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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.

-Noam Chomsky

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The Rise Of What's

Noam Chomsky

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

Governments Are Not Representative.

Representatives

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

Donald Trump And Sean Spicer Do One Thing After Another To Keep The Media Attention Focused On Them. And It Works. These Legislative Achievements Are Being Made Which Are Chipping Away At Anything The Government Has That's Of Any Use To Anybody. Paul Ryan, I Think, Is The Most Dangerous Guy In The Government. He Knows What He's Doing. And It's Very Systematic. I Presume He's Behind The Cabinet Appointments, But It's Pretty Amazing That Every Single Cabinet Appointment Is Somebody Devoted To Destroying That Part Of Government.

Of Course, We [ With Edward Herman] Have A Purpose: Namely, To Encourage Readers To Undertake What Might Be Called "a Course In Intellectual Self-defense," And To Suggest Ways To Proceed; In Other Words, To Help People Undermine The Dedicated Efforts To "manufacture Consent" And To Turn Them Into Passive Objects Rather Than Agents Who Control Their Own Fate.

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".

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

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.

For A While, After The Second World War, When There Was Strong Support For Labor, This Was Done Subtly.

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.

That Is [edward Said] Proposal As To How The Term Should Be Used. It Surely Does Not Describe Those Who Are Called "intellectuals" In Standard Usage, As He Would Be The First To Agree.

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.

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

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

Surely Few If Any Readers Have Come Across The Sentence They Are Now Reading, And Someone Who Had By Chance Heard Or Seen It Could Not Possibly Remember Such A Fact.

Jingoism, Racism, Fear, Religious Fundamentalism: These Are The Ways Of Appealing To People If You're Trying To Organize A Mass Base Of Support For Policies That Are Really Intended To Crush Them.

English Is A Second Language In Most Of The Educated Sectors Of Europe And Much Of The World. But Maybe In The Future Chinese Will Be. But I Doubt That National Languages Will Disappear. In Fact, To Some Extent They're Becoming More Diverse, Like In Europe.

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.

Okay, Nato Expanded To East Berlin And East Germany. Under [bill] Clinton Nato Expanded Further, To The Former Russian Satellites. In 2008 Nato Formally Made An Offer To Ukraine To Join Nato. That's Unbelievable. I Mean, Ukraine Is The Geopolitical Heartland Of Russian Concern, Quite Aside From Historical Connections, Population And So On.

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

Concentration Of Ownership In The Media Is High And Increasing. Furthermore, Those Who Occupy Managerial Positions In The Media, Or Gain Status Within Them As Commentators, Belong To The Same Privileged Elites, And Might Be Expected To Share The Perceptions, Aspirations And Attitudes Of Their Associates, Reflecting Their Own Class Interests As Well.

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.

California Is Maybe The Richest Place In The World. They're Destroying The Best Public Education System In The World.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Governments Will Use Whatever Technology Is Available To Combat Their Primary Enemy - Their Own Population.

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.

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

The Human Species Is Now At A Point Where It Has To Make Choices That Are Going To Determine Whether Decent Survival Is Even Possible. Environmental Catastrophe, Including War, Maybe Pandemics, These Are Very Serious Issues And They Can't Be Addressed Within The Current Structure Of Institutions. That's Almost Given. There Have To Be Real Significant Changes, And Only Really Effective Popular Mass-based Movements Can Introduce And Carry Forward Such Initiatives, As Indeed Did Happen During The 1930s.

There Is A Reason Why Nelson Mandela Went To Cuba To Praise Castro And Thank The Cuban People Almost As Soon As He Got Out Of Jail. That's A Third World Reaction And They Understand It. Cuba Played An Enormous Role In The Liberation Of Africa And The Overthrow Of Apartheid, Sending Doctors And Teachers To The Poorest Places In The World, To Haiti, To Pakistan After The Earthquake, Almost Everywhere. The Internationalism Is Just Astonishing. I Don't Think There Has Been Anything Like It In History.

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.

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

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

There Is No Reason To Accept The Doctrines Crafted To Sustain Power And Privilege, Or To Believe That We Are Constrained By Mysterious And Unknown Social Laws. These Are Simply Decisions Made Within Institutions That Are Subject To Human Will And That Must Face The Test Of Legitimacy. And If They Do Not Meet The Test, They Can Be Replaced By Other Institutions That Are More Free And More Just, As Has Happened Often In The Past.

If The Rewiring Of The Brain That Yielded Recursive Generation Of Hierarchically Structured Expressions Took Place In An Individual, Not A Group (and There Seems To Be No Coherent Alternative), Then Interaction Must Have Been A Later Phenomenon.

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.

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.

[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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

You Know, People Talk About [richard] Nixon's "madman Theory." We Don't Really Know Much About That. It Was In Memoirs, By Somebody Else.

Israel Has A Couple Of Hundred Nuclear Weapons And Also Chemical And Biological Weapons. This Stockpile Is Not Only A Threat In Itself But Encourages Others To Proliferate In Reaction And In Self-defense. Is Anybody Saying Anything About This?

The 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.

The People Who Were Really Important Are The Ones Whose Names Are Forgotten. And That's True Of Every Movement That Ever Existed.

Our Crimes, For Which We Are Responsible: As Taxpayers, For Failing To Provide Massive Reparations, For Granting Refuge And Immunity To The Perpetrators, And For Allowing The Terrible Facts To Be Sunk Deep In The Memory Hole. All Of This Is Of Great Significance, As It Has Been In The Past.

I've Already Supported Bernie Sanders In The Primaries.

In Europe There's An Dangerous Growth Of Ultra Xenophobia Which Is Pretty Threatening To Any One Who Remembers The History Of Europe... And An Attack On The Remnants Of The Welfare State. It's Hard To Interpret The Austerity-in-the-midst-of-recession Policy As Anything Other Than Attack On The Social Contract.

The Elections Are Run By The Same Guys Who Sell Toothpaste. They Show You An Image Of A Sports Hero, Or A Sexy Model, Or A Car Going Up A Sheer Cliff Or Something, Which Has Nothing To Do With The Commodity, But It's Intended To Delude You Into Picking This One Rather Than Another One.

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."

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

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

Nobody Should Have Any Illusions. The United States Has Essentially A One-party System And The Ruling Party Is The Business Party.

When I Was Growing Up In The 1930s And '40s Anti-semitism Was Rampant. It Wasn't Like Nazi Germany But It Was Pretty Serious - It Was Part Of Life.

If Current Tendencies Persist, The Outcome Will Be Disastrous Before Too Long. Large Parts Of The World Will Become Barely Habitable Affecting Hundreds Of Millions Of People, Along With Other Disasters That We Can Barely Contemplate.

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

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.

Sometimes The Former Forces Are In The Ascendance, And "democratic Governance" Is Eroded, Though Anyone Familiar With Intellectual History Would Expect That The Slogans Will Be Passionately Proclaimed As They Are Drained Of Substantive Content. We Happen To Be Living In Such An Era, But As Often Before, There Is No Reason To Suppose That The Process Is Irreversible.

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

Israeli Occupation

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 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?

For The Last Couple Of Hundred Years, There Have Been Struggles About This. Even The Fifth And Sixth Amendments Of The Constitution Talk About Personal Rights.

There Is A Principle Of Human Affairs That Goes Back Millennia, Which Is That You Don't Look In The Mirror. You Can Trace This Principle Back To The Bible. The Designated Intellectuals Of That Time Are Called Prophets, Which Is A Mistranslation Of A Hebrew Word, But They Were Basically Intellectuals, Giving Geopolitical Analysis, Criticizing The Moral Practice Of Leadership, Etc. Now, These People Were Not Treated Very Nicely. There Were Other Intellectuals Who Were Treated Nicely, Namely Those Who Centuries Later Came To Be Called False Prophets. These Were The Flatterers Of The Court.

If You Go Back A Century In Europe, All Over The Place People Were Speaking Different Languages. There Were Dozens Of Languages In France And Italy, And They're All Called French [and Italian], But They Were Not Mutually Comprehensible. They Were Different Languages. And They Have Mostly Disappeared In The Last Century Or So. Some Are Being Preserved, Like Welsh, Some Are Being Revived, Like Basque Or Catelan To Some Extent. There Are Plenty Of People In Europe Who Can't Talk To Their Grandmother Because They Talk A Different Language.

They, Students Have A Degree Of Freedom That Nobody Else Has.

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

You Also Have To Get Beyond That To Dismantle The System Of Production For Profit Rather Than Production For Use. That Means Dismantling At Least Large Parts Of Market Systems.

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

At The Peak Of The So-called Great Success Of Neoliberal Economics, In 2007, Right Before The Crash, Non-supervisory Workers Were At Wages Considerably Lower Than In 1979, When The Neoliberal Assault Was Taking Off. That Perfectly Naturally Causes Resentment And Fear, And Combines With A Tendency To Blame The Most Vulnerable.

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

All You Have To Do Is Read The Business Literature. In The 1930s They Were Very Frightened And They Were Concerned About How The Rising Power Of The Masses Was Hazardous To Industrialists.

In Turkey Also, For A Long Time, The Military Was The Decisive Force But In The Past 10 Years They Have Backed Off Somewhat And The Civilian Government Has Gained More Independence And Autonomy Even To Shake Up The Military Command. In Fact, It Even Arrested Several High-ranking Officers [for Interfering In Governmental Affairs]. Maybe Pakistan Can Move In A Similar Direction.

If The Nuremberg Laws Were Applied, Then Every Post-war American President Would Have Been Hanged.

The Threat Of China Is Not Military. The Threat Of China Is They Can't Be Intimidated. Europe You Can Intimidate. When The Us Tries To Get People To Stop Investing In Iran, European Companies Pull Out, China Disregards It. You Look At History And Understand Why - They've Been Around For 4,000 Years, They Have Contempt For The Barbarians, They Just Don't Give A Damn.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

When I Wrote About The Spanish Civil War Many Years Later, I Used Documents That I Picked Up When I Was A Child, As A Lot Hadn't Been Published (a Lot More Resources Are Available Now).

It Is A Privilege To Join The Campaign To Support Bradley Manning For His Courage And Integrity In Serving His Country By Helping Make The Government Accountable To Its Citizens, And To Inform The World Of What Its People Should Know.

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.

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.

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.

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

What Is Failure For Some Is Success For Others. It Depends On Where They Stand In The Struggles Over "democratic Governance" And Related Rights - Civil, Social And Economic, And Broadly Cultural, To Adopt The Framework Of The Universal Declaration That Is Formally Endorsed But Constantly Undermined.

There Was A Really Monstrous And Almost Literal Genocide In The Mayan Area, Specifically Under Ríos Montt. By Now It Has Been Recognized Somewhat By Guatemalan Society. In Fact, Montt Was Under Trial For Some Crimes. But The U.s. Prohibits People From Fleeing Here.

In The 1960s, Various Parts Of The Population Became Energized And Began To Enter The Public Arena To Call For The Rights Of Women, Students, Young People, Old People, Farmers And Workers. What Are Called "special Interests" - Meaning The Whole Population - They Began To Press To Enter The Public Arena. And They Said That Puts Too Much Pressure On The State And Therefore We Have To Have More Moderation In Democracy And They Should Go Back And Be Quiet And Obedient.

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."

There Are In Fact Many Ways To Combat The Trump Project Of Creating A Tiny America, Isolated From The World, Cowering In Fear Behind Walls While Pursuing The Paul Ryan-style Domestic Policies That Represent The Most Savage Wing Of The Republican Establishment.

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.

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

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

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

The "prophets" Were What We Would Call Dissident Intellectuals. They Provided Critical Geopolitical Analysis, Condemned The Crimes Of The Powerful, Called For Justice And Mercy For Those Who Needed Help, Etc. I Wouldn't Personally Endorse Everything They Said, Any More Than I Would For Critics Of Power And Its Crimes Today. But Rather Generally I Think They Played An Honorable Role - And Suffered Accordingly.

Ever Since I've Had Any Political Awareness, I've Felt Either Alone Or Part Of A Tiny Minority.

We Have This Huge, Massive Information, But What Is It That Matters? What Doesn't Matter? What Makes Sense, What Doesn't Make Sense? You Have To Have A Framework For Understanding And Of Interpretation In Order To Make Use Of The Information.

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

The Task For A Modern Industrial Society Is To Achieve What Is Now Technically Realizable, Namely, A Society Which Is Really Based On Free Voluntary Participation Of People Who Produce And Create, Live Their Lives Freely Within Institutions They Control, And With Limited Hierarchical Structures, Possibly None At All

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.

Given Their Unusual Privilege, Western Intellectuals Can Realistically Accomplish A Great Deal. The Limits Are Imposed By Will More Than Objective Circumstances. And About Human Will Predictions Are Without Value.

As Far As Bernie Sanders Is Concerned, He Is A Decent, Honest Person, And I Supported Him. What He Means By Socialism Is New Deal Liberalism. In Fact, His Actual Policies Would Not Have Been A Great Surprise To General Eisenhower. The Fact That This Is Called A "political Revolution" Is A Sign Of How Far To The Right The Political Spectrum Has Shifted, Mainly In The Last 30 Years Since The Neoliberal Programs Began To Be Instituted. What He Was Calling For Was A Restoration Of Something Like New Deal Liberalism, Which Is A Very Good Thing.

Political Revolution

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.

Hillary Clinton Was The One Pressing The Hardest For Bombing, And Look At What Happened. They Not Only Destroyed The Country, But Libya Has Become The Center For Jihad All Over Africa And The Middle East. It's A Total Disaster In Every Respect, But It Does Not Matter. Look At The So-called Global War On Terror.

Whoever Sets The Agenda Controls The Outcome Of The Debate

In Fact If You Look At Reagan's Global War On Terrorism It Very Quickly Turned Into A Massive Terrorist War: [by Us] Central America, South Africa, The Middle East, All U.s.-backed Terrorism. That's One Of The Reasons Why It Disappeared From History And Why The Standard Line Is That Bush 43 Declared The War On Terror. Actually He Just Repeated What Reagan Had Said 20 Years Earlier.

You Can’t Have Meaningful Political Democracy Without Functioning Economic Democracy.

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

The Beauty Of Our System Is That It Isolates Everybody. Each Person Is Sitting Alone In Front Of The Tube, You Know. It's Very Hard To Have Ideas Or Thoughts Under Those Circumstances. You Can't Fight The World Alone.

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

George Washington Hated The Guerrillas. He Wanted To Imitate The British Red Coat Armies, Fighting As Gentlemen Are Supposed To Fight.

A Lot Of Association On The Internet Is Highly Constructive. There Are People Interacting, Interchanging Ideas, Making Plans, Coordinating Activities; Take Any Of The Popular Movements, A Lot Of The Organization Is Through The Internet. We Want To Have A Demonstration Or We Want To Have A Meeting, Its Done Through The Internet. I Think That's All To The Good.

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.

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

I Think This Country And The World Would Be Far Better Off If The Us Is Not An Outlaw State.

...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 Mean, It’s True, Nobody Talks About Them, But When You Bring It Up, The Idea That You Have To Rent Yourself To Somebody And Follow Their Orders, And That They Own And You Work There, And You Built It But You Don’t Own It, That’s A Highly Unnatural Notion. You Don’t Have To Study Any Complicated Theories To See That This Is An Attack On Human Dignity.

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

The Truth Of The Matter Is That About 99 Percent Of Teaching Is Making The Students Feel Interestedin The Material. Then The Other 1 Percent Has To Do With Your Methods. And That's Not Just True Of Languages. It's True Of Every Subject.

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

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

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

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

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

Put Yourself In The Position Of A Person, Sort Of An Ordinary American, "i'm A Hard-working, God-fearing Christian. I Take Care Of My Family, I Go To Church, I, You Know, Do Everything 'right'. And I'm Getting Shafted. For The Last Thirty Years, My Income Has Stagnated, My Working Hours Are Going Up, My Benefits Are Going Down. My Wife Has To Work Two [jobs] To, You Know, Put Food On The Table. The Children, God, There's No Care For The Children, The Schools Are Rotten, And So On. What Did I Do Wrong? I Did Everything You're Supposed To Do, But Something's Going Wrong To Me.

If You Take An Economics Or A Political Science Course, You're Taught That Humans Are Supposed To Be Rational Wealth Accumulators, Each Acting As An Individual To Maximize His Own Wealth In The Market.

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.

Latin America, For The First Time In 500 Years, Is Moving Towards A Degree Of Independence.

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

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

In The Late 1990s, Some Of The Worst Terrorist Atrocities In The World Were What The Turkish Government Itself Called State Terror, Namely Massive Atrocities, 80 Percent Of The Arms Coming From The United States, Millions Of Refugees, Tens Of Thousands Of People Killed, Hideous Repression, That's International Terror, And We Can Go On And On.

The European Reaction To Obama Is A European Delusion.

I Think We Can Be Reasonably Confident That If The American Population Had The Slightest Idea Of What Is Being Done In Their Name, They Would Be Utterly Appalled.

Why Should Iran Have A Deterrent Strategy? Well, It's Surrounded By Hostile Enemies. Both Of Its Borders Have Been Under Occupation By A Hostile Superpower, The United States, Which Is Constantly Violating The U.n. Charter By Leaving Open What They Call The Saying, 'all Options Are Open' - Meaning The Threat Of War.

Education Is Really Aimed At Helping Students Get To The Point Where They Can Learn On Their Own. . .

U.s. International And Security Policy . . . Has As Its Primary Goal The Preservation Of What We Might Call "the Fifth Freedom," Understood Crudely But With A Fair Degree Of Accuracy As The Freedom To Rob, To Exploit And To Dominate, To Undertake Any Course Of Action To Ensure That Existing Privilege Is Protected And Advanced.

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.

If You Look At Us Internal Documents, They Explain Very Clearly What The Threat Of Cuba Was. So, Back In The Early 1960s The State Department Described The Threat Of Cuba As Castro's Successful Defiance Of Us Policy, Going Back To The Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine Established The Us Claim To Dominate The Western Hemisphere And Castro Was Successfully Defying That. That's Not Tolerable. It Is Like Somebody Saying "let's Have Democracy In Greece," And We Just Can't Tolerate That So We Have To Destroy The Threat At Its Roots.

It Is ... Necessary To Whip Up The Population In Support Of Foreign Adventures. Usually The Population Is Pacifist, Just Like They Were During The First World War. The Public Sees No Reason To Get Involved In Foreign Adventures, Killing, And Torture. So You Have To Whip Them Up. And To Whip Them Up You Have To Frighten Them.

That's Unfortunately Common - To Blame Immigrants, To Blame The African-americans Who Are Being Helped By Federal Programs, To Blame Anyone Available, To Direct Attention Away From The Roots Of The Distress Which You're Suffering. This Combines With Xenophobia, White Supremacy, Racism, Misogyny, And Other Quite Unpleasant Phenomena Which Are Far From Being Eradicated. All Of This Makes For A Pretty Dangerous Brew. But Economic Issues Are Right In The Center Of It. And You Can See This In The Fact That So Many Former Obama Voters Now Voted For Trump, Or Just Didn't Bother Voting.

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

Independence Of Mind, Enthusiasm, Dedication To The Field, And Willingness To Challenge And Question And To Explore New Direction. There Are Plenty Of People Like That, But Schools Tend To Discourage Those Characteristics.

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

The Internet Is An élite Organization; Most Of The Population Of The World Has Never Even Made A Phone Call.

Technology Can Also Be Used So That Private Individuals Will Have Access To The Way Centralized Decisions Are Being Made.

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

The Social System Is Taking On A Form In Which Finding Out What You Want To Do Is Less And Less Of An Option Because Your Life Is Too Structured, Organised, Controlled And Disciplined.

I Felt That We Could Hardly Improve On The Conception Of The University Expressed By One Of The Founders Of The Modern System, Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Also One Of The Founders Of Classical Liberalism. That Seems To Me True Today As Well, Though Ideals Of Course Have To Be Adapted To Changing Circumstances.

Radical Islamist Extremists Surely Hope That An Attack On Iraq Will Kill Many People And Destroy Much Of The Country, Providing Recruits For Terrorist Actions.

In Societies That Profess Some Respect For Law, Suspects Are Apprehended And Brought To Fair Trial. I Stress 'suspects.'

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

There Is A Social Responsibility To Take Care Of Vulnerable People. It Seems That A Sensible Social Responsibility Is Obligatory Education, But Also Decent Education, And That Is Not Happening.

The Term 'globalisation' Is Conventionally Used To Refer To The Specific Form Of Investor-rights Integration Designed By Wealth And Power, For Their Own Interests.

The 'free-floating Intellectual' May Occupy Himself With Problems Because Of Their Inherent Interest And Importance, Perhaps To Little Effect.

Don't Be Obsessed With Tactics But With Purpose. Tactics Have A Half Life.

The U.s. Is Different From Europe And Other Industrial Countries.

It Is A Virtual Reflex For Governments To Plead Security Concerns When They Undertake Any Controversial Action, Often As A Pretext For Something Else.

Bear In Mind That Capitalism Is A Tiny Period Of Human Society. You Never Really Had Capitalism, You Always Had One Or Another Variant Of State Capitalism.

Contemporary Technology Could Be Used To Eliminate Ownership And Management Of Corporations. It Could Be Used To Provide - Lets Say Apple Computers. In Principle Information Technology Could Be Used To Provide Direct Information To The Work Force On The Ground So That They Could Democratically Decide What The Company Would Do, Eliminating The Role Of Management. It Could Be Used For That. People Aren't Developing Technology For That Purpose.

Three Quarters Of The American Population Literally Believe In Religious Miracles. The Numbers Who Believe In The Devil, In Resurrection, In God Doing This And That - It's Astonishing. These Numbers Aren't Duplicated Anywhere Else In The Industrial World. You'd Have To Maybe Go To Mosques In Iran Or Do A Poll Among Old Ladies In Sicily To Get Numbers Like This. Yet This Is The American Population.

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

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

You Keep Plugging Away--that's The Way Social Change Takes Place. That's The Way Every Social Change In History Has Taken Place: By A Lot Of People, Who Nobody Ever Heard Of, Doing Work.

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

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

Women Didn't Have Rights. Under British Common Law, Women Were Property.

A Lot Of The Letters That Are Coming In - A Lot Of Them Are Queries Or Comments - Are One Sentence Long... These Are From Twitter. And If You Look At The Nature Of Those One Sentence Letters, Most Of The Time It's Something That Came To Somebody's Mind - Somebody Walking Down The Street Had A Thought And Sent It Out. If They Thought About It For Two Minutes They Would Not Have Sent It.

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

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.

If Palestinian Authority Refuse To Join The Us-run Negotiations, Their Basis For Support Would Collapse. They Survive On Donations Essentially. Israel Has Made Sure That It's Not A Productive Economy.

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

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

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.

I Don't Really Think There Have Been Transitional Periods To Socialism. There Have Been Efforts, But They Have Usually Been Destroyed By A Combination Of External Force And Internal Corruption.

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.

Presented With The Claims Of Nineteenth-century Racist Anthropology, A Rational Person Will Ask Two Sorts Of Questions: 'what Is The Scientific Status Of The Claims?' 'what Social Or Ideological Needs Do They Serve?'

The Saudi, Arabian Ruling Class, For Example, Have Rights Because They Are Performing A Service For Western Power, Ensuring That Oil Profits Go To The West And Not To The Regional Population. The Local Gendarmes Like Israel, Turkey And So On Have Rights, At Least In Their Ruling Groups. Others Do Not.

The Best Defense Against Democracy Is To Distract People.

In The Humanities And Social Sciences, And In Fields Like Journalism And Economics And So On, People Have To Be Trained To Be Managers, And Controllers, And To Accept Things, And Not To Question Too Much.

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

[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 Intellectual Tradition Is One Of Servility To Power, And If I Didn't Betray It I'd Be Ashamed Of Myself.

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

Private Companies Can Make A Personal Profile, Direct You To Things - They Will Say - That You Would Be Interested In, But That's Their Choice Not Your Choice.

Anarchism Means All Sort Of Things To Different People But The Traditional Anarchists' Movements Assumed That There'd Be A Highly Organized Society, Just One Organized From Below With Direct Participation And So On. Actually, One Piece Of The Media Confusion Has A Basis Because There Really Are Two Different Strands In The Occupy Movement, Both Important, But Different.

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.

The Fourteenth Amendment, After The Civil War, In Principle Brought Former Slaves Into The Category Of Persons, Theoretically. But If You Actually Look, Almost All The Cases Brought Up For Personal Rights Under The Fourteenth Amendment Were By Corporations. Freed Slaves Couldn't Do It. In Fact They Were Pretty Much Driven Back Into Something Like Slavery By A North - South Compact, That Allowed Former Slave States To Criminalize Black Life, Which Made A Criminal Force That Was Basically Used As A Forced Labor Force, Up Until The 1930s.

Cuba Has Become A Symbol Of Courageous Resistance To Attack. Since 1959, Cuba Has Been Under Attack From The Hemispheric Superpower.

Labor #‎ Unions Are The Leading Force For #‎ Democratization And #‎ Progress .

Today, The Danger Of Some Sort Of A Nuclear Catastrophe Is Greater Than It Was During The Cold War, And Most People Are Blissfully Unaware Of This Danger.

If The United States Is Accommodating, The North Koreans Become Accommodating. If The United States Is Hostile, They Become Hostile.

I've Occasionally Been Asked To Talk On Israel-palestine. Sometimes It Works, And Sometimes It Elicits Hysteria In The Community.

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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