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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."

-Noam Chomsky

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The Dominant Propaganda Systems

Noam Chomsky

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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."

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Biblical Archaeology Was Developed Early In This Century In An Effort To Substantiate The Authenticity Of The Biblical Account. It's By Now Generally Recognized In Biblical Scholarship That It Has Done The Opposite. The Bible Is Not A Historical Text, And Has Only Vague Resemblances To What Took Place, As Far As Can Be Reconstructed. For Example, Whether Israel Ever Existed Is Not Clear; If So, It Was Probably A Small Kingdom Somewhere In The Hills, Apparently Virtually Unknown To The Egyptians.

Reagan Was Extreme. Beginning Of His Administration, One Of The First Things Was To Call In Scabs - Hadn't Been Done For A Long Time, And It's Illegal In Most Countries - In The Air Controller Strike.

When [bill] Clinton Came Along, It Sort Of Moderated A Little Bit, But Clinton Had A Different Device For Breaking Unions Called Nafta [north America Free Trade Agreement]. Because The Government Was Entirely Lawless, Employers Could Exploit Nafta To Threaten Union Organizers With Transfer. It's Illegal, But When You've Got A Lawless Government, It Doesn't Matter If It's Illegal. I Think The Number Of Union Drives Blocked Increased By About 50 Percent.

Debt Is A Trap, Especially Student Debt, Which Is Enormous, Far Larger Than Credit Card Debt. It’s A Trap For The Rest Of Your Life Because The Laws Are Designed So That You Can’t Get Out Of It. If A Business, Say, Gets In Too Much Debt It Can Declare Bankruptcy, But Individuals Can Almost Never Be Relieved Of Student Debt Through Bankruptcy.

Iceland Is Capitalist Social Democratic, Rather Like The Nordic Countries Generally. The Capital Had A Mayor Who Is An Anarchist, But The City Has Been Nothing Like That. In Fact A Few Years Ago It Was Super-neoliberal, Which Led To The Crash.

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

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

Concision Is A Technique Of Propaganda. It Ensures You Cannot Do Anything Except Repeat Clichés, The Standard Doctrine, Or Sound Like A Lunatic.

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.

Those Lucky Enough To Qualify As "intellectuals" Have Their Own Special Responsibilities, Deriving From Their Good Fortune. Among These Is The Task That [edward] Said Describes, Surely An Important One.

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.

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

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

Governments Don't Control People Like They Used To.

Venezuela Is Independent. It's Diversifying Its Exports To A Limited Extent, Instead Of Just Being Dependent On Exports To The United States. And It's Initiating Moves Toward Latin American Integration And Independence. It's What They Call A Bolivarian Alternative And The United States Doesn't Like Any Of That.

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.

We're Looking At The Dawn Of A New Arms Race. For Example, Germany Technically Opposes The Us Space Militarization Program, But Is Bound To Get Involved. Otherwise It Will Be Left Behind In The Development Of Advanced Technology. Germany Understands That Very Well. The Us Understands It Too, And They Fully Expect That Germany And Other Countries That They Want On Board Will Go Along With The Program.

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

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

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.

Free Markets Are Based On The Free Circulation Of Labor. If You Don't Have Free Circulation Of Labor, You Don't Have Free Markets.

I Remember Talking To, 40 Years Ago, One Of The Leading People In The Government Who Was Involved In Arms Control, Pressing For Arms Control Measures, Détente, And So On. He's Very High Up, And We Were Talking About Whether Arms Control Could Succeed. And Only Partially As A Joke He Said, "well It Might Succeed If The High Tech Industry Makes More Profit From Arms Control Than It Can Make From Weapons-related Research And Production. If We Get To That Tipping Point Maybe Arms Control Will Work." He Was Partially Joking But There's A Truth That Lies Behind It.

My Speculation Is That The U.s. Does Not Want To Establish The Principle That It Has To Defer To Some Higher Authority Before Carrying Out The Use Of Violence.

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.

Worker Ownership Within A State Capitalist, Semi-market System Is Better Than Private Ownership But It Has Inherent Problems. Markets Have Well-known Inherent Inefficiencies. They're Very Destructive.

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

Citizenship Means Every Four Years You Put A Mark Somewhere And You Go Home And Let Other Guys Run The World. It's A Very Destructive Ideology.

...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.

As The Capacity To Coerce Declines, It Is Natural To Turn To Control Of Opinion As The Basis For Authority And Domination - A Fundamental Principle Of Government Already Emphasized By David Hume.

You Can't Mention Hezbollah In The U.s. Media Without Putting In The Context Of "iranian-supported Hezbollah." That's Its Name. Its Name Is Iranian-supported Hezbollah. It Gets Iranian Support. But You Can Mention Israel Without Saying Us-supported Israel. So This Is More Tacit Propaganda.

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

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

Our Concern Is To Help People Counter The Efforts Of Those Who Seek To "regiment The Public Mind Every Bit As Much As An Army Regiments The Bodies Of Its Soldiers," So That The Self-designated "responsible Men" Will Be Able To Run The Affairs Of The World Untroubled By The "bewildered Herd" - The General Public - Who Are To Be Marginalized And Dispersed, Directed To Personal Concerns, In A Well-regulated "democracy."

It's Necessary To Address The Concerns And Beliefs Of Those Who Are Taken In By The Fraud, Or Who Don't Recognize The Nature And Significance Of The Issues For Other Reasons. If By Philosophy We Mean Reasoned And Thoughtful Analysis, Then It Can Address The Moment, Though Not By Confronting The "alternative Facts" But By Analyzing And Clarifying What Is At Stake, Whatever The Issue Is. Beyond That, What Is Needed Is Action: Urgent And Dedicated, In The Many Ways That Are Open To Us.

I Am Thinking Of Actual Cases Of Adolescents, Lets Say, Who Think They Have Five Hundred Friends, Because There Are Five Hundred People On Their Facebook Account. But These Are The Kind Of Friends Whose Relation To You Is That If You Say 'i Bought A Sandwich'; They Say 'did It Taste Good?' You Know, That's A Kind Of Interaction, But Very Different To Having A Real Friend, Somebody Who You Can Actually Talk To.

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.

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

Colombia Has Been The Leading Western Recipient Of U.s. Arms And Training As Violence Has Grown Through The '90s.

There Is A Considerable Polarization Taking Place Here, Increasing The Gap Between Rich And Poor. It's Most Dramatic In Third World Countries, Of Course, But In The Rich Countries It's Also Very Noticeable.

You've Just Got To Get People Organized And Tell Them The Truth. There Aren't Any Magic Tricks To It. You Know, Sometimes It's Pretty Amazing. Actually, I Mentioned A Pretty Striking Case Of This In "crisis And Hope," Which Was The Caterpillar Case In The Early 1990s.

As For Organs, Traits, Etc., Being "for" Something, The Notion May Be A Useful Shorthand, But Shouldn't Be Taken Too Seriously, If Only Because Of The Ubiquitous Phenomenon Of Exaptation.

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

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

. . . Among All Grammars Meeting This Condition (of Adequacy), We Select The Simplest.

The Major Organizing Centers, Like The Labor Movement, Have Been Severely Weakened In The United States By Policy.

There Are Plenty Of Things That Are Unknown, But Are Assumed Reasonably To Exist, Even In The Most Basic Sciences. Maybe 90 Percent Of The Mass-energy In The Universe Is Called "dark," Because Nobody Knows What It Is.

Every Wave Of Immigrants Who Came [to America] Were Treated Pretty Badly, But When They All Finally Became Integrated, All Of Us Became Anglo-saxons.

Just Media Alone Is Not Enough. You Have To Have Organization.

I Have Often Thought That If A Rational Fascist Dictatorship Were To Exist, Then It Would Choose The American System.

...if You Ask Me Whether Or Not I'm An Atheist, I Wouldn't Even Answer. I Would First Want An Explanation Of What It Is That I'm Supposed Not To Believe In, And I've Never Seen An Explanation.

In Western Europe, Turkey Is Regarded As Uncivilized, So They Can't Come In Into The European Union Until They're Civilized. I Think It's The Other Way Around. If You Could Achieve The Level Of Civilization Of, Say, Turkish Intelectuals, It Would Be Quite An Achievement.

If We Don't Believe In Free Expression For People We Despise, We Don't Believe In It At All.

All Public Resources Go To The Rich. The Poor, If They Can Survive In The Labor Market, Fine. Otherwise, They Die. That's Economics In A Nutshell.

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

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.

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.

In Fact, For The Majority Of The Population, Wages And Incomes Have Stagnated And Conditions Have Gotten Worse. So They Are Asking, "what Did I Do Wrong?" And The Answer That The Talk Show Host Is Giving Them Is Convincing, In It's Internal Logic. It's Saying, "what's Wrong Is The Rich Liberals Own Everything, Run Everything, They Don't Care About You; Therefore, Distrust Them" And So On.

Pakistan Just Cannot Survive If It Continues To Do So (continue This Confrontation With India).

When I Arrived In Laos And Found Young Americans Living There, Out Of Free Choice, I Was Surprised. After Only A Week, I Began To Have A Sense Of The Appeal Of The Country And Its People - Along With Despair About Its Future.

The Whole Intelectual Culture Has A Filtering System, Starts As A Child In School. You're Expected To Accept Certain Beliefs, Styles, Behavioral Patterns And So On. If You Don't Accept Them, You Are Called Maybe A Behavioral Problem, Or Something, And You're Weeded Out. Something Like That Goes On All The Way Through Universities And Graduate Schools. There Is An Implicit System Of Filtering, Which Has The, It Creates A Strong Tendency To Impose Conformism. Now, It's A Tendency, So You Do Have Exceptions, And Sometimes The Exceptions Are Quite Striking.

A Woman Was The Property Of Her Father Or Her Husband And That Remained True Right Into The Twentieth Century. It Wasn't Until 1975 That Women Had A Guaranteed Right To Serve On Federal Juries.

[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.

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.

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.

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.

U.s. Analysts Estimate That Russian Military Expenditures Have Tripled During The Bush-putin Years, In Large Measure A Predicted Reaction To The Bush Administration's Militancy And Aggressiveness.

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.

When Israelis In The Occupied Territories Now Claim That They Have To Defend Themselves, They Are Defending Themselves In The Sense That Any Military Occupier Has To Defend Itself Against The Population They Are Crushing. You Can't Defend Yourself When You're Militarily Occupying Someone Else's Land. That's Not Defense. Call It What You Like, It's Not Defense.

There Was A Free Election In Palestine, But It Came Out The Wrong Way. So Instantly, The United States And Israel With Europe Tagging Along, Moved To Punish The Palestinian People, And Punish Them Harshly, Because They Voted The Wrong Way In A Free Election. That's Accepted Here In The West As Perfectly Normal. That Illustrates The Deep Hatred And Contempt For Democracy Among Western Elites, So Deep-seated They Can't Even Perceive It When It's In Front Of Their Eyes. You Punish People Severely If They Vote The Wrong Way In A Free Election.

The Educational System Is Pretty Much Geared To Passing The Next Exam. You're Educated To Pass Tests And Not To Understand.

The Intellectual World Is Deeply Conformist... We Talk A Lot About The Crimes Of Others. When It Comes To Our Own Crimes, We Are Nationalists In The Orwellian Sense.

... The Media Serve The Interests Of State And Corporate Power, Which Are Closely Interlinked, Framing Their Reporting And Analysis In A Manner Supportive Of Established Privilege And Limiting Debate And Discussion Accordingly.

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.

I Get Terrific Health Care.

The Capacity To Transfer Production Elsewhere Is A Weapon Against The Western Workers.

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.

Extensive Violations Of Human Rights (torture, Forced Reduction Of Living Standards For Much Of The Population, Police-sponsored Death Squads, Destruction Of Representative Institutions Or Of Independent Unions, Etc.) Are Directly Correlated With Us Government Support. The Linkage Is Not Accidental; Rather It Is Systematic. The Reason Is Obvious Enough. Client Fascism Often Improves The Business Climate For American Corporations, Quite Generally The Guiding Factor In Foreign Policy.

Violation Of Human Rights

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

Anarcho-capitalism, In My Opinion, Is A Doctrinal System Which, If Ever Implemented, Would Lead To Forms Of Tyranny And Oppression That Have Few Counterparts In Human History. There Isn't The Slightest Possibility That Its (in My View, Horrendous) Ideas Would Be Implemented, Because They Would Quickly Destroy Any Society That Made This Colossal Error. The Idea Of 'free Contract' Between The Potentate And His Starving Subject Is A Sick Joke, Perhaps Worth Some Moments In An Academic Seminar Exploring The Consequences Of (in My View, Absurd) Ideas, But Nowhere Else.

It's As If We're Higher Apes Who Had A Language Faculty Inserted.

...free Enterprise, [is] A Term That Refers, In Practice, To A System Of Public Subsidy And Private Profit, With Massive Government Intervention In The Economy To Maintain A Welfare State For The Rich.

A Good American Friend Of Mine Who Has Lived In India For Many Years, Working As A Journalist, Was Recently Denied Entry To The Country Because He Wrote On Kashmir. This Is A Reflection Of Fractures Within Society. Pakistan, Too, Has To Focus On The Lashkar [lashkar-i-taiba] And Other Similar Groups And Work Towards Some Sort Of Sensible Compromise On Kashmir.

Cuba Forces In Angola Gave A Real Shot In The Arm To The Liberation Movements, And It Also Was A Lesson To The White South Africans That The End Is Coming. They Can't Just Hope To Subdue The Continent On Racist Grounds.

Virtually All Informed Observers Agree That A Fair And Equitable Resolution Of The Plight Of The Palestinians Would Considerably Weaken The Anger And Hatred Of Israel And The Us In The Arab And Muslim Worlds - And Far Beyond, As International Polls Reveal. Such An Agreement Is Surely Within Reach, If The Us And Israel Depart From Their Long-standing Rejectionism.

I Think A Very Important Aspect Of Language Has To Do With The Establishment Of Social Relations And Interactions. Often, This Is Described As Communication. But That Is Very Misleading, I Think.

Another Problem Is The Confrontation With India. Pakistan Just Cannot Survive If It Continues To Do So (continue This Confrontation).

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.

Passivity May Be The Easy Course, But It Is Hardly The Honorable One.

Finally Irish Were Accepted Into Society And Became Part Of The Political System, And There Were Kennedys, And So On. But The Same Is True About Other Waves Of Immigrants, Like The Jews In The 1950s.

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?

Judge Afiuni Has Suffered Enough. She Has Been Subject To Acts Of Violence And Humiliations To Undermine Her Human Dignity. I Am Convinced That She Must Be Set Free.

If Anybody Thinks They Should Listen To Me Because I'm A Professor At Mit, That's Nonsense. You Should Decide Whether Something Makes Sense By Its Content, Not By The Letters After The Name Of The Person Who Says It.

Students Typically Are At A Period Of Their Lives When They're More Free Than At Any Other Time. They're Out Of Parental Control. They're Not Yet Burdened By The Needs Of Trying To Put Food On The Table In A Pretty Repressive Environment, Often, And They're Free To Explore, To Create, To Invent, To Act, And To Organize. Over And Over Through The Years, Student Activism Has Been Extremely Significant In Initiating And Galvanizing Major Changes. I Don't See Any Reason For That To 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.

The Republicans Went So Far To The Right That They Just Can't Get Votes. They've Become A Dedicated Party Of The Very Rich And The Corporate Sector.

From Now On I Will Consider A Language To Be A Set (finite Or Infinite) Of Sentences, Each Finite In Length And Constructed Out Ofa Finite Set Of Elements. All Natural Languages In Their Spoken Or Written Form Are Languages In This Sense.

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

My Own Feeling Is That One Should Refuse To Participate In Any Activity That Implements American Aggression - Thus Tax Refusal, Draft Refusal, Avoidance Of Work That Can Be Used By The Agencies Of Militarism And Repression, All Seem To Me Essential.

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 Childcare Tax Credit Makes Some Sense.

Humans May Be Destroying Their Chances For Decent Survival. It Won't Kill Everybody, But It Would Change The World Dramatically.

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

...the Mass Media. What Are They? They're Huge Corporations, Massive Corporations, Linked Up With Even Bigger Corporations. They Sell Audiences To Other Businesses, Namely Advertisers. So When You Turn On The Television Set, Cbs Doesn't Make Any Money. They Make Money From The Advertisers. You're The Product That They're Selling, And The Same Is True Of The Daily Newspaper. They're Huge Corporations, Selling Audiences, Potential Consumers, To Other Businesses, All Linked Up Closely To The Government, Especially The Big Media. What Picture Of The World Do You Expect Them To Present?

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

A More Appropriate Expansion Is The Statement "it Is The Responsibility Of Intellectuals To Speak The Truth And Expose Lies" A Transcript Of A Talk To A Writers Conference In Australia In 1996, Where I Had Been Asked To Talk On "writers And Intellectual Responsibility" - A Question That I Said I Found "puzzling," Because I Knew Of Nothing To Say About It Beyond Truisms, Though These Were Perhaps Worth Affirming Because They Are "so Commonly Denied, If Not In Words, Then In Consistent Practice."

Those Who Wish To Change The World Should Have The Best Possible Understanding Of The World, Including What Is Revealed By The Sciences, Some Of Which They Might Be Able To Use For Their Purposes. That's Why Workers Education, Including Science And Mathematics, Has Commonly Been A Concern Of Left Intellectuals.

I Think It Only Makes Sense To Seek Out And Identify Structures Of Authority, Hierarchy, And Domination In Every Aspect Of Life, And To Challenge Them; Unless A Justification For Them Can Be Given, They Are Illegitimate, And Should Be Dismantled, To Increase The Scope Of Human Freedom.

The Syntactic Component Of A Grammar Must Specify, For Each Sentence, A Deep Structure That Determines Its Semantic Interpretationand A Surface Structure That Determines Its Phonetic Interpretation.

Hypocrites Are Those Who Apply To Others The Standards That They Refuse To Accept For Themselves.

The Internet Could Be A Very Positive Step Towards Education, Organisation And Participation In A Meaningful Society.

Technology Can Be Used That Way And It Can Also Be Used In Other Ways.

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

The People Of The Third World Need Our Sympathetic Understanding And, Much More Than That, They Need Our Help. We Can Provide Them With A Margin Of Survival By Internal Disruption In The United States. Whether They Can Succeed Against The Kind Of Brutality We Impose On Them Depends In Large Part On What Happens Here.

Our Current Prison State Has The Dual Effect Of Getting Rid Of A Superfluous Population Of Basically Unskilled Workers (with A Close Race-class Correlation), And Also Demonizing Them... The Drug War Is Basically For This - It Has Nothing To Do With Drugs, But It Has Plenty To Do With Criminalizing An Unwanted Population And Scaring Everybody Else.

In A Really Business-run Society Like The United States, The Business Elites Are Deeply Committed To Class Struggle And Are Engaged In It All The Time. They're Instinctive Marxists.

You Can Imagine A Different World In Which A Number Of Species Developed With Different Genetically Determined Linguistic Systems. It Hasn't Happened In Evolution. What Has Happened Is That One Species Has Developed, And The Genetic Structure Of This Species Happens To Involve A Variety Of Intricate Abstract Principles Of Linguistic Organization That, Therefore, Necessarily Constrain Every Language, And, In Fact, Create The Basis For Learning Language As A Way Of Organizing Experience Rather Than Constituting Something Learned From Experience.

If You Want To Find Weapons Of Destruction, You Can Find Them All Over The Place. Take, Say, Israel. There Is A Very Great Concern Right Now About Proliferation Of Nuclear Weapons, As There Should Be. 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?

The Worst Terrorist Crimes Going On Right Now Are The Drone Campaigns.

The Whole Basis For The Us Intervention In Colombia Is Outrageously Racist And Arrogant.

The European Reaction To Obama Is A European Delusion.

The Us And Europe Are Committing Suicide In Different Ways. In Europe It's Austerity In The Midst Of Recession And That's Guaranteed To Be A Disaster. There's Some Resistance To That Now. In The Us, It's Essentially Off-shoring Production And Financialization And Getting Rid Of Superfluous Population Through Incarceration.

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.

By That Time [1966], We Did Begin To Get Some Protests [against Vietnam War]. But Not From Liberal Intellectuals; They Never Opposed The War.

There Are Some Very General Ideas That People Can Keep In Mind; They're Kind Of Truisms. It's Only Worth Mentioning Them Because They're Always Denied.

I Think The Christian Coalition Could Be Extremely Dangerous. We Should Always Be Concerned When Any Group Wants To Impose Their Doctrinal Concerns On All. To An Extent That's What They Are Trying To Do.

Somebody Puts Up Some Weird Thing And Somebody Else Thinks Yeah Maybe That's The Way Things Work And Pretty Soon You Have Some Cult Going. Its Not The Fault Of The Internet, It's The Fault Of A Social And Culture System That Doesn't Educate People Properly And In Fact On Purpose. They Don't Want To Educate People Properly.

Democracy, In The United States Rhetoric Refers To A System Of Governance In Which Elite Elements Based In The Business Community Control The State By Virtue Of Their Dominance Of The Private Society, While The Population Observes Quietly. So Understood, Democracy Is A System Of Elite Decision And Public Ratification, As In The United States Itself. Correspondingly, Popular Involvement In The Formation Of Public Policy Is Considered A Serious Threat. It Is Not A Step Towards Democracy; Rather It Constitutes A 'crisis Of Democracy' That Must Be Overcome.

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

In Fact, Some Leaders Come Right Out And Say It. Mario Draghi The President Of The European Central Bank Had An Interview With The Wall St Journal In Which He Said The Social Contract's Dead; We Finally Got Rid Of It.

I Know Of Only One Country, At Least To My Knowledge, Which Has A Dissident Culture Where Leading Figures, I Mean, The Most Famous Writers, Journalists, Academics And So On, Are Not Only Critical Of State Policy, But Are Constantly Carrying Out Civil Disobedience And Risking Imprisonment And Often Being Imprisoned, Standing Up For People's Rights. That's Turkey.

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

Latin America Is Now Exploring New And Often Promising Paths In Rejecting The Doctrinal Notions Of "globalization," And Also In The Remarkable Growth Of Popular Movements And Authentic Participation In The Political Systems. How Successful This Will Be Is More A Matter For Action Than For Speculation.

There Are Very Deep And Restrictive Principles That Determine The Nature Of Human Language And Are Rooted In The Specific Character Of The Human Mind

The Local Grocery Store Was A Gathering, A Community Place. You Knew The Owner, If You Didn't Have Any Money They'd Let You Go For A Couple Days. You Talked. It Was A Friendly Place. Supermarkets Are Totally Impersonal. I Mean, You May Say Hello To The Checkout Girl Or Something, But The Personal Connections Are All Gone.

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.

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 Target Of Preventive War Must Have Several Characteristics. It Must Be Virtually Defenceless; It Must Be Important Enough To Be Worth The Trouble; It Must Be Possible To Portray It As The Ultimate Evil And An Imminent Threat To Our Survival.

Obama's Primary Constituency Was Financial Institutions. They Were The Core Of The Funding For His Campaign. They Expect To Be Paid Back. And They Were. They Were Paid Back By Coming Out Richer And More Powerful Than They Were Before The Crisis That They Created.

There's A War Crimes Act In The United States Passed By A Republican Congress In 1996, Which Says That Grave Breaches Of The Geneva Convention Are Subject To The Death Penalty. And That Doesn't Mean The Soldier That Committed Them - That Means The Commanders.

I Think There Are All Kinds Of Intrusions Into Private Rights That Make Use Of Contemporary Technology.

I Was In Mexico City. It's A Very Pleasant City In Many Ways. It's Vibrant, Lively, Pretty Exciting Society, But Also Depressing In Other Ways, And Sometimes Almost Hopeless, You Know. So It's A Combination Of Vibrancy And, I Wouldn't Say Despair, But Hopelessness, You Know. Doesn't Have To Be, But It Is. I Mean, There Is Almost No Economy.

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.

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

On The Other Hand, You Have To Balance That Against Expanding Our Nuclear Forces, Add To Our So-called Depleted Military, Which Is Already More Powerful Than The Rest Of The World Combined; Attack In Syria, Send Forces To Syria, Start Bombing. Who Knows What Could Be Next?

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.

When I Am At Home, I Never Watch Tv, But When I Am Abroad In A Hotel I Take A Look At The Bbc To Find Out What's Going On.

If Scientists And Scholars Were To Become "collectively Self-organised And Consciously Activist" Today, They Would Probably Devote Themselves To Service To State And Private Power. Those Who Have Different Goals Should (and Do) Become Organized And Activist.

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.

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

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.

In The United States, The Political System Is A Very Marginal Affair. There Are Two Parties, So-called, But They're Really Factions Of The Same Party, The Business Party.

The Government Has A Defect: It's Potentially Democratic. Corporations Have No Defect: They're Pure Tyrannies.

Trump's Principal Policies Make Clear What's Going To Happen. This Gives An Opportunity. Right Now It's Going To Take Hard Work, But It's Possible That There Could Be A Real Revival Of The Labor Movement.

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

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.

If You Look At The Associated Press Wires, There's A Constant Flow Of Information Coming In. At That Time I Happened To Have Direct Access To Ap Wires. The Day The Marines Landed In Haiti And Restored [ Jan Bètran] Aristide There Was A Lot Of Excitement About The Dedication To Democracy And So On. But The Day Before The Marines Landed, When Every Journalist Was Looking At Haiti Because It Was Assumed That Something Big Was Happening, The Ap Wires Reported That Then [bill] Clinton Administration Had Authorized Texaco To Ship Oil Illegally To The Military Junta.

You Are Responsible For The Predictable Consequences Of Your Actions.

The Smart Way To Keep People Passive And Obedient Is To Strictly Limit The Spectrum Of Acceptable Opinion, But Allow Very Lively Debate Within That Spectrum - Even Encourage The More Critical And Dissident Views. That Gives People The Sense That There's Free Thinking Going On, While All The Time The Presuppositions Of The System Are Being Reinforced By The Limits Put On The Range Of The Debate.

It [the Internet] Probably Has The Effect Of Weakening Personal Associations.

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

I Don't Suggest That The Observations Are Surprising Or Profound. Rather, They Seem To Me The Merest Truisms. I Was Not Aware That [ Michel] Foucault Had Used The Phrase "speaking Truth To Power." I Had Thought It Was An Old Quaker Phrase.

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

In Fact, By Universal Grammar I Mean Just That System Of Principles And Structures That Are The Prerequisites For Acquisition Of Language, And To Which Every Language Necessarily Conforms.

There Are Two Problems For Our Species' Survival - Nuclear War And Environmental Catastrophe - And We're Hurtling Towards Them. Knowingly.

If [climate Change ] Became A Serious Proposal In The United States, There Would Be A Huge Propaganda Onslaught By The Business Community, The Energy Corporations And Many Others, To Try To Frighten The Population Into Opposing It - Claiming That If They Have It, All Sorts Of Terrible Things Will Happen, Like You Won't Be Able To Heat Your Home, Or Whatever The Story Is.

My Linguistics Is Pretty Theoretical.

The Bible Is One Of The Most Genocidal Books In History.

In Fact, What Were Called The Socialist Countries In Eastern Europe Were The Most Anti-socialist Systems In The World. Workers Had More Rights In The United States And England Than They Had In Russia, And It Was Somehow Still Called Socialism.

The Great Soul Of Power Extends Far Beyond States, To Every Domain Of Life, From Families To International Affairs. And Throughout, Every Form Of Authority And Domination Bears A Severe Burden Of Proof. It Is Not Self-legitimizing. And When It Cannot Bear The Burden, As Is Commonly The Case, It Should Be Dismantled.

Burden Of Proof

While The State Can Coerce, With Some Exceptions (like North Korea) It Seems To Me Misleading To Think Of It As Capable Of "enslavement."

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

The Two Countries [pakistan And India] Have Already Come Close To Nuclear Confrontation Twice And This Could Get Worse. So Dealing With The Relationship With India Is Extremely Important.

From A Comparative Perspective, The United States Is Unusual If Not Unique In The Lack Of Restraints On Freedom Of Expression. It Is Also Unusual In The Range And Effectiveness Of Methods Employed To Restrain Freedom Of Thought... Where The Voice Of The People Is Heard, Elite Groups Must Insure Their Voice Says The Right Things.

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.

Unless That Happens, Unless You Get, You Know, Kind Of Integration Of Activists' Concerns And Movements, It Will Be, Each One Will Be 'preaching To The Choir'.

Like Most Terms Of Political Discourse, Socialism Has More Or Less, Lost Its Meaning. Socialism Used To Mean Something. If You Go Back Far Enough It Meant Basically Control Of Production By Producers, Elimination Of Wage Labor, Democratization Of All Spheres Of Life; Production, Commerce, Education, Media, Workers Control Of Factories, Community Control Of Communities, And So On. That Was Socialism Once. But It Hasn't Meant That For A Hundred Years. Socialism Meant Something Different.

The Us Cannot Be Brought To The World Court For Major Crimes, For Example The Supreme International Crime, Invasion, Or Violation Of The Un Charter, Or Violation Of The Genocide Convention, These Are Things The Us Is Exempt From, Because They Exempted Themselves From Being Subjected To International Treaties In World Court Proceedings.

I Don't Think There Is Any Scientific Evidence About The Question Of Whether We Think Only In Language Or Not. But Introspection Indicates Pretty Clearly That We Don't Think In Language Necessarily. We Also Think In Visual Images, We Think In Terms Of Situations And Events, And So On, And Many Times We Can't Even Express In Words What The Content Of Our Thinking Is. And Even If We Are Able To Express It In Words, It Is A Common Experience To Say Something And Then To Recognize That It Is Not What We Meant, That It Is Something Else.

Common Experience

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

Freedom Without Opportunity Is A Devil's Gift, And The Refusal To Provide Such Opportunities Is Criminal

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

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.

You Never Know How [donald Trump] Is Going To React. When He Learned For Example That He'd Lost The Election By About Three Million Votes, His Instant Reaction Was Insanity; You Know, Three To Five Million Illegal Immigrants Somehow Were Organized In Some Incredible Fashion To Vote.

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

There Are Many Concepts Of Spirituality, Among Them, Various Notions Of Divinity Developed In The Judaeo-christian-islamic Religions. Within These The Concepts Vary Greatly.

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

There's A Very Striking Fact About The Elections Which You Can't Miss If You Looked At The Red-and-blue Electoral Map The Next Day: It's The Same Political Landscape That You Saw During The Civil War - Nothing Much Has Changed Except The Party Names.

Citizens Of The Democratic Societies Should Undertake A Course Of Intellectual Self Defense To Protect Themselves From Manipulation And Control, And To Lay The Basis For Meaningful Democracy.

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.

During The 1960s, Large Groups Of People Who Are Normally Passive And Apathetic Began To Try To Enter The Political Arena To Press Their Demands.... The Naive Might Call That Democracy, But That's Because They Don't Understand. The Sophisticated Understand That That's The Crisis Of Democracy.

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.

Modern Science And Technology Can Relieve Men Of The Necessity For Specialized, Imbecile Labor. They May, In Principle, Provide The Basis For A Rational Social Order Based On Free Association And Democratic Control, If We Have The Will To Create It.

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.

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.

The United States Is A Violent Military State. It's Been Involved In Military Action All Over The Place.

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.

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

Jamie Kilstein And Allison Kilkenny Have Created An Important Political Radio Show That Balances Humor And Unreported News. At A Time When Media Conglomerates Dominate The Airwaves, Independent Media Like Citizen Radio Is Vital To National Discourse.

What Happened In The Following Years? Well, I Think That Among The Educated Classes It Stayed The Same. You Talk About Humanitarian Intervention, It's Like Vietnam Was A Humanitarian Intervention. Among The Public, It's Quite Different.

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