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If You Go Back A Century In Europe, All Over The Place People Were Speaking Different Languages. There Were Dozens Of Languages In France And Italy, And They're All Called French [and Italian], But They Were Not Mutually Comprehensible. They Were Different Languages. And They Have Mostly Disappeared In The Last Century Or So. Some Are Being Preserved, Like Welsh, Some Are Being Revived, Like Basque Or Catelan To Some Extent. There Are Plenty Of People In Europe Who Can't Talk To Their Grandmother Because They Talk A Different Language.

-Noam Chomsky

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If You Go Back

Noam Chomsky

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If You Go Back A Century In Europe, All Over The Place People Were Speaking Different Languages. There Were Dozens Of Languages In France And Italy, And They're All Called French [and Italian], But They Were Not Mutually Comprehensible. They Were Different Languages. And They Have Mostly Disappeared In The Last Century Or So. Some Are Being Preserved, Like Welsh, Some Are Being Revived, Like Basque Or Catelan To Some Extent. There Are Plenty Of People In Europe Who Can't Talk To Their Grandmother Because They Talk A Different Language.

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Technological Development

Naming Our Murder Weapons After Victims Of Our Crimes: Apache, Tomahawk... It's As If The Luftwaffe Were To Call Its Fighter Planes 'jew' And 'gypsy.'

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.

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Peace Is Preferable To War. But It’s Not An Absolute Value, And So We Always Ask, “what Kind Of Peace?

Extensive Violations Of Human Rights (torture, Forced Reduction Of Living Standards For Much Of The Population, Police-sponsored Death Squads, Destruction Of Representative Institutions Or Of Independent Unions, Etc.) Are Directly Correlated With Us Government Support. The Linkage Is Not Accidental; Rather It Is Systematic. The Reason Is Obvious Enough. Client Fascism Often Improves The Business Climate For American Corporations, Quite Generally The Guiding Factor In Foreign Policy.

Violation Of Human Rights

The Whole Intelectual Culture Has A Filtering System, Starts As A Child In School. You're Expected To Accept Certain Beliefs, Styles, Behavioral Patterns And So On. If You Don't Accept Them, You Are Called Maybe A Behavioral Problem, Or Something, And You're Weeded Out. Something Like That Goes On All The Way Through Universities And Graduate Schools. There Is An Implicit System Of Filtering, Which Has The, It Creates A Strong Tendency To Impose Conformism. Now, It's A Tendency, So You Do Have Exceptions, And Sometimes The Exceptions Are Quite Striking.

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.

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

On Abortion: We Are Talking About Ambiguous Issues Of A Complicated Kind Where You Have To Balance Conflicting Interests And Concerns.

The Public Is Easily Amenable To Lies: The More Lies There Are, The Greater The Support For War. For Instance, When The Public Was Told That Saddam Hussein Would Attack The U.s., This Increased Support For The War.

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.

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Precisely Constructed Models For Linguistic Structure Can Play An Important Role, Both Negative And Positive, In The Process Of Discovery Itself. By Pushing A Precise But Inadequate Formulation To An Unacceptable Conclusion, We Can Often Expose The Exact Source Of This Inadequacy And, Consequently, Gain A Deep Understanding Of The Linguistic Data. More Positively, A Formalized Theory May Automatically Provide Solutions For Many Problems Other Than Those For Which It Was Explicitly Designed.

Deep Understanding

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These Are Fashionable People Who Call Themselves Philosophers.

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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.

Judge Afiuni Has Suffered Enough. She Has Been Subject To Acts Of Violence And Humiliations To Undermine Her Human Dignity. I Am Convinced That She Must Be Set Free.

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

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Israeli Occupation

Julian Assange Shouldn't Be The Subject Of A Grand Jury Hearing, He Should Be Given A Medal. He's Contributing To Democracy.

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The Task For A Modern Industrial Society Is To Achieve What Is Now Technically Realizable, Namely, A Society Which Is Really Based On Free Voluntary Participation Of People Who Produce And Create, Live Their Lives Freely Within Institutions They Control, And With Limited Hierarchical Structures, Possibly None At All

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I Remember At The Age Of Five Travelling On A Trolley Car With My Mother Past A Group Of Women On A Picket Line At A Textile Plant, Seeing Them Being Viciously Beaten By Security People. So That Kind Of Thing Stayed With Me.

To Achieve Respectability, To Be Admitted To The Debate, They Must Accept Without Question Or Inquiry The Fundamental Doctrine That The State Is Benevolent, Governed By The Loftiest Intentions, Adopting A Defensive Stance, Not An Actor In World Affairs But Only Reacting To The Crimes Of Others...if Even The Harshest Of Critics Tacitly Adopt These Premises, Then The Ordinary Person May Ask, Who Am I To Disagree?

Many Of The People Who Voted For Trump Were People Who Voted For Obama Eight Years Ago. You Remember, Of Course, His Message Was "hope And Change." People Wanted Change, For Good Reasons, And They Wanted Hope. Disillusioned With What Took Place, They Turned To Someone Else Who Was Offering Hope And Change. When They're Disillusioned With That, It Depends On What Activists And Others Do.

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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.

It Has Been Known For Some Time That A Major Nuclear War Might Lead To Nuclear Winter That Would Destroy The Attacker As Well As The Target. And Threats Are Now Mounting, Particularly At The Russian Border, Confirming The Prediction Of George Kennan And Other Prominent Figures That Nato Expansion, Particularly The Way It Was Undertaken, Would Prove To Be A "tragic Mistake," A "policy Error Of Historic Proportions."

The Drug Problem Is In The United States, Not In Mexico. It's A Demand Problem And That Is To Be Dealt With Here, And It Is Not Being Dealt With. It's Been Shown Over And Over That Prevention And Treatment Are Far More Cost Effective Than Police Action, Out-of-country Action, Border Control, And So On.

There Are A Lot Of People That Form Movements Around Particular Commitments, Like Gay Rights. It Is Important, But It Does Not Link Easily To, Say, Economic Rights, And It Often Looks Like It's Opposed To Them. The Attempt To Bring These Together Has Yet To Be Done In A Truly Effective Way, And I Think It Can Be.

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

You Ought To Teach Kids That Elections Take Place But That's Not Politics. If You Want To Know How Legislation Is Made It Doesn't Come From Elections.

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.

It's Not In Doubt That Tobacco Is Far More Lethal Than Hard Drugs.

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

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

There's An Interesting Book Called The Fugu Plan, Written By Marvin Tokayer And Mary Swartz, Which Describes The Circumstances When European Jews Came To Japan, A Semi-feudal Society.

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

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.

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

Legalizing Marijuana Would Make A Lot Of Sense, I Don't Think There's A Single Case Of Marijuana Overdose On Record And Tens Of Millions Of Users. It's Much Less Dangerous Than Alcohol, For Example.

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

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

For The Powerful, Crimes Are Those That Others Commit.

The Washington Leadership Has Put Aside Non-proliferation Programmes And Devoted Its Energies And Resources To Driving The Country To War By Extraordinary Deceit, Then Trying To Manage The Catastrophe It Created In Iraq.

The Internet, Since It Is Publicly Created, Ought To Be Publicly Controlled.

Labor #‎ Unions Are The Leading Force For #‎ Democratization And #‎ Progress .

Another Problem Is The Confrontation With India. Pakistan Just Cannot Survive If It Continues To Do So (continue This Confrontation).

Who Wrote The Bible? Current Scholarship, To My Knowledge, Assumes That The Material That Constitutes The Old Testament Was Put Together From Various Oral And Folk Traditions (many Of Them Going Far Back) In The Hellenistic Period. That Was One Of Several Currents, Of Which The Collection That Formed The New Testament Was Another.

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.

We Should Not Be Speaking To, But With. That Is Second Nature To Any Good Teacher.

The Very Design Of Neoliberal Principles Is A Direct Attack On Democracy.

I Don't Think That Any Deal Was Needed: Iran Was Not A Threat. Even If Iran Were A Threat, There Was A Very Easy Way To Handle It - By Establishing A Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, Which Is Something That Nearly Everyone In The World Wants.

Education Is Not For Profit. If You're Not In Education For Profit, It's Not Going To Be A Fair Critique For Education.

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.

I Don't Feel That I Have Anything To Say Beyond Moral Truisms.

Ceos Pretty Much Pick The Boards That Give Them Salaries And Bonuses. That's One Of The Reasons Why The Ceo-to-payment [ratio] Has So Sharply Escalated In This Country In Contrast To Europe. (they're Similar Societies And It's Bad Enough There, But Here We're In The Stratosphere. ] There's No Particular Reason For It.

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

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.

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.

My Own Feeling Is That One Should Refuse To Participate In Any Activity That Implements American Aggression - Thus Tax Refusal, Draft Refusal, Avoidance Of Work That Can Be Used By The Agencies Of Militarism And Repression, All Seem To Me Essential.

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

To Understand How People Organize Social Systems, We Have To Discover The Principles That We Create To Make Some Societies Intelligible.

There Certainly Are Those Who Worship The State Much As Divinities Are Worshipped. Not Just The State But Even Leaders.

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

Very Urgent Measures Need To Be Taken, And Without Much Delay, In Dealing With The Ongoing Destruction Of The Environment.

The Only Debatable Issue, It Seems To Me, Is Whether It Is More Ridiculous To Turn To Experts In Social Theory For General Well-confirmed Propositions, Or To The Specialists In The Great Religions And Philosophical Systems For Insights Into Fundamental Human Values.

Every Wave Of Immigrants Who Came [to America] Were Treated Pretty Badly, But When They All Finally Became Integrated, All Of Us Became Anglo-saxons.

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

If You Believe In Democracy, Why Shouldn't You Know What The Government Is Doing?

Modifying The Core Institutions Of The Society Is No Small Challenge.

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

The Us Is The Wrecking Machine That Is Destroying Everything. The World Is Hoping That China Will Somehow Come To The Rescue.

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

Human Language Appears To Be A Unique Phenomenon, Without Significant Analogue In The Animal World.

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.

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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.

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

The Police Can Go To Downtown Harlem And Pick Up A Kid With A Joint In The Streets. But They Can't Go Into The Elegant Apartments And Get A Stockbroker Who's Sniffing Cocaine.

White Privilege

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

The Basic Principle, Rarely Violated, Is That What Conflicts With The Requirements Of Power And Privilege Does Not Exist.

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

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

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.

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.

I Don't Think All Thinking Is A Kind Of Rational Structure. But I Don't Think It Is Correct To Identify The Rational-nonrational Dichotomy With The Linguistic-nonlinguistic Dichotomy.

A Democracy Barely Functions Under The Neoliberal System.

There's Kind Of A Hidden Point Which Isn't Being Brought Out, And That Is That It Is Inconceivable That The U.s. Would Permit Democracy In The Middle East, And For A Very Simple Reason. Just Take A Look At Polls Of Arab Public Opinion. They Exist. You Can't Find Them In The Press, But They Exist From Prestigious Polling Agencies. Released By Major Institutions. And What They Show Is That If There Was Democracy In The Middle East, The Entire U.s. Program For Domination Of The Middle East Would Be Down The Tube.

The Pashtuns In Particular Are Kind Of Trapped. They've Never Accepted The Durand Line Nor Has Any Afghan Government Historically Accepted It.

It Is Now Well-known That The Taliban's Creation Was Facilitated By The Cia And The Isi As Part Of The 1980s Anti-soviet War.

Wikileaks Is A Service To The Population. Assange Should Get An Award For - Presidential Medal Of Honor.

Democracy Doesn't Mean Much If People Have To Confront Concentrated Systems Of Economic Power As Isolated Individuals. Democracy Means Something If People Can Organize To Gain Information, To Have Thoughts For That Matter, To Make Plans, To Enter Into The Political System In Some Active Way, To Put Forth Programs And So On. If Organizations Of That Kind Exist, Then Democracy Can Exist Too. Otherwise It's A Matter Of Pushing A Lever Every Couple Of Years; It's Like Having The Choice Between Coca-cola And Pepsi-cola.

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

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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.

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Policies Are Designed To Undermine Working Class Organization And The Reason Is Not Only The Unions Fight For Workers' Rights, But They Also Have A Democratizing Effect. These Are Institutions In Which People Without Power Can Get Together, Support One Another, Learn About The World, Try Out Their Ideas, Initiate Programs, And That Is Dangerous. That's Like A Referendum In Greece. It Is Dangerous To Allow That.

Capitalism Is A System In Which The Central Institutions Of Society Are, In Principle, Under Autocratic Control. Thus, A Corporation Or An Industry Is, If We Were To Think Of It In Political Terms, Fascist, That Is, It Has Tight Control At The Top And Strict Obedience Has To Be Established At Every Level. [...] Just As I'm Opposed To Political Fascism, I Am Opposed To Economic Fascism. I Think That Until The Major Institutions Of Society Are Under The Popular Control Of Participants And Communities, It's Pointless To Talk About Democracy.

The People Who Live On The Land - Israelis And Palestinians - Have A Right To Live In Security And Peace.

The Social And Physical Construction Of Suburban America Really Was Quite Complex. It Was A Very Elaborate System, And Clearly A Massive Social Engineering Project That Has Changed U.s. Society Enormously.

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

The Media Are A Corporate Monopoly. They Have The Same Point Of View. The Two Parties Are Two Factions Of The Business Party. Most Of The Population Doesn't Even Bother Voting Because It Looks Meaningless. They're Marginalized And Properly Distracted. At Least That's The Goal.

Should People Be Mere "interested Spectators Of Action," Not "participants," Restricted To Lending Their Weight Periodically To One Or Another Sector Of The "responsible Men," As Advocates Of "manufacture Of Consent" Have Recommended? Or Should Their Rights Transcend These Highly Restricted Bounds?

It Doesn't Matter What We Cover, It Matters What You Discover.

We Need Not Stride Resolutely Towards Catastrophe, Merely Because Those Are The Marching Orders.

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

Internal Security Means Something. It Means War Against Your Own Population.

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

There Was A Time Traditionally - Say, Gm In The 1950s - It Was Trying To Develop A Consumer Base That Would Be Loyal And Lasting And They Were Thinking In Terms Of An Institution That Would Remain And Grow And Thrive In The Society. By Now, A Lot Of The Investment Firms - Bankers, Hedge Funds - Are Perfectly Happy To Destroy What They're In And Come Out With Huge, Tremendous Benefits. That's A New Stage Of Capitalism.

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.

With The Development Of Industrial Capitalism, A New And Unanticipated System Of Injustice, It Is Libertarian Socialism That Has Preserved And Extended The Radical Humanist Message Of The Enlightenment And The Classical Liberal Ideals That Were Perverted Into An Ideology To Sustain The Emerging Social Order.

The United States Is Off The International Spectrum In Religious Extremism.

I Think This Country And The World Would Be Far Better Off If The Us Is Not An Outlaw State.

One Measure For Promoting Both Stability And Fairness Across Financial Market Segments Is A Small Sales Tax On All Financial Transactions.

[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.

The Government Of Israel Doesn't Like The Kinds Of Things I Say, Which Puts Them Into The Same Category As Every Other Government In The World.

The Key Element Of Social Control Is The Strategy Of Distraction That Is To Divert Public Attention From Important Issues And Changes Decided By Political And Economic Elites, Through The Technique Of Flood Or Flooding Continuous Distractions And Insignificant Information.

States Are Not Moral Agents.

Establishing A Client State In Iraq Would Significantly Enhance That Strategic Power, A Matter Of Great Significance For The Future. As Zbigniew Brzezinski Observed, It Would Provide The Us With "critical Leverage" Of Its European And Asian Rivals, A Conception With Roots In Early Post-war Planning. These Are Substantial Reasons For Aggression - Not Unlike Those Of The British When They Invaded And Occupied Iraq Over 80 Years Earlier, At The Dawn Of The Oil Age.

Citizenship Means Every Four Years You Put A Mark Somewhere And You Go Home And Let Other Guys Run The World. It's A Very Destructive Ideology.

You Never Really Saw The Racism In Europe In The Past Because It Was So Homogeneous. When Everyone Is Blonde And Blue-eyed, You Don't See Racism. But As Soon As There Was The Beginnings Of Immigration, It Just Came Out Very Dramatically.

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

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

Just Take Ease Of Interchange Between People. Your Email Is Of Course Faster Than Letter - On The Other Hand The Transition From Sailing Ship To Telegraphs Was Far Greater Than The Shift From The Postal Service To Email. That Was A Fabulous Change. If You Sent A Letter To England, Instead Of Waiting A Couple Of Months For A Response You Got It Instantly. That's A Huge Change. Every One Of These Changes Of Course Increases Opportunities And Also Increases Means Of Control And Domination.

There Are Historical Analogs, Which Are Not Exact, Of Course, But Are Close Enough To Be Worrisome. This Is A Whiff Of Early Nazi Germany. [adolf] Hitler Was Appealing To Groups With Similar Grievances, And Giving Them Crazy Answers, But At Least They Were Answers; These Groups Weren't Getting Them Anywhere Else. It Was The Jews And The Bolsheviks [that Were The Problem].

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

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'.

The People Who Are Unemployed Want To Do The Work, But The System Is Such A Catastrophic Failure That It Cannot Bring Together Idle Hands And Work. This Is All Hailed As A Great Success, And It Is A Great Success - For A Very Small Sector Of The Population.

Britain Kept Its Position As The Dominant World Power Well Into The 20th Century Despite Steady Decline. By The End Of World War Ii, Dominance Had Shifted Decisively Into The Hands Of The Upstart Across The Sea, The United States, By Far The Most Powerful And Wealthy Society In World History.

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

The U.s. Directed The War Against South Vietnam. There Was A Political Settlement In 1954. But In The Late '50's The United States Organized An Internal Repression In South Vietnam, Not Using Its Troops, But Using The Local Apparatus It Was Constructing. This Was A Very Significant And Very Effective Campaign Of Violence And Terrorism Against The Vietminh - Which Was The Communist-led Nationalist Force That Fought The French. And The Vietminh At That Time Was Adhering To The Geneva Accords, Hoping That The Political Settlement Would Work Out In South Vietnam.

I Have Not Suggested That The Emergence Of Language Is Instantaneous. Rather, That The Rewiring Of The Brain Enabling An Infinite Array Of Structured Expressions Was In Effect Instantaneous. I Have Never Heard Of An Alternative To This Suggestion.

Some Of The Most Moving Experiences I've Had Are Just In Black Churches In The South, During The Civil Rights Movement, Where People Were Getting Beaten, Killed, Really Struggling For The Most Elementary Rights.

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

Suppose That Humans Happen To Be So Constructed That They Desire The Opportunity For Freely Undertaken Productive Work. Suppose That They Want To Be Free From The Meddling Of Technocrats And Commissars, Bankers And Tycoons, Mad Bombers Who Engage In Psychological Tests Of Will With Peasants Defending Their Homes, Behavioral Scientists Who Can't Tell A Pigeon From A Poet, Or Anyone Else Who Tries To Wish Freedom And Dignity Out Of Existence Or Beat Them Into Oblivion.

Productive Work

Student Debt Is Structured To Be A Burden For Life. The Indebted Cannot Declare Bankruptcy, Unlike Donald Trump. Current Student Debt Is Estimated To Be Over $1.45 Trillion. There Are Ample Resources For That Simply From Waste, Including The Bloated Military And The Enormous Concentrated Private Wealth That Has Accumulated In The Financial And General Corporate Sector Under Neoliberal Policies. There Is No Economic Reason Why Free Education Cannot Flourish From Schools Through Colleges And University. The Barriers Are Not Economic But Rather Political Decisions.

How Do I Define God? I Don't.... People Who Find Such Conceptions Important For Themselves Have Every Right To Frame Them As They Like. Personally, I Don't.

There Are By Now Declassified Documents From The 1950s That Tells You A Lot About What's Going On In Egypt And We Should Have Known It Then. It's About Exactly What's Happening, How We Can Disregard Public Opinion As Long As The Dictators We Support Are Capable Of Suppressing Their Populations. So To Hell With Public Opinion. That's All Right There In The 1950's. That's Not Security. That's Not Security Of The Government. That's, If Anything, Security From Its Own Population. And There's A Lot Of That.

The Best Defense Against Democracy Is To Distract People.

Under Capitalism, We Can't Have Democracy By Definition. Capitalism Is A System In Which The Central Institutions Of Society Are In Principle Under Autocratic Control.

If You Want To Find Weapons Of Destruction, You Can Find Them All Over The Place. Take, Say, Israel. There Is A Very Great Concern Right Now About Proliferation Of Nuclear Weapons, As There Should Be. Israel Has A Couple Of Hundred Nuclear Weapons And Also Chemical And Biological Weapons. This Stockpile Is Not Only A Threat In Itself But Encourages Others To Proliferate In Reaction And In Self-defense. Is Anybody Saying Anything About This?

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

The Internet Is An élite Organization; Most Of The Population Of The World Has Never Even Made A Phone Call.

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.

The Reason Academic Disputes Are So Vicious Is That So Little Is At Stake.

I Think That The Real Tragedy Of Greece - Aside Of The Savagery Of European Bureaucracy, Brussels Bureaucracy And Northern Banks, Which Was Really Savage - Is That The Greek Crisis Didn't Have To Erupt. It Could Have Been Taken Care Of Pretty Easily At The Very Beginning. But It Happened And Syriza Came Into Office With A Declared Commitment To Combat It, And In Fact As I Recall They Actually Called A Referendum, Which Horrified Europe.

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

If Scientists And Scholars Were To Become "collectively Self-organised And Consciously Activist" Today, They Would Probably Devote Themselves To Service To State And Private Power. Those Who Have Different Goals Should (and Do) Become Organized And Activist.

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

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

Anti-americanism Is A Pure Totalitarian Concept. The Very Notion Is Idiotic.

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

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.

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

The Book [manufacturing Consent] Itself Is Then Devoted To A Series Of Case Studies, Selected, We Hope [with Edward Herman], To Offer A Fair And In Fact Rather Severe Test Of Those Conclusions.

If There Are Dollars To Be Made, You Destroy The Environment. The Reason Is Elementary. The People Who Are Going To Be Harmed By This Are Your Grandchildren And They Don't Have Any Votes In The Market. Their Interests Are Worth Zero. Anybody That Pays Attention To Their Grandchildren's Interests Is Being Irrational. Because What You're Supposed To Do Is Maximize Your Own Interests, Measured By Wealth, Right Now. Nothing Else Matters. So Destroying The Environment And Militarizing Outer Space Are Rational Policies, But Within A Framework Of Institutional Lunacy.

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

The Intellectual Tradition Is One Of Servility To Power, And If I Didn't Betray It I'd Be Ashamed Of Myself.

Okay, Nato Expanded To East Berlin And East Germany. Under [bill] Clinton Nato Expanded Further, To The Former Russian Satellites. In 2008 Nato Formally Made An Offer To Ukraine To Join Nato. That's Unbelievable. I Mean, Ukraine Is The Geopolitical Heartland Of Russian Concern, Quite Aside From Historical Connections, Population And So On.

Why Does Everyone Take For Granted That We Don't Learn To Grow Arms, But Rather, Are Designed To Grow Arms? Similarly, We Should Conclude That In The Case Of The Development Of Moral Systems; There's A Biological Endowment Which In Effect Requires Us To Develop A System Of Moral Judgment And A Theory Of Justice, If You Like, That In Fact Has Detailed Applicability Over An Enormous Range.

Part Of The Nafta Legislation Required Studies Of Labor Practices, And There Was Quite A Good Study That Came Out By A Labor Historian On The Use Of Nafta To Undermine And Destroy Unions.

Groupings Of People That Get Together, Think Things Through, Come Out To Plan And So On, Like Unions Or True Political Organizations, They've Disintegrated. And People Tend To Be Atomized - You Get Down To A Society Based On Social Units Based On An Atom - An Atomic Element - Which Is A Person And Their Computer. Not A Society That Is Going To Be Able To Function Freely And Democratically. The Tendency Is There; It Doesn't Have To Be, But Its Something To Worry About.

The Current Period Of Regression Is Registering Some Success In "producing People" Who Are Subordinated To External Power, Diverted To Such "superficial Things" As "fashionable Consumption" And Other Pursuits More Fitting For The "bewildered Herd" Than Participation In Determining The Course Of Individual And Social Life.

Superficial Things

Suppose That I See A Hungry Child In The Street, And I Am Able To Offer The Child Some Food. Am I Morally Culpable If I Refuse To Do So? Am I Morally Culpable If I Choose Not To Do What I Easily Can About The Fact That 1000 Children Die Every Hour From Easily Preventable Disease, According To Unicef? Or The Fact That The Government Of My Own "free And Open Society" Is Engaged In Monstrous Crimes That Can Easily Be Mitigated Or Terminated? Is It Even Possible To Debate These Questions?

The Fact Is That If You Have Not Developed Language, You Simply Don't Have Access To Most Of Human Experience, And If You Don't Have Access To Experience, Then You're Not Going To Be Able To Think Properly.

Anarcho-capitalism, In My Opinion, Is A Doctrinal System Which, If Ever Implemented, Would Lead To Forms Of Tyranny And Oppression That Have Few Counterparts In Human History. There Isn't The Slightest Possibility That Its (in My View, Horrendous) Ideas Would Be Implemented, Because They Would Quickly Destroy Any Society That Made This Colossal Error. The Idea Of 'free Contract' Between The Potentate And His Starving Subject Is A Sick Joke, Perhaps Worth Some Moments In An Academic Seminar Exploring The Consequences Of (in My View, Absurd) Ideas, But Nowhere Else.

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

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.

In Fact, For The Majority Of The Population, Wages And Incomes Have Stagnated And Conditions Have Gotten Worse. So They Are Asking, "what Did I Do Wrong?" And The Answer That The Talk Show Host Is Giving Them Is Convincing, In It's Internal Logic. It's Saying, "what's Wrong Is The Rich Liberals Own Everything, Run Everything, They Don't Care About You; Therefore, Distrust Them" And So On.

We Should Certainly Not Be Perpetuating Further Harm To Others Or To The Environment. Suppose That Workers At Exxonmobil Are Trying To Unionize. We Have Two Choices: To Help Them Improve Their Lives, Or To Keep Away So That Their Lives Will Be Worse. Neither Choice Has Any Effect On Use Of Fossil Fuels. So Radical Organizers Can Both Help Them Unionize And Improve Their Lives, And Convince Them To Find A Different Way To Survive And Work For Ending The Use Of Fossil Fuels.

The Term "intellectual" Is Used Conventionally To Refer To People Who Happen To Have Unusual Opportunities In This Regard, And As Always, Opportunity Confers Moral Responsibility.

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