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[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.

-Noam Chomsky

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[moral Responsibilities] Has Nothing

Noam Chomsky

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[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.

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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.

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

Destruction Of The Environment Is Not Only Rational; It's Exactly What You're Taught To Do In College.

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

There Is Good Reason To Believe That We Have Already Entered The Sixth Extinction, A Period Of Destruction Of Species On A Massive Scale, Comparable To The Fifth Extinction 65 Million Years Ago, When Three-quarters Of The Species On Earth Were Destroyed, Apparently By A Huge Asteroid.

The Internet Is Something Created Largely By Public Funding.

It’s Ridiculous To Talk About Freedom In A Society Dominated By Huge Corporations. What Kind Of Freedom Is There Inside A Corporation? They’re Totalitarian Institutions - You Take Orders From Above And Maybe Give Them To People Below You. There’s About As Much Freedom As Under Stalinism.

When I Wrote About The Spanish Civil War Many Years Later, I Used Documents That I Picked Up When I Was A Child, As A Lot Hadn't Been Published (a Lot More Resources Are Available Now).

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

In Fact, The Capitalist Class In The '50s Was Sort Of Part Of A Social Contract. It Was Part Of The Tenor Of The Times.

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.

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.

In Fact If You Look At Reagan's Global War On Terrorism It Very Quickly Turned Into A Massive Terrorist War: [by Us] Central America, South Africa, The Middle East, All U.s.-backed Terrorism. That's One Of The Reasons Why It Disappeared From History And Why The Standard Line Is That Bush 43 Declared The War On Terror. Actually He Just Repeated What Reagan Had Said 20 Years Earlier.

A Colonial War Is A Very Dirty Kind Of War. You're Not Fighting Armed Forces. You're Fighting Mostly Unarmed People. And To Fight That Kind Of War Requires Professional Killers, Which Means Mercenaries.

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.

Censorship Is Never Over For Those Who Have Experienced It. It Is A Brand On The Imagination That Affects The Individual Who Has Suffered It, Forever.

The More Privilege You Have, The More Opportunity You Have. The More Opportunity You Have, The More Responsibility You Have.

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

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

The Andes Region Is Not Stable. So We Can Expect To See More Us Intervention. It Could Be Under Any Kind Of Pretext. We Can No Longer Use The Russians As An Excuse, As We Did In Central America In The 1980's, So Drugs Will Have To Do.

The Us Is A Business-run Huckster Society, And Its Primary Value Is Deceit.

The Prescription For Endless War Poses A Far Greater Danger To Americans Than Perceived Enemies Do, For Reasons The Terrorist Organisations Understand Very Well.

Let's Take Adam Smith, The Patron-saint Of Capitalism, What Did He Think? He Thought The Main Human Instinct Was Sympathy. In Fact, Take A Look At The Word "invisible Hand." Which, Of Course, You Learned About, Or You Think You've Learned About. Take A Look At The Actual Way In Which He Used The Phrase. There Is Almost No Relation To What Is Claimed.

The United States Has Done Some Very Good Things In The World, And That Does Not Change The Fact That The World Court Was Quite Correct In Condemning The United States As An International Terrorist State.

By A Generative Grammar I Mean Simply A System Of Rules That In Some Explicit And Well-defined Way Assigns Structural Descriptions To Sentences. Obviously, Every Speaker Of A Language Has Mastered And Internalized A Generative Grammar That Expresses His Knowledge Of His Language. This Is Not To Say That He Is Aware Of The Rules Of The Grammar Or Even That He Can Become Aware Of Them, Or That His Statements About His Intuitive Knowledge Of The Language Are Necessarily Accurate.

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.

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.

To Construct A Scientific Theory From The Data And To Be Able To Recognize That It Is A Reasonable Theory Is Possible Only If There Are Some Very Sharp Restrictive Principles That Lead You To Go In One Direction And Not In Another Direction. Otherwise, You Wouldn't Have Science At All, Merely Randomly Chosen Hypotheses.

Of Course, We [ With Edward Herman] Have A Purpose: Namely, To Encourage Readers To Undertake What Might Be Called "a Course In Intellectual Self-defense," And To Suggest Ways To Proceed; In Other Words, To Help People Undermine The Dedicated Efforts To "manufacture Consent" And To Turn Them Into Passive Objects Rather Than Agents Who Control Their Own Fate.

...dissent, Protest, Presures Of A Wide Variety That Escape Elite Control Can Modify The Calculus Of Costs Of Planners, And Offer A Slight Hope That Washington Can Be Compelled To Permit At Least Some Steps Towards "justice, Freedom And Democracy" Within Its Domains.

While Trump Keeps The Spotlight On Himself, The "respectable" Republican Establishment Chips Away At Government Programs That Benefit The General Population.

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.

In The Years Of The Reagan-bush Administration Alone, About 1.5 Million People Were Killed By South Africa Just In The Surrounding Countries. Forget What Was Happening In South Africa And Namibia.

Enormous And Growing Parts Of The Population Are Basically Superfluous For Profit-making Purposes. Along With This, The Jail Population Is Increasing Very Rapidly; It's The Highest In The Industrial World By Far. New And Onerous Crime Bills Are Being Passed To Deal With This Superfluous Population.

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

The Ideal Is To Create A Completely Fragmented Atomized Society Where Everybody Is Totally Alone, Doing Nothing But Trying To Pursue Created Wants, And The Wants Are Created.

To Go Back To A Moment Of Western Civilization Remote Enough In Time So That We Should Be Able To Look At It Dispassionately, Ask What Happened During World War I. What Was The Typical Behavior Of Respected Intellectuals In Germany, England, The United States? What Happened To Those Who Publicly Questioned The Nobility Of The War Effort, On Both Sides? I Do Not Think The Answers Are Untypical.

In A Democracy The Day When You Pay Your Taxes, April 15, Would Be A Day Of Celebration, Because You're Getting Together To Provide Resources For The Programs You Decided On.

When I Was A Boy, We Were The Only Jewish Family In A Terribly Anti-semitic Neighborhood. Those Streets Weren't Any Fun For Us But Our Parents Never Found That Out. In A Way, You Avoid Telling Your Parents What Happened To You During Those Days.

The Most Striking Aspect Of Linguistic Competence Is What We May Call The 'creativity Of Language,' That Is, The Speaker's Ability To Produce New Sentences, Sentences That Are Immediately Understood By Other Speakers Although They Bear No Physical Resemblance To Sentences Which Are 'familiar.

The Us Intervened In The Philippines To Uplift And Christianize The Backward People, Killing A Couple Of Hundred Thousand Of Them And Destroying The Place. The Same Thing Happened In Haiti, The Same Thing Happened With Other Countries.

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

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.

Occupying Armies Have Responsibilities, Not Rights. Their Primary Responsibility Is To Withdraw As Quickly And Expeditiously As Possible, In A Manner Determined By The Occupied Population.

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.'

The Russians Were Doing A Lot Of Rotten Things, You Can Point To Them. But The Idea That If You Consider What Hans Morgenthau Called "i Called Abuse Of Reality," The Picture Of The World Was Almost The Opposite Of What They Presented. But Somehow This Sells And Is Continually Repeated, At Least In This Kind Of Situation.

It’s A Shameful Moment For U.s. Media When It Insists On Being Subservient To The Grotesque Propaganda Agencies Of A Violent, Aggressive State.

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

The Media Are Corporations So... It's The Concentrations Of Private Power Which Have An Enormous, Not Total Control, But Enormous Influence Over Congress And The White House And That's Increasing Sharply With Sharp Concentration Of Private Power And Escalating Cost Of Elections And So On.

So Yes In Theory There Is A Kind Of A Formal Democracy And In Many Ways These Were Achievements And An Improvement Over The Feudal System And More Advanced Than Anything Else In The World, But Nothing That We Ought To Call Democracy.

Markets Also Have A Very Bad Psychological Effect. They Drive People To A Conception Of Themselves And Society In Which You're Only After Your Own Good, Not The Good Of Others And That's Extremely Harmful.

The September 11 Attacks Were Major Atrocities. . . . This Was A Horrendous Crime . . . The Primary Victims . . . Were Working People: Janitors, Secretaries, Firemen, Etc. It Is Likely To Prove To Be A Crushing Blow To Palestinians . . . It Is Also Likely To Lead To Harsh Security Controls, With Many Possible Ramifications For Undermining Civil Liberties And Internal Freedom.

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.

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

Thanh Hoa Itself Is A Rich Agricultural Province. Rice Fields, A Pattern Of Many Shades Of Green, Stretch Far Into The Distance Along The Road, Which Also Winds Through Foothills And The Fringes Of Heavy Jungle Where Tigers Are Said To Roam. The Vegetation, Wild Or Cultivated, Is Lush.

A Corporation Is A State Created Institution, State Supported Institution, Its Concentration Of Private Power, There Is No Reason Why It Should Have The Rights Of Persons.

One Of The Real Problems Of Society Is That Its Far Too Atomized, What Sociologists Call Secondary Associations.

If Kids Are Studying For A Test, They're Not Going To Learn Anything. We All Know That From Our Own Experience.

A Lot Of The People Involved In The Media Are Very Serious, Honest People, And They Will Tell You, And I Think They Are Right, That They Are Not Being Forced To Write Anything... What They Don't Tell You, And Are Maybe Unaware Of, Is That They Are Allowed To Write Freely Because Their Beliefs Conform To The... Standard Doctrinal System, And Then, Yes, They Are Allowed To Write Freely And Are Not Coerced.

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

Everyone Engaged In Research Must Have Had The Experience Of Working With Feverish And Prolonged Intensity To Write A Paper Which No One Else Will Read Or To Solve A Problem Which No One Else Thinks Important And Which Will Bring No Conceivable Reward - Which May Only Confirm A General Opinion That The Researcher Is Wasting His Time On Irrelevancies.

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

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

Look At The Ozone Story. As Long As It Was The Southern Hemisphere That Was Being Threatened, There Was Very Little Talk About It. When It Was Discovered In The North, Very Quickly Actions Were Taken To Do Something About It. Right Now There's Discussion Of Putting Serious Effort Into Developing A Malaria Vaccine, Because Global Warming Might Extend Malaria To The Rich Countries, So Something Should Be Done About It.

Every Predecessor Has Used Mercenaries, Often Drawn From The Country That They're Attacking Like England Ran India With Indian Mercenaries. You Take Them From One Place And Send Them To Kill People In The Other Place. That's The Standard Way To Run Imperial Wars.

What Can You Do To Mitigate The Likelihood That Iran Will Develop Nuclear Weapons? There's A Very Simple Method: Move Towards Establishing A Nuclear-weapons-free Zone, Which Everybody In The World Wants, But The Us Blocks.

The Labor Movement Can Be Rebuilt, As Has Happened Before After Sharp Declines.

From The Late 1940s, Into And Through The '50s, There Developed A Complex Interaction Between Federal Government, State And Local Government, Real-estate Interests, Commercial Interests And Court Decisions, Which Had The Effect Of Undermining The Mass Transit System Across The Country.

The Us Is A Country [in Which] Eighty Percent Of The Population Thinks The Bible Was Written By God. About Half Think Every Word Is Literally True. So It's Had To Appeal To That - And To The Nativist Population, The People That Are Frightened, Have Always Been... It's A Very Frightened Country And That's Increasing Now With The Recognition That The White Population Is Going To Be A Minority Pretty Soon, "they've Taken Our Country From Us."

There Is A Social Responsibility To Take Care Of Vulnerable People. It Seems That A Sensible Social Responsibility Is Obligatory Education, But Also Decent Education, And That Is Not Happening.

My Position Is That We Should Not Succumb To Irrational Belief.

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

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.

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.

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 Most Dramatic Case Is That Of The Central Americans. Why Are People Fleeing Central America? It's Because Of The Atrocities The U.s. Committed There. Take Boston, Where There's A Fairly Large Mayan Population. These People Are Fleeing From The Highlands Of Guatemala, Where There Was Virtual Genocide In The Early 1980s Backed By Ronald Reagan. The Region Was Devastated, And People Are Still Fleeing To This Day, Yet They're Sent Back.

Latin America Has Much Richer Resources. You'd Expect It To Be Far More Advanced Than East Asia, But It Had The Disadvantage Of Being Under Imperialist Wings.

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.

On The Other Hand, A Lot Of The Internet - I Don't Know The Percentage, But I Am Sure A Great Mass Of Internet Use - Is Pretty Superficial Interaction Amongst People. Its Not Necessarily A Bad Thing. A Teenager Wants To Talk To Her Friend, That's Fine, But I Think It Probably Contributes To Atomization, Which Is A Threat To The Society.

There Is A Big Difference Between Tweeting To Your Friend About Something That Is Happening And Having A Real Personal Relationship With People.

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

The Government Of Rwanda, Which Is A Us Client, Is Intervening Massively, And Uganda To An Extent. It's Almost An International War In Africa. Well, How Many People Know About This?

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.

Education Is Imposed Ignorance.

Haiti, Which Has Been The Main Target Of Us Intervention Throughout The 20th Century, Is The Poorest. And Guatemala, Which Is Maybe The Third Major Target Of Us Intervention, Probably Ranks Third Poorest.

We Had One Or Another Form Of State Capitalism During An Extremely Brief Period Of Human History, Which Tells Us Essentially Nothing About Human Nature. If You Look At Human Societies And Human Interactions, You Can Find Anything. You Find Selfishness, You Find Altruism, You Find Sympathy.

Education Must Provide The Opportunities For Self-fulfillment; It Can At Best Provide A Rich And Challenging Environment For The Individual To Explore, In His Own Way.

Some Of [donald Trump] Comments Can Be Interpreted As Potentially Reducing The Threat Of Nuclear War. The Major Threat Right Now Is Right On The Russian Border. Notice, Not The Mexican Border, The Russian Border. And It's Serious. He Has Made Various Statements Moving Towards Reducing The Tensions, Accommodating Russian Concerns And So On.

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.

President Barack Obama, To His Credit, Has Given - Issued Personal Pardons In Deserving Cases. But He Should Go Far Beyond. He Should Proceed To What Is In Fact An Urgent Necessity: To Grant A General Pardon To 11 Million People Who Are Living And Working Here, Productive Citizens In All But Name, Threatened With Deportation By The Incoming Donald Trump Administration. This Would Be A Horrible Humanitarian Tragedy, A Moral Outrage.

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.

As Far As Marx's Analysis Of Capitalism, There's A Lot Of Very Useful Ideas In It, But He's Developing An Abstract Model Of 19th Century Capitalism. It's Abstract And It's Changed.

If You Take A Look At Places Like Harvard, It's Striking. In The Early ,50s, I Think There Were A Handful Of Jewish Professors, Three Or Four. But By The 1960s, There Were Jewish Deans And Administrators. In Fact, One Of The Reasons Why Mit Became A Great University Was Because They Admitted Jews Whereas Harvard Did Not.

As Long As Each Individual Is Facing The Television Tube Alone, Formal Freedom Poses No Threat To Privilege

I Have Written Occasionally On Links Between My Scientific Work And Political Thinking, But Not Much, Because The Links Seem To Me Abstract And Speculative.

I Think A Decent Society Should Protect Rights To Private Property Within Limits, But Not Concentrations Of Private Power That Infringe On The Freedom And Rights Of Others, Including Exploitation Of Labor, And That Convert Any Democratic Forms Into What Have Been Called Sometimes "hierarchical Democracies," Like Ours, In Which Some Have Vastly Greater Influence Over Public Policy Than Others. Spelling All Of This Out Is A Complex Matter That Raises Many Issue And Problems That Are Impossible To Address Here.

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 Threat Is That The Public Will Know What The Government Is Up To. Any System Of Power Is Going To Want To Keep Free From Public Surveillance, That's Natural. Its Shouldn't Be But, Its Very Natural.

The Intellectual Is An Individual With A Specific Public Role In Society That Cannot Be Reduced Simply To . . A Faceless Professional.

Take Something You Really Don't Think About: Plastics In The Ocean. I Mean Plastics In The Ocean Have An Enormous Ecological Effect.

The General Public Are Not Even Aware Of Major Decisions That Will Determine Their Fate, Hence Are In No Position To Influence Them

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

I Should Say That Canada Is One Of The Major Criminals, Not Just The Tar Sands And So On, But Even Mining Throughout The World, A Lot Of It Is Canadian. It's Extremely Destructive, So An Important Thing For Canadians To Do Is Curtail The Predatory And Destructive Behavior Of Their Own Government And Corporations. A Carbon Tax Is One Way Of Doing It.

I Think The Press, By And Large, Is What We Call "liberal". But Of Course What We Call "liberal" Means Well To The Right. "liberal" Means The "guardians Of The Gates". So The New York Times Is "liberal" By, What's Called, The Standards Of Political Discourse, New York Times Is Liberal, Cbs Is Liberal. I Don't Disagree. I Think They're Moderately Critical At The Fringes. They're Not Totally Subordinate To Power, But They Are Very Strict In How Far You Can Go. And In Fact, Their Liberalism Serves An Extremely Important Function In Supporting Power.

It Takes One Minute To Tell A Lie, And An Hour To Refute It.

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.

I Doubt That National Languages Will Disappear. In Fact, To Some Extent They're Becoming More Diverse, Like In Europe.

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

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.

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

I Think That What's Actually Happening Is The Collapse Of The Center - The Centrist Semi-coalitions, Mildly Social-democrat, Mildly Conservative, That Have Been Running The Countries For Years. They Are Severely Declining. You Can See It In Voting; You Can See It Also In Popular Attitudes: Contempt For What Are Called "the élites," The Experts, The People In Charge.

It's Like These People Are Programmed By Karl Rove. What He Wants Is To Have Liberal Critics Ridicule Bush Because He Says 'nucular' And 'misunderestimate' And Talks With A Probably Fake Texas Accent And So On, Because Then Can Come Back With The Big Propaganda Apparatus Saying, 'see, Those Elite Liberals Who Run The World And Are Sitting Around Drinking French Wine And Eating Quiche Don't Understand Us Ordinary Guys'; Regular Guys Like The Guy Working On The Assembly Line And George Bush, Who Is Going Back To His Ranch To Cut Brush.

I Think There Was An Overemphasis In The Early Stage On Militarization Rather Than Directly Providing Relief. I Don't Think It Has Any Long-term Significance.

There's Just No Question That The United States Was Trying Desperately To Prevent The Independence Of South Vietnam And To Prevent A Political Settlement Inside South Vietnam. And In Fact It Went To War Precisely To Prevent That. It Finally Bombed The North In 1965 With The Purpose Of Trying To Get The North To Use Its Influence To Call Off The Insurgency In The South.

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.

It's Designed To Carry Forward The Neoliberal Project To Maximize Profit And Domination, And To Set The Working People In The World In Competition With One Another So As To Lower Wages To Increase Insecurity

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.

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?

The Main Selling Appeal Of Nafta To Us Corporations Is That It Gives Them An Advantage In The North American Market Over Their European And Japanese Competitors.

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

We Have To Remember That Literally Within Months After Castro's Taking Office The Planes From Florida Were Beginning To Bomb Cuba. Within A Year, The Eisenhower Administration Secretly, But Formally, Decided To Overthrow The Government. Then Came The Bay Of Pigs Invasion. The Kennedy Administration Was Furious About The Failure Of The Invasion And Immediately Launched A Major Terrorist War And Economic War That Got Harsher Through The Years. Under These Conditions It Is Kind Of Amazing That Cuba Survived.

That's The Whole Point Of Good Propaganda. You Want To Create A Slogan That Nobody's Going To Be Against, And Everybody's Going To Be For. Nobody Knows What It Means, Because It Doesn't Mean Anything.

The Occupy Movement Did Create Spontaneously Communities That Taught People Something: You Can Be In A Supportive Community Of Mutual Aid And Cooperation And Develop Your Own Health System And Library And Have Open Space For Democratic Discussion And Participation. Communities Like That Are Really Important.

Governments Don't Control People Like They Used To.

Silicon Valley Benefits, As All Of Industry, From Highly Protectionist Policy - Patent Policies And Things Like That - Which Come Out Of The Government.

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

Nuclear Proliferation

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."

There's A Radical Insurgency, Which Is A Large Part Of The Republican Base, Which Is Willing To Do Anything, Destroy The Country, Whatever, In Order To Get Rid Of This Affordable Care Act. That's The One Thing That They're Able To Hang Onto.

...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.

States Are Not Moral Agents.

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.

Immediately After 11 September, The U.s. Closed Down The Somali Charitable Network Al-barakaat On Grounds That It Was Financing Terror. This Achievement Was Hailed One Of The Great Successes Of The 'war On Terror.' In Contrast, Washington's Withdrawal Of Its Charges As Without Merit A Year Later Aroused Little Notice.

Contemporary Technology Could Be Used To Eliminate Ownership And Management Of Corporations. It Could Be Used To Provide - Lets Say Apple Computers. In Principle Information Technology Could Be Used To Provide Direct Information To The Work Force On The Ground So That They Could Democratically Decide What The Company Would Do, Eliminating The Role Of Management. It Could Be Used For That. People Aren't Developing Technology For That Purpose.

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

It's Not A Matter Of Public Relations And Rhetorical Style But Of Actions. It's The Actions And Policies Under George W.bush Administration That Have Left The Us Government Remarkably Isolated, Feared And Often Hated To An Extent With No Historical Precedent.

There's A Very Committed Effort To Convert The Us Into Something Resembling A Third World Society, Where A Few People Have Enormous Wealth And A Lot Of Others Have No Security.

As Long As The General Population Is Passive, Apathetic, Diverted To Consumerism Or Hatred Of The Vulnerable, Then The Powerful Can Do As They Please, And Those Who Survive Will Be Left To Contemplate The Outcome.

Throughout History, Even The Harshest And Most Shameful Measures Are Regularly Accompanied By Professions Of Noble Intent - And Rhetoric About Bestowing Freedom And Independence.

If You Want To Talk About Distributing Substances That Are Lethal, . . . Let's Be Serious. Tobacco Is Far Ahead Of Anything Else. Alcohol Is Second.

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. These Are Simply Decisions Made Within Institutions That Are Subject To Human Will And That Must Face The Test Of Legitimacy. And If They Do Not Meet The Test, They Can Be Replaced By Other Institutions That Are More Free And More Just, As Has Happened Often In The Past.

The New Crimes That The Us And Israel Were Committing In Gaza As 2009 Opened Do Not Fit Easily Into Any Standard Category—except For The Category Of Familiarity.

The Zionist Movement Based In Palestine Pretty Much Took Over The Camps And Instituted The Policy That Every Man And Woman Between The Ages Of Seventeen And Thirty-five Should Be Directed To Palestine - Not Allowed To Go To The West.

I See No Anti-semitic Implications In Denial Of The Existence Of Gas Chambers, Or Even Denial Of The Holocaust.

Somebodys Paying The Corporations That Destroyed Iraq And The Corporations That Are Rebuilding It. Theyre Getting Paid By The American Taxpayer In Both Cases. So We Pay Them To Destroy The Country, And Then We Pay Them To Rebuild It. Those Are Gifts From U.s. Taxpayer To U.s. Corporations.

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

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.

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.

Dissidents Are Not Imprisoned As In The Domains Of The Kremlin, In The Old Days. They Do Not Have Their Brains Blown Out By Elite Forces Armed And Trained By The Reigning Superpower, As Happens In Washington's Domains - With No Particular Concern At Home - An Important Fact, One Of Many That Help Us Learn About Ourselves, If We Choose.

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.

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.

I Think Individuals Have A Right To Privacy, But That Ought To Include The Right To Prevent Private Institutions From Monitoring What You Do And Building Up A Personal Profile For You So That They Can Direct You In Particular Ways By Their Effective Control Over The Internet, And That Doesn't Happen Of Course.

The Fact That All Normal Children Acquire Essentially Comparable Grammars Of Great Complexity With Remarkable Rapidity Suggests That Human Beings Are Somehow Specially Designed To Do This, With Data-handling Or 'hypothesis-formulating' Ability Of Unknown Character And Complexity.

I Am Not Sure Just What Marx Had In Mind When He Wrote That "philosophers Have Hitherto Only Interpreted The World In Various Ways; The Point Is To Change It." Did He Mean That Philosophy Could Change The World, Or That Philosophers Should Turn To The Higher Priority Of Changing The World? If The Former, Then He Presumably Meant Philosophy In A Broad Sense Of The Term, Including Analysis Of The Social Order And Ideas About Why It Should Be Changed, And How. In That Broad Sense, Philosophy Can Play A Role, Indeed An Essential Role, In Changing The World.

The Process Of Shaping Opinion, Attitudes, And Perceptions Was Termed The 'engineering Of Consent' By One Of The Founders Of The Modern Public Relations Industry, Edward Bernays.

Palestinians Have No Wealth Or Power.

The Basic Principle Is That The Losers Have To Confess, Not The Victors. When They Do It, It's A Crime. When We Do It, It's Not. And More Generally, It's The Defeated Who Are Tried, Not The Victors.

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 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."

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

We Don't Live In Tyrannies, You Know, The King Doesn't Decide What's Legitimate, And There's Much More Freedom Than There Was In The Past.

So, At One Extreme You Have Indigenous, Tribal Societies Trying To Stem The Race To Disaster. At The Other Extreme, The Richest, Most Powerful Societies In World History, Like The United States And Canada, Are Racing Full-speed Ahead To Destroy The Environment As Quickly As Possible.

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

What Happened In The Missile Crisis In October 1962 Has Been Prettified To Make It Look As If Acts Of Courage And Thoughtfulness Abounded. The Truth Is That The Whole Episode Was Almost Insane.

The House Of Representatives, Which Was Closer To The Population, Had Much Less Power. The Executive Was More Or Less An Administrator, Not An Emperor Like Today.

As A Research Tool, The Internet Is Invaluable.

These Are Questions For Action, Not Speculation, Which Is Idle.

That's The Standard Technique Of Privatization: Defund, Make Sure Things Don't Work, People Get Angry, You Hand It Over To Private Capital.

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

If You're Teaching Today What You Were Teaching Five Years Ago, Either The Field Is Dead Or You Are.

I Have Never Heard Of Anyone Who Was A "model Person" In All Aspects Of His Or Her Life, Intellectual Life Or Other Aspects; Nor Do I See Why Anyone Should Care. We Are Not Engaged In Idol Worship, After All.

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

It Is ... Necessary To Whip Up The Population In Support Of Foreign Adventures. Usually The Population Is Pacifist, Just Like They Were During The First World War. The Public Sees No Reason To Get Involved In Foreign Adventures, Killing, And Torture. So You Have To Whip Them Up. And To Whip Them Up You Have To Frighten Them.

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.

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.

The Crimes Against Palestinians In The Occupied Territories And Elsewhere, Particularly Lebanon, Are So Shocking That The Only Emotionally Valid Reaction Is Rage And A Call For Extreme Actions. But That Does Not Help The Victims. And, In Fact, It's Likely To Harm Them.

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

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

There Are Very Interesting Books About These Events, For Instance One By A Very Well-known American Historian Named William R. Polk Called Violent Politics. It's A Record Of What Are Basically Guerrilla Wars From The American Revolution Right Up Through The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq.

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. Tuition Fee Increases Are A Disciplinary Technique, And By The Time Students Graduate, They Are Not Only Loaded With Debt, But Have Also Internalized The Disciplinarian Culture. This Makes Them Efficient Components Of The Consumer Economy.

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.

Unaccountable Private Power Concentrations That Dominate Economic And Social Life Have The Means To Seek To "regiment The Public Mind," And Become "tools And Tyrants" Of Government, In James Madison's Memorable Phrase, As He Warned Of The Threats He Discerned To The Democratic Experiment If Private Powers Were Granted Free Rein.

The Dominant Propaganda Systems Have Appropriated The Term "globalization" To Refer To The Specific Version Of International Economic Integration That They Favor, Which Privileges The Rights Of Investors And Lenders, Those Of People Being Incidental. In Accord With This Usage, Those Who Favor A Different Form Of International Integration, Which Privileges The Rights Of Human Beings, Become "anti-globalist."

Democracy, In Any Rational Form, Also Imposes Conditions On Majority Rule. That's What The Bill Of Rights Is About, For Example.

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.

Human Physical Structures And Intellectual Structures Are Generally Studied In Different Ways. The Assumption Is That Physical Structures Are Genetically Inherited And Intellectual Structures Are Learned. I Think That This Assumption Is Wrong. None Of These Structures Is Learned. They All Grow; They Grow In Comparable Ways; Their Ultimate Forms Are Heavily Dependent On Genetic Predispositions.

I Hope That A Move Toward Clemency With Judge Afiuni Would Be A Step Towards The Importance Of Maintaining A Properly Functioning Justice System.

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.

Nothing Can Justify Crimes Such As Those Of September 11, But We Can Think Of The United States As An Innocent Victim Only If We Adopt The Convenient Path Of Ignoring The Record Of Its Actions And Those Of Its Allies, Which Are, After All, Hardly A Secret.

Independence Of Mind, Enthusiasm, Dedication To The Field, And Willingness To Challenge And Question And To Explore New Direction. There Are Plenty Of People Like That, But Schools Tend To Discourage Those Characteristics.

Israel Has A Couple Of Hundred Nuclear Weapons And Also Chemical And Biological Weapons. This Stockpile Is Not Only A Threat In Itself But Encourages Others To Proliferate In Reaction And In Self-defense. Is Anybody Saying Anything About This?

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?

Surely No Rational Or Realistic Person Will Discount The Possibility That [during Wartime] The United States Might Suddenly Resort To Nuclear Weapons. Those Who Retain The Instinct For Survival, Not To Speak Of Minimal Concern For Their Fellow Man, Will Seek Ways To Act Before Rather Than After The Event.

The Money In Politics Is A Cash Cow For The Media.

I Get Terrific Health Care.

Our Whole Educational And Cultural System Is Not Designed To Provide Those Intellectual Tools, So People Are Often Lost And The Internet Often Becomes Kind Of A Cult Generator.

As Far As Dsa Is Concerned, I'm Perfectly Happy To Be Associated With It While Disagreeing With A Large Part Of The Leadership.

It's Perfectly Obvious That There Is Some Genetic Factor That Distinguishes Humans From Other Animals And That It Is Language-specific. The Theory Of That Genetic Component, Whatever It Turns Out To Be, Is What Is Called Universal Grammar.

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.

I Think That Sooner Or Later The White Working-class Constituency Will Recognize, And In Fact, Much Of The Rural Population Will Come To Recognize, That The Trump's Promises Are Built On Sand. There Is Nothing There.

What Wikileaks Exposed Is Kind Of Superficial In A Way.

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