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The Labor Movement Had Been Pretty Much Killed In The 1920s, Almost Destroyed. It Revived In The 1930s And Made A Huge Difference. By The Late 1930s The Business World Was Already Trying To Find Ways To Beat It Back.

-Noam Chomsky

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The Labor Movement Had

Noam Chomsky

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The Labor Movement Had Been Pretty Much Killed In The 1920s, Almost Destroyed. It Revived In The 1930s And Made A Huge Difference. By The Late 1930s The Business World Was Already Trying To Find Ways To Beat It Back.

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

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

In America, We Happen To Be Living In A Third World Country From The Point Of View Of Economic And Social Development. I Came Back From New York Yesterday And I Took The Fastest Train In The Country, The Acela. My Wife And I Took The New York-boston Train Sixty Years Ago - It Wasn't Called The Acela Then - And I Think It's Improved By About Fifteen Minutes Since Then. Any Other Country In The World Would Be About Half The Time. In Fact When It's Riding Along The Connecticut Turnpike It's Barely Keeping Up With Traffic, Which Is Just Scandalous.

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.

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.

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

As Soon As Questions Of Will Or Decision Or Reason Or Choice Of Action Arise, Human Science Is At A Loss.

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.

It Was Right After Woodrow Wilson's First Serious Post-world War I Repression, Which Deported Thousands Of People, Effectively Destroyed Unions And Independent Press, And So On. Right After That, The Anti-immigration Law Was Passed That Remained In Place Until The 1960s.

I Don't See Any Possibility Of Britain And The U.s. Allowing A Sovereign Independent Iraq; That's Almost Inconceivable.

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.

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.

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

Whether The Person Should Then Be Called "an Intellectual" Seems To Reduce The Issue To A Question Of Terminology.

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

People Have No Human Rights, Only The Rights That They Can Gain On The Labour Market. Above All, Wealth And Power Have To Be Protected.

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

Now Financial Liberalization Is Just A Catastrophe Waiting To Happen, And There Are Very Well Understood Reasons For That.

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.

The Escalation To Attack Undefended Civilian Targets Is Just A Classic Illustration Of Terrorism.

Nobody Is Going To Pour Truth Into Your Brain. It's Something You Have To Find Out For Yourself.

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

Today's Democrats Are Pretty Much What Used To Be Called Moderate Republicans A Generation Ago.

Governments Are Not Representative. They Have Their Own Power, Serving Segments Of The Population That Are Dominant And Rich.

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

As Long As People Are Marginalized And Distracted [they] Have No Way To Organize Or Articulate Their Sentiments, Or Even Know That Others Have These Sentiments. People Assume That They Are The Only People With A Crazy Idea In Their Heads. They Never Hear It From Anywhere Else. Nobody's Supposed To Think That. ... Since There's No Way To Get Together With Other People Who Share Or Reinforce That View And Help You Articulate It, You Feel Like An Oddity, An Oddball. So You Just Stay On The Side And You Don't Pay Any Attention To What's Going On. You Look At Something Else, Like The Superbowl.

Popular Support For Alternative Energy Has Been Very High For Years. But It Harms Corporate Profits.

Chemistry, Until My Childhood, Not That Long Ago, Was Regarded As A Calculating Device. Because You Couldn't Reduce To Physics. So It's Just Some Way Of Calculating The Result Of Experiments. The Bohr Atom Was Treated That Way.

Iraq Has The Second Largest Oil Reserves In The World, It Is Right In The Midst Of The Major Energy Reserves In The World. Its Been A Primary Goal Of Us Policy Since World War Ii To Control What The State Department Called "a Stupendous Source Of Strategic Power" And One Of The Greatest Material Prizes In History.

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

Silicon Valley, After All, Feeds Off The Existence Of Computers, The Internet, The It Systems, Satellites, The Whole Of Micro Electronics And So On, But A Lot Of That Comes Straight Out Of The State Sector Of The Economy. Silicon Valley Developed, But They Expanded And Turned It Into Commercial Products And So On, But The Innovation Is On The Basis Of Fundamental Technological Development That Took Places In Places Like This [mit] On Government Funding, And That Continues.

Technological Development

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

The Former Colonies, In Latin America In Particular, Have A Better Chance Than Ever Before To Overcome Centuries Of Subjugation, Violence And Foreign Intervention, Which They Have So Far Survived As Dependencies With Islands Of Luxury In A Sea Of Misery.

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

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Take The Iraq War,it's The Second Worst Crime After The Second World War. It's The First Time In History, In The History Of Imperialism, There Were Huge Demonstrations, Before The War Was Officially Launched.

In America, We Will Use Force Whenever We Like Against Anyone We Regard As A Potential Threat, And Maybe We Will Delegate That Right To Clients, But It's Not For Others.

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.

My Grandchildren Are On Social Media All The Time, And They Think They Have Friends. But It's Not What I Would've Called A Friend, Ever.

The Good News From The U.s. Military Survey Of Focus Groups Is That Iraqis Do Accept The Nuremberg Principles. They Understand That Sectarian Violence And The Other Postwar Horrors Are Contained Within The Supreme International Crime Committed By The Invaders.

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.

If You Go To One Demonstration And Then Go Home, That's Something, But The People In Power Can Live With That. What They Can't Live With Is Sustained Pressure That Keeps Building, Organisations That Keep Doing Things, People That Keep Learning Lessons From The Last Time And Doing It Better The Next Time.

The Basic Idea Which Runs Right Through Modern History And Modern Liberalism Is That The Public Has Got To Be Marginalized. The General Public Are Viewed As No More Than Ignorant And Meddlesome Outsiders, A Bewildered Herd.

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

The First Modern Propaganda Agency Was The British Ministry Of Information A Century Ago, Which Secretly Defined Its Task As "to Direct The Thought Of Most Of The World" - Primarily Progressive American Intellectuals, Who Had To Be Mobilized To Come To The Aid Of Britain During World War I.

People Have To Be Atomized And Segregated And Alone. They're Not Supposed To Organize, Because Then They Might Be Something Beyond Spectators Of Action. They Might Actually Be Participants If Many People With Limited Resources Could Get Together To Enter The Political Arena. That's Really Threatening.

A Bombing Was Planned [in Syria], Which Would Probably Make The Situation Worse, But Would At Least Establish Us Credibility.

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.

Either You Repeat The Same Conventional Doctrines Everybody Is Saying, Or Else You Say Something True, And It Will Sound Like It's From Neptune.

A Functioning Eco-system Is A Human Need.

What's The Point Of Being Better Than Someone Else?

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The Only Justification For Repressive Institutions Is Material And Cultural Deficit. But Such Institutions, At Certain Stages Of History, Perpetuate And Produce Such A Deficit, And Even Threaten Human Survival.

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I Think Half The Population Supports This Ban On These Dangerous Immigrants Who Are Going To Come In And Do Something, Who Knows What. And Meanwhile The Countries That Really Have Been Involved In Terrorism, They're Out. It's Kind Of Like I Think It Was Oklahoma Banning Sharia Law.

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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.

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

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

Jean Kirkpatrick [is] The Chief Sadist-in-residence Of The Reagan Administration.

For The Powerful, Crimes Are Those That Others Commit.

Occupy Was Not A Movement, It Was A Tactic. You Can't Sit Forever In A Park Near Wall Street. You Can't Do It For More Than A Few Months. It Was A Tactic I Had Not Predicted. If People Asked Me, I Would Have Said "don't Do It." But It Was A Great Success, An Enormous Success, With A Big Impact On People's Thinking, On People's Actions.

The Real Invasion Of South Vietnam Which Was Directed Largely Against The Rural Society Began Directly In 1962 After Many Years Of Working Through Mercenaries And Client Groups. And That Fact Simply Does Not Exist In Official American History. There Is No Such Event In American History As The Attack On South Vietnam. That's Gone. Of Course, It Is A Part Of Real History. But It's Not A Part Of Official History.

Every Time A Candidate Came Up From The Base, That Is With Popular Support, The Republican Establishment Went Into High Gear To Destroy Them With Massive Propaganda Attack Ads And So On. It Was One After Another, Each One Crazier Than The Last.

One Of The Best Predictors Of Policy Around Is Thomas Ferguson's Investment Theory Of Politics, As He Calls It - Very Outstanding Political Economist - Which Essentially - I Mean, To Say It In A Sentence, He Describes Elections As Occasions In Which Groups Of Investors Coalesce And Invest To Control The State.

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While I Think In Principle People Should Not Have Irrational Beliefs, I Should Say That As A Matter Of Fact, It Is People Who Hold What I Regard As Completely Irrational Beliefs Who Are Among The Most Effective Moral Actors In The World, In Many Respects. They're Among The Worst, But Also Among The Best, Even Though The Moral Beliefs Are Ostensibly The Same.

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.

I Don't Like The Intellectual Label.

The Literature Is Like That - They [unions] Are Constantly Talking About The Masses, The Danger They Pose, And How To Control Them. They Understand What They're Doing, And They're Very Class Conscious. They Press Policies Which Work For Their Interests.

The Reaction We Should Be Having To [rich Liberals] Is Not Ridicule, But Rather Self-criticism. Why Aren't We Organizing Them? I Mean, We Are The Ones That Ought To Be Organizing Them, Not Rush Limbaugh. There Are Historical Analogs, Which Are Not Exact, Of Course, But Are Close Enough To Be Worrisome. This Is A Whiff Of Early Nazi Germany.

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

The Us Is Off The Spectrum In Religious Commitment. It's Been Increasing Since 1980 But It's A Major Part Of The Voting Base Of The Republican Party So That Means Committing To Anti-abortion Positions, Opposing Women's Rights.

Labor Has Been Severely Undermined, But That's Happened Before. In The 1920s, The Labor Movement Was Virtually Crushed, In Large Part By Wilson's Red Scare, But It Dramatically Revived In The 1930s. It Spearheaded The Social-democratic New-deal Style Changes Which Were Beneficial To The Country - Not Sufficient, But Beneficial. That Could Happen Again.

If You Believe In Democracy, Why Shouldn't You Know What The Government Is Doing?

I Do Think That Magna Carta And International Law Are Worth Paying Some Attention To.

Its Minority Rule And Majority Limited Rights. In Fact It's Set Up That Way. If You Read The Framers Of The Constitution, Including James Madison, He Was Pretty Clear About It.

I Am Opposed To The Accumulation Of Executive Power Anywhere.

Executive Power

Anything That You Are Achieving That Undermines And Threatens Systems Of Power Will Meet With Oppression. Systems Of Power Don't Say 'thank You.' What's Important Is Not To Focus All Your Efforts On The Oppression, But To Continue The Constructive Work.

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

No One Is Concerned With Central America Anymore. If A Million People Are Facing Starvation In Northern Nicaragua And Honduras, It's None Of Our Business. Few People Even Recognize That This Situation Is In Part An Outgrowth Of Us Policies Going Back To The 1980's. Nobody Is Concerned Because Nicaragua Is Technically Stable.

...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.

...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.

There Is Still Much Debate About Whether Torture Has Been Effective In Eliciting Information - The Assumption Being, Apparently, That If It Is Effective, Then It May Be Justified.

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.

The Anniversary Of Hiroshima, Should Be A Day Of Somber Reflection, Not Only On The Terrible Events Of That Day In 1945, But Also On What They Revealed: That Humans, In Their Dedicated Quest To Extend Their Capacities For Destruction, Had Finally Found A Way To Approach The Ultimate Limit.

Terrible Events

The Us And Canada Are Now Increasingly Isolated In The Hemisphere, And Sooner Or Later, I Think We're Going To Find That The Us And Canada Are Simply Excluded From Hemispheric Affairs. That's A Sharp Reversal Of What Was The Case Not Long Ago.

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

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.

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.

The Majority Of The Population Thinks That If The Government Runs Healthcare, They're Going To Take Away Your Freedom. At The Same Time, The Public Favors A National Healthcare Program.

[my Father] Came Over As An Immigrant And Didn't Know Any English. He Went To Work At A Sweat Shop In Baltimore. He Told Me Later That This Guy Was Coming Around, And The Guy Seemed To Be For The Workers, So He Signed Up. It Turned Out That Guy Was An Iww Organizer . My Father Didn't Regret Signing Up; He Just Really Didn't Know What Was Going On.

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

There Is A Phrase In Trade Theory; It's Called "kicking Away The Ladder." First You Violate The Rules - The Market Rules - And Then By The Time You Succeed In Developing, You Kick Away The Ladders So Others Can't Do It Too, And You Preach About "free Trade."

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

I Think That We Have Basically Nothing In The Field Of Human Behavior. Maybe That Is Just A Condition Of Temporary Ignorance. But It May Be That We Are Simply Not Intellectually Equipped To Develop Such A Theory.

[ronald] Reagan Bitterly Hated Unions And Wanted Them Destroyed. This Began With The Air Controllers' Strike And Went On From There.

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

Some Kind Of Settlement In Kashmir Is Crucial For Both Countries [pakistan And India]. It's Also Tearing India Apart With Horrible Atrocities In The Region Which Is Controlled By Indian Armed Forces.

Elements Of The Christian Fundamentalist Right Are One Of The Strongest Components Of "support For Israel" - Support In An Odd Sense, Because They Presumably Want To See It Destroyed In A Cosmic Battle At Armageddon, After Which All The Proper Souls Will Ascend To Heaven - Or So I Understand, Again, Not From Close Reading.

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.

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

It's Kind Of Interesting And Sick That The Intellectual Culture Called The 1960s, "time Of Troubles," A Dangerous Period In Which A Lot Of Harm Was Done To The Society. And The Reason Is Because We Were Civilized And That's Dangerous. That Increased The Commitment To Democracy, To Rights And So On, And This Left People Much Less Obedient.

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.

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

The United States Invaded Iraq To Gain Control Of One Of The Major Sources Of The World's Energy.

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 In The Us Was A Highly Predictable Victim Of The Neoliberal Reaction, Guided By The Maxim Of "private Affluence And Public Squalor." Funding For Public Education Has Sharply Declined. As Higher Education Is Driven To A Business Model In Accord With Neoliberal Doctrine, Administrative Bureaucracy Has Sharply Increased At The Expense Of Faculty And Students. Cost-cutting Leads To Hyper-exploitation Of The More Vulnerable, Creating A New Precariat Of Graduate Students And Adjuncts Surviving On A Bare Pittance, Replacing Tenured Faculty.

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.

South America Has Virtually Broken Away In The Last Decade. That's An Event Of Historic Significance. South America Just Doesn't Follow Us Orders. In Fact There Isn't A Single Us Military Base Left There.

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.

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.

There Had Been A Free And Open Election In Haiti In The Early 1990s And President Jean-bertrand Aristide Won, A Populist Priest. A Few Months Later Came The Expected Military Coup - A Very Vicious Military Junta Took Over, Of Which The United States Was Passively Supportive. Not Openly, Of Course, But Haitians Started To Flee From The Terror And Were Sent Back And On Towards Guantanamo Bay. Of Course, That Is Against International Law. But The United States Pretended That They Were "economic Refugees."

I Know Of People Whose Actions And Words I Admire And Respect. Some Are Called "intellectuals," Some Are Not.

When Something Isn't Constantly Drummed-up By The Media, [people] Just Don't Know About It.

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

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 Major Advances In Speed Of Communication And Ability To Interact Took Place More Than A Century Ago. The Shift From Sailing Ships To Telegraph Was Far More Radical Than That From Telephone To Email!

United States Has Comparative Advantage In Military Force. It Tends To React To Anything At First With Military Force, That's What It's Good At. And I Think They Overdid It. There Was More Military Force Than Was Necessary.

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.

All Media Depend On Advertisement To Survive.

The Very Idea That There Should Be A Certain Class Of People Who Give Orders By Virtue Of Their Ownership Of Wealth And Another Huge Class Who Take On Orders And Follow Them Because Of Their Lack Of Access To Wealth And Power, That's Unacceptable. So, Sure It Should Be Abolished.

Plainly, Such An Approach Does Not Exclude Other Ways Of Trying To Comprehend The World. Someone Committed To It (as I Am) Can Consistently Believe (as I Do) That We Learn Much More Of Human Interest About How People Think And Feel And Act By Reading Novels Or Studying History Than From All Of Naturalistic Psychology, And Perhaps Always Will; Similarly, The Arts May Offer Appreciation Of The Heavens To Which Astrophysics Cannot Aspire.

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

What Is Important To Us Is To Reverse The Shameful Course Being Pursued By America. It Won't Be Easy, But It Must And Can Be Done.

You Can't Get Votes That Way. So [the Republicans] Have Been Compelled To Mobilize A Base Of Voters And Gone To Elements Of The Country That Have Always Been There But Were Kind Of Marginal To The Political System, For Example, Religious Extremists.

It's Not A Free Trade Agreement. It Has Virtually Nothing To Do With Free Trade... It's A Protectionist Agreement; It's Anti Free-trade.

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

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

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.

I Think That Has A Lot Of Dangers, As Does Government Surveillance, Which Is Way Too High.

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

French Intellectual Life Has, In My Opinion, Been Turned Into Something Cheap And Meretricious By The 'star' System. It Is Like Hollywood. Thus We Go From One Absurdity To Another - Stalinism, Existentialism. Lacan, Derrida - Some Of Them Obscene ( Stalinism), Some Simply Infantile And Ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida). What Is Striking, However, Is The Pomposity And Self-importance, At Each Stage.

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.

The Invasion Of Iraq Was Simply A War Crime. Straight-out War Crime.

Our Yearning For Democracy Is Accompanied By A No Less Profound Yearning For Peace. And The Media Also Faced The Task Of Historical Engineering To Establish This Required Truth. We Therefore Have Phenomena Called 'peace Missions' And The 'peace Process'. These Are Terms That Apply To Whatever The United States Happens To Be Doing Or Advocating At Some Moment... In Short, 'war Is Peace'.

In 1961, The United States Began Chemical Warfare In Vietnam, South Vietnam, Chemical Warfare To Destroy Crops And Livestock. That Went On For Seven Years. The Level Of Poison - They Used The Most Extreme Carcinogen Known: Dioxin. And This Went On For Years.

We Naturally Assume That Our Mental Structures Are Universal. But I Suppose An Outside Biologist Looking At Us Would See Something Very Different. He Would See That, Like Other Organisms, We Have A Narrow Sphere Within Which We Are Very Good, But That Sphere Is Very Limited. And That, In Fact, The Very Achievements We Can Have Within That Sphere Are Related To Lack Of Achievements In Other Spheres.

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

In A Moment Of Crisis, Of Which There Are All Too Many, Russian Military Planners May Conclude That Lacking A Deterrent, The Only Hope Of Survival Is A First Strike - Which Means The End For All Of Us.

I Think The Activism Of The 1960s Had A Very Definite Civilizing Effect On The Whole Society In All Kinds Of Ways. So Lots Of Things That By Now Are Almost Taken For Granted Were Heretical In The 1960s. We Had Anti-sodomy Laws Until Not Many Years Ago.

[camillo] Berneri Proposed That The Anarchists Should Link Up With The Effort Of Northern Africa To Overthrow The Spanish Government, Carry Out Land Reform, Attract The Base Of The Moorish Army, And See If They Could Undermine [francisco] Franco's Army Through Political Warfare In Northern Africa Combined With Guerrilla Warfare In Spain. Historians Laughed At That, But I Don't Think They Should Have. This Was The Kind Of War That Might Have Succeeded In Stopping Spanish Fascism.

Suppose Vietnam Could Separate Itself From The American Dominated Global System And Carry Out A Successful Social And Economic Development. Then That Is Very Dangerous Because Then It Could Be A Model To Other Movements And Groups In Neighboring Countries. And Gradually There Could Be An Erosion From Within By Indigenous Forces Of American Domination Of The Region.

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

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.

Scientists Generally, Not Just Evolutionary Biologists, Don't Take Much For Granted.

With Regard To Freedom Of Expression There Are Basically Two Positions: You Defend It Vigorously For Views You Hate, Or You Reject It In Favor Of Stalinist/fascist Standards.

Take, For Example, There Is A Right-wing Populist Uprising. It's Very Common, Even On The Left, To Just Ridicule Them, But That's Not The Right Reaction. If You Look At Those People And Listen To Them On Talk Radio, These Are People With Real Grievances.

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

If The Naacp Were To Impose A Control Of Something Towards All, Then I Would Staunchly Oppose It.

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.

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.

We're Now In A Situation In Which Capital Is Highly Mobile And Labour Is Basically Immobile.

It's Only Terrorism If They Do It To Us. When We Do Much Worse To Them, It's Not Terrorism.

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

We Have A Record For Nawaz Sharif But Not The Others. And Judging By The Record, It's Pretty Hard To Be Optimistic. His [sharif's] Previous Governments Were Very Corrupt And Regressive In The Policies Pursued.

In My Experience At Least, The Large Public Universities Do Not Fall Behind In Fostering Creativity And Independence; Often The Contrary.

Optimism Is A Strategy For Making A Better Future. Because Unless You Believe That The Future Can Be Better, It’s Unlikely You Will Step Up And Take Responsibility For Making It So. If You Assume That There’s No Hope, You Guarantee That There Will Be No Hope. If You Assume That There Is An Instinct For Freedom, There Are Opportunities To Change Things, There’s A Chance You May Contribute To Making A Better World. The Choice Is Yours.

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.

William R. Polk Discusses The Spanish Guerrilla War Against Napoleon [ Bonaparte] And Other Cases Where The Conflict Turns Into A Political War, And The Invader, Who Usually Has Overwhelming Power, Loses Because They Can't Fight The Political War.

Democracy Is A Danger To Any Powerful Group.

The Big Change, The Really Radical Change In Communication, Was In The Late 19th Century. The Shift From Sailing Ships To Telegraph Is Astronomical. Everything Since Then Has Been Small Increments, Including The Internet.

Whoever Sets The Agenda Controls The Outcome Of The Debate

I've Spent A Lot Of Time Working On Declassified Documents - And They Do Get Declassified After Decades - You Look At The Record Of Declassified Documents, And They Are Mostly Concerned With Keeping What The Government Does Secret From Its Own Population. It's Mostly Defense Of The Power System From Its Own Population. Very Little Is Authentic Security.

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 Don't Think That Any Deal Was Needed: Iran Was Not A Threat. Even If Iran Were A Threat, There Was A Very Easy Way To Handle It - By Establishing A Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, Which Is Something That Nearly Everyone In The World Wants.

The Iraq War Was The First Conflict In Western History In Which An Imperialist War Was Massively Protested Against Before It Had Even Been Launched.

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.

That's A Large Part Of The Source Of The Gun Culture. You Have To Have A Gun When You Go Into Starbucks, Because Who Knows What's Going To Happen. It Just Doesn't Happen In Other Countries.

Resource Extraction Impacts A Global Environment That Is Increasingly At Severe Risk.

A Captured Pirate Was Brought Before Alexander The Great. “how Dare You Molest The Sea?” Asked Alexander. “how Dare You Molest The Whole World?” The Pirate Replied, And Continued: “because I Do It With A Little Ship Only, I Am Called A Thief; You, Doing It With A Great Navy, Are Called An Emperor.

I Had No Expectations About Barack Obama And I'm Not In The Least Disillusioned.

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

If You Are Giving A Graduate Course You Don't Try To Impress The Students With Oratory, You Try To Challenge Them, Get Them To Question You.

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.

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

Ronald Reagan In The Us Was Not A Particularly Popular President, But After His Death Sectors Of Wealth And Power Created A Huge Propaganda Campaign That Converted This Disgraceful Figure Into A Semi-divinity.

If By 'intellectual' You Mean People Who Are A Special Class Who Are In The Business Of Imposing Thoughts And Forming Ideas For People In Power, And Telling People What They Should Believe...they're Really More A Kind Of Secular Priesthood, Whose Task It Is To Uphold The Doctrinal Truths Of The Society. And The Population Should Be Anti-intellectual In That Repect.

The Police Can Go To Downtown Harlem And Pick Up A Kid With A Joint In The Streets. But They Can't Go Into The Elegant Apartments And Get A Stockbroker Who's Sniffing Cocaine.

White Privilege

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

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.

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

People Are Dangerous. If They're Able To Involve Themselves In Issues That Matter, They May Change The Distribution Of Power, To The Detriment Of Those Who Are Rich And Privileged.

There Are Questions As To Whether It Should Even Exist. Who Should Corporations Be Responsive To, The Management Of A Corporation? Theoretically They Are Responsive To The Shareholders, But I Why Not To The So - Called Stakeholders, The Work Force And The Community? Nothing In Economic Theory Opposes That. Those Are Social And Political Decisions.

I'm No Expert On Pornography. The Core Element Of It, I Think, Is Degradation Of Women, Whatever Else Goes On. I Don't Think It Should Be Outlawed, But I'm Not In Favor Of The Degradation Of Anybody.

To Pay Attention To The Actual Core Of The Movement - That Would Be Pretty Hard. Can You Concentrate For Example On Either The Policy Issues Or The Creation Of Functioning Democratic Communities Of Mutual Support And Say, Well, That's What's Lacking In Our Country That's Why We Don't Have A Functioning Democracy - A Community Of Real Participation. That's Really Important. And That Always Gets Smashed.

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

There Clearly Is A Serious Race Problem In The Country. Just Take A Look At What's Happening To African American Communities. For Example Wealth, Wealth In African American Communities Is Almost Zero. The History Is Striking.

There Was An International Conference Going On In Morocco That Was A Follow Up For The Paris Conference - To Put Some Teeth In The Paris Agreements. But On November 8, 2017 The Conferences Stopped. The Question Was, Will We Survive? Not A Word About It. Even More Amazing, The World Is Looking To China To Save Them. The Us Is The Wrecking Machine That Is Destroying Everything. The World Is Hoping That China Will Somehow Come To The Rescue.

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

If You Care About Other People, You Might Try To Organize To Undermine Power And Authority. That's Not Going To Happen If You Care Only About Yourself.

During The Terrorist Regime In Haiti In The 1990s, The Cia, Under The Administration Of Bill Clinton, Was Reporting To Congress That Oil Shipments Had Been Blocked From Entering Haiti. That Was Just A Lie. I Was There. You Could See The Oil Terminals Being Built And The Ships Coming In.

Luckily For [barack] Obama, The Russians Came Along And Rescued Him With This Proposal [to Confiscate Assad's Chemical Weapons] Which He Quickly Accepted - It Was A Way Out Of The Embarrassment Of Facing Likely Defeat. They Still Have The Option Of Bombing If They Want To. And Incidentally, To Add One Comment About This, You'll Notice That This Would Be A Very Good Moment To Institute A Call For Imposing The Chemical Weapons Convention On The Middle East.

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