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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."

-Noam Chomsky

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The Us Is A

Noam Chomsky

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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."

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

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 Country Was Founded On The Principle That Primary Role Of Government Is To Protect Property From The Majority, And So It Remains.

Capitalism Is Based On The Principle That Everything Has To Be Privately Owned; It Can't Be Held In Common. There Is Even A Dogma, Which Is Today Called, The "tragedy Of The Commons" Which Holds That If Things Are Held In Common They Are Going To Be Destroyed. If They're Privatized, Like You Give Them To Bechtel Or Monsanto Or Exxonmobil, Then They'll Be Preserved Because That's The Capitalist's Religion.

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.

Bohemian Grove Seems To Be A Kind Of Frat House Affair. Bilderberg [philosophy] May Be Marginally More Serious. The Cfr Is Transparent. You Can Read Their Publications. In The 18th Century It Perhaps Made Some Sense To Conjure Up The Illuminati And Masons. Not Since.

Let's Take Adam Smith, The Patron-saint Of Capitalism, What Did He Think? He Thought The Main Human Instinct Was Sympathy. In Fact, Take A Look At The Word "invisible Hand." Which, Of Course, You Learned About, Or You Think You've Learned About. Take A Look At The Actual Way In Which He Used The Phrase. There Is Almost No Relation To What Is Claimed.

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

Washington Basically Works For The Corporate Sector And Silicon Valley, Technically At Least, Is Suppose To Sponsor Initiative In Creativity, Whether It Does Or Not Is Another Question.

Rush Limbaugh Has Answered - It's The Rich Liberals Who Own The Banks And Run The Government, And Of Course Run The Media, And They Don't Care About You - They Just Want To Give Everything Away To Illegal Immigrants And Gays And Communists And So On.

We Must Present A National Persona Of Being Irrational And Vindictive, Because That's Going To Terrify People. And Then, They'll Back Off. And This Is Not [donald] Trump, This Is [bill] Clinton. It's Not [richard] Nixon, You Know. We Have To Be Irrational And Vindictive, Because That's Going To Frighten People.

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

The United States Is Unique Among The Rich Countries, Developed Countries, In Not Having Some Kind Of A National Health-care System.

As International Support For Obama's Decision To Attack Syria Has Collapsed, Along With The Credibility Of Government Claims, The Administration Has Fallen Back On A Standard Pretext For War Crimes When All Else Fails: The Credibility Of The Threats Of The Self-designated Policeman Of The World.

[health-care System] Is Largely Privatized And Unregulated. So Of Course It's Highly Inefficient And Costly.

Younger People Who Are Being Indoctrinated Into The Contemporary System Of Falsification - They Really Have To Do Some Research To Find Out What Is The Truth. In The General Population, People Forget Or Don't Care That Much. And Gradually What You Hear Drilled Into Your Head Everyday Comes To Be Believed. People Don't Understand What You're Talking About Any More If You Discuss The American War On South Vietnam.

When Something Like This [2003 Invasion Of Iraq] Takes Place, The International Law Professionals Have A Complicated Task. There Is A Fringe That Just Tells The Truth: Look, It's A Violation Of International Law. But Most Have To Construct Complex Arguments To Justify It As Defense Counsel. That's Basically Their Job, Defense Counsel For State Power.

The Prescription For Endless War Poses A Far Greater Danger To Americans Than Perceived Enemies Do, For Reasons The Terrorist Organisations Understand Very Well.

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.

As Far As U.s. Intelligence Knows, Iran Is Developing Nuclear Capacities, But They Don't Know If They Are Trying To Develop Nuclear Weapons Or Not. Chances Are They're Developing What's Called 'nuclear Capability,' Which Many States Have. That Is The Ability To Have Nuclear Weapons If They Decide To Do It. That's Not A Crime.

The Washington Leadership Has Put Aside Non-proliferation Programmes And Devoted Its Energies And Resources To Driving The Country To War By Extraordinary Deceit, Then Trying To Manage The Catastrophe It Created In Iraq.

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

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.

Every Night I Get Many Letters, And After Every Talk I Get Many Questions From People Who Say, "i Want To Change Things. What Can I Do?" I Never Hear These Questions From Peasants In Southern Colombia Or Kurds In Southeastern Turkey Under Miserable Repression Or Anybody Who Is Suffering. They Don't Ask What They Can Do; They Tell You What They're Doing.

By Most Accounts, Aristide Is The Most Popular Figure In Haiti.

Take Pandemics. There Could Easily Be A Severe Pandemic. A Lot Of That Comes From Something We Don't Pay Much Attention To: Eating Meat. The Meat Production Industry, The Industrial Production Of Meat, Uses An Immense Amount Of Antibiotics.we're Now Running Out Of Antibiotics That Deal With The Threat Of Rapidly Mutating Bacteria. A Lot Of That Just Comes From The Meat Production Industry. Well, Do We Worry About It? Well, We Ought To Be.

Suppose I Try To Say The Us Carries Out Terror, In Fact It's One Of The Leading Terrorist States In The World. You Can't Say That Between Commercials. People Rightly Want To Know What Do You Mean. They've Never Heard That Before. Then You Have To Explain. You Have To Give Background. That's Exactly What's Cut Out.

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.

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

Plainly, Children Learn Their Language. I Don't Speak Swahili. And It Cannot Be That My Language Is 'an Innate Property Of Our Brain.' Otherwise I Would Have Been Genetically Programmed To Speak (some Variety Of) English.

I Know Some Really Outstanding Turkish Journalists, And Have Been Pleased And Honored To Be Able To Join With Them A Few Times In Their Courageous Protests Against State Terror And Repression.

In Any Institution-factory, University, Health Center, Or Whatever-there Are A Variety Of Interests That Ought To Be Represented In Decision-making: The Work Force Itself, The Community In Which It Is Located, Users Of Its Products Or Services, Institutions That Compete For The Same Resources. These Interests Should Be Directly Represented In Democratic Structures That Displace And Eliminate Private Ownership Of The Means Of Production Or Resources, An Anachronism With No Legitimacy.

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

Markets Have Built In Inefficiencies, Serious Inefficiencies Which Are Well Known.

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.

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

Concentration Of Executive Power, Unless It's Very Temporary And For Specific Circumstances, Let's Say Fighting World War Two, It's An Assault On Democracy.

If Workers Are More Insecure, That's Very 'healthy' For The Society, Because If Workers Are Insecure, They Won't Ask For Wages, They Won't Go On Strike, They Won't Call For Benefits; They'll Serve The Masters Gladly And Passively. And That's Optimal For Corporations' Economic Health.

You Have 30% Of The World Unemployed, A Huge Amount Of Work, That Needs To Be Done Just Rebuilding The Society Alone.

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

To Cite The Facts Of History Is To Fall Prey To 'moral Equivalence,' Or 'political Correctness,' Or 'the Error Of Of Atheism,' Or One Of The Other Misdeeds Concocted To Guard Against The Sins Of Understanding And Insight Into The Real World.

Stock Ownership In The Us Is Very Highly Concentrated. [shareholder Actions Are] Something, But It's Like The Old Communist Party In The Ussr, It Would Be Nice To See More Protest Inside The Communist Party But It's Not Democracy. It's Not Going To Happen. [shareholder Actions] Are A Good Step, But They're Mostly Symbolic.

Take Germany And Japan, Both Defeated In The Second World War. Germany Has Acknowledged Its Monstrous Crimes To A Certain Extent, Has Paid Reparations And So On. Japan, In Contrast, Apologizes For Nothing And Has Paid No Reparations, With One Exception: It Pays Reparations To The United States, But Not To Asia.

Stakeholders - Meaning Workers And Community - The Ceo Could Just As Well Be Responsible To Them. This Presupposes There Ought To Be Management But Why Does There Have To Be Management? Why Not Have The Stakeholders Run The Industry?

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

Real Schools Ought To Provide People With Techniques Of Self-defense, But That Would Mean Teaching The Truth About The World And About The Society, And Schools Couldn't Survive Very Long If They Did That.

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.

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

Andorrans Deserve Much Better Than The Rule Of Superstitious Hysterics And Extreme Authoritarians, Who Try To Instill Obedience To Their Holy Texts And Chosen Divinities - And We Should Not Fail To See That The Terms Are Appropriate, If Anything Too Kind.

No One Seriously Doubts That If Piraha Children Are Brought Up In Boston They'll Be Speaking Boston English, That Is, That The Capacities Are Present, Unlike Other Animals, As Far As Is Known. There's No Challenge To The Theory - Not Mine, But Everyone's - That The Human Language Faculty Provides The Means For Generation Of An Infinite Array Of Structured Expressions.

We Have To Be A Little Cautious About Not Trying To Kill A Gnat With An Atom Bomb. The Performances Are So Utterly Absurd Regarding The "post-truth" Moment That The Proper Response Might Best Be Ridicule.

The Us And Israel Have Demanded Further That Palestinians Not Only Recognize Israel's Rights As A State In The International System, But That They Also Recognize Israel's Abstract Right To Exist, A Concept That Has No Place In International Law Or Diplomacy, And A Right Claimed By No One. In Effect, The Us And Israel Are Demanding That Palestinians . . . Formally Accept The Legitimacy Of Their Expulsion From Their Own Land. They Cannot Be Expected To Accept That, Just As Mexico Does Not Grant The Us The Right To Exist On Half Of Mexico's Territory, Gained By Conquest.

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

Every Predecessor Has Used Mercenaries, Often Drawn From The Country That They're Attacking Like England Ran India With Indian Mercenaries. You Take Them From One Place And Send Them To Kill People In The Other Place. That's The Standard Way To Run Imperial Wars.

You Have To Rely On Yourself And Your Associates - Gifts Don't Come From Above; You're Going To Win Them, Or You Won't Have Them.

Rely On Yourself

I Don't Use The Social Media But I Can See The Effects In My Own Correspondence. I Get A Ton Of Correspondence. It Used To Be Hard Copy And Now It's A Very Limited Amount Of Actual Letters People Write. So It's Mostly Email.

There Are No Conservatives In The United States. The United States Does Not Have A Conservative Tradition. The People Who Call Themselves Conservatives, Like The Heritage Foundation Or Gingrich, Are Believers In -- Are Radical Statists. They Believe In A Powerful State, But A Welfare State For The Rich.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Language Would Have Evolved First As An Internal Object, A Kind Of "language Of Thought" (lot), With Externalisation (hence Communication) An Ancillary Process. I Can't Review Here The Strong And Growing Evidence To Support This Conclusion, But I Have Elsewhere. There Are Ample Reasons Why Having A Lot Would Confer Selectional Advantage: The Person So Endowed Could Plan, Interpret, Reflect, Etc., In Ways Denied To Others.

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

The Reason I Am A Political Radical Is That I Work On Syntax. If I Worked On Semantics (which In Fact I Do), I'd Be A Good Thatcherite.

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

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

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

So Marxism, Freudianism: Any One Of These Things I Think Is An Irrational Cult. They're Theology, So They're Whatever You Think Of Theology; I Don't Think Much Of It. In Fact, In My View That's Exactly The Right Analogy: Notions Like Marxism And Freudianism Belong To The History Of Organized Religion.

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

Millions Of People Are Getting The Vote, And We Have To Educate Them To Keep Them From Our Throats. In Other Words, We Have To Train Them In Obedience And Servility, So They're Not Going To Think Through The Way The World Works And Come After Our Throats.

Real Popular Culture Is Folk Art - Coalminers' Songs And So Forth.

What The [james] Monroe Doctrine Stated, In Effect, Is That The Us Should Dominate The Hemisphere.

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.

When Britain And The U.s. Invaded Iraq, It Was With The Reasonable Expectation That It Was Going To Increase The Threat Of Terror, As It Has.

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".

Optimism Is A Strategy For Making A Better Future. Because Unless You Believe That The Future Can Be Better, You Are Unlikely To Step Up And Take Responsibility For Making It So.

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.

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.

The Un To Some Extent Diffuses U.s. Power. Therefore It's Less Direct An Agency Of The United States Than The U.s. Army Is. But Still, It Can't Escape The Distribution Of Power In The World.

Distribution Of Power

People Don't Have Knowledge And Understanding About The Outside World, Or About History [in The Usa].

Colombia Was A Big Wheat Producer In The 1950's. That Was Eliminated By What Sounds Like A Nice Plan, Called "food For Peace. " It's A Plan By Which Us Taxpayers Subsidized Us Agribusiness To Send Food To Poor Countries. This, Of Course, Destroyed The Domestic Agricultural Markets Of These Countries, Opening These Markets To Us Agribusiness.

The More You Can Increase Fear Of Drugs And Crime, Welfare Mothers, Immigrants And Aliens, The More You Control All The People.

The Ottoman Empire . . . The Rulers In Turkey Were Fortunately So Corrupt That They Left People Alone Pretty Much - Were Mostly Interested In Robbing Them - And They Left Them Alone To Run Their Own Affairs . . . With A Lot Of Local Self Determination.

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

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.

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

There Is Pakistan's Relationship With Afghanistan Which Will Also Be A Very Tricky Issue In The Coming Years. Then There Is A Large Part Of Pakistan Which Is Being Torn Apart From American Drone Attacks. The Country Is Being Invaded Constantly By A Terrorist Superpower. Again, This Is Not A Small Problem.

More Generally, Independent Farmers Had To Be Trained To Become Docile Workers In The Expanding Industrial System. It Was Necessary To Drive From Their Heads Evil Ideas, Such As The Belief That Wage Labor Was Not Much Different From Chattel Slavery. That Continues To The Present, Now Sometimes Taking The Form Of An Attack On Public Education.

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.

In Studying Language We Can Discover Many Basic Properties Of This Cognitive Structure, Its Organization, And Also The Genetic Predispositions That Provide The Foundation For Its Development. So In This Respect, Linguistics, First Of All, Tries To Characterize A Major Feature Of Human Cognitive Organization. And Second, I Think It May Provide A Suggestive Model For The Study Of Other Cognitive Systems. And The Collection Of These Systems Is One Aspect Of Human Nature.

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

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

Far From Creating Independent Thinkers, Schools Have Always, Throughout History, Played An Institutional Role In A System Of Control And Coercion. And Once You Are Well Educated You Have Already Been Socialized In Ways That Support The Power Structure, Which, In Turn, Rewards You Immensely.

Activism Spawned By Sanders Campaign Is Beginning To Make Inroads Into Electoral Politics. Under Barack Obama, The Democratic Party Pretty Much Collapsed At The Crucial Local And State Levels, But It Can Be Rebuilt And Turned Into A Progressive Force. That Would Mean Reviving The New Deal Legacy And Moving Well Beyond, Instead Of Abandoning, The Working Class And Turning Into Clintonite New Democrats, Which More Or Less Resemble What Used To Be Called Moderate Republicans, A Category That Has Largely Disappeared With The Shift Of Both Parties To The Right During The Neoliberal Period.

I Think The Most Important Work That Is Going On Has To Do With The Search For Very General And Abstract Features Of What Is Sometimes Called Universal Grammar: General Properties Of Language That Reflect A Kind Of Biological Necessity Rather Than Logical Necessity; That Is, Properties Of Language That Are Not Logically Necessary For Such A System But Which Are Essential Invariant Properties Of Human Language And Are Known Without Learning. We Know These Properties But We Don't Learn Them. We Simply Use Our Knowledge Of These Properties As The Basis For Learning.

Let's Take Southeast Asia. The Last 20, 30 Years Has Been What's Called The "asian Miracle" - Fast Economic Growth, Industrial Society. It's Happening All Over, With One Exception, Which One? The Philippines Is The One That Can't Grow, Which The Us Has Been Running For 100 Years. Is There A Correlation? Have You Read About It? It Comes To Mind, At Least.

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.

For A Privileged Minority, Western Democracy Provides The Leisure, The Facilities, And The Training To Seek The Truth Lying Hidden Behind The Veil Of Distortion And Misrepresentation, Ideology And Class Interest, Through Which The Events Of Current History Are Presented To Us.

The Level Of Destruction And Terror And Violence Carried Out By The Powerful States Far Exceeds Anything That Can Imaginably Can Be Done By Groups That Are Called Terrorists And Subnational Groups.

I Don't Think You Would Have Any Trouble At All In Deciding That You Are Thinking Of Some Event And Then Visualizing It Happening With Its Consequences, And Constructing A Rational Analysis Of It Without Being Able To Verbalize It Adequately In Anything Like Its Full Complexity.

My Own Concern Is Primarily The Terror And Violence Carried Out By My Own State... It Is Very Easy To Denounce The Atrocities Of Someone Else. That Has About As Much Ethical Value As Denouncing Atrocities That Took Place In The 18th Century.

Capitalism Denies The Right To Live. You Have Only The Right To Remain On The Labour Market.

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.

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

It Is An Astonishing Fact About The Current Era That In The Most Powerful Country In World History, With A High Level Of Education And Privilege, One Of The Two Political Parties Virtually Denies The Well-established Facts About Anthropogenic Climate Change.

It's Not In Doubt That Tobacco Is Far More Lethal Than Hard Drugs.

I Admire Ralph Nader And Denis Kucinich Very Much, And Insofar As They Bring Up Issues And Carry Out An Educational And Organisational Function - That's Important, And Fine, And I Support It.

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

[the Republican Party] For Example, They Do Run The House Of Representatives, They're A Majority There, And It's The House That Is Essentially Sending The Government Into Shutdown And Maybe Default. But They Won The Majority Of Seats There Because Of Various Kinds Of Chicanery. They Got A Minority Of The Votes, But A Majority Of The Seats, And They're Using Them To Press Forward An Agenda Which Is Extremely Harmful To The Public.

In General, I Think, U.s. Policies Remain Constant, Going Back To The Second World War. But The Capacity To Implement Them Is Declining.

The Smart Way To Keep People Passive And Obedient Is To Strictly Limit The Spectrum Of Acceptable Opinion, But Allow Very Lively Debate Within That Spectrum.

There Are Massive Efforts On The Part Of The Internet's Corporate Owners To Try To Direct It To Become A Technique Of Marginalisation And Control.

The United States Is Unusual Among The Industrial Democracies In The Rigidity Of The System Of Ideological Control - 'indoctrination,' We Might Say - Exercised Through The Mass Media.

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

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

Evaluating Countries Is Senseless And I Would Never Put Things In Those Terms, But That Some Of America's Advances, Particularly In The Area Of Free Speech, That Have Been Achieved By Centuries Of Popular Struggle, Are To Be Admired.

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.

We Can, For Example, Be Fairly Confident That Either There Will Be A World Without War Or There Won't Be A World - At Least, A World Inhabited By Creatures Other Than Bacteria And Beetles, With Some Scattering Of Others.

Technologies Can Be Liberating, But It Can Also Be A Tool Of Coercion And Control.

When Nazi Emissaries Came To The United States, They Were Welcomed At Harvard.

The Obama Administration Is Dedicated To Increasing Terrorism. In Fact, He Is Doing It All Over The World. Obama Is Running The Biggest Terrorist Operation That Exists, Maybe In History. The Drone Assassination Campaigns - Which Are Just Part Of The Special Forces Operations And So On - All Of These Operations Are Terror Operations.

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.

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.

The American Revolution Was A Small Part Of A Major World War Going On Between France And England, So The French Intervened And That Was A Big Factor, But The Domestic Contribution Was Basically Guerrilla Warfare.

France And England

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

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.

Democracy, In Any Rational Form, Also Imposes Conditions On Majority Rule. That's What The Bill Of Rights Is About, For Example.

I Had Relatives In New York City Who I Stayed With. And In Those Days, The Area From Union Square Down Fourth Avenue Had Small Bookstores, Many Of Which Were Run By Spanish Immigrants Who'd Fled After [francisco] Franco's Victory. I Spent Time In Them, And Also In The Offices Of Freie Arbeiter Stimme (free Worker's Voice) With Anarchists. I Picked Up A Lot Of Material And Talked To People, And It Became A Major Influence.

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.

So Take Social Media; Take A Look At The Way They're Used. In A Lot Of Ways They're Used Constructively; Lot Of Things Are Done That Couldn't Be Done Before. On The Other Hand A Lot Of The Effect Of Social Media Is To Set Up Extremely Superficial Contacts Amongst People.

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.

I Don't Really See What Can Be Said About The Role Of Faculty Members, Or Universities, Beyond The Truisms Voiced Earlier, And Their Elaboration In Various Domains, Ranging From Focused Intellectual Pursuits To The Concerns Of The Larger Society And Future Generations.

Faculty Members

Ontological Questions Are Generally Beside The Point, Hardly More Than A Form Of Harassment.

In General, We Should Be Able To Agree That Those Who Have Greater Opportunities And Face Fewer Impediments Have A Greater Responsibility To Do More To Help Achieve Such Ends.

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

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

I Am Not Too Happy With Terms Like “the Left”, To Be Honest. And I Don’t Use It Much….if By “the Left” You Mean People Who Are Committed To Peace And Justice And Freedom And So On, There Can’t Be Elements Of The Left Opposed To Workers’ Movement, At Least Under That Definition.

Israel Uses Sophisticated Attack Jets And Naval Vessels To Bomb Densely-crowded Refugee Camps, Schools, Apartment Blocks, Mosques, And Slums To Attack A Population That Has No Air Force, No Air Defense, No Navy, No Heavy Weapons, No Artillery Units, No Mechanized Armor, No Command In Control, No Army And Calls It A War.

It's A Near Miracle That Nuclear War Has So Far Been Avoided.

Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously.

You Never Really Saw The Racism In Europe In The Past Because It Was So Homogeneous. When Everyone Is Blonde And Blue-eyed, You Don't See Racism. But As Soon As There Was The Beginnings Of Immigration, It Just Came Out Very Dramatically.

In Fact, It's Pretty Dramatic When You Get To 1975, Very Revealing, The [vietnam] War Ends. Everybody Had To Write Something About The War, What It Meant. You Also Had Polls Of Public Opinion, And They're Dramatically Different.

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.

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.

Personally, I Am Uneasy About The Notion Of "a Politically Engaged University," For Reasons I Wrote About Over 30 Years Ago, At The Height Of Protest And Resistance (reprinted In For Reasons Of State).

Unfortunately, You Can’t Vote The Rascals Out, Because You Never Voted Them In, In The First Place

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.

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

It [the Internet] Should Be Publicly Controlled But Washington Is Not A System Of Public Control, It's Mainly A System Of Corporate Control. We Ought To Have A Free Internet, But That Means Having A Free Society, And There Is Fundamental Questions There.

I Don't Know What It Means To Say That 'the Internet Should Have A Voice In Washington'.

Karl Marx Was In Favor Of Socialist And Communist-socialist Revolutions, But He Had A Pretty Nuanced View About It.

It's Roughly The Case That If Systems Become Too Complex To Study In Sufficient Depth, Physics Hands Them Over To Chemistry, Then To Biology, Then Experimental Psychology, And Finally On To History. Roughly. These Are Tendencies, And They Tend To Distinguish Roughly Between Hard And Soft Sciences.

Well, They Really Didn't Have To Worry, Because The Way Power Politics Works, The World Court Can't Do Anything. Look, There's One Country In The World At The Moment Which Has Refused To Accept World Court Decision-that's The United States. Is Anybody Going To Do Anything About It?

A Large Part Of The Left Is Pro-assad. In Those Circles, You Can't Criticize Assad, But You Know He's A Monstrous War Criminal. And Anyone Who Criticizes Assad Is Joining The Us Imperialists. That's Just Ludicrous.

In The Early 50s In The Us, There Was What Was Called Mccarthyism And The Only Reason It Succeeded Was That There Was No Resistance To It. When They Tried The Same Thing In The 60s It Instantly Collapsed Because People Simply Laughed At It So They Couldn't Do It. Even A Dictatorship Can't Do Everything It Wants. It's Got To Have Some Degree Of Popular Support.

As Any Good Teacher Knows, The Methods Of Instruction And The Range Of Material Covered Are Matters Of Small Importance As Compared With The Success In Arousing The Natural Curiosity Of The Students And Stimulating Their Interest In Exploring On Their Own.

Those Of Us Lucky Enough To Have A Share Of Privilege In The More Free Societies Should Not Be Asking This Question, But Doing Something To Answer It.

The Best Defense Against Democracy Is To Distract People.

It Was Reported In The Left-wing Press In The Late 1930s That The Texas Company (texaco), Headed By The Nazi Sympathizer Torkild Rieber, Diverted Its Oil Shipments From The Republic, With Which It Had Contracts, To [francisco] Franco.

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.

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.

An Effective Regulatory System Today Would Be One Guided By A Few Basic Premises That Can Be Applied Flexibly But Also Universally.

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

Industrial Production Of Meat Makes A Huge Contribution To Global Warming.

... An Essential Feature Of A Decent Society, And An Almost Defining Feature Of A Democratic Society, Is Relative Equality Of Outcome - Not Opportunity, But Outcome. Without That You Can't Seriously Talk About A Democratic State... These Concepts Of The Common Good Have A Long Life. They Lie Right At The Core Of Classical Liberalism, Of Enlightenment Thinking... Like Aristotle, [adam] Smith Understood That The Common Good Will Require Substantial Intervention To Assure Lasting Prosperity Of The Poor By Distribution Of Public Revenues.

Take A Look At The Bombing Of Serbia In 1999. The Us Was Quite Open About The Reasons For The Bombing. A Main Reason Was To Preserve Stability And Credibility. Serbia Was Interfering With Stability, Meaning That It Was The One Part Of The Balkans That Was Not Integrated Into The Western-dominated (mostly Us-dominated) System.

...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.

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.

As We [with Edward Herman] Discuss There [in Manufacturing Consent] And Elsewhere, Recognition Of The Importance Of "manufacturing Consent" Has Become An Ever More Central Theme In The More Free Societies.

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.

Michael Flynn, National Security Adviser, [his Reaction] To The Iranian Missile Test The Other Day Was Very Frightening. Now The Missile Test Is Ill-advised, They Shouldn't Have Done It. But It's Not In Violation Of International Law Or International Agreements. They Shouldn't Have Done It. His Reaction Suggested Maybe We're Going To Go To War In Retaliation.

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."

It's Not A Matter Of Public Relations And Rhetorical Style But Of Actions. It's The Actions And Policies Under George W.bush Administration That Have Left The Us Government Remarkably Isolated, Feared And Often Hated To An Extent With No Historical Precedent.

If The Most Important Revolutionary Part Of The George W. Bush Doctrine Is That States That Harbor Terrorists Are Terrorist States, What Do We Conclude From That? We Conclude Exactly What Kissinger Was Kind Enough To Say: These Doctrines Are Unilateral. They Are Not Intended As Doctrines Of International Law Or Doctrines Of International Affairs. They Are Doctrines That Grant The U.s. The Right To Use Force And Violence And To Harbor Terrorists, But Not Anyone Else.

In Mexico, A Poor Country, Higher Education Is Of Quite Good Quality -- And Is Free. Ten Years Ago The Government Tried To Impose Small Fees. There Was A National Student Strike And The Government Backed Down. High Tuition Is Not An Economic Necessity, As Is Easy To Show, But A Debt Trap Is A Good Technique Of Indoctrination And Control. And Resisting This Makes Good Sense.

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

An Unstated But Crucial Premise Is That The "responsible Men" Achieve That Exalted Status By Their Service To Authentic Power, A Fact Of Life That They Will Discover Soon Enough If They Try To Pursue An Independent Path.

The Sanders Campaign Showed That A Candidate With Mildly Progressive Programs Could Win The Nomination, Maybe The Election, Even Without The Backing Of The Major Funders Or Any Media Support. There's Good Reason To Suppose That Sanders Would Have Won The Nomination Had It Not Been For Shenanigans Of The Obama-clinton Party Managers. He Is Now The Most Popular Political Figure In The Country By A Large Margin.

It Is Reported That About 30% Of The World's Population Is Unemployed. That's Worse Than The Great Depression, But It's Now An International Phenomenon.

Great Depression

For One Thing, Studying Language Is By Itself A Part Of A Study Of Human Intelligence That Is, Perhaps, The Central Aspect Of Human Nature. And Second, I Think, It Is A Good Model For Studying Other Human Properties, Which Ought To Be Studied By Psychologists In The Same Way.

Social And Political Issues In General Seem To Me Fairly Simple; The Effort To Obfuscate Them In Esoteric And Generally Vacuous Theory Is One Of The Contributions Of The Intelligentsia To Enhancing Their Own Power And The Power Of Those They Serve.

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

In The United States, And To A Certain Extent In Canada, There's Very Little Interest In What Happens Outside Their Borders.

The [barack] Obama Administration Has Pressured Mexico To Keep Them Away From The Mexican Border, So That They Don't Succeed In Reaching The United States. Pretty Much The Same Thing Europeans Have Done To Turks And Syrians.

It Is Not That I Am Not A Fan Of American Exceptionalism. That Is Like Saying I Am Not A Fan Of The Moon Being Made Out Of Green Cheese - It Does Not Exist. Powerful States Have Quite Typically Considered Themselves To Be Exceptionally Magnificent, And The United States Is No Exception To That. The Basis For It Is Not Very Substantial To Put It Politely.

There Is No Western Concern For Issues Of Aggression, Atrocities, Human Rights Abuses And So On If There's A Profit To Be Made From Them

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.

It Is Quite Possible--overwhelmingly Probable, One Might Guess--that We Will Always Learn More About Human Life And Personality From Novels Than From Scientific Psychology

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.

Roughly Speaking, I Think It's Accurate To Say That A Corporate Elite Of Managers And Owners Governs The Economy And The Political System As Well, At Least In Very Large Measure.

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.

A War With Pakistan Would Be An Utter Disaster.

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

I Don't Feel That There Is Anything Deep In The Political Culture That Prevents "educating The Masses." I'm Old Enough To Recall Vividly The High Level Of Culture, General And Political, Among First-generation Working People During The Great Depression. Workers' Education Was Lively And Effective, Union-based - Mostly The Vigorous Rising Labor Movement, Reviving From The Ashes Of The 1920s. I've Often Seen Independent And Impressive Initiatives In Working-class And Poor And Deprived Communities Today.

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

I Have Never Suggested Any Principled Difference Between The Natural And Social Sciences.

Boards Of Directors Are Allowed To Work Together, So Are Banks And Investors And Corporations In Alliances With One Another And With Powerful States. That’s Just Fine. It’s Just The Poor Who Aren’t Supposed To Cooperate.

Working Together

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