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There Was No Direct Way To Prevent The Boston Murders. There Are Some Easy Ways To Prevent Likely Future Ones: By Not Inciting Them. That's Also True Of Another Case Of A Suspect Murdered, His Body Disposed Of Without Autopsy, When He Could Easily Have Been Apprehended And Brought To Trial: Osama Bin Laden.

-Noam Chomsky

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There Was No Direct

Noam Chomsky

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There Was No Direct Way To Prevent The Boston Murders. There Are Some Easy Ways To Prevent Likely Future Ones: By Not Inciting Them. That's Also True Of Another Case Of A Suspect Murdered, His Body Disposed Of Without Autopsy, When He Could Easily Have Been Apprehended And Brought To Trial: Osama Bin Laden.

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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.

The United States Is A Very Insular Society. Most People Know Very Little About The Outside World And Don't Care That Much. They're Concerned With Their Own Affairs.

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

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

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.

Right To A Speedy Jury Trial And So On And So Forth. But What Do They Mean By 'person'? It Certainly Didn't Mean Individuals With Flesh And Blood Like Native Americans Who Weren't Persons, They Don't Have Any Rights.

Native American

There Was An International Conference Going On In Morocco That Was A Follow Up For The Paris Conference - To Put Some Teeth In The Paris Agreements. But On November 8, 2017 The Conferences Stopped. The Question Was, Will We Survive? Not A Word About It. Even More Amazing, The World Is Looking To China To Save Them. The Us Is The Wrecking Machine That Is Destroying Everything. The World Is Hoping That China Will Somehow Come To The Rescue.

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

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

The Pashtuns In Particular Are Kind Of Trapped. They've Never Accepted The Durand Line Nor Has Any Afghan Government Historically Accepted It.

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

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

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

I Can Understand The Idea That There Is A Conspiracy. In Fact, In Much Of The World There Is A Sense Of An Ultra-powerful Cia Manipulating Everything That Happens, Such As Running The Arab Spring, Running The Pakistani Taliban, Etc. That Is Just Nonsense. They [cia] Created A Monster And Now They Are Appalled By It.

One Of The Best Predictors Of Policy Around Is Thomas Ferguson's Investment Theory Of Politics, As He Calls It - Very Outstanding Political Economist - Which Essentially - I Mean, To Say It In A Sentence, He Describes Elections As Occasions In Which Groups Of Investors Coalesce And Invest To Control The State.

Even In A Largely Depoliticized Society Such As The United States, With No Political Parties Or Opposition Press Beyond The Narrow Spectrum Of The Business-dominated Consensus, It Is Possible For Populate Action To Have A Significant Impact On Policy, Though Indirectly. That Was An Important Lesson For The Indochina Wars.

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.

Internal Security Means Something. It Means War Against Your Own Population.

In Europe There's Kind Of A Reaction To The European Union, Kind Of A Move Towards Some Kind Of Regionalization. It's More Advanced In Some Regions Than Others, Like In Spain For Example. Catelan Was Repressed Under Franco. People Spoke It, But Not Publicly. It's Now The Language Of Catelonia. The Basque Language Is Being Revived, Not Just The Language But The Culture, The Folk Music And Everything Else. So You're Getting More Diverse Societies, And It's Happening In Britain As Well.

Diverse Society

A Number Of Analysts Have Observed That Although Bin Laden Was Finally Killed, He Won Some Major Successes In His War Against The U.s.

Whoever Sets The Agenda Controls The Outcome Of The Debate

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

The Us Is Off The Spectrum In Religious Commitment. It's Been Increasing Since 1980 But It's A Major Part Of The Voting Base Of The Republican Party So That Means Committing To Anti-abortion Positions, Opposing Women's Rights.

The 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.

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

In Some Ways, [the Student Anti-sweatshop Movement] Is Like The Anti-apartheid Movement, Except That In This Case Its Striking At The Core Of The Relations Of Exploitation. Much Of This Was Initiated By Charlie Kernaghan Of The Institute For Global Labour And Human Rights.

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

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.

Modifying The Core Institutions Of The Society Is No Small Challenge.

Kaplan Can't Understand Trivialities. The Triviality Here Is That Nobody Except The Ultra Right-wing Jingoists Like Kaplan Are Comparing Atrocities By Various Countries. What Honest People Are Saying Seems To Be Incomprehensible: That We Should Keep To The Elementary Moral Level Of The Gospels. We Should Pay Attention To Our Own Crimes And Stop Committing Them. This Would Be True Even If We Were Killing One Person, Ok? And It's Even More True When We're Killing Millions Of People.

Scientists Generally, Not Just Evolutionary Biologists, Don't Take Much For Granted.

In Fact, For The Majority Of The Population, Wages And Incomes Have Stagnated And Conditions Have Gotten Worse. So They Are Asking, "what Did I Do Wrong?" And The Answer That The Talk Show Host Is Giving Them Is Convincing, In It's Internal Logic. It's Saying, "what's Wrong Is The Rich Liberals Own Everything, Run Everything, They Don't Care About You; Therefore, Distrust Them" And So On.

Every Time A Candidate Came Up From The Base, That Is With Popular Support, The Republican Establishment Went Into High Gear To Destroy Them With Massive Propaganda Attack Ads And So On. It Was One After Another, Each One Crazier Than The Last.

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.

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

Workers In Different Countries Can Easily Be Played Off Against Each Other.

If The United States Loses The Economic Weapons Of Control, It Is Very Much Weakened.

Civil Disobedience's Main Goal Typically Is To Try To Arouse And Inspire Others To Join And Do Something. Well, Sometimes That Is A Good Tactic, Sometimes Not.

I Don't Say You're Self-censoring - I'm Sure You Believe Everything You're Saying; But What I'm Saying Is, If You Believed Something Different, You Wouldn't Be Sitting Where You're Sitting.

[after Vietnam] The Type Of Interventions That Are Carried Out Are Designed So As Not To Elicit Public Reactions.

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.

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

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.

The Republicans Have Picked That As The One Thing That They Want To Hang On To To Try To Gain Some Political Stand, So They Have To Destroy What They Call Obamacare. This Is Now Not All The Republicans, It's A Wing Of The Republican Party, Which Is Called Conservative But In Fact Is Just Deeply Reactionary.

Allowing An Independent And Sovereign Iraq Could Be A Nightmare For The United States. It Would Mean That It Would Be Shi'ite-dominated, At Least If It's Minimally Democratic. It Would Continue To Improve Relations With Iran, Just What The United States Doesn't Want To See. And Beyond That, Right Across The Border In Saudi Arabia Where Most Of Saudi Oil Is, There Happens To Be A Large Shi'ite Population, Probably A Majority.

Fed And Electoral College Could Use Some Tinkering, But They Are Not The Source Of The Problems.

If You Have To Control People, You Have To Have An Administrative Force That Does It. So In U.s. Industry, Even More Than Elsewhere, There's Layer After Layer Of Management - A Kind Of Economic Waste, But Useful For Control And Domination. And The Same Is True In Universities.

Silicon Valley, After All, Feeds Off The Existence Of Computers, The Internet, The It Systems, Satellites, The Whole Of Micro Electronics And So On, But A Lot Of That Comes Straight Out Of The State Sector Of The Economy. Silicon Valley Developed, But They Expanded And Turned It Into Commercial Products And So On, But The Innovation Is On The Basis Of Fundamental Technological Development That Took Places In Places Like This [mit] On Government Funding, And That Continues.

Technological Development

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

I Don't Think All Thinking Is A Kind Of Rational Structure. But I Don't Think It Is Correct To Identify The Rational-nonrational Dichotomy With The Linguistic-nonlinguistic Dichotomy.

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

There Had Been A Free And Open Election In Haiti In The Early 1990s And President Jean-bertrand Aristide Won, A Populist Priest. A Few Months Later Came The Expected Military Coup - A Very Vicious Military Junta Took Over, Of Which The United States Was Passively Supportive. Not Openly, Of Course, But Haitians Started To Flee From The Terror And Were Sent Back And On Towards Guantanamo Bay. Of Course, That Is Against International Law. But The United States Pretended That They Were "economic Refugees."

Amusing And Perfectly Self-conscious Charlatans.

I Don't Have Time, You Know - I Want To Be Able To Get It [information] Instantly On The Internet And Not Have To Think About It. Well, There Is That Phenomenon As Well.

Nothing Is More Inspiring To See How Poor And Suffering People, Living Under Conditions Incomparably Worse Than We Endure, Continue Quietly And Unpretentiously With Courageous And Committed Struggle For Justice And Dignity.

Syria Is Bad Enough, It's A Pretty Terrible Atrocity. But There Are Much Worse Ones In The World. So For Example, The Worst Atrocities In The Past Decade Have Been In The Congo, The Eastern Congo, Where Maybe 5 Million People Have Been Killed.

I Think There Are Real Possibilities Of Reaching Out To Many Of The Trump Voters, Those Who Voted For Obama Believing His Rhetoric.

We Could Not Bring Democracy To South Vietnam At A Cost That We Were Willing To Accept. So It Was A Disaster. That' Is The Left Extreme.

Look, The United States Doesn't Have Political Parties. In Other Countries, Take Say Europe, You Can Be An Active Member Of The Political Party. Here, The Only Thing In A Political Party Is Gearing To Elections, Not The Other Things You Do. So It's Basically, A Way Of Making People Passive, Submissive Objects.

The United States Has Done Some Very Good Things In The World, And That Does Not Change The Fact That The World Court Was Quite Correct In Condemning The United States As An International Terrorist State.

Power Has To Be Protected From Scrutiny. That's The Principle Of Every Dictatorship, Of Every Autocracy. You Hear It From High Priests At Harvard And Every Government Department, That Power Has To Be Kept Secret Otherwise It Will Fade And It Won't Work. But Bradley Manning Is Violating That Principle.

I Mean The Reason The Sit-down Strikes Struck Such Fear In The Hearts Of Management Was That They Knew That A Sit-down Strike Was Just One Step Short Of Taking Over The Factory.

The Federal Reserve, Has An Official Commitment To Two Different Policies. One Is To Prevent Inflation From Getting Too High. The Second Is To Maintain High Employment... The European Central Bank Has Only The First. It Has No Commitment To Keep Employment Up.

Take Google - I Can Use It, You Can Use It, Anyone Else Can Use It, But We All Know Its Designed So That Private Power Can Influence Significantly How You Access It.

Pakistan Is Not A Unified Country. In Large Parts Of The Country, The State Is Regarded As A Punjabi State, Not Their (the People's) State.

If It's Wrong When They Do It, It's Wrong When We Do It.

International Relations

Anyone Can Be A Moral Individual, Concerned With Human Rights And Problems; But Only A College Professor, A Trained Expert, Can Solve Technical Problems By 'sophisticated' Methods. Ergo, It Is Only Problems Of The Latter Sort That Are Important Or Real.

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.

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.

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

If You Want To Control A Population... Give Them A God To Worship.

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

The Idea That People Should Be Allowed To Decide Something About Their Own Fate Is Just Anathema To European Elites.

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.

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.

If You Want To Become A Biologist, It Doesn't Help To Go Into The Harvard Biology Library And All The Information Is There For You. You Have To Know What To Look For And The Internet Is The Same, Just Magnified.

I'll Have 15 Letters Today From Mostly Young Kids Who Don't Like What's Going On And Want To Do Something About It, And [they Ask Me] If I Can Give Them Some Advice As To What They Should Do, Or Can I Tell Them What To Read Or Something.

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

There's A Good Reason Why Nobody Studies History, It Just Teaches You Too Much.

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.

Human Language Appears To Be A Unique Phenomenon, Without Significant Analogue In The Animal World.

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

In Our Society, Real Power Does Not Happen To Lie In The Political System, It Lies In The Private Economy: That’s Where The Decisions Are Made About What’s Produced, How Much Is Produced, What’s Consumed, Where Investment Takes Place, Who Has Jobs, Who Controls The Resources, And So On And So Forth. And As Long As That Remains The Case, Changes Inside The Political System Can Make Some Difference-i Don’t Want To Say It’s Zero-but The Differences Are Going To Be Very Slight.

From 1962 To 1965 The Us Was Dedicated To Try To Prevent The Independence Of South Vietnam, The Reason Was Of Course That Kennedy And Johnson Knew That If Any Political Solution Was Permitted In The South, The National Liberation Front Would Effectively Come To Power, So Strong Was Its Political Support In Comparison With The Political Support Of The So-called South Vietnamese Government.

I Have No Facebook Page Or Twitter - I Don't Participate In It, And I Don't Like It Particularly. I Mean, It's A Form Of Interaction, Which Strikes Me As Extremely Superficial.

There Is Always Room For Gramsci's "optimism Of The Will."

In A Capitalist System, There's A Principle That If You Invest, Especially In A Long-term Risky Investment, If Something Comes Out Of It, You're Supposed To Get The Profit. It Doesn't Happen In Our System. The Taxpayer Paid For It And Gets Nothing - Assumes All Of The Risk, Gets Zero. The Money Goes Into The Pockets Of Bill Gates And Steve Jobs, Who Are Ripping Off Decades Of Work In The Public Sector.

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.

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

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.

We're Supposed To Worship Adam Smith But You're Not Supposed To Read Him. That's Too Dangerous.

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

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

I Think That We Have Basically Nothing In The Field Of Human Behavior. Maybe That Is Just A Condition Of Temporary Ignorance. But It May Be That We Are Simply Not Intellectually Equipped To Develop Such A Theory.

There's Something Deeply Rooted In American Culture. You Can Pretty Much Identify What It Was. You Take A Look At The History. It Was Internal Conquest. You Had To Defend Yourself Against What The Declaration Of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, An Enlightened Figure, Called The Attacks Of The "merciless Indian Savages," Whose Known Way Of Warfare Was Torture And Destruction. Also You Had A Slave Population, You Had To Protect Yourself Against Them. You Needed Guns.

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.

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.

You Can See It In The Worship Of [ronald] Reagan, Which Portrays Him As Somebody Who Saved Us From Government. Actually He Was An Apostle Of Big Government.

There Certainly Are Those Who Worship The State Much As Divinities Are Worshipped. Not Just The State But Even Leaders.

As Far As Dsa Is Concerned, I'm Perfectly Happy To Be Associated With It While Disagreeing With A Large Part Of The Leadership.

The People Who Live On The Land - Israelis And Palestinians - Have A Right To Live In Security And Peace.

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.

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

When Leaders Carry Out Policies For Decades That Have No Consequences For The Stated Goal And Are Very Costly, You Have To Ask Whether They Are Telling You The Truth Or Whether The Policies Are For A Different Goal, Because They Are Not Reducing Drug Use.

The Senate Was Wealthy People And It Wasn't Elected, It Was Chosen Through Legislatures, Which Themselves Were Under Private Influence, Powerful Influence. They Were Remote From The Population And That's Where Power Was Suppose To Reside.

Half The Population Hold That The Government Is Run By A Few Big Interests Looking Out For Themselves, As Polls Regularly Show.

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

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

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

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.

Stability Means You Do What We Say, And What We Say Is That Colombia And The Resources Of The Andean Region Shall Be Freely Available To The Rich And Powerful Of The World, Particularly Us-based Multinational Corporations.

Say The Pentagon Papers, - That Material Went Much Deeper. It Went Into Internal Government Planning Back For Twenty - Five Years. Those Are Things That The Public Should Have Known About. In A Democracy They Should Have Known What Leaders Thinking And Planning About Major Enterprises Like The Vietnam War. It Was Kept Secret From Them.

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.

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

I Did Not Say That Language As A Completed System Emerged In An Individual In An Instant. But I Cannot Think Of A Coherent Alternative To The Idea That Mutations Take Place In Individuals, Not Communities, So That Whatever Rewiring Of The Brain Yielded The Apparently Unique Properties Of Language, Specifically Recursive Generation Of Hierarchically Structured Expressions, Would Therefore Have Taken Place In An Individual, And Only Later Been Used Among Individuals Who Had Inherited This Capacity.

Religion Is Based On The Idea That God Is An Imbecile.

As For Climate Change, It's By Now Widely Accepted By The Scientific Community That We Have Entered A New Geological Era, The Anthropocene, In Which The Earth's Climate Is Being Radically Modified By Human Action, Creating A Very Different Planet, One That May Not Be Able To Sustain Organized Human Life In Anything Like A Form We Would Want To Tolerate.

If You Want To Make Changes In The World, You're Going To Have To Be There Day After Day Doing The Boring, Straightforward Work Of Getting A Couple Of People Interested And Building A Slightly Bigger Organization And Carrying Out The Next Move And Suffering Frustration And Finally Getting Somewhere. That's How The World Changes.

Barack Obama Is An Opportunist, Mostly Supported By The Financial Institutions. He Had No Positions On Anything. He's Very Intelligent. If You Look At His Program, Almost No Substance. Change, Hope, What's That? I Mean, He Had Some Policies, But It Was Almost Certain That He Would Give Them Up Instantly, Which He Did.

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

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.

In Fact, By Universal Grammar I Mean Just That System Of Principles And Structures That Are The Prerequisites For Acquisition Of Language, And To Which Every Language Necessarily Conforms.

So If You Look At The Writings Of Intellectuals, There Are Two Kinds. One Said, L"look, If We Fought Harder We Could Have Won.but The Others, Who Were Way At The Left, People Like Anthony Lewis Of The New York Times, Way Out In Left Stream, His View In 1975 Was The Vietnam War Began With Blundering Efforts To Do Good. But By 1969, It Was Clear That It Was A Disaster, That Was Too Costly To Us.

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.

Democracy Has Both Expanded And Declined Over The Years.

Democracies Have

Some International Law Specialists Compare The Invasion Of Iraq To The 'crimes Against The Peace' For Which Nazi Leaders Were Indicted At Nuremberg.

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

Suppose That I See A Hungry Child In The Street, And I Am Able To Offer The Child Some Food. Am I Morally Culpable If I Refuse To Do So? Am I Morally Culpable If I Choose Not To Do What I Easily Can About The Fact That 1000 Children Die Every Hour From Easily Preventable Disease, According To Unicef? Or The Fact That The Government Of My Own "free And Open Society" Is Engaged In Monstrous Crimes That Can Easily Be Mitigated Or Terminated? Is It Even Possible To Debate These Questions?

Nicaragua Dealt With The Problem Of Terrorism In Exactly The Right Way. It Followed International Law And Treaty Obligations. It Collected Evidence, Brought The Evidence To The Highest Existing Tribunal, The International Court Of Justice, And Received A Verdict - Which, Of Course, The U.s. Dismissed With Contempt.

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.

Silicon Valley Wouldn't Exist Without Massive Government Spending And In Fact Initiative.

I Remember Talking To, 40 Years Ago, One Of The Leading People In The Government Who Was Involved In Arms Control, Pressing For Arms Control Measures, Détente, And So On. He's Very High Up, And We Were Talking About Whether Arms Control Could Succeed. And Only Partially As A Joke He Said, "well It Might Succeed If The High Tech Industry Makes More Profit From Arms Control Than It Can Make From Weapons-related Research And Production. If We Get To That Tipping Point Maybe Arms Control Will Work." He Was Partially Joking But There's A Truth That Lies Behind It.

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

If You Are Working 50 Hours A Week In A Factory, You Don't Have Time To Read 10 Newspapers A Day And Go Back To Declassified Government Archives. But Such People May Have Far-reaching Insights Into The Way The World Works.

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

Chemistry, Until My Childhood, Not That Long Ago, Was Regarded As A Calculating Device. Because You Couldn't Reduce To Physics. So It's Just Some Way Of Calculating The Result Of Experiments. The Bohr Atom Was Treated That Way.

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.

As Long As People Are Marginalized And Distracted [they] Have No Way To Organize Or Articulate Their Sentiments, Or Even Know That Others Have These Sentiments. People Assume That They Are The Only People With A Crazy Idea In Their Heads. They Never Hear It From Anywhere Else. Nobody's Supposed To Think That. ... Since There's No Way To Get Together With Other People Who Share Or Reinforce That View And Help You Articulate It, You Feel Like An Oddity, An Oddball. So You Just Stay On The Side And You Don't Pay Any Attention To What's Going On. You Look At Something Else, Like The Superbowl.

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

I Think A Very Important Aspect Of Language Has To Do With The Establishment Of Social Relations And Interactions. Often, This Is Described As Communication. But That Is Very Misleading, I Think.

Obama's Primary Constituency Was Financial Institutions. They Were The Core Of The Funding For His Campaign. They Expect To Be Paid Back. And They Were. They Were Paid Back By Coming Out Richer And More Powerful Than They Were Before The Crisis That They Created.

Anything Feasible And Potentially Effective Should Be Explored.

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.

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

I Was In Mexico City. It's A Very Pleasant City In Many Ways. It's Vibrant, Lively, Pretty Exciting Society, But Also Depressing In Other Ways, And Sometimes Almost Hopeless, You Know. So It's A Combination Of Vibrancy And, I Wouldn't Say Despair, But Hopelessness, You Know. Doesn't Have To Be, But It Is. I Mean, There Is Almost No Economy.

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.

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

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

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 Media Are A Corporate Monopoly. They Have The Same Point Of View. The Two Parties Are Two Factions Of The Business Party. Most Of The Population Doesn't Even Bother Voting Because It Looks Meaningless. They're Marginalized And Properly Distracted. At Least That's The Goal.

A Default Of The Us Government Would Not Only Be Very Harmful Here, It Would Probably Send The Country Back Into Deep Recession, But It Just Might Crash The International Financial System.

One Of The Christian Fundamentalists' Goals Seems To Be To Rebuild The Temple, Which Means Destroying The Al-aqsa Mosque, Which Presumably Means War With The Arab World - One Of The Goals, Perhaps, In Fulfilling The Prophecy Of Armageddon. So They Strongly Support Israeli Power And Expansionism, And Help Fund It And Lobby For It; But They Also Support Actions That Are Very Harmful And Objectionable To Most Of Its Population - As Do Jewish Fundamentalist Groups, Mostly Rooted In The Us, Which, After All, Is One Of The Most Extreme Religious Fundamentalist Societies In The World.

You've Just Got To Get People Organized And Tell Them The Truth. There Aren't Any Magic Tricks To It. You Know, Sometimes It's Pretty Amazing. Actually, I Mentioned A Pretty Striking Case Of This In "crisis And Hope," Which Was The Caterpillar Case In The Early 1990s.

Evolutionary Theory Has Nothing To Say, In General, As To Whether Cheating Is More Advantageous Than Cooperating. There Are Many Circumstances In Which The Contrary Would Be True, And Empirical Evidence, Though It Exists, Has Little Bearing On Real Situations.

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

Anti-union Propaganda Has Been Considerably More Successful Here [ In The U.s.] Than In Europe, Even Among Working People Who Would Benefit [from] Unions.

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.

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.

There Are Very Few People Who Are Going To Look Into The Mirror And Say, 'that Person I See Is A Savage Monster;' Instead, They Make Up Some Construction That Justifies What They Do.

The Occupy Movement Did Create Spontaneously Communities That Taught People Something: You Can Be In A Supportive Community Of Mutual Aid And Cooperation And Develop Your Own Health System And Library And Have Open Space For Democratic Discussion And Participation. Communities Like That Are Really Important.

Isn't It Interesting That Eating A Banana Is Somehow Comical.

Wikileaks Is A Democratizing Force. Its Giving Individuals Access To Decisions And Thinking By Their Representatives And In A Democracy That Ought To Be Reflexive.

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.

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

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

[internet] Is Kind Of Like A Hammer. The Technology Itself Doesn't Determine How Its Used. It Depends On The Social, Cultural And Economic Context In Which The Technology Is Made Available.

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

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

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

Part Of The Nafta Legislation Required Studies Of Labor Practices, And There Was Quite A Good Study That Came Out By A Labor Historian On The Use Of Nafta To Undermine And Destroy Unions.

Those Who Wish To Change The World Should Have The Best Possible Understanding Of The World, Including What Is Revealed By The Sciences, Some Of Which They Might Be Able To Use For Their Purposes. That's Why Workers Education, Including Science And Mathematics, Has Commonly Been A Concern Of Left Intellectuals.

I Don't Claim To Know A Lot About Mexico, But I Did Talk To Quite A Number Of Left Mexican Intelectuals, And They All Said The Same Thing. That There's A Lot Of Popular, Kind Of, Concern And Activism, But It Is Very Fragmented. That The Groups Have Very Specific, Narrow Agendas And They Don't Interact And Cooperate With One Another. Ok, That's Something You Have To Overcome To Build A Mass Popular Movement. And That's, Media Can Help, But They Also Benefit From It.

American Imperialism Has Suffered A Stunning Defeat In Indochina. But The Same Forces Are Engaged In Another War Against A Much Less Resilient Enemy, The American People. Here, The Prospects For Success Are Much Greater. The Battleground Is Ideological, Not Military. At Stake Are The Lessons To Be Drawn From The American War In Indochina; The Outcome Will Determine The Course And Character Of New Imperial Ventures.

...a Very Terrifying Aspect Of Our Society, And Other Societies, Is The Equanimity And The Detachment With Which Sane, Reasonable, Sensible People Can Observe [war And Human Suffering]. I Think That's More Terrifying Than The Occasional Hitler ...or Other That Crop Up - These People Would Not Able To Operate Were It Not For This Apathy And Equanimity - And Therefore I Think That It Is In Some Sense The Sane And Reasonable And Tolerant People Who Should Share A Very Serious Burden Of Guilt, That They Very Easily Throw On The Shoulders Of Others Who Seem More Extreme And More Violent.

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

America Is A Very Fundamentalist Society. It's Like Iran In The Degree Of Fanatic Religious Commitment.

George Kennan Is Another Extreme Case. He Was The American Consul In Berlin Until The War Between Germany And The United States Broke Out In December 1941. And Until Then He Was Writing Pretty Supportive Statements Back Stressing That We Shouldn't Be So Hard On The Nazis If They Were Doing Something We Didn't Agree With - Basically Repeating The Idea That They Were People We Could Do Business With.

If You're In A System Where You Must Make Profit In Order To Survive. You Are Compelled To Ignore Negative Externalities, Effects On Others.

If You Don't Like What Someone Has To Say, Argue With Them.

It's Like These People Are Programmed By Karl Rove. What He Wants Is To Have Liberal Critics Ridicule Bush Because He Says 'nucular' And 'misunderestimate' And Talks With A Probably Fake Texas Accent And So On, Because Then Can Come Back With The Big Propaganda Apparatus Saying, 'see, Those Elite Liberals Who Run The World And Are Sitting Around Drinking French Wine And Eating Quiche Don't Understand Us Ordinary Guys'; Regular Guys Like The Guy Working On The Assembly Line And George Bush, Who Is Going Back To His Ranch To Cut Brush.

I Don't Entirely Agree With The Slogan "speaking Truth To Power."

The Book [manufacturing Consent] Itself Is Then Devoted To A Series Of Case Studies, Selected, We Hope [with Edward Herman], To Offer A Fair And In Fact Rather Severe Test Of Those Conclusions.

Dissidents Are Not Imprisoned As In The Domains Of The Kremlin, In The Old Days. They Do Not Have Their Brains Blown Out By Elite Forces Armed And Trained By The Reigning Superpower, As Happens In Washington's Domains - With No Particular Concern At Home - An Important Fact, One Of Many That Help Us Learn About Ourselves, If We Choose.

Our Yearning For Democracy Is Accompanied By A No Less Profound Yearning For Peace. And The Media Also Faced The Task Of Historical Engineering To Establish This Required Truth. We Therefore Have Phenomena Called 'peace Missions' And The 'peace Process'. These Are Terms That Apply To Whatever The United States Happens To Be Doing Or Advocating At Some Moment... In Short, 'war Is Peace'.

The Human Digestive And Visual Systems Did Clearly Evolve Over A Very Long Period.

Efforts Can Succeed Over Time, And Not Trying Ensures That The Worst Will Happen.

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.

In The United States Everyone Is An Illegal Immigrant - Everyone Except The People In Indian Reservations. This Is An Immigrant Society.

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

Terror Became A Big Issue When The Reagan Administration Came In. They Immediately Announced [their Plans] And Kind Of Disparaged Carter's Alleged Human Rights Programs. The Main Issue Is State-directed International Terrorism. Right At That Time That Big Industry Developed. That's When You Start Getting The Academic Departments On Terrorism.

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.

Sooner Or Later, Jihadist-style Terror And Wmd Are Going To Come Together And The Consequences Could Be Horrendous.

There Was Great Anxiety About Russian Intervention In The Recent German Elections, Perhaps Contributing To The Frightening Surge Of Support For The Right-wing Nationalist, If Not Neo-fascist, "alternative For Germany".

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.

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

Extensive Violations Of Human Rights (torture, Forced Reduction Of Living Standards For Much Of The Population, Police-sponsored Death Squads, Destruction Of Representative Institutions Or Of Independent Unions, Etc.) Are Directly Correlated With Us Government Support. The Linkage Is Not Accidental; Rather It Is Systematic. The Reason Is Obvious Enough. Client Fascism Often Improves The Business Climate For American Corporations, Quite Generally The Guiding Factor In Foreign Policy.

Violation Of Human Rights

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

I Think The Use Of Language Is A Very Important Means By Which This Species, Because Of Its Biological Nature, Creates A Kind Of Social Space, To Place Itself In Interactions With Other People. It Doesn't Have Much To Do With Communication In A Narrow Sense; That Is, It Doesn't Involve Transmission Of Information. There Is Much Information Transmitted But It Is Not The Content Of What Is Said That Is Transmitted.

States Are Not Moral Agents, People Are, And Can Impose Moral Standards On Powerful Institutions.

Cuba Forces In Angola Gave A Real Shot In The Arm To The Liberation Movements, And It Also Was A Lesson To The White South Africans That The End Is Coming. They Can't Just Hope To Subdue The Continent On Racist Grounds.

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