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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.

-Noam Chomsky

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I Think The Most

Noam Chomsky

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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.

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The Us Reasserted Control Over Nicaragua In 1990. Since Then, The Country Has Experienced A Steep Decline. It's Now The Second Poorest Country In The Hemisphere.

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

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

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

The Possibility Of Interpersonal Communication Has Increased Substantially With Contemporary Technology. But As Compared With The Major Changes, Which Were Long Ago, These Are Not Huge.

I Really Suggest Listening To Talk Radio. I Mean, If You Just Listen To What The Talk Hosts Are Saying, They Sound Like They Are Lunatics.

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?"

All Public Resources Go To The Rich. The Poor, If They Can Survive In The Labor Market, Fine. Otherwise, They Die. That's Economics In A Nutshell.

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

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

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

Our Ignorance Can Be Divided Into Problems And Mysteries. When We Face A Problem, We May Not Know Its Solution, But We Have Insight, Increasing Knowledge, And An Inkling Of What We Are Looking For. When We Face A Mystery, However, We Can Only Stare In Wonder And Bewilderment, Not Knowing What An Explanation Would Even Look Like.

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.

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."

Our Current Prison State Has The Dual Effect Of Getting Rid Of A Superfluous Population Of Basically Unskilled Workers (with A Close Race-class Correlation), And Also Demonizing Them... The Drug War Is Basically For This - It Has Nothing To Do With Drugs, But It Has Plenty To Do With Criminalizing An Unwanted Population And Scaring Everybody Else.

[companies That Specialized In How To Destroy Unions] Don't Make It A Secret, And They Have All Sorts Of Techniques For Management To Destroy Unions.

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).

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.

They [the Union] Were Members Of The Communist Party - They Didn't Care One Way Or Another About Russia, They Just Cared About The United States.

Allowing An Independent And Sovereign Iraq Could Be A Nightmare For The United States. It Would Mean That It Would Be Shi'ite-dominated, At Least If It's Minimally Democratic. It Would Continue To Improve Relations With Iran, Just What The United States Doesn't Want To See. And Beyond That, Right Across The Border In Saudi Arabia Where Most Of Saudi Oil Is, There Happens To Be A Large Shi'ite Population, Probably A Majority.

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

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

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

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.

I Don't Use The Social Media But I Can See The Effects In My Own Correspondence. I Get A Ton Of Correspondence. It Used To Be Hard Copy And Now It's A Very Limited Amount Of Actual Letters People Write. So It's Mostly Email.

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.

Isis Is A Monstrosity. It Didn't Come From Nowhere. It's One Of The Results Of The U.s. Hitting A Very Vulnerable Society - Iraq - With A Sledgehammer.

It's Roughly The Case That If Systems Become Too Complex To Study In Sufficient Depth, Physics Hands Them Over To Chemistry, Then To Biology, Then Experimental Psychology, And Finally On To History. Roughly. These Are Tendencies, And They Tend To Distinguish Roughly Between Hard And Soft Sciences.

The Worst Drug Of All By Far Is Tobacco; The Death Toll From Tobacco Is Just Overwhelming.

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.

There's A Tremendous Amount Of Language Loss. Most Of The Attention Is Given To Indigenous Languages, Which Makes Sense, But Some Of The Most Dramatic Language Loss Is In Europe.

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.

For The Past Century Or So That's [ Monroe Doctrine] Actually Been True, But It's Declining Very Significantly.

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.

There Are People On The Left Who Say, Look, We Can't Let These Atrocities Go On, So Let's Enter The War And Get Rid Of Bashar Assad. The Problem With That Is You Get Into A Nuclear War With Russia. And Syria Gets Wiped Out Along With Everything Else. So, It's Fine To Say, Ok, Let's Stop The Crimes, But How Exactly?

The Drones Are A Terrorist Weapon, They Not Only Kill Targets But Also Terrorise Other People.

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.

This Sarah Palin Phenomenon Is Very Curious. I Think Somebody Watching Us From Mars — They Would Think The Country Has Gone Insane.

There Are Huge Areas Where The Human Mind Is Apparently Incapable Of Forming Sciences, Or At Least Has Not Done So. There Are Other Areas - So Far, In Fact, One Area Only [physics] - In Which We Have Demonstrated The Capacity For True Scientific Progress.

As For The Various Religions, There's No Doubt That They Are Very Meaningful To Adherents, And Allow Them To Delude Themselves Into Thinking There Is Some Meaning To Their Lives Beyond What We Agree Is The Case. I'd Never Try To Talk Them Out Of The Delusions, Which Are Necessary For Them To Live A Life That Makes Some Sense To Them. These Beliefs Can Provide A Framework For Deeds That Are Noble Or Savage, And Anywhere In Between, And There's Every Reason To Focus Attention On The Deeds And The Background For Them, To The Extent That We Can Grasp It.

In Our Society, Real Power Does Not Happen To Lie In The Political System, It Lies In The Private Economy: That’s Where The Decisions Are Made About What’s Produced, How Much Is Produced, What’s Consumed, Where Investment Takes Place, Who Has Jobs, Who Controls The Resources, And So On And So Forth. And As Long As That Remains The Case, Changes Inside The Political System Can Make Some Difference-i Don’t Want To Say It’s Zero-but The Differences Are Going To Be Very Slight.

I Think That As Human Beings, We Quite Naturally Take For Granted What Is Similar Among Human Beings And, Then, Pay Attention To What Differentiates Us. That Makes Perfect Sense For Us As Human Beings.

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

Whoever Sets The Agenda Controls The Outcome Of The Debate

In General, The Attitude Towards Nazi Germany Was Not That Hostile, Especially If You Look At The U.s. State Department Reports. In 1937 The State Department Was Describing Adolf Hitler As A "moderate" Who Was Holding Off The Forces Of The Right And The Left.

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

The Most Extreme Types, Like Murray Rothbard, Are At Least Honest. They'd Like To Eliminate Highway Taxes Because They Force You To Pay For A Road You May Never Drive On. As An Alternative, They Suggest That If You And I Want To Get Somewhere, We Should Build A Road There And Charge People Tolls On It. Just Try Generalizing That. Such A Society Couldn't Survive, And Even If It Could, It Would Be So Full Of Terror And Hate That Any Human Being Would Prefer To Live In Hell.

Latin America, For The First Time In 500 Years, Is Moving Towards A Degree Of Independence.

In Fact, It's Pretty Dramatic When You Get To 1975, Very Revealing, The [vietnam] War Ends. Everybody Had To Write Something About The War, What It Meant. You Also Had Polls Of Public Opinion, And They're Dramatically Different.

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

Worker Ownership Within A State Capitalist, Semi-market System Is Better Than Private Ownership But It Has Inherent Problems. Markets Have Well-known Inherent Inefficiencies. They're Very Destructive.

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.

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

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.

There Was An International Conference Going On In Morocco That Was A Follow Up For The Paris Conference - To Put Some Teeth In The Paris Agreements. But On November 8, 2017 The Conferences Stopped. The Question Was, Will We Survive? Not A Word About It. Even More Amazing, The World Is Looking To China To Save Them. The Us Is The Wrecking Machine That Is Destroying Everything. The World Is Hoping That China Will Somehow Come To The Rescue.

The Freer The Society Gets, The More Dangerous The Great Beast Becomes And The More You Have To Be Careful To Cage It Somehow.

Optimism Is A Strategy For Making A Better Future. Because Unless You Believe That The Future Can Be Better, You Are Unlikely To Step Up And Take Responsibility For Making It So.

In Southern Culture, Possession Of A Gun Became Kind Of A Sign Of Manhood, Not Just Because Of Slaves But Other White Men. If You Had A Gun, You're Not Going To Push Me Around. You Know, I'm Not One Of Those Guys You Can Kick In The Face.

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

One Of The Benefits Of A Properly Functioning Democracy Is Minority Rights And Majority Rule.

The U.s. - The Idea That The U.s. Has Introduced And Imposed Principles Of International Law, That's Hardly Even A Joke. The United States Has Even Gone So Far As To Veto Security Council Resolutions Calling On All States To Observe International Law. That Was In The 1980s Under Reagan.

The Us Is Off The Spectrum In Religious Commitment. It's Been Increasing Since 1980 But It's A Major Part Of The Voting Base Of The Republican Party So That Means Committing To Anti-abortion Positions, Opposing Women's Rights.

Obama's Primary Constituency Was Financial Institutions. They Were The Core Of The Funding For His Campaign. They Expect To Be Paid Back. And They Were. They Were Paid Back By Coming Out Richer And More Powerful Than They Were Before The Crisis That They Created.

As Long As Nuclear Weapons Exist, The Chances Of Survival Of The Human Species Are Quite Slight.

Descriptive Grammar Is An Attempt To Give An Account Of What The Current System Is For Either A Society Or An Individual, Whatever You Happen To Be Studying.

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

Our Only Real Hope For Democracy Is That We Get The Money Out Of Politics Entirely And Establish A System Of Publicly Funded Elections.

Nothing Is More Inspiring To See How Poor And Suffering People, Living Under Conditions Incomparably Worse Than We Endure, Continue Quietly And Unpretentiously With Courageous And Committed Struggle For Justice And Dignity.

The Us Cannot Be Brought To The World Court For Major Crimes, For Example The Supreme International Crime, Invasion, Or Violation Of The Un Charter, Or Violation Of The Genocide Convention, These Are Things The Us Is Exempt From, Because They Exempted Themselves From Being Subjected To International Treaties In World Court Proceedings.

Just Media Alone Is Not Enough. You Have To Have Organization.

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

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

Popular Struggles To Bring About A Freer And More Just Society Have Been Resisted By Violence And Repression, And Massive Efforts To Control Opinion And Attitudes. Over Time, However, They Have Met With Considerable Success, Even Though There Is A Long Way To Go, And There Is Often Regression.

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.

Pick The Topic You Like: The Middle East, International Terrorism, Central America, Whatever It Is - The Picture Of The World That's Presented To The Public Has Only The Remotest Relation To Reality. The Truth Of The Matter Is Buried Under Edifice After Edifice Of Lies Upon Lies. It's All Been A Marvelous Success From The Point Of View In Deterring The Threat Of Democracy, Achieved Under Conditions Of Freedom, Which Is Extremely Interesting. It's Not Like A Totalitarian State, Where It's Done By Force. These Achievements Are Under Conditions Of Freedom.

What Matters Is What Happens Among The Powerful.

Every Single One Cabinet Appointment: Education, Environment, Labor - Every Single One Is Selected To Undermine Any Aspect Of Government That's Of Any Help To People, And That Doesn't Benefit The Super-rich. And It's Absolutely Systematic. The Interesting Question Will Be How Long Donald Trump's Constituency Can Fall For The Con Game.

The Idea That Hezbollah Is Acting As An Agent Of Iran Is Very Dubious. It's Not Accepted By Specialists On Iran Or Specialists On Hezbollah. But It's The Party Line. Or Sometimes You Can Put In Syria, I.e. "syrian-supported Hezbollah," But Since Syria Is Of Less Interest Now You Have To Emphasize Iranian Support.

Nafta And Gatt Are Quite Similar. They Both Have Highly Protectionist Elements. They're Kind Of A Mixture Of Liberalization And Protection Designed To Expand The Power Of Transnational Corporations. They're Very Basically Investor's Rights Agreements. One Crucial Part In Both Is The "intellectual Property Right," Which Is A Funny Way Of Saying That Corporations, Like Pharmaceutical Companies, Will Have Near-monopolistic Rule Over Future Technology. This Now Includes Product As Well As Process Rights.

One Of The Real Problems Of Society Is That Its Far Too Atomized, What Sociologists Call Secondary Associations.

The Invasion Of Panama, What Was That? The U.s. Killed, According To The Panamanians, 3,000 Civilians. Maybe They're Right. We Don't Investigate Our Own Crimes, So Nobody Knows.

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

Some Innate Capacity - Some Part Of The Human Genetic Endowment - Enters Into Language Acquisition. That Much Is Uncontroversial Among Those Who Believe That Humans Are Part Of The Natural World. If It Were Not True, Would Be A Miracle That My Granddaughter Reflexively Identified Some Elements Of The Blooming Buzzing Confusion As Language-related And Went On To Acquire Capacities Of The Kind That You And I Are Now Exercising, While Her Pet Kitten (chimp, Songbird, Bee...), Presented With Exactly The Same Data, Could Not Take The First Step, Let Alone The Later Ones.

In Any Case, It Is Better To Have Some Deal Than No Deal, But It's Interesting That Obama Picked The Day Of Implementing Of Iran Deal To Impose New Sanctions On North Korea.

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

Economic Models

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

There Was Great Anxiety About Russian Intervention In The Recent German Elections, Perhaps Contributing To The Frightening Surge Of Support For The Right-wing Nationalist, If Not Neo-fascist, "alternative For Germany".

It Turned Out That [bill] Clinton Had Authorized Texaco To Illegally Ship Oil To The Military Junta [in Haiti] During A Time When We Were Supposedly Opposing The Military Junta And Supporting Democracy Instead.

[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.

It Is One Thing For The Institution To Offer Space For Serious Engagement, In Thought And Action, And To Encourage Free And Independent Use Of Such Opportunities; It Is Something Else For The University To Become Engaged As An Institution, Beyond A Fairly Narrow Range Where True Consensus Exists, And Even That Raises Questions.

Raises Questions

To Live A Life Of Honesty And Integrity Is A Responsibility Of Every Decent Person.

Some Kind Of Settlement In Kashmir Is Crucial For Both Countries [pakistan And India]. It's Also Tearing India Apart With Horrible Atrocities In The Region Which Is Controlled By Indian Armed Forces.

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

Today, The Danger Of Some Sort Of A Nuclear Catastrophe Is Greater Than It Was During The Cold War, And Most People Are Blissfully Unaware Of This Danger.

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.

The Racism In Europe Takes The Form Of Anti-immigrant Extremism - Which Is Bad Enough Here - I Think It's Hard To Measure, But My Guess Is That It's Probably Worse There.

In The Late 19th Century There Was A Major Union Organization, Knights Of Labor, And Also A Radical Populist Movement Based On Farmers. It's Hard To Believe, But It Was Based In Texas, And It Was Quite Radical. They Wanted Their Own Banks, Their Own Cooperatives, Their Own Control Over Sales And Commerce.

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

To Go Back To A Moment Of Western Civilization Remote Enough In Time So That We Should Be Able To Look At It Dispassionately, Ask What Happened During World War I. What Was The Typical Behavior Of Respected Intellectuals In Germany, England, The United States? What Happened To Those Who Publicly Questioned The Nobility Of The War Effort, On Both Sides? I Do Not Think The Answers Are Untypical.

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

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.

Israeli Occupation

The Human Digestive And Visual Systems Did Clearly Evolve Over A Very Long Period.

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.

If You Owned Everything And A Tiny Little Piece Gets Out Of Control, Then Your World's Gone. Like Some Unusual Child Who Has A Million Toys And One Of Them Is Stolen, He's Going To Perish.

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?

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

In Some Respects, South African Apartheid Was More Vicious Than Israeli Practices, And In Some Respects The Opposite Is True.

There Are In Fact Many Ways To Combat The Trump Project Of Creating A Tiny America, Isolated From The World, Cowering In Fear Behind Walls While Pursuing The Paul Ryan-style Domestic Policies That Represent The Most Savage Wing Of The Republican Establishment.

If It's Wrong When They Do It, It's Wrong When We Do It.

International Relations

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.

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

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

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.

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

In America, The Professor Talks To The Mechanic. They Are In The Same Category.

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

There Are Enormous Opportunities To Work For A World That Is More Free, Peaceful And Just.

[my Father] Came Over As An Immigrant And Didn't Know Any English. He Went To Work At A Sweat Shop In Baltimore. He Told Me Later That This Guy Was Coming Around, And The Guy Seemed To Be For The Workers, So He Signed Up. It Turned Out That Guy Was An Iww Organizer . My Father Didn't Regret Signing Up; He Just Really Didn't Know What Was Going On.

Freedom Without Opportunity Is A Devil's Gift, And The Refusal To Provide Such Opportunities Is Criminal

The Local Grocery Store Was A Gathering, A Community Place. You Knew The Owner, If You Didn't Have Any Money They'd Let You Go For A Couple Days. You Talked. It Was A Friendly Place. Supermarkets Are Totally Impersonal. I Mean, You May Say Hello To The Checkout Girl Or Something, But The Personal Connections Are All Gone.

The Media Are Corporations So... It's The Concentrations Of Private Power Which Have An Enormous, Not Total Control, But Enormous Influence Over Congress And The White House And That's Increasing Sharply With Sharp Concentration Of Private Power And Escalating Cost Of Elections And So On.

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

With Government Deregulation And The Triumph Of Financial Liberalization, The Dangers Of Systemic Risks, The Possibility Of A Financial Tsunami, Sharply Increased.

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

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.

Great Depression

Those Who Had Demanded No More Than An End To The Bombing Of North Vietnam And A Commitment To Negotiations Saw Their Demands Being Realized, And Lapsed Into Silence.

I Think A Very Important Aspect Of Language Has To Do With The Establishment Of Social Relations And Interactions. Often, This Is Described As Communication. But That Is Very Misleading, I Think.

If You Go To One Demonstration And Then Go Home, That's Something, But The People In Power Can Live With That. What They Can't Live With Is Sustained Pressure That Keeps Building, Organisations That Keep Doing Things, People That Keep Learning Lessons From The Last Time And Doing It Better The Next Time.

If The United States Loses The Economic Weapons Of Control, It Is Very Much Weakened.

The Most Effective Way To Restrict Democracy Is To Transfer Decision-making From The Public Arena To Unaccountable Institutions: Kings And Princes, Priestly Castes, Military Juntas, Party Dictatorships, Or Modern Corporations.

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

Whether The Person Should Then Be Called "an Intellectual" Seems To Reduce The Issue To A Question Of Terminology.

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

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

Diverse Society

You Can't Mention Hezbollah In The U.s. Media Without Putting In The Context Of "iranian-supported Hezbollah." That's Its Name. Its Name Is Iranian-supported Hezbollah. It Gets Iranian Support. But You Can Mention Israel Without Saying Us-supported Israel. So This Is More Tacit Propaganda.

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

It’s A Shameful Moment For U.s. Media When It Insists On Being Subservient To The Grotesque Propaganda Agencies Of A Violent, Aggressive State.

There Is Still Much Debate About Whether Torture Has Been Effective In Eliciting Information - The Assumption Being, Apparently, That If It Is Effective, Then It May Be Justified.

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

Enormous And Growing Parts Of The Population Are Basically Superfluous For Profit-making Purposes. Along With This, The Jail Population Is Increasing Very Rapidly; It's The Highest In The Industrial World By Far. New And Onerous Crime Bills Are Being Passed To Deal With This Superfluous Population.

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.

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

The Educational System In The Us Was A Highly Predictable Victim Of The Neoliberal Reaction, Guided By The Maxim Of "private Affluence And Public Squalor." Funding For Public Education Has Sharply Declined. As Higher Education Is Driven To A Business Model In Accord With Neoliberal Doctrine, Administrative Bureaucracy Has Sharply Increased At The Expense Of Faculty And Students. Cost-cutting Leads To Hyper-exploitation Of The More Vulnerable, Creating A New Precariat Of Graduate Students And Adjuncts Surviving On A Bare Pittance, Replacing Tenured Faculty.

In Fact, Anyone Who Merits Attention And Who Promotes Any Cause At All Is Doing So On The Basis Of A Belief That It Is Somehow Good For Humans, Because Of Their Inherent Nature.

The Us Is Also Unusual In The Enormous Scale Of Religious Fundamentalism. The Impact On Understanding Of The World Is Extraordinary. In National Polls Almost Half Of Those Surveyed Have Reported That They Believe That God Created Humans In Their Present Form 10,000 Years Ago (or Less) And That Man Shares No Common Ancestor With The Ape. There Are Similar Beliefs About The Second Coming.

If A Person Chooses Not To Be A Writer, Or Speaker, Then (by Definition) The Person Is Choosing Not To Be Engaged In An Effort,"to Bring The Truth About Matters Of Human Significance To An Audience That Can Do Something About Them," Apart, Perhaps, From Some Circle Of Immediate Associates.

Roughly Speaking, I Think It's Accurate To Say That A Corporate Elite Of Managers And Owners Governs The Economy And The Political System As Well, At Least In Very Large Measure.

We Have To Remember That Literally Within Months After Castro's Taking Office The Planes From Florida Were Beginning To Bomb Cuba. Within A Year, The Eisenhower Administration Secretly, But Formally, Decided To Overthrow The Government. Then Came The Bay Of Pigs Invasion. The Kennedy Administration Was Furious About The Failure Of The Invasion And Immediately Launched A Major Terrorist War And Economic War That Got Harsher Through The Years. Under These Conditions It Is Kind Of Amazing That Cuba Survived.

Anywhere In Latin America There Is A Potential Threat Of The Pathology Of Caudillismo And It Has To Be Guarded Against.

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

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

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

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

Capitalism Is Based On The Principle That Everything Has To Be Privately Owned; It Can't Be Held In Common. There Is Even A Dogma, Which Is Today Called, The "tragedy Of The Commons" Which Holds That If Things Are Held In Common They Are Going To Be Destroyed. If They're Privatized, Like You Give Them To Bechtel Or Monsanto Or Exxonmobil, Then They'll Be Preserved Because That's The Capitalist's Religion.

The Childcare Tax Credit Makes Some Sense.

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.

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

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

What The Public Wants Is Called 'politically Unrealistic.' Translated Into English, That Means Power And Privilege Are Opposed To It.

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

Every Predecessor Has Used Mercenaries, Often Drawn From The Country That They're Attacking Like England Ran India With Indian Mercenaries. You Take Them From One Place And Send Them To Kill People In The Other Place. That's The Standard Way To Run Imperial Wars.

Blacks Have No Rights - In Fact They Were Three - Fifths Human According To The Constitution To Give Slave Owners More Voting Rights. So That's African Americans.

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

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

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

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.

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

Prophet Just Means Intellectual. They Were People Giving Geopolitical Analysis, Moral Lessons, That Sort Of Thing. We Call Them Intellectuals Today. There Were The People We Honor As Prophets, There Were The People We Condemn As False Prophets. But If You Look At The Biblical Record, At The Time, It Was The Other Way Around. The Flatterers Of The Court Of King Ahab Were The Ones Who Were Honored. The Ones We Call Prophets Were Driven Into The Desert And Imprisoned.

Capitalism Denies The Right To Live. You Have Only The Right To Remain On The Labour Market.

The Major Advances In Speed Of Communication And Ability To Interact Took Place More Than A Century Ago. The Shift From Sailing Ships To Telegraph Was Far More Radical Than That From Telephone To Email!

If There Are Lessons To Be Drawn From The Sciences, Then That Should Be The Concern Of Everyone, Including Scientists To The Extent That They Can Make A Contribution.

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.

We're Supposed To Believe That Oil Had Nothing To Do With It, That If Iraq Were Exporting Pickles Or Jelly And The Center Of World Oil Production Were In The South Pacific That The United States Would've Liberated Them Anyway. It Has Nothing To Do With The Oil, What A Crass Idea. Anyone With Their Head Screwed On Knows That That Can't Be True.

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

What Can One Say About A Country Where A Museum Of Science In A Great City Can Feature An Exhibit In Which People Fire Machine Guns From A Helicopter At Vietnamese Huts, With A Light Flashing When A Hit Is Scored? What Can One Say About A Country Where Such An Idea Can Even Be Considered? You Have To Weep For This Country.

Insofar As The Universities Are Free And Independent, They Will Also Be "subversive," In The Sense That Dominant Structures Of Power And Their Ideological Support Will Be Subjected To Challenge And Critique, A Counterpart To Attitudes That Are Fostered In The Hard Sciences Wherever They Are Taken Seriously.

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

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

Marx's Early Manuscripts, With Their Roots In The Enlightenment And Romanticism, Derived Fundamental Concepts Such As Alienation From A Conception Of Human Nature - What We Would Call Genetically Determined.

In Fact, I Was In A Lab That Was A Hundred Percent Funded By The Pentagon, And It Was One Of The Centers Of The Organized Antiwar Resistance Movement.

We Could Not Bring Democracy And Freedom To Vietnam At A Cost Acceptable To Ourselves. The Idea That That Was What We Were Trying To Do, Is Again, A Tautology, It's True By Definition Because We Were Doing, And The State Is Noble By Definition. That's Called "extreme Liberalism".

When People Say Do You Believe In God? What Do They Mean By It? Do I Believe In Some Spiritual Force In The World? In A Way, Yes. People Have Thoughts, Emotions. If You Want To Call That A Spiritual Force, Okay. But Unless There's Some Clarification Of What We're Supposed To Believe In Or Disbelieve In, I Can't Answer.

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

In A Society That Has Very High Concentration Of Capital In A Narrow Sector Of The Population, That's Going To Influence Everything In Different Ways.

Ronald Reagan In The Us Was Not A Particularly Popular President, But After His Death Sectors Of Wealth And Power Created A Huge Propaganda Campaign That Converted This Disgraceful Figure Into A Semi-divinity.

Neoliberal Democracy. Instead Of Citizens, It Produces Consumers. Instead Of Communities, It Produces Shopping Malls. The Net Result Is An Atomized Society Of Disengaged Individuals Who Feel Demoralized And Socially Powerless. In Sum, Neoliberalism Is The Immediate And Foremost Enemy Of Genuine Participatory Democracy, Not Just In The United States But Across The Planet, And Will Be For The Foreseeable Future.

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.

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

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

For Those Who Stubbornly Seek Freedom, There Can Be No More Urgent Task Than To Come To Understand The Mechanisms And Practices Of Indoctrination.

Palestinians Have No Wealth Or Power.

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

Responsibility, I Believe, Accrues Through Privilege.

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

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.

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

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

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.

There Is A Principle Of Human Affairs That Goes Back Millennia, Which Is That You Don't Look In The Mirror. You Can Trace This Principle Back To The Bible. The Designated Intellectuals Of That Time Are Called Prophets, Which Is A Mistranslation Of A Hebrew Word, But They Were Basically Intellectuals, Giving Geopolitical Analysis, Criticizing The Moral Practice Of Leadership, Etc. Now, These People Were Not Treated Very Nicely. There Were Other Intellectuals Who Were Treated Nicely, Namely Those Who Centuries Later Came To Be Called False Prophets. These Were The Flatterers Of The Court.

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William Manchester

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