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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.

-Noam Chomsky

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Just Take Ease Of

Noam Chomsky

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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.

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Every Time There Has Been An Effort By The Haitian People To Overcome The Misery And Poverty That Comes From 200 Years Of Bitter Attacks, Really Bitter, The U.s. Steps In And Blocks It.

If There Was An Observer On Mars, They Would Probably Be Amazed That We Have Survived This Long.

The Media Is Uncritical, And Their So-called The Concept Of Objectivity Translates Into Keeping Everything Within The Beltway. However, Iraq Was Quite Different. Here, There Were Flat-out Lies, And They Sort Of Knew It. They Were Desperately Trying To Make Connections Between Saddam Hussein And 9/11.

There's An Interesting Book About That Called The Third Reich And The Ivory Tower, Written By Stephen H. Norwood. It Has A Long Discussion About Harvard, And Indeed The School's President, James Conant, Did Block Jewish Faculty. He Was The One Who Prevented European Jews From Being Admitted To The Chemistry Department - His Field - And Also Had Pretty Good Relations With The Nazis.

Remember, The U.s. Is A Powerful State, It's Not Like Libya. If Libya Wants To Carry Out Terrorist Acts, They Hire Carlos The Jackal Or Something. The United States Hires Terrorist States.

As For Geoengineering, There Have Been Serious General Critiques That I Think Cannot Be Ignored, Like Clive Hamilton's, Along With Many Positive Assessments. It Is Not A Matter For Subjective Judgment Based On Guesswork And Intuition. Rather, These Are Matters That Have To Be Considered Seriously, Relying On The Best Scientific Understanding Available, Without Abandoning Sensible Precautionary Principles.

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.

Every Book That Comes Out, Every Article That Comes Out, Talks About How - While It May Have Been A "mistake" Or An "unwise Effort" - The United States Was Defending South Vietnam From North Vietnamese Aggression. And They Portray Those Who Opposed The War As Apologists For North Vietnam. That's Standard To Say. The Purpose Is Obvious: To Obscure The Fact That The United States Did Attack South Vietnam And The Major War Was Fought Against South Vietnam.

If The Rewiring Of The Brain That Yielded Recursive Generation Of Hierarchically Structured Expressions Took Place In An Individual, Not A Group (and There Seems To Be No Coherent Alternative), Then Interaction Must Have Been A Later Phenomenon.

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

Unfortunately, You Can’t Vote The Rascals Out, Because You Never Voted Them In, In The First Place

Technology Is Usually Fairly Neutral. It’s Like A Hammer, Which Can Be Used To Build A House Or To Destroy Someone’s Home. The Hammer Doesn’t Care. It Is Almost Always Up To Us To Determine Whether The Technology Is Good Or Bad.

Sports Plays A Societal Role In Engendering Jingoist And Chauvinist Attitudes. They're Designed To Organize A Community To Be Committed To Their Gladiators.

My Linguistics Is Pretty Theoretical.

I Don't Encourage Socialists Or Anarchists To Accept Falsehoods, In Particular, To See Revolutionary Potential Where There Is None.

Students Who Acquire Large Debts Putting Themselves Through School Are Unlikely To Think About Changing Society. When You Trap People In A System Of Debt, They Can't Afford The Time To Think.

A Big Producer Can Survive Price Fluctuations On The World Market. A Small Farmer Can't.

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

We Have This Huge, Massive Information, But What Is It That Matters? What Doesn't Matter? What Makes Sense, What Doesn't Make Sense? You Have To Have A Framework For Understanding And Of Interpretation In Order To Make Use Of The Information.

I Did Not Say That Language As A Completed System Emerged In An Individual In An Instant. But I Cannot Think Of A Coherent Alternative To The Idea That Mutations Take Place In Individuals, Not Communities, So That Whatever Rewiring Of The Brain Yielded The Apparently Unique Properties Of Language, Specifically Recursive Generation Of Hierarchically Structured Expressions, Would Therefore Have Taken Place In An Individual, And Only Later Been Used Among Individuals Who Had Inherited This Capacity.

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

International Relations

Nicaragua Dealt With The Problem Of Terrorism In Exactly The Right Way. It Followed International Law And Treaty Obligations. It Collected Evidence, Brought The Evidence To The Highest Existing Tribunal, The International Court Of Justice, And Received A Verdict - Which, Of Course, The U.s. Dismissed With Contempt.

You Have 30% Of The World Unemployed, A Huge Amount Of Work, That Needs To Be Done Just Rebuilding The Society Alone.

Stock Ownership In The Us Is Very Highly Concentrated. [shareholder Actions Are] Something, But It's Like The Old Communist Party In The Ussr, It Would Be Nice To See More Protest Inside The Communist Party But It's Not Democracy. It's Not Going To Happen. [shareholder Actions] Are A Good Step, But They're Mostly Symbolic.

The Irish Sea Is A Chasm, And It Just Depends Who's Been Holding The Whip For 800 Years And Who's Been Under It For 800 Years.

The Truth Of The Matter Is That About 99 Percent Of Teaching Is Making The Students Feel Interestedin The Material. Then The Other 1 Percent Has To Do With Your Methods. And That's Not Just True Of Languages. It's True Of Every Subject.

The Bush Administration Has Created An Unimaginable Catastrophe In Iraq. This Should've Been One Of The Easiest Military Occupations In History And They Succeeded In Turning It Into One Of The Worst Military Disasters In History. They Can't Control It And It's Almost Impossible For Them To Get Out For Reasons You Can't Discuss In The United States Because To Discuss The Reasons Why They Can't Get Out Would Be To Concede The Reasons Why They Invaded.

For 500 Years, Since European Explorers Came, Latin American Countries Had Been Separated From One Another. They Had Very Limited Relations. Integration Is A Prerequisite For Independence.

Europe Is Being Subjected To The Kinds Of Programs That Devastated Latin America For Many Years. Latin America Has Thrown Them Out And Is Pulling Out: It's Successful; It's Democratizing; It's Economically Developing; And It's Free From The Shrapnel Of Us Imperialism For 25 Years. Meanwhile, Western Europe Is Destroying Itself Systematically, Destroying Itself Going In The Opposite Direction.

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

The Most Interesting - In Fact, Inspiring - People I Met There [porto Alegre] Are Those Who Remain Nameless: Representatives Of The International Campesino Movement, The East Timorese Delegation,... - The Usual Heroes, Who Disappear, Unknown, Apart From The Consequences Of Their Work.

Regulate The Banks, Get Money Out Of Elections; Raise The Minimum Wage, Environmental Issues. They're All Very Important And The Occupy Movement Made A Difference. It Shifted Not Only The Discourse But To Some Extent, Action On These Issues.

I Wouldn't Say That The Efforts Of Academics To Critique The Media's Messages Are "half-hearted." As Far As I Am Aware, The Efforts Scarcely Exist: Very Few Even Pay Attention To The Question.

Anti-union Propaganda Has Been Considerably More Successful Here [ In The U.s.] Than In Europe, Even Among Working People Who Would Benefit [from] Unions.

You Go Into A Hospital Now, It's Dangerous. We Can Get Diseases That Can't Be Dealt With, That Are Moving Around The Hospital. A Lot Of That Traces Back To Industrial Meat Production. These Are Really Serious Threats, All Over The Place.

Anyone In A Position To Overcome Barriers To Free Thought And Communication Should Do So.

An Effective Regulatory System Today Would Be One Guided By A Few Basic Premises That Can Be Applied Flexibly But Also Universally.

Quite Generally, International Affairs Have More Than A Slight Resemblance To The Mafia. The Godfather Does Not Take It Lightly When He Is Crossed, Even By A Small Storekeeper.

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.

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.'

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

The Saudi, Arabian Ruling Class, For Example, Have Rights Because They Are Performing A Service For Western Power, Ensuring That Oil Profits Go To The West And Not To The Regional Population. The Local Gendarmes Like Israel, Turkey And So On Have Rights, At Least In Their Ruling Groups. Others Do Not.

The Time To Be Political Is Not When You Have Parties And Carnivals, It's Kind Of A Show, The Election. It Affects Something But Not That Much. And Focusing All The Attention On It Is I Think A Mistake.

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.

The Leading, The Most Respected Vietnam Historian, Military Historian Bernard Fall -he Was A Hawk Incidentally, But He Cared For The Vietnamese - He Said It Wasn't Clear To Him Whether Vietnam Could Survive As A Historical And Cultural Entity Under The Most Massive Attack That Any Region That Size Had Ever Suffered. He Was Talking About South Vietnam, Incidentally.

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

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.

It Is Not That I Am Not A Fan Of American Exceptionalism. That Is Like Saying I Am Not A Fan Of The Moon Being Made Out Of Green Cheese - It Does Not Exist. Powerful States Have Quite Typically Considered Themselves To Be Exceptionally Magnificent, And The United States Is No Exception To That. The Basis For It Is Not Very Substantial To Put It Politely.

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

The Smart Way To Keep People Passive And Obedient Is To Strictly Limit The Spectrum Of Acceptable Opinion, But Allow Very Lively Debate Within That Spectrum.

[camillo] Berneri Proposed That The Anarchists Should Link Up With The Effort Of Northern Africa To Overthrow The Spanish Government, Carry Out Land Reform, Attract The Base Of The Moorish Army, And See If They Could Undermine [francisco] Franco's Army Through Political Warfare In Northern Africa Combined With Guerrilla Warfare In Spain. Historians Laughed At That, But I Don't Think They Should Have. This Was The Kind Of War That Might Have Succeeded In Stopping Spanish Fascism.

A Large Part Of The Left Is Pro-assad. In Those Circles, You Can't Criticize Assad, But You Know He's A Monstrous War Criminal. And Anyone Who Criticizes Assad Is Joining The Us Imperialists. That's Just Ludicrous.

Technology Is Basically Neutral. It's Kind Of Like A Hammer. The Hammer Doesn't Care Whether You Use It To Build A House, Or Whether A Torturer Uses It To Crush Somebody's Skull.

When Geologists Announced The Beginning Of A New Geological Epoch, The Anthropocene, Humans Destroying The Environment, One Of The Main Things They Pointed To Is The Use Of Plastics In The Earth. 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. It's Easy To Put Them Aside, And The Media Don't Talk About Them.

Our Crimes, For Which We Are Responsible: As Taxpayers, For Failing To Provide Massive Reparations, For Granting Refuge And Immunity To The Perpetrators, And For Allowing The Terrible Facts To Be Sunk Deep In The Memory Hole. All Of This Is Of Great Significance, As It Has Been In The Past.

Today, Aid To Colombia Is Given Under The Pretext Of A Drug War. That's Pretty Hard To Take Seriously. Ten Years Ago, Amnesty International Flatly Called It A Myth.

The Times Are Too Difficult And The Crisis Too Severe To Indulge In Schadenfreude. Looking At It In Perspective, The Fact That There Would Be A Financial Crisis Was Perfectly Predictable: Its General Nature, If Not Its Magnitude. Markets Are Always Inefficient.

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

A Number Of Analysts Have Observed That Although Bin Laden Was Finally Killed, He Won Some Major Successes In His War Against The U.s.

We Are Entering A Period Of Human History That May Provide An Answer To The Question Of Whether It Is Better To Be Smart Than Stupid.

Put Yourself In The Position Of A Person, Sort Of An Ordinary American, "i'm A Hard-working, God-fearing Christian. I Take Care Of My Family, I Go To Church, I, You Know, Do Everything 'right'. And I'm Getting Shafted. For The Last Thirty Years, My Income Has Stagnated, My Working Hours Are Going Up, My Benefits Are Going Down. My Wife Has To Work Two [jobs] To, You Know, Put Food On The Table. The Children, God, There's No Care For The Children, The Schools Are Rotten, And So On. What Did I Do Wrong? I Did Everything You're Supposed To Do, But Something's Going Wrong To Me.

The Bolshevik Revolution Was A Counter-revolution. Its First Moves Were To Destroy And Eliminate Every Socialist Tendency That Had Developed In The Pre-revolutionary Period. Their Goal Was As They Said; It Wasn't A Big Secret. They Regarded The Soviet Union As Sort A Backwater. They Were Orthodox Marxists, Expecting A Revolution In Germany. They Moved Toward What They Themselves Called "state Capitalism," Then They Moved On To Stalinism. They Called It Democracy And Called It Socialism. The One Claim Was As Ludicrous As The Other.

We Don't Have Polls From The Business World, But It's Pretty Clear That The Energy Corporations In America Would Be Quite Happy To Be Given Authorization To Go Back Into Iran Instead Of Leaving All That To Their Rivals. But The State Won't Allow It. And It Is Setting Up Confrontations Right Now, Very Explicitly. Part Of The Reason Is Strategic, Geo-political, Economic, But Part Of The Reason Is The Mafia Complex. They Have To Be Punished For Disobeying Us.

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.

Moral Cowardice And Intellectual Corruption Are The Natural Concomitants Of Unchallenged Privilege.

With Regard To Nuclear Weapons, It's Kind Of Hard To Say. [donald Trump] Is Said Lots Of Things. The National Security Experts Are Terrified. But They're More Terrified By His Personality Than By His Statements.

A Basic Principle Of Modern State Capitalism Is That Costs And Risks Are Socialized To The Extent Possible, While Profit Is Privatized.

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.

[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.

I Think Religion Has Often Played A Very Positive Role. Take Western Civilization, The Catholic Church Has Played An Honorable Role In Helping Those In Need. In Contrast, The Us Carried Out A Virtual War Against The Church In Central America In The 1980's Primarily Because Prime Elements In The Church Were Working With Great Courage And Honor To Help Those In Need. And To Organize Them To Help Themselves.

Elements Of The Christian Fundamentalist Right Are One Of The Strongest Components Of "support For Israel" - Support In An Odd Sense, Because They Presumably Want To See It Destroyed In A Cosmic Battle At Armageddon, After Which All The Proper Souls Will Ascend To Heaven - Or So I Understand, Again, Not From Close Reading.

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.

Long Before The Technology Revolution There Was Declassification Of Documents And I've Spent Quite A Lot Of Time Studying Declassified Internal Documents And Written A Lot About Them. In Fact, Anybody Who's Worked Through The Declassified Record Can See Very Clearly That The Reason For Classification Is Very Rarely To Protect The State Or The Society From Enemies. Most Of The Time It Is To Protect The State From Its Citizens, So They Don't Know What The Government Is Doing.

We Can Imagine A Society In Which No One Could Survive As A Social Being Because It Does Not Correspond To Biologically Determined Perceptions And Human Social Needs. For Historical Reasons, Existing Societies Might Have Such Properties, Leading To Various Forms Of Pathology.

The Democrats Have Pretty Much Given Up On The White Working Class. That Would Require A Commitment To Economic Issues And That's Not Their Concern.

Younger People Who Are Being Indoctrinated Into The Contemporary System Of Falsification - They Really Have To Do Some Research To Find Out What Is The Truth. In The General Population, People Forget Or Don't Care That Much. And Gradually What You Hear Drilled Into Your Head Everyday Comes To Be Believed. People Don't Understand What You're Talking About Any More If You Discuss The American War On South Vietnam.

Sectors Of Power Are Not Going To Favor The Flourishing Of Dissidence.

[for Business After Wwii ] Democracy Means Getting People To Regard Government As An Alien Force That's Robbing Them And Oppressing Them, Not As Their Government. In A Democracy It Would Be Your Government.

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

It Is Only In Folk Tales, Children's Stories, And The Journals Of Intellectual Opinion That Power Is Used Wisely And Well To Destroy Evil. The Real World Teaches Very Different Lessons, And It Takes Willful And Dedicated Ignorance To Fail To Perceive Them.

[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.

If You're In A System Where You Must Make Profit In Order To Survive. You Are Compelled To Ignore Negative Externalities, Effects On Others.

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.

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.

The Ottoman Empire . . . The Rulers In Turkey Were Fortunately So Corrupt That They Left People Alone Pretty Much - Were Mostly Interested In Robbing Them - And They Left Them Alone To Run Their Own Affairs . . . With A Lot Of Local Self Determination.

To Speak Truth To Power Is Not A Particularly Honorable Vocation. One Should Seek Out An Audience That Matters - And Furthermore (another Important Qualification), It Should Not Be Seen As An Audience, But As A Community Of Common Concern In Which One Hopes To Participate Constructively.

Greece Has Been, In Many Ways, A Partially Dysfunctional Society. For Example, The Wealthy Barely Pay Taxes... To An Extent, That's True Elsewhere, Including The United States, But It's Been Pretty Extreme In Greece.

Kaplan Can't Understand Trivialities. The Triviality Here Is That Nobody Except The Ultra Right-wing Jingoists Like Kaplan Are Comparing Atrocities By Various Countries. What Honest People Are Saying Seems To Be Incomprehensible: That We Should Keep To The Elementary Moral Level Of The Gospels. We Should Pay Attention To Our Own Crimes And Stop Committing Them. This Would Be True Even If We Were Killing One Person, Ok? And It's Even More True When We're Killing Millions Of People.

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.

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

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

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.

There Is Massive Propaganda For Everyone To Consume. Consumption Is Good For Profits And Consumption Is Good For The Political Establishment.

The Us And Israel Have Demanded Further That Palestinians Not Only Recognize Israel's Rights As A State In The International System, But That They Also Recognize Israel's Abstract Right To Exist, A Concept That Has No Place In International Law Or Diplomacy, And A Right Claimed By No One. In Effect, The Us And Israel Are Demanding That Palestinians . . . Formally Accept The Legitimacy Of Their Expulsion From Their Own Land. They Cannot Be Expected To Accept That, Just As Mexico Does Not Grant The Us The Right To Exist On Half Of Mexico's Territory, Gained By Conquest.

We Have To Recognize That There Is A Range Of Interests, Like There Isn't A Single Corporate Interest And A Single State Interest, So There's A Range. In Addition To That, There Is The Fact Of Professional Integrity.

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

It Is A Privilege To Join The Campaign To Support Bradley Manning For His Courage And Integrity In Serving His Country By Helping Make The Government Accountable To Its Citizens, And To Inform The World Of What Its People Should Know.

The Number Of Illegal Firings Tripled During The [ronald] Reagan Years. It Was At That Time That You Started Getting These Companies That Specialized In How To Destroy Unions.

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

The Leading Student Of Business Propaganda, Australian Social Scientist Alex Carey, Argues Persuasively That “the 20th Century Has Been Characterized By Three Developments Of Great Political Importance: The Growth Of Democracy, The Growth Of Corporate Power, And The Growth Of Corporate Propaganda As A Means Of Protecting Corporate Power Against Democracy.

Democracies Have

You Keep Plugging Away--that's The Way Social Change Takes Place. That's The Way Every Social Change In History Has Taken Place: By A Lot Of People, Who Nobody Ever Heard Of, Doing Work.

In The United States, And To A Certain Extent In Canada, There's Very Little Interest In What Happens Outside Their Borders.

Now, The Libertarian Party, Is A *capitalist* Party. It's In Favor Of What *i* Would Regard A *particular Form* Of Authoritarian Control. Namely, The Kind That Comes Through Private Ownership And Control, Which Is An *extremely* Rigid System Of Domination - People Have To... People Can Survive, By Renting Themselves To It, And Basically In No Other Way... I Do Disagree With Them *very* Sharply, And I Think That They Are Not..understanding The *fundamental* Doctrine, That You Should Be Free From Domination And Control, Including The Control Of The Manager And The Owner.

If You Want To End Terrorism Stop Participating In It.

The American Claim That The Bombing Of North Vietnam Was Directed Against Military Targets Does Not Withstand Direct Investigation.

I Just Don't Care About Popular Culture. It Looks To Me Pointless And Superficial. If I Had Free Time I'd Rather Read A 19th Century Novel.

In Kosovo, The U.s. Has Chosen A Course Of Action That Escalates Atrocities And Violence. It Is Also A Course Of Action That Strikes A Blow Against The Regime Of International Order, But Which Offers The Weak At Least Some Protection From Predatory States.

I Don't Like Piracy But If Anybody's Concerned About Piracy, Why Don't They Pay Attention To Our Role In It?

Every Time A Candidate Came Up From The Base, That Is With Popular Support, The Republican Establishment Went Into High Gear To Destroy Them With Massive Propaganda Attack Ads And So On. It Was One After Another, Each One Crazier Than The Last.

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.

Now Take A Look At The Way The Drug War Is Conducted Over The Past 40 Years. It Goes Back Farther, But Start From 40 Years Ago: There's Very Little Spent On Prevention And Treatment. There's A Lot On Policing, A Ton Of Stuff On Border Control And A Lot On Out-of-country Operations. And The Effect On The Availability Of Drugs Is Almost Undetectable; Drug Prices Don't Change On Measures Of Availability. So There Are Two Possibilities: Either Those Conducting The Drug War Are Lunatics, Or They Have Another Purpose.

Some International Law Specialists Compare The Invasion Of Iraq To The 'crimes Against The Peace' For Which Nazi Leaders Were Indicted At Nuremberg.

Take, Say, The Solidarity Movement In Central America, Which I Think Is What You Probably Had In Mind. To A Large Extent, It Comes Out Of Mainstream Christianity, Based On Beliefs That Have Had Outrageous Human Consequences In The Past, And That I Think Are Totally Indefensible. In This Case, They Happen To Lead To Some Of The Most Courageous, Heroic, And Honourable Human Action That's Taking Place Anywhere In The World. Well, That's How Life Is, I Guess. It Doesn't Come In Neat Little Packages.

I've Never Seen A Study, But My Sense Is That These Are People Who Feel Really Aggrieved. These People Think, "i've Done Everything Right All My Life, I'm A God-fearing Christian, I'm White, I'm Male, I've Worked Hard, And I Carry A Gun. I Do Everything I'm Supposed To Do. And I'm Getting Shafted." And In Fact They Are Getting Shafted. For 30 Years Their Wages Have Stagnated Or Declined, The Social Conditions Have Worsened, The Children Are Going Crazy, There Are No Schools, There's Nothing, So Somebody Must Be Doing Something To Them, And They Want To Know Who It Is.

A Functioning Eco-system Is A Human Need.

Chemistry, Until My Childhood, Not That Long Ago, Was Regarded As A Calculating Device. Because You Couldn't Reduce To Physics. So It's Just Some Way Of Calculating The Result Of Experiments. The Bohr Atom Was Treated That Way.

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.

Working Together

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

...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.

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

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.

Government Intervention

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.

See, People With Power Understand Exactly One Thing: Violence.

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

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

It's Hard To Achieve That, Especially In A Free Society, But It's Been Done, And That's The Kind Of Thing That Activists In The Iww Have To Work Against, Right On The Shop Floor. It's Not So Simple, But It's Been Done Before.

Education Is Imposed Ignorance.

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

I Don't Think You Would Have Any Trouble At All In Deciding That You Are Thinking Of Some Event And Then Visualizing It Happening With Its Consequences, And Constructing A Rational Analysis Of It Without Being Able To Verbalize It Adequately In Anything Like Its Full Complexity.

The 'anti-globalisation Movement' Is The Most Significant Proponent Of Globalisation - But In The Interests Of People, Not Concentrations Of State-private Power.

Whoever Sets The Agenda Controls The Outcome Of The Debate

There Are Leaks From The Embassy In Honduras. There Was A Coup In 2009. Obama Broke With Most Of Latin America And Even Europe And Supported The Military Coup, Still Does. The Ambassador In Honduras Sent Back A Detailed Analysis Saying The Coup Was Military, Illegal, Unconstitutional, And That The Legitimate President Was Thrown Out. Okay, We Now Know That Washington Was Perfectly Aware Of That And Decided To Support The Military Coup Anyway. We Should Have Known That At The Time. The Government Has No Right To Keep That Information Secret.

Take Any Country That Has Laws Against Hate Crimes, Inspiring Hatred And Genocide And So On. The First Thing They Would Do Is Ban The Old Testament. There's Nothing Like It In The Literary Canon That Exalts Genocide, To That Extent. And It's Not A Joke Either. Like Where I Live, New England, The People Who Liberated It From The Native Scourge Were Religious Fundamentalist Lunatics, Who Came Waving The Holy Book, Declaring Themselves To Be The Children Of Israel Who Are Killing The Amalekites, Like God Told Them.

Karl Marx Was In Favor Of Socialist And Communist-socialist Revolutions, But He Had A Pretty Nuanced View About It.

In Societies That Profess Some Respect For Law, Suspects Are Apprehended And Brought To Fair Trial. I Stress 'suspects.'

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

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.

Growth Is A Funny Sort Of Concept. For Example, Our Gnp Increases Every Time We Build A Prison. Well, Okay, It's Growth In A Sense.

The Un Can Go As Far As The U.s. Will Allow, And No Further. And It's Bound By Conditions That The Powerful States, Which Means Mostly The U.s., Impose.

Sooner Or Later, Jihadist-style Terror And Wmd Are Going To Come Together And The Consequences Could Be Horrendous.

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.

Pakistan Will Never Be Able To Match The Indian Militarily And The Effort To Do So Is Taking An Immense Toll On The Society. It's Also Extremely Dangerous With All The Weapons Development.

There's A Split In The Us About How This [split] Will Be Resolved. The Main Point To Look At Is The Split Within The Republican Party. The Republican Establishment, And Wall Street, And The Bankers, And The Corporate Executives And So On, They Don't Want This. They Don't Want It At All. It's The Part Of The Base That Is Mobilized That Wants It.

One Thing That You And I Know Is Language. Another Thing That You And I Know Is How Objects Behave In Perceptual Space. We Have A Whole Mass Of Complex Ways Of Understanding What Is The Nature Of Visual Space. A Proper Part Of Psychology Ought To Be, And In Recent Years Has Been, An Effort To Try To Discover The Principles Of How We Organize Visual Space. I Would Say That The Same Is True Of Every Domain Of Psychology, Of Human Studies.

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

I Know Some Really Outstanding Turkish Journalists, And Have Been Pleased And Honored To Be Able To Join With Them A Few Times In Their Courageous Protests Against State Terror And Repression.

South America Has Virtually Broken Away In The Last Decade. That's An Event Of Historic Significance. South America Just Doesn't Follow Us Orders. In Fact There Isn't A Single Us Military Base Left There.

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.

Surely Few If Any Readers Have Come Across The Sentence They Are Now Reading, And Someone Who Had By Chance Heard Or Seen It Could Not Possibly Remember Such A Fact.

There Is A Noticeable General Difference Between The Sciences And Mathematics On The One Hand, And The Humanities And Social Sciences On The Other. It's A First Approximation, But One That Is Real. In The Former, The Factors Of Integrity Tend To Dominate More Over The Factors Of Ideology. It's Not That Scientists Are More Honest People. It's Just That Nature Is A Harsh Taskmaster. You Can Lie Or Distort The Story Of The French Revolution As Long As You Like, And Nothing Will Happen. Propose A False Theory In Chemistry, And It'll Be Refuted Tomorrow.

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.

No Honest Journalist Should Be Willing To Describe Himself Or Herseif As 'embedded.' To Say, 'i'm An Embedded Journalist' Is To Say, 'i'm A Government Propagandist.

Wanton Killing Of Innocent Civilians Is Terrorism, Not A War Against Terrorism.

I Agree With Bill Clinton That Us Forces Should Not Be Sent To Haiti, But Not For His Reasons.

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.

Whatever The Reasons May Be, I Was Very Much Affected By Events Of The 1930s - The Spanish Civil War, For Example, Though I Was Barely Literate.

The Death Penalty Can Be Tolerated Only By Extreme Statist Reactionaries Who Demand A State That Is So Powerful That It Has The Right To Kill.

I Pretend No Originality In Observing That Mass Education Was Motivated In Part By The Perceived Need To "educate Them To Keep Them From Our Throats," To Borrow Ralph Waldo Emerson's Parody Of Elite Fears That Inspired Early Advocates Of Public Mass Education.

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

Starting With [ronald] Regan It Became Quite Open, The Attack On Unions. It Wasn't The Pinkertons Anymore, But It Was Just Not Applying The Laws.

There Are Massive Efforts On The Part Of The Internet's Corporate Owners To Try To Direct It To Become A Technique Of Marginalisation And Control.

Physics And Those Parts Of Other Fields That Grow Out Of Physics - Chemistry, The Structure Of Big Molecules - In Those Domains, There Is A Lot Of Progress. In Many Other Domains, There Is Very Little Progress In Developing Real Scientific Understanding.

Selfish-gene Theory Tells Us Nothing About The Value Of Interacting Through Language.

There Was A Striking Example Of This In Pakistan When The Us Sent In Special Forces, To Be Honest, To Kill Osama Bin Laden. He Could Easily Have Been Apprehended And Caught But Their Orders Were To Kill Him.

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

The Basic Idea Which Runs Right Through Modern History And Modern Liberalism Is That The Public Has Got To Be Marginalized. The General Public Are Viewed As No More Than Ignorant And Meddlesome Outsiders, A Bewildered Herd.

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?

It's Been A Real Success - One Of The Great Business Successes In The United States - To Break Down Organization, To Separate People Too: It's Part Of Consumerism. If You Can Drive People Toward Individual Consumption, That's The Highest Goal In Life. And Furthermore, Drive Them Into Debt So They're Trapped. You Don't Have To Worry About A Democracy Function Because People Are Trapped And They're Alone.

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

As International Support For Obama's Decision To Attack Syria Has Collapsed, Along With The Credibility Of Government Claims, The Administration Has Fallen Back On A Standard Pretext For War Crimes When All Else Fails: The Credibility Of The Threats Of The Self-designated Policeman Of The World.

The Focus On Creativity And Independence Exists In Pockets Of Resistance In The Educational System, Which, To Thrive, Should Be Integrated With The Needs And Concerns Of The Great Majority Of The Population. One Finds Them Everywhere.

I Wrote An Article About The Marine Landing [in Haiti] Right Away, But Barely Mentioned The Oil, Because My Article Would Come Out Two Months Later And I Assumed By Then, "of Course, Everybody Knows." Nobody Knew. There Was A News Report In The Wall Street Journal, In The Petroleum Journals, And In Some Small Newspapers, But Not In The Mainstream Press.

There Are A Lot Of Things That Can Be Done Within The Framework Of Existing Institutions Which Would Be Very Valuable For People.

In My Own Professional Work I Have Touched On A Variety Of Different Fields. I've Done Work In Mathematical Linguistics, For Example, Without Any Professional Credentials In Mathematics; In This Subject I Am Completely Self-taught, And Not Very Well Taught.

It Doesn't Matter How Much You Learn In School; It's Whether You Learn How To Go On And Do Things By Yourself. And That Can Be Done At Any Level.

There Are Simple Things Which Would Make Sense. Take, Say, Weatherization, Which Would Make A Big Cut In The Unemployment Rate. That's The Kind Of Work That Plenty Of People Are Quick To Do, And It Would Save Individual Households Money, And It Would Make A Significant Reduction In The Threats Of Climate Change. But Something Is Holding It Back: The Sociopathic Character Of Market Systems.

There Is No Body Of Theory Or Significant Body Of Relevant Information, Beyond The Comprehension Of The Layman, Which Makes Policy Immune From Criticism.

Take The Iraq War,it's The Second Worst Crime After The Second World War. It's The First Time In History, In The History Of Imperialism, There Were Huge Demonstrations, Before The War Was Officially Launched.

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.

The Desire For Hope And Change Is Easily Understandable. In Many Ways It's Even More Dramatic In Europe.

Real Popular Culture Is Folk Art - Coalminers' Songs And So Forth.

What Is Failure For Some Is Success For Others. It Depends On Where They Stand In The Struggles Over "democratic Governance" And Related Rights - Civil, Social And Economic, And Broadly Cultural, To Adopt The Framework Of The Universal Declaration That Is Formally Endorsed But Constantly Undermined.

There Is A Phrase In Trade Theory; It's Called "kicking Away The Ladder." First You Violate The Rules - The Market Rules - And Then By The Time You Succeed In Developing, You Kick Away The Ladders So Others Can't Do It Too, And You Preach About "free Trade."

The General Population Doesn't Know What's Happening, And It Doesn't Even Know That It Doesn't Know.

In England, Enclosure Programs Kind Of Destroyed The Commons. In The United States, It Happened Later. But, Ah, Now It's Happening In The World. The Last Remnant Of The Commons Is The Environment, Which The Indigenous People Are Still Trying To Preserve And We Sophisticated Rich People Are Trying To Destroy.

If Voting Could Actually Change Anything, It Would Be Illegal.

South America Goes Its Own Way Dramatically In International Affairs.

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.

There Is Undoubtedly Much To Learn About The Social Uses Of Language, For Communication Or For Other Purposes. But At Present There Is Not Much In The Way Of A Theory Of Sociolinguistics, Of Social Uses Of Languages, As Far As I Am Aware.

The More You Can Increase Fear Of Drugs And Crime, Welfare Mothers, Immigrants And Aliens, The More You Control All The People.

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.

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.

If You Are Not Offending People Who Ought To Be Offended, You're Doing Something Wrong.

What Was The Invasion Of South Vietnam, For Example, In 1962, When Kennedy Sent The Air Force To Bomb South Vietnam And Start Chemical Warfare? That's Aggression.

Efforts Can Succeed Over Time, And Not Trying Ensures That The Worst Will Happen.

I Don't Say You're Self-censoring - I'm Sure You Believe Everything You're Saying; But What I'm Saying Is, If You Believed Something Different, You Wouldn't Be Sitting Where You're Sitting.

Suppose That We Believe What We Are Taught. . . . Destroying The Environment And Militarizing Outer Space Are Rational Policies . . . Of Institutional Lunacy.

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.

If You Want To Make Changes In The World, You're Going To Have To Be There Day After Day Doing The Boring, Straightforward Work Of Getting A Couple Of People Interested And Building A Slightly Bigger Organization And Carrying Out The Next Move And Suffering Frustration And Finally Getting Somewhere. That's How The World Changes.

The Manufacturing Industry Is Starting To Press For Some Kind Of National Healthcare. Now It's Beginning To Put It On The Agenda. It Doesn't Matter If The Population Wants It. What 90% Of The Population Wants Would Be Kind Of Irrelevant. But If Part Of The Concentration Of Corporate Capital That Basically Runs The Country - Another Thing We're Not Allowed To Say But It's Obvious - If Part Of That Sector Becomes In Favor Then The Issue Moves Onto The Political Agenda.

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