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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.
-Noam Chomsky
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In Other Countries, Rich

Noam Chomsky
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.
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Educational
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Neoliberal Democracy. Instead Of Citizens, It Produces Consumers. Instead Of Communities, It Produces Shopping Malls. The Net Result Is An Atomized Society Of Disengaged Individuals Who Feel Demoralized And Socially Powerless. In Sum, Neoliberalism Is The Immediate And Foremost Enemy Of Genuine Participatory Democracy, Not Just In The United States But Across The Planet, And Will Be For The Foreseeable Future.
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The Us Has Been The Leading Terrorist State In The World For Many Years.
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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.
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Technologies Can Be Liberating, But It Can Also Be A Tool Of Coercion And Control.
Technology
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It Also Seems Beyond Controversy That Moral Responsibilities Are Greater To The Extent That People "have The Resources, The Training, The Facilities And Opportunities To Speak And Act Effectively."
Responsibility
Opportunity
People
The Escalation To Attack Undefended Civilian Targets Is Just A Classic Illustration Of Terrorism.
Illustration
Target
Classic
For Example, The Insurance Industries And The Big Banks Are Absolutely Euphoric Now - On The Business Pages They Don't Even Conceal It - Because They've Succeeded In Coming Out Of The Crisis Even Stronger Than They Were Before, And In A Better Position To Lay The Basis For The Next Crisis. But They Don't Care, Because They'll Get Bailed Out Again. That's Class Consciousness With A Vengeance.
Class
Stronger
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Take A Look At The Current Debates In Washington, And Of Course, Everything In The Media. Only One Issue Is Discussed: The Deficit - The Least Significant Issue, But The Most Significant Issue For The Banks. The Big Problem, Joblessness, Is Barely Discussed, Even Though That's What The Public Wants, As Polls Clearly Show. That's Even What The Business Press Supports, But The Financial Institutions Are So Powerful That The Only Issue Is The Deficit, And This Runs Right Through The Intellectual Culture.
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Modern China; One Also Finds Many Things That Are Really Quite Admirable.
Modern
China
Admirable
If [barack] Obama Or The Boss Or The Newspapers Or Anyone Else Tells You They're Doing This, That, Or The Other Thing, Dismiss It Or Assume The Opposite Is True, Which It Often Is.
Often Is
Opposites
Boss
Free Speech Has Been Used By The Supreme Court To Give Immense Power To The Wealthiest Members Of Our Society.
Giving
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Democracy Is A Danger To Any Powerful Group.
Powerful
Democracy
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If You Listen To The Talk Shows, Which Are Rabid Right-wing, And Very Interesting, An Important Fact About The United States, They Reach A Huge Audience. And They're Very Uniform. So Right Wing, I Don't Think You Can Even Find An Analog In Your, But They Reach A Mass Audience, And Their View Is That The Corporations Are Liberal. Their Appeal To The Population Is, "the Country Is Run By Liberals, They Own The Corporations, They Run The Government, They Own The Media, And They Don't Care About Us Ordinary People."
Running
Country
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There's A Tremendous Gap Between Public Opinion And Public Policy.
Public Opinion
Gaps
Policy
[with] Military Threats, You Can See Them Actually, You Can Imagine It. People Don't Think About It Enough. But If You Think About It For A Minute, You Can See That A Nuclear Attack Could Be The End Of Everything.
Military
Thinking
People
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
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.
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Stephen Colbert's Recent Comment Is Apropos: When The Republican Legislature Of North Carolina Responded To A Scientific Study Predicting A Threatening Rise In Sea Level By Barring State And Local Agencies From Developing Regulations Or Planning Documents To Address The Problem, Colbert Responded: "this Is A Brilliant Solution. If Your Science Gives You A Result That You Don't Like, Pass A Law Saying The Result Is Illegal. Problem Solved."
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There's A Strong Nativist Tradition - Saying, "we Have To Protect Ourselves" - That Comes From The Founding Of The Country. If You Read Benjamin Franklin, Who Was One Of The Leading Figures Of The Enlightenment In The United States And The Most Distinguished Representative Of The Movement Here, He Actually Advised That The Newly Founded Republic Should Block Germans And Swedes Because They Were Too "swarthy" - Dark.
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Isaiah Berlin Described The Intellectuals Of [mikhail] Bakunin's "red Bureaucracy" As A "secular Priesthood.
Berlin
Red
Priesthood
In The United States, The Political System Is A Very Marginal Affair. There Are Two Parties, So-called, But They're Really Factions Of The Same Party, The Business Party.
Party
Two
Political
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.
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Latin
America
The Tendencies Are Considerably Weaker In The Natural Sciences, Which, For The Past Several Centuries, Have Survived And Flourished Through Such Constant Challenge, And Therefore, At Best, Seek To Encourage It. Serving The Status Quo In Political And Socioeconomic Realms Is A Different Matter.
Past
Political
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[there Is] Is All Part Of The Whole Neoliberal Shift In The Economy. But The Parties Have Shifted To The Right.
Party
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Whole
One Of The Problems Of Organizing In The North, In The Rich Countries, Is That People Tend To Think - Even The Activists - That Instant Gratification Is Required. You Constantly Hear: 'look I Went To A Demonstration, And We Didn't Stop The War So What's The Use Of Doing It Again?'
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In The West, You Don't Get In Any Trouble If You Tell The Truth, But You Still Can't Do It. Not Only Can't You Tell The Truth, You Can't Think The Truth. It's Just So Deeply Embedded, Deeply Instilled, That Without Any Meaningful Coercion It Comes Out The Same Way It Does In A Totalitarian State.
Meaningful
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No Use In Waiting, We Can All Work Hard To Bring About Changes.
Hard Work
Waiting
Use
No One Seriously Doubts That If Piraha Children Are Brought Up In Boston They'll Be Speaking Boston English, That Is, That The Capacities Are Present, Unlike Other Animals, As Far As Is Known. There's No Challenge To The Theory - Not Mine, But Everyone's - That The Human Language Faculty Provides The Means For Generation Of An Infinite Array Of Structured Expressions.
Children
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Animal
Why Was The United States So Afraid Of An Independent South Vietnam? Well, I Think The Reason Again Is Pretty Clear From The Internal Government Documents. Precisely What They Were Afraid Of Was That The "takeover" Of South Vietnam By Nationalist Forces Would Not Be Brutal. They Feared It Would Be Conciliatory And That There Would Be Successful Social And Economic Development - And That The Whole Region Might Work.
Independent
Successful
Thinking
It's True That Many Say That [they] Object To The Idea Of "human Nature," But It's Not Clear What That Is Supposed To Mean. Are We Different From Ants?
Mean
Ideas
Different
Moves Toward Sovereignty In Iraq Stimulate Pressures First For Human Rights Among The Bitterly Repressed Shi'ite Population But Also Toward Some Degree Of Autonomy. You Can Imagine A Kind Of A Loose Shi'ite Alliance In Iraq, Saudi Arabia, And Iran, Controlling Most Of The World's Oil And Independent Of The United States. And Much Worse, Although Europe Can Be Intimidated By The United States, China Can't. It's One Of The Reasons, The Main Reasons, Why China Is Considered A Threat. We're Back To The Mafia Principle.
Moving
Independent
Rights
The American Claim That The Bombing Of North Vietnam Was Directed Against Military Targets Does Not Withstand Direct Investigation.
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The Very Properties Of The Human Mind That Provide An Enormous Scope For Human Genius In Some Domains Will Serve As Barriers To Progress In Other Domains, Just As The Properties That Enable Each Child To Acquire A Complex And Highly Articulated Human Language Block The Acquisition Of Other Imaginable Linguistic Systems.
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Edward Said Is A Very Honorable Representative Of The "intellectual" In The Sense Of The Term That He Defines.
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Said
Honorable
On Abortion: We Are Talking About Ambiguous Issues Of A Complicated Kind Where You Have To Balance Conflicting Interests And Concerns.
Talking
Issues
Abortion
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.
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Suppose That We Believe What We Are Taught. . . . Destroying The Environment And Militarizing Outer Space Are Rational Policies . . . Of Institutional Lunacy.
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There Is A Principle Of Human Affairs That Goes Back Millennia, Which Is That You Don't Look In The Mirror. You Can Trace This Principle Back To The Bible. The Designated Intellectuals Of That Time Are Called Prophets, Which Is A Mistranslation Of A Hebrew Word, But They Were Basically Intellectuals, Giving Geopolitical Analysis, Criticizing The Moral Practice Of Leadership, Etc. Now, These People Were Not Treated Very Nicely. There Were Other Intellectuals Who Were Treated Nicely, Namely Those Who Centuries Later Came To Be Called False Prophets. These Were The Flatterers Of The Court.
Mirrors
Practice
People
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.
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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.
Couple
Fall
Years
I Had No Expectations About Barack Obama And I'm Not In The Least Disillusioned.
Expectations
Disillusioned
Barack
Most Of The Population In America Is Disenfranchised. It Doesn't Matter What They Think. Just Look At The Passionate Rhetoric About How We Can't Stand By When A Country Uses Weapons To Kill Innocent Civilians.
Country
Thinking
America
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.
People
Understanding
Important
Remember That In Any Major Nuclear War, The First Strike Destroys The Country That Attacks; It's Been Known For Years. The First Strike Of A Major Power Is Very Likely To Cause What's Called Nuclear Winter, Leads To Global Famine For Years And Everything's Basically Gone. Some Survivors Straggling Around. Could [donald Trump] Do It? Who Knows.
Country
War
Winter
We Don't Think About It, But It Has A Tremendous Effect. But These Are Things You Don't See Right In Front Of Your Eyes. You Need To Think About Them A Little, To See What The Consequences Are.
Eye
Thinking
Needs
What I've Called "the Mafia Doctrine" In Many Publications: When The Godfather Issues An Edict, Others Must Obey, Or Else. It's Too Dangerous To Allow Disobedience. A Leading Principle Of World Affairs - Though, Of Course, Officials And Commentators Put It More Politely.
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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.
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Community
Political
The West Bank Is Essentially Imprisoned.
West
Sea Level Rise And Destruction Of Water Resources As Glaciers Melt Alone May Have Horrendous Human Consequences.
Sea
Water
Levels
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.
India
Kicking
Pearls
Right Now, Where Do We Stand? Well Right At The Russian Border, Both Sides Have Been Taking Provocative Actions, Both Sides Are Building Up Military Forces. Nato Forces Are Carrying Out Maneuvers Hundreds Of Yards From The Russian Border, The Russian Jets Are Buzzing American Jets. Anything Could Blow Up In A Minute.
Military
Blow
Building Up
The United States In Many Ways Resembles A Third World Country - Far More Elevated, But It Has Many Of Those Structural Characteristics: The Extreme Inequality Of Wealth, The Deterioration Of Infrastructure Because It Only Serves Poor People, Predatory Operations, Huge Corruption, And So On.
Country
People
United States
George Washington Hated The Guerrillas. He Wanted To Imitate The British Red Coat Armies, Fighting As Gentlemen Are Supposed To Fight.
Fighting
Army
Gentleman
If Something Is Right (or Wrong) For Us, It’s Right (or Wrong) For Others. It Follows That If It’s Wrong For Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, And A Long List Of Others To Bomb Washington And New York, Then It’s Wrong For Rumsfeld To Bomb Afghanistan (on Much Flimsier Pretexts), And He Should Be Brought Before War Crimes Trials.
New York
War
Long
I Don't Want Followers.
Followers
Want
Cuba Has Become A Symbol Of Courageous Resistance To Attack. Since 1959, Cuba Has Been Under Attack From The Hemispheric Superpower.
Cuba
Resistance
Courageous
If Current Tendencies Persist, The Outcome Will Be Disastrous Before Too Long. Large Parts Of The World Will Become Barely Habitable Affecting Hundreds Of Millions Of People, Along With Other Disasters That We Can Barely Contemplate.
Long
People
World
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
I Have No Facebook Page Or Twitter - I Don't Participate In It, And I Don't Like It Particularly. I Mean, It's A Form Of Interaction, Which Strikes Me As Extremely Superficial.
Mean
Pages
Superficial
In The Major State Capitalists Economies, Europe And The Us, It's Low Growth And Stagnation And A Very Sharp Income Differentiation A Shift - A Striking Shift - From Production To Financialization.
Europe
Growth
Income
There Is No Reason To Accept The Doctrines Crafted To Sustain Power And Privilege, Or To Believe That We Are Constrained By Mysterious And Unknown Social Laws.
Believe
Law
Privilege
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
Democracy, In Any Rational Form, Also Imposes Conditions On Majority Rule. That's What The Bill Of Rights Is About, For Example.
Rights
Majority Rule
Democracy
We [ With Edward Herman] Believe That The Empirical Evidence We Review There - And Elsewhere, In A Great Deal Of Joint And Separate Work - Lends Substantial Support To The Conclusions; Whether That Is True Is For Others To Judge.
Believe
Judging
Support
Take Cuba. A Very Large Majority Of The U.s. Population Is In Favor Of Establishing Diplomatic Relations With Cuba And Has Been For A Long Time With Some Fluctuations. And Even Part Of The Business World Is In Favor Of It Too. But The Government Won't Allow It.
Government
Long
Majority
We Have Never Had Class-based Parties. We've Had Parties Run By The Business Classes. There's Slight Variations. Like In The New Deal Period, There Was A Lot Of Popular Activism, So Things Shifted Slightly, But Not Much.
Running
Party
Activism
When I Was A College Student And I Got Interested In Linguistics The Concern Among Students Was, This Is A Lot Of Fun, But After We Have Done A Structural Analysis Of Every Language In The World What's Left? It Was Assumed There Were Basically No Puzzles.
Fun
College
Analysis
Democratic Societies Can't Force People. Therefore They Have To Control What They Think.
Thinking
People
Force
We Can, For Example, Be Fairly Confident That Either There Will Be A World Without War Or There Won't Be A World - At Least, A World Inhabited By Creatures Other Than Bacteria And Beetles, With Some Scattering Of Others.
War
Example
World
If The Us Were To Attack North Korea, They'd Certainly Destroy North Korea, But South Korea Would Be Pretty Well Wiped Out Too.
Korea
Would Be
Wells
One Of The Best Predictors Of Policy Around Is Thomas Ferguson's Investment Theory Of Politics, As He Calls It - Very Outstanding Political Economist - Which Essentially - I Mean, To Say It In A Sentence, He Describes Elections As Occasions In Which Groups Of Investors Coalesce And Invest To Control The State.
Mean
Political
Groups
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
There's A Tremendous Amount Of Language Loss. Most Of The Attention Is Given To Indigenous Languages, Which Makes Sense, But Some Of The Most Dramatic Language Loss Is In Europe.
Loss
Europe
Attention
It [the Internet] Should Be Publicly Controlled But Washington Is Not A System Of Public Control, It's Mainly A System Of Corporate Control. We Ought To Have A Free Internet, But That Means Having A Free Society, And There Is Fundamental Questions There.
Mean
Fundamentals
Internet
Stability Means You Do What We Say, And What We Say Is That Colombia And The Resources Of The Andean Region Shall Be Freely Available To The Rich And Powerful Of The World, Particularly Us-based Multinational Corporations.
Powerful
Mean
World
Suppose That, Say, China Established Military Bases In Colombia To Carry Out Chemical Warfare In Kentucky And North Carolina To Destroy This Lethal Crop [tobacco] That Is Killing Huge Numbers Of Chinese.
Military
Kentucky
Numbers
The Freer The Society Gets, The More Dangerous The Great Beast Becomes And The More You Have To Be Careful To Cage It Somehow.
Cages
Beast
Dangerous
I Don't Bother Writing About Fox News. It Is Too Easy. What I Talk About Are The Liberal Intellectuals, The Ones Who Portray Themselves And Perceive Themselves As Challenging Power, As Courageous, As Standing Up For Truth And Justice. They Are Basically The Guardians Of The Faith. They Set The Limits. They Tell Us How Far We Can Go. They Say, 'look How Courageous I Am.' But Do Not Go One Millimeter Beyond That. At Least For The Educated Sectors, They Are The Most Dangerous In Supporting Power.
Writing
Justice
Challenges
Most Of Us Who Were Opposed To The War, Especially In The Early '60's - The War We Were Opposed To Was The War On South Vietnam Which Destroyed South Vietnam's Rural Society. The South Was Devastated. But Now Anyone Who Opposed This Atrocity Is Regarded As Having Defended North Vietnam. And That's Part Of The Effort To Present The War As If It Were A War Between South Vietnam And North Vietnam With The United States Helping The South. Of Course It's Fabrication. But It's "official Truth" Now.
War
Effort
Atrocities
The Basic Principle, Rarely Violated, Is That What Conflicts With The Requirements Of Power And Privilege Does Not Exist.
Principles
Doe
Requirements
Western Intellectuals, And Also Third World Intellectuals, Were Attracted To The Bolshevik Counter-revolution Because Leninism Is, After All, A Doctrine Which Says That The Radical Intelligentsia Have A Right To Take State Power And To Run Their Countries By Force, And That Is An Idea Which Is Rather Appealing To Intellectuals.
Running
Country
Ideas
There Is A Reason Why Nelson Mandela Went To Cuba To Praise Castro And Thank The Cuban People Almost As Soon As He Got Out Of Jail. That's A Third World Reaction And They Understand It. Cuba Played An Enormous Role In The Liberation Of Africa And The Overthrow Of Apartheid, Sending Doctors And Teachers To The Poorest Places In The World, To Haiti, To Pakistan After The Earthquake, Almost Everywhere. The Internationalism Is Just Astonishing. I Don't Think There Has Been Anything Like It In History.
Teacher
Thinking
Doctors
[moral Responsibilities] Has Nothing Particular To Do With Academia, Except Insofar As Those Within It Tend To Be Unusually Privileged In The Respects Just Mentioned.
Responsibility
Academia
Moral
Every Great Power, Every Aggressive Power Has Always Regarded Itself As Exceptional And As Doing Things Only For The Most Moral Ends.
Moral
Ends
Aggressive
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.
Personality
Doubt
Brain
We Could Not Bring Democracy To South Vietnam At A Cost That We Were Willing To Accept. So It Was A Disaster. That' Is The Left Extreme.
Democracy
Cost
Vietnam
Just Media Alone Is Not Enough. You Have To Have Organization.
Media
Organization
Enough
Of Course Language Arose In A Darwinian Biological World, Because That's All There Is, But That World Relates Only Superficially To The Pop-biology That Circulates Informally.
World
Language
Biology
The Dangers Of Unexamined And Unregulated Monopoly Power, Particularly In The State Executive, Are Hardly News. The Right Reaction Is Not Passive Acquiescence.
Power
Acquiescence
News
The Labor Movement Had Been Pretty Much Killed In The 1920s, Almost Destroyed. It Revived In The 1930s And Made A Huge Difference. By The Late 1930s The Business World Was Already Trying To Find Ways To Beat It Back.
Differences
Trying
Movement
One Might Ask Why Tobacco Is Legal And Marijuana Not. A Possible Answer Is Suggested By The Nature Of The Crop.
Marijuana
Answers
Might
It's A Class War, And A War On Young People Too... That's Why Tuition Is Rising So Rapidly. There's No Real Economic Reason For That. It's A Technique Of Control And Indoctrination. And This Is Really The First Organized, Significant Reaction To It, Which Is Important.
Real
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Class
In Some Ways, [the Student Anti-sweatshop Movement] Is Like The Anti-apartheid Movement, Except That In This Case Its Striking At The Core Of The Relations Of Exploitation. Much Of This Was Initiated By Charlie Kernaghan Of The Institute For Global Labour And Human Rights.
Impact
Rights
Sweatshops
The Republicans Have Picked That As The One Thing That They Want To Hang On To To Try To Gain Some Political Stand, So They Have To Destroy What They Call Obamacare. This Is Now Not All The Republicans, It's A Wing Of The Republican Party, Which Is Called Conservative But In Fact Is Just Deeply Reactionary.
Party
Wings
Obamacare
You Win By Struggle, And That Requires Understanding And Serious Analysis Of The Options And The Circumstances, And Then You Can Do A Lot.
Struggle
Winning
Understanding
Capitalism Would Self-destruct In No Time. So The Business Classes Have Always Demanded Strong, Straight Intervention To Protect The Society From The Destructive Effects Of Market Forces Because They Don't Want Everything Destroyed.
Strong
Self
Class
I Have Often Thought That If A Rational Fascist Dictatorship Were To Exist, Then It Would Choose The American System.
Fascists
Fascism
Dictatorship
Peace Is Preferable To War. But It’s Not An Absolute Value, And So We Always Ask, “what Kind Of Peace?
Peace
War
Kind
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.
People
Interesting
Calling
As To Whether Those Who Fit The Common Meaning Of The Term "intellectual" Should Act In The Manner That [ Edward] Said Prescribes, That's Another Question. Needless To Say, I Agree With Him That They Should, And That They Commonly Do Not.
Intellectual
Common
Fit
The Literature Is Like That - They [unions] Are Constantly Talking About The Masses, The Danger They Pose, And How To Control Them. They Understand What They're Doing, And They're Very Class Conscious. They Press Policies Which Work For Their Interests.
Talking
Class
Literature
Iran Is Independent And Independence Is Not Tolerated.
Independent
Iran
Independence
You Never Need An Argument Against The Use Of Violence, You Need An Argument For It.
Peace
War
Needs
In The Literal Sense, There Has Been No Relevant Evolution Since The Trek From Africa. But There Has Been Substantial Progress Towards Higher Standards Of Rights, Justice And Freedom - Along With All Too Many Illustrations Of How Remote Is The Goal Of A Decent Society.
Rights
Illustration
Justice
It's Not In Doubt That Tobacco Is Far More Lethal Than Hard Drugs.
Drug
Doubt
Tobacco
Concentration Of Executive Power, Unless It's Very Temporary And For Specific Circumstances, Let's Say Fighting World War Two, It's An Assault On Democracy.
War
Fighting
Two
It May Be Beyond The Limits Of Human Intelligence To Understand How Human Intelligence Works.
May
Limits
Humans
The Printing Press Had A Very Liberatory Effect That Meant Individuals - Small Groups Could Produce Radical Pamphlets - Could Use It For Organizing.
Groups
Use
Individual
People Are Capable Of Seeing The Deceit They're Ensnared In. They Just Have To Make The Effort.
People
Effort
Deceit
What Can Realistically Be Done Depends On The Historical Moment. The Same Is True With Regard To The Agents.
Historical
Done
Agents
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
I Happen To Agree With The Anti-dictatorship Policies, But I Don't Think It's The Role Of General Electric To Support Them Or Oppose Them. They Do Of Course, But I Don't Agree With That.
Thinking
Support
Roles
The United States Is Alone Among All The Countries In That It Does Not Permit Us Military Forces To Be Under Any Threat. Other Countries Are Willing To Have Forces In Peace-keeping Operations Where They Sometimes Are Under Threat, But The Us Is Not Willing To Do That.
Country
Military
United States
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.
Agency
Feelings
Essentials
The More There Is A Need To Talk About The Ideals Of Democracy, The Less Democratic The System Usually Is.
Democracy
Needs
Democratic
The Media Want To Maintain Their Intimate Relation To State Power. They Want To Get Leaks, They Want To Get Invited To The Press Conferences. They Want To Rub Shoulders With The Secretary Of State, All That Kind Of Business. To Do That, You've Got To Play The Game, And Playing The Game Means Telling Their Lies, Serving As Their Disinformation Apparatus.
Lying
Mean
Media
Go Back To Classical Times, Say Classical Greece. Who Drank The Hemlock? Was It Someone Who Was Conforming, Obeying The Gods? Or Was It Someone Who Was Disrupting The Youth And Questioning The Faith And Belief? Socrates, In Other Words. It Was Socrates.
Hemlock
Belief
Youth
Clinton, Kennedy, They All Carried Out Mass Murder, But They Didn't Think That That Was What They Were Doing - Nor Does Bush. You Know, They Were Defending Justice And Democracy From Greater Evils.
Thinking
Evil
Justice
There Clearly Is A Serious Race Problem In The Country. Just Take A Look At What's Happening To African American Communities. For Example Wealth, Wealth In African American Communities Is Almost Zero. The History Is Striking.
Country
Zero
Race
Half Of The [usa] Population, Roughly, Thinks The World Was Created A Couple Thousand Years Ago. Two Thirds Of The Country Is Expecting The Second Coming Of Christ. They've Also Had To Turn To Nativists. The Gun Culture In The United States, Which Is Out Of Control, Is Party Fueled By People Who Think 'we've Got To Have Our Guns To Protect Ourselves.'
Country
Couple
Party
My Suspicion Is That Those Who Seem Oblivious To Suffering, Whether It Is Nearby Or In Remote Corners, Are For The Most Part Unaware, Perhaps Blinded By Doctrine And Ideology. For Them, The Answer Is To Develop A Critical Attitude Toward Articles Of Faith, Secular Or Religious; To Encourage Their Capacity To Question, To Explore, To View The World From The Standpoint Of Others. And Direct Exposure Is Never Very Far Away, Wherever We Live - Perhaps The Homeless Person Huddling In The Cold Or Asking For A Few Pennies For Food, Or All Too Many More.
Religious
Attitude
Suffering
The Russian Ambassador At The United Nations Did Make Some Proposals For A Political Settlement In Which Bashar Assad Would Be Slowly Eased Out. The West Dismissed It Immediately, And We Don't Know If It Was Real, Because It Didn't Come From The Kremlin, And It Was Informal. But The Point Is Every Such Proposal Is Immediately Scotched. And You Just Don't Know If They're Real.
Real
Political
Proposal
If You Are Not Offending People Who Ought To Be Offended, You're Doing Something Wrong.
Offended You
Offending
People
As Far As U.s. Intelligence Knows, Iran Is Developing Nuclear Capacities, But They Don't Know If They Are Trying To Develop Nuclear Weapons Or Not. Chances Are They're Developing What's Called 'nuclear Capability,' Which Many States Have. That Is The Ability To Have Nuclear Weapons If They Decide To Do It. That's Not A Crime.
Iran
Trying
Nuclear
From Now On I Will Consider A Language To Be A Set (finite Or Infinite) Of Sentences, Each Finite In Length And Constructed Out Ofa Finite Set Of Elements. All Natural Languages In Their Spoken Or Written Form Are Languages In This Sense.
Elements
Language
Infinite
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 You Are Giving A Graduate Course You Don't Try To Impress The Students With Oratory, You Try To Challenge Them, Get Them To Question You.
Giving
Challenges
Trying
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
Now Financial Liberalization Is Just A Catastrophe Waiting To Happen, And There Are Very Well Understood Reasons For That.
Waiting
Financial
Reason
In The Mid To Late Nineteenth Century, The Gun Manufacturers Recognized That They Had A Limited Market. Remember That This Is A Capitalist Society, You've Got To Expand Your Market. They Were Selling Guns To The Military. That's A Pretty Limited Market. What About All The Rest Of The People? So What Started Was All Kinds Of Fantastic Stories About Wyatt Earp And The Gunmen And The Wild West, How Exciting It Was To Have These Guys With Guns Defending Themselves Against All Sorts Of Things.
Military
Gun
People
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
History Records Endless Struggles To Enlarge Those Realms, Inspiring Ones; It Also Records Painful Reversals And Setbacks.
Struggle
Records
Painful
Reparations - Not Just Aid - Should Be Provided By Those Responsible For Devastating Iraqi Civilian Society By Cruel Sanctions And Military Actions, And - Together With Other Criminal States - For Supporting Saddam Hussein Through His Worst Atrocities And Beyond. That Is The Minimum That Honesty Requires.
Honesty
Military
Together
The Educational System In The Us Was A Highly Predictable Victim Of The Neoliberal Reaction, Guided By The Maxim Of "private Affluence And Public Squalor." Funding For Public Education Has Sharply Declined. As Higher Education Is Driven To A Business Model In Accord With Neoliberal Doctrine, Administrative Bureaucracy Has Sharply Increased At The Expense Of Faculty And Students. Cost-cutting Leads To Hyper-exploitation Of The More Vulnerable, Creating A New Precariat Of Graduate Students And Adjuncts Surviving On A Bare Pittance, Replacing Tenured Faculty.
Educational
Students
Graduates
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.
Support
Political
Election
It Seems Self-evident That We Should Want People To Be Free, To Be Able To Play An Active Part In Making Decisions About Matters Of Concern To Them, To The Largest Possible Extent.
Self
Play
People
As Far As Bernie Sanders Is Concerned, He Is A Decent, Honest Person, And I Supported Him. What He Means By Socialism Is New Deal Liberalism. In Fact, His Actual Policies Would Not Have Been A Great Surprise To General Eisenhower. The Fact That This Is Called A "political Revolution" Is A Sign Of How Far To The Right The Political Spectrum Has Shifted, Mainly In The Last 30 Years Since The Neoliberal Programs Began To Be Instituted. What He Was Calling For Was A Restoration Of Something Like New Deal Liberalism, Which Is A Very Good Thing.
Mean
Political Revolution
Years
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
I Admire Ralph Nader And Denis Kucinich Very Much, And Insofar As They Bring Up Issues And Carry Out An Educational And Organisational Function - That's Important, And Fine, And I Support It.
Educational
Issues
Support
To Object That The Facts About Human Nature Set Limits On Our Ability To Change The World And Ourselves Makes About As Much Sense As The Lament That Our Lack Of Wings Sets Limits On Our Ability To 'fly' As Far As Eagles Under Our Own Power.
Eagles
Wings
World
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
There Are Questions As To Whether It Should Even Exist. Who Should Corporations Be Responsive To, The Management Of A Corporation? Theoretically They Are Responsive To The Shareholders, But I Why Not To The So - Called Stakeholders, The Work Force And The Community? Nothing In Economic Theory Opposes That. Those Are Social And Political Decisions.
Community
Decision
Political
Anything That You Are Achieving That Undermines And Threatens Systems Of Power Will Meet With Oppression. Systems Of Power Don't Say 'thank You.' What's Important Is Not To Focus All Your Efforts On The Oppression, But To Continue The Constructive Work.
Focus
Effort
Important
Boards Of Directors Are Allowed To Work Together, So Are Banks And Investors And Corporations In Alliances With One Another And With Powerful States. That’s Just Fine. It’s Just The Poor Who Aren’t Supposed To Cooperate.
Powerful
Working Together
Directors
During The Terrorist Regime In Haiti In The 1990s, The Cia, Under The Administration Of Bill Clinton, Was Reporting To Congress That Oil Shipments Had Been Blocked From Entering Haiti. That Was Just A Lie. I Was There. You Could See The Oil Terminals Being Built And The Ships Coming In.
Lying
Oil
Entering
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.
Country
War
Iraq
I Think A Very Important Aspect Of Language Has To Do With The Establishment Of Social Relations And Interactions. Often, This Is Described As Communication. But That Is Very Misleading, I Think.
Communication
Thinking
Important
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
Like Most Terms Of Political Discourse, Socialism Has More Or Less, Lost Its Meaning. Socialism Used To Mean Something. If You Go Back Far Enough It Meant Basically Control Of Production By Producers, Elimination Of Wage Labor, Democratization Of All Spheres Of Life; Production, Commerce, Education, Media, Workers Control Of Factories, Community Control Of Communities, And So On. That Was Socialism Once. But It Hasn't Meant That For A Hundred Years. Socialism Meant Something Different.
Mean
Media
Years
People Don't Have Knowledge And Understanding About The Outside World, Or About History [in The Usa].
Usa
People
Understanding
My Feeling Is That The Supreme Court Reached A Reasonable Standard Of Protection Of Speech In The 1960s, A Standard Higher Than Any Other Country In The World, To My Knowledge. In Brief, Speech Should Be Protected Up To Participation In Imminent Criminal Action.
Country
Feelings
World
Going Back To Why People Don't Vote, I Presume The Main Reason Is Because They Understand Without Reading Political Science Texts That It Doesn't Make Any Difference How They Vote. It's Not Going To Affect Policy, So Why Bother?
Reading
People
Political
The Very Idea That There Should Be A Certain Class Of People Who Give Orders By Virtue Of Their Ownership Of Wealth And Another Huge Class Who Take On Orders And Follow Them Because Of Their Lack Of Access To Wealth And Power, That's Unacceptable. So, Sure It Should Be Abolished.
Order
Class
Ideas
I Know Of Only One Country, At Least To My Knowledge, Which Has A Dissident Culture Where Leading Figures, I Mean, The Most Famous Writers, Journalists, Academics And So On, Are Not Only Critical Of State Policy, But Are Constantly Carrying Out Civil Disobedience And Risking Imprisonment And Often Being Imprisoned, Standing Up For People's Rights. That's Turkey.
Country
Mean
Rights
If You Want To Control A Population... Give Them A God To Worship.
Giving
Population
Want
One Measure For Promoting Both Stability And Fairness Across Financial Market Segments Is A Small Sales Tax On All Financial Transactions.
Fairness
Financial
Stability
By Most Accounts, Aristide Is The Most Popular Figure In Haiti.
Haiti
Figures
Accounts
The Attack On Social Security Is Similarly Motivated. Social Security Is Based On The Conception Is That We Should Have Sympathy For Others, Not Function Merely As Isolated "rational Wealth Maximizers."
Should Have
Wealth
Motivated
It's Only Terrorism If They Do It To Us. When We Do Much Worse To Them, It's Not Terrorism.
Terrorism
Ifs
I Can Understand The Idea That There Is A Conspiracy. In Fact, In Much Of The World There Is A Sense Of An Ultra-powerful Cia Manipulating Everything That Happens, Such As Running The Arab Spring, Running The Pakistani Taliban, Etc. That Is Just Nonsense. They [cia] Created A Monster And Now They Are Appalled By It.
Running
Powerful
Spring
The Internet Is Something Created Largely By Public Funding.
Internet
Funding
I See No Anti-semitic Implications In Denial Of The Existence Of Gas Chambers, Or Even Denial Of The Holocaust.
Holocaust
Denial
Existence
I Would Feel No Hesitation In Saying That It Is The Responsibility Of A Decent Human Being To Give Assistance To A Child Who Is Being Attacked By A Rabid Dog, But I Would Not Intend This To Imply That In All Imaginable Circumstances One Must, Necessarily, Act In Accordance With This General Responsibility.
Dog
Children
Responsibility
Hamas Is Regularly Described As 'iranian-backed Hamas, Which Is Dedicated To The Destruction Of Israel.' One Will Be Hard Put To Find Something Like 'democratically Elected Hamas, Which Has Long Been Calling For A Two-state Settlement In Accord With The International Consensus'—blocked For Over 30 Years By The Us And Israel. All True, But Not A Useful Contribution To The Party Line, Hence Dispensable.
Party
Israel
Years
Balochistan, And To Some Extent Sindh Too, Has A General Feeling That They Are Not Part Of The Decision-making Process In Pakistan And Are Ruled By A Punjabi Dictatorship. There Is A Lot Of Exploitation Of The Rich Resources [in Balochistan] Which The Locals Are Not Gaining From. As Long As This Goes On, It Is Going To Keep Providing Grounds For Serious Uprisings And Insurgencies.
Uprising
Long
Decision
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.
Government
Israel
World
Before The 1970s, Banks Were Banks. They Did What Banks Were Supposed To Do In A State Capitalist Economy: They Took Unused Funds From Your Bank Account, For Example, And Transferred Them To Some Potentially Useful Purpose Like Helping A Family Buy A Home Or Send A Kid To College.
Home
Kids
College
Internal Security Means Something. It Means War Against Your Own Population.
War
Mean
Population
Destruction Of The Environment Is Not Only Rational; It's Exactly What You're Taught To Do In College.
College
Taught
Environment
For Decades Israel Has Been Capturing, And Kidnapping Lebanese And Palestinian Refugees On The High Seas, From Cyprus To Lebanon, Killing Them In Lebanon, Bringing Them To Israel, Holding Them As Hostages. It's Been Going On For Decades, Has Anybody Called For An Invasion Of Israel?
Israel
Sea
Cyprus
The 50,000 Korean Mercenaries We Had In Vietnam Were Professional Killers And Just Massacred People Outright. And The American Army Did Plenty Of That Too, But It Couldn't Take It After Awhile. It's Not The Kind Of Job You Can Give To Conscripts Who Are Not Trained To Be Murderers.
Jobs
Army
People
...a Very Terrifying Aspect Of Our Society, And Other Societies, Is The Equanimity And The Detachment With Which Sane, Reasonable, Sensible People Can Observe [war And Human Suffering]. I Think That's More Terrifying Than The Occasional Hitler ...or Other That Crop Up - These People Would Not Able To Operate Were It Not For This Apathy And Equanimity - And Therefore I Think That It Is In Some Sense The Sane And Reasonable And Tolerant People Who Should Share A Very Serious Burden Of Guilt, That They Very Easily Throw On The Shoulders Of Others Who Seem More Extreme And More Violent.
War
Thinking
People
South Africa, With Us Support, After The Fall Of The Portuguese Empire, Invaded Angola And Mozambique To Establish Their Own Puppet Regime There. They Were Trying To Protect Namibia, To Protect Apartheid, And Nobody Did Much About It; But The Cubans Sent Forces, And Furthermore They Sent Black Soldiers And They Defeated A White Mercenary Army, Which Not Only Rescued Angola But It Sent A Shock Throughout The Continent-it Was A Psychic Shock-white Mercenaries Were Purported To Be Invincible, And A Black Army Defeated Them And Sent Them Back Fleeing Into South Africa.
Fall
Army
Psychics
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.
Mean
Listening
Sound
By That Time [1966], We Did Begin To Get Some Protests [against Vietnam War]. But Not From Liberal Intellectuals; They Never Opposed The War.
War
Vietnam
Vietnam War
As Long As People Are Marginalized And Distracted [they] Have No Way To Organize Or Articulate Their Sentiments, Or Even Know That Others Have These Sentiments. People Assume That They Are The Only People With A Crazy Idea In Their Heads. They Never Hear It From Anywhere Else. Nobody's Supposed To Think That. ... Since There's No Way To Get Together With Other People Who Share Or Reinforce That View And Help You Articulate It, You Feel Like An Oddity, An Oddball. So You Just Stay On The Side And You Don't Pay Any Attention To What's Going On. You Look At Something Else, Like The Superbowl.
Crazy
Thinking
Oddities
Our Minds Are Specifically Adapted To Developing Certain Theories, And We Have A Science If The Theories That Are Available To Our Minds Happen To Be Close To True. Well, There Is No Particular Reason To Suppose That The Intersection Of True Theories And Theories That Are Accessible To The Mind Is Very Large. It May Not Be Very Large.
Mind
May
Reason
The Iranian Issue I Don't Think Has Much To Do With Nuclear Weapons Frankly. Nobody Is Saying Iran Should Have Nuclear Weapons ­nor Should Anybody Else. But The Point In The Middle East, As Distinct From North Korea, Is That This Is Center Of The World's Energy Resources. Originally The British And Secondarily The French Had Dominated It, But After The Second World War, It's Been A U.s. Preserve. That's Been An Axiom Of U.s. Foreign Policy, That It Must Control Middle East Energy Resources.
War
Thinking
Issues
States Are Not Moral Agents.
Agents
Moral
States
We Should Not Be Speaking To, But With. That Is Second Nature To Any Good Teacher.
Teacher
Teaching
Good Teacher
I Don't Think That The United States Cares. They Just Assume That North Korea Will Soon Have Nuclear Weapons.
Thinking
Korea
United States
My Proposal Happens To Be Very Mainstream.
Proposal
Mainstream
Happens
In A Really Business-run Society Like The United States, The Business Elites Are Deeply Committed To Class Struggle And Are Engaged In It All The Time. They're Instinctive Marxists.
Running
Struggle
Class
Trump's Principal Policies Make Clear What's Going To Happen. This Gives An Opportunity. Right Now It's Going To Take Hard Work, But It's Possible That There Could Be A Real Revival Of The Labor Movement.
Real
Hard Work
Opportunity
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
Prophet Just Means Intellectual. They Were People Giving Geopolitical Analysis, Moral Lessons, That Sort Of Thing. We Call Them Intellectuals Today. There Were The People We Honor As Prophets, There Were The People We Condemn As False Prophets. But If You Look At The Biblical Record, At The Time, It Was The Other Way Around. The Flatterers Of The Court Of King Ahab Were The Ones Who Were Honored. The Ones We Call Prophets Were Driven Into The Desert And Imprisoned.
Kings
Mean
Biblical
In Some Respects, South African Apartheid Was More Vicious Than Israeli Practices, And In Some Respects The Opposite Is True.
Opposites
Practice
Vicious
Expressing Criticism Of Society Is Not Being A Grouch.
Criticism
Grouches
. . . Among All Grammars Meeting This Condition (of Adequacy), We Select The Simplest.
Adequacy
Select
Grammar
Pick The Topic You Like: The Middle East, International Terrorism, Central America, Whatever It Is - The Picture Of The World That's Presented To The Public Has Only The Remotest Relation To Reality. The Truth Of The Matter Is Buried Under Edifice After Edifice Of Lies Upon Lies. It's All Been A Marvelous Success From The Point Of View In Deterring The Threat Of Democracy, Achieved Under Conditions Of Freedom, Which Is Extremely Interesting. It's Not Like A Totalitarian State, Where It's Done By Force. These Achievements Are Under Conditions Of Freedom.
Lying
Reality
America
On Intervention Under The Un Framework, I Think That Sometimes That's Legitimate, In Fact Even Helpful.
Thinking
Facts
Helpful
It's As If We're Higher Apes Who Had A Language Faculty Inserted.
Apes
Language
Faculty
[francisco] Franco's Army Was Mainly Moorish. They Were Recruiting People From Morocco To Come To Spain. There Was An Uprising In Morocco At The Time Led By Abd El-krim (whose Tactics Influenced Ho Chi Minh And Che Guevara) That Sought Independence For Morocco And Northern Africa.
Army
Uprising
People
We Should Not Want To Permit Providers, For Example To Have Control Over Access.
Want
Example
Should
When Leaders Carry Out Policies For Decades That Have No Consequences For The Stated Goal And Are Very Costly, You Have To Ask Whether They Are Telling You The Truth Or Whether The Policies Are For A Different Goal, Because They Are Not Reducing Drug Use.
Drug Use
Goal
Leader
The Rise Of What's Called Islamic Fundamentalism Is To A Significant Extent A Result Of The Collapse Of Secular Nationalist Alternatives Which Were Either Discredited Internally Or Destroyed, Leaving Few Other Options. Something Like That May Be True Of American Society.
Islamic
Leaving
Alternatives
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.
People
Humanity
Too Much
Of Course All Such Conclusions About Appropriate Actions Against The Rich And Powerful Are Based On A Fundamental Flaw: This Is Us, And That Is Them. This Crucial Principle, Deeply Embedded In Western Culture, Suffices To Undermine Even The Most Precise Analogy And The Most Impeccable Reasoning.
Powerful
Principles
Western Culture
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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