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

Noam Chomsky
We Could Not Bring Democracy And Freedom To Vietnam At A Cost Acceptable To Ourselves. The Idea That That Was What We Were Trying To Do, Is Again, A Tautology, It's True By Definition Because We Were Doing, And The State Is Noble By Definition. That's Called "extreme Liberalism".
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Topic
Ideas
Democracy
Trying
More From Noam Chomsky
In 1962, War Was Avoided By Khrushchev's Willingness To Accept Kennedy's Hegemonic Demands.
War
Demand
Accepting
I've Often Been Struck By The Extensive Knowledge That People Have Of Sports, And Particularly, Their Self-confidence In Discussing It With Experts. . . . In Contrast, When Discussing Matters Of Concern To Human Lives - Their Own And Others - People Tend To Defer To Experts.
Sports
Self Confidence
People
I Don't See Much Use In General Slogans. Sometimes It Is Worth Resisting Evil With Lesser Evil, Very Commonly In Fact.
Evil
Use
Facts
The Internet, Since It Is Publicly Created, Ought To Be Publicly Controlled.
Internet
Ought
Controlled
Whenever There Is Injustice, Oppression, Aggression, Violence, It's Standard For It To Be Supported By Those We Now Call "intellectuals," But Typically Not By All; There Is Typically A Fringe Of Dissidents. With Very Rare Exceptions - In Fact, It's Hard To Think Of Any - They Suffer In One Or Another Way; How Depends On The Nature Of The Society.
Thinking
Suffering
Way
The Times Are Too Difficult And The Crisis Too Severe To Indulge In Schadenfreude. Looking At It In Perspective, The Fact That There Would Be A Financial Crisis Was Perfectly Predictable: Its General Nature, If Not Its Magnitude. Markets Are Always Inefficient.
Indulge In
Perspective
Would Be
Procurement Is A Major Technique Of State Subsidy.
Technique
Subsidies
States
A Large Part Of The Left Is Pro-assad. In Those Circles, You Can't Criticize Assad, But You Know He's A Monstrous War Criminal. And Anyone Who Criticizes Assad Is Joining The Us Imperialists. That's Just Ludicrous.
War
Circles
Criminals
The House Of Representatives, Which Was Closer To The Population, Had Much Less Power. The Executive Was More Or Less An Administrator, Not An Emperor Like Today.
House
Population
Today
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
Right Now, Huge Numbers Of People Cannot Obtain Even Drinking Water, And The Situation Is Likely To Become Worse With Predicted Climate Change And Failure To Take The Actions That Are Necessary.
Drinking
People
Water
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.
Government
Worship
Bigs
For Decades Israel Has Been Capturing, And Kidnapping Lebanese And Palestinian Refugees On The High Seas, From Cyprus To Lebanon, Killing Them In Lebanon, Bringing Them To Israel, Holding Them As Hostages. It's Been Going On For Decades, Has Anybody Called For An Invasion Of Israel?
Israel
Sea
Cyprus
The Drones Are A Terrorist Weapon, They Not Only Kill Targets But Also Terrorise Other People.
People
Drones
Target
When [ Paul Johnson] Got To Me He Was In Trouble, Because I'm An Old-fashioned Conservative: Married When I Was 21, Stayed Married, 3 Kids, Live In The Suburbs, No Scandals, So Nothing To Write About. So What He Did Is Concoct One Of The Nuttiest Claims I've Ever Seen.
Writing
Kids
Scandal
Judge Afiuni Has Suffered Enough. She Has Been Subject To Acts Of Violence And Humiliations To Undermine Her Human Dignity. I Am Convinced That She Must Be Set Free.
Judging
Violence
Dignity
Washington Basically Works For The Corporate Sector And Silicon Valley, Technically At Least, Is Suppose To Sponsor Initiative In Creativity, Whether It Does Or Not Is Another Question.
Creativity
Valleys
Doe
If You Have Worker-owned And Worker-managed Enterprises, You've Got A Different Sociopolitical System.
Different
Enterprise
Organization And Education, When They Interact With Each Other, They Strengthen Each Other, They Are Mutually Supportive.
Organization
Supportive
No Liberal Newspaper Ever Talked About The Invasion Of Vietnam; They Talked About The Defense Of Vietnam. And Then They Were Saying, "well, It's Not Going Well." Ok, That Make Them Liberal. It's Like, It's If We Were To Say, That Going Back To, Say, Nazi Germany, That Hitler's General Staff Was Liberal After Stalingrad Because They Were Criticizing His Tactics: "it Was A Mistake To Fight A Two Front War, We Should've Knocked Off Englad First," Or Something.
War
Mistake
Fighting
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
John Lewis Gaddis Is Not Only The Favorite Historian Of The Reagan Administration, But He's Regarded As The Dean Of Cold War Scholarship, The Leading Figure In The American Cold War Scholarship, A Professor At Yale.
War
Yale
Administration
Because The 1979 Strike Against U.s. Steel In Youngstown, Ohio Was An Occupation - And Actually, That's A Model That Really Should Be Pursued Now.they Went On From Striking To Trying To Have The Workforce And The Communities Take Over The Abandoned Factories That U.s. Steel Was Dismantling.
Ohio
Community
Trying
I Really Suggest Listening To Talk Radio. I Mean, If You Just Listen To What The Talk Hosts Are Saying, They Sound Like They Are Lunatics.
Mean
Listening
Sound
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.
United States
Population
Structure
The Great Soul Of Power Extends Far Beyond States, To Every Domain Of Life, From Families To International Affairs. And Throughout, Every Form Of Authority And Domination Bears A Severe Burden Of Proof. It Is Not Self-legitimizing. And When It Cannot Bear The Burden, As Is Commonly The Case, It Should Be Dismantled.
Self
Burden Of Proof
Soul
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.
Teacher
Lying
Believe
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.
Mind
Tiny
Bears
In Much Of The World The U.s. Is Regarded As A Leading Terrorist State.
World
States
Terrorist
Its True That Contemporary Technology Permits Decentralization, It Also Permits Centralization. It Depends On How You Use The Technology.
Technology
Use
Permit
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
In Many Respects, The United States Is A Great Country. Freedom Of Speech Is Protected More Than In Any Other Country. It Is Also A Very Free Society.
Country
Freedom Of Speech
United States
The Corporations Plainly Want Academic Scholarship To Create A Web Of Mystification That Will Avoid Any Public Awareness Of The Way In Which Power Actually Functions In The Society, And The Faculty Has Caught The Message And They Do It Magnificently.
Power
Society
Want
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
It Hardly Takes More Than A Day In Gaza To Begin To Appreciate What It Must Be Like To Try To Survive In The World’s Largest Open-air Prison.
Air
Appreciate
Trying
The Iraq War Was The First Conflict In Western History In Which An Imperialist War Was Massively Protested Against Before It Had Even Been Launched.
War
Iraq
Firsts
Quite Generally, International Affairs Have More Than A Slight Resemblance To The Mafia. The Godfather Does Not Take It Lightly When He Is Crossed, Even By A Small Storekeeper.
Mafia
Doe
Affair
It Doesn't Matter What We Cover, It Matters What You Discover.
Matter
We Have To Be Irrational And Vindictive, Because That's Going To Frighten People. And We Have To Maintain This For Years. And Then We'll Be Able To Carry Out The Actions That We Want To Carry Out.
Years
People
Want
The Ideal Is To Create A Completely Fragmented Atomized Society Where Everybody Is Totally Alone, Doing Nothing But Trying To Pursue Created Wants, And The Wants Are Created.
Trying
Doing Nothing
Want
The Republican Primaries Were Quite Interesting. The Establishment Had Its Candidate, [mitt] Romney, A Kind Of A Wall Street Lawyer And Investor, And They Wanted Him In. But The Base Didn't Want Him.
Wall
Interesting
Want
Trump's Principal Policies Make Clear What's Going To Happen. This Gives An Opportunity. Right Now It's Going To Take Hard Work, But It's Possible That There Could Be A Real Revival Of The Labor Movement.
Real
Hard Work
Opportunity
The U.s. Is, To A Very Unusual Extent, A Business-run Society.
Running
Unusual
Armed Attack Has A Definition In International Law. It Means Sudden, Overwhelming, Instantaneous Ongoing Attack.
Mean
Law
Ongoing
For One Thing, Studying Language Is By Itself A Part Of A Study Of Human Intelligence That Is, Perhaps, The Central Aspect Of Human Nature. And Second, I Think, It Is A Good Model For Studying Other Human Properties, Which Ought To Be Studied By Psychologists In The Same Way.
Thinking
Way
Study
The Indoctrination Is So Deep That Educated People Think They’re Being Objective.
Thinking
People
Indoctrination
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
I Am Opposed To The Accumulation Of Executive Power Anywhere.
Executive Power
Accumulation
Executives
There's A Tremendous Gap Between Public Opinion And Public Policy.
Public Opinion
Gaps
Policy
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
We Have Never Had Class-based Parties. We've Had Parties Run By The Business Classes. There's Slight Variations. Like In The New Deal Period, There Was A Lot Of Popular Activism, So Things Shifted Slightly, But Not Much.
Running
Party
Activism
Under Capitalism, We Can't Have Democracy By Definition. Capitalism Is A System In Which The Central Institutions Of Society Are In Principle Under Autocratic Control.
Democracy
Principles
Definitions
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
The Free Market Is 'socialism' For The Rich: The Public Pays The Costs And The Rich Get The Benefit - Markets For The Poor And Plenty Of State Protection For The Rich.
Cost
Benefits
Pay
Pakistan Will Never Be Able To Match The Indian Militarily And The Effort To Do So Is Taking An Immense Toll On The Society. It's Also Extremely Dangerous With All The Weapons Development. The Two Countries Have Already Come Close To Nuclear Confrontation Twice And This Could Get Worse. So Dealing With The Relationship With India Is Extremely Important.
Country
Two
Effort
A Very Large Majority Of The U.s. Population Is In Favor Of Establishing Diplomatic Relations With Cuba And Has Been For A Long Time With Some Fluctuations. And Even Part Of The Business World Is In Favor Of It, Too. But The Government Won't Allow It.
Government
Long
World
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.
Home
Brain
Important
You Cannot Control Your Own Population By Force, But It Can Be Distracted By Consumption.
Population
Force
Consumption
The Beam In Our Own Eye Is Harder To Detect, Although - Or More Accurately Because - To Detect It, And Remove It, Is Vastly More Important On Elementary Moral Grounds, And Commonly More Important In Terms Of Direct Human Consequences As Well. Intellectuals Have Historically Played A Critical Function In Performing These Tasks, And [ivan] Illich Is Right To Observe That Claims To Scientific Expertise And Special Knowledge Are Often Used As A Device.
Eye
Important
Special
The Obama Administration Is Dedicated To Increasing Terrorism. In Fact, He Is Doing It All Over The World. Obama Is Running The Biggest Terrorist Operation That Exists, Maybe In History. The Drone Assassination Campaigns - Which Are Just Part Of The Special Forces Operations And So On - All Of These Operations Are Terror Operations.
Running
Special
Administration
Travel From What Is Called Pakistan To Afghanistan Has Been Made Increasingly Difficult And People Are Often Labelled Terrorists, Even Those Who Might Be Just Visiting Families.
People
Pakistan
Might
That's The Standard Technique Of Privatization: Defund, Make Sure Things Don't Work, People Get Angry, You Hand It Over To Private Capital.
Hands
People
Technique
The Second World War Had Really Devastating Effects For Much Of Europe. It Really Didn't Take Them Very Long To Reconstruct State Capitalist Democracies Because It Was In People's Heads. There Were Other Parts Of The World That Were Pretty Much Devastated And They Couldn't Do It; They Didn't Have The Conceptions In Their Mind. A Lot Of It Is Human Consciousness.
War
Europe
Long
U.s. Domestic Drug Policy Does Not Carry Out Its Stated Goals, And Policymakers Are Well Aware Of That. If It Isn't About Reducing Substance Abuse, What Is It About? It Is Reasonably Clear, Both From Current Actions And The Historical Record, That Substances Tend To Be Criminalized When They Are Associated With The So-called Dangerous Classes, That The Criminalization Of Certain Substances Is A Technique Of Social Control.
Class
Goal
Historical
The Missile Defense Component Is A Minor Feature That Nobody Takes Very Seriously. Nobody Really Believes That The Us Is Trying To Protect Itself From North Korea. That's Not Serious. But The Militarization Of Space Is Quite Serious.
Believe
Space
Korea
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
Just Recently, The Administration Of Barack Obama, Which Has Broken All Sorts Of Records In Regards To Deportation, Picked Up A Guatemalan Man Living Here [in U.s]. I Think He Had Been Living Here For Twenty-five Years, Had A Family, A Business, And So On. He Had Fled From The Mayan Region And They Picked Him Up And Deported Him. To Me, That's Really Sick.
Men
Thinking
Years
[ Republican Party] Is Correctly Described As A "radical Insurgency" By One Of The Leading Conservative Commentators, Norman Ornstein.
Party
Conservative
Republican
[donald Trump] Guru Steve Bannon Is Worse, He's Much Scarier. He Probably Knows What He's Doing.
Guru
Trump
Knows
So Marxism, Freudianism: Any One Of These Things I Think Is An Irrational Cult. They're Theology, So They're Whatever You Think Of Theology; I Don't Think Much Of It. In Fact, In My View That's Exactly The Right Analogy: Notions Like Marxism And Freudianism Belong To The History Of Organized Religion.
Thinking
Views
Analogies
There Is Extensive Critical Scholarship That Provides Illustrations In Many Areas Of Scholarship. I've Discussed Many Cases Myself, While Also Citing And Often Relying On Academic Studies That Disentangle These Webs Of Mystification Woven For The General Public. It's Impossible To Provide Illustrations That Would Even Approach Accuracy, Let Alone Carry Any Conviction, Without Going Well Beyond The Bounds Of This Discussion.
Illustration
Woven
Citing
Now Take A Look At The Way The Drug War Is Conducted Over The Past 40 Years. It Goes Back Farther, But Start From 40 Years Ago: There's Very Little Spent On Prevention And Treatment. There's A Lot On Policing, A Ton Of Stuff On Border Control And A Lot On Out-of-country Operations. And The Effect On The Availability Of Drugs Is Almost Undetectable; Drug Prices Don't Change On Measures Of Availability. So There Are Two Possibilities: Either Those Conducting The Drug War Are Lunatics, Or They Have Another Purpose.
Country
War
Past
I've Already Supported Bernie Sanders In The Primaries.
Primaries
What I've Called "the Mafia Doctrine" In Many Publications: When The Godfather Issues An Edict, Others Must Obey, Or Else. It's Too Dangerous To Allow Disobedience. A Leading Principle Of World Affairs - Though, Of Course, Officials And Commentators Put It More Politely.
Issues
Mafia
Principles
Israel Has A Couple Of Hundred Nuclear Weapons And Also Chemical And Biological Weapons. This Stockpile Is Not Only A Threat In Itself But Encourages Others To Proliferate In Reaction And In Self-defense. Is Anybody Saying Anything About This?
Couple
Israel
Self
By A Generative Grammar I Mean Simply A System Of Rules That In Some Explicit And Well-defined Way Assigns Structural Descriptions To Sentences. Obviously, Every Speaker Of A Language Has Mastered And Internalized A Generative Grammar That Expresses His Knowledge Of His Language. This Is Not To Say That He Is Aware Of The Rules Of The Grammar Or Even That He Can Become Aware Of Them, Or That His Statements About His Intuitive Knowledge Of The Language Are Necessarily Accurate.
Mean
Way
Language
The Internet Is An élite Organization; Most Of The Population Of The World Has Never Even Made A Phone Call.
Phones
Organization
Population
Bear In Mind That We [ With Edward Herman] Did Not Devise The Terms "manufacture Of Consent" And "engineering Of Consent." We Borrowed Them From Leading Figures In The Media, Public Relations Industry, And Academic Scholarship.
Engineering
Media
Mind
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
What Can Realistically Be Done Depends On The Historical Moment. The Same Is True With Regard To The Agents.
Historical
Done
Agents
Very Commonly Substances Are Criminalized Because They're Associated With What's Called The Dangerous Classes, You Know, Poor People, Or Working People.... Actually, The Peak Of Marijuana Use Was As I Said, In The Seventies, But That Was Rich Kids, So You Don't Throw Them In Jail. And Then It Got Seriously Criminalized, You Know, You Really Throw People In Jail For It, When It Was Poor People.
Kids
Marijuana
Class
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.
Reality
Thinking
Order
... The Media Serve The Interests Of State And Corporate Power, Which Are Closely Interlinked, Framing Their Reporting And Analysis In A Manner Supportive Of Established Privilege And Limiting Debate And Discussion Accordingly.
Media
Supportive
Analysis
Latin America Wants To Decriminalize At Least Marijuana (maybe More Or Course;) The Us Wants To Maintain It. An Interesting Story. There Seems To Me No Easy Way Out Of This.
Latin
Marijuana
America
I'm Sorry To Say It Has Some Historical Analogs. It's Kind Of Reminiscent Of What Happened In Germany In The Late Weimar Years.
Sorry
Years
Historical
The Country Was Founded On The Principle That Primary Role Of Government Is To Protect Property From The Majority, And So It Remains.
Country
Government
Majority
You Know, We Have Little Bits Of Understanding, Glimpses, A Little Bit Of Light Here And There, But There's A Tremendous Amount Of Darkness, Which Is A Challenge. I Think Life Would Be Pretty Boring If We Understood Everything. It's Better If We Don't Understand Anything And Know That We Don't, That's The Important Part.
Thinking
Light
Challenges
The Invasion Of Panama, What Was That? The U.s. Killed, According To The Panamanians, 3,000 Civilians. Maybe They're Right. We Don't Investigate Our Own Crimes, So Nobody Knows.
Invasion
Crime
Panama
The Two Countries [pakistan And India] Have Already Come Close To Nuclear Confrontation Twice And This Could Get Worse. So Dealing With The Relationship With India Is Extremely Important.
Country
Two
Important
Hypocrites Are Those Who Apply To Others The Standards That They Refuse To Accept For Themselves.
Hypocrite
Media
Politics
Bradley Manning Should Be Regarded As A Hero. He Is Doing What An Honest, Decent Citizen Should Be Doing: Letting Your Population Know What The Government, The People Who Rule You Are Doing. They Want To Keep It Secret Of Course.
Hero
Government
People
Iceland Is Capitalist Social Democratic, Rather Like The Nordic Countries Generally. The Capital Had A Mayor Who Is An Anarchist, But The City Has Been Nothing Like That. In Fact A Few Years Ago It Was Super-neoliberal, Which Led To The Crash.
Country
Years
Iceland
Isaiah Berlin Described The Intellectuals Of [mikhail] Bakunin's "red Bureaucracy" As A "secular Priesthood.
Berlin
Red
Priesthood
When People Know We Are Ready To Use Nuclear Weapons, They're Going To Back Off If We Do Something Aggressive. So Basically, Nuclear Weapons Are Always Being Used.
People
Nuclear
Use
Enormous And Growing Parts Of The Population Are Basically Superfluous For Profit-making Purposes. Along With This, The Jail Population Is Increasing Very Rapidly; It's The Highest In The Industrial World By Far. New And Onerous Crime Bills Are Being Passed To Deal With This Superfluous Population.
Jail
Population
Purpose
In Any Case, It Is Better To Have Some Deal Than No Deal, But It's Interesting That Obama Picked The Day Of Implementing Of Iran Deal To Impose New Sanctions On North Korea.
Iran
Korea
Interesting
Our Concern Is To Help People Counter The Efforts Of Those Who Seek To "regiment The Public Mind Every Bit As Much As An Army Regiments The Bodies Of Its Soldiers," So That The Self-designated "responsible Men" Will Be Able To Run The Affairs Of The World Untroubled By The "bewildered Herd" - The General Public - Who Are To Be Marginalized And Dispersed, Directed To Personal Concerns, In A Well-regulated "democracy."
Running
Army
Men
What Is Called 'capitalism'is Basically A System Of Corporate Mercantilism, With Huge And Largely Unaccountable Private Tyrannies Exercising Vast Control Over The Economy, Political Systems, And Social And Cultural Life, Operating In Close Cooperation With Powerful States That Intervene Massively In The Domestic Economy And International Society.
Powerful
Exercise
Accountability
The Search For Truth Is A Cooperative, Unending Endeavor. We Can, And Should, Engage In It To The Extent We Can And Encourage Others To Do So As Well, Seeking To Free Ourselves From Constraints Imposed By Coercive Institutions, Dogma, Irrationality, Excessive Conformity And Lack Of Initiative And Imagination, And Numerous Other Obstacles.
Imagination
Obstacles
Conformity
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
Finally Irish Were Accepted Into Society And Became Part Of The Political System, And There Were Kennedys, And So On. But The Same Is True About Other Waves Of Immigrants, Like The Jews In The 1950s.
Political
Wave
Accepted
The Former Colonies, In Latin America In Particular, Have A Better Chance Than Ever Before To Overcome Centuries Of Subjugation, Violence And Foreign Intervention, Which They Have So Far Survived As Dependencies With Islands Of Luxury In A Sea Of Misery.
Latin
Sea
Luxury
Let's Imagine Again An Observer Looking At Us Without Any Preconceptions. I Think He Would Be Struck By The Fact That Although Human Beings Have The Capacity To Develop Scientific Knowledge, It Must Be A Very Limited Capacity Because It Is Only Done In Very Narrow And Specific Domains.
Thinking
Would Be
Done
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.
Powerful
Mean
World
Now, You Ban Not The Whole Muslim World. You Ban Seven States, Seven States That Have Not Been Responsible For A Single Terrorist Act. Those Are The Seven [donald Trump] Banned. But, You Leave The Ones That Really Are Responsible, Like Saudi Arabia, Which Is The Center For Propaganda And Funding And So On For Radical Islamic Jihadism, Well You Can't Touch Them Because Of Business Interests, Also They Have Oil And So On And So Forth.
Islamic
Oil
Arabia
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
Unless That Happens, Unless You Get, You Know, Kind Of Integration Of Activists' Concerns And Movements, It Will Be, Each One Will Be 'preaching To The Choir'.
Movement
Kind
Choir
I Happen To Agree With The Anti-dictatorship Policies, But I Don't Think It's The Role Of General Electric To Support Them Or Oppose Them. They Do Of Course, But I Don't Agree With That.
Thinking
Support
Roles
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
Should A Community... Be Free To Enact Legislation To Say They Don't Want Blacks? Now That's Illegal. Fifty Years Ago It Was Legal. Is That Progress Or Is That Regress?
Years
Community
Progress
States Are Violent To The Extent That They Have The Power To Act In The Interests Of Those With Domestic Power
Violent
States
Interest
In Fact If You Look At Reagan's Global War On Terrorism It Very Quickly Turned Into A Massive Terrorist War: [by Us] Central America, South Africa, The Middle East, All U.s.-backed Terrorism. That's One Of The Reasons Why It Disappeared From History And Why The Standard Line Is That Bush 43 Declared The War On Terror. Actually He Just Repeated What Reagan Had Said 20 Years Earlier.
War
America
Years
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
Everyone Engaged In Research Must Have Had The Experience Of Working With Feverish And Prolonged Intensity To Write A Paper Which No One Else Will Read Or To Solve A Problem Which No One Else Thinks Important And Which Will Bring No Conceivable Reward - Which May Only Confirm A General Opinion That The Researcher Is Wasting His Time On Irrelevancies.
Writing
Thinking
Important
Science Talks About Very Simple Things, And Asks Hard Questions About Them. As Soon As Things Become Too Complex, Science Can't Deal With Them... But It's A Complicated Matter: Science Studies What's At The Edge Of Understanding, And What's At The Edge Of Understanding Is Usually Fairly Simple. And It Rarely Reaches Human Affairs. Human Affairs Are Way Too Complicated.
Simple
Understanding
Matter
Most Of Us Who Were Opposed To The War, Especially In The Early '60's - The War We Were Opposed To Was The War On South Vietnam Which Destroyed South Vietnam's Rural Society. The South Was Devastated. But Now Anyone Who Opposed This Atrocity Is Regarded As Having Defended North Vietnam. And That's Part Of The Effort To Present The War As If It Were A War Between South Vietnam And North Vietnam With The United States Helping The South. Of Course It's Fabrication. But It's "official Truth" Now.
War
Effort
Atrocities
The United States In Many Ways Resembles A Third World Country - Far More Elevated, But It Has Many Of Those Structural Characteristics: The Extreme Inequality Of Wealth, The Deterioration Of Infrastructure Because It Only Serves Poor People, Predatory Operations, Huge Corruption, And So On.
Country
People
United States
Even Stalin Proclaimed His Love For Democracy. We Do Not Learn About The Nature Of Systems Of Power By Listening To Their Rhetoric.
Listening
Democracy
His Love
The Point Of Advertising Is To Destroy Markets.
Advertising
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.
Firsts
Doe
Would Be
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.
Organization
Ideas
People
People Who Don't Accept That Doctrinal System, They May Try To Survive In The Media, But They Are Unlikely To.
Media
People
Trying
Humans Have Certain Properties And Characteristics Which Are Intrinsic To Them, Just As Every Other Organism Does. That's Human Nature.
Doe
Human Nature
Characteristics
The Pashtuns In Particular Are Kind Of Trapped. They've Never Accepted The Durand Line Nor Has Any Afghan Government Historically Accepted It.
Government
Lines
Kind
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.
Way
Population
Different
Sports Plays A Societal Role In Engendering Jingoist And Chauvinist Attitudes. They're Designed To Organize A Community To Be Committed To Their Gladiators.
Sports
Peace
Attitude
You Don't Have Any Other Society Where The Educated Classes Are So Effectively Indoctrinated And Controlled By A Subtle Propaganda System - A Private System Including Media, Intellectual Opinion Forming Magazines And The Participation Of The Most Highly Educated Sections Of The Population. Such People Ought To Be Referred To As "commissars - For That Is What Their Essential Function Is - To Set Up And Maintain A System Of Doctrines And Beliefs Which Will Undermine Independent Thought And Prevent A Proper Understanding And Analysis Of National And Global Institutions, Issues, And Policies".
Truth
Independent
Issues
In Fact, It Was Stated Early In The First Bush [presidency], Bush I, In One Of Their Documents They Pointed Out In The Future, Us Wars Are Going To Be Against Much Weaker Enemies. And They Have To Be Won Quickly And Decisively Before A Popular Reaction Develops. And Iif You Take A Look, That's What's Done. Look At Panama, For Instance, Over A Couple Of Days; And Kosovo, No American Troops.
Couple
War
Enemy
About Specific Social Issues, There Is A Great Deal To Say That Departs Very Far From Truism And Is, Accordingly, Significant And Controversial.
Issues
Controversial
Significant
Roughly Speaking, I Think It's Accurate To Say That A Corporate Elite Of Managers And Owners Governs The Economy And The Political System As Well, At Least In Very Large Measure.
Thinking
Political
Economics
But On The Contrary Wikileaks Is Under Heavy Attack By The Government And Corporations Are Participating In That By Closing Down Their Websites.
Government
Corporations
Wikileaks
There's An Interesting Book Called The Fugu Plan, Written By Marvin Tokayer And Mary Swartz, Which Describes The Circumstances When European Jews Came To Japan, A Semi-feudal Society.
Book
Japan
Interesting
I Think Half The Population Supports This Ban On These Dangerous Immigrants Who Are Going To Come In And Do Something, Who Knows What. And Meanwhile The Countries That Really Have Been Involved In Terrorism, They're Out. It's Kind Of Like I Think It Was Oklahoma Banning Sharia Law.
Country
Thinking
Oklahoma
There Are Very Deep And Restrictive Principles That Determine The Nature Of Human Language And Are Rooted In The Specific Character Of The Human Mind
Character
Mind
Principles
Every Time There Has Been An Effort By The Haitian People To Overcome The Misery And Poverty That Comes From 200 Years Of Bitter Attacks, Really Bitter, The U.s. Steps In And Blocks It.
Block
Years
People
I Think A Decent Society Should Protect Rights To Private Property Within Limits, But Not Concentrations Of Private Power That Infringe On The Freedom And Rights Of Others, Including Exploitation Of Labor, And That Convert Any Democratic Forms Into What Have Been Called Sometimes "hierarchical Democracies," Like Ours, In Which Some Have Vastly Greater Influence Over Public Policy Than Others. Spelling All Of This Out Is A Complex Matter That Raises Many Issue And Problems That Are Impossible To Address Here.
Thinking
Democracy
Impossible
You Can't Mention Hezbollah In The U.s. Media Without Putting In The Context Of "iranian-supported Hezbollah." That's Its Name. Its Name Is Iranian-supported Hezbollah. It Gets Iranian Support. But You Can Mention Israel Without Saying Us-supported Israel. So This Is More Tacit Propaganda.
Israel
Media
Names
Freedom Without Opportunity Is A Devil's Gift.
Opportunity
Liberty
Devil
We Naturally Assume That Our Mental Structures Are Universal. But I Suppose An Outside Biologist Looking At Us Would See Something Very Different. He Would See That, Like Other Organisms, We Have A Narrow Sphere Within Which We Are Very Good, But That Sphere Is Very Limited. And That, In Fact, The Very Achievements We Can Have Within That Sphere Are Related To Lack Of Achievements In Other Spheres.
Achievement
Different
Facts
The Human Species Is Now At A Point Where It Has To Make Choices That Are Going To Determine Whether Decent Survival Is Even Possible. Environmental Catastrophe, Including War, Maybe Pandemics, These Are Very Serious Issues And They Can't Be Addressed Within The Current Structure Of Institutions. That's Almost Given. There Have To Be Real Significant Changes, And Only Really Effective Popular Mass-based Movements Can Introduce And Carry Forward Such Initiatives, As Indeed Did Happen During The 1930s.
Real
War
Choices
We're Supposed To Believe That Oil Had Nothing To Do With It, That If Iraq Were Exporting Pickles Or Jelly And The Center Of World Oil Production Were In The South Pacific That The United States Would've Liberated Them Anyway. It Has Nothing To Do With The Oil, What A Crass Idea. Anyone With Their Head Screwed On Knows That That Can't Be True.
Believe
Ideas
Oil
The Worst Terrorist Crimes Going On Right Now Are The Drone Campaigns.
Drones
Campaigns
Crime
Some Kind Of Settlement In Kashmir Is Crucial For Both India And Pakistan. It's Also Tearing India Apart With Horrible Atrocities In The Region Which Is Controlled By Indian Armed Forces. This Is Feeding Right Back Into Society Even In The Domain Of Elementary Civil Rights.
Rights
India And Pakistan
Kashmir
A Bombing Was Planned [in Syria], Which Would Probably Make The Situation Worse, But Would At Least Establish Us Credibility.
Credibility
Situation
Syria
Obama's Latest Line Is That He Didn't Establish A "red Line" But The World Did Through Its Conventions On Chemical Warfare.
World
What Is Important To Us Is To Reverse The Shameful Course Being Pursued By America. It Won't Be Easy, But It Must And Can Be Done.
America
Important
Done
I Have Often Thought That If A Rational Fascist Dictatorship Were To Exist, Then It Would Choose The American System.
Fascists
Fascism
Dictatorship
The [ronald] Reagan Administration Told The Business World That They Were Not Going To Enforce The Labor Laws.
Law
World
Administration
All Forms Of Involuntary Servitude Are Prohibited, Not Only Slavery But Also Conscription, Forced Association, And Forced Welfare Distribution.
Slavery
Association
Welfare
Radical Islamist Extremists Surely Hope That An Attack On Iraq Will Kill Many People And Destroy Much Of The Country, Providing Recruits For Terrorist Actions.
Country
Iraq
People
Take Like, Say, Obama, He's Called "liberal" And He's Praised For His "principled Objection To The Iraq War". What Was His "principled Objection"? He Says It Was A "strategic Blunder," Like Nazi Generals After Stalingrad.
War
Iraq
Nazi
The Most Important Issues To Address Are The Truly Existential Threats We Face: Climate Change And Nuclear War. On The Former, The Republican Leadership, In Splendid Isolation From The World, Is Almost Unanimously Dedicated To Destroying The Chances For Decent Survival; Strong Words, But No Exaggeration. There Is A Great Deal That Can Be Done At The Local And State Level To Counter Their Malign Project.
Strong
War
Survival
The Imf Economists Were Doubtless Shaken By The Extreme Failures Of Their Prescriptions Over Many Years, And By The Collapse Of The Intellectual Edifice Of Economic Theory On Which They Were Relying.
Years
Intellectual
Imf
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
Greece Has Been, In Many Ways, A Partially Dysfunctional Society. For Example, The Wealthy Barely Pay Taxes... To An Extent, That's True Elsewhere, Including The United States, But It's Been Pretty Extreme In Greece.
United States
Example
Pay
Propaganda Is To A Democracy What The Bludgeon Is To A Totalitarian State...
Media
Political
Democracy
Nobody Can Successfully Defy The Master Of The Hemisphere [america], In Fact Of The World, Hence The Savagery.
America
Hemisphere
World
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
The Us Cannot Be Brought To The World Court For Major Crimes, For Example The Supreme International Crime, Invasion, Or Violation Of The Un Charter, Or Violation Of The Genocide Convention, These Are Things The Us Is Exempt From, Because They Exempted Themselves From Being Subjected To International Treaties In World Court Proceedings.
Example
World
Invasion
The American Claim That The Bombing Of North Vietnam Was Directed Against Military Targets Does Not Withstand Direct Investigation.
Military
Doe
Target
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.
Christian
Children
Crazy
We Live In This World, Not Another One That We'd Prefer, And Sometimes It's Necessary To Follow Painful Paths If We Hope To Provide At Least A Little Help For Suffering People.
People
Suffering
World
Africa's A Wreck And It's Not Because It Was Hit By An Asteroid. It's A Wreck Largely Because It Was Hit By Europe.
Europe
Wrecks
Asteroids
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
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.
Military
War
Character
It Was Declared By Congress That Marijuana Makes People Insane. But . . . Lawyers, Defense Lawyers, Got The Idea, Ok, I Can Use This For An Insanity Defense.
Marijuana
Ideas
People
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.
Distance
Thinking
Order
Education Is A System Of Imposed Ignorance.
Education
Ignorance
Thrive
Biblical Archaeology Was Developed Early In This Century In An Effort To Substantiate The Authenticity Of The Biblical Account. It's By Now Generally Recognized In Biblical Scholarship That It Has Done The Opposite. The Bible Is Not A Historical Text, And Has Only Vague Resemblances To What Took Place, As Far As Can Be Reconstructed. For Example, Whether Israel Ever Existed Is Not Clear; If So, It Was Probably A Small Kingdom Somewhere In The Hills, Apparently Virtually Unknown To The Egyptians.
Biblical
Israel
Opposites
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.
Sea
Pirate
Navy
Isis Is A Monstrosity. It Didn't Come From Nowhere. It's One Of The Results Of The U.s. Hitting A Very Vulnerable Society - Iraq - With A Sledgehammer.
Iraq
Isis
Hitting
Suppose I Try To Say The Us Carries Out Terror, In Fact It's One Of The Leading Terrorist States In The World. You Can't Say That Between Commercials. People Rightly Want To Know What Do You Mean. They've Never Heard That Before. Then You Have To Explain. You Have To Give Background. That's Exactly What's Cut Out.
Mean
Cutting
People
There Is Little Doubt That A Significant Part Of Any Serious Solution Will Require Advances Of Technology, But That Can Only Be Part Of The Solution. Other Major Changes Are Necessary.
Technology
Doubt
Littles
Optimism Is A Strategy For Making A Better Future. Because Unless You Believe That The Future Can Be Better, It’s Unlikely You Will Step Up And Take Responsibility For Making It So. If You Assume That There’s No Hope, You Guarantee That There Will Be No Hope. If You Assume That There Is An Instinct For Freedom, There Are Opportunities To Change Things, There’s A Chance You May Contribute To Making A Better World. The Choice Is Yours.
Leadership
Believe
Responsibility
The World Was Warned Of Extremely Severe Dangers Unless Urgent Steps Are Taken To Deal With Global Warming.
Taken
World
Steps
Over The Years, There's Been Case After Case When There Were Very Narrow Decisions That Had To Be Made About Whether To Launch Nuclear Weapons In Serious Cases. What Is This Guy [donald Trump] Going To Do If His Vaunted Negotiating Skills Fail, If Somebody Doesn't Do What He Says? Is He Going To Say, "okay We'll Nuke Them? We're Done?"
Skills
Years
Guy
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
If Anybody Thinks They Should Listen To Me Because I'm A Professor At Mit, That's Nonsense. You Should Decide Whether Something Makes Sense By Its Content, Not By The Letters After The Name Of The Person Who Says It.
Thinking
Names
Mit
But, That’s The Whole Point Of Corporatization - To Try To Remove The Public From Making Decisions Over Their Own Fate, To Limit The Public Arena, To Control Opinion, To Make Sure That The Fundamental Decisions That Determine How The World Is Going To Be Run - Which Includes Production, Commerce, Distribution, Thought, Social Policy, Foreign Policy, Everything - Are Not In The Hands Of The Public, But Rather In The Hands Of Highly Concentrated Private Power. In Effect, Tyranny Unaccountable To The Public.
Running
Fate
Hands
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 Zionist Movement Based In Palestine Pretty Much Took Over The Camps And Instituted The Policy That Every Man And Woman Between The Ages Of Seventeen And Thirty-five Should Be Directed To Palestine - Not Allowed To Go To The West.
Men
Age
West
The Most Striking Aspect Of Linguistic Competence Is What We May Call The 'creativity Of Language,' That Is, The Speaker's Ability To Produce New Sentences, Sentences That Are Immediately Understood By Other Speakers Although They Bear No Physical Resemblance To Sentences Which Are 'familiar.
Creativity
May
Bears
I Think Such An Inquiry Will Reveal A Rather Different Picture: Namely, It Will Reveal A Very Strong Tendency For The Intellectuals Who Are Respected And Privileged To Be Those Who Subordinate Themselves To Power.
Strong
Thinking
Different
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.
World
Language
Biology
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
Intellectual
Generations
The Crimes Committed Against The People Of West Papua Are Some Of The Most Shameful Of The Past Years. The Western Powers Have Much To Answer For, And At The Very Least Should Use Their Ample Means To Bring About The Withdrawal Of The Occupying Indonesian Army And Termination Of The Shameful Exploitation Of Resources And Destruction Of The Environment And The Lives And Societies Of The People Of West Papua, Who Have Suffered Far Too Much.
Mean
Army
Past
I Happened To Go To A School When I Was A Kid And That's All We Did, Pursue Our Own Interests. It Was Kind Of Structured So You Ended Up Knowing Everything You Were Supposed To Know, Arithmetic, Latin, Whatever It Was. But Almost Always It Was Under Your Own Initiative.
Latin
School
Kids
We Could Not Bring Democracy And Freedom To Vietnam At A Cost Acceptable To Ourselves. The Idea That That Was What We Were Trying To Do, Is Again, A Tautology, It's True By Definition Because We Were Doing, And The State Is Noble By Definition. That's Called "extreme Liberalism".
Ideas
Democracy
Trying
A Good Education Instills In You The Intuitive Comprehension - It Becomes Unconscious And Reflexive - That You Just Don't Think Certain Things, Things That Are Threatening To Power Interests.
Thinking
Threatening
Certain
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
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
The American Escalation Of The War In Laos Provoked A Response By The Communist Forces, Which Now Control More Of Laos Than Ever Before.
War
Laos
Communist
The Whole Infrastructure Of Air Travel Was, And Is, Part Of Government Policy. It Is Not A Natural Development Of A Free Economic System - At Least Not In The Way That Is Claimed. The Same Is True Of The Roads, Of Course.
Government
Air
Development
It's Quite Extraordinary To Hear A Supposedly Learned Person Call The United States A Leading Terrorist Nation, One Of The Leading Terrorist Nations In The World. It's False And Very Treacherous Teaching.
Teaching
Learned Person
United States
Amusing And Perfectly Self-conscious Charlatans.
Self
Amusing
Conscious
It's As If We're Higher Apes Who Had A Language Faculty Inserted.
Apes
Language
Faculty
In The Major State Capitalists Economies, Europe And The Us, It's Low Growth And Stagnation And A Very Sharp Income Differentiation A Shift - A Striking Shift - From Production To Financialization.
Europe
Growth
Income
Citizens Of The Democratic Societies Should Undertake A Course Of Intellectual Self Defense To Protect Themselves From Manipulation And Control, And To Lay The Basis For Meaningful Democracy.
Meaningful
Self
Intellectual
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.
Government
Boston
Two
Capitalism Is Based On The Principle That Everything Has To Be Privately Owned; It Can't Be Held In Common. There Is Even A Dogma, Which Is Today Called, The "tragedy Of The Commons" Which Holds That If Things Are Held In Common They Are Going To Be Destroyed. If They're Privatized, Like You Give Them To Bechtel Or Monsanto Or Exxonmobil, Then They'll Be Preserved Because That's The Capitalist's Religion.
Giving
Tragedy
Principles
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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