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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.

-Noam Chomsky

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The War Against Working

Noam Chomsky

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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.

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Us Wars Are Going To Be Against Much Weaker Enemies. And They Have To Be Won Quickly And Decisively Before A Popular Reaction Develops.

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

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.

There Are A Lot Of Things That Can Be Done Within The Framework Of Existing Institutions Which Would Be Very Valuable For People.

Nixon At One Point Informs Kissinger . . . That He Wanted Bombing Of Cambodia. And Kissinger Loyally Transmits The Order To The Pentagon To Carry Out A Massive Bombing Campaign In Cambodia. Anything That Flies On Anything That Moves . . . Genocide.

I Remember At The Age Of Five Travelling On A Trolley Car With My Mother Past A Group Of Women On A Picket Line At A Textile Plant, Seeing Them Being Viciously Beaten By Security People. So That Kind Of Thing Stayed With Me.

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

Africa's A Wreck And It's Not Because It Was Hit By An Asteroid. It's A Wreck Largely Because It Was Hit By Europe.

The Term "intellectual" Is Used Conventionally To Refer To People Who Happen To Have Unusual Opportunities In This Regard, And As Always, Opportunity Confers Moral Responsibility.

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

The Democrats Have Pretty Much Given Up On The White Working Class. That Would Require A Commitment To Economic Issues And That's Not Their Concern.

Pakistan Will Never Be Able To Match The Indian Militarily And The Effort To Do So Is Taking An Immense Toll On The Society. It's Also Extremely Dangerous With All The Weapons Development. The Two Countries Have Already Come Close To Nuclear Confrontation Twice And This Could Get Worse. So Dealing With The Relationship With India Is Extremely Important.

The Manufacturing Industry Is Starting To Press For Some Kind Of National Healthcare. Now It's Beginning To Put It On The Agenda. It Doesn't Matter If The Population Wants It. What 90% Of The Population Wants Would Be Kind Of Irrelevant. But If Part Of The Concentration Of Corporate Capital That Basically Runs The Country - Another Thing We're Not Allowed To Say But It's Obvious - If Part Of That Sector Becomes In Favor Then The Issue Moves Onto The Political Agenda.

From The Late 1940s, Into And Through The '50s, There Developed A Complex Interaction Between Federal Government, State And Local Government, Real-estate Interests, Commercial Interests And Court Decisions, Which Had The Effect Of Undermining The Mass Transit System Across The Country.

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.

It Is Now Well-known That The Taliban's Creation Was Facilitated By The Cia And The Isi As Part Of The 1980s Anti-soviet War.

As In The Past, The Costs And Risks Of The Coming Phases Of The Industrial Economy Were To Be Socialized, With Eventual Profits Privatized.

Nafta Was Much More Popular Among Us Corporations Than Gatt, Because Nafta Is Highly Protectionist In Ways That Gatt Is Not.

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

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.

One Of The Problems Of Organizing In The North, In The Rich Countries, Is That People Tend To Think - Even The Activists - That Instant Gratification Is Required. You Constantly Hear: 'look I Went To A Demonstration, And We Didn't Stop The War So What's The Use Of Doing It Again?'

In Fact, There Is A Very Close Correlation Between Human Rights Violations And Us Aid, Particularly In Latin America.

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

The Book Manufacturing Consent, Which I Co-authored With Edward Herman, Begins With A Description Of The Structure And Institutional Setting Of The Commercial Media, And Then Draws Some Rather Simple-minded Conclusions About What We Would Expect The Media Product To Be, Given These (not Particularly Controversial) Conditions.

What The Us Does Is The Kind Of Thing I Described In Italy In 1948. Case After Case Like That, Not Hacking Or Spreading Rumors In The Media; But Saying Look, We're Going To Starve You To Death Or Kill You Or Destroy You Unless You Vote The Way We Want. I Mean That's What We Do.

Karl Marx Said, “the Task Is Not Just To Understand The World But To Change It.” A Variant To Keep In Mind Is That If You Want To Change The World You’d Better Try To Understand It. That Doesn’t Mean Listening To A Talk Or Reading A Book, Though That’s Helpful Sometimes. You Learn From Participating. You Learn From Others. You Learn From The People You’re Trying To Organize. We All Have To Gain The Understanding And The Experience To Formulate And Implement Ideas.

If You're In Favour Of Any Policy - Reform, Revolution, Stability, Regression, Whatever - If You're At Least Minimally Moral, It's Because You Think It's Somehow Good For People. And Good For People Means Conforming To Their Fundamental Nature.

There's A Split In The Us About How This [split] Will Be Resolved. The Main Point To Look At Is The Split Within The Republican Party. The Republican Establishment, And Wall Street, And The Bankers, And The Corporate Executives And So On, They Don't Want This. They Don't Want It At All. It's The Part Of The Base That Is Mobilized That Wants It.

The Big Change, The Really Radical Change In Communication, Was In The Late 19th Century. The Shift From Sailing Ships To Telegraph Is Astronomical. Everything Since Then Has Been Small Increments, Including The Internet. So You Don't Have To Wait For A Letter To Get To England In Six Weeks, You Have Almost Instant Communication. That Was An Enormous Shift.

Of Course Language Arose In A Darwinian Biological World, Because That's All There Is, But That World Relates Only Superficially To The Pop-biology That Circulates Informally.

The First Step Is To Penetrate The Clouds Of Deceit And Distortion And Learn The Truth About The World, Then To Organize And Act To Change It. That's Never Been Impossible And Never Been Easy.

The United States In Many Ways Resembles A Third World Country - Far More Elevated, But It Has Many Of Those Structural Characteristics: The Extreme Inequality Of Wealth, The Deterioration Of Infrastructure Because It Only Serves Poor People, Predatory Operations, Huge Corruption, And So On.

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.

The Death Penalty Can Be Tolerated Only By Extreme Statist Reactionaries Who Demand A State That Is So Powerful That It Has The Right To Kill.

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

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.

Haiti, Which Has Been The Main Target Of Us Intervention Throughout The 20th Century, Is The Poorest. And Guatemala, Which Is Maybe The Third Major Target Of Us Intervention, Probably Ranks Third Poorest.

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

The Communists Were Mainly Responsible For The Destruction Of The Spanish Anarchists. Not Just In Catalonia - The Communist Armies Mainly Destroyed The Collectives Elsewhere.

Blacks Have No Rights - In Fact They Were Three - Fifths Human According To The Constitution To Give Slave Owners More Voting Rights. So That's African Americans.

Anarchists Try To Identify Power Structures. They Urge Those Exercising Power To Justify Themselves. This Justification Does Not Succeed Most Of The Time.

I've Never Seen A Study, But My Sense Is That These Are People Who Feel Really Aggrieved. These People Think, "i've Done Everything Right All My Life, I'm A God-fearing Christian, I'm White, I'm Male, I've Worked Hard, And I Carry A Gun. I Do Everything I'm Supposed To Do. And I'm Getting Shafted." And In Fact They Are Getting Shafted. For 30 Years Their Wages Have Stagnated Or Declined, The Social Conditions Have Worsened, The Children Are Going Crazy, There Are No Schools, There's Nothing, So Somebody Must Be Doing Something To Them, And They Want To Know Who It Is.

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

I Think Individuals Have A Right To Privacy, But That Ought To Include The Right To Prevent Private Institutions From Monitoring What You Do And Building Up A Personal Profile For You So That They Can Direct You In Particular Ways By Their Effective Control Over The Internet, And That Doesn't Happen Of Course.

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

On The Other Hand, A Lot Of The Internet - I Don't Know The Percentage, But I Am Sure A Great Mass Of Internet Use - Is Pretty Superficial Interaction Amongst People. Its Not Necessarily A Bad Thing. A Teenager Wants To Talk To Her Friend, That's Fine, But I Think It Probably Contributes To Atomization, Which Is A Threat To The Society.

Thanh Hoa Itself Is A Rich Agricultural Province. Rice Fields, A Pattern Of Many Shades Of Green, Stretch Far Into The Distance Along The Road, Which Also Winds Through Foothills And The Fringes Of Heavy Jungle Where Tigers Are Said To Roam. The Vegetation, Wild Or Cultivated, Is Lush.

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

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

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.

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.

The Us Is A Business-run Huckster Society, And Its Primary Value Is Deceit.

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.

Language Etches The Grooves Through Which Your Thoughts Must Flow.

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

At The Beginning Of His Administration, Reagan Tried Set The Basis For American Military Intervention In El Salvador - Which Is About What Kennedy Did When He Came Into Office In Regard To Vietnam. Well, When Kennedy Tried It In Vietnam, It Just Worked Like A Dream. Virtually Nobody Opposed American Bombing Of South Vietnam In 1962. It Was Not An Issue. But When Reagan Began To Talk Of Involving American Forces In El Salvador There Was A Huge Popular Uproar. And He Had To Choose A Much More Indirect Way Of Supporting The Collection Of Gangsters In Power There. He Had To Back Off.

With The Development Of Industrial Capitalism, A New And Unanticipated System Of Injustice, It Is Libertarian Socialism That Has Preserved And Extended The Radical Humanist Message Of The Enlightenment And The Classical Liberal Ideals That Were Perverted Into An Ideology To Sustain The Emerging Social Order.

Human Needs Are Served By A Sustainable Lifestyle, Almost By Definition, If Humans Include Coming Generations. And A Shift To Such Technologies As High-speed Rail Instead Of Maximizing Fossil Fuel Use, And Solar Energy, Is Not "relentless Resource Extraction."

Iran Has Been Calling For It For Years, And The Arab Countries Support It. Everyone Except The United States And Israel Support It. The U.s. Won't Allow It Because It Means Inspecting Israel's Nuclear Weapons. The U.s. Has Continued To Block It, And In Fact Blocked It Again Just A Couple Of Days Ago; It Just Wasn't Widely Reported. Iran's Nuclear Program, As U.s. Intelligence Points Out, Is Deterrent, And The Bottom Line Is That The U.s. And Israel Don't Want Iran To Have A Deterrent.

I Agree With Bill Clinton That Us Forces Should Not Be Sent To Haiti, But Not For His Reasons.

Radical Activists Can't Ignore The Fact That We Live In This World, Like It Or Not, And Have To Make Difficult Decisions About Which Paths Are The Best - Or Sometimes, The Least Harmful. There Are No Abstract Formulas. Have To Think Through Each Case On Its Own.

Selfish-gene Theory Tells Us Nothing About The Value Of Interacting Through Language.

Goebbels Was In Favor Of Free Speech For Views He Liked. So Was Stalin. If You’re Really In Favor Of Free Speech, Then You’re In Favor Of Freedom Of Speech For Precisely The Views You Despise. Otherwise, You’re Not In Favor Of Free Speech.

Freedom Of Speech

Predatory Capitalism Created A Complex Industrial System And An Advanced Technology; It Permitted A Considerable Extension Of Democratic Practice And Fostered Certain Liberal Values, But Within Limits That Are Now Being Pressed And Must Be Overcome. It Is Not A Fit System For The Mid-twentieth Century.

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

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

There's An Interesting Book About That Called The Third Reich And The Ivory Tower, Written By Stephen H. Norwood. It Has A Long Discussion About Harvard, And Indeed The School's President, James Conant, Did Block Jewish Faculty. He Was The One Who Prevented European Jews From Being Admitted To The Chemistry Department - His Field - And Also Had Pretty Good Relations With The Nazis.

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

Anton Pannekoek Didn't Encourage Radical Workers And Other Activists Of The Anti-bolshevik Left To See Revolutionary Potential In His Work In Astronomy, For The Simple Reason That He Was Honest, And Knew There Was None To Speak Of.

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.

There Are Very Interesting Books About These Events, For Instance One By A Very Well-known American Historian Named William R. Polk Called Violent Politics. It's A Record Of What Are Basically Guerrilla Wars From The American Revolution Right Up Through The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq.

It Is The Worst Atrocity Underway [in Rwanda]. But It's Barely In The Media, And People Just Don't Know About It. And That's Quite Generally True.

For Those Who Stubbornly Seek Freedom, There Can Be No More Urgent Task Than To Come To Understand The Mechanisms And Practices Of Indoctrination. These Are Easy To Perceive In The Totalitarian Societies, Much Less So In The System Of 'brainwashing Under Freedom' To Which We Are Subjected And Which All Too Often We Serve As Willing Or Unwitting Instruments.

The Shutdown Itself Is Bad But Not Devastating. The Real Danger Will Come Up In A Couple Of Weeks. There's Legislation Which Is In Fact Routine - It's Passed Every Year - Which Allows The Government To Borrow Money, Otherwise It Can't Function. If Congress Does Not Approve This Budget Request, The Government May Have To Default.

The Change Between Horse And Buggy To Automobile Is A Big Change And There Hasn't Been A Major Change Since.

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.

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

I Don't Feel That I Have Anything To Say Beyond Moral Truisms.

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

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

What Happened In The Missile Crisis In October 1962 Has Been Prettified To Make It Look As If Acts Of Courage And Thoughtfulness Abounded. The Truth Is That The Whole Episode Was Almost Insane.

The People Who Were Honored In The Bible Were The False Prophets. It Was The Ones We Call The Prophets Who Were Jailed And Driven Into The Desert.

On Intervention Under The Un Framework, I Think That Sometimes That's Legitimate, In Fact Even Helpful.

To Go Back To A Moment Of Western Civilization Remote Enough In Time So That We Should Be Able To Look At It Dispassionately, Ask What Happened During World War I. What Was The Typical Behavior Of Respected Intellectuals In Germany, England, The United States? What Happened To Those Who Publicly Questioned The Nobility Of The War Effort, On Both Sides? I Do Not Think The Answers Are Untypical.

That Is What I Have Always Understood To Be The Essence Of Anarchism: The Conviction That The Burden Of Proof Has To Be Placed On Authority, And That It Should Be Dismantled If That Burden Cannot Be Met.

Burden Of Proof

In A Society That Has Very High Concentration Of Capital In A Narrow Sector Of The Population, That's Going To Influence Everything In Different Ways.

In The Case Of [antonio] Gramsci, The Fascist Government Agreed That He Was A "model Intellectual" In [edward] Said's Sense, And For That Reason Determined, In Their Words, That "we Must Stop This Brain From Functioning For Twenty Years."

The World Is A Very Puzzling Place. If You're Not Willing To Be Puzzled, You Just Become A Replica Of Someone Else's Mind.

It's A Mistake To Suppose That Capacities Must Evolve Gradually. There Are Many Known Examples Of Sharp Changes - Slight Genetic Modification That Yields Substantial Phenotypic Effects, And Much Else.

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."

While Language Can Surely Be Used For Communication (as Can Much Else), Communication Probably Has No Special Role In Its Design Or Evolution.

[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.

When I Was A College Student And I Got Interested In Linguistics The Concern Among Students Was, This Is A Lot Of Fun, But After We Have Done A Structural Analysis Of Every Language In The World What's Left? It Was Assumed There Were Basically No Puzzles.

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.

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

Farming Out Atrocities To Paramilitaries Is Standard Operating Procedure.

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

A Lot Of People Who Voted For Trump, Working Class People, Voted For Obama In 2008. They Were Seduced By The Slogans "hope" And "change." They Didn't Get Hope, They Didn't Get Change, They Were Disillusioned. This Time They Voted For Another Candidate Who Is Calling For Hope And Change And Has Promised To Deliver All Kinds Of Amazing Things.

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

Public Opinion In Egypt Is Very Antagonistic To The Way The Dictatorship, Mubarak Dictatorship, Interpreted Relations With Israel. Very Antagonistic.

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

There Are Historical Analogs, Which Are Not Exact, Of Course, But Are Close Enough To Be Worrisome. This Is A Whiff Of Early Nazi Germany. [adolf] Hitler Was Appealing To Groups With Similar Grievances, And Giving Them Crazy Answers, But At Least They Were Answers; These Groups Weren't Getting Them Anywhere Else. It Was The Jews And The Bolsheviks [that Were The Problem].

Since November 8, 2017 The United States Is Literally Alone In The World In First Of All Refusing To Join In Efforts To Do Something About Climate Change, But Even Worse, Dedicated To Making The Situation Worse. Every Part Of The World Is Trying To Do Something. The United States Alone Is Trying To Destroy It, And It's Not Just Trump, It's The Whole Republican Party. You Just Can't Find Words For It. And It's Not Reported. It's Not Discussed.

In Fact, When Drugs Are Legalized, Use Sometimes Goes Down, It's Been Claimed. Part Of The Reason Is That Teenage Kids Use Illicit Drugs Because They Are Illicit. They Are Thumbing Their Noses At Society. If They Were Legal, They Might Not.

France Has Not Been Able To Come To Terms With The Fact That It's Not A Major Power Anymore. I Mean Even Before The Second World War Paris Was One Of The Main Centers Of Intellectual And Cultural Life. But Now Paris Is A Kind Of Subsidiary Of Germany, Their Traditional Enemy And They Can't Come To Terms With It.

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

States Are Not Moral Agents.

The Responsibility Of The Writer As A Moral Agent Is To Try To Bring The Truth About Matters Of Human Significance To An Audience That Can Do Something About Them.

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.

Every Wave Of Immigrants Who Came [to America] Were Treated Pretty Badly, But When They All Finally Became Integrated, All Of Us Became Anglo-saxons.

September 11 Shocked Many Americans Into An Awareness That They Had Better Pay Much Closer Attention To What The Us Government Does In The World And How It Is Perceived. Many Issues Have Been Opened For Discussion That Were Not On The Agenda Before. That's All To The Good.

There Isn't Much Point Arguing About The Word "libertarian." It Would Make About As Much Sense To Argue With An Unreconstructed Stalinist About The Word "democracy" - Recall That They Called What They'd Constructed "peoples' Democracies." The Weird Offshoot Of Ultra-right Individualist Anarchism That Is Called "libertarian" Here Happens To Amount To Advocacy Of Perhaps The Worst Kind Of Imaginable Tyranny, Namely Unaccountable Private Tyranny. If They Want To Call That "libertarian," Fine; After All, Stalin Called His System "democratic." But Why Bother Arguing About It?

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.

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

Half Of The [usa] Population, Roughly, Thinks The World Was Created A Couple Thousand Years Ago. Two Thirds Of The Country Is Expecting The Second Coming Of Christ. They've Also Had To Turn To Nativists. The Gun Culture In The United States, Which Is Out Of Control, Is Party Fueled By People Who Think 'we've Got To Have Our Guns To Protect Ourselves.'

Syria Is Descending Into Suicide. It's A Horror Story And Getting Worse And Worse. There's No Bright Spot On The Horizon. What Will Probably Happen, If This Continues, Is That Syria Will Be Partitioned Into Probably Three Regions; A Kurdish Region - Which Is Already Forming - That Could Pull Out And Join In Some Fashion The Semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, Maybe With Some Kind Of Deal With Turkey.

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

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

Democratic Societies Can't Force People. Therefore They Have To Control What They Think.

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.

My Feeling Is That The Supreme Court Reached A Reasonable Standard Of Protection Of Speech In The 1960s, A Standard Higher Than Any Other Country In The World, To My Knowledge. In Brief, Speech Should Be Protected Up To Participation In Imminent Criminal Action.

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

The Imf Economists Were Doubtless Shaken By The Extreme Failures Of Their Prescriptions Over Many Years, And By The Collapse Of The Intellectual Edifice Of Economic Theory On Which They Were Relying.

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.

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

Globalization Is The Result Of Powerful Governments, Especially That Of The United States, Pushing Trade Deals And Other Accords Down The Throats Of The World’s People To Make It Easier For Corporations And The Wealthy To Dominate The Economies Of Nations Around The World Without Having Obligations To The Peoples Of Those Nations.

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

The Public Is Easily Amenable To Lies: The More Lies There Are, The Greater The Support For War. For Instance, When The Public Was Told That Saddam Hussein Would Attack The U.s., This Increased Support For The War.

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

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

The Target Of Preventive War Must Have Several Characteristics. It Must Be Virtually Defenceless; It Must Be Important Enough To Be Worth The Trouble; It Must Be Possible To Portray It As The Ultimate Evil And An Imminent Threat To Our Survival.

Compare Mathematics And The Political Sciences - It's Quite Striking. In Mathematics, In Physics, People Are Concerned With What You Say, Not With Your Certification. But In Order To Speak About Social Reality, You Must Have The Proper Credentials, Particularly If You Depart From The Accepted Framework Of Thinking. Generally Speaking, It Seems Fair To Say That The Richer The Intellectual Substance Of A Field, The Less There Is A Concern For Credentials, And The Greater Is The Concern For Content.

As For The Various Religions, There's No Doubt That They Are Very Meaningful To Adherents, And Allow Them To Delude Themselves Into Thinking There Is Some Meaning To Their Lives Beyond What We Agree Is The Case. I'd Never Try To Talk Them Out Of The Delusions, Which Are Necessary For Them To Live A Life That Makes Some Sense To Them. These Beliefs Can Provide A Framework For Deeds That Are Noble Or Savage, And Anywhere In Between, And There's Every Reason To Focus Attention On The Deeds And The Background For Them, To The Extent That We Can Grasp It.

Peter Kropotkin Was Surely On The Left. He Was One Of The Founders Of What Is Now Called 'sociobiology' Or 'evolutionary Psychology' With His Book Mutual Aid, Arguing That Human Nature Had Evolved In Ways Conducive To The Communitarian Anarchism That He Espoused.

The Intellectual World Is Deeply Conformist... We Talk A Lot About The Crimes Of Others. When It Comes To Our Own Crimes, We Are Nationalists In The Orwellian Sense.

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.

My Suspicion Is That Those Who Seem Oblivious To Suffering, Whether It Is Nearby Or In Remote Corners, Are For The Most Part Unaware, Perhaps Blinded By Doctrine And Ideology. For Them, The Answer Is To Develop A Critical Attitude Toward Articles Of Faith, Secular Or Religious; To Encourage Their Capacity To Question, To Explore, To View The World From The Standpoint Of Others. And Direct Exposure Is Never Very Far Away, Wherever We Live - Perhaps The Homeless Person Huddling In The Cold Or Asking For A Few Pennies For Food, Or All Too Many More.

If Anybody Thinks They Should Listen To Me Because I'm A Professor At Mit, That's Nonsense. You Should Decide Whether Something Makes Sense By Its Content, Not By The Letters After The Name Of The Person Who Says It.

During The 1990's, Colombia Was The Leading Recipient Of Us Military Aid And Training In The Hemisphere. Approximately Half Of All Us Aid In The Hemisphere Went To Colombia. Colombia Was Also Far And Away The Leading Human Rights Violator In The Hemisphere.

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.

The Times Are Too Difficult And The Crisis Too Severe To Indulge In Schadenfreude. Looking At It In Perspective, The Fact That There Would Be A Financial Crisis Was Perfectly Predictable: Its General Nature, If Not Its Magnitude. Markets Are Always Inefficient.

[antonio] Gramsci's Words And Actions Explain Their Assessment, Though I Think We Should Refrain From Using The Term "model Intellectual" For Him Or Others.

The General Public Are Not Even Aware Of Major Decisions That Will Determine Their Fate, Hence Are In No Position To Influence Them

If There Are Dollars To Be Made, You Destroy The Environment. The Reason Is Elementary. The People Who Are Going To Be Harmed By This Are Your Grandchildren And They Don't Have Any Votes In The Market. Their Interests Are Worth Zero. Anybody That Pays Attention To Their Grandchildren's Interests Is Being Irrational. Because What You're Supposed To Do Is Maximize Your Own Interests, Measured By Wealth, Right Now. Nothing Else Matters. So Destroying The Environment And Militarizing Outer Space Are Rational Policies, But Within A Framework Of Institutional Lunacy.

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.

I Haven't Seen Any Claim That Piraha Lacks Recursion, That Is, That There Are A Finite Number Of Sentences Or Sentence Frames. If That's So, It Would Mean That The Speakers Of This Language Aren't Making Use Of A Capacity That They Surely Have, A Normal Situation; Plenty Of People Throughout History Would Drown If They Fall Into Water.

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.

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

China Is The Center Of The Asian Energy Security Grid, Which Includes The Central Asian States And Russia. India Is Also Hovering Around The Edge, South Korea Is Involved, And Iran Is An Associate Member Of Some Kind. If The Middle East Oil Resources Around The Gulf, Which Are The Main Ones In The World, If They Link Up To The Asian Grid, The United States Is Really A Second-rate Power. A Lot Is At Stake In Not Withdrawing From Iraq.

In A Democracy The Day When You Pay Your Taxes, April 15, Would Be A Day Of Celebration, Because You're Getting Together To Provide Resources For The Programs You Decided On.

There Are Leaks From The Embassy In Honduras. There Was A Coup In 2009. Obama Broke With Most Of Latin America And Even Europe And Supported The Military Coup, Still Does. The Ambassador In Honduras Sent Back A Detailed Analysis Saying The Coup Was Military, Illegal, Unconstitutional, And That The Legitimate President Was Thrown Out. Okay, We Now Know That Washington Was Perfectly Aware Of That And Decided To Support The Military Coup Anyway. We Should Have Known That At The Time. The Government Has No Right To Keep That Information Secret.

[ Republican Party] Is Correctly Described As A "radical Insurgency" By One Of The Leading Conservative Commentators, Norman Ornstein.

You Know, We Have Little Bits Of Understanding, Glimpses, A Little Bit Of Light Here And There, But There's A Tremendous Amount Of Darkness, Which Is A Challenge. I Think Life Would Be Pretty Boring If We Understood Everything. It's Better If We Don't Understand Anything And Know That We Don't, That's The Important Part.

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.

The Childcare Tax Credit Makes Some Sense.

I Think Such An Inquiry Will Reveal A Rather Different Picture: Namely, It Will Reveal A Very Strong Tendency For The Intellectuals Who Are Respected And Privileged To Be Those Who Subordinate Themselves To Power.

If Humans Are Organisms Like Every Other Organism - Which They Are - Then We Should Expect That If There Are Some Domains Where Real Scientific Progress Is Possible, Then There Are Others Where It Is Not.

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.

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.

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

Terrible Events

As Long As Individuals Are Compelled To Rent Themselves On The Market To Those Who Are Willing To Hire Them, As Long As Their Role In Production Is Simply That Of Ancillary Tools, Then There Are Striking Elements Of Coercion And Oppression That Make Talk Of Democracy Very Limited, If Even Meaningful.

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

Going Back To Why People Don't Vote, I Presume The Main Reason Is Because They Understand Without Reading Political Science Texts That It Doesn't Make Any Difference How They Vote. It's Not Going To Affect Policy, So Why Bother?

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.

There Are Few Genuine Conservatives Within The U.s. Political System, And It Is A Sign Of The Intellectual Corruption Of The Age That The Honorable Term 'conservatism' Can Be Appropriated To Disguise The Advocacy Of A Powerful, Lawless, Aggressive And Violent State, A Welfare State For The Rich Dedicated To A Lunatic Form Of Keynesian Economic Intervention That Enhances State And Private Power While Mortgaging The Country's Future.

State Propaganda, When Supported By The Educated Classes And When No Deviation Is Permitted From It, Can Have A Big Effect. It Was A Lesson Learned By Hitler And Many Others, And It Has Been Pursued To This Day.

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.

Why Did The People Think [vietnam War] Was Fundamentally Wrong And Immoral? The Guys Who Ran The Polls, John E. Rielly, A Professor At The University Of Chicago, A Liberal Professor, He Said What That Means Is That People Thought Too Many Americans Had Being Killed. Another Possibility Is They Didn't Like The Fact That We Were Carrying Out The Worst Crime Since The Second World War. But That's So Inconceivable That Wasn't Even Offered As A Possible Reason.

The Us Cannot Be Brought To The World Court For Major Crimes, For Example The Supreme International Crime, Invasion, Or Violation Of The Un Charter, Or Violation Of The Genocide Convention, These Are Things The Us Is Exempt From, Because They Exempted Themselves From Being Subjected To International Treaties In World Court Proceedings.

[francisco Franco] Said They Should Resort To Guerrilla War. Which Has A History In Spain.

A Very Large Majority Of The U.s. Population Is In Favor Of Establishing Diplomatic Relations With Cuba And Has Been For A Long Time With Some Fluctuations. And Even Part Of The Business World Is In Favor Of It, Too. But The Government Won't Allow It.

The United States Is The Godfather When It Establishes Edicts. Others Had Better Live Up To Them, Or Else. We Have To Demonstrate That. So That's What The Bombing Of Syria Was To Have Demonstrated.

I Pretend No Originality In Observing That Mass Education Was Motivated In Part By The Perceived Need To "educate Them To Keep Them From Our Throats," To Borrow Ralph Waldo Emerson's Parody Of Elite Fears That Inspired Early Advocates Of Public Mass Education.

In Our Case [the United States] It Happens To Be Basically Corporate Structure. Much Of The Population Is Going To Be Harmed By That. Those Policies Are Designed To Turn State Power Into An Instrument That Works For The Wealthy. Maybe There Are Some Crumbs For The Rest Of The Population, Maybe Not. But That's Given.

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

I Just Don't Care About Popular Culture. It Looks To Me Pointless And Superficial. If I Had Free Time I'd Rather Read A 19th Century Novel.

It's A Class War, And A War On Young People Too... That's Why Tuition Is Rising So Rapidly. There's No Real Economic Reason For That. It's A Technique Of Control And Indoctrination. And This Is Really The First Organized, Significant Reaction To It, Which Is Important.

Physics And Those Parts Of Other Fields That Grow Out Of Physics - Chemistry, The Structure Of Big Molecules - In Those Domains, There Is A Lot Of Progress. In Many Other Domains, There Is Very Little Progress In Developing Real Scientific Understanding.

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

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.

The Only Debatable Issue, It Seems To Me, Is Whether It Is More Ridiculous To Turn To Experts In Social Theory For General Well-confirmed Propositions, Or To The Specialists In The Great Religions And Philosophical Systems For Insights Into Fundamental Human Values.

Take A Look At Public Opinion. About 70 Percent Of The Population, In The Polls, Said The [vietnam ] War Was Fundamentally Wrong And Immoral, Not A Mistake. And That Attitude Lasted As Long As Polls Were Taken In The Early '80s.

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.

I've Often Been Struck By The Extensive Knowledge That People Have Of Sports, And Particularly, Their Self-confidence In Discussing It With Experts. . . . In Contrast, When Discussing Matters Of Concern To Human Lives - Their Own And Others - People Tend To Defer To Experts.

Self Confidence

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

The Country That Consistently Ranks Among The Highest In Educational Achievement Is Finland. A Rich Country, But Education Is Free. Germany, Education Is Free. France, Education Is Free.

There 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.

The Bolshevik Revolution Was A Counter-revolution. Its First Moves Were To Destroy And Eliminate Every Socialist Tendency That Had Developed In The Pre-revolutionary Period. Their Goal Was As They Said; It Wasn't A Big Secret. They Regarded The Soviet Union As Sort A Backwater. They Were Orthodox Marxists, Expecting A Revolution In Germany. They Moved Toward What They Themselves Called "state Capitalism," Then They Moved On To Stalinism. They Called It Democracy And Called It Socialism. The One Claim Was As Ludicrous As The Other.

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.

There Is No Body Of Theory Or Significant Body Of Relevant Information, Beyond The Comprehension Of The Layman, Which Makes Policy Immune From Criticism.

The Actual Consequences Of Plan Colombia Are To Devastate Peasant Communities, Which Have Been Driven To Drug Production. These Peasants Have No Particular Desire To Grow Coca, But Their Other Means Of Livelihood Have Been Wiped Out.

The Best Defense Against Democracy Is To Distract People.

There Are Major Efforts Being Made To Dismantle Social Security, The Public Schools, The Post Office - Anything That Benefits The Population Has To Be Dismantled. Efforts Against The U.s. Postal Service Are Particularly Surreal.

If You Take A Look At Places Like Harvard, It's Striking. In The Early ,50s, I Think There Were A Handful Of Jewish Professors, Three Or Four. But By The 1960s, There Were Jewish Deans And Administrators. In Fact, One Of The Reasons Why Mit Became A Great University Was Because They Admitted Jews Whereas Harvard Did Not.

On Humanitarian Intervention In General, I Guess My View Is Not Unlike The View That Was Attributed To Gandhi, Accurately Or Not, When He Was Supposedly Asked What He Thought About Western Civilization. He Is Supposed To Have Said That He Thought It Would Be A Good Idea. Similarly, Humanitarian Intervention Would Be A Good Idea, In Principle.

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

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

As A Research Tool, The Internet Is Invaluable.

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

I Think That In Order To Achieve Progress In The Study Of Language And Human Cognitive Faculties In General It Is Necessary First To Establish 'psychic Distance' From The 'mental Facts' To Which Köhler Referred, And Then To Explore The Possibilities For Developing Explanatory Theories... We Must Recognize That Even The Most Familiar Phenomena Require Explanation And That We Have No Privileged Access To The Underlying Mechanisms, No More So Than In Physiology Or Physics.

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