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There's Kind Of A Hidden Point Which Isn't Being Brought Out, And That Is That It Is Inconceivable That The U.s. Would Permit Democracy In The Middle East, And For A Very Simple Reason. Just Take A Look At Polls Of Arab Public Opinion. They Exist. You Can't Find Them In The Press, But They Exist From Prestigious Polling Agencies. Released By Major Institutions. And What They Show Is That If There Was Democracy In The Middle East, The Entire U.s. Program For Domination Of The Middle East Would Be Down The Tube.

-Noam Chomsky

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There's Kind Of A

Noam Chomsky

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There's Kind Of A Hidden Point Which Isn't Being Brought Out, And That Is That It Is Inconceivable That The U.s. Would Permit Democracy In The Middle East, And For A Very Simple Reason. Just Take A Look At Polls Of Arab Public Opinion. They Exist. You Can't Find Them In The Press, But They Exist From Prestigious Polling Agencies. Released By Major Institutions. And What They Show Is That If There Was Democracy In The Middle East, The Entire U.s. Program For Domination Of The Middle East Would Be Down The Tube.

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

The Crimes Against Palestinians In The Occupied Territories And Elsewhere, Particularly Lebanon, Are So Shocking That The Only Emotionally Valid Reaction Is Rage And A Call For Extreme Actions. But That Does Not Help The Victims. And, In Fact, It's Likely To Harm Them.

We Have Never Had Class-based Parties. We've Had Parties Run By The Business Classes. There's Slight Variations. Like In The New Deal Period, There Was A Lot Of Popular Activism, So Things Shifted Slightly, But Not Much.

If You And I Go Into A Store To Rob It, And I Say "shoot," That's Not Protected. Like All Judicial Decisions And Legislation, This Leaves Plenty Of Gray Areas, Including Many Of Great Significance That Are Rarely Discussed: Advocacy Of Imminent War Crimes, Such As Aggression, For Example. I Think We Would All Agree That Such Speech Should Be Protected, Despite The Often Horrific Consequences, But It's Worth Noting That That Stretches The Doctrine To Its Limits.

The Goal Is A Society In Which The Basic Social Unit Is You And Your Television Set. If The Kid Next Door Is Hungry, It’s Not Your Problem. If The Retired Couple Next Door Invested Their Assets Badly And Are Now Starving, That’s Not Your Problem Either.

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.

We Are Hurtling Towards Self-destruction At An Alarming Rate Thanks Chiefly To An Advertising And Propaganda System That Goads People From Infancy Towards Apathy, Isolation, Passivity, Helplessness And Separation.

The Process Of Shaping Opinion, Attitudes, And Perceptions Was Termed The 'engineering Of Consent' By One Of The Founders Of The Modern Public Relations Industry, Edward Bernays.

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.

If [respulicans] Can't Get Rid Of [obamacare], They're Going To Have To Tell Their Base, We've Been Lying To You For The Last Five Years. So They're Willing To Go To Almost Any Extent To Do That. That's Unusual, In Fact I Think It's Unique In The History Of Modern Parliamentary Systems. And It's Very Dangerous For The Country And For The World.

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

Just As I'm Opposed To Political Fascism, I'm Opposed To Economic Fascism. I Think That Until Major Institutions Of Society Are Under The Popular Control Of Participants And Communities, It's Pointless To Talk About Democracy.

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

Jesus Himself, And Most Of The Message Of The Gospels, Is A Message Of Service To The Poor, A Critique Of The Rich And The Powerful, And A Pacifist Doctrine. And It Remained That Way, That's What Christianity Was Up... Until Constantine. :constantine Shifted It So The Cross, Which Was The Symbol Of Persecution Of Somebody Working For The Poor, Was Put On The Shield Of The Roman Empire. It Became The Symbol For Violence And Oppression, And That's Pretty Much What The Church Has Been Until The Present.

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.

The Indoctrination Is So Deep That Educated People Think They’re Being Objective.

The Whole Basis For The Us Intervention In Colombia Is Outrageously Racist And Arrogant.

Hamas Is Regularly Described As 'iranian-backed Hamas, Which Is Dedicated To The Destruction Of Israel.' One Will Be Hard Put To Find Something Like 'democratically Elected Hamas, Which Has Long Been Calling For A Two-state Settlement In Accord With The International Consensus'—blocked For Over 30 Years By The Us And Israel. All True, But Not A Useful Contribution To The Party Line, Hence Dispensable.

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.

The People Who Are Unemployed Want To Do The Work, But The System Is Such A Catastrophic Failure That It Cannot Bring Together Idle Hands And Work. This Is All Hailed As A Great Success, And It Is A Great Success - For A Very Small Sector Of The Population.

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."

Maybe [the Republicans] 'll Find Ways Around It, But The Financial System Of The World Depends Very Heavily On The Credibility Of The Us Treasury Department. Us Treasury Securities Are What's Called "good As Gold"; They're The Basis Of International Finance, And If The Government Can't Uphold Them, If They Become Valueless, The Effect On The International Financial System Could Be Quite Severe. But In Order To Destroy A Limited Health-care Law, The Right-wing Republicans, The Reactionary Republicans, Are Willing To Do That.

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.

The More Privilege You Have, The More Opportunity You Have. The More Opportunity You Have, The More Responsibility You Have.

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.

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

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.

Capitalism Is A System In Which The Central Institutions Of Society Are, In Principle, Under Autocratic Control. Thus, A Corporation Or An Industry Is, If We Were To Think Of It In Political Terms, Fascist, That Is, It Has Tight Control At The Top And Strict Obedience Has To Be Established At Every Level. [...] Just As I'm Opposed To Political Fascism, I Am Opposed To Economic Fascism. I Think That Until The Major Institutions Of Society Are Under The Popular Control Of Participants And Communities, It's Pointless To Talk About Democracy.

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

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.

Do I Believe In God? Can't Answer, I'm Afraid. I'm Not Being Flippant, But I Don't Understand The Question. What Is It That I Am Supposed To Believe Or Not Believe In? Are You Asking Whether I Believe There Is Something Not In The Universe (or The Universes, If There Are (maybe Infinitely) Many Of Them), And That Somehow Stands Above Them? I've Never Heard Of Any Reason For Believing That.

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.

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

We Are Entering A Period Of Human History That May Provide An Answer To The Question Of Whether It Is Better To Be Smart Than Stupid.

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

The Community Itself Didn't Support The Union. Now That's Kind Of Interesting About [barack] Obama, Because Obama Was Supposedly A Community Organizer In Chicago At That Time. Now I'm Sure He Read The Chicago Tribune, So He Knew About It, But When He Went To Show His Solidarity With The Workforce, The First Place He Went Was Caterpillar. I Don't Think He's Forgotten, And The Labor Movement Didn't React. Even Radical Labor Historians Didn't Remember. It Was Only 15 Years Ago, After All, But That's A Real Triumph Of Propaganda In Many Ways.

I've Been Interested In The Reports On Rojava. It Seems Clear That There Are Positive Developments.

The Republican Primaries Were Quite Interesting. The Establishment Had Its Candidate, [mitt] Romney, A Kind Of A Wall Street Lawyer And Investor, And They Wanted Him In. But The Base Didn't Want Him.

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

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I Am Opposed To The Accumulation Of Executive Power Anywhere.

Executive Power

Procurement Is A Major Technique Of State Subsidy.

One Might Ask Why Tobacco Is Legal And Marijuana Not. A Possible Answer Is Suggested By The Nature Of The Crop.

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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.

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.

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The Press Is Owned By Wealthy Men Who Only Want Certain Things To Reach The Public.

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

The Internet, Since It Is Publicly Created, Ought To Be Publicly Controlled.

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

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

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

[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.

Looking At Polls Of Arab Public Opinion, You Look At Popular Figures, The Most Popular Figure Is The Prime Minister Of Turkey, Erdogan, And Then It Goes Down The List. You Get Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, You Don't Get Obama, Or In Fact Any Western Leader. The Public Doesn't Want The Whole Imperial Project. So If You Had Democracy, It Would Be All Over.

Moral Cowardice And Intellectual Corruption Are The Natural Concomitants Of Unchallenged Privilege.

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 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.

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

Who Wrote The Bible? Current Scholarship, To My Knowledge, Assumes That The Material That Constitutes The Old Testament Was Put Together From Various Oral And Folk Traditions (many Of Them Going Far Back) In The Hellenistic Period. That Was One Of Several Currents, Of Which The Collection That Formed The New Testament Was Another.

Any Little Issue - Miss Universe, Or Whatever It May Be - [donald Trump] Is Completely Unpredictable, He'll Go Off Into Outer Space.

The Developing World Voice Can Be Amplified Enormously By Support From The Wealthy And The Privileged, Otherwise It's Very Likely To Be Marginalized.

If [barack] Obama Or The Boss Or The Newspapers Or Anyone Else Tells You They're Doing This, That, Or The Other Thing, Dismiss It Or Assume The Opposite Is True, Which It Often Is.

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.

You Win By Struggle, And That Requires Understanding And Serious Analysis Of The Options And The Circumstances, And Then You Can Do A Lot.

Modern Science And Technology Can Relieve Men Of The Necessity For Specialized, Imbecile Labor. They May, In Principle, Provide The Basis For A Rational Social Order Based On Free Association And Democratic Control, If We Have The Will To Create It.

As A Health Scientist At Columbia University, Les Roberts, Pointed Out, Sooner Or Later People Are Going To Be Looking At A Child In A Wheelchair Suffering From Polio And Will Say 'the Americans Did That To Him'. So They Continue Policies Which Have Similar Effects I.e. Organising The Taliban. This Will Come Back To Them Too.

Everybody's Worried About Stopping Terrorism. Well, There's A Really Easy Way: Stop Participating In It.

The Us Has Been The Leading Terrorist State In The World For Many Years.

From A Comparative Perspective, The United States Is Unusual If Not Unique In The Lack Of Restraints On Freedom Of Expression. It Is Also Unusual In The Range And Effectiveness Of Methods Employed To Restrain Freedom Of Thought... Where The Voice Of The People Is Heard, Elite Groups Must Insure Their Voice Says The Right Things.

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

People Who Spend Their Working Hours In A Lab Or Research Library Or A Classroom Might Be Intent Primarily On Keeping Or Advancing Their Elite Positions, Thereby Lending Tacit Support To Power Structures. Or They Might Not Be.

The United States Is Going To Continue To Punish Iran Because Of Its Defiance.

The U.s. - The Idea That The U.s. Has Introduced And Imposed Principles Of International Law, That's Hardly Even A Joke. The United States Has Even Gone So Far As To Veto Security Council Resolutions Calling On All States To Observe International Law. That Was In The 1980s Under Reagan.

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

It Happened: The First 9/11, It Happened On September 11, 1973, In Chile. We Did It. Was That Interfering Or Hacking A Party? This Record Is All Over The World, Constantly Overthrowing Governments, Invading, Forcing People To Follow What We Call Democracy, As In The Cases I Mentioned. As I Say, If Every Charge Is Accurate, It's A Joke, And I'm Sure Half The World Is Collapsing In Laughter About This, Because People Outside The United States Know It. You Don't Have To Tell People In Chile About The First 9/11.

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.

If You Listen To The Talk Shows, Which Are Rabid Right-wing, And Very Interesting, An Important Fact About The United States, They Reach A Huge Audience. And They're Very Uniform. So Right Wing, I Don't Think You Can Even Find An Analog In Your, But They Reach A Mass Audience, And Their View Is That The Corporations Are Liberal. Their Appeal To The Population Is, "the Country Is Run By Liberals, They Own The Corporations, They Run The Government, They Own The Media, And They Don't Care About Us Ordinary People."

When I Am At Home, I Never Watch Tv, But When I Am Abroad In A Hotel I Take A Look At The Bbc To Find Out What's Going On.

There Is Nothing More Mysterious About The Concept Human Nature Than About The Concept Bee Or Chicken Nature, At Least For Those Who Regard Humans As Creatures In The Biological World.

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

Very Commonly I Get Queries. Somebody Saw Something Of Mine On Youtube And Of Course If There Is A Talk On Youtube, There Aren't Any Footnotes - And They Want To Know Why Did You Say This. Well If They Bothered To Look Up Something In Print, They Would've Seen Why I Said That. If They Ask For Evidence, I Just Say Well Take A Look And Mention Something They Can Read And That Usually Ends The Conversation.

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.

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

There Have, For Years, Been Comparative Studies Of Religious Fanaticism And Factors That Correlate With It. By And Large, It Tends To Decline With Increasing Industrialization And Education. The Us, However, Is Off The Chart, Ranking Near Devastated Peasant Societies. About 1/2 The Population Believe The World Was Created A Few Thousand Years Ago: The Justification For The Belief Is That That Is What They Were Ordered To Believe By Authority Figures To Whom They Were Taught One Must Subordinate Oneself. And On, And On.

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.

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

You Cannot Control Your Own Population By Force, But It Can Be Distracted By Consumption.

The Argument That Resistance To The War Should Remain Strictly Nonviolent Seems To Me Overwhelming.

Greece Has Been, In Many Ways, A Partially Dysfunctional Society. For Example, The Wealthy Barely Pay Taxes... To An Extent, That's True Elsewhere, Including The United States, But It's Been Pretty Extreme In Greece.

After The First International Days Of Protest In October, 1965, Senator Mansfield Criticized The 'sense Of Utter Irresponsibility' Shown By The Demonstrators.

The Bible Is One Of The Most Genocidal Books In History.

The Very Design Of Neoliberal Principles Is A Direct Attack On Democracy.

The Internet Could Be A Very Positive Step Towards Education, Organisation And Participation In A Meaningful Society.

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.

I Happened To Go To A School When I Was A Kid And That's All We Did, Pursue Our Own Interests. It Was Kind Of Structured So You Ended Up Knowing Everything You Were Supposed To Know, Arithmetic, Latin, Whatever It Was. But Almost Always It Was Under Your Own Initiative.

U.s. Analysts Estimate That Russian Military Expenditures Have Tripled During The Bush-putin Years, In Large Measure A Predicted Reaction To The Bush Administration's Militancy And Aggressiveness.

Academics Are Mostly Professionals, Involved In Their Work And Other Concerns Of Their Own, With No Particular Interest In The Workings Of The Ideological System.

Latin America Was The Most Obedient Follower Of The Neoliberal Regime That Was Instituted By The United States, Its Allies And The International Financial Institutions. They Followed It Most Rigorously. Almost Everyone Who's Followed Those Rules, Including The Western Countries, Have Suffered. And In Latin America They Suffered Severely.

The Goal Is To Keep The Bewildered Herd Bewildered. It's Unnecessary For Them To Trouble Themselves With What's Happening In The World. In Fact, It's Undesirable - If They See Too Much Of Reality They May Set Themselves To Change It.

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.

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

On Nuclear War, Actions In Syria And At The Russian Border Raise Very Serious Threats Of Confrontation That Might Trigger War, An Unthinkable Prospect. Furthermore, Trump's Pursuit Of Obama's Programs Of Modernization Of The Nuclear Forces Poses Extraordinary Dangers. As We Have Recently Learned, The Modernized U.s. Nuclear Force Is Seriously Fraying The Slender Thread On Which Survival Is Suspended.

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

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

I Am A Child Of The Enlightenment. I Think Irrational Belief Is A Dangerous Phenomenon, And I Try To Consciously Avoid Irrational Belief. On The Other Hand, I Certainly Recognize That It's A Major Phenomenon For People In General, And You Can Understand Why It Would Be. It Does, Apparently, Provide Personal Sustenance, But Also Bonds Of Association And Solidarity And A Means For Expressing Elements Of One's Personality That Are Often Very Valuable Elements. To Many People It Does That. In My View, There's Nothing Wrong With That.

I See No Anti-semitic Implications In Denial Of The Existence Of Gas Chambers, Or Even Denial Of The Holocaust.

Europe Is Being Subjected To The Kinds Of Programs That Devastated Latin America For Many Years. Latin America Has Thrown Them Out And Is Pulling Out: It's Successful; It's Democratizing; It's Economically Developing; And It's Free From The Shrapnel Of Us Imperialism For 25 Years. Meanwhile, Western Europe Is Destroying Itself Systematically, Destroying Itself Going In The Opposite Direction.

Students Who Acquire Large Debts Putting Themselves Through School Are Unlikely To Think About Changing Society. When You Trap People In A System Of Debt, They Can't Afford The Time To Think.

A Tremendous Amount Of The Entrepreneurial Initiative, If You Want To Call It That, Comes From The Dynamic State Sector On Which Most Of The Economy Relies To Socialize Costs And Risks And Privatize Eventual Profit. And That's Achieved By, If You Like, Advertising.

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?

Isaiah Berlin Described The Intellectuals Of [mikhail] Bakunin's "red Bureaucracy" As A "secular Priesthood.

My Feeling Is That A Human Being Or Any Complex Organism Has A System Of Cognitive Structures That Develop Much In The Way The Physical Organs Of The Body Develop. That Is, In Their Fundamental Character They Are Innate; Their Basic Form Is Determined By The Genetic Structure Of The Organism. Of Course, They Grow Under Particular Environmental Conditions, Assuming A Specific Form That Admits Of Some Variation. Much Of What Is Distinctive Among Human Beings Is A Specific Manner In Which A Variety Of Shared Cognitive Structures Develop.

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.

Education Must Provide The Opportunities For Self-fulfillment; It Can At Best Provide A Rich And Challenging Environment For The Individual To Explore, In His Own Way.

I'm Pretty Much Out Of Popular Culture Altogether.

Popular Culture

Free Markets Are Based On The Free Circulation Of Labor. If You Don't Have Free Circulation Of Labor, You Don't Have Free Markets.

Sports Plays A Societal Role In Engendering Jingoist And Chauvinist Attitudes. They're Designed To Organize A Community To Be Committed To Their Gladiators.

The Labor Movement Can Be Rebuilt, As Has Happened Before After Sharp Declines.

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.

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.

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

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.

A Colonial War Is A Very Dirty Kind Of War. You're Not Fighting Armed Forces. You're Fighting Mostly Unarmed People. And To Fight That Kind Of War Requires Professional Killers, Which Means Mercenaries.

People Who Don't Accept That Doctrinal System, They May Try To Survive In The Media, But They Are Unlikely To.

Take, Say, The Solidarity Movement In Central America, Which I Think Is What You Probably Had In Mind. To A Large Extent, It Comes Out Of Mainstream Christianity, Based On Beliefs That Have Had Outrageous Human Consequences In The Past, And That I Think Are Totally Indefensible. In This Case, They Happen To Lead To Some Of The Most Courageous, Heroic, And Honourable Human Action That's Taking Place Anywhere In The World. Well, That's How Life Is, I Guess. It Doesn't Come In Neat Little Packages.

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

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

It Turned Out That [bill] Clinton Had Authorized Texaco To Illegally Ship Oil To The Military Junta [in Haiti] During A Time When We Were Supposedly Opposing The Military Junta And Supporting Democracy Instead.

As Far As Marx's Analysis Of Capitalism, There's A Lot Of Very Useful Ideas In It, But He's Developing An Abstract Model Of 19th Century Capitalism. It's Abstract And It's Changed.

I Am Not Sure Just What Marx Had In Mind When He Wrote That "philosophers Have Hitherto Only Interpreted The World In Various Ways; The Point Is To Change It." Did He Mean That Philosophy Could Change The World, Or That Philosophers Should Turn To The Higher Priority Of Changing The World? If The Former, Then He Presumably Meant Philosophy In A Broad Sense Of The Term, Including Analysis Of The Social Order And Ideas About Why It Should Be Changed, And How. In That Broad Sense, Philosophy Can Play A Role, Indeed An Essential Role, In Changing The World.

Do You Train For Passing Tests Or Do You Train For Creative Inquiry?

Intellectuals Are In A Position To Expose The Lies Of Governments, To Analyze Actions According To Their Causes And Motives And Often Hidden Intentions.

I Think There Are All Kinds Of Intrusions Into Private Rights That Make Use Of Contemporary Technology.

I Suppose Frogs Pay No Attention To Being Frogs. They Take It For Granted. What Interests A Frog Are Differences Among Frogs. From Our Point Of View They Are More Or Less The Same, From Their Point Of View They Are All Radically Different.

In The Literal Sense, There Has Been No Relevant Evolution Since The Trek From Africa. But There Has Been Substantial Progress Towards Higher Standards Of Rights, Justice And Freedom - Along With All Too Many Illustrations Of How Remote Is The Goal Of A Decent Society.

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

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.

People Don't Talk To Each Other. You're Alone With Your Television Set Or Internet. But You Can't Have A Functioning Democracy Without What Sociologists Call "secondary Organizations," Places Where People Can Get Together, Plan, Talk And Develop Ideas. You Don't Do It Alone.

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.

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

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

For Fifty Years, We Heard Nato Is Necessary To Save Western Europe From The Russian Hordes, You Know The Slave State, Stuff I Was Taking About. In 1990-91, No Russian Hordes. Okay, What Happens? Well There Are Actually Visions Of The Future System That Were Presented. One Was [mikhail] Gorbachev. He Called For A Eurasian Security System, With No Military Blocs. He Called It A Common European Home. No Military Blocs, No Warsaw Pact. Just An Integrated Security System With No Conflicts.now The Other Vision Was Presented By George Bush, This Is The "statesman".

Security Systems

As To Whether Those Who Fit The Common Meaning Of The Term "intellectual" Should Act In The Manner That [ Edward] Said Prescribes, That's Another Question. Needless To Say, I Agree With Him That They Should, And That They Commonly Do Not.

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."

In The Munich Agreement In Late 1938 [franklin] Roosevelt Sent His Chief Adviser Sumner Welles, Who Came Back With A Very Supportive Statement Saying That Hitler Was Someone We Could Really Do Business With And So On.

After All, The Internet Originated Around 1960 And Wasn't Privatized Until 1995. That's Thirty Five Years In The Public Domain During The Hard, Creative Development Period.

My Linguistics Is Pretty Theoretical.

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

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.

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

Any Incident Could Instantly Blow Up. Both Sides [usa And Russia] Are Modernizing And Increasing Their Military Systems, Including Nuclear Systems.

The Public Is Not To See Where Power Lies, How It Shapes Policy, And For What Ends. Rather, People Are To Hate And Fear One Another.

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

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

Another Problem Is The Confrontation With India. Pakistan Just Cannot Survive If It Continues To Do So (continue This Confrontation).

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

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

Actually, My First Article, It Wasn't About The Anarchists; It Was About The Fall Of Barcelona And The Spread Of Fascism Over Europe, Which Was Frightening. But A Couple Of Years Later I Became Interested In The Anarchist Movement.

There Is Kind Of A Fundamental Conformity, Which Is A Virtual Requirement To Enter Into The Media.

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.

The Attack On Social Security Is Similarly Motivated. Social Security Is Based On The Conception Is That We Should Have Sympathy For Others, Not Function Merely As Isolated "rational Wealth Maximizers."

The 'corporatization Of America' During The Past Century Has Been An Attack On Democracy.

Arab Public Opinion Does Not Regard Iran As A Hostile Entity. In Fact It's So Supportive Of Iran That A Majority Would Think The Place Would Be Better Off If Iran Had Nuclear Weapons. The Main Enemies Are The United States And Isreal, In The 80, 90 Percent Range.

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

Of Course, Everybody Says They're For Peace. Hitler Was For Peace. Everybody Is For Peace. The Question Is: What Kind Of Peace?

Just Recently, The Administration Of Barack Obama, Which Has Broken All Sorts Of Records In Regards To Deportation, Picked Up A Guatemalan Man Living Here [in U.s]. I Think He Had Been Living Here For Twenty-five Years, Had A Family, A Business, And So On. He Had Fled From The Mayan Region And They Picked Him Up And Deported Him. To Me, That's Really Sick.

I Think Religion Has Often Played A Very Positive Role. Take Western Civilization, The Catholic Church Has Played An Honorable Role In Helping Those In Need. In Contrast, The Us Carried Out A Virtual War Against The Church In Central America In The 1980's Primarily Because Prime Elements In The Church Were Working With Great Courage And Honor To Help Those In Need. And To Organize Them To Help Themselves.

Another Recollection Is That [ Paul Johnson] Mostly Kept Away From Ideas And Dedicated Activism, And Concentrated On Sex Lives And Other Gossip.

We Have To Remember That Literally Within Months After Castro's Taking Office The Planes From Florida Were Beginning To Bomb Cuba. Within A Year, The Eisenhower Administration Secretly, But Formally, Decided To Overthrow The Government. Then Came The Bay Of Pigs Invasion. The Kennedy Administration Was Furious About The Failure Of The Invasion And Immediately Launched A Major Terrorist War And Economic War That Got Harsher Through The Years. Under These Conditions It Is Kind Of Amazing That Cuba Survived.

Take The Us. Women Were Not Even Able To Vote Until 90 Ago, At About The Same Time They Gained The Right In Afghanistan. Rights Of Former Slaves Were Very Limited Until The 1960s, And In Some Ways Still Are. In These And Other Domains There Has Been Progress In Democracy, Though Still Seriously Flawed. In Other Dimensions - The Control Of Concentrated Wealth Over The Political Process, For Example, Things Have Gotten Much Worse In Recent Years. And There Is Much More, In Both Directions.

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.

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

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.

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

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

There Was Very Little International Support, Even England Wouldn't Support [bombing Of Syria], Which Is Amazing.

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?'

I Still Think, Despite Everything, That The Us Is Very Unlikely To Attack Iran. It Could Be A Huge Catastrophe; Nobody Knows What The Consequences Would Be. I Imagine That Only An Administration That's Really Desperate Would Resort To That.

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

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

Palestinians Have No Wealth Or Power.

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

'reform' Is A Word You Always Aughta' Watch Out For. 'reform' Is A Change That You're Supposed To Like. And Watch It - As Soon As You Hear The Word 'reform', You Should Reach For Your Wallet And See Who's Lifting It.

Small Changes Can Magnifiy. The Possibility Of Interpersonal Communication Has Increased Substantially With Contemporary Technology. But As Compared With The Major Changes, Which Were Long Ago, These Are Not Huge.

The Invasion Of Panama, What Was That? The U.s. Killed, According To The Panamanians, 3,000 Civilians. Maybe They're Right. We Don't Investigate Our Own Crimes, So Nobody Knows.

In Fact, It Was Stated Early In The First Bush [presidency], Bush I, In One Of Their Documents They Pointed Out In The Future, Us Wars Are Going To Be Against Much Weaker Enemies. And They Have To Be Won Quickly And Decisively Before A Popular Reaction Develops. And Iif You Take A Look, That's What's Done. Look At Panama, For Instance, Over A Couple Of Days; And Kosovo, No American Troops.

We Should Therefore Be Opposed To Institutional Barriers To That Freedom: Military Dictatorships, For Example. Or States Run By A Central Committee.

Passivity May Be The Easy Course, But It Is Hardly The Honorable One.

My Feeling Is That If Any Republican Was Elected It Would Be Almost A Death Knell For The Species Literally, Just Because Of Their Attitude On Climate Change.

They Are Involve In Producing Products And There Are Different Kinds Of People Running Them, But The Principle Is The Same. A Corporation Shouldn't Have The Right. Under American Law As Its Developed Over The Past Century, Corporation Do Have Personal Rights, But I Think That's A Very Negative Development.

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

The Attack On Unions Has Been Far More Extreme Here [in U.s], And It Has Been Much More Successful.

Prophet Just Means Intellectual. They Were People Giving Geopolitical Analysis, Moral Lessons, That Sort Of Thing. We Call Them Intellectuals Today. There Were The People We Honor As Prophets, There Were The People We Condemn As False Prophets. But If You Look At The Biblical Record, At The Time, It Was The Other Way Around. The Flatterers Of The Court Of King Ahab Were The Ones Who Were Honored. The Ones We Call Prophets Were Driven Into The Desert And Imprisoned.

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

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