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The Iranian Issue I Don't Think Has Much To Do With Nuclear Weapons Frankly. Nobody Is Saying Iran Should Have Nuclear Weapons nor Should Anybody Else. But The Point In The Middle East, As Distinct From North Korea, Is That This Is Center Of The World's Energy Resources. Originally The British And Secondarily The French Had Dominated It, But After The Second World War, It's Been A U.s. Preserve. That's Been An Axiom Of U.s. Foreign Policy, That It Must Control Middle East Energy Resources.

-Noam Chomsky

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The Iranian Issue I

Noam Chomsky

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The Iranian Issue I Don't Think Has Much To Do With Nuclear Weapons Frankly. Nobody Is Saying Iran Should Have Nuclear Weapons nor Should Anybody Else. But The Point In The Middle East, As Distinct From North Korea, Is That This Is Center Of The World's Energy Resources. Originally The British And Secondarily The French Had Dominated It, But After The Second World War, It's Been A U.s. Preserve. That's Been An Axiom Of U.s. Foreign Policy, That It Must Control Middle East Energy Resources.

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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 Language Is Not Just Words. It's A Culture, A Tradition, A Unification Of A Community, A Whole History That Creates What A Community Is. It's All Embodied In A Language.

If Something Is Repeated Over And Over As Obvious, The Chances Are That It Is Obviously False.

If You Owned Everything And A Tiny Little Piece Gets Out Of Control, Then Your World's Gone. Like Some Unusual Child Who Has A Million Toys And One Of Them Is Stolen, He's Going To Perish.

The Responsibilities Of Someone In A More Free And Open Society Are, Again Obviously, Greater Than Those Who May Pay Some Cost For Honesty And Integrity.

Human Language Is Nothing Like The Signalling Systems Of Other Animals.

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

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

Welsh Is Now Almost A National Language In Wales. The Scottish Dialects Are Reviving To Some Extent. I Don't Think It's A Major Thing, But It's There, And It's Happening Elsewhere.

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.

Work Can Be Undertaken To Create An Authentic Independent Political Party, A Real Party, Based On Popular Participation From The Ground Up, Not A Top-down Candidate Producing Organization Like The Two Official Parties, Working From School Boards To State Legislatures And Beyond. Not Easy In The Regressive U.s. Political System, But Not Impossible.

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.

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?

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

In Southern Culture, Possession Of A Gun Became Kind Of A Sign Of Manhood, Not Just Because Of Slaves But Other White Men. If You Had A Gun, You're Not Going To Push Me Around. You Know, I'm Not One Of Those Guys You Can Kick In The Face.

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.

We [ With Edward Herman] Believe That The Empirical Evidence We Review There - And Elsewhere, In A Great Deal Of Joint And Separate Work - Lends Substantial Support To The Conclusions; Whether That Is True Is For Others To Judge.

Government May Not Redistribute Private Wealth Or Grant Special Privileges To Any Individual Or Group.

In 1962, War Was Avoided By Khrushchev's Willingness To Accept Kennedy's Hegemonic Demands.

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.

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

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

State Formation Has Been A Brutal Project, With Many Hideous Consequences. But The Results Exist, And Their Pernicious Aspects Should Be Overcome.

The Internet Is Something Created Largely By Public Funding.

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

I Try To Encourage People To Think For Themselves, To Question Standard Assumptions... Don't Take Assumptions For Granted. Begin By Taking A Skeptical Attitude Toward Anything That Is Conventional Wisdom. Make It Justify Itself. It Usually Can't. Be Willing To Ask Questions About What Is Taken For Granted. Try To Think Things Through For Yourself.

There Are People On The Left Who Say, Look, We Can't Let These Atrocities Go On, So Let's Enter The War And Get Rid Of Bashar Assad. The Problem With That Is You Get Into A Nuclear War With Russia. And Syria Gets Wiped Out Along With Everything Else. So, It's Fine To Say, Ok, Let's Stop The Crimes, But How Exactly?

You Are Responsible For The Predictable Consequences Of Your Actions.

Part Of The Uprising Of Latin America, Particularly In The Last 10 To 15 Years, Has Been A Reaction To [neoliberal Regime], And They Have Thrown Out A Lot Of These Measures And Moved In A Different Direction. In Earlier Years, The Us Would Have Overthrown The Governments Or, One Way Or Another, Curtailed Them. Now, It Can't Do That.

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

Academics Are Not Necessarily Nice People.

[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.

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.

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In The United States Everyone Is An Illegal Immigrant - Everyone Except The People In Indian Reservations. This Is An Immigrant Society.

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I Would Feel No Hesitation In Saying That It Is The Responsibility Of A Decent Human Being To Give Assistance To A Child Who Is Being Attacked By A Rabid Dog, But I Would Not Intend This To Imply That In All Imaginable Circumstances One Must, Necessarily, Act In Accordance With This General Responsibility.

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

I Have Trouble Reading Modern Hebrew. In The 1950s, I Could Read Anything. I Don't Know How Much Experience You've Had With Contemporary Hebrew. It's Quite Difficult.

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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.

[cia Manipulating] Has Its Roots In Internal Pakistani Affairs. It's A Horrible Development And Phenomenon Which Goes Back To Radical Islamisation Under Zia And Taking Away The Long Standing Rights Of People In The Tribal Areas [who Were Left Largely Alone].

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.

The Only Way We Can Put A Permanent End To Terrorism Is To Stop Participating In It.

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I Suspect Most Likely That More Nazis Came To America. I Was A Student At Harvard During The Early 1950s. There Was Practically No Jewish Faculty There.

A Functioning Eco-system Is A Human Need.

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Mexico Is A Pretty Poor Country, But They Are Maintaining A Free, High Quality Public Education System, Not For Everyone Of Course But Pretty Substantial.

One Measure For Promoting Both Stability And Fairness Across Financial Market Segments Is A Small Sales Tax On All Financial Transactions.

It Makes Sense To Work Towards A Better World, But It Doesn't Make Any Sense To Have Illusions About What The Real World Is.

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In The 1960s, There Was A Point, 1968, '69, When There Was A Very Strong Antiwar Movement Against The War In Vietnam. But It's Worth Remembering That The War In Vietnam Started - An Outright War Started In 1962.

The American Escalation Of The War In Laos Provoked A Response By The Communist Forces, Which Now Control More Of Laos Than Ever Before.

I Get Terrific Health Care.

Just As I'm Opposed To Political Fascism, I'm Opposed To Economic Fascism. I Think That Until Major Institutions Of Society Are Under The Popular Control Of Participants And Communities, It's Pointless To Talk About Democracy.

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Mr. Mijanovi And Those Associated With Him Are The Hope And The Conscience Of The Yugoslav Revolution.

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.

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Science Is A Bit Like The Joke About The Drunk Who Is Looking Under A Lamppost For A Key That He Has Lost On The Other Side Of The Street, Because That's Where The Light Is. It Has No Other Choice.

Human Language Appears To Be A Unique Phenomenon, Without Significant Analogue In The Animal World.

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

The War Against Working People Should Be Understood To Be A Real War…. Specifically In The U.s., Which Happens To Have A Highly Class-conscious Business Class…. And They Have Long Seen Themselves As Fighting A Bitter Class War, Except They Don’t Want Anybody Else To Know About It.

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.

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

If You Don't Like What Someone Has To Say, Argue With Them.

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".

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

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

To Object That The Facts About Human Nature Set Limits On Our Ability To Change The World And Ourselves Makes About As Much Sense As The Lament That Our Lack Of Wings Sets Limits On Our Ability To 'fly' As Far As Eagles Under Our Own Power.

If [respulicans] Can't Get Rid Of [obamacare], They're Going To Have To Tell Their Base, We've Been Lying To You For The Last Five Years. So They're Willing To Go To Almost Any Extent To Do That. That's Unusual, In Fact I Think It's Unique In The History Of Modern Parliamentary Systems. And It's Very Dangerous For The Country And For The World.

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

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.

Yes, And Syrians. There Is A Horrible Crisis There And The United States Has Admitted Virtually None Of The Refugees.

Neoliberal Democracy. Instead Of Citizens, It Produces Consumers. Instead Of Communities, It Produces Shopping Malls. The Net Result Is An Atomized Society Of Disengaged Individuals Who Feel Demoralized And Socially Powerless. In Sum, Neoliberalism Is The Immediate And Foremost Enemy Of Genuine Participatory Democracy, Not Just In The United States But Across The Planet, And Will Be For The Foreseeable Future.

I've Already Supported Bernie Sanders In The Primaries.

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When I Was Ten Years Old I Wanted To Be A Taxidermist For Some Reason, Don't Ask Me Why.

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.

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.

There Is A Narrow Class Of Uses Of Language Where You Intend To Communicate. Communication Refers To An Effort To Get People To Understand What One Means. And That, Certainly, Is One Use Of Language And A Social Use Of It. But I Don't Think It Is The Only Social Use Of Language. Nor Are Social Uses The Only Uses Of Language.

The Japanese Bombing Of Pearl Harbor Led To Many Very Good Things. If You Follow The Trail, It Led To Kicking Europeans Out Of Asia - That Saved Tens Of Millions Of Lives In India Alone.

The First Thing You Ought To Do Is Verify What I Present. Just Because I Say It Doesn't Make It True. So Check It Out, See What Looks Correct, What Looks Wrong, Look At Other Material Which Wasn't Discussed, Figure Out What The Truth Really Is. That's What You've Got A Brain For.

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The Structure Of Language Determines Not Only Thought, But Reality Itself.

There Are Big, Extremely Irrational Parts Of The Society, And They Have Now Been Mobilized Politically By The Republican Establishment, Hoping That These People Could Be An Electoral Base To Keep Them In Power.

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

America Is A Very Fundamentalist Society. It's Like Iran In The Degree Of Fanatic Religious Commitment.

I Mean, What's The Elections? You Know, Two Guys, Same Background, Wealth, Political Influence, Went To The Same Elite University, Joined The Same Secret Society Where You're Trained To Be A Ruler - They Both Can Run Because They're Financed By The Same Corporate Institutions.

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.

In Much Of The World The U.s. Is Regarded As A Leading Terrorist State.

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We Live In This World, Not Another One That We'd Prefer, And Sometimes It's Necessary To Follow Painful Paths If We Hope To Provide At Least A Little Help For Suffering People.

The Dynamics Of The Taliban Now Appear To Be Very Different And Complex, In Both Afghanistan And Pakistan, As They Attack Governments And Mainstream Parties.

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

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I Mean, The Liberal Democrats Aren't Going To Tell The Average American, "yeah, You're Being Shafted Because Of The Policies That We've Established Over The Years That We're Maintaining Now." That's Not Going To Be An Answer. And They're Not Getting Answers From The Left.

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

Advertising Is Tax Deductible, So We All Pay For The Privilege Of Being Manipulated And Controlled.

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

John Lewis Gaddis Is Not Only The Favorite Historian Of The Reagan Administration, But He's Regarded As The Dean Of Cold War Scholarship, The Leading Figure In The American Cold War Scholarship, A Professor At Yale.

Wikileaks Is A Service To The Population. Assange Should Get An Award For - Presidential Medal Of Honor.

It's Not Radical Islam That Worries The Us -- It's Independence

The Entire Socioeconomic System Is Based On Production For Profit And A Growth Imperative That Cannot Be Sustained.

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.

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

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.

Pre-emptive War Might Fall Within The Framework Of International Law.

As Soon As One Identifies, Challenges And Overcomes Illegitimate Power, He Or She Is An Anarchist. Most People Are Anarchists. What They Call Themselves Doesn’t Matter To Me. The World Is Full Of Suffering, Distress, Violence And Catastrophes. Students Must Decide: Does Something Concern You Or Not? I Say: Look Around, Analyze The Problems, Ask Yourself What You Can Do And Set Out On The Work!

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

For Decades Israel Has Been Capturing, And Kidnapping Lebanese And Palestinian Refugees On The High Seas, From Cyprus To Lebanon, Killing Them In Lebanon, Bringing Them To Israel, Holding Them As Hostages. It's Been Going On For Decades, Has Anybody Called For An Invasion Of Israel?

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.

In General I Don't Think The Image Of The State As A Divinity Is Very Helpful.

To Some Degree It Matters Who's In Office, But It Matters More How Much Pressure They're Under From The Public.

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

Do I Believe In God? Can't Answer, I'm Afraid. I'm Not Being Flippant, But I Don't Understand The Question. What Is It That I Am Supposed To Believe Or Not Believe In? Are You Asking Whether I Believe There Is Something Not In The Universe (or The Universes, If There Are (maybe Infinitely) Many Of Them), And That Somehow Stands Above Them? I've Never Heard Of Any Reason For Believing That.

It May Be Beyond The Limits Of Human Intelligence To Understand How Human Intelligence Works.

The United States Is Off The International Spectrum In Religious Extremism.

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

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.

I Choose To Live In What I Think Is The Greatest Country In The World, Which Is Committing Horrendous Terrorist Acts And Should Stop.

The "end Of History" Has Been Proclaimed Many Times, Always Falsely.

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The West Bank Is Essentially Imprisoned.

In The Us, There Is Basically One Party - The Business Party. It Has Two Factions, Called Democrats And Republicans, Which Are Somewhat Different But Carry Out Variations On The Same Policies. By And Large, I Am Opposed To Those Policies. As Is Most Of The Population.

The Evangelicals. . . . If All They Want Is Gold Cadillacs And Sex And So On, No Big Problem.

Look, The United States Doesn't Have Political Parties. In Other Countries, Take Say Europe, You Can Be An Active Member Of The Political Party. Here, The Only Thing In A Political Party Is Gearing To Elections, Not The Other Things You Do. So It's Basically, A Way Of Making People Passive, Submissive Objects.

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

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.

The Main Mineral In Your Cellphone, Coltan [a Black Metallic Ore], Comes From The Eastern Congo. Multinational Corporations Are There Exploiting The Very Rich Mineral Resources Of The Region. A Lot Of Them Are Backing Militias Which Are Fighting One Other To Gain Control Of The Resources Or A Piece Of The Resources.

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

I Just Went Along With Political Activists And Interested In Other Intellectual Interests Which I Pursued Kind Of At Random. I Never Had A Real College Education. I Got A Degree, But It Was Just Patching Together Courses Here And There.

Do You Train For Passing Tests Or Do You Train For Creative Inquiry?

Violence Can Succeed, As Americans Know Well From The Conquest Of The National Territory. But At Terrible Cost. It Can Also Provoke Violence In Response, And Often Does.

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.

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

In The Munich Agreement In Late 1938 [franklin] Roosevelt Sent His Chief Adviser Sumner Welles, Who Came Back With A Very Supportive Statement Saying That Hitler Was Someone We Could Really Do Business With And So On.

If You Want Information About Sports, I Can Tell You Things From The 1940's, And The Couple Years That My Grandson Was Kind Of A Jock, But Nothing In Between.

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

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.

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.

In This Possibly Terminal Phase Of Human Existence, Democracy And Freedom Are More Than Just Ideals To Be Valued - They May Be Essential To Survival.

Democracies Have

How It Is We Have So Much Information, But Know So Little?

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

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

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

American Decline Is Real, Though The Apocalyptic Vision Reflects The Familiar Ruling Class Perception That Anything Short Of Total Control Amounts To Total Disaster.

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.

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

No Use In Waiting, We Can All Work Hard To Bring About Changes.

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

Our Minds Are Specifically Adapted To Developing Certain Theories, And We Have A Science If The Theories That Are Available To Our Minds Happen To Be Close To True. Well, There Is No Particular Reason To Suppose That The Intersection Of True Theories And Theories That Are Accessible To The Mind Is Very Large. It May Not Be Very Large.

The Development Of Space Technology, Including Space Warfare Today, Is Similar In Its Technological-industrial Significance To The Development Of Navies A Hundred Years Ago.

There Are Two Parties, So-called, But They're Really Factions Of The Same Party, The Business Party.

Education Is A System Of Imposed Ignorance.

The Lessons Are, Unfortunately, That A Small Weak Country That Is Facing An Extremely Hostile And Very Violent Superpower Will Not Make Much Progress Unless There's A Strong Solidarity Movement Within The Superpower That Will Restrain Its Actions. With More Support Within The United States, I Think The Haitian Efforts Could Have Succeeded.

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

Imagine An Extrahuman Observer Looking At Us. Such An Extrahuman Observer Would Be Struck Precisely By The Uniformity Of Human Languages, By The Very Slight Variation From One Language To Another, And By The Remarkable Respects In Which All Languages Are The Same. And Then He Would Notice We Do Not Pay Any Attention To That Because For The Purpose Of Human Life It Is Quite Natural And Appropriate Just To Take For Granted Everything That Is Common. We Don't Concern Ourselves With That, All We Worry About Are Differences.

From The U.s. Point Of View, Negotiations Are, In Effect, A Way For Israel To Continue Its Policies Of Systematically Taking Over Whatever It Wants In The West Bank, Maintaining The Brutal Siege On Gaza, Separating Gaza From The West Bank And, Of Course, Occupying The Syrian Golan Heights, All With Full U.s. Support.

In Many Respects, The United States Is A Great Country. Freedom Of Speech Is Protected More Than In Any Other Country. It Is Also A Very Free Society.

Freedom Of Speech

Looking At Polls Of Arab Public Opinion, You Look At Popular Figures, The Most Popular Figure Is The Prime Minister Of Turkey, Erdogan, And Then It Goes Down The List. You Get Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, You Don't Get Obama, Or In Fact Any Western Leader. The Public Doesn't Want The Whole Imperial Project. So If You Had Democracy, It Would Be All Over.

If You Accept The Institutional Lunacy, Then The Policies Are Rational.

The Second World War Had Really Devastating Effects For Much Of Europe. It Really Didn't Take Them Very Long To Reconstruct State Capitalist Democracies Because It Was In People's Heads. There Were Other Parts Of The World That Were Pretty Much Devastated And They Couldn't Do It; They Didn't Have The Conceptions In Their Mind. A Lot Of It Is Human Consciousness.

Science Talks About Very Simple Things, And Asks Hard Questions About Them. As Soon As Things Become Too Complex, Science Can't Deal With Them... But It's A Complicated Matter: Science Studies What's At The Edge Of Understanding, And What's At The Edge Of Understanding Is Usually Fairly Simple. And It Rarely Reaches Human Affairs. Human Affairs Are Way Too Complicated.

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

Workers In Different Countries Can Easily Be Played Off Against Each Other.

If North Korea Doesn't Have A Deterrent, They Will Be Wiped Out.

Now, You Ban Not The Whole Muslim World. You Ban Seven States, Seven States That Have Not Been Responsible For A Single Terrorist Act. Those Are The Seven [donald Trump] Banned. But, You Leave The Ones That Really Are Responsible, Like Saudi Arabia, Which Is The Center For Propaganda And Funding And So On For Radical Islamic Jihadism, Well You Can't Touch Them Because Of Business Interests, Also They Have Oil And So On And So Forth.

All Forms Of Involuntary Servitude Are Prohibited, Not Only Slavery But Also Conscription, Forced Association, And Forced Welfare Distribution.

I Listen To Talk Radio A Lot And It's Kind Of Interesting. If You Can Sort Of Suspend Your Knowledge Of The World And Just Enter Into The World Of The People Who Are Calling In, You Can Understand Them.

Western Intellectuals, And Also Third World Intellectuals, Were Attracted To The Bolshevik Counter-revolution Because Leninism Is, After All, A Doctrine Which Says That The Radical Intelligentsia Have A Right To Take State Power And To Run Their Countries By Force, And That Is An Idea Which Is Rather Appealing To Intellectuals.

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.

If You Sell Me A Car, We Have Perhaps Made A Good Bargain For Ourselves. But There Are Effects Of This Transaction On Others, Which We Do Not Take Into Account. There Is More Pollution, The Price Of Gas Goes Up, There Is More Congestion.

The United States Is A Special Case, And For Me, Very Interesting. It's Studied Carefully And We Know A Lot About It. One Of The Most Striking Features Of The Elections Is The Class-based Character Of The Vote. Now, Class Is Not Discussed Or Even Measured In The United States. In Fact, The Word Is Almost Obscene, Except For The Term "middle Class." And You Can't Get Exact Class Data; The Census Doesn't Even Give Class Data. But You Can Sort Of See The Significance Of It Just From Income Figures.

The World Was Warned Of Extremely Severe Dangers Unless Urgent Steps Are Taken To Deal With Global Warming.

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.

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.

We Could Not Bring Democracy And Freedom To Vietnam At A Cost Acceptable To Ourselves. The Idea That That Was What We Were Trying To Do, Is Again, A Tautology, It's True By Definition Because We Were Doing, And The State Is Noble By Definition. That's Called "extreme Liberalism".

I Would, However, Question The Implication That There Is Some Novelty In This Beyond Modalities [of Mikhail Bakunin], Which Naturally Change As Institutions Change And Develop.

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

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

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