Irresponsible Too.

Children

Hands

Decision

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

Support

Littles

England

For A While, After The Second World War, When There Was Strong Support For Labor, This Was Done Subtly.

Strong

War

Support

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

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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Guillaume Apollinaire