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I've Spent A Lot Of Time Working On Declassified Documents - And They Do Get Declassified After Decades - You Look At The Record Of Declassified Documents, And They Are Mostly Concerned With Keeping What The Government Does Secret From Its Own Population. It's Mostly Defense Of The Power System From Its Own Population. Very Little Is Authentic Security.
-Noam Chomsky
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I've Spent A Lot

Noam Chomsky
I've Spent A Lot Of Time Working On Declassified Documents - And They Do Get Declassified After Decades - You Look At The Record Of Declassified Documents, And They Are Mostly Concerned With Keeping What The Government Does Secret From Its Own Population. It's Mostly Defense Of The Power System From Its Own Population. Very Little Is Authentic Security.
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Topic
Government
Secret
Records
More From Noam Chomsky
Andorrans Deserve Much Better Than The Rule Of Superstitious Hysterics And Extreme Authoritarians, Who Try To Instill Obedience To Their Holy Texts And Chosen Divinities - And We Should Not Fail To See That The Terms Are Appropriate, If Anything Too Kind.
Trying
Divinity
Kind
Quite Generally, International Affairs Have More Than A Slight Resemblance To The Mafia. The Godfather Does Not Take It Lightly When He Is Crossed, Even By A Small Storekeeper.
Mafia
Doe
Affair
Parts Of The United States Are Taking On A Third World Look.
United States
Looks
World
Washington Still Refuses To Provide Evidence To Support The Claims In 1990 That A Huge Iraqi Military Build-up On The Saudi Border Justified War.
Military
War
Support
After World War Ii There Were Many Jews Who Remained In Refugee Camps...president Harry F. Truman Called For The Harrison Commission To Investigate The Situation In The Camps And It Was A Pretty Gloomy Report. There Were Very Few Jews Admitted Into The United States.
War
President
United States
The Best Defense Against Democracy Is To Distract People.
People
Democracy
Defense
You Know, We Have Little Bits Of Understanding, Glimpses, A Little Bit Of Light Here And There, But There's A Tremendous Amount Of Darkness, Which Is A Challenge. I Think Life Would Be Pretty Boring If We Understood Everything. It's Better If We Don't Understand Anything And Know That We Don't, That's The Important Part.
Thinking
Light
Challenges
For One Thing, Studying Language Is By Itself A Part Of A Study Of Human Intelligence That Is, Perhaps, The Central Aspect Of Human Nature. And Second, I Think, It Is A Good Model For Studying Other Human Properties, Which Ought To Be Studied By Psychologists In The Same Way.
Thinking
Way
Study
There Are Women (some Men, Too, But Mostly Women) Who Are Going To The Occupied Palestinian Territories To Stand With The Victims Of Israeli Occupation. These Are Very Courageous Israeli Women And Some British And American Women. That's Something Quite New.
Men
Israeli Occupation
Territory
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
A More Appropriate Expansion Is The Statement "it Is The Responsibility Of Intellectuals To Speak The Truth And Expose Lies" A Transcript Of A Talk To A Writers Conference In Australia In 1996, Where I Had Been Asked To Talk On "writers And Intellectual Responsibility" - A Question That I Said I Found "puzzling," Because I Knew Of Nothing To Say About It Beyond Truisms, Though These Were Perhaps Worth Affirming Because They Are "so Commonly Denied, If Not In Words, Then In Consistent Practice."
Lying
Responsibility
Practice
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
I Don't Have Any Oratory Skills. But I Would Not Use Them If I Had.
Skills
Use
Oratory
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
[francisco Franco] Said They Should Resort To Guerrilla War. Which Has A History In Spain.
War
Spain
Should
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.
Attitude
Germany
Looks
California Is Maybe The Richest Place In The World. They're Destroying The Best Public Education System In The World.
California
World
Destroying
It’s Pretty Ironic That The So-called ‘least Advanced’ People Are The Ones Taking The Lead In Trying To Protect All Of Us, While The Richest And Most Powerful Among Us Are The Ones Who Are Trying To Drive The Society To Destruction.
Powerful
People
Ironic
It's Necessary To Address The Concerns And Beliefs Of Those Who Are Taken In By The Fraud, Or Who Don't Recognize The Nature And Significance Of The Issues For Other Reasons. If By Philosophy We Mean Reasoned And Thoughtful Analysis, Then It Can Address The Moment, Though Not By Confronting The "alternative Facts" But By Analyzing And Clarifying What Is At Stake, Whatever The Issue Is. Beyond That, What Is Needed Is Action: Urgent And Dedicated, In The Many Ways That Are Open To Us.
Philosophy
Taken
Mean
[after Vietnam] The Type Of Interventions That Are Carried Out Are Designed So As Not To Elicit Public Reactions.
Vietnam
Reactions
Type
It Is Important To Bear In Mind That Political Campaigns Are Designed By The Same People Who Sell Toothpaste And Cars.
People
Car
Political
There Are Massive Efforts On The Part Of The Internet's Corporate Owners To Try To Direct It To Become A Technique Of Marginalisation And Control.
Effort
Trying
Technique
In Fact, Some Leaders Come Right Out And Say It. Mario Draghi The President Of The European Central Bank Had An Interview With The Wall St Journal In Which He Said The Social Contract's Dead; We Finally Got Rid Of It.
Wall
Leader
President
What Was The Invasion Of South Vietnam, For Example, In 1962, When Kennedy Sent The Air Force To Bomb South Vietnam And Start Chemical Warfare? That's Aggression.
Air
Invasion
Example
I Am Not Sure Just What Marx Had In Mind When He Wrote That "philosophers Have Hitherto Only Interpreted The World In Various Ways; The Point Is To Change It." Did He Mean That Philosophy Could Change The World, Or That Philosophers Should Turn To The Higher Priority Of Changing The World? If The Former, Then He Presumably Meant Philosophy In A Broad Sense Of The Term, Including Analysis Of The Social Order And Ideas About Why It Should Be Changed, And How. In That Broad Sense, Philosophy Can Play A Role, Indeed An Essential Role, In Changing The World.
Philosophy
Mean
Priorities
Take, For Example, There Is A Right-wing Populist Uprising. It's Very Common, Even On The Left, To Just Ridicule Them, But That's Not The Right Reaction. If You Look At Those People And Listen To Them On Talk Radio, These Are People With Real Grievances.
Real
Uprising
Wings
You Know, You Can Go To The Fiftieth Thing On A Google List And That's The One You Want, But The Ones You Are Going To Be Directed To Are The Funders.
Google
Lists
Want
Human Language Appears To Be A Unique Phenomenon, Without Significant Analogue In The Animal World.
Animal
Unique
World
Somehow The Fact Of Enormous Privilege And Freedom Carries With It A Sense Of Impotence, Which Is A Strange, But Striking, Phenomenon. The Fact Is, We Can Do Just About Anything. There Is No Difficulty, Wherever You Are, In Finding Groups That Are Working Hard On Things That Concern You.
Groups
Facts
Privilege
The Intellectual Is An Individual With A Specific Public Role In Society That Cannot Be Reduced Simply To . . A Faceless Professional.
Intellectual
Roles
Individual
Jean Kirkpatrick [is] The Chief Sadist-in-residence Of The Reagan Administration.
Administration
Chiefs
Residence
More Generally, Independent Farmers Had To Be Trained To Become Docile Workers In The Expanding Industrial System. It Was Necessary To Drive From Their Heads Evil Ideas, Such As The Belief That Wage Labor Was Not Much Different From Chattel Slavery. That Continues To The Present, Now Sometimes Taking The Form Of An Attack On Public Education.
Independent
Ideas
Evil
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.
World
November
Those Are Possibilities For Technology, Which Don't Tend To Be Used, Because Of The Way Power Is Concentrated. There Are All Kinds Of Possibilities, Including For Coercion. In China, Technology Is Used To Control And Coerce. Here Too, To An Extent, But Not To That Extent.
Technology
Coercion
Way
One Measure For Promoting Both Stability And Fairness Across Financial Market Segments Is A Small Sales Tax On All Financial Transactions.
Fairness
Financial
Stability
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
Language Is A Process Of Free Creation; Its Laws And Principles Are Fixed, But The Manner In Which The Principles Of Generation Are Used Is Free And Infinitely Varied. Even The Interpretation And Use Of Words Involves A Process Of Free Creation.
Language Words
Law
Generations
The Two Countries [pakistan And India] Have Already Come Close To Nuclear Confrontation Twice And This Could Get Worse. So Dealing With The Relationship With India Is Extremely Important.
Country
Two
Important
Everyone Engaged In Research Must Have Had The Experience Of Working With Feverish And Prolonged Intensity To Write A Paper Which No One Else Will Read Or To Solve A Problem Which No One Else Thinks Important And Which Will Bring No Conceivable Reward - Which May Only Confirm A General Opinion That The Researcher Is Wasting His Time On Irrelevancies.
Writing
Thinking
Important
We Don't Have Polls From The Business World, But It's Pretty Clear That The Energy Corporations In America Would Be Quite Happy To Be Given Authorization To Go Back Into Iran Instead Of Leaving All That To Their Rivals. But The State Won't Allow It. And It Is Setting Up Confrontations Right Now, Very Explicitly. Part Of The Reason Is Strategic, Geo-political, Economic, But Part Of The Reason Is The Mafia Complex. They Have To Be Punished For Disobeying Us.
Iran
America
Political
I Think This Country And The World Would Be Far Better Off If The Us Is Not An Outlaw State.
Country
Thinking
World
Palestinians Have No Wealth Or Power.
Wealth
Palestinian
The Good News From The U.s. Military Survey Of Focus Groups Is That Iraqis Do Accept The Nuremberg Principles. They Understand That Sectarian Violence And The Other Postwar Horrors Are Contained Within The Supreme International Crime Committed By The Invaders.
Military
Focus
News
Occupying Armies Have Responsibilities, Not Rights. Their Primary Responsibility Is To Withdraw As Quickly And Expeditiously As Possible, In A Manner Determined By The Occupied Population.
Responsibility
Army
Rights
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
If Humans Are Organisms Like Every Other Organism - Which They Are - Then We Should Expect That If There Are Some Domains Where Real Scientific Progress Is Possible, Then There Are Others Where It Is Not.
Real
Progress
Should
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
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.
Party
Iran
Ideas
The Basic Principle, Rarely Violated, Is That What Conflicts With The Requirements Of Power And Privilege Does Not Exist.
Principles
Doe
Requirements
It Makes Sense To Work Towards A Better World, But It Doesn't Make Any Sense To Have Illusions About What The Real World Is.
Real
World
Illusion
Thanh Hoa Itself Is A Rich Agricultural Province. Rice Fields, A Pattern Of Many Shades Of Green, Stretch Far Into The Distance Along The Road, Which Also Winds Through Foothills And The Fringes Of Heavy Jungle Where Tigers Are Said To Roam. The Vegetation, Wild Or Cultivated, Is Lush.
Distance
Wind
Patterns
Responsibility, I Believe, Accrues Through Privilege.
Believe
Responsibility
Privilege
One Of The Dangers [that Donald Trump Poses, Due To The Augmented Risk Of Nuclear War] Is Unquestionable. Of The Two Existential Threats - The Threats To The Termination Of The Species Basically And Most Other Species - One Of Them, Climate Change, On That I Think There's No Basis For Discussion.
War
Thinking
Two
Whenever There Is Injustice, Oppression, Aggression, Violence, It's Standard For It To Be Supported By Those We Now Call "intellectuals," But Typically Not By All; There Is Typically A Fringe Of Dissidents. With Very Rare Exceptions - In Fact, It's Hard To Think Of Any - They Suffer In One Or Another Way; How Depends On The Nature Of The Society.
Thinking
Suffering
Way
In Fact, What Were Called The Socialist Countries In Eastern Europe Were The Most Anti-socialist Systems In The World. Workers Had More Rights In The United States And England Than They Had In Russia, And It Was Somehow Still Called Socialism.
Country
Russia
Rights
When People Denounced [former Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad For Rejecting And Criminalizing Homosexuality, It Should Be Remembered That Was True Of The United States Until Very Recently. Women's Rights Were Unheard Of. Civil Rights Proponents Were Horribly Treated, Not Just In The South. It Was Awful There, But Pretty Bad Here. Environmental Issues Did Not Exist. Opposition To Aggression Was Virtually Zero. In Fact, So Little, That To This Day, Even Scholarship Mentions The Vietnam War As Beginning In 1965.
Zero
War
Rights
In Other Countries, Rich And Poor, Education Remains Substantially Free, With Educational Standards That Rank High In Global Comparisons. Even In The Us, Higher Education Was Almost Free During The Economically Successful Years Before The Neoliberal Reaction - And It Was A Much Poorer Country Then. The Gi Bill Provided Free Education To Huge Numbers Of People - White Men Overwhelmingly - Who Would Probably Never Have Gone To College, A Great Benefit To Them Personally And To The Whole Society. Tuition At Private Colleges Was Far Below Today's Exorbitant Costs.
Country
Educational
Successful
This Is A Large Part Of The Academic Profession: To Make Up Complex, Subtle Arguments That Are Childishly Ridiculous But Are Enveloped In Sufficient Profundity That They Take On A Kind Of Plausibility.
Ridiculous
Kind
Argument
The Dynamics Of The Taliban Now Appear To Be Very Different And Complex, In Both Afghanistan And Pakistan, As They Attack Governments And Mainstream Parties.
Party
Government
Different
Why Should Iran Have A Deterrent Strategy? Well, It's Surrounded By Hostile Enemies. Both Of Its Borders Have Been Under Occupation By A Hostile Superpower, The United States, Which Is Constantly Violating The U.n. Charter By Leaving Open What They Call The Saying, 'all Options Are Open' - Meaning The Threat Of War.
War
Iran
Leaving
These Are Questions For Action, Not Speculation, Which Is Idle.
Action
Speculation
Idle
[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
Personally, I Am Uneasy About The Notion Of "a Politically Engaged University," For Reasons I Wrote About Over 30 Years Ago, At The Height Of Protest And Resistance (reprinted In For Reasons Of State).
Years
Height
Resistance
Anarchism Means All Sort Of Things To Different People But The Traditional Anarchists' Movements Assumed That There'd Be A Highly Organized Society, Just One Organized From Below With Direct Participation And So On. Actually, One Piece Of The Media Confusion Has A Basis Because There Really Are Two Different Strands In The Occupy Movement, Both Important, But Different.
Mean
Two
Media
The Answer To Subversion Of Democracy Is More Democracy, More Freedom, More Justice.
Justice
Democracy
Answers
Compare Mathematics And The Political Sciences - It's Quite Striking. In Mathematics, In Physics, People Are Concerned With What You Say, Not With Your Certification. But In Order To Speak About Social Reality, You Must Have The Proper Credentials, Particularly If You Depart From The Accepted Framework Of Thinking. Generally Speaking, It Seems Fair To Say That The Richer The Intellectual Substance Of A Field, The Less There Is A Concern For Credentials, And The Greater Is The Concern For Content.
Reality
Thinking
Order
There's A Tremendous Gap Between Public Opinion And Public Policy.
Public Opinion
Gaps
Policy
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
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
We Shouldn't Be Looking For Heroes, We Should Be Looking For Good Ideas.
Hero
Ideas
Should
Karl Marx Said, “the Task Is Not Just To Understand The World But To Change It.” A Variant To Keep In Mind Is That If You Want To Change The World You’d Better Try To Understand It. That Doesn’t Mean Listening To A Talk Or Reading A Book, Though That’s Helpful Sometimes. You Learn From Participating. You Learn From Others. You Learn From The People You’re Trying To Organize. We All Have To Gain The Understanding And The Experience To Formulate And Implement Ideas.
Book
Reading
Mean
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
You Have 30% Of The World Unemployed, A Huge Amount Of Work, That Needs To Be Done Just Rebuilding The Society Alone.
Needs
Done
World
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
I Doubt That National Languages Will Disappear. In Fact, To Some Extent They're Becoming More Diverse, Like In Europe.
Europe
Doubt
Facts
Take, Say, The Solidarity Movement In Central America, Which I Think Is What You Probably Had In Mind. To A Large Extent, It Comes Out Of Mainstream Christianity, Based On Beliefs That Have Had Outrageous Human Consequences In The Past, And That I Think Are Totally Indefensible. In This Case, They Happen To Lead To Some Of The Most Courageous, Heroic, And Honourable Human Action That's Taking Place Anywhere In The World. Well, That's How Life Is, I Guess. It Doesn't Come In Neat Little Packages.
Past
Thinking
America
There's An Internal Coherence And Logic To What They Get From [rush] Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, And The Rest Of These Guys. And They Sound Very Convincing, They're Very Self-confident, And They Have An Answer To Everything - A Crazy Answer, But It's An Answer. And It's Our Fault If That Goes On. So One Thing To Be Done Is Don't Ridicule These People, Join Them, And Talk About Their Real Grievances And Give Them A Sensible Answer, Like, "take Over Your Factories."
Crazy
Real
Self
China Is The Center Of The Asian Energy Security Grid, Which Includes The Central Asian States And Russia. India Is Also Hovering Around The Edge, South Korea Is Involved, And Iran Is An Associate Member Of Some Kind. If The Middle East Oil Resources Around The Gulf, Which Are The Main Ones In The World, If They Link Up To The Asian Grid, The United States Is Really A Second-rate Power. A Lot Is At Stake In Not Withdrawing From Iraq.
Russia
Iran
Korea
If You Accept The Institutional Lunacy, Then The Policies Are Rational.
Accepting
Rational
Policy
I Agree With Bill Clinton That Us Forces Should Not Be Sent To Haiti, But Not For His Reasons.
Haiti
Bills
Reason
It Is A Privilege To Join The Campaign To Support Bradley Manning For His Courage And Integrity In Serving His Country By Helping Make The Government Accountable To Its Citizens, And To Inform The World Of What Its People Should Know.
Country
Integrity
Government
People Are Dangerous. If They're Able To Involve Themselves In Issues That Matter, They May Change The Distribution Of Power, To The Detriment Of Those Who Are Rich And Privileged.
Power
Issues
People
People Don't Have Knowledge And Understanding About The Outside World, Or About History [in The Usa].
Usa
People
Understanding
As A Tactic, Violence Is Absurd. No One Can Compete With The Government In Violence, And The Resort To Violence, Which Will Surely Fail, Will Simply Frighten And Alienate Some Who Can Be Reached, And Will Further Encourage The Ideologists And Administrators Of Forceful Repression.
Government
Tactics
Violence
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.
Independent
Opportunity
Raises Questions
The Irish Were Treated Horribly, Even Here In Boston. For Example, In The Late Nineteenth Century They Were Treated Pretty Much Like African Americans. You Could Find Signs Here In Boston In The Restaurants Saying "no Dogs And Irish."
Dog
Boston
African American
As We [with Edward Herman] Discuss There [in Manufacturing Consent] And Elsewhere, Recognition Of The Importance Of "manufacturing Consent" Has Become An Ever More Central Theme In The More Free Societies.
Recognition
Theme
Importance
Iraqi Commandos Landed At George W. Bush's Compound, Assassinated Him, And Dumped His Body In The Atlantic.
Body
Compounds
Commandos
My Linguistics Is Pretty Theoretical.
Linguistics
Theoretical
Religion Is Based On The Idea That God Is An Imbecile.
Ideas
Imbeciles
Surely No Rational Or Realistic Person Will Discount The Possibility That [during Wartime] The United States Might Suddenly Resort To Nuclear Weapons. Those Who Retain The Instinct For Survival, Not To Speak Of Minimal Concern For Their Fellow Man, Will Seek Ways To Act Before Rather Than After The Event.
Men
Survival
Church
The Intellectual World Is Deeply Conformist... We Talk A Lot About The Crimes Of Others. When It Comes To Our Own Crimes, We Are Nationalists In The Orwellian Sense.
Intellectual
World
Crime
Poor Whites Didn't Have Rights. They Made All Kind Of Restrictions On Voting. So Person Meant Relatively Well - Off, Free White Man.
Men
Rights
White Man
Now Financial Liberalization Is Just A Catastrophe Waiting To Happen, And There Are Very Well Understood Reasons For That.
Waiting
Financial
Reason
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
It's Kind Of Interesting And Sick That The Intellectual Culture Called The 1960s, "time Of Troubles," A Dangerous Period In Which A Lot Of Harm Was Done To The Society. And The Reason Is Because We Were Civilized And That's Dangerous. That Increased The Commitment To Democracy, To Rights And So On, And This Left People Much Less Obedient.
Commitment
Rights
People
I Don't See Any Possibility Of Britain And The U.s. Allowing A Sovereign Independent Iraq; That's Almost Inconceivable.
Independent
Iraq
Sovereign
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.
President
Campaigns
Divinity
It Was During The Reagan Years That Defiance Of International Law And The U.n. Charter Became Entirely Open.
Years
Law
Defiance
Look, The United States Doesn't Have Political Parties. In Other Countries, Take Say Europe, You Can Be An Active Member Of The Political Party. Here, The Only Thing In A Political Party Is Gearing To Elections, Not The Other Things You Do. So It's Basically, A Way Of Making People Passive, Submissive Objects.
Country
Party
Europe
We Can Try To Gain Some Of The Sensibility Of Some Of The Indigenous Populations Of The World Or Our Predecessors 800 Years Ago. We Can Laugh At Them As Being Naive And Unsophisticated, But Unless We Can Gain That Sensibility That There Has To Be Rights Of Nature As Bolivians And Others Put It, Then We're Going To Be Destroyed.
Rights
Years
Laughing
In Our Case [the United States] It Happens To Be Basically Corporate Structure. Much Of The Population Is Going To Be Harmed By That. Those Policies Are Designed To Turn State Power Into An Instrument That Works For The Wealthy. Maybe There Are Some Crumbs For The Rest Of The Population, Maybe Not. But That's Given.
United States
Population
Structure
Far From Creating Independent Thinkers, Schools Have Always, Throughout History, Played An Institutional Role In A System Of Control And Coercion. And Once You Are Well Educated You Have Already Been Socialized In Ways That Support The Power Structure, Which, In Turn, Rewards You Immensely.
School
Independent
Creating
Language Is A Weapon Of Politicians, But Language Is A Weapon In Much Of Human Affairs.
Weapons
Language
Affair
Debt Is A Trap, Especially Student Debt, Which Is Enormous, Far Larger Than Credit Card Debt. It’s A Trap For The Rest Of Your Life Because The Laws Are Designed So That You Can’t Get Out Of It. If A Business, Say, Gets In Too Much Debt It Can Declare Bankruptcy, But Individuals Can Almost Never Be Relieved Of Student Debt Through Bankruptcy.
Law
Cards
Credit
I Try To Encourage People To Think For Themselves, To Question Standard Assumptions... Don't Take Assumptions For Granted. Begin By Taking A Skeptical Attitude Toward Anything That Is Conventional Wisdom. Make It Justify Itself. It Usually Can't. Be Willing To Ask Questions About What Is Taken For Granted. Try To Think Things Through For Yourself.
Wisdom
Attitude
Taken
There's Very Little Dislike Of Americans In The World, Shown By Repeated Polls, And The Dissatisfaction - That Is, The Hatred And The Anger - They Come From Acceptance Of American Values, Not A Rejection Of Them, And Recognition That They're Rejected By The U.s. Government And By U.s. Elites, Which Does Lead To Hatred And Anger.
Acceptance
Government
Rejection
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
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.
War
Thinking
Civilization
It Is A Virtual Reflex For Governments To Plead Security Concerns When They Undertake Any Controversial Action, Often As A Pretext For Something Else.
Government
Action
Controversial
An Unstated But Crucial Premise Is That The "responsible Men" Achieve That Exalted Status By Their Service To Authentic Power, A Fact Of Life That They Will Discover Soon Enough If They Try To Pursue An Independent Path.
Independent
Men
Soon Enough
The U.s. Is, To A Very Unusual Extent, A Business-run Society.
Running
Unusual
As For Academics, I Do Not See Why Their Responsibilities As Moral Agents Should Differ In Principle From The Responsibilities Of Others; In Particular, Others Who Also Enjoy A Degree Of Privilege And Power, And Therefore Have The Responsibilities That Are Conferred By Those Advantages.
Responsibility
Privilege
Principles
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
By Most Accounts, Aristide Is The Most Popular Figure In Haiti.
Haiti
Figures
Accounts
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 Am Not Offering This Is A Critique Of The Internet, Its Just That There Are A Lot Of Factors Involved. It Does Offer Plenty Of Possibilities. It Also Has, It Can Have, A Cheapening Effect And I Think Both Exist And I Think Its True Of Everything. You Could Say That About The Printing Press.
Thinking
Offering
Doe
A Captured Pirate Was Brought Before Alexander The Great. “how Dare You Molest The Sea?” Asked Alexander. “how Dare You Molest The Whole World?” The Pirate Replied, And Continued: “because I Do It With A Little Ship Only, I Am Called A Thief; You, Doing It With A Great Navy, Are Called An Emperor.
Sea
Pirate
Navy
In The Munich Agreement In Late 1938 [franklin] Roosevelt Sent His Chief Adviser Sumner Welles, Who Came Back With A Very Supportive Statement Saying That Hitler Was Someone We Could Really Do Business With And So On.
Agreement
Supportive
Munich
All You Have To Do Is Read The Business Literature. In The 1930s They Were Very Frightened And They Were Concerned About How The Rising Power Of The Masses Was Hazardous To Industrialists.
Rising
Literature
Frightened
We Don't Live In Tyrannies, You Know, The King Doesn't Decide What's Legitimate, And There's Much More Freedom Than There Was In The Past.
Kings
Past
Tyranny
To Cite The Facts Of History Is To Fall Prey To 'moral Equivalence,' Or 'political Correctness,' Or 'the Error Of Of Atheism,' Or One Of The Other Misdeeds Concocted To Guard Against The Sins Of Understanding And Insight Into The Real World.
Real
Fall
Errors
How Many Educated Americans Can Even Remember The Names Of The Assassinated Jesuit Intellectuals Of El Salvador, Or Would Know Where To Find A Word They Wrote? The Answers Are Revealing, Particularly When We Draw The Striking - And Historically Typical - Contrast To The Attitudes Towards Their Counterparts In Enemy Domains.
Attitude
Names
Enemy
The Most Powerful Country In World History, Which Is Sure To Set Its Stamp On What Follows, Placed The Entire Government (executive, Legislative, Judicial Branches) In The Hands Of An Organization - The Republican Party - Dedicated To Escalating The Race To Disaster.
Country
Powerful
Party
For The Last Couple Of Hundred Years, There Have Been Struggles About This. Even The Fifth And Sixth Amendments Of The Constitution Talk About Personal Rights.
Couple
Struggle
Rights
[james] Madison Pointed Out In The Discussion Of The Constitutional Debates - The Constitutional Convention - That Democracy Would Be A Danger. He Used England Of Course As The Model And Said Suppose That In England Everyone Had The Free Right To Vote; The Poor, The Propertyless - Who Are The Great Majority - Would Use Their Voting Power To Take Away The Rights Of Property Owners To Carry Out What We Would Call Land Reform.
Rights
Land
Voting
The Fact Of The Matter Is That The U.s. Is Run By An Unusually Class-conscious, Dedicated Business Class That Has A Very Violent Labor History, Much Worse Than In Europe.
Running
Europe
Class
The West Bank Is Essentially Imprisoned.
West
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.
Commitment
Silence
Being Real
That's A Point That Dan Ellsberg Has Made For Years. He Said It's Kind Of Like If You And I Go Into A Grocery Store To Rob It, And I Have A Gun. The Guy May Give You The Money In The Cash Register. I'm Using The Gun Even If I Don't Shoot. Well That's Nuclear Weapons - Essential To Post-war Deterrence - They Cast A Shadow Over Everything.
War
Gun
Years
People Have To Be Atomized And Segregated And Alone. They're Not Supposed To Organize, Because Then They Might Be Something Beyond Spectators Of Action. They Might Actually Be Participants If Many People With Limited Resources Could Get Together To Enter The Political Arena. That's Really Threatening.
Media
People
Political
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
Barron And Paul...rely On 'specialists' At The State And Defense Departments...elsewhere In The Media, Similiar Figures Are Bandied About, With Equal Credibility.
War
Media
Defense
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
Venezuela Is Independent. It's Diversifying Its Exports To A Limited Extent, Instead Of Just Being Dependent On Exports To The United States. And It's Initiating Moves Toward Latin American Integration And Independence. It's What They Call A Bolivarian Alternative And The United States Doesn't Like Any Of That.
Latin
Moving
Independent
If You Take An Economics Or A Political Science Course, You're Taught That Humans Are Supposed To Be Rational Wealth Accumulators, Each Acting As An Individual To Maximize His Own Wealth In The Market.
Political
Acting
Taught
It's Very Hard To Look In The Mirror. We All Know This. It's Much Easier To Have Illusions About Yourself. And In Particular, When You Think, Well, I'm Going To Believe What I Like, But I'll Say What The Powerful Want, You Do That Over Time, And You Believe What You Say.
Powerful
Believe
Thinking
There Are All The Activist Groups On Every Imaginable Topic - Solidarity Groups, Environmental And Feminist Groups - Sectors Of These Movements Do Very Valuable Work.
Feminist
Environmental
Groups
Silicon Valley Benefits, As All Of Industry, From Highly Protectionist Policy - Patent Policies And Things Like That - Which Come Out Of The Government.
Government
Valleys
Benefits
The Rich And Powerful Countries Are Trying To Wreck As Much As Possible. You Know, Go Off The Cliff As Soon As You Can. Extract Every Drop Of Hydrocarbons Off The Ground And Destroy The Environment. At The Opposite Extreme Are Countries Like Bolivia And Ecuador, Indigenous People Around The World, And First Nations In Canada And Tribal People In India, Campesinos In Colombia... They're Trying To Save The Commons.
Country
Powerful
Opposites
Nafta Was Much More Popular Among Us Corporations Than Gatt, Because Nafta Is Highly Protectionist In Ways That Gatt Is Not.
Corporations
Way
Nafta
On The Other Hand, You Have To Balance That Against Expanding Our Nuclear Forces, Add To Our So-called Depleted Military, Which Is Already More Powerful Than The Rest Of The World Combined; Attack In Syria, Send Forces To Syria, Start Bombing. Who Knows What Could Be Next?
Powerful
Military
Hands
The Internet Is An élite Organization; Most Of The Population Of The World Has Never Even Made A Phone Call.
Phones
Organization
Population
It Is An Astonishing Fact About The Current Era That In The Most Powerful Country In World History, With A High Level Of Education And Privilege, One Of The Two Political Parties Virtually Denies The Well-established Facts About Anthropogenic Climate Change.
Country
Powerful
Party
Academics Are Mostly Professionals, Involved In Their Work And Other Concerns Of Their Own, With No Particular Interest In The Workings Of The Ideological System.
Interest
Concern
Particular
The Us Is A Country [in Which] Eighty Percent Of The Population Thinks The Bible Was Written By God. About Half Think Every Word Is Literally True. So It's Had To Appeal To That - And To The Nativist Population, The People That Are Frightened, Have Always Been... It's A Very Frightened Country And That's Increasing Now With The Recognition That The White Population Is Going To Be A Minority Pretty Soon, "they've Taken Our Country From Us."
Country
Taken
Thinking
[mikhail] Gorbachev Complained. He Was Told Look, There's Nothing On Paper. People Didn't Actually Say It But The Implication Was Look, If You Are Dumb Enough To Take Faith In A Gentleman's Agreement With Us, That's Your Problem. Nato Expanded To East Germany.
East Germany
Agreement
People
So The First Things That You See When You Look Up Something On Google Could Be Dependent On The Amount Of Advertising Or Something Else. Since It Is A Profit Making Institution, It Is Going To Reflect The Interests And Concerns Of Those Who Fund It, Which Is Advertisers.
Google
Looks
Firsts
During The 1990's, Colombia Was The Leading Recipient Of Us Military Aid And Training In The Hemisphere. Approximately Half Of All Us Aid In The Hemisphere Went To Colombia. Colombia Was Also Far And Away The Leading Human Rights Violator In The Hemisphere.
Military
Rights
Training
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
Nothing Can Justify Crimes Such As Those Of September 11, But We Can Think Of The United States As An Innocent Victim Only If We Adopt The Convenient Path Of Ignoring The Record Of Its Actions And Those Of Its Allies, Which Are, After All, Hardly A Secret.
Thinking
September 11
Secret
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
Modern Science And Technology Can Relieve Men Of The Necessity For Specialized, Imbecile Labor. They May, In Principle, Provide The Basis For A Rational Social Order Based On Free Association And Democratic Control, If We Have The Will To Create It.
Technology
Men
Order
In Egypt The Neoliberal Programs Have Meant Statistical Growth, Like Right Before The Arab Spring, Egypt Was A Kind Of Poster Child For The World Bank And The Imf [international Monetary Fund:] The Marvelous Economic Management And Great Reform. The Only Problem Was For Most Of The Population It Was A Kind Of Like A Blow In The Solar Plexus: Wages Going Down, Benefits Being Eliminated, Subsidized Food Gone And Meanwhile, High Concentration Of Wealth And A Huge Amount Of Corruption.
Children
Spring
Blow
So, At One Extreme You Have Indigenous, Tribal Societies Trying To Stem The Race To Disaster. At The Other Extreme, The Richest, Most Powerful Societies In World History, Like The United States And Canada, Are Racing Full-speed Ahead To Destroy The Environment As Quickly As Possible.
Powerful
Race
Racing
I Don't See Much Use In General Slogans. Sometimes It Is Worth Resisting Evil With Lesser Evil, Very Commonly In Fact.
Evil
Use
Facts
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
Human Language Is Nothing Like The Signalling Systems Of Other Animals.
Animal
Language
Humans
Control Of Thought Is More Important For Governments That Are Free And Popular Than For Despotic And Military States. The Logic Is Straightforward: A Despotic State Can Control Its Domestic Enemies By Force, But As The State Loses This Weapon, Other Devices Are Required To Prevent The Ignorant Masses From Interfering With Public Affairs, Which Are None Of Their Business… The Public Are To Be Observers, Not Participants, Consumers Of Ideology As Well As Products.
Military
Government
Ignorant Masses
It Happened: The First 9/11, It Happened On September 11, 1973, In Chile. We Did It. Was That Interfering Or Hacking A Party? This Record Is All Over The World, Constantly Overthrowing Governments, Invading, Forcing People To Follow What We Call Democracy, As In The Cases I Mentioned. As I Say, If Every Charge Is Accurate, It's A Joke, And I'm Sure Half The World Is Collapsing In Laughter About This, Because People Outside The United States Know It. You Don't Have To Tell People In Chile About The First 9/11.
Laughter
Party
Government
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.
Country
Real
Loss
Students Typically Are At A Period Of Their Lives When They're More Free Than At Any Other Time. They're Out Of Parental Control. They're Not Yet Burdened By The Needs Of Trying To Put Food On The Table In A Pretty Repressive Environment, Often, And They're Free To Explore, To Create, To Invent, To Act, And To Organize. Over And Over Through The Years, Student Activism Has Been Extremely Significant In Initiating And Galvanizing Major Changes. I Don't See Any Reason For That To Change.
Trying
Students
Environment
Workers In Different Countries Can Easily Be Played Off Against Each Other.
Country
Different
Workers
Everything Depends Very Much On Who You Are, What Your Values Are, What Your Commitments Are, What Circumstances You Live In And What Options You're Willing To Undertake, And That Determines What You Ought To Be Doing.
Commitment
Circumstances
Determine
Evolutionary Theory Has Nothing To Say, In General, As To Whether Cheating Is More Advantageous Than Cooperating. There Are Many Circumstances In Which The Contrary Would Be True, And Empirical Evidence, Though It Exists, Has Little Bearing On Real Situations.
Cheating
Real
Would Be
The Great Soul Of Power Extends Far Beyond States, To Every Domain Of Life, From Families To International Affairs. And Throughout, Every Form Of Authority And Domination Bears A Severe Burden Of Proof. It Is Not Self-legitimizing. And When It Cannot Bear The Burden, As Is Commonly The Case, It Should Be Dismantled.
Self
Burden Of Proof
Soul
Anything Feasible And Potentially Effective Should Be Explored.
Should
This Is Class War On An International Scale, And Power Is In The Hands Of Those Who Control The International Economic System.
War
Hands
Class
Actually, The Phrase "national Security" Is Barely Used Until The 1930s. And There's A Reason. By Then, The United States Was Beginning To Become Global. Before That The United States Had Been Mostly A Regional Power - Britain Was The Biggest Global Power. After The Second World War, National Security Is Everywhere, Because We Basically Owned The World, So Our Security Is Threatened Everywhere. Not Just On Our Borders, But Everywhere - So You Have To Have A Thousand Military Bases Around The World For "defense."
Military
War
Borders
If You Want To Scare People, You Talk About Evil.
People
Evil
Nihilism
History Records Endless Struggles To Enlarge Those Realms, Inspiring Ones; It Also Records Painful Reversals And Setbacks.
Struggle
Records
Painful
We Recriminalized Black Life. Incarceration Rates Since The 1908s Have Gone Through The Roof, Overwhelmingly Black Males, Women And Hispanics To Some Extent. Essentially Re-doing What Happened Under Reconstruction. That's The History Of African Americans - So How Can Any One Say There's No Problem. Sure, Racism Is Serious, But It's Worse Than That.
Racism
African American
Black
If The Principle Is, "let's Not Get Lethal Substances Out To The Public", The First One You'd Go After Is Tobacco. The Next One You'd Go After Is Alcohol. Way Down The List You'd Get To Cocaine, And Sort Of Invisibly Low You'd Get To Marijuana.
Marijuana
Alcohol
Principles
Its Minority Rule And Majority Limited Rights. In Fact It's Set Up That Way. If You Read The Framers Of The Constitution, Including James Madison, He Was Pretty Clear About It.
Rights
Majority
Minorities
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
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
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
There Was A Free Election In Palestine, But It Came Out The Wrong Way. So Instantly, The United States And Israel With Europe Tagging Along, Moved To Punish The Palestinian People, And Punish Them Harshly, Because They Voted The Wrong Way In A Free Election. That's Accepted Here In The West As Perfectly Normal. That Illustrates The Deep Hatred And Contempt For Democracy Among Western Elites, So Deep-seated They Can't Even Perceive It When It's In Front Of Their Eyes. You Punish People Severely If They Vote The Wrong Way In A Free Election.
Eye
Israel
Europe
I Don't Buy Much. Almost Buy Nothing. I Buy What I Need, Do It The Easiest Way Possible.
Needs
Way
It's Hard To Achieve That, Especially In A Free Society, But It's Been Done, And That's The Kind Of Thing That Activists In The Iww Have To Work Against, Right On The Shop Floor. It's Not So Simple, But It's Been Done Before.
Simple
Done
Kind
Suppose That Insect Wings Developed Primarily As Thermoregulators And Then Were Used For Skimming And Finally Flying, Evolving Along The Way. What Would They Be "for"? Or What Is The Skeleton "for"? For Keeping One Upright, Protecting Organs, Storing Calcium, Making Blood Cells...?
Skeletons
Cells
Blood
If You Take A Look At Places Like Harvard, It's Striking. In The Early ,50s, I Think There Were A Handful Of Jewish Professors, Three Or Four. But By The 1960s, There Were Jewish Deans And Administrators. In Fact, One Of The Reasons Why Mit Became A Great University Was Because They Admitted Jews Whereas Harvard Did Not.
Thinking
Three
Looks
As A Zionist Youth Leader In The 1940s, I Was Among Those Who Called For A Binational State In Mandatory Palestine. When A Jewish State Was Declared, I Felt That It Should Have The Rights Of Other States - No More, No Less.
Rights
Should Have
Leader
Nobody Is Going To Pour Truth Into Your Brain. It's Something You Have To Find Out For Yourself.
Truth
Brain
The Development Of Space Technology, Including Space Warfare Today, Is Similar In Its Technological-industrial Significance To The Development Of Navies A Hundred Years Ago.
Technology
Space
Years
Education Is Really Aimed At Helping Students Get To The Point Where They Can Learn On Their Own. . .
Helping
Students
If You Assume That There Is No Hope, You Guarantee That There Will Be No Hope. If You Assume That There Is An Instinct For Freedom, That There Are Opportunities To Change Things, Then There Is A Possibility That You Can Contribute To Making A Better World.
Courage
Freedom
Opportunity
Unless That Happens, Unless You Get, You Know, Kind Of Integration Of Activists' Concerns And Movements, It Will Be, Each One Will Be 'preaching To The Choir'.
Movement
Kind
Choir
I Choose To Live In What I Think Is The Greatest Country In The World, Which Is Committing Horrendous Terrorist Acts And Should Stop.
Country
Thinking
World
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
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.
Zero
Jobs
Lying
Arab Public Opinion Does Not Regard Iran As A Hostile Entity. In Fact It's So Supportive Of Iran That A Majority Would Think The Place Would Be Better Off If Iran Had Nuclear Weapons. The Main Enemies Are The United States And Isreal, In The 80, 90 Percent Range.
Thinking
Iran
Enemy
The Internet Could Be A Very Positive Step Towards Education, Organisation And Participation In A Meaningful Society.
Positive
Meaningful
Steps
Biblical Archaeology Was Developed Early In This Century In An Effort To Substantiate The Authenticity Of The Biblical Account. It's By Now Generally Recognized In Biblical Scholarship That It Has Done The Opposite. The Bible Is Not A Historical Text, And Has Only Vague Resemblances To What Took Place, As Far As Can Be Reconstructed. For Example, Whether Israel Ever Existed Is Not Clear; If So, It Was Probably A Small Kingdom Somewhere In The Hills, Apparently Virtually Unknown To The Egyptians.
Biblical
Israel
Opposites
Today's Democrats Are Pretty Much What Used To Be Called Moderate Republicans A Generation Ago.
Generations
Today
Republican
Take A Look At The Supreme Court Decision That Just Authorized An Effort By U.s. Claimants Against Iran For Terrorist Acts. What Are The Terrorist Acts? The Terrorist Acts Are Bombings Of U.s. Military Installations In Lebanon And Saudi Arabia, Which Iran Is Claimed To Have Something To Do With. Well Suppose They Did. That's Not Terrorism. I Mean If We Have A Military Base In Lebanon That While We're Shelling Lebanese Naval Ships, The Navy Is Shelling Lebanese Installations And Somebody Attacks [that's Not Terrorism].
Military
Mean
Iran
Nicaragua Was Destabilizing Central America, Meaning Moving In A Direction The Us Didn't Like. So Nicaragua Was Crushed.
Moving
America
Nicaragua
Death And Genitals Are Things That Frighten People, And When People Are Frightened, They Develop Means Of Concealment And Aggression. It Is Common Sense.
Mean
People
Common Sense
If Voting Could Actually Change Anything, It Would Be Illegal.
Voting
Would Be
Illegal
So If You Look At The Writings Of Intellectuals, There Are Two Kinds. One Said, L"look, If We Fought Harder We Could Have Won.but The Others, Who Were Way At The Left, People Like Anthony Lewis Of The New York Times, Way Out In Left Stream, His View In 1975 Was The Vietnam War Began With Blundering Efforts To Do Good. But By 1969, It Was Clear That It Was A Disaster, That Was Too Costly To Us.
New York
War
Writing
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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