Background Image

...

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.

-Noam Chomsky

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

One Contribution Scientists Can

Noam Chomsky

...

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.

Views: 9

Topic

More From Noam Chomsky

The Whole Infrastructure Of Air Travel Was, And Is, Part Of Government Policy. It Is Not A Natural Development Of A Free Economic System - At Least Not In The Way That Is Claimed. The Same Is True Of The Roads, Of Course.

The Press Is Owned By Wealthy Men Who Only Want Certain Things To Reach The Public.

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.

Reparations - Not Just Aid - Should Be Provided By Those Responsible For Devastating Iraqi Civilian Society By Cruel Sanctions And Military Actions, And - Together With Other Criminal States - For Supporting Saddam Hussein Through His Worst Atrocities And Beyond. That Is The Minimum That Honesty Requires.

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.

The Responsibility Of The Writer As A Moral Agent Is To Try To Bring The Truth About Matters Of Human Significance To An Audience That Can Do Something About Them.

Tough Love Is Just The Right Phrase: Love For The Rich And Privileged, Tough For Everyone Else.

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

Nuclear Proliferation

The Criminalization Of Black Life Was Something Specific To The United States In The Post-reconstruction Period And There's Something Like It Happening Today With Mass Incarceration, Directed Largely Against Black Males.

The Question In Brief, Is Whether Democracy And Freedom Are Values To Be Preserved Or Threats To Be Avoided . . . Democracy And Freedom Are More Than Values To Be Treasured; They May Well Be Essential To Survival.

I Can Understand The Idea That There Is A Conspiracy. In Fact, In Much Of The World There Is A Sense Of An Ultra-powerful Cia Manipulating Everything That Happens, Such As Running The Arab Spring, Running The Pakistani Taliban, Etc. That Is Just Nonsense. They [cia] Created A Monster And Now They Are Appalled By It.

They [the Union] Were Members Of The Communist Party - They Didn't Care One Way Or Another About Russia, They Just Cared About The United States.

If You Claim To Have A Theory That Deduces Unexpected Consequences From Nontrivial Principles, Let's See It.

Historically, Several Policy Domains, Including That Of Foreign Policy Towards The Us And India, Budget Allocations Etc, Have Been Controlled By The Pakistani Military, And The Civil-military Divide Can Be Said To Be The Most Fundamental Fracture In Pakistan's Body Politic.

What's The Purpose Of Nato? Well Actually We Have An Official Answer. It Isn't Publicized Much, But A Couple Of Years Ago, The Secretary-general Of Nato Made A Formal Statement Explaining The Purpose Of Nato In The Post-cold War World Is To Control Global Energy Systems, Pipelines, And Sea Lanes. That Means It's A Global System And Of Course He Didn't Say It, It's An Intervention Force Under Us Command, As We've Seen In Case After Case. So That's Nato.

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.

For Fifty Years, We Heard Nato Is Necessary To Save Western Europe From The Russian Hordes, You Know The Slave State, Stuff I Was Taking About. In 1990-91, No Russian Hordes. Okay, What Happens? Well There Are Actually Visions Of The Future System That Were Presented. One Was [mikhail] Gorbachev. He Called For A Eurasian Security System, With No Military Blocs. He Called It A Common European Home. No Military Blocs, No Warsaw Pact. Just An Integrated Security System With No Conflicts.now The Other Vision Was Presented By George Bush, This Is The "statesman".

Security Systems

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.

Edward Said Is A Very Honorable Representative Of The "intellectual" In The Sense Of The Term That He Defines.

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

I Happen To Agree With The Anti-dictatorship Policies, But I Don't Think It's The Role Of General Electric To Support Them Or Oppose Them. They Do Of Course, But I Don't Agree With That.

Iran Is Independent And Independence Is Not Tolerated.

I Do Not Feel That We Should Set Up People As "models"; Rather Actions, Thoughts, Principles.

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.

Most Of Us Who Were Opposed To The War, Especially In The Early '60's - The War We Were Opposed To Was The War On South Vietnam Which Destroyed South Vietnam's Rural Society. The South Was Devastated. But Now Anyone Who Opposed This Atrocity Is Regarded As Having Defended North Vietnam. And That's Part Of The Effort To Present The War As If It Were A War Between South Vietnam And North Vietnam With The United States Helping The South. Of Course It's Fabrication. But It's "official Truth" Now.

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

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.

We Use The Official Definitions Of Terrorism. The Definitions In The U.s. Code, In British Law, In U.s. Army Manuals And So On. And If You Use Those Definitions It Follows Instantly That The United States Is The Leading Terrorist State In The World.

There Is A Kind Of Nonlinguistic Thought Going On Which We Are Trying To Represent In Language, And We Know That Sometimes We Fail.

Nixon At One Point Informs Kissinger . . . That He Wanted Bombing Of Cambodia. And Kissinger Loyally Transmits The Order To The Pentagon To Carry Out A Massive Bombing Campaign In Cambodia. Anything That Flies On Anything That Moves . . . Genocide.

To Use The Terms That Are Reserved For Official Enemies, It Is The Commissars And Apparatchiks, Not The Dissidents, Who Are Respected And Privileged Within Their Own Societies.

There's A Good Reason Why Nobody Studies History, It Just Teaches You Too Much.

Stability Means You Do What We Say, And What We Say Is That Colombia And The Resources Of The Andean Region Shall Be Freely Available To The Rich And Powerful Of The World, Particularly Us-based Multinational Corporations.

[donald] Trump Has Been Very Inconsistent On Many Things; On Twitter He's Been All Over The Place, But Some Of It Is Very Consistent. That Is: Do Nothing About Climate Change Except Make It Worse. And He's Not Just Speaking For Himself, But For The Whole Republican Party, The Whole Leadership. It's Already Had Impact, It Will Have Worse Impact.

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

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.

A Very Large Majority Of The U.s. Population Is In Favor Of Establishing Diplomatic Relations With Cuba And Has Been For A Long Time With Some Fluctuations. And Even Part Of The Business World Is In Favor Of It, Too. But The Government Won't Allow It.

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

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.

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

People Who Spend Their Working Hours In A Lab Or Research Library Or A Classroom Might Be Intent Primarily On Keeping Or Advancing Their Elite Positions, Thereby Lending Tacit Support To Power Structures. Or They Might Not Be.

Corporations Are Totalitarian Institutions. Board Of Directors At The Top Of Managers Give Orders, Everyone Follows Orders..... At The Very Bottom Of Command, If You Are Lucky You Can Rent Yourself To It And Get A Job , And If You Are Sufficiently Propagandized You May Even Buy Some Of The Junk They Produce And So On.

Right After 9-11, As Far As I Know, One Newspaper In The United States Had The Integrity To Investigate Opinion In The Muslim World: The 'wall Street Journal.'

Suppose That, Say, China Established Military Bases In Colombia To Carry Out Chemical Warfare In Kentucky And North Carolina To Destroy This Lethal Crop [tobacco] That Is Killing Huge Numbers Of Chinese.

Caterpillar Was Quite Important Because That Was The First Manufacturing Industry That Used Reaganite Strike-breaking Techniques. They Illegally Called In Scabs To Break A Major Strike. It Was Reported Pretty Well In The Chicago Tribune, Who Pointed Out Something Very Interesting. They Said That The Workers Got Very Little Support In Peoria When Scabs Illegally Broke The Strike, And That Was Particularly Striking Because That Whole Community Had Been Built Up By The Union - It Was A Union-based Community.

Marx's Early Manuscripts, With Their Roots In The Enlightenment And Romanticism, Derived Fundamental Concepts Such As Alienation From A Conception Of Human Nature - What We Would Call Genetically Determined.

Any Little Issue - Miss Universe, Or Whatever It May Be - [donald Trump] Is Completely Unpredictable, He'll Go Off Into Outer Space.

Obama's Latest Line Is That He Didn't Establish A "red Line" But The World Did Through Its Conventions On Chemical Warfare.

[there Is] Is All Part Of The Whole Neoliberal Shift In The Economy. But The Parties Have Shifted To The Right.

Fed And Electoral College Could Use Some Tinkering, But They Are Not The Source Of The Problems.

Latin America Is All Moving To The Left, From Venezuela To Argentina With Rare Exceptions, But There's A Good Left And A Bad Left.

Well Before September 11, It Was Understood That With Modern Technology, The Rich And Powerful Will Lose Their Near Monopoly Of The Means Of Violence And Can Expect To Suffer Atrocities On Home Soil.

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.

Industrial Production Of Meat Makes A Huge Contribution To Global Warming.

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

The Most Important Issues To Address Are The Truly Existential Threats We Face: Climate Change And Nuclear War. On The Former, The Republican Leadership, In Splendid Isolation From The World, Is Almost Unanimously Dedicated To Destroying The Chances For Decent Survival; Strong Words, But No Exaggeration. There Is A Great Deal That Can Be Done At The Local And State Level To Counter Their Malign Project.

One Of The Benefits Of A Properly Functioning Democracy Is Minority Rights And Majority Rule.

American Imperialism Has Suffered A Stunning Defeat In Indochina. But The Same Forces Are Engaged In Another War Against A Much Less Resilient Enemy, The American People. Here, The Prospects For Success Are Much Greater. The Battleground Is Ideological, Not Military. At Stake Are The Lessons To Be Drawn From The American War In Indochina; The Outcome Will Determine The Course And Character Of New Imperial Ventures.

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.

The Indoctrination Is So Deep That Educated People Think They’re Being Objective.

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.'

Expressing Criticism Of Society Is Not Being A Grouch.

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

As For The Various Religions, There's No Doubt That They Are Very Meaningful To Adherents, And Allow Them To Delude Themselves Into Thinking There Is Some Meaning To Their Lives Beyond What We Agree Is The Case. I'd Never Try To Talk Them Out Of The Delusions, Which Are Necessary For Them To Live A Life That Makes Some Sense To Them. These Beliefs Can Provide A Framework For Deeds That Are Noble Or Savage, And Anywhere In Between, And There's Every Reason To Focus Attention On The Deeds And The Background For Them, To The Extent That We Can Grasp It.

The Republican Primaries Were Quite Interesting. The Establishment Had Its Candidate, [mitt] Romney, A Kind Of A Wall Street Lawyer And Investor, And They Wanted Him In. But The Base Didn't Want Him.

The United States Is Unusual Among The Industrial Democracies In The Rigidity Of The System Of Ideological Control - 'indoctrination,' We Might Say - Exercised Through The Mass Media.

[donald Trump] Guru Steve Bannon Is Worse, He's Much Scarier. He Probably Knows What He's Doing.

What Has To Be Done Today Is (1) Large-scale Conversion (weatherizing , Etc.), (2) Sharp Change In Transportation To Greater Efficiency, Like High-speed Rail, (3) Serious Efforts To Move To Sustainable Energy, Probably Solar In The Somewhat Longer Term, (4) Other Adjustments That Are Feasible. If Done Effectively, That Might Be Enough To Stave Off Disaster. If Not, Then We Can Give Up The Ghost, Because There Are No Alternatives In This World, At Least None That I've Seen Suggested.

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.

Before The 1970s, Banks Were Banks. They Did What Banks Were Supposed To Do In A State Capitalist Economy: They Took Unused Funds From Your Bank Account, For Example, And Transferred Them To Some Potentially Useful Purpose Like Helping A Family Buy A Home Or Send A Kid To College.

In Some Respects, South African Apartheid Was More Vicious Than Israeli Practices, And In Some Respects The Opposite Is True.

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

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

When Britain And The U.s. Invaded Iraq, It Was With The Reasonable Expectation That It Was Going To Increase The Threat Of Terror, As It Has.

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

The Irish Were Treated Horribly, Even Here In Boston. For Example, In The Late Nineteenth Century They Were Treated Pretty Much Like African Americans. You Could Find Signs Here In Boston In The Restaurants Saying "no Dogs And Irish."

African American

The Us Is Also Unusual In The Enormous Scale Of Religious Fundamentalism. The Impact On Understanding Of The World Is Extraordinary. In National Polls Almost Half Of Those Surveyed Have Reported That They Believe That God Created Humans In Their Present Form 10,000 Years Ago (or Less) And That Man Shares No Common Ancestor With The Ape. There Are Similar Beliefs About The Second Coming.

[mikhail Bakunin] Expectations Were Generally Confirmed, Including His Prediction That Some Would Seek To Gain State Power On The Backs Of Popular Revolution, Then Constructing A "red Bureaucracy" That Would Be One Of The Worst Tyrannies In History, While Others Would Recognize That Power Lies Elsewhere And Would Serve As Its Apologists, Becoming Mystifies, "disablers," And Managers While Demanding The Right To Function In "technocratic Isolation," In World Bank Lingo.

Those Who Actually Do Have A Valid Claim To Such Special Competence Have A Particular Obligation To Make Very Clear To The General Public The Limits Of What Is Understood At Any Serious Level; These Limits Are Typically Very Narrow In Matters Of Significance In Human Affairs.

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

We Do Not For Example Say That The Person Has A Perfect Knowledge Of Some Language L Similar To English But Still Different From It. What We Say Is That The Child Or Foreigner Has A 'partial Knowledge Of English' Or Is 'on His Or Her Way' Towards Acquiring Knowledge Of English, And If They Reach This Goal, They Will Then Know English.

I've Been Interested In The Reports On Rojava. It Seems Clear That There Are Positive Developments.

It's True That Language Is In A Sense Linear But That Is As Obvious As Perceptual Space Is Three-dimensional.

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.

When I Was In High School I Asked Myself At One Point: "why Do I Care If My High School's Team Wins The Football Game? I Don't Know Anybody On The Team, They Have Nothing To Do With Me... Why Am I Here And Applaud? It Does Not Make Any Sense." But The Point Is, It Does Make Sense: It's A Way Of Building Up Irrational Attitudes Of Submission To Authority And Group Cohesion Behind Leadership Elements. In Fact It's Training In Irrational Jingoism. That's Also A Feature Of Competitive Sports.

U.s. Domestic Drug Policy Does Not Carry Out Its Stated Goals, And Policymakers Are Well Aware Of That. If It Isn't About Reducing Substance Abuse, What Is It About? It Is Reasonably Clear, Both From Current Actions And The Historical Record, That Substances Tend To Be Criminalized When They Are Associated With The So-called Dangerous Classes, That The Criminalization Of Certain Substances Is A Technique Of Social Control.

But On The Contrary Wikileaks Is Under Heavy Attack By The Government And Corporations Are Participating In That By Closing Down Their Websites.

The U.s. - The Idea That The U.s. Has Introduced And Imposed Principles Of International Law, That's Hardly Even A Joke. The United States Has Even Gone So Far As To Veto Security Council Resolutions Calling On All States To Observe International Law. That Was In The 1980s Under Reagan.

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.

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

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.

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.

Even Stalin Proclaimed His Love For Democracy. We Do Not Learn About The Nature Of Systems Of Power By Listening To Their Rhetoric.

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

As In The Past, The Costs And Risks Of The Coming Phases Of The Industrial Economy Were To Be Socialized, With Eventual Profits Privatized.

This Is Real. This Is The Real Mad Man Theory. We Have To Be Irrational And Vindictive, So People Don't Know What We're Up To. This Is Not [donald] Trump And [steve] Bannon, It's From The [bill] Clinton Era.

That's Our Nuclear Weapons Strategy [going To Frighten People], As Of The Early Post-cold War Years. And I Think This Is A Real Failure Of The Intellectual Community, Including Scholarship And The Media. It's Not Like You Had Headlines All Over The Place. And It's Not Secret, The Documents Are There. And I Think That's Probably The Right Picture.

There Are Women (some Men, Too, But Mostly Women) Who Are Going To The Occupied Palestinian Territories To Stand With The Victims Of Israeli Occupation. These Are Very Courageous Israeli Women And Some British And American Women. That's Something Quite New.

Israeli Occupation

I Don't Even Know If I Ever Knew - Some Sweatshop In Baltimore. I Knew With My Other Relatives - Some Of The Women Were In The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union And Men Were Shop Boys And Things Like That. I Happened To Be In Philadelphia, But The Family Was In New York. I Could See What The Union Was Doing For Them.it Really Saved Their Lives.

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.

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."

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.

One Of The Greatest Dangers Is Secular Religion - State Worship.

If You Want To Scare People, You Talk About Evil.

[according To The Rigid Dogma] We Have To Believe The United States Would Have So-called Liberated Iraq Even If Its Main Products Were Lettuce And Pickles And The Main Energy Resource Of The World Were In Central Africa.

September 11 Shocked Many Americans Into An Awareness That They Had Better Pay Much Closer Attention To What The Us Government Does In The World And How It Is Perceived. Many Issues Have Been Opened For Discussion That Were Not On The Agenda Before. That's All To The Good.

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?

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

Go Back To The Bible, The Old Testament. I Mean There Were People Who We Would Call Intelectuals, There, They Were Called Prophets, But They Were Basically Intelectuals: They Were People Who Were Doing Critical, Geopolitical Analysis, Talking About The Decisions Of The King Were Going To Lead To Destruction; Condemning Inmorality, Calling For Justice For Widows And Orphans. What We Would Call Dissident Intelectuals. Were They Nicely Treated? No, They Were Driven Into The Desert, They Were Imprisoned, They Were Denounced. They Were Intelectuals Who Conformed.

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.

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

Well, They Really Didn't Have To Worry, Because The Way Power Politics Works, The World Court Can't Do Anything. Look, There's One Country In The World At The Moment Which Has Refused To Accept World Court Decision-that's The United States. Is Anybody Going To Do Anything About It?

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.

The Military Has A Huge Role In The Economy [of Pakistan] With Big Stakes And, As You Say, It Has Constantly Intervened To Make Sure That It Keeps Its Hold On Policy Making. Well, I Hope, And There Seem To Be Some Signs, That The Military Is Taking A Backseat, Not Really In The Economy, But In Some Of The Policy Issues. If That Can Continue, Which Perhaps It Will, This Will Be A Positive Development.

By Most Accounts, Aristide Is The Most Popular Figure In Haiti.

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

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

I Don't Claim To Know A Lot About Mexico, But I Did Talk To Quite A Number Of Left Mexican Intelectuals, And They All Said The Same Thing. That There's A Lot Of Popular, Kind Of, Concern And Activism, But It Is Very Fragmented. That The Groups Have Very Specific, Narrow Agendas And They Don't Interact And Cooperate With One Another. Ok, That's Something You Have To Overcome To Build A Mass Popular Movement. And That's, Media Can Help, But They Also Benefit From It.

If Commissars In Soviet Russia Agreed To Subordinate Themselves To State Power, They Could At Least Plead Fear In Extenuation. Their Counterparts In More Free And Open Societies Can Plead Only Cowardice.

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

Clinton, Kennedy, They All Carried Out Mass Murder, But They Didn't Think That That Was What They Were Doing - Nor Does Bush. You Know, They Were Defending Justice And Democracy From Greater Evils.

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.

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

Putting It In Plain Terms, The General Public Must Be Reduced To Its Traditional Apathy And Obedience, And Driven From The Arena Of Political Debate And Action, If Democracy Is To Survive.

Peter Kropotkin Was Surely On The Left. He Was One Of The Founders Of What Is Now Called 'sociobiology' Or 'evolutionary Psychology' With His Book Mutual Aid, Arguing That Human Nature Had Evolved In Ways Conducive To The Communitarian Anarchism That He Espoused.

Most Of What Is Done I Think Is To Kept Secret So The Public Won't Know. The Same Is True Of What Wikileaks Exposed.

One Of The Christian Fundamentalists' Goals Seems To Be To Rebuild The Temple, Which Means Destroying The Al-aqsa Mosque, Which Presumably Means War With The Arab World - One Of The Goals, Perhaps, In Fulfilling The Prophecy Of Armageddon. So They Strongly Support Israeli Power And Expansionism, And Help Fund It And Lobby For It; But They Also Support Actions That Are Very Harmful And Objectionable To Most Of Its Population - As Do Jewish Fundamentalist Groups, Mostly Rooted In The Us, Which, After All, Is One Of The Most Extreme Religious Fundamentalist Societies In The World.

By Accident Of Geography, The World's Major Oil Resources Are In Shi'ite-dominated Areas. Iran's Oil Is Concentrated Right Near The Gulf, Which Happens To Be An Arab Area, Not Persian. Khuzestan Is Arab, Has Been Loyal To Iran, Fought With Iran Not Iraq During The Iran-iraq War. This Is A Potential Source Of Dissension. I Would Be Amazed If There Isn't An Attempt Going On To Stir Up Secessionist Elements In Khuzestan.

It Was During The Reagan Years That Defiance Of International Law And The U.n. Charter Became Entirely Open.

We Have To Be Irrational And Vindictive, Because That's Going To Frighten People. And We Have To Maintain This For Years. And Then We'll Be Able To Carry Out The Actions That We Want To Carry Out.

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.

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.

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

South Africa, With Us Support, After The Fall Of The Portuguese Empire, Invaded Angola And Mozambique To Establish Their Own Puppet Regime There. They Were Trying To Protect Namibia, To Protect Apartheid, And Nobody Did Much About It; But The Cubans Sent Forces, And Furthermore They Sent Black Soldiers And They Defeated A White Mercenary Army, Which Not Only Rescued Angola But It Sent A Shock Throughout The Continent-it Was A Psychic Shock-white Mercenaries Were Purported To Be Invincible, And A Black Army Defeated Them And Sent Them Back Fleeing Into South Africa.

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

In The Late 19th Century There Was A Major Union Organization, Knights Of Labor, And Also A Radical Populist Movement Based On Farmers. It's Hard To Believe, But It Was Based In Texas, And It Was Quite Radical. They Wanted Their Own Banks, Their Own Cooperatives, Their Own Control Over Sales And Commerce.

If Some Small Storekeeper Somewhere Decides He's Not Going To Pay The Money, The Godfather Doesn't Let Him Get Away With It. The Money Doesn't Mean Anything To Him, But He Sends In His Goons To Beat Him To A Pulp. You Have To Establish Credibility, Otherwise Conformity To Your Orders Will Tend To Erode. International Affairs Runs In Much The Same Way.

My Linguistics Is Pretty Theoretical.

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.

The Internet Is Something Created Largely By Public Funding.

Nobody Can Successfully Defy The Master Of The Hemisphere [america], In Fact Of The World, Hence The Savagery.

If You Are Working 50 Hours A Week In A Factory, You Don't Have Time To Read 10 Newspapers A Day And Go Back To Declassified Government Archives. But Such People May Have Far-reaching Insights Into The Way The World Works.

The Beam In Our Own Eye Is Harder To Detect, Although - Or More Accurately Because - To Detect It, And Remove It, Is Vastly More Important On Elementary Moral Grounds, And Commonly More Important In Terms Of Direct Human Consequences As Well. Intellectuals Have Historically Played A Critical Function In Performing These Tasks, And [ivan] Illich Is Right To Observe That Claims To Scientific Expertise And Special Knowledge Are Often Used As A Device.

[francisco Franco] Said They Should Resort To Guerrilla War. Which Has A History In Spain.

In The Academic World, Most Of The Work That Is Done Is Clerical. A Lot Of The Work Done By Professors Is Routine.

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.

Somehow The Fact Of Enormous Privilege And Freedom Carries With It A Sense Of Impotence, Which Is A Strange, But Striking, Phenomenon. The Fact Is, We Can Do Just About Anything. There Is No Difficulty, Wherever You Are, In Finding Groups That Are Working Hard On Things That Concern You.

In The Primary Debates For The 2016 Election, Every Single Republican Candidate Was A Climate Change Denier, With One Exception, John Kasich - The "rational Moderate" - Who Said It May Be Happening But We Shouldn't Do Anything About It. For A Long Time, The Media Have Downplayed The Issue.

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.

The Republican Establishment, The Mainstream Corporate Financial Wealth, Is Getting To A Point Where It Can't Control The Base It's Mobilized.

The Answer To Subversion Of Democracy Is More Democracy, More Freedom, More Justice.

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

In Ideal Form Of Social Control Is An Atomised Collection Of Individuals Focused On Their Own Narrow Concern, Lacking The Kinds Of Organisations In Which They Can Gain Information, Develop And Articulate Their Thoughts, And Act Constructively To Achieve Common Ends.

There Was Also A National Policy, Which As A Child I Didn't Know Anything About. In 1924 The First Major Immigration Law Was Passed. Before That, There Was An Oriental Exclusion Act, But Other Than That, European Immigrants Like My Parents Were Generally Admitted In The Early Years Of The Twentieth Century. But That Ended In 1924 With An Immigration Law That Was Largely Directed Against Jews And Italians.

People Tend To Rally Around Power.

Free Speech Has Been Used By The Supreme Court To Give Immense Power To The Wealthiest Members Of Our Society.

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.

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.

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

Anywhere In Latin America There Is A Potential Threat Of The Pathology Of Caudillismo And It Has To Be Guarded Against.

Modern China; One Also Finds Many Things That Are Really Quite Admirable.

Universities Are Less Constrained By Authority And Rigid Doctrine In The United States Than In Most Other Societies, To My Knowledge.

The Whole Educational And Professional Training System Is A Very Elaborate Filter, Which Just Weeds Out People Who Are Too Independent, And Who Think For Themselves, And Who Don't Know How To Be Submissive, And So On -- Because They're Dysfunctional To The Institutions.

The Rise Of What's Called Islamic Fundamentalism Is To A Significant Extent A Result Of The Collapse Of Secular Nationalist Alternatives Which Were Either Discredited Internally Or Destroyed, Leaving Few Other Options. Something Like That May Be True Of American Society.

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.

It Is The Worst Atrocity Underway [in Rwanda]. But It's Barely In The Media, And People Just Don't Know About It. And That's Quite Generally True.

In Fact, Various Lawyers' Groups - To Some Extent In The U.s. But Mostly In England And Canada And Elsewhere - Are Bringing Demands For A War Crimes Trial For The Crime Of Aggression. However, Though The Invasion Of Iraq Was Plainly An Act Of Aggression, It Doesn't Break Any Records.

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.

That Intellectuals, Including Academics, Would Become A "new Class" Of Technocrats, Claiming The Name Of Science While Cooperating With The Powerful, Was Predicted By [mikhail] Bakunin In The Early Days Of The Formation Of The Modern Intelligentsia In The 19th Century.

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.

Desktop Publishing Was A Big Innovation That Meant Small Groups Or Even Poor Societies Could Do Their Own Publication Without The Capital Investment In A Major Printing Press. That's A Big Difference. Same Is True Of More Advanced Technologies - It Can Offer Plenty Of Liberatory Possibilities - Can - But Whether It Does Or Not Or Whether It Serves For Coercion Depends On Socioeconomic Decisions.

Colombia Was A Big Wheat Producer In The 1950's. That Was Eliminated By What Sounds Like A Nice Plan, Called "food For Peace. " It's A Plan By Which Us Taxpayers Subsidized Us Agribusiness To Send Food To Poor Countries. This, Of Course, Destroyed The Domestic Agricultural Markets Of These Countries, Opening These Markets To Us Agribusiness.

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.

Intellectuals Are In A Position To Expose The Lies Of Governments, To Analyze Actions According To Their Causes And Motives And Often Hidden Intentions.

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

The Country That Consistently Ranks Among The Highest In Educational Achievement Is Finland. A Rich Country, But Education Is Free. Germany, Education Is Free. France, Education Is Free.

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

[james] Madison Pointed Out In The Discussion Of The Constitutional Debates - The Constitutional Convention - That Democracy Would Be A Danger. He Used England Of Course As The Model And Said Suppose That In England Everyone Had The Free Right To Vote; The Poor, The Propertyless - Who Are The Great Majority - Would Use Their Voting Power To Take Away The Rights Of Property Owners To Carry Out What We Would Call Land Reform.

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

Public Opinion Can Be Influential, The Media Can Be Influential.

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.

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

To Say That The United States Has Pursued Diplomacy With North Korea Is A Little Bit Misleading. It Did Under The Clinton Administration, Though Neither Side Completely Lived Up To Their Obligations. Clinton Didn't Do What Was Promised, Nor Did North Korea, But They Were Making Progress. So When Bush Came Into The Presidency, North Korea Had Enough Uranium Or Plutonium For Maybe One Or Two Bombs, But Then Very Limited Missile Capacity. During The Bush Years It's Exploded. The Reason Is, He Immediately Canceled The Diplomacy And He's Pretty Much Blocked It Ever Since.

History Records Endless Struggles To Enlarge Those Realms, Inspiring Ones; It Also Records Painful Reversals And Setbacks.

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

That Is What I Have Always Understood To Be The Essence Of Anarchism: The Conviction That The Burden Of Proof Has To Be Placed On Authority, And That It Should Be Dismantled If That Burden Cannot Be Met.

Burden Of Proof

Unlimited Economic Growth Has The Marvelous Quality Of Stilling Discontent While Maintaining Privilege, A Fact That Has Not Gone Unnoticed Among Liberal Economists.

If You're In Favour Of Any Policy - Reform, Revolution, Stability, Regression, Whatever - If You're At Least Minimally Moral, It's Because You Think It's Somehow Good For People. And Good For People Means Conforming To Their Fundamental Nature.

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

The Change Between Horse And Buggy To Automobile Is A Big Change And There Hasn't Been A Major Change Since.

It Seems Self-evident That We Should Want People To Be Free, To Be Able To Play An Active Part In Making Decisions About Matters Of Concern To Them, To The Largest Possible Extent.

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.

There Is No Reason To Believe ... That The "essential Purpose" Of Language Is "communication". Language Can Be Used To Transmit Information, But It Also Serves Many Other Purposes: To Establish Relations Among People, To Express Or Clarify Thought, For Play, For Creative Mental Activity, To Gain Understanding, And So On. In My Opinion, There Is No Reason To Accord Privileged Status To One Or The Other Of These Modes.

I Have No Facebook Page Or Twitter - I Don't Participate In It, And I Don't Like It Particularly. I Mean, It's A Form Of Interaction, Which Strikes Me As Extremely Superficial.

What Can One Say About A Country Where A Museum Of Science In A Great City Can Feature An Exhibit In Which People Fire Machine Guns From A Helicopter At Vietnamese Huts, With A Light Flashing When A Hit Is Scored? What Can One Say About A Country Where Such An Idea Can Even Be Considered? You Have To Weep For This Country.

Moves Toward Sovereignty In Iraq Stimulate Pressures First For Human Rights Among The Bitterly Repressed Shi'ite Population But Also Toward Some Degree Of Autonomy. You Can Imagine A Kind Of A Loose Shi'ite Alliance In Iraq, Saudi Arabia, And Iran, Controlling Most Of The World's Oil And Independent Of The United States. And Much Worse, Although Europe Can Be Intimidated By The United States, China Can't. It's One Of The Reasons, The Main Reasons, Why China Is Considered A Threat. We're Back To The Mafia Principle.

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

A Default Of The Us Government Would Not Only Be Very Harmful Here, It Would Probably Send The Country Back Into Deep Recession, But It Just Might Crash The International Financial System.

When People Know We Are Ready To Use Nuclear Weapons, They're Going To Back Off If We Do Something Aggressive. So Basically, Nuclear Weapons Are Always Being Used.

Trending Author

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Category