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

-Noam Chomsky

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In Europe There's Kind

Noam Chomsky

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

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Diverse Society

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I Listen To Talk Radio A Lot And It's Kind Of Interesting. If You Can Sort Of Suspend Your Knowledge Of The World And Just Enter Into The World Of The People Who Are Calling In, You Can Understand Them.

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The Point Of Public Relations Slogans Like "support Our Troops" Is That They Don't Mean Anything ... That's The Whole Point Of Good Propaganda. You Want To Create A Slogan That Nobody Is Going To Be Against And I Suppose Everybody Will Be For, Because Nobody Knows What It Means, Because It Doesn't Mean Anything. But Its Crucial Value Is That It Diverts Your Attention From A Question That Does Mean Something, Do You Support Our Policy? And That's The One You're Not Allowed To Talk About.

Well, In Fact If You Look At The Trump Voters, You Take A Look At Their Attitudes It's Not All That Different. In Some Respects They're Similar. They're An Older Version Of The Sanders People. So A Lot Of It Is Racist And You Have That Sort Of Thing, But If You Look At Their Views On Say Health, Education, And So On, It's Kind Of The Same As Sanders.

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[ronald] Reagan Bitterly Hated Unions And Wanted Them Destroyed. This Began With The Air Controllers' Strike And Went On From There.

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Silicon Valley, After All, Feeds Off The Existence Of Computers, The Internet, The It Systems, Satellites, The Whole Of Micro Electronics And So On, But A Lot Of That Comes Straight Out Of The State Sector Of The Economy. Silicon Valley Developed, But They Expanded And Turned It Into Commercial Products And So On, But The Innovation Is On The Basis Of Fundamental Technological Development That Took Places In Places Like This [mit] On Government Funding, And That Continues.

Technological Development

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Working Together

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One Contribution Scientists Can And Should Make Is To Be Clear And Explicit About The Limits Of Scientific Understanding, A Matter That Is Particularly Important In Societies Where People Are Trained To Defer To Alleged Experts.

Like Other Organisms, Humans Have A Certain Genetic Endowment (apparently Varying Little In The Species, Not A Surprise Considering Its Recent Separation From Other Hominids). That Determines What We Call Their Nature.

America Has Always Been The Richest And Most Secure, And Sometimes The Most Dangerous Country In The World. In The Early Years, The Danger Was To Everybody Near Us, Slaves, Native Americans, Mexicans. It Finally Expanded In 1898 To The Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, And The Philippines.

Native American

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

The Iranian Government Is Undoubtedly A Severe Danger To Its Own Population, But Not Beyond That.

Radical Islamist Extremists Surely Hope That An Attack On Iraq Will Kill Many People And Destroy Much Of The Country, Providing Recruits For Terrorist Actions.

Why Should Workers Agree To Be Slaves In A Basically Authoritarian Structure? They Should Have Control Over It Themselves. Why Shouldn't Communities Have A Dominant Voice In Running The Institutions That Affect Their Lives?

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

Greece, Alone, Is In A Very Vulnerable Position. If The Greeks Had Had Support From Progressive Left And Popular Forces Elsewhere In Europe They Might Have Been Able To Resist The Demands Of The Troika, But They Had Almost No Support. Not Even From Portugal, Spain, Or Other Left Forces. They Were Left Alone.

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

With Regard To Freedom Of Expression There Are Basically Two Positions: You Defend It Vigorously For Views You Hate, Or You Reject It In Favor Of Stalinist/fascist Standards.

You Can Go Into The Library Of Congress And Find Information On Just About Anything, But That Doesn't Do You Much Good Unless You Know What You Are Looking For.

And If You Look At All This Academic Work In The Conferences And So On There's A Constant Theme That Terrorism Is Extremely Hard To Define And We Therefore Have To Have A Deep Thinking About It. And The Reason It's Hard To Define Is Quite Simple. It's Hard To Find A Definition That Includes What They Do To Us But Excludes What We Do To Them. That's Quite Difficult. So It Takes A Global War On Terrorism.

Just Recently, The Administration Of Barack Obama, Which Has Broken All Sorts Of Records In Regards To Deportation, Picked Up A Guatemalan Man Living Here [in U.s]. I Think He Had Been Living Here For Twenty-five Years, Had A Family, A Business, And So On. He Had Fled From The Mayan Region And They Picked Him Up And Deported Him. To Me, That's Really Sick.

At The Beginning Of His Administration, Reagan Tried Set The Basis For American Military Intervention In El Salvador - Which Is About What Kennedy Did When He Came Into Office In Regard To Vietnam. Well, When Kennedy Tried It In Vietnam, It Just Worked Like A Dream. Virtually Nobody Opposed American Bombing Of South Vietnam In 1962. It Was Not An Issue. But When Reagan Began To Talk Of Involving American Forces In El Salvador There Was A Huge Popular Uproar. And He Had To Choose A Much More Indirect Way Of Supporting The Collection Of Gangsters In Power There. He Had To Back Off.

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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The Anniversary Of Hiroshima, Should Be A Day Of Somber Reflection, Not Only On The Terrible Events Of That Day In 1945, But Also On What They Revealed: That Humans, In Their Dedicated Quest To Extend Their Capacities For Destruction, Had Finally Found A Way To Approach The Ultimate Limit.

Terrible Events

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If The Mutation Is Partially Transmitted To Offspring, They Too Would Have The Advantage. And Over Time It Might Have Come To Dominate A Small Breeding Group.

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?

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I Had No Expectations About Barack Obama And I'm Not In The Least Disillusioned.

In The Humanities And Social Sciences, And In Fields Like Journalism And Economics And So On, People Have To Be Trained To Be Managers, And Controllers, And To Accept Things, And Not To Question Too Much.

If In Fact, The Us Story Is Correct, If It Is True That Syria Used Chemical Weapons, Then It Wouldn't Be A Major Crime To Send A Kind Of Shot Across The Bow Saying You Can't Do This Anymore. Not The Best Thing In The World, But Not A Major Crime, Either. So, I Think At The Very Least There Should Have Been An Inquiry Into What Happened. But Just Joining The Bandwagon About How We're Finally Standing Up To Crimes In Syria, That's Ridiculous.

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'.

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.

About Specific Social Issues, There Is A Great Deal To Say That Departs Very Far From Truism And Is, Accordingly, Significant And Controversial.

In The Us, First Of All, The Electoral System Has Been Almost Totally Shredded. For A Long Time It's Been Pretty Much Run By Private Concentrated Spending But Now It's Over The Top. Elections Increasingly Over The Years Have Been [public Relations] Extravaganzas.

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

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

I Think That In Order To Achieve Progress In The Study Of Language And Human Cognitive Faculties In General It Is Necessary First To Establish 'psychic Distance' From The 'mental Facts' To Which Köhler Referred, And Then To Explore The Possibilities For Developing Explanatory Theories... We Must Recognize That Even The Most Familiar Phenomena Require Explanation And That We Have No Privileged Access To The Underlying Mechanisms, No More So Than In Physiology Or Physics.

The 'corporatization Of America' During The Past Century Has Been An Attack On Democracy.

This Would Be A Very Good Moment To Institute A Call For Imposing The Chemical Weapons Convention On The Middle East. The Actual Chemical Weapons Convention. Not The Version That [barack] Obama Presented In His Address To The Nation And That Media Commentators Repeat. What He Said Is That The Convention Bars The Use Of Chemical Weapons. He Knows Better. And So Do The Commentators. The Chemical Weapons Convention Calls For Banning The Production, Storage And Use Of Chemical Weapons, Not Just The Use. So Why Omit Production And Storage?

As A Health Scientist At Columbia University, Les Roberts, Pointed Out, Sooner Or Later People Are Going To Be Looking At A Child In A Wheelchair Suffering From Polio And Will Say 'the Americans Did That To Him'. So They Continue Policies Which Have Similar Effects I.e. Organising The Taliban. This Will Come Back To Them Too.

The Printing Press Had A Very Liberatory Effect That Meant Individuals - Small Groups Could Produce Radical Pamphlets - Could Use It For Organizing.

The Similarity Is That Concentration Of Capital Influences Virtually Everything That Goes On. It Influences The Way The Media Functions, It Very Powerfully Influences How The Government Works And It Of Course Influences Corporate Sector Elements, Like Say How Google Or Amazon Present Materials That Reach The Public.

U.s. Has No Feudal Background, So Institutions That Remained In Place In Europe Did Not Remain In Place Here.

Markets Have Built In Inefficiencies, Serious Inefficiencies Which Are Well Known.

The Big Change, The Really Radical Change In Communication, Was In The Late 19th Century. The Shift From Sailing Ships To Telegraph Is Astronomical. Everything Since Then Has Been Small Increments, Including The Internet.

The Republican And Democratic Parties Are Only Factions Of The Government Party.

Colombia Is Potentially A Very Wealthy Country. It Has Tremendous Resources, But Its Wealth Is Highly Concentrated. Most Of The Population Lives In Misery, Which Has Led To Violent Confrontation Throughout The Century.

Iran Has Been Calling For It For Years, And The Arab Countries Support It. Everyone Except The United States And Israel Support It. The U.s. Won't Allow It Because It Means Inspecting Israel's Nuclear Weapons. The U.s. Has Continued To Block It, And In Fact Blocked It Again Just A Couple Of Days Ago; It Just Wasn't Widely Reported. Iran's Nuclear Program, As U.s. Intelligence Points Out, Is Deterrent, And The Bottom Line Is That The U.s. And Israel Don't Want Iran To Have A Deterrent.

Language Is A Weapon Of Politicians, But Language Is A Weapon In Much Of Human Affairs.

Credible Reports Came Through That Syria Had Used Chemical Weapons. Whether It's True Actually Is Still Open To Question, But It's Very Probably True. At That Point, What Was At Stake Was What Is Called Credibility. So If You Read The Political Actors, Political Leadership, Foreign Policy Commentary, They Constantly Point Out Accurately That Us Credibility Was At Stake, And We Have To Maintain Us Credibility. So Therefore Something Had To Be Done To Show You Can't Violate Our Orders.

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

What Happened In Syria Was, President [barack] Obama Had Made A Statement Announcing What He Called His "red Line": You Can't Use Chemical Weapons, You Can Do Anything Else But [use] Chemical Weapons.

The Sanders Campaign, However, Broke Dramatically With Over A Century Of U.s. Political History. Extensive Political Science Research, Notably The Work Of Thomas Ferguson, Has Shown Convincingly That Elections Are Pretty Much Bought. For Example, Campaign Spending Alone Is A Remarkably Good Predictor Of Electoral Success, And Support Of Corporate Power And Private Wealth Is A Virtual Prerequisite Even For Participation In The Political Arena.

I'm Into Eating As Little As Possible... I Never Cook. Never Use The Stove Or Anything.

As Elite Attitudes Towards Public Education Over Time Illustrate, Simple Formulas Are Far From Adequate. There Are Conflicting Tendencies.

Why Was The United States So Afraid Of An Independent South Vietnam? Well, I Think The Reason Again Is Pretty Clear From The Internal Government Documents. Precisely What They Were Afraid Of Was That The "takeover" Of South Vietnam By Nationalist Forces Would Not Be Brutal. They Feared It Would Be Conciliatory And That There Would Be Successful Social And Economic Development - And That The Whole Region Might Work.

Barack Obama Is An Opportunist, Mostly Supported By The Financial Institutions. He Had No Positions On Anything. He's Very Intelligent. If You Look At His Program, Almost No Substance. Change, Hope, What's That? I Mean, He Had Some Policies, But It Was Almost Certain That He Would Give Them Up Instantly, Which He Did.

Latin America Was The Most Obedient Follower Of The Neoliberal Regime That Was Instituted By The United States, Its Allies And The International Financial Institutions. They Followed It Most Rigorously. Almost Everyone Who's Followed Those Rules, Including The Western Countries, Have Suffered. And In Latin America They Suffered Severely.

I Like The Cold Weather. It Means You Get Work Done.

My Own Concern Is Primarily The Terror And Violence Carried Out By My Own State... It Is Very Easy To Denounce The Atrocities Of Someone Else. That Has About As Much Ethical Value As Denouncing Atrocities That Took Place In The 18th Century.

The American Revolution Was A Small Part Of A Major World War Going On Between France And England, So The French Intervened And That Was A Big Factor, But The Domestic Contribution Was Basically Guerrilla Warfare.

France And England

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.

African American

I'm No Expert On Pornography. The Core Element Of It, I Think, Is Degradation Of Women, Whatever Else Goes On. I Don't Think It Should Be Outlawed, But I'm Not In Favor Of The Degradation Of Anybody.

In Mexico, A Poor Country, Higher Education Is Of Quite Good Quality -- And Is Free. Ten Years Ago The Government Tried To Impose Small Fees. There Was A National Student Strike And The Government Backed Down. High Tuition Is Not An Economic Necessity, As Is Easy To Show, But A Debt Trap Is A Good Technique Of Indoctrination And Control. And Resisting This Makes Good Sense.

After All, The Internet Originated Around 1960 And Wasn't Privatized Until 1995. That's Thirty Five Years In The Public Domain During The Hard, Creative Development Period.

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

You Win By Struggle, And That Requires Understanding And Serious Analysis Of The Options And The Circumstances, And Then You Can Do A Lot.

We Have To Be A Little Cautious About Not Trying To Kill A Gnat With An Atom Bomb. The Performances Are So Utterly Absurd Regarding The "post-truth" Moment That The Proper Response Might Best Be Ridicule.

If You Have To Control People, You Have To Have An Administrative Force That Does It. So In U.s. Industry, Even More Than Elsewhere, There's Layer After Layer Of Management - A Kind Of Economic Waste, But Useful For Control And Domination. And The Same Is True In Universities.

We Don't Use The Term 'working Class' Here Because It's A Taboo Term. You're Supposed To Say 'middle Class,' Because It Helps Diminish The Understanding That There's A Class War Going On.

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

I Grew Up In That, When I Was A Kid. My Friends And I Used To Play Cowboys And Indians. We Were Cowboys Killing The Indians, Following The Wild West Stories. All Of This Combined Into A Very Strange Culture, Which Is Frightened.

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.

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

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.

George Kennan Is Another Extreme Case. He Was The American Consul In Berlin Until The War Between Germany And The United States Broke Out In December 1941. And Until Then He Was Writing Pretty Supportive Statements Back Stressing That We Shouldn't Be So Hard On The Nazis If They Were Doing Something We Didn't Agree With - Basically Repeating The Idea That They Were People We Could Do Business With.

The Threat And Use Of Violence Is Stimulating Nuclear Proliferation Along With Jihadi Terrorism.

Nuclear Proliferation

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.

The Human Species Is Now At A Point Where It Has To Make Choices That Are Going To Determine Whether Decent Survival Is Even Possible. Environmental Catastrophe, Including War, Maybe Pandemics, These Are Very Serious Issues And They Can't Be Addressed Within The Current Structure Of Institutions. That's Almost Given. There Have To Be Real Significant Changes, And Only Really Effective Popular Mass-based Movements Can Introduce And Carry Forward Such Initiatives, As Indeed Did Happen During The 1930s.

The Us Is To An Unusual Extent A Business-run Society, Where Short-term Concerns Of Profit And Market Share Displace Rational Planning.

There Is Little Doubt That A Significant Part Of Any Serious Solution Will Require Advances Of Technology, But That Can Only Be Part Of The Solution. Other Major Changes Are Necessary.

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

The Japanese Bombing Of Pearl Harbor Led To Many Very Good Things. If You Follow The Trail, It Led To Kicking Europeans Out Of Asia - That Saved Tens Of Millions Of Lives In India Alone.

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.

Education Is A System Of Imposed Ignorance.

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

I Felt That We Could Hardly Improve On The Conception Of The University Expressed By One Of The Founders Of The Modern System, Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Also One Of The Founders Of Classical Liberalism. That Seems To Me True Today As Well, Though Ideals Of Course Have To Be Adapted To Changing Circumstances.

Technologies Can Be Liberating, But It Can Also Be A Tool Of Coercion And Control.

Israel Uses Sophisticated Attack Jets And Naval Vessels To Bomb Densely-crowded Refugee Camps, Schools, Apartment Blocks, Mosques, And Slums To Attack A Population That Has No Air Force, No Air Defense, No Navy, No Heavy Weapons, No Artillery Units, No Mechanized Armor, No Command In Control, No Army And Calls It A War.

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.

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

You Have To Love That Government, But Hate The Government That Might Work In Your Interest And That You Could Control. That's An Interesting Propaganda Task, But It's Been Carried Out Very Well.

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

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.

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

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

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

I Don't See How One Can "believe In Organized Religion." What Does It Mean To Believe In An Organization? One Can Join It, Support It, Oppose It, Accept Its Doctrines Or Reject Them. There Are Many Kinds Of Organized Religion. People Associate Themselves With Some Of Them, Or Not, For All Sorts Of Reasons, Maybe Belief In Some Of Their Doctrines.

You Don't Get To Be A Respected Intellectual By Uttering Truisms In Monosyllables.

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

Mr. Mijanovi And Those Associated With Him Are The Hope And The Conscience Of The Yugoslav Revolution.

[the Republican Party] For Example, They Do Run The House Of Representatives, They're A Majority There, And It's The House That Is Essentially Sending The Government Into Shutdown And Maybe Default. But They Won The Majority Of Seats There Because Of Various Kinds Of Chicanery. They Got A Minority Of The Votes, But A Majority Of The Seats, And They're Using Them To Press Forward An Agenda Which Is Extremely Harmful To The Public.

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

If North Korea Doesn't Have A Deterrent, They Will Be Wiped Out.

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

Labor Has Been Severely Undermined, But That's Happened Before. In The 1920s, The Labor Movement Was Virtually Crushed, In Large Part By Wilson's Red Scare, But It Dramatically Revived In The 1930s. It Spearheaded The Social-democratic New-deal Style Changes Which Were Beneficial To The Country - Not Sufficient, But Beneficial. That Could Happen Again.

Intellectuals Of The Categories Happen To Enjoy Unusual Privilege, Unique In History, I Suppose. It's Easy Enough To Find Ugly Illustrations Of Repression, Malice, Dishonesty, Marginalization And Exclusion In The Academic World.

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