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The Earthquake In Haiti Was A Class-based Catastrophe. It Didn't Much Harm The Wealthy Elite Up In The Hills, They Were Shaken But Not Destroyed. On The Other Hand The People Who Were Living In The Miserable Urban Slums, Huge Numbers Of Them, They Were Devastated. Maybe A Couple Hundred Thousand Were Killed. How Come They Were Living There? They Were Living There Because Of-it Goes Back To The French Colonial System-but In The Past Century, They Were Living There Because Of Us Policies, Consistent Policies.

-Noam Chomsky

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The Earthquake In Haiti

Noam Chomsky

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The Earthquake In Haiti Was A Class-based Catastrophe. It Didn't Much Harm The Wealthy Elite Up In The Hills, They Were Shaken But Not Destroyed. On The Other Hand The People Who Were Living In The Miserable Urban Slums, Huge Numbers Of Them, They Were Devastated. Maybe A Couple Hundred Thousand Were Killed. How Come They Were Living There? They Were Living There Because Of-it Goes Back To The French Colonial System-but In The Past Century, They Were Living There Because Of Us Policies, Consistent Policies.

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Self Confidence

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International Relations

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Diverse Society

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Freedom Of Speech

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African American

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Working Together

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

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The Main Purpose Of Advertising Is To Undermine Markets. If You Go To Graduate School And You Take A Course In Economics, You Learn That Markets Are Systems In Which Informed Consumers Make Rational Choices. That's What's So Wonderful About It. But That's The Last Thing That The State Corporate System Wants. It Is Spending Huge Sums To Prevent That.

There Are Very Few People Who Are Going To Look Into The Mirror And Say, 'that Person I See Is A Savage Monster;' Instead, They Make Up Some Construction That Justifies What They Do.

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

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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.

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I've Already Supported Bernie Sanders In The Primaries.

Some May Remember, If You Have Good Memories, That There Used To Be A Concept In Anglo-american Law Called A Presumption Of Innocence, Innocent Until Proven Guilty In A Court Of Law. Now That's So Deep In History That There's No Point Even Bringing It Up, But It Did Once Exist.

Presumption Of Innocence

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In The Pre-capitalist World, Everyone Had A Place. It Might Not Have Been A Very Nice Place, Even Maybe A Horrible Place, But At Least They Had Some Place In The Spectrum Of The Society And They Had Some Kind Of A Right To Live In The Place. Now That's Inconsistent With Capitalism, Which Denies The Right To Live. You Have Only The Right To Remain On The Labour Market.

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This Crazy Ban On The Seven States, Where We Can't Accept Immigrants, Almost Every Analyst Points Out The Obvious: It Just Increases The Threat Of Terror. It Lays The Basis For Terror. It's Just Like The Atrocities In Abu Ghraib And Bagram And Guantanamo. They're The Most Fabulous Recruiting Techniques For Al Qaeda And Isis.

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

What Can Realistically Be Done Depends On The Historical Moment. The Same Is True With Regard To The Agents.

The Neoliberal Programs Of The Last Generation Have In Fact Been, And Were Intended To Be, A Pretty Serious Attack On Democracy, But Also They've Led To Stagnation Or Decline For Large Parts Of The Population - The Working Class, The Lower Middle Class, These People Have Essentially Been Cast Aside.

Plainly Elites In America Don't Want Democracy. And Why Should They? Democracy Is Always Harmful To Elite Interests. Almost By Definition.

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.

It Also Seems Beyond Controversy That Moral Responsibilities Are Greater To The Extent That People "have The Resources, The Training, The Facilities And Opportunities To Speak And Act Effectively."

There Have Been Repeated Cases When Nuclear War Came Ominously Close, Often A Result Of Malfunctioning Of Early-warning Systems And Other Accidents, Sometimes [as A Result Of] Highly Adventurist Acts Of Political Leaders.

On October 15, 1965, An Estimated 70,000 People Took Part In Large-scale Anti-war Demonstrations.

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

It's Commonly Assumed That The Emergence Of Language Was A Key Element Of The Great Leap. We Of Course Know Very Little About The Sociopolitical Conditions That Existed At The Time, But There's No Scenario I Can Think Of That Suggests How A Sudden Change In These Conditions Could Have Led To The Emergence Of Language.

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

Propaganda Is To A Democracy What The Bludgeon Is To A Totalitarian State...

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

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

Markets Are Lethal, If Only Because Of Ignoring Externalities, The Impacts Of Their Transactions On The Environment.

It Is The Responsibility Of Intellectuals To Speak The Truth And Expose Lies.

When Geologists Announced The Beginning Of A New Geological Epoch, The Anthropocene, Humans Destroying The Environment, One Of The Main Things They Pointed To Is The Use Of Plastics In The Earth. We Don't Think About It, But It Has A Tremendous Effect. But These Are Things You Don't See Right In Front Of Your Eyes. You Need To Think About Them A Little, To See What The Consequences Are. It's Easy To Put Them Aside, And The Media Don't Talk About Them.

I Don't Like The Intellectual Label.

If A Person Chooses Not To Be A Writer, Or Speaker, Then (by Definition) The Person Is Choosing Not To Be Engaged In An Effort,"to Bring The Truth About Matters Of Human Significance To An Audience That Can Do Something About Them," Apart, Perhaps, From Some Circle Of Immediate Associates.

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

Government Grew Under [ronald] Reagan. He Was The Strongest Opponent Of Free Markets In The Post-war History Among Presidents. But It Doesn't Matter What The Reality Is; They Concocted An Image That You Worship.

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

If You Want To Become A Biologist, It Doesn't Help To Go Into The Harvard Biology Library And All The Information Is There For You. You Have To Know What To Look For And The Internet Is The Same, Just Magnified.

If The Us Were To Attack North Korea, They'd Certainly Destroy North Korea, But South Korea Would Be Pretty Well Wiped Out Too.

It’s Not Going To Be Easy To Proceed. There Are Going To Be Barriers, Difficulties, Hardships, Failures - It’s Inevitable. But Unless The Spirit Of The Last Year, Here And Elsewhere In The Country And Around The Globe, Unless That Continues To Grow And Becomes A Major Force In The Social And Political World, The Chances For A Decent Future Are Not Very High.

Democracy Is A Danger To Any Powerful Group.

...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.

South America Goes Its Own Way Dramatically In International Affairs.

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

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.

There's One White Powder Which Is By Far The Most Lethal Known, It's Called Sugar. . . . The Caribbean Back In The 18th Century Was A Soft Drug Producer: Sugar, Rum, Tobacco, Chocolate. And In Order To Do It, They Had To Enslave Africans.

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

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

...a Very Terrifying Aspect Of Our Society, And Other Societies, Is The Equanimity And The Detachment With Which Sane, Reasonable, Sensible People Can Observe [war And Human Suffering]. I Think That's More Terrifying Than The Occasional Hitler ...or Other That Crop Up - These People Would Not Able To Operate Were It Not For This Apathy And Equanimity - And Therefore I Think That It Is In Some Sense The Sane And Reasonable And Tolerant People Who Should Share A Very Serious Burden Of Guilt, That They Very Easily Throw On The Shoulders Of Others Who Seem More Extreme And More Violent.

I'll Have 15 Letters Today From Mostly Young Kids Who Don't Like What's Going On And Want To Do Something About It, And [they Ask Me] If I Can Give Them Some Advice As To What They Should Do, Or Can I Tell Them What To Read Or Something.

Half The Population Hold That The Government Is Run By A Few Big Interests Looking Out For Themselves, As Polls Regularly Show.

There Was Great Anxiety About Russian Intervention In The Recent German Elections, Perhaps Contributing To The Frightening Surge Of Support For The Right-wing Nationalist, If Not Neo-fascist, "alternative For Germany".

If You're Working 50 Hours A Week To Try To Maintain Family Income, And Your Children Have The Kinds Of Aspirations That Come From Being Flooded With Television From Age One, And Associations Have Declined, People End Up Hopeless, Even Though They Have Every Option.

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.

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?

Our Only Real Hope For Democracy Is That We Get The Money Out Of Politics Entirely And Establish A System Of Publicly Funded Elections.

If [barack] Obama Or The Boss Or The Newspapers Or Anyone Else Tells You They're Doing This, That, Or The Other Thing, Dismiss It Or Assume The Opposite Is True, Which It Often Is.

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.

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

Very Commonly I Get Queries. Somebody Saw Something Of Mine On Youtube And Of Course If There Is A Talk On Youtube, There Aren't Any Footnotes - And They Want To Know Why Did You Say This. Well If They Bothered To Look Up Something In Print, They Would've Seen Why I Said That. If They Ask For Evidence, I Just Say Well Take A Look And Mention Something They Can Read And That Usually Ends The Conversation.

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.

Since The Civil War In Laos Was Resumed In Earnest In 1963, American Participation Has Been Veiled In Secrecy.

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.

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.

There Is Always Room For Gramsci's "optimism Of The Will."

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.

If There Had Been A Charismatic Figure In The United States Who Could Mobilize Fears, Anger, Racism, A Sense Of Loss Of The Future That Belongs To Us, This Country Could Be In Real Danger. We're Lucky That There Never Has Been An Honest, Charismatic Figure. Mccarthy Was Too Much Of A Thug, You Know? Nixon Was Too Crooked. Trump, I Think, Is Too Much Of A Clown. So, We've Been Lucky.

Under Capitalism, We Can't Have Democracy By Definition. Capitalism Is A System In Which The Central Institutions Of Society Are In Principle Under Autocratic Control.

As Long As Nuclear Weapons Exist, The Chances Of Survival Of The Human Species Are Quite Slight.

In The Mid To Late Nineteenth Century, The Gun Manufacturers Recognized That They Had A Limited Market. Remember That This Is A Capitalist Society, You've Got To Expand Your Market. They Were Selling Guns To The Military. That's A Pretty Limited Market. What About All The Rest Of The People? So What Started Was All Kinds Of Fantastic Stories About Wyatt Earp And The Gunmen And The Wild West, How Exciting It Was To Have These Guys With Guns Defending Themselves Against All Sorts Of Things.

Credible Reports Came Through That Syria Had Used Chemical Weapons. Whether It's True Actually Is Still Open To Question, But It's Very Probably True. At That Point, What Was At Stake Was What Is Called Credibility. So If You Read The Political Actors, Political Leadership, Foreign Policy Commentary, They Constantly Point Out Accurately That Us Credibility Was At Stake, And We Have To Maintain Us Credibility. So Therefore Something Had To Be Done To Show You Can't Violate Our Orders.

States Are Violent Institutions. The Government Of Any Country, Including Ours, Represents Some Sort Of Domestic Power Structure, And It's Usually Violent. States Are Violent To The Extent That They're Powerful, That's Roughly Accurate.

Democracy Is Always Harmful To Elite Interests. Almost By Definition.

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.

A Functioning Eco-system Is A Human Need.

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

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.

Private Sector Unionization Is Down To Practically Seven Percent. Meanwhile The Public Sector Unions Have Kind Of Sustained Themselves [even] Under Attack, But In The Last Few Years, There's Been A Sharp [increase In The] Attack On Public Sector Unions, Which Barack Obama Has Participated In, In Fact. When You Freeze Salaries Of Federal Workers, That's Equivalent To Taxing Public Sector People.

In The Occupied Territories, What Israel Is Doing Is Much Worse Than Apartheid. The South African Nationalists Needed The Black Population. That Was Their Workforce. The Israeli Relationship To The Palestinians In The Occupied Territories Is Totally Different. They Just Don’t Want Them.

Haitian Rice Farmers Are Quite Efficient, But They Can't Compete With U.s. Agribusiness That Relies On A Huge Government Subsidy, Thanks To Ronald Reagan's Free Market Enthusiasms.

In The West, You Don't Get In Any Trouble If You Tell The Truth, But You Still Can't Do It. Not Only Can't You Tell The Truth, You Can't Think The Truth. It's Just So Deeply Embedded, Deeply Instilled, That Without Any Meaningful Coercion It Comes Out The Same Way It Does In A Totalitarian State.

[moral Responsibilities] Has Nothing Particular To Do With Academia, Except Insofar As Those Within It Tend To Be Unusually Privileged In The Respects Just Mentioned.

We Are Hurtling Towards Self-destruction At An Alarming Rate Thanks Chiefly To An Advertising And Propaganda System That Goads People From Infancy Towards Apathy, Isolation, Passivity, Helplessness And Separation.

There's An Interesting Book By The Former Brazilian Ambassador Celso Amorim. In 2010, He Initiated An Effort Along With Turkey To Settle The Whole Iran Issue. Nobody Outside Of The United States Takes It To Be Much Of An Issue. They Made A Deal With Iran For Iran To Essentially Give Away Its Low Enriched Uranium To Turkey For Storage, And In Return, The Western Powers. It Was Immediately Scratched By Barack Obama And Hillary Clinton. And The Main Reason Was They Didn't Want Anybody Else To Be Involved In It. We Were Supposed To Run Things, But We Didn't Say That.

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