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To Go Back To A Moment Of Western Civilization Remote Enough In Time So That We Should Be Able To Look At It Dispassionately, Ask What Happened During World War I. What Was The Typical Behavior Of Respected Intellectuals In Germany, England, The United States? What Happened To Those Who Publicly Questioned The Nobility Of The War Effort, On Both Sides? I Do Not Think The Answers Are Untypical.
-Noam Chomsky
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Noam Chomsky
To Go Back To A Moment Of Western Civilization Remote Enough In Time So That We Should Be Able To Look At It Dispassionately, Ask What Happened During World War I. What Was The Typical Behavior Of Respected Intellectuals In Germany, England, The United States? What Happened To Those Who Publicly Questioned The Nobility Of The War Effort, On Both Sides? I Do Not Think The Answers Are Untypical.
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Topic
War
Thinking
Civilization
More From Noam Chomsky
Somebodys Paying The Corporations That Destroyed Iraq And The Corporations That Are Rebuilding It. Theyre Getting Paid By The American Taxpayer In Both Cases. So We Pay Them To Destroy The Country, And Then We Pay Them To Rebuild It. Those Are Gifts From U.s. Taxpayer To U.s. Corporations.
Country
Iraq
Pay
There Is Either A Crisis Or A Return To The Norm Of Stagnation. One View Is The Norm Is Stagnation And Occasionally You Get Out Of It. The Other Is That The Norm Is Growth And Occasionally You Can Get Into Stagnation. You Can Debate That But It's A Period Of Close To Global Stagnation.
Views
Growth
Return
The One State/two State Debate Is Irrelevant As Israel And The Us Consolidate Greater Israel.
Israel
Two
Debate
It's A Class War, And A War On Young People Too... That's Why Tuition Is Rising So Rapidly. There's No Real Economic Reason For That. It's A Technique Of Control And Indoctrination. And This Is Really The First Organized, Significant Reaction To It, Which Is Important.
Real
War
Class
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.
Islamic
Leaving
Alternatives
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.
Rights
Years
Political
The Washington Leadership Has Put Aside Non-proliferation Programmes And Devoted Its Energies And Resources To Driving The Country To War By Extraordinary Deceit, Then Trying To Manage The Catastrophe It Created In Iraq.
Country
War
Iraq
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.
Thinking
Iran
Would Be
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.
Xenophobia
Roots
White
Britain Kept Its Position As The Dominant World Power Well Into The 20th Century Despite Steady Decline. By The End Of World War Ii, Dominance Had Shifted Decisively Into The Hands Of The Upstart Across The Sea, The United States, By Far The Most Powerful And Wealthy Society In World History.
Powerful
War
Hands
The Us Is To An Unusual Extent A Business-run Society, Where Short-term Concerns Of Profit And Market Share Displace Rational Planning.
Running
Planning
Unusual
...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.
War
Thinking
People
Anarcho-syndic Alism Took For Granted That Working People Ought To Control Their Own Work, Its Conditions, The Enterprises In Which They Work, Along With Communities, So They Should Be Associated With One Another In Free Associations, And Democracy Of That Kind Should Be The Foundational Elements Of A More General Free Society.
People
Community
Democracy
Honduras Has Become A Murder Capital Of The World; There's Horrible Atrocities, Infanticide, Murder Of Women Is Way Up, And People Are Fleeing In Desperation. They Come To The Border, And We Put Them In Trucks And Send Them Back To Mexico To Die. And Here People Are Scared Of Illegal Immigrants - That's What We're Doing. It's Pretty Shocking.
People
Atrocities
Fleeing
Karl Marx Said, “the Task Is Not Just To Understand The World But To Change It.” A Variant To Keep In Mind Is That If You Want To Change The World You’d Better Try To Understand It. That Doesn’t Mean Listening To A Talk Or Reading A Book, Though That’s Helpful Sometimes. You Learn From Participating. You Learn From Others. You Learn From The People You’re Trying To Organize. We All Have To Gain The Understanding And The Experience To Formulate And Implement Ideas.
Book
Reading
Mean
Anton Pannekoek Didn't Encourage Radical Workers And Other Activists Of The Anti-bolshevik Left To See Revolutionary Potential In His Work In Astronomy, For The Simple Reason That He Was Honest, And Knew There Was None To Speak Of.
Simple
Honest
Speak
Humans May Be Destroying Their Chances For Decent Survival. It Won't Kill Everybody, But It Would Change The World Dramatically.
Survival
World
May
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.
Smart
Passivity Is
People
The Republican Establishment, The Mainstream Corporate Financial Wealth, Is Getting To A Point Where It Can't Control The Base It's Mobilized.
Financial
Republican
Wealth
U.s. International And Security Policy . . . Has As Its Primary Goal The Preservation Of What We Might Call "the Fifth Freedom," Understood Crudely But With A Fair Degree Of Accuracy As The Freedom To Rob, To Exploit And To Dominate, To Undertake Any Course Of Action To Ensure That Existing Privilege Is Protected And Advanced.
Goal
Degrees
Might
I Know Some Really Outstanding Turkish Journalists, And Have Been Pleased And Honored To Be Able To Join With Them A Few Times In Their Courageous Protests Against State Terror And Repression.
Able
Courageous
States
The First Commitment Is Raise Your Salary. One Of The Ways To Raise Your Salary Sometimes Is To Have Short-term Profits But There Are Many Other Ways.
Commitment
Salary
Way
The Lessons Are, Unfortunately, That A Small Weak Country That Is Facing An Extremely Hostile And Very Violent Superpower Will Not Make Much Progress Unless There's A Strong Solidarity Movement Within The Superpower That Will Restrain Its Actions. With More Support Within The United States, I Think The Haitian Efforts Could Have Succeeded.
Country
Strong
Thinking
My Own Feeling Is That One Should Refuse To Participate In Any Activity That Implements American Aggression - Thus Tax Refusal, Draft Refusal, Avoidance Of Work That Can Be Used By The Agencies Of Militarism And Repression, All Seem To Me Essential.
Agency
Feelings
Essentials
I Was Told By Journalists Who Can't Publish It That There Are In Mexico, Close To The U.s. Border, Big Areas That Used To Be Devoted To Agriculture That Are Now Devoted To Poppies. They Say You Can't Get In There Because They're Guarded, First By The Cartels, But Also By The Army, Which Goes Hand In Hand With The Cartels.
Army
Hands
Agriculture
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.
Distance
Wind
Patterns
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.
Responsibility
Special
Important
If We Don't Believe In Free Expression For People We Despise, We Don't Believe In It At All.
Inspirational
Relationship
Freedom
The Drug Problem Is In The United States, Not In Mexico. It's A Demand Problem And That Is To Be Dealt With Here, And It Is Not Being Dealt With. It's Been Shown Over And Over That Prevention And Treatment Are Far More Cost Effective Than Police Action, Out-of-country Action, Border Control, And So On.
Country
Drug
Police
One Of The Dangers [that Donald Trump Poses, Due To The Augmented Risk Of Nuclear War] Is Unquestionable. Of The Two Existential Threats - The Threats To The Termination Of The Species Basically And Most Other Species - One Of Them, Climate Change, On That I Think There's No Basis For Discussion.
War
Thinking
Two
Markets Also Have A Very Bad Psychological Effect. They Drive People To A Conception Of Themselves And Society In Which You're Only After Your Own Good, Not The Good Of Others And That's Extremely Harmful.
People
Psychological
Effects
Its True That Contemporary Technology Permits Decentralization, It Also Permits Centralization. It Depends On How You Use The Technology.
Technology
Use
Permit
California Is Maybe The Richest Place In The World. They're Destroying The Best Public Education System In The World.
California
World
Destroying
I Wrote An Article About The Marine Landing [in Haiti] Right Away, But Barely Mentioned The Oil, Because My Article Would Come Out Two Months Later And I Assumed By Then, "of Course, Everybody Knows." Nobody Knew. There Was A News Report In The Wall Street Journal, In The Petroleum Journals, And In Some Small Newspapers, But Not In The Mainstream Press.
Wall
Marine
Two
In Mexico, A Poor Country, Higher Education Is Of Quite Good Quality -- And Is Free. Ten Years Ago The Government Tried To Impose Small Fees. There Was A National Student Strike And The Government Backed Down. High Tuition Is Not An Economic Necessity, As Is Easy To Show, But A Debt Trap Is A Good Technique Of Indoctrination And Control. And Resisting This Makes Good Sense.
Country
Government
Years
The "prophets" Were What We Would Call Dissident Intellectuals. They Provided Critical Geopolitical Analysis, Condemned The Crimes Of The Powerful, Called For Justice And Mercy For Those Who Needed Help, Etc. I Wouldn't Personally Endorse Everything They Said, Any More Than I Would For Critics Of Power And Its Crimes Today. But Rather Generally I Think They Played An Honorable Role - And Suffered Accordingly.
Powerful
Thinking
Justice
Worker Ownership Within A State Capitalist, Semi-market System Is Better Than Private Ownership But It Has Inherent Problems. Markets Have Well-known Inherent Inefficiencies. They're Very Destructive.
Problem
Well Known
Ownership
What Is "credibility"? It's A Very Familiar Notion. It's Basically The Notion That Is Central To The Mafia. So Suppose Say The Godfather Produces Some Kind Of Edict And Says You're Going To Have To Pay Protection Money.
Mafia
Pay
Kind
To Summarize, Draft Resistance Can Make Use Of The Inegalitarian Nature Of American Society As A Technique For Increasing The Cost Of American Aggression, And It Threatens Values That Are Important To Those In A Decision-making Position.
Decision
Important
Technique
Suppose That, Say, China Established Military Bases In Colombia To Carry Out Chemical Warfare In Kentucky And North Carolina To Destroy This Lethal Crop [tobacco] That Is Killing Huge Numbers Of Chinese.
Military
Kentucky
Numbers
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.
Depressing
Mean
Cities
Nothing In These Abstract Economic Models Actually Works In The Real World. It Doesn't Matter How Many Footnotes They Put In, Or How Many Ways They Tinker Around The Edges. The Whole Enterprise Is Totally Rotten At The Core: It Has No Relation To Reality.
Real
Economic Models
Rotten
Latin America, For The First Time In 500 Years, Is Moving Towards A Degree Of Independence.
Latin
Moving
Years
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.
Government
Technological Development
Innovation
There Are Many Cases Around The World In Which The Presence Of Un Peace-keeping Forces Has Had A Somewhat Beneficial Effect.
World
Force
Cases
One Can Neither Agree Nor Disagree With A Terminological Proposal, As Long As It Is Clear That It Is Just That: Terminological.
Long
Proposal
Clear
Religion Is Based On The Idea That God Is An Imbecile.
Ideas
Imbeciles
The Republican And Democratic Parties Are Only Factions Of The Government Party.
Party
Government
Republican
It [the Internet] Should Be Publicly Controlled But Washington Is Not A System Of Public Control, It's Mainly A System Of Corporate Control. We Ought To Have A Free Internet, But That Means Having A Free Society, And There Is Fundamental Questions There.
Mean
Fundamentals
Internet
Anyone In A Position To Overcome Barriers To Free Thought And Communication Should Do So.
Communication
Overcoming
Free Thought
The Reason I Am A Political Radical Is That I Work On Syntax. If I Worked On Semantics (which In Fact I Do), I'd Be A Good Thatcherite.
Political
Syntax
Facts
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.
People
Support
Library
Every Wave Of Immigrants Who Came [to America] Were Treated Pretty Badly, But When They All Finally Became Integrated, All Of Us Became Anglo-saxons.
America
Wave
Integrated
If You Don't Like What Someone Has To Say, Argue With Them.
Arguing
Ifs
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.
War
Thinking
Civilization
I Think That As Human Beings, We Quite Naturally Take For Granted What Is Similar Among Human Beings And, Then, Pay Attention To What Differentiates Us. That Makes Perfect Sense For Us As Human Beings.
Thinking
Perfect
Attention
[donald] Trump Has Been Very Inconsistent On Many Things; On Twitter He's Been All Over The Place, But Some Of It Is Very Consistent. That Is: Do Nothing About Climate Change Except Make It Worse. And He's Not Just Speaking For Himself, But For The Whole Republican Party, The Whole Leadership. It's Already Had Impact, It Will Have Worse Impact.
Party
Impact
Climate
As For Organs, Traits, Etc., Being "for" Something, The Notion May Be A Useful Shorthand, But Shouldn't Be Taken Too Seriously, If Only Because Of The Ubiquitous Phenomenon Of Exaptation.
Taken
May
Etc
Given Their Unusual Privilege, Western Intellectuals Can Realistically Accomplish A Great Deal. The Limits Are Imposed By Will More Than Objective Circumstances. And About Human Will Predictions Are Without Value.
Limits
Privilege
Unusual
The Only Way We Can Put A Permanent End To Terrorism Is To Stop Participating In It.
Way
Terrorism
Ends
There's A Very Striking Fact About The Elections Which You Can't Miss If You Looked At The Red-and-blue Electoral Map The Next Day: It's The Same Political Landscape That You Saw During The Civil War - Nothing Much Has Changed Except The Party Names.
War
Party
Political
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.
Lying
Hate
People
There Are Huge Areas Where The Human Mind Is Apparently Incapable Of Forming Sciences, Or At Least Has Not Done So. There Are Other Areas - So Far, In Fact, One Area Only [physics] - In Which We Have Demonstrated The Capacity For True Scientific Progress.
Mind
Progress
Done
You Can Imagine A Different World In Which A Number Of Species Developed With Different Genetically Determined Linguistic Systems. It Hasn't Happened In Evolution. What Has Happened Is That One Species Has Developed, And The Genetic Structure Of This Species Happens To Involve A Variety Of Intricate Abstract Principles Of Linguistic Organization That, Therefore, Necessarily Constrain Every Language, And, In Fact, Create The Basis For Learning Language As A Way Of Organizing Experience Rather Than Constituting Something Learned From Experience.
Organization
Numbers
World
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.
Latin
Successful
America
Technology Is Usually Fairly Neutral. It’s Like A Hammer, Which Can Be Used To Build A House Or To Destroy Someone’s Home. The Hammer Doesn’t Care. It Is Almost Always Up To Us To Determine Whether The Technology Is Good Or Bad.
Home
Technology
House
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.
World
November
I Get Terrific Health Care.
Care
Health Care
Terrific
Caterpillar Was Quite Important Because That Was The First Manufacturing Industry That Used Reaganite Strike-breaking Techniques. They Illegally Called In Scabs To Break A Major Strike. It Was Reported Pretty Well In The Chicago Tribune, Who Pointed Out Something Very Interesting. They Said That The Workers Got Very Little Support In Peoria When Scabs Illegally Broke The Strike, And That Was Particularly Striking Because That Whole Community Had Been Built Up By The Union - It Was A Union-based Community.
Interesting
Support
Community
Just Take Ease Of Interchange Between People. Your Email Is Of Course Faster Than Letter - On The Other Hand The Transition From Sailing Ship To Telegraphs Was Far Greater Than The Shift From The Postal Service To Email. That Was A Fabulous Change. If You Sent A Letter To England, Instead Of Waiting A Couple Of Months For A Response You Got It Instantly. That's A Huge Change. Every One Of These Changes Of Course Increases Opportunities And Also Increases Means Of Control And Domination.
Couple
Mean
Opportunity
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.
Military
Iran
Years
In The Academic World, Most Of The Work That Is Done Is Clerical. A Lot Of The Work Done By Professors Is Routine.
Routine
Done
World
Peace Is Preferable To War. But It’s Not An Absolute Value, And So We Always Ask, “what Kind Of Peace?
Peace
War
Kind
There Is No Reason To Accept The Doctrines Crafted To Sustain Power And Privilege, Or To Believe That We Are Constrained By Mysterious And Unknown Social Laws.
Believe
Law
Privilege
[companies That Specialized In How To Destroy Unions] Don't Make It A Secret, And They Have All Sorts Of Techniques For Management To Destroy Unions.
Secret
Technique
Unions
Why Not Stakeholder Action? There's No Economic Principal That Says That Management Should Be Responsive To Shareholders, In Fact You Can Read In Texts Of Business Economics That They Could Just As Well Have A System In Which The Management Is Responsible To Stakeholders.
Why Not
Facts
Action
... An Essential Feature Of A Decent Society, And An Almost Defining Feature Of A Democratic Society, Is Relative Equality Of Outcome - Not Opportunity, But Outcome. Without That You Can't Seriously Talk About A Democratic State... These Concepts Of The Common Good Have A Long Life. They Lie Right At The Core Of Classical Liberalism, Of Enlightenment Thinking... Like Aristotle, [adam] Smith Understood That The Common Good Will Require Substantial Intervention To Assure Lasting Prosperity Of The Poor By Distribution Of Public Revenues.
Lying
Opportunity
Thinking
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.
Real
College
Political
The Leading Student Of Business Propaganda, Australian Social Scientist Alex Carey, Argues Persuasively That “the 20th Century Has Been Characterized By Three Developments Of Great Political Importance: The Growth Of Democracy, The Growth Of Corporate Power, And The Growth Of Corporate Propaganda As A Means Of Protecting Corporate Power Against Democracy.
Mean
Democracies Have
Australia Day
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.
War
Government
Self
The Person Who Wins The Nobel Prize Is Not The Person Who Read The Most Journal Articles And Took The Most Notes On Them. It's The Person Who Knew What To Look For. And Cultivating That Capacity To Seek What's Significant, Always Willing To Question Whether You're On The Right Track - That's What Education Is Going To Be About, Whether It's Using Computers And The Internet, Or Pencil And Paper, Or Books.
Book
Winning
Track
On Humanitarian Intervention In General, I Guess My View Is Not Unlike The View That Was Attributed To Gandhi, Accurately Or Not, When He Was Supposedly Asked What He Thought About Western Civilization. He Is Supposed To Have Said That He Thought It Would Be A Good Idea. Similarly, Humanitarian Intervention Would Be A Good Idea, In Principle.
Views
Civilization
Ideas
I Think We Can Be Reasonably Confident That If The American Population Had The Slightest Idea Of What Is Being Done In Their Name, They Would Be Utterly Appalled.
Thinking
Names
Ideas
We're Human Beings; We're Not Robots. And Face-to-face Contact Is Something Totally Different Than Typing A Text Message And Then Forgetting About It.
Robots
Different
Faces
Modern China; One Also Finds Many Things That Are Really Quite Admirable.
Modern
China
Admirable
In The Us, First Of All, The Electoral System Has Been Almost Totally Shredded. For A Long Time It's Been Pretty Much Run By Private Concentrated Spending But Now It's Over The Top. Elections Increasingly Over The Years Have Been [public Relations] Extravaganzas.
Running
Years
Long
There Is A Principle Of Human Affairs That Goes Back Millennia, Which Is That You Don't Look In The Mirror. You Can Trace This Principle Back To The Bible. The Designated Intellectuals Of That Time Are Called Prophets, Which Is A Mistranslation Of A Hebrew Word, But They Were Basically Intellectuals, Giving Geopolitical Analysis, Criticizing The Moral Practice Of Leadership, Etc. Now, These People Were Not Treated Very Nicely. There Were Other Intellectuals Who Were Treated Nicely, Namely Those Who Centuries Later Came To Be Called False Prophets. These Were The Flatterers Of The Court.
Mirrors
Practice
People
In Kosovo, The U.s. Has Chosen A Course Of Action That Escalates Atrocities And Violence. It Is Also A Course Of Action That Strikes A Blow Against The Regime Of International Order, But Which Offers The Weak At Least Some Protection From Predatory States.
Blow
Order
Violence
The Book Manufacturing Consent, Which I Co-authored With Edward Herman, Begins With A Description Of The Structure And Institutional Setting Of The Commercial Media, And Then Draws Some Rather Simple-minded Conclusions About What We Would Expect The Media Product To Be, Given These (not Particularly Controversial) Conditions.
Book
Simple
Media
One Of The Most Interesting Reactions To Come Out Of 1968 Was In The First Publication Of The Trilateral Commission, Which Believed There Was A 'crisis Of Democracy' From Too Much Participation Of The Masses.
Interesting
Democracy
Too Much
The Government Of Israel Doesn't Like The Kinds Of Things I Say, Which Puts Them Into The Same Category As Every Other Government In The World.
Government
Israel
World
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.
Impact
Rights
Sweatshops
The Main Selling Appeal Of Nafta To Us Corporations Is That It Gives Them An Advantage In The North American Market Over Their European And Japanese Competitors.
Giving
Corporations
Selling
It's True That Language Is In A Sense Linear But That Is As Obvious As Perceptual Space Is Three-dimensional.
Space
Three
Language
One Of The Real Problems Of Society Is That Its Far Too Atomized, What Sociologists Call Secondary Associations.
Real
Association
Problem
The Indoctrination Is So Deep That Educated People Think They’re Being Objective.
Thinking
People
Indoctrination
Free Speech Has Been Used By The Supreme Court To Give Immense Power To The Wealthiest Members Of Our Society.
Giving
Speech
Our Society
The Bolshevik Revolution Was A Counter-revolution. Its First Moves Were To Destroy And Eliminate Every Socialist Tendency That Had Developed In The Pre-revolutionary Period. Their Goal Was As They Said; It Wasn't A Big Secret. They Regarded The Soviet Union As Sort A Backwater. They Were Orthodox Marxists, Expecting A Revolution In Germany. They Moved Toward What They Themselves Called "state Capitalism," Then They Moved On To Stalinism. They Called It Democracy And Called It Socialism. The One Claim Was As Ludicrous As The Other.
Moving
Goal
Secret
The United States Is Absolutely The Most Dangerous Country In The World.
Country
United States
World
If The Mutation Is Partially Transmitted To Offspring, They Too Would Have The Advantage. And Over Time It Might Have Come To Dominate A Small Breeding Group.
Groups
Mutation
Might
As Soon As One Identifies, Challenges And Overcomes Illegitimate Power, He Or She Is An Anarchist. Most People Are Anarchists. What They Call Themselves Doesn’t Matter To Me. The World Is Full Of Suffering, Distress, Violence And Catastrophes. Students Must Decide: Does Something Concern You Or Not? I Say: Look Around, Analyze The Problems, Ask Yourself What You Can Do And Set Out On The Work!
People
Challenges
Suffering
If A Person Chooses Not To Be A Writer, Or Speaker, Then (by Definition) The Person Is Choosing Not To Be Engaged In An Effort,"to Bring The Truth About Matters Of Human Significance To An Audience That Can Do Something About Them," Apart, Perhaps, From Some Circle Of Immediate Associates.
Circles
Effort
Definitions
In The West, You Don't Get In Any Trouble If You Tell The Truth, But You Still Can't Do It. Not Only Can't You Tell The Truth, You Can't Think The Truth. It's Just So Deeply Embedded, Deeply Instilled, That Without Any Meaningful Coercion It Comes Out The Same Way It Does In A Totalitarian State.
Meaningful
Thinking
Doe
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.
Law
Justice
Nicaragua
It’s Ridiculous To Talk About Freedom In A Society Dominated By Huge Corporations. What Kind Of Freedom Is There Inside A Corporation? They’re Totalitarian Institutions - You Take Orders From Above And Maybe Give Them To People Below You. There’s About As Much Freedom As Under Stalinism.
Freedom
Power
Government
Take Something You Really Don't Think About: Plastics In The Ocean. I Mean Plastics In The Ocean Have An Enormous Ecological Effect.
Ocean
Mean
Thinking
Stakeholders - Meaning Workers And Community - The Ceo Could Just As Well Be Responsible To Them. This Presupposes There Ought To Be Management But Why Does There Have To Be Management? Why Not Have The Stakeholders Run The Industry?
Running
Community
Doe
The Old-fashioned Idea Is That Responsibility Falls Upon Those Who Borrow And Lend. Money Was Not Borrowed By Campesinos, Assembly Plant Workers, Or Slum-dwellers. The Mass Of The Population Gained Little From Borrowing, Indeed Often Suffered Grievously From Its Effects.
Fall
Responsibility
Ideas
States Are Not Moral Agents, People Are, And Can Impose Moral Standards On Powerful Institutions.
Powerful
Hero
People
What The Public Wants Is Called 'politically Unrealistic.' Translated Into English, That Means Power And Privilege Are Opposed To It.
Mean
Justice
Diversity
In The Humanities And Social Sciences, And In Fields Like Journalism And Economics And So On, People Have To Be Trained To Be Managers, And Controllers, And To Accept Things, And Not To Question Too Much.
People
Humanity
Too Much
The Most Extreme Types, Like Murray Rothbard, Are At Least Honest. They'd Like To Eliminate Highway Taxes Because They Force You To Pay For A Road You May Never Drive On. As An Alternative, They Suggest That If You And I Want To Get Somewhere, We Should Build A Road There And Charge People Tolls On It. Just Try Generalizing That. Such A Society Couldn't Survive, And Even If It Could, It Would Be So Full Of Terror And Hate That Any Human Being Would Prefer To Live In Hell.
Hate
People
Trying
A Woman Was The Property Of Her Father Or Her Husband And That Remained True Right Into The Twentieth Century. It Wasn't Until 1975 That Women Had A Guaranteed Right To Serve On Federal Juries.
Husband
Father
Century
Markets Are Lethal, If Only Because Of Ignoring Externalities, The Impacts Of Their Transactions On The Environment.
Impact
Environment
Transactions
My Suspicion Is That Those Who Seem Oblivious To Suffering, Whether It Is Nearby Or In Remote Corners, Are For The Most Part Unaware, Perhaps Blinded By Doctrine And Ideology. For Them, The Answer Is To Develop A Critical Attitude Toward Articles Of Faith, Secular Or Religious; To Encourage Their Capacity To Question, To Explore, To View The World From The Standpoint Of Others. And Direct Exposure Is Never Very Far Away, Wherever We Live - Perhaps The Homeless Person Huddling In The Cold Or Asking For A Few Pennies For Food, Or All Too Many More.
Religious
Attitude
Suffering
If You Look At The Minutes Of The Constitutional Convention - Which We Have - Madison Who Was The Main Framer, Proceeded To Develop A System In Which - As He Put It - Power Would Be In The Hands Of The Wealth Of The Nation, The More Responsible Set Of Men And Who Recognize The Need To Protect The Rights Of Property Owners. That's Why In The Constitutional System, The Most Powerful Part Of The Whole System Is The Senate.
Powerful
Men
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.
Law
Land
Rights
Scientists Generally, Not Just Evolutionary Biologists, Don't Take Much For Granted.
Granted
Scientist
Biologist
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.
Thinking
Iran
Enemy
The Most Effective Way To Restrict Democracy Is To Transfer Decision-making From The Public Arena To Unaccountable Institutions: Kings And Princes, Priestly Castes, Military Juntas, Party Dictatorships, Or Modern Corporations.
Kings
Military
Party
Every Great Power, Every Aggressive Power Has Always Regarded Itself As Exceptional And As Doing Things Only For The Most Moral Ends.
Moral
Ends
Aggressive
In General I Don't Think The Image Of The State As A Divinity Is Very Helpful.
Thinking
Divinity
Helpful
China Has Been There For 3,000 Years, Has Contempt For The Barbarians, Is Overcoming A Century Of Domination, And Simply Moves On Its Own. It Does Not Get Intimidated When Uncle Sam Shakes His Fist. That's Scary.
Uncles
Moving
Years
Destruction Of The Environment Is Not Only Rational; It's Exactly What You're Taught To Do In College.
College
Taught
Environment
It Doesn't Matter What We Cover, It Matters What You Discover.
Matter
By Accident Of Geography, The World's Major Oil Resources Are In Shi'ite-dominated Areas. Iran's Oil Is Concentrated Right Near The Gulf, Which Happens To Be An Arab Area, Not Persian. Khuzestan Is Arab, Has Been Loyal To Iran, Fought With Iran Not Iraq During The Iran-iraq War. This Is A Potential Source Of Dissension. I Would Be Amazed If There Isn't An Attempt Going On To Stir Up Secessionist Elements In Khuzestan.
War
Iran
Oil
They, Students Have A Degree Of Freedom That Nobody Else Has.
Degrees
Students
Anarchism, In My View, Is An Expression Of The Idea That The Burden Of Proof Is Always On Those Who Argue That Authority And Domination Are Necessary. They Have To Demonstrate, With Powerful Argument, That That Conclusion Is Correct. If They Cannot, Then The Institutions They Defend Should Be Considered Illegitimate. How One Should React To Illegitimate Authority Depends On Circumstances And Conditions: There Are No Formulas.
Powerful
Views
Expression
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.
Mind
World
Willing
A Drone Strike Is A Terror Weapon, We Don't Talk About It That Way. It Is; Just Imagine You Are Walking Down The Street And You Don't Know Whether In 5 Minutes There Is Going To Be An Explosion Across The Street From Some Place Up In The Sky That You Can't See. Somebody Will Be Killed, And Whoever Is Around Will Be Killed, Maybe You'll Be Injured If You're There. That Is A Terror Weapon. It Terrorizes Villages, Regions, Huge Areas. It's The Most Massive Terror Campaign Going On By A Long Shot.
Sky
Long
Drones
Imagine An Extrahuman Observer Looking At Us. Such An Extrahuman Observer Would Be Struck Precisely By The Uniformity Of Human Languages, By The Very Slight Variation From One Language To Another, And By The Remarkable Respects In Which All Languages Are The Same. And Then He Would Notice We Do Not Pay Any Attention To That Because For The Purpose Of Human Life It Is Quite Natural And Appropriate Just To Take For Granted Everything That Is Common. We Don't Concern Ourselves With That, All We Worry About Are Differences.
Differences
Worry
Would Be
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.
Turkeys
Leader
Democracy
Very Urgent Measures Need To Be Taken, And Without Much Delay, In Dealing With The Ongoing Destruction Of The Environment.
Taken
Delay
Needs
I Don't See How One Can "believe In Organized Religion." What Does It Mean To Believe In An Organization? One Can Join It, Support It, Oppose It, Accept Its Doctrines Or Reject Them. There Are Many Kinds Of Organized Religion. People Associate Themselves With Some Of Them, Or Not, For All Sorts Of Reasons, Maybe Belief In Some Of Their Doctrines.
Believe
Mean
Organization
Cuba Has Become A Symbol Of Courageous Resistance To Attack. Since 1959, Cuba Has Been Under Attack From The Hemispheric Superpower.
Cuba
Resistance
Courageous
Education Is Not For Profit. If You're Not In Education For Profit, It's Not Going To Be A Fair Critique For Education.
Profit
Critique
Fairs
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.
Country
Latin
America
Don't Be Obsessed With Tactics But With Purpose. Tactics Have A Half Life.
Purpose
Half
Tactics
In Egypt The Neoliberal Programs Have Meant Statistical Growth, Like Right Before The Arab Spring, Egypt Was A Kind Of Poster Child For The World Bank And The Imf [international Monetary Fund:] The Marvelous Economic Management And Great Reform. The Only Problem Was For Most Of The Population It Was A Kind Of Like A Blow In The Solar Plexus: Wages Going Down, Benefits Being Eliminated, Subsidized Food Gone And Meanwhile, High Concentration Of Wealth And A Huge Amount Of Corruption.
Children
Spring
Blow
Our Ignorance Can Be Divided Into Problems And Mysteries. When We Face A Problem, We May Not Know Its Solution, But We Have Insight, Increasing Knowledge, And An Inkling Of What We Are Looking For. When We Face A Mystery, However, We Can Only Stare In Wonder And Bewilderment, Not Knowing What An Explanation Would Even Look Like.
Ignorance
Knowing
Looks
Students Typically Are At A Period Of Their Lives When They're More Free Than At Any Other Time. They're Out Of Parental Control. They're Not Yet Burdened By The Needs Of Trying To Put Food On The Table In A Pretty Repressive Environment, Often, And They're Free To Explore, To Create, To Invent, To Act, And To Organize. Over And Over Through The Years, Student Activism Has Been Extremely Significant In Initiating And Galvanizing Major Changes. I Don't See Any Reason For That To Change.
Trying
Students
Environment
It's Easy To Put [serious Threats] Aside, And The Media Don't Talk About Them. Other Things Are More Important. How Am I Going To Put Food On The Table Tomorrow? That's What I've Got To Worry About, And So On. It's Very Serious, But It's Hard To Bring Out The Enormity Of These Issues, When They Do Not Have The Dramatic Character Of Something You Can Show In The Movies, With A Nuclear Weapons Falling And Everything Disappears.
Fall
Character
Media
I Would, However, Question The Implication That There Is Some Novelty In This Beyond Modalities [of Mikhail Bakunin], Which Naturally Change As Institutions Change And Develop.
Novelty
Institutions
Implications
When Geologists Announced The Beginning Of A New Geological Epoch, The Anthropocene, Humans Destroying The Environment, One Of The Main Things They Pointed To Is The Use Of Plastics In The Earth. We Don't Think About It, But It Has A Tremendous Effect. But These Are Things You Don't See Right In Front Of Your Eyes. You Need To Think About Them A Little, To See What The Consequences Are. It's Easy To Put Them Aside, And The Media Don't Talk About Them.
Eye
Thinking
Media
If You Have Worker-owned And Worker-managed Enterprises, You've Got A Different Sociopolitical System.
Different
Enterprise
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.
Powerful
Campaigns
Financial
If You Go To One Demonstration And Then Go Home, That's Something, But The People In Power Can Live With That. What They Can't Live With Is Sustained Pressure That Keeps Building, Organisations That Keep Doing Things, People That Keep Learning Lessons From The Last Time And Doing It Better The Next Time.
Religious
Home
People
Those Are Possibilities For Technology, Which Don't Tend To Be Used, Because Of The Way Power Is Concentrated. There Are All Kinds Of Possibilities, Including For Coercion. In China, Technology Is Used To Control And Coerce. Here Too, To An Extent, But Not To That Extent.
Technology
Coercion
Way
I Think That Has A Lot Of Dangers, As Does Government Surveillance, Which Is Way Too High.
Thinking
Government
Surveillance
Michael Flynn, National Security Adviser, [his Reaction] To The Iranian Missile Test The Other Day Was Very Frightening. Now The Missile Test Is Ill-advised, They Shouldn't Have Done It. But It's Not In Violation Of International Law Or International Agreements. They Shouldn't Have Done It. His Reaction Suggested Maybe We're Going To Go To War In Retaliation.
War
Agreement
Law
Maybe The Science Is Uncertain, Maybe We Don't Have To Worry About It. Climate Change Is The Worst, But There's Others.
Worry
Climate
Uncertain
I've Been Interested In The Reports On Rojava. It Seems Clear That There Are Positive Developments.
Development
Clear
Seems
What Matters Is What Happens Among The Powerful.
Powerful
What Matters
Matter
There's An Interesting Book About That Called The Third Reich And The Ivory Tower, Written By Stephen H. Norwood. It Has A Long Discussion About Harvard, And Indeed The School's President, James Conant, Did Block Jewish Faculty. He Was The One Who Prevented European Jews From Being Admitted To The Chemistry Department - His Field - And Also Had Pretty Good Relations With The Nazis.
Block
Book
School
If You Are Not Offending People Who Ought To Be Offended, You're Doing Something Wrong.
Offended You
Offending
People
It's Not A Matter Of Public Relations And Rhetorical Style But Of Actions. It's The Actions And Policies Under George W.bush Administration That Have Left The Us Government Remarkably Isolated, Feared And Often Hated To An Extent With No Historical Precedent.
Historical
Style
Action
There Is No Reason To Believe ... That The "essential Purpose" Of Language Is "communication". Language Can Be Used To Transmit Information, But It Also Serves Many Other Purposes: To Establish Relations Among People, To Express Or Clarify Thought, For Play, For Creative Mental Activity, To Gain Understanding, And So On. In My Opinion, There Is No Reason To Accord Privileged Status To One Or The Other Of These Modes.
Believe
Communication
Play
It Is Reported That About 30% Of The World's Population Is Unemployed. That's Worse Than The Great Depression, But It's Now An International Phenomenon.
Population
World
Great Depression
The Fourteenth Amendment, After The Civil War, In Principle Brought Former Slaves Into The Category Of Persons, Theoretically. But If You Actually Look, Almost All The Cases Brought Up For Personal Rights Under The Fourteenth Amendment Were By Corporations. Freed Slaves Couldn't Do It. In Fact They Were Pretty Much Driven Back Into Something Like Slavery By A North - South Compact, That Allowed Former Slave States To Criminalize Black Life, Which Made A Criminal Force That Was Basically Used As A Forced Labor Force, Up Until The 1930s.
War
Labor Force
Rights
Power Is Concentrated. The General Policy Is Exactly The Way That Adam Smith Described It: It's Designed For The Benefit Of Its Principal Architects, The Powerful. It Serves "the Vile Maxim Of The Masters: All For Ourselves And Nothing For Anyone Else". Those Are The Basic Rules Of The World.
Powerful
Benefits
World
For 500 Years, Since European Explorers Came, Latin American Countries Had Been Separated From One Another. They Had Very Limited Relations. Integration Is A Prerequisite For Independence.
Country
Latin
Years
There's A Strange Myth Of Anglo-saxonism. When The University Of Virginia Was Founded By Thomas Jefferson, For Example, Its Law School Offered The Study Of "anglo-saxon Law." And That Myth Of Anglo-saxonism Carries Right Over Into The Early Twentieth Century.
School
Virginia
Law
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.
Mean
Political
Groups
There Are Two Parties, So-called, But They're Really Factions Of The Same Party, The Business Party.
Party
Two
Degrees
Go Back To The Bible, The Old Testament. I Mean There Were People Who We Would Call Intelectuals, There, They Were Called Prophets, But They Were Basically Intelectuals: They Were People Who Were Doing Critical, Geopolitical Analysis, Talking About The Decisions Of The King Were Going To Lead To Destruction; Condemning Inmorality, Calling For Justice For Widows And Orphans. What We Would Call Dissident Intelectuals. Were They Nicely Treated? No, They Were Driven Into The Desert, They Were Imprisoned, They Were Denounced. They Were Intelectuals Who Conformed.
Kings
Mean
Talking
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.
School
Office
Effort
It's Necessary To Address The Concerns And Beliefs Of Those Who Are Taken In By The Fraud, Or Who Don't Recognize The Nature And Significance Of The Issues For Other Reasons. If By Philosophy We Mean Reasoned And Thoughtful Analysis, Then It Can Address The Moment, Though Not By Confronting The "alternative Facts" But By Analyzing And Clarifying What Is At Stake, Whatever The Issue Is. Beyond That, What Is Needed Is Action: Urgent And Dedicated, In The Many Ways That Are Open To Us.
Philosophy
Taken
Mean
All You Have To Do Is Read The Business Literature. In The 1930s They Were Very Frightened And They Were Concerned About How The Rising Power Of The Masses Was Hazardous To Industrialists.
Rising
Literature
Frightened
One Of The Problems Of Organizing In The North, In The Rich Countries, Is That People Tend To Think - Even The Activists - That Instant Gratification Is Required. You Constantly Hear: 'look I Went To A Demonstration, And We Didn't Stop The War So What's The Use Of Doing It Again?'
Country
War
Thinking
The U.s. Has The Most Dysfunctional Healthcare System In The Industrial World, Has About Twice The Per Capita Costs, And Some Of The Worst Outcomes. It's Also The Only Privatized System.
Cost
World
Outcomes
The Russian Ambassador At The United Nations Did Make Some Proposals For A Political Settlement In Which Bashar Assad Would Be Slowly Eased Out. The West Dismissed It Immediately, And We Don't Know If It Was Real, Because It Didn't Come From The Kremlin, And It Was Informal. But The Point Is Every Such Proposal Is Immediately Scotched. And You Just Don't Know If They're Real.
Real
Political
Proposal
People Have No Human Rights, Only The Rights That They Can Gain On The Labour Market. Above All, Wealth And Power Have To Be Protected.
Rights
People
Gains
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.
Real
Thinking
Years
Intellectuals Are In A Position To Expose The Lies Of Governments, To Analyze Actions According To Their Causes And Motives And Often Hidden Intentions.
Lying
Government
Causes
You Never Need An Argument Against The Use Of Violence, You Need An Argument For It.
Peace
War
Needs
That's The Whole Point Of Good Propaganda. You Want To Create A Slogan That Nobody's Going To Be Against, And Everybody's Going To Be For. Nobody Knows What It Means, Because It Doesn't Mean Anything.
Mean
Want
Propaganda
This Sarah Palin Phenomenon Is Very Curious. I Think Somebody Watching Us From Mars — They Would Think The Country Has Gone Insane.
Country
Thinking
Political
The Government Has A Defect: It's Potentially Democratic. Corporations Have No Defect: They're Pure Tyrannies.
Government
Democracy
Corporations
Some Innate Capacity - Some Part Of The Human Genetic Endowment - Enters Into Language Acquisition. That Much Is Uncontroversial Among Those Who Believe That Humans Are Part Of The Natural World. If It Were Not True, Would Be A Miracle That My Granddaughter Reflexively Identified Some Elements Of The Blooming Buzzing Confusion As Language-related And Went On To Acquire Capacities Of The Kind That You And I Are Now Exercising, While Her Pet Kitten (chimp, Songbird, Bee...), Presented With Exactly The Same Data, Could Not Take The First Step, Let Alone The Later Ones.
Believe
Exercise
Data
The Intellectual World Is Deeply Conformist... We Talk A Lot About The Crimes Of Others. When It Comes To Our Own Crimes, We Are Nationalists In The Orwellian Sense.
Intellectual
World
Crime
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.
Attitude
Feelings
Climate
The Earthquake In Haiti Was A Class-based Catastrophe. It Didn't Much Harm The Wealthy Elite Up In The Hills, They Were Shaken But Not Destroyed. On The Other Hand The People Who Were Living In The Miserable Urban Slums, Huge Numbers Of Them, They Were Devastated. Maybe A Couple Hundred Thousand Were Killed. How Come They Were Living There? They Were Living There Because Of-it Goes Back To The French Colonial System-but In The Past Century, They Were Living There Because Of Us Policies, Consistent Policies.
Couple
Past
Hands
One Of The Questions Asked In That Study Was, How Many Vietnamese Casualties Would You Estimate That There Were During The Vietnam War? The Average Response On The Part Of Americans Today Is About 100,000. The Official Figure Is About Two Million. The Actual Figure Is Probably Three To Four Million. The People Who Conducted The Study Raised An Appropriate Question: What Would We Think About German Political Culture If, When You Asked People Today How Many Jews Died In The Holocaust, They Estimated About 300,000? What Would That Tell Us About German Political Culture?
War
Thinking
Average
Suppose That Humans Happen To Be So Constructed That They Desire The Opportunity For Freely Undertaken Productive Work. Suppose That They Want To Be Free From The Meddling Of Technocrats And Commissars, Bankers And Tycoons, Mad Bombers Who Engage In Psychological Tests Of Will With Peasants Defending Their Homes, Behavioral Scientists Who Can't Tell A Pigeon From A Poet, Or Anyone Else Who Tries To Wish Freedom And Dignity Out Of Existence Or Beat Them Into Oblivion.
Home
Opportunity
Productive Work
When Something Like This [2003 Invasion Of Iraq] Takes Place, The International Law Professionals Have A Complicated Task. There Is A Fringe That Just Tells The Truth: Look, It's A Violation Of International Law. But Most Have To Construct Complex Arguments To Justify It As Defense Counsel. That's Basically Their Job, Defense Counsel For State Power.
Jobs
Law
Iraq
At The Peak Of The So-called Great Success Of Neoliberal Economics, In 2007, Right Before The Crash, Non-supervisory Workers Were At Wages Considerably Lower Than In 1979, When The Neoliberal Assault Was Taking Off. That Perfectly Naturally Causes Resentment And Fear, And Combines With A Tendency To Blame The Most Vulnerable.
Wages
Causes
Resentment
People Don't Have Knowledge And Understanding About The Outside World, Or About History [in The Usa].
Usa
People
Understanding
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.
Religious
Believe
Years
The People I Find Most Impressive Are Generally Unknown At The Time Of Their Actions And Forgotten In History.
People
Action
Forgotten
Farming Out Atrocities To Paramilitaries Is Standard Operating Procedure.
Atrocities
Farming
Procedures
What Can Realistically Be Done Depends On The Historical Moment. The Same Is True With Regard To The Agents.
Historical
Done
Agents
The Irish Were Treated Horribly, Even Here In Boston. For Example, In The Late Nineteenth Century They Were Treated Pretty Much Like African Americans. You Could Find Signs Here In Boston In The Restaurants Saying "no Dogs And Irish."
Dog
Boston
African American
There Are Real Possibilities Of Reaching Many Of The Trump Voters: Many Of Them In Fact Voted For Obama, Believing His Rhetoric About "change," And Upon Realizing That They Were Deluded, Have Turned To Trump. And Will Find That They Are Again Deluded. That's An Opportunity That Can Be Grasped, By Organizing, Education, Activism Right Now.
Real
Believe
Opportunity
The Invasion Of Iraq Was Simply A War Crime. Straight-out War Crime.
War
Iraq
Invasion
A Principle Familiar To Propagandists Is That The Doctrine To Be Instilled In The Target Audience Should Not Be Articulated: That Would Only Expose Them To Reflection, Inquiry, And, Very Likely, Ridicule. The Proper Procedure Is To Drill Them Home By Constantly Presupposing Them, So That They Become The Very Condition For Discourse.
Home
Reflection
Target Audience
It Was Reported In The Left-wing Press In The Late 1930s That The Texas Company (texaco), Headed By The Nazi Sympathizer Torkild Rieber, Diverted Its Oil Shipments From The Republic, With Which It Had Contracts, To [francisco] Franco.
Texas
Wings
Oil
There Isn't Much Point Arguing About The Word "libertarian." It Would Make About As Much Sense To Argue With An Unreconstructed Stalinist About The Word "democracy" - Recall That They Called What They'd Constructed "peoples' Democracies." The Weird Offshoot Of Ultra-right Individualist Anarchism That Is Called "libertarian" Here Happens To Amount To Advocacy Of Perhaps The Worst Kind Of Imaginable Tyranny, Namely Unaccountable Private Tyranny. If They Want To Call That "libertarian," Fine; After All, Stalin Called His System "democratic." But Why Bother Arguing About It?
Democracy
Want
Libertarian
Science Is A Bit Like The Joke About The Drunk Who Is Looking Under A Lamppost For A Key That He Has Lost On The Other Side Of The Street, Because That's Where The Light Is. It Has No Other Choice.
Science
Keys
Light
It's Not In Doubt That Tobacco Is Far More Lethal Than Hard Drugs.
Drug
Doubt
Tobacco
We Don't Have Polls From The Business World, But It's Pretty Clear That The Energy Corporations In America Would Be Quite Happy To Be Given Authorization To Go Back Into Iran Instead Of Leaving All That To Their Rivals. But The State Won't Allow It. And It Is Setting Up Confrontations Right Now, Very Explicitly. Part Of The Reason Is Strategic, Geo-political, Economic, But Part Of The Reason Is The Mafia Complex. They Have To Be Punished For Disobeying Us.
Iran
America
Political
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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