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The Whole Intelectual Culture Has A Filtering System, Starts As A Child In School. You're Expected To Accept Certain Beliefs, Styles, Behavioral Patterns And So On. If You Don't Accept Them, You Are Called Maybe A Behavioral Problem, Or Something, And You're Weeded Out. Something Like That Goes On All The Way Through Universities And Graduate Schools. There Is An Implicit System Of Filtering, Which Has The, It Creates A Strong Tendency To Impose Conformism. Now, It's A Tendency, So You Do Have Exceptions, And Sometimes The Exceptions Are Quite Striking.

-Noam Chomsky

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The Whole Intelectual Culture

Noam Chomsky

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The Whole Intelectual Culture Has A Filtering System, Starts As A Child In School. You're Expected To Accept Certain Beliefs, Styles, Behavioral Patterns And So On. If You Don't Accept Them, You Are Called Maybe A Behavioral Problem, Or Something, And You're Weeded Out. Something Like That Goes On All The Way Through Universities And Graduate Schools. There Is An Implicit System Of Filtering, Which Has The, It Creates A Strong Tendency To Impose Conformism. Now, It's A Tendency, So You Do Have Exceptions, And Sometimes The Exceptions Are Quite Striking.

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Anti-americanism Is A Pure Totalitarian Concept. The Very Notion Is Idiotic.

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Us Government Policies Are Continuing To Do Exactly The Same Thing [produce Terrorism]. Two Days After The Boston Marathon Bombings, There Was A Drone Strike In Yemen Attacking A Peaceful Village, Which Killed A Target Who Could Very Easily Have Been Apprehended. But Of Course It Is Just Easier To Terrorise People.

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We Still Name Our Military Helicopter Gunships After Victims Of Genocide. Nobody Bats An Eyelash About That: Blackhawk. Apache. And Comanche. If The Luftwaffe Named Its Military Helicopters Jew And Gypsy, I Suppose People Would Notice.

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Some Of [donald Trump] Comments Can Be Interpreted As Potentially Reducing The Threat Of Nuclear War. The Major Threat Right Now Is Right On The Russian Border. Notice, Not The Mexican Border, The Russian Border. And It's Serious. He Has Made Various Statements Moving Towards Reducing The Tensions, Accommodating Russian Concerns And So On.

There Was A Hemispheric Conference In Colombia. It Couldn't Reach A Consensus, So There Was No Declaration That Came Out, [but] On The Crucial Issues, Canada And The Us Were Totally Isolated. The Rest Of The Hemisphere Voted One Way, And The Us And Canada Rejected It. So There Couldn't Be A Consensus.

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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.

It's Fine To Criticize Somebody Else's Crimes And Misdeeds, But You Don't Talk About Your Own. The Only Exception Is A Country That Is Defeated. And Even That Is Rather Nuanced.

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No Honest Journalist Should Be Willing To Describe Himself Or Herseif As 'embedded.' To Say, 'i'm An Embedded Journalist' Is To Say, 'i'm A Government Propagandist.

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

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The Republicans Went So Far To The Right That They Just Can't Get Votes. They've Become A Dedicated Party Of The Very Rich And The Corporate Sector.

I Don't Have Any Oratory Skills. But I Would Not Use Them If I Had.

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For The Powerful, Crimes Are Those That Others Commit.

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If You Assume There Is No Hope, You Guarantee There Will Be No Hope.

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The More There Is A Need To Talk About The Ideals Of Democracy, The Less Democratic The System Usually Is.

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

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The Dominant Propaganda Systems Have Appropriated The Term "globalization" To Refer To The Specific Version Of International Economic Integration That They Favor, Which Privileges The Rights Of Investors And Lenders, Those Of People Being Incidental. In Accord With This Usage, Those Who Favor A Different Form Of International Integration, Which Privileges The Rights Of Human Beings, Become "anti-globalist."

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

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

The Point Of Public Relations Slogans Like "support Our Troops" Is That They Don't Mean Anything ... That's The Whole Point Of Good Propaganda. You Want To Create A Slogan That Nobody Is Going To Be Against And I Suppose Everybody Will Be For, Because Nobody Knows What It Means, Because It Doesn't Mean Anything. But Its Crucial Value Is That It Diverts Your Attention From A Question That Does Mean Something, Do You Support Our Policy? And That's The One You're Not Allowed To Talk About.

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

In The Years Of The Reagan-bush Administration Alone, About 1.5 Million People Were Killed By South Africa Just In The Surrounding Countries. Forget What Was Happening In South Africa And Namibia.

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.

My Own Feeling Is That A Corporation Has No Right To Have A Political Or Social Influence.

Unlimited Economic Growth Has The Marvelous Quality Of Stilling Discontent While Maintaining Privilege, A Fact That Has Not Gone Unnoticed Among Liberal Economists.

Pick The Topic You Like: The Middle East, International Terrorism, Central America, Whatever It Is - The Picture Of The World That's Presented To The Public Has Only The Remotest Relation To Reality. The Truth Of The Matter Is Buried Under Edifice After Edifice Of Lies Upon Lies. It's All Been A Marvelous Success From The Point Of View In Deterring The Threat Of Democracy, Achieved Under Conditions Of Freedom, Which Is Extremely Interesting. It's Not Like A Totalitarian State, Where It's Done By Force. These Achievements Are Under Conditions Of Freedom.

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

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.

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.

[mikhail Bakunin] Expectations Were Generally Confirmed, Including His Prediction That Some Would Seek To Gain State Power On The Backs Of Popular Revolution, Then Constructing A "red Bureaucracy" That Would Be One Of The Worst Tyrannies In History, While Others Would Recognize That Power Lies Elsewhere And Would Serve As Its Apologists, Becoming Mystifies, "disablers," And Managers While Demanding The Right To Function In "technocratic Isolation," In World Bank Lingo.

Policies Are Designed To Undermine Working Class Organization And The Reason Is Not Only The Unions Fight For Workers' Rights, But They Also Have A Democratizing Effect. These Are Institutions In Which People Without Power Can Get Together, Support One Another, Learn About The World, Try Out Their Ideas, Initiate Programs, And That Is Dangerous. That's Like A Referendum In Greece. It Is Dangerous To Allow That.

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

Censorship Is Never Over For Those Who Have Experienced It. It Is A Brand On The Imagination That Affects The Individual Who Has Suffered It, Forever.

I Think A Decent Society Should Protect Rights To Private Property Within Limits, But Not Concentrations Of Private Power That Infringe On The Freedom And Rights Of Others, Including Exploitation Of Labor, And That Convert Any Democratic Forms Into What Have Been Called Sometimes "hierarchical Democracies," Like Ours, In Which Some Have Vastly Greater Influence Over Public Policy Than Others. Spelling All Of This Out Is A Complex Matter That Raises Many Issue And Problems That Are Impossible To Address Here.

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.

We Had One Or Another Form Of State Capitalism During An Extremely Brief Period Of Human History, Which Tells Us Essentially Nothing About Human Nature. If You Look At Human Societies And Human Interactions, You Can Find Anything. You Find Selfishness, You Find Altruism, You Find Sympathy.

Jamie Kilstein And Allison Kilkenny Have Created An Important Political Radio Show That Balances Humor And Unreported News. At A Time When Media Conglomerates Dominate The Airwaves, Independent Media Like Citizen Radio Is Vital To National Discourse.

Finally Irish Were Accepted Into Society And Became Part Of The Political System, And There Were Kennedys, And So On. But The Same Is True About Other Waves Of Immigrants, Like The Jews In The 1950s.

The Current Period Of Regression Is Registering Some Success In "producing People" Who Are Subordinated To External Power, Diverted To Such "superficial Things" As "fashionable Consumption" And Other Pursuits More Fitting For The "bewildered Herd" Than Participation In Determining The Course Of Individual And Social Life.

Superficial Things

When Israelis In The Occupied Territories Now Claim That They Have To Defend Themselves, They Are Defending Themselves In The Sense That Any Military Occupier Has To Defend Itself Against The Population They Are Crushing. You Can't Defend Yourself When You're Militarily Occupying Someone Else's Land. That's Not Defense. Call It What You Like, It's Not Defense.

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.

Anarcho-syndic Alism Took For Granted That Working People Ought To Control Their Own Work, Its Conditions, The Enterprises In Which They Work, Along With Communities, So They Should Be Associated With One Another In Free Associations, And Democracy Of That Kind Should Be The Foundational Elements Of A More General Free Society.

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 European Reaction To Obama Is A European Delusion.

What Is Called 'capitalism'is Basically A System Of Corporate Mercantilism, With Huge And Largely Unaccountable Private Tyrannies Exercising Vast Control Over The Economy, Political Systems, And Social And Cultural Life, Operating In Close Cooperation With Powerful States That Intervene Massively In The Domestic Economy And International Society.

I Should Say That Canada Is One Of The Major Criminals, Not Just The Tar Sands And So On, But Even Mining Throughout The World, A Lot Of It Is Canadian. It's Extremely Destructive, So An Important Thing For Canadians To Do Is Curtail The Predatory And Destructive Behavior Of Their Own Government And Corporations. A Carbon Tax Is One Way Of Doing It.

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

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.

Throughout History, Even The Harshest And Most Shameful Measures Are Regularly Accompanied By Professions Of Noble Intent - And Rhetoric About Bestowing Freedom And Independence.

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.

Control Of Thought Is More Important For Governments That Are Free And Popular Than For Despotic And Military States. The Logic Is Straightforward: A Despotic State Can Control Its Domestic Enemies By Force, But As The State Loses This Weapon, Other Devices Are Required To Prevent The Ignorant Masses From Interfering With Public Affairs, Which Are None Of Their Business… The Public Are To Be Observers, Not Participants, Consumers Of Ideology As Well As Products.

Ignorant Masses

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."

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.

I Have Often Thought That If A Rational Fascist Dictatorship Were To Exist, Then It Would Choose The American System.

If You Want To Find Weapons Of Destruction, You Can Find Them All Over The Place. Take, Say, Israel. There Is A Very Great Concern Right Now About Proliferation Of Nuclear Weapons, As There Should Be. Israel Has A Couple Of Hundred Nuclear Weapons And Also Chemical And Biological Weapons. This Stockpile Is Not Only A Threat In Itself But Encourages Others To Proliferate In Reaction And In Self-defense. Is Anybody Saying Anything About This?

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

Starting With [ronald] Regan It Became Quite Open, The Attack On Unions. It Wasn't The Pinkertons Anymore, But It Was Just Not Applying The Laws.

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

There's A Strong Nativist Tradition - Saying, "we Have To Protect Ourselves" - That Comes From The Founding Of The Country. If You Read Benjamin Franklin, Who Was One Of The Leading Figures Of The Enlightenment In The United States And The Most Distinguished Representative Of The Movement Here, He Actually Advised That The Newly Founded Republic Should Block Germans And Swedes Because They Were Too "swarthy" - Dark.

A Property Of An Organism Enters Into Its Life (and Survival) In Many Different Ways, Some More Salient Than Others. But There Is No Simple Notion Of Its Being "for" Some Function.

There Are Very Deep And Restrictive Principles That Determine The Nature Of Human Language And Are Rooted In The Specific Character Of The Human Mind

About Specific Social Issues, There Is A Great Deal To Say That Departs Very Far From Truism And Is, Accordingly, Significant And Controversial.

Nicaragua Was Destabilizing Central America, Meaning Moving In A Direction The Us Didn't Like. So Nicaragua Was Crushed.

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

I Hope That A Move Toward Clemency With Judge Afiuni Would Be A Step Towards The Importance Of Maintaining A Properly Functioning Justice System.

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

Well, In Fact If You Look At The Trump Voters, You Take A Look At Their Attitudes It's Not All That Different. In Some Respects They're Similar. They're An Older Version Of The Sanders People. So A Lot Of It Is Racist And You Have That Sort Of Thing, But If You Look At Their Views On Say Health, Education, And So On, It's Kind Of The Same As Sanders.

Health Education

It's Very Hard To Look In The Mirror. We All Know This. It's Much Easier To Have Illusions About Yourself. And In Particular, When You Think, Well, I'm Going To Believe What I Like, But I'll Say What The Powerful Want, You Do That Over Time, And You Believe What You Say.

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

To Speak Truth To Power Is Not A Particularly Honorable Vocation. One Should Seek Out An Audience That Matters - And Furthermore (another Important Qualification), It Should Not Be Seen As An Audience, But As A Community Of Common Concern In Which One Hopes To Participate Constructively.

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

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

One Of The Benefits Of A Properly Functioning Democracy Is Minority Rights And Majority Rule.

My Linguistics Is Pretty Theoretical.

The Real World Of American Society Is One Which It Is Very Misleading To Call Simply A Democracy. Of Course, It Is In A Sense A Democracy, But It Is One In Which There Are Enormous Inequities In The Distribution Of Power And Force. For Example, The Entire Commercial And Industrial System Is In Principle Excluded From The Democratic Process, Including Everything That Goes On Within It

Distribution Of Power

Hypocrites Are Those Who Apply To Others The Standards That They Refuse To Accept For Themselves.

The Term "globalization," Like Most Terms Of Public Discourse, Has Two Meanings: Its Literal Meaning, And A Technical Sense Used For Doctrinal Purposes. In Its Literal Sense, "globalization" Means International Integration. Its Strongest Proponents Since Its Origins Have Been The Workers Movements And The Left , Which Is Why Unions Are Called "internationals", And The Strongest Proponents Today Are Those Who Meet Annually In The World Social Forum And Its Many Regional Offshoots.

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.

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

Anyone Who Studies Declassified Documents Soon Becomes Aware That Government Secrecy Is Largely An Effort To Protect Policy Makers From Scrutiny By Citizens, Not To Protect The Country From Enemies.

In Many Respects, The United States Is The Freest Country In The World. I Don't Just Mean In Terms Of Limits On State Coercion, Though That's True Too, But Also In Terms Of Individual Relations. The United States Comes Closer To Classlessness In Terms Of Interpersonal Relations Than Virtually Any Society.

History Records Endless Struggles To Enlarge Those Realms, Inspiring Ones; It Also Records Painful Reversals And Setbacks.

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.

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.

All Over The Place, From The Popular Culture To The Propaganda System, There Is Constant Pressure To Make People Feel That They Are Helpless, That The Only Role They Can Have Is To Ratify Decisions And To Consume.

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.

The Tendencies Are Considerably Weaker In The Natural Sciences, Which, For The Past Several Centuries, Have Survived And Flourished Through Such Constant Challenge, And Therefore, At Best, Seek To Encourage It. Serving The Status Quo In Political And Socioeconomic Realms Is A Different Matter.

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

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.

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

Democracy Has Both Expanded And Declined Over The Years.

Democracies Have

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

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.

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

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

I Don't Buy Much. Almost Buy Nothing. I Buy What I Need, Do It The Easiest Way Possible.

The People I Find Most Impressive Are Generally Unknown At The Time Of Their Actions And Forgotten In History.

You Can Go Into The Library Of Congress And Find Information On Just About Anything, But That Doesn't Do You Much Good Unless You Know What You Are Looking For.

In Fact, Various Lawyers' Groups - To Some Extent In The U.s. But Mostly In England And Canada And Elsewhere - Are Bringing Demands For A War Crimes Trial For The Crime Of Aggression. However, Though The Invasion Of Iraq Was Plainly An Act Of Aggression, It Doesn't Break Any Records.

I've Already Supported Bernie Sanders In The Primaries.

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.

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.

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

There Are A Lot Of People That Form Movements Around Particular Commitments, Like Gay Rights. It Is Important, But It Does Not Link Easily To, Say, Economic Rights, And It Often Looks Like It's Opposed To Them. The Attempt To Bring These Together Has Yet To Be Done In A Truly Effective Way, And I Think It Can Be.

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

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

So The First Things That You See When You Look Up Something On Google Could Be Dependent On The Amount Of Advertising Or Something Else. Since It Is A Profit Making Institution, It Is Going To Reflect The Interests And Concerns Of Those Who Fund It, Which Is Advertisers.

It’s Not Going To Be Easy To Proceed. There Are Going To Be Barriers, Difficulties, Hardships, Failures - It’s Inevitable. But Unless The Spirit Of The Last Year, Here And Elsewhere In The Country And Around The Globe, Unless That Continues To Grow And Becomes A Major Force In The Social And Political World, The Chances For A Decent Future Are Not Very High.

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

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

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

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

Humans Have Certain Properties And Characteristics Which Are Intrinsic To Them, Just As Every Other Organism Does. That's Human Nature.

Characteristics

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

In Other Countries, Rich And Poor, Education Remains Substantially Free, With Educational Standards That Rank High In Global Comparisons. Even In The Us, Higher Education Was Almost Free During The Economically Successful Years Before The Neoliberal Reaction - And It Was A Much Poorer Country Then. The Gi Bill Provided Free Education To Huge Numbers Of People - White Men Overwhelmingly - Who Would Probably Never Have Gone To College, A Great Benefit To Them Personally And To The Whole Society. Tuition At Private Colleges Was Far Below Today's Exorbitant Costs.

When You Read About The End Of The Soviet Union, It's Always About The "death Of Socialism." They Never Say "the Death Of Democracy." But It Makes About The Same Sense.

Whenever There Is Injustice, Oppression, Aggression, Violence, It's Standard For It To Be Supported By Those We Now Call "intellectuals," But Typically Not By All; There Is Typically A Fringe Of Dissidents. With Very Rare Exceptions - In Fact, It's Hard To Think Of Any - They Suffer In One Or Another Way; How Depends On The Nature Of The Society.

In Fact, Some Leaders Come Right Out And Say It. Mario Draghi The President Of The European Central Bank Had An Interview With The Wall St Journal In Which He Said The Social Contract's Dead; We Finally Got Rid Of It.

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

Of Course All Such Conclusions About Appropriate Actions Against The Rich And Powerful Are Based On A Fundamental Flaw: This Is Us, And That Is Them. This Crucial Principle, Deeply Embedded In Western Culture, Suffices To Undermine Even The Most Precise Analogy And The Most Impeccable Reasoning.

Western Culture

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

Like Most Technology, The Internet Has Mixed Effects. It's A Neutral Instrument.

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

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.

For Those Of Us Who Got Into Good Colleges Or The Professions, Did We Stand Up To That High School History Teacher Who Told Us Some Ridiculous Lie About American History And Say, "that's A Ridiculous Lie. You're An Idiot"? No. We Said, "all Right, I'll Keep Quiet, And I'll Write It In The Exam And I'll Think, Yes, He's An Idiot." And It's Easy To Say And Believe Things That Improve Your Self-image And Your Career And That Are In Other Ways Beneficial To Yourselves.

Washington Still Refuses To Provide Evidence To Support The Claims In 1990 That A Huge Iraqi Military Build-up On The Saudi Border Justified War.

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

Students Typically Are At A Period Of Their Lives When They're More Free Than At Any Other Time. They're Out Of Parental Control. They're Not Yet Burdened By The Needs Of Trying To Put Food On The Table In A Pretty Repressive Environment, Often, And They're Free To Explore, To Create, To Invent, To Act, And To Organize. Over And Over Through The Years, Student Activism Has Been Extremely Significant In Initiating And Galvanizing Major Changes. I Don't See Any Reason For That To Change.

Concision Is A Technique Of Propaganda. It Ensures You Cannot Do Anything Except Repeat Clichés, The Standard Doctrine, Or Sound Like A Lunatic.

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

Maybe The Science Is Uncertain, Maybe We Don't Have To Worry About It. Climate Change Is The Worst, But There's Others.

There Could Be An Independent Labor-based Party, Which Might Over Time Become An Important Force The Way The Labor Party Did In England. To All Of These Things There Are Plenty Of Barriers, In The Culture And In The Social And Political Institutions, The Concentration Of Economic Power. But These Are Not Insuperable Barriers, I Think. They Can Be Overcome. And It Is Urgent That This Be Done, Because There Are Really Incredible Problems That Are Simply Not Being Addressed.

[isaiah] Berlin's Observation Is Accurate Enough, And Applies At Home As Well, And Even More Harshly For The Reasons Already Mentioned: The Apparatchiks And Commissars Could At Least Plead Fear In Extenuation.

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

[james] Madison Pointed Out In The Discussion Of The Constitutional Debates - The Constitutional Convention - That Democracy Would Be A Danger. He Used England Of Course As The Model And Said Suppose That In England Everyone Had The Free Right To Vote; The Poor, The Propertyless - Who Are The Great Majority - Would Use Their Voting Power To Take Away The Rights Of Property Owners To Carry Out What We Would Call Land Reform.

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

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.

I'm Into Eating As Little As Possible... I Never Cook. Never Use The Stove Or Anything.

The Russians Were Doing A Lot Of Rotten Things, You Can Point To Them. But The Idea That If You Consider What Hans Morgenthau Called "i Called Abuse Of Reality," The Picture Of The World Was Almost The Opposite Of What They Presented. But Somehow This Sells And Is Continually Repeated, At Least In This Kind Of Situation.

The British Had An Even Stronger [then America] Business Interest In Nazi Germany. And Benito Mussolini Was Greatly Admired.

The Fact Of The Matter Is That The U.s. Is Run By An Unusually Class-conscious, Dedicated Business Class That Has A Very Violent Labor History, Much Worse Than In Europe.

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

The Soviet Union Was Pretty Much What Lenin And Trotsky Said It Was.

Latin America Has Much Richer Resources. You'd Expect It To Be Far More Advanced Than East Asia, But It Had The Disadvantage Of Being Under Imperialist Wings.

Very Commonly Substances Are Criminalized Because They're Associated With What's Called The Dangerous Classes, You Know, Poor People, Or Working People.... Actually, The Peak Of Marijuana Use Was As I Said, In The Seventies, But That Was Rich Kids, So You Don't Throw Them In Jail. And Then It Got Seriously Criminalized, You Know, You Really Throw People In Jail For It, When It Was Poor People.

My Own Feeling Is That One Should Refuse To Participate In Any Activity That Implements American Aggression - Thus Tax Refusal, Draft Refusal, Avoidance Of Work That Can Be Used By The Agencies Of Militarism And Repression, All Seem To Me Essential.

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