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We Do Not For Example Say That The Person Has A Perfect Knowledge Of Some Language L Similar To English But Still Different From It. What We Say Is That The Child Or Foreigner Has A 'partial Knowledge Of English' Or Is 'on His Or Her Way' Towards Acquiring Knowledge Of English, And If They Reach This Goal, They Will Then Know English.
-Noam Chomsky
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We Do Not For

Noam Chomsky
We Do Not For Example Say That The Person Has A Perfect Knowledge Of Some Language L Similar To English But Still Different From It. What We Say Is That The Child Or Foreigner Has A 'partial Knowledge Of English' Or Is 'on His Or Her Way' Towards Acquiring Knowledge Of English, And If They Reach This Goal, They Will Then Know English.
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Topic
Children
Perfect
Goal
More From Noam Chomsky
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
There's A Very Committed Effort To Convert The Us Into Something Resembling A Third World Society, Where A Few People Have Enormous Wealth And A Lot Of Others Have No Security.
People
Effort
World
Individuals In A University - Students, Faculty, Staff - Can Choose To Become Politically Engaged, And A Free University Should Foster A Climate In Which Those Are Natural Choices.
University Students
Choices
Climate
Language Would Have Evolved First As An Internal Object, A Kind Of "language Of Thought" (lot), With Externalisation (hence Communication) An Ancillary Process. I Can't Review Here The Strong And Growing Evidence To Support This Conclusion, But I Have Elsewhere. There Are Ample Reasons Why Having A Lot Would Confer Selectional Advantage: The Person So Endowed Could Plan, Interpret, Reflect, Etc., In Ways Denied To Others.
Strong
Communication
Support
The Goal Is To Keep The Bewildered Herd Bewildered. It's Unnecessary For Them To Trouble Themselves With What's Happening In The World. In Fact, It's Undesirable - If They See Too Much Of Reality They May Set Themselves To Change It.
Reality
Goal
World
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
The General Principle Is That The Victors Don't Look At Themselves Or Concede Anything. The Defeated Typically Have To, Except When It's Beneficial To The Powerful For Them Not To.
Powerful
Principles
Looks
Nafta And Gatt Are Quite Similar. They Both Have Highly Protectionist Elements. They're Kind Of A Mixture Of Liberalization And Protection Designed To Expand The Power Of Transnational Corporations. They're Very Basically Investor's Rights Agreements. One Crucial Part In Both Is The "intellectual Property Right," Which Is A Funny Way Of Saying That Corporations, Like Pharmaceutical Companies, Will Have Near-monopolistic Rule Over Future Technology. This Now Includes Product As Well As Process Rights.
Technology
Rights
Agreement
Prophet Just Means Intellectual. They Were People Giving Geopolitical Analysis, Moral Lessons, That Sort Of Thing. We Call Them Intellectuals Today. There Were The People We Honor As Prophets, There Were The People We Condemn As False Prophets. But If You Look At The Biblical Record, At The Time, It Was The Other Way Around. The Flatterers Of The Court Of King Ahab Were The Ones Who Were Honored. The Ones We Call Prophets Were Driven Into The Desert And Imprisoned.
Kings
Mean
Biblical
We [ With Edward Herman] Believe That The Empirical Evidence We Review There - And Elsewhere, In A Great Deal Of Joint And Separate Work - Lends Substantial Support To The Conclusions; Whether That Is True Is For Others To Judge.
Believe
Judging
Support
The People We Call The Prophets I Think Are The Earliest Dissident Intellectuals, And They're Treated Like Most Dissident Intellectuals - Very Badly. They're Imprisoned, Driven Into The Desert. King Ahab, The Epitome Of Evil In The Bible, Condemned Elijah As A "hater Of Israel." This Is The First Self-hating Jew, The Origin Of The Term. It Goes Right Up To The Present. That's The History Of Intellectuals.
Kings
Hate
Thinking
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
I Am Not Offering This Is A Critique Of The Internet, Its Just That There Are A Lot Of Factors Involved. It Does Offer Plenty Of Possibilities. It Also Has, It Can Have, A Cheapening Effect And I Think Both Exist And I Think Its True Of Everything. You Could Say That About The Printing Press.
Thinking
Offering
Doe
In Fact, When Drugs Are Legalized, Use Sometimes Goes Down, It's Been Claimed. Part Of The Reason Is That Teenage Kids Use Illicit Drugs Because They Are Illicit. They Are Thumbing Their Noses At Society. If They Were Legal, They Might Not.
Teenage
Kids
Drug
These Are Questions For Action, Not Speculation, Which Is Idle.
Action
Speculation
Idle
If We Choose, We Can Live In A World Of Comforting Illusion.
Hero
Comforting
Anarchy
Pre-emptive War Might Fall Within The Framework Of International Law.
War
Fall
Law
The Drones Are A Terrorist Weapon, They Not Only Kill Targets But Also Terrorise Other People.
People
Drones
Target
Take The Iraq War,it's The Second Worst Crime After The Second World War. It's The First Time In History, In The History Of Imperialism, There Were Huge Demonstrations, Before The War Was Officially Launched.
War
Iraq
World
Anarchists Try To Identify Power Structures. They Urge Those Exercising Power To Justify Themselves. This Justification Does Not Succeed Most Of The Time.
Exercise
Trying
Doe
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
I Mean, The Liberal Democrats Aren't Going To Tell The Average American, "yeah, You're Being Shafted Because Of The Policies That We've Established Over The Years That We're Maintaining Now." That's Not Going To Be An Answer. And They're Not Getting Answers From The Left.
Mean
Average
Years
It Is Not That I Am Not A Fan Of American Exceptionalism. That Is Like Saying I Am Not A Fan Of The Moon Being Made Out Of Green Cheese - It Does Not Exist. Powerful States Have Quite Typically Considered Themselves To Be Exceptionally Magnificent, And The United States Is No Exception To That. The Basis For It Is Not Very Substantial To Put It Politely.
Powerful
Moon
Green
I Mean You Look Back At American History And American Culture, It's Pretty Striking. I Mean This Has Been The Safest Country In The World Forever, And The Most Frightened Country In The World.
Country
Mean
Forever
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
From The Late 1940s, Into And Through The '50s, There Developed A Complex Interaction Between Federal Government, State And Local Government, Real-estate Interests, Commercial Interests And Court Decisions, Which Had The Effect Of Undermining The Mass Transit System Across The Country.
Country
Real
Government
There's An Interesting Book By The Former Brazilian Ambassador Celso Amorim. In 2010, He Initiated An Effort Along With Turkey To Settle The Whole Iran Issue. Nobody Outside Of The United States Takes It To Be Much Of An Issue. They Made A Deal With Iran For Iran To Essentially Give Away Its Low Enriched Uranium To Turkey For Storage, And In Return, The Western Powers. It Was Immediately Scratched By Barack Obama And Hillary Clinton. And The Main Reason Was They Didn't Want Anybody Else To Be Involved In It. We Were Supposed To Run Things, But We Didn't Say That.
Running
Book
Giving
. . . Among All Grammars Meeting This Condition (of Adequacy), We Select The Simplest.
Adequacy
Select
Grammar
The Us Stole Texas From Mexico By Violence, Then Invaded Mexico On Ludicrous Pretexts And Conquered Half Of It, What Is Now The Southwest And Far West. That's Why Cities Have Spanish Names: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Etc. All Of This Is Suppressed In Standard American History. But The Victims Remember. The Conquerors Typically Have One History, The Victims A Different One - And Often A More Accurate One.
Texas
Cities
Names
To Use The Terms That Are Reserved For Official Enemies, It Is The Commissars And Apparatchiks, Not The Dissidents, Who Are Respected And Privileged Within Their Own Societies.
Enemy
Use
Term
Destruction Of The Environment Is Not Only Rational; It's Exactly What You're Taught To Do In College.
College
Taught
Environment
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
There Is Nothing More Mysterious About The Concept Human Nature Than About The Concept Bee Or Chicken Nature, At Least For Those Who Regard Humans As Creatures In The Biological World.
World
Bees
Mysterious
The Atrocities In Cambodia Are A Direct And Understandable Response To The Violence Of The Imperial System.
War
Atrocities
Violence
...dissent, Protest, Presures Of A Wide Variety That Escape Elite Control Can Modify The Calculus Of Costs Of Planners, And Offer A Slight Hope That Washington Can Be Compelled To Permit At Least Some Steps Towards "justice, Freedom And Democracy" Within Its Domains.
Justice
Democracy
Cost
Every Time A Candidate Came Up From The Base, That Is With Popular Support, The Republican Establishment Went Into High Gear To Destroy Them With Massive Propaganda Attack Ads And So On. It Was One After Another, Each One Crazier Than The Last.
Support
Gears
Lasts
A Default Of The Us Government Would Not Only Be Very Harmful Here, It Would Probably Send The Country Back Into Deep Recession, But It Just Might Crash The International Financial System.
Country
Government
Might
Peter Kropotkin Was Surely On The Left. He Was One Of The Founders Of What Is Now Called 'sociobiology' Or 'evolutionary Psychology' With His Book Mutual Aid, Arguing That Human Nature Had Evolved In Ways Conducive To The Communitarian Anarchism That He Espoused.
Book
Psychology
Way
Insofar As The Universities Are Free And Independent, They Will Also Be "subversive," In The Sense That Dominant Structures Of Power And Their Ideological Support Will Be Subjected To Challenge And Critique, A Counterpart To Attitudes That Are Fostered In The Hard Sciences Wherever They Are Taken Seriously.
Attitude
Taken
Independent
As A Research Tool, The Internet Is Invaluable.
Tools
Research
Internet
What Was The Invasion Of South Vietnam, For Example, In 1962, When Kennedy Sent The Air Force To Bomb South Vietnam And Start Chemical Warfare? That's Aggression.
Air
Invasion
Example
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
The Iranian Government Is Undoubtedly A Severe Danger To Its Own Population, But Not Beyond That.
Government
Population
Danger
The Freer The Society Gets, The More Dangerous The Great Beast Becomes And The More You Have To Be Careful To Cage It Somehow.
Cages
Beast
Dangerous
American Decline Is Real, Though The Apocalyptic Vision Reflects The Familiar Ruling Class Perception That Anything Short Of Total Control Amounts To Total Disaster.
Real
Class
Perception
The Time To Be Political Is Not When You Have Parties And Carnivals, It's Kind Of A Show, The Election. It Affects Something But Not That Much. And Focusing All The Attention On It Is I Think A Mistake.
Mistake
Party
Thinking
If The Nuremberg Laws Were Applied, Then Every Post-war American President Would Have Been Hanged.
War
Law
President
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
You Can Read It In History Books Now, But They Often Suppress The Fact That The U.s. Government Tolerated [nazi]. It's Really Remarkable Because They Claim That [franklin] Roosevelt Was Impeded By The Neutrality Act. On The Other Hand, He Bitterly Condemned A Mexican Businessman For Sending Several Guns To The Republic. If You Look Back, Oil Was The One Commodity That [francisco] Franco Could Not Receive From The Germans And The Italians, So That Was Quite Significant.
Book
Gun
Government
If The United States Is Accommodating, The North Koreans Become Accommodating. If The United States Is Hostile, They Become Hostile.
United States
Korean
North Korea
A Lot Of The Letters That Are Coming In - A Lot Of Them Are Queries Or Comments - Are One Sentence Long... These Are From Twitter. And If You Look At The Nature Of Those One Sentence Letters, Most Of The Time It's Something That Came To Somebody's Mind - Somebody Walking Down The Street Had A Thought And Sent It Out. If They Thought About It For Two Minutes They Would Not Have Sent It.
Two
Long
Mind
When People Say Do You Believe In God? What Do They Mean By It? Do I Believe In Some Spiritual Force In The World? In A Way, Yes. People Have Thoughts, Emotions. If You Want To Call That A Spiritual Force, Okay. But Unless There's Some Clarification Of What We're Supposed To Believe In Or Disbelieve In, I Can't Answer.
Spiritual
Believe
Mean
There Are Enormous Opportunities To Work For A World That Is More Free, Peaceful And Just.
Opportunity
Peaceful
World
There Is A Noticeable General Difference Between The Sciences And Mathematics On The One Hand, And The Humanities And Social Sciences On The Other. It's A First Approximation, But One That Is Real. In The Former, The Factors Of Integrity Tend To Dominate More Over The Factors Of Ideology. It's Not That Scientists Are More Honest People. It's Just That Nature Is A Harsh Taskmaster. You Can Lie Or Distort The Story Of The French Revolution As Long As You Like, And Nothing Will Happen. Propose A False Theory In Chemistry, And It'll Be Refuted Tomorrow.
Integrity
Real
Lying
For The Totalitarian Mind, Adherence To State Propaganda Does Not Suffice: One Must Display Proper Enthusiasm While Marching In The Parade.
Mind
Liberty
Libertarian
The Social And Physical Construction Of Suburban America Really Was Quite Complex. It Was A Very Elaborate System, And Clearly A Massive Social Engineering Project That Has Changed U.s. Society Enormously.
Engineering
America
Construction
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
What Right Does The Us Have To Do Anything In Colombia? Does Colombia Have The Right To Bomb North Carolina? There Are More Colombians Dying From Tobacco Than Americans Dying From Heroin.
Dying
North Carolina
Doe
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
We're Looking At The Dawn Of A New Arms Race. For Example, Germany Technically Opposes The Us Space Militarization Program, But Is Bound To Get Involved. Otherwise It Will Be Left Behind In The Development Of Advanced Technology. Germany Understands That Very Well. The Us Understands It Too, And They Fully Expect That Germany And Other Countries That They Want On Board Will Go Along With The Program.
Country
Technology
Space
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
In 1961, The United States Began Chemical Warfare In Vietnam, South Vietnam, Chemical Warfare To Destroy Crops And Livestock. That Went On For Seven Years. The Level Of Poison - They Used The Most Extreme Carcinogen Known: Dioxin. And This Went On For Years.
Years
United States
Warfare
Anarchism Means All Sort Of Things To Different People But The Traditional Anarchists' Movements Assumed That There'd Be A Highly Organized Society, Just One Organized From Below With Direct Participation And So On. Actually, One Piece Of The Media Confusion Has A Basis Because There Really Are Two Different Strands In The Occupy Movement, Both Important, But Different.
Mean
Two
Media
It’s A Shameful Moment For U.s. Media When It Insists On Being Subservient To The Grotesque Propaganda Agencies Of A Violent, Aggressive State.
Agency
Media
Moments
Small Changes Can Magnifiy. The Possibility Of Interpersonal Communication Has Increased Substantially With Contemporary Technology. But As Compared With The Major Changes, Which Were Long Ago, These Are Not Huge.
Communication
Technology
Long Ago
The Childcare Tax Credit Makes Some Sense.
Credit
Taxes
Childcare
We Must Present A National Persona Of Being Irrational And Vindictive, Because That's Going To Terrify People. And Then, They'll Back Off. And This Is Not [donald] Trump, This Is [bill] Clinton. It's Not [richard] Nixon, You Know. We Have To Be Irrational And Vindictive, Because That's Going To Frighten People.
People
Bills
Clinton
Far From Creating Independent Thinkers, Schools Have Always, Throughout History, Played An Institutional Role In A System Of Control And Coercion. And Once You Are Well Educated You Have Already Been Socialized In Ways That Support The Power Structure, Which, In Turn, Rewards You Immensely.
School
Independent
Creating
I Know Of People Whose Actions And Words I Admire And Respect. Some Are Called "intellectuals," Some Are Not.
People
Action
Admire
In The Late 1990s, Some Of The Worst Terrorist Atrocities In The World Were What The Turkish Government Itself Called State Terror, Namely Massive Atrocities, 80 Percent Of The Arms Coming From The United States, Millions Of Refugees, Tens Of Thousands Of People Killed, Hideous Repression, That's International Terror, And We Can Go On And On.
Government
People
Atrocities
For The Past Century Or So That's [ Monroe Doctrine] Actually Been True, But It's Declining Very Significantly.
Past
Doctrine
Century
In General, We Should Be Able To Agree That Those Who Have Greater Opportunities And Face Fewer Impediments Have A Greater Responsibility To Do More To Help Achieve Such Ends.
Responsibility
Opportunity
Able
In The Literal Sense, There Has Been No Relevant Evolution Since The Trek From Africa. But There Has Been Substantial Progress Towards Higher Standards Of Rights, Justice And Freedom - Along With All Too Many Illustrations Of How Remote Is The Goal Of A Decent Society.
Rights
Illustration
Justice
I've Spent A Lot Of Time Working On Declassified Documents - And They Do Get Declassified After Decades - You Look At The Record Of Declassified Documents, And They Are Mostly Concerned With Keeping What The Government Does Secret From Its Own Population. It's Mostly Defense Of The Power System From Its Own Population. Very Little Is Authentic Security.
Government
Secret
Records
America Has Always Been The Richest And Most Secure, And Sometimes The Most Dangerous Country In The World. In The Early Years, The Danger Was To Everybody Near Us, Slaves, Native Americans, Mexicans. It Finally Expanded In 1898 To The Caribbean, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, And The Philippines.
Country
Native American
Years
Nafta Was Much More Popular Among Us Corporations Than Gatt, Because Nafta Is Highly Protectionist In Ways That Gatt Is Not.
Corporations
Way
Nafta
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
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 Irish Sea Is A Chasm, And It Just Depends Who's Been Holding The Whip For 800 Years And Who's Been Under It For 800 Years.
Years
Sea
Chasms
The Syntactic Component Of A Grammar Must Specify, For Each Sentence, A Deep Structure That Determines Its Semantic Interpretationand A Surface Structure That Determines Its Phonetic Interpretation.
Language
Interpretation
Grammar
As A Tactic, Violence Is Absurd. No One Can Compete With The Government In Violence, And The Resort To Violence, Which Will Surely Fail, Will Simply Frighten And Alienate Some Who Can Be Reached, And Will Further Encourage The Ideologists And Administrators Of Forceful Repression.
Government
Tactics
Violence
The Argument That Resistance To The War Should Remain Strictly Nonviolent Seems To Me Overwhelming.
War
Resistance
Argument
Policies Are Designed To Undermine Working Class Organization And The Reason Is Not Only The Unions Fight For Workers' Rights, But They Also Have A Democratizing Effect. These Are Institutions In Which People Without Power Can Get Together, Support One Another, Learn About The World, Try Out Their Ideas, Initiate Programs, And That Is Dangerous. That's Like A Referendum In Greece. It Is Dangerous To Allow That.
Fighting
Class
Organization
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
I'll Have 15 Letters Today From Mostly Young Kids Who Don't Like What's Going On And Want To Do Something About It, And [they Ask Me] If I Can Give Them Some Advice As To What They Should Do, Or Can I Tell Them What To Read Or Something.
Kids
Giving
Advice
I Know Of Only One Country, At Least To My Knowledge, Which Has A Dissident Culture Where Leading Figures, I Mean, The Most Famous Writers, Journalists, Academics And So On, Are Not Only Critical Of State Policy, But Are Constantly Carrying Out Civil Disobedience And Risking Imprisonment And Often Being Imprisoned, Standing Up For People's Rights. That's Turkey.
Country
Mean
Rights
I Have Often Thought That If A Rational Fascist Dictatorship Were To Exist, Then It Would Choose The American System.
Fascists
Fascism
Dictatorship
It's True That Many Say That [they] Object To The Idea Of "human Nature," But It's Not Clear What That Is Supposed To Mean. Are We Different From Ants?
Mean
Ideas
Different
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
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
One Might Ask Why Tobacco Is Legal And Marijuana Not. A Possible Answer Is Suggested By The Nature Of The Crop.
Marijuana
Answers
Might
The Internet Is An élite Organization; Most Of The Population Of The World Has Never Even Made A Phone Call.
Phones
Organization
Population
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
What's Called "liberal" In The Intelectual Culture Means Highly Conformist To Power, But Mildly Critical.
Mean
Culture
Critical
The Iraq War Is The First War In History, In Which There Were Huge Demonstrations Before The War Was Launched, Not Beginning Five Years Later And Then Being Broken Up. All Of These Are Changes, And The People Who Are Writing In Journals Today Lived Through These Changes.
War
Writing
Years
It's Not In Doubt That Tobacco Is Far More Lethal Than Hard Drugs.
Drug
Doubt
Tobacco
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
One Should Be Cautious About "general Conceptions." I Think A Strong Case Can Be Made That Activism Today Is As High As Ever, Perhaps More So, And Is Also Taking New And Significant Forms. There Has Never Been Anything Like The International Solidarity Movements That Began To Take Shape In The 1980s, Right In The Mainstream, Or The Global Justice Movements That Have Become A Very Powerful Force In Later Years. It's True That The Society Is Highly Atomized, Which Does Induce A Sense Of Hopelessness Often - Quite Mistakenly I Think.
Strong
Powerful
Thinking
If There Are Dollars To Be Made, You Destroy The Environment. The Reason Is Elementary. The People Who Are Going To Be Harmed By This Are Your Grandchildren And They Don't Have Any Votes In The Market. Their Interests Are Worth Zero. Anybody That Pays Attention To Their Grandchildren's Interests Is Being Irrational. Because What You're Supposed To Do Is Maximize Your Own Interests, Measured By Wealth, Right Now. Nothing Else Matters. So Destroying The Environment And Militarizing Outer Space Are Rational Policies, But Within A Framework Of Institutional Lunacy.
Zero
Grandchildren
Space
I Think That Sooner Or Later The White Working-class Constituency Will Recognize, And In Fact, Much Of The Rural Population Will Come To Recognize, That The Trump's Promises Are Built On Sand. There Is Nothing There.
Thinking
Promise
Sand
The Us Intervened In The Philippines To Uplift And Christianize The Backward People, Killing A Couple Of Hundred Thousand Of Them And Destroying The Place. The Same Thing Happened In Haiti, The Same Thing Happened With Other Countries.
Uplifting
Country
Couple
I Think It's Just Been A Core Part Of The Cuban Revolution To Have A Very High Level Of Internationalism. I Mean, These Cases You've Mentioned Are Cases In Point, But The Most Extreme Case Was The Liberation Of Africa. Take The Case Of Angola For Example, And There Are Real Connections Between Cuba And Angola-much Of The Cuban Population Comes From Angola.
Real
Mean
Thinking
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
Half The Population Hold That The Government Is Run By A Few Big Interests Looking Out For Themselves, As Polls Regularly Show.
Running
Government
Population
States Are Not Moral Agents.
Agents
Moral
States
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 People I Find Most Impressive Are Generally Unknown At The Time Of Their Actions And Forgotten In History.
People
Action
Forgotten
[camillo] Berneri Proposed That The Anarchists Should Link Up With The Effort Of Northern Africa To Overthrow The Spanish Government, Carry Out Land Reform, Attract The Base Of The Moorish Army, And See If They Could Undermine [francisco] Franco's Army Through Political Warfare In Northern Africa Combined With Guerrilla Warfare In Spain. Historians Laughed At That, But I Don't Think They Should Have. This Was The Kind Of War That Might Have Succeeded In Stopping Spanish Fascism.
War
Army
Thinking
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
I Don't Think There Is Any Scientific Evidence About The Question Of Whether We Think Only In Language Or Not. But Introspection Indicates Pretty Clearly That We Don't Think In Language Necessarily. We Also Think In Visual Images, We Think In Terms Of Situations And Events, And So On, And Many Times We Can't Even Express In Words What The Content Of Our Thinking Is. And Even If We Are Able To Express It In Words, It Is A Common Experience To Say Something And Then To Recognize That It Is Not What We Meant, That It Is Something Else.
Thinking
Common Experience
Able
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
[there Is] Is All Part Of The Whole Neoliberal Shift In The Economy. But The Parties Have Shifted To The Right.
Party
Economy
Whole
Surely Few If Any Readers Have Come Across The Sentence They Are Now Reading, And Someone Who Had By Chance Heard Or Seen It Could Not Possibly Remember Such A Fact.
Reading
Facts
Chance
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
I Suspect Most Likely That More Nazis Came To America. I Was A Student At Harvard During The Early 1950s. There Was Practically No Jewish Faculty There.
America
Students
Nazi
My Own Feeling Is That A Corporation Has No Right To Have A Political Or Social Influence.
Political
Feelings
Corporations
The Intellectual Tradition Is One Of Servility To Power, And If I Didn't Betray It I'd Be Ashamed Of Myself.
Responsibility
Intelligent
Power
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
It May Be Beyond The Limits Of Human Intelligence To Understand How Human Intelligence Works.
May
Limits
Humans
The Iranian Issue I Don't Think Has Much To Do With Nuclear Weapons Frankly. Nobody Is Saying Iran Should Have Nuclear Weapons ­nor Should Anybody Else. But The Point In The Middle East, As Distinct From North Korea, Is That This Is Center Of The World's Energy Resources. Originally The British And Secondarily The French Had Dominated It, But After The Second World War, It's Been A U.s. Preserve. That's Been An Axiom Of U.s. Foreign Policy, That It Must Control Middle East Energy Resources.
War
Thinking
Issues
There Are In Fact Many Ways To Combat The Trump Project Of Creating A Tiny America, Isolated From The World, Cowering In Fear Behind Walls While Pursuing The Paul Ryan-style Domestic Policies That Represent The Most Savage Wing Of The Republican Establishment.
Wall
World
Republican
If You're Working 50 Hours A Week To Try To Maintain Family Income, And Your Children Have The Kinds Of Aspirations That Come From Being Flooded With Television From Age One, And Associations Have Declined, People End Up Hopeless, Even Though They Have Every Option.
Children
People
Age
The Occupy Movement Did Create Spontaneously Communities That Taught People Something: You Can Be In A Supportive Community Of Mutual Aid And Cooperation And Develop Your Own Health System And Library And Have Open Space For Democratic Discussion And Participation. Communities Like That Are Really Important.
Space
People
Community
The Process Of Shaping Opinion, Attitudes, And Perceptions Was Termed The 'engineering Of Consent' By One Of The Founders Of The Modern Public Relations Industry, Edward Bernays.
Attitude
Engineering
Perception
The Republican Party Among The Public Is A Minority Party.
Party
Minorities
Republican
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
Pakistan Just Cannot Survive If It Continues To Do So (continue This Confrontation With India).
India
Pakistan
Confrontation
Human Physical Structures And Intellectual Structures Are Generally Studied In Different Ways. The Assumption Is That Physical Structures Are Genetically Inherited And Intellectual Structures Are Learned. I Think That This Assumption Is Wrong. None Of These Structures Is Learned. They All Grow; They Grow In Comparable Ways; Their Ultimate Forms Are Heavily Dependent On Genetic Predispositions.
Thinking
Intellectual
Way
Capitalism’s Concept Of Competitive Man Who Seeks Only To Maximize Wealth And Power, Who Subjects Himself To Market Relationships, To Exploitation And External Authority, Is Anti-human And Intolerable In The Deepest Sense
Men
Wealth
Authority
No One Seriously Doubts That If Piraha Children Are Brought Up In Boston They'll Be Speaking Boston English, That Is, That The Capacities Are Present, Unlike Other Animals, As Far As Is Known. There's No Challenge To The Theory - Not Mine, But Everyone's - That The Human Language Faculty Provides The Means For Generation Of An Infinite Array Of Structured Expressions.
Children
Mean
Animal
Anything Feasible And Potentially Effective Should Be Explored.
Should
Bohemian Grove Seems To Be A Kind Of Frat House Affair. Bilderberg [philosophy] May Be Marginally More Serious. The Cfr Is Transparent. You Can Read Their Publications. In The 18th Century It Perhaps Made Some Sense To Conjure Up The Illuminati And Masons. Not Since.
Philosophy
House
May
You Have To Rely On Yourself And Your Associates - Gifts Don't Come From Above; You're Going To Win Them, Or You Won't Have Them.
Winning
Rely On Yourself
Rely
Colombia Has Been The Leading Western Recipient Of U.s. Arms And Training As Violence Has Grown Through The '90s.
Training
Arms
Violence
Donald Trump And Sean Spicer Do One Thing After Another To Keep The Media Attention Focused On Them. And It Works. These Legislative Achievements Are Being Made Which Are Chipping Away At Anything The Government Has That's Of Any Use To Anybody. Paul Ryan, I Think, Is The Most Dangerous Guy In The Government. He Knows What He's Doing. And It's Very Systematic. I Presume He's Behind The Cabinet Appointments, But It's Pretty Amazing That Every Single Cabinet Appointment Is Somebody Devoted To Destroying That Part Of Government.
Thinking
Achievement
Guy
Whoever Sets The Agenda Controls The Outcome Of The Debate
Agendas
Outcomes
Debate
Responsibility, I Believe, Accrues Through Privilege.
Believe
Responsibility
Privilege
Iran Has Been Calling For It For Years, And The Arab Countries Support It. Everyone Except The United States And Israel Support It. The U.s. Won't Allow It Because It Means Inspecting Israel's Nuclear Weapons. The U.s. Has Continued To Block It, And In Fact Blocked It Again Just A Couple Of Days Ago; It Just Wasn't Widely Reported. Iran's Nuclear Program, As U.s. Intelligence Points Out, Is Deterrent, And The Bottom Line Is That The U.s. And Israel Don't Want Iran To Have A Deterrent.
Country
Couple
Block
Nixon At One Point Informs Kissinger . . . That He Wanted Bombing Of Cambodia. And Kissinger Loyally Transmits The Order To The Pentagon To Carry Out A Massive Bombing Campaign In Cambodia. Anything That Flies On Anything That Moves . . . Genocide.
Moving
Order
Campaigns
Where Are The Drug Cartels Getting Their Weapons? They Are Being Provided By The United States. Cut Off That Flow Of Arms.
Cutting
Drug Cartels
United States
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
There Is Undoubtedly Much To Learn About The Social Uses Of Language, For Communication Or For Other Purposes. But At Present There Is Not Much In The Way Of A Theory Of Sociolinguistics, Of Social Uses Of Languages, As Far As I Am Aware.
Communication
Purpose
Use
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
There Is No Western Concern For Issues Of Aggression, Atrocities, Human Rights Abuses And So On If There's A Profit To Be Made From Them
Rights
Issues
Abuse
The Current Period Of Regression Is Registering Some Success In "producing People" Who Are Subordinated To External Power, Diverted To Such "superficial Things" As "fashionable Consumption" And Other Pursuits More Fitting For The "bewildered Herd" Than Participation In Determining The Course Of Individual And Social Life.
Superficial Things
People
Regression
There's An Internal Coherence And Logic To What They Get From [rush] Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, And The Rest Of These Guys. And They Sound Very Convincing, They're Very Self-confident, And They Have An Answer To Everything - A Crazy Answer, But It's An Answer. And It's Our Fault If That Goes On. So One Thing To Be Done Is Don't Ridicule These People, Join Them, And Talk About Their Real Grievances And Give Them A Sensible Answer, Like, "take Over Your Factories."
Crazy
Real
Self
The Tendencies Are Considerably Weaker In The Natural Sciences, Which, For The Past Several Centuries, Have Survived And Flourished Through Such Constant Challenge, And Therefore, At Best, Seek To Encourage It. Serving The Status Quo In Political And Socioeconomic Realms Is A Different Matter.
Past
Political
Challenges
I Mean The Reason The Sit-down Strikes Struck Such Fear In The Hearts Of Management Was That They Knew That A Sit-down Strike Was Just One Step Short Of Taking Over The Factory.
Heart
Mean
Steps
The Best Defense Against Democracy Is To Distract People.
People
Democracy
Defense
In Fact, There Is A Very Close Correlation Between Human Rights Violations And Us Aid, Particularly In Latin America.
Latin
Rights
America
[ Republican Party] Is Correctly Described As A "radical Insurgency" By One Of The Leading Conservative Commentators, Norman Ornstein.
Party
Conservative
Republican
Hume's Paradox Does Hold: Power Is In The Hands Of The Governed. If They Refuse To Accept It, You're In Trouble, No Matter How Many Guns You Have.
Gun
Hands
Doe
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
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
Colombia Is Potentially A Very Wealthy Country. It Has Tremendous Resources, But Its Wealth Is Highly Concentrated. Most Of The Population Lives In Misery, Which Has Led To Violent Confrontation Throughout The Century.
Country
Population
Misery
Every Single One Cabinet Appointment: Education, Environment, Labor - Every Single One Is Selected To Undermine Any Aspect Of Government That's Of Any Help To People, And That Doesn't Benefit The Super-rich. And It's Absolutely Systematic. The Interesting Question Will Be How Long Donald Trump's Constituency Can Fall For The Con Game.
Fall
Long
People
Democracy Has Both Expanded And Declined Over The Years.
Democracies Have
Years
Democracy
The Human Digestive And Visual Systems Did Clearly Evolve Over A Very Long Period.
Long
Periods
Evolve
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
Right To A Speedy Jury Trial And So On And So Forth. But What Do They Mean By 'person'? It Certainly Didn't Mean Individuals With Flesh And Blood Like Native Americans Who Weren't Persons, They Don't Have Any Rights.
Native American
Mean
Rights
As Soon As Questions Of Will Or Decision Or Reason Or Choice Of Action Arise, Human Science Is At A Loss.
Loss
Choices
Decision
Those Of Us Lucky Enough To Have A Share Of Privilege In The More Free Societies Should Not Be Asking This Question, But Doing Something To Answer It.
Lucky
Asking
Answers
There's A War Crimes Act In The United States Passed By A Republican Congress In 1996, Which Says That Grave Breaches Of The Geneva Convention Are Subject To The Death Penalty. And That Doesn't Mean The Soldier That Committed Them - That Means The Commanders.
War
Mean
Soldier
Right At The Beginning Of All Of This [ukraine To Join Nato], Serious Senior Statesmen, People Like [george] Kennan For Example And Others Warned That The Expansion Of Nato To The East Is Going To Cause A Disaster. I Mean, It's Like Having The Warsaw Pact On The Mexican Border. It's Inconceivable. And Others, Senior People Warned About This, But Policymakers Didn't Care. Just Go Ahead.
Senior
Mean
Ukraine
That Is What I Have Always Understood To Be The Essence Of Anarchism: The Conviction That The Burden Of Proof Has To Be Placed On Authority, And That It Should Be Dismantled If That Burden Cannot Be Met.
Burden Of Proof
Essence
Anarchy
As Long As Each Individual Is Facing The Television Tube Alone, Formal Freedom Poses No Threat To Privilege
Long
Television
Privilege
The Principle That Human Nature, In Its Psychological Aspects, Is Nothing More Than A Product Of History And Given Social Relations Removes All Barriers To Coercion And Manipulation By The Powerful.
Nature
Powerful
Principles
States Are Violent To The Extent That They Have The Power To Act In The Interests Of Those With Domestic Power
Violent
States
Interest
Anarcho-capitalism, In My Opinion, Is A Doctrinal System Which, If Ever Implemented, Would Lead To Forms Of Tyranny And Oppression That Have Few Counterparts In Human History. There Isn't The Slightest Possibility That Its (in My View, Horrendous) Ideas Would Be Implemented, Because They Would Quickly Destroy Any Society That Made This Colossal Error. The Idea Of 'free Contract' Between The Potentate And His Starving Subject Is A Sick Joke, Perhaps Worth Some Moments In An Academic Seminar Exploring The Consequences Of (in My View, Absurd) Ideas, But Nowhere Else.
Errors
Views
Ideas
I Think That What's Actually Happening Is The Collapse Of The Center - The Centrist Semi-coalitions, Mildly Social-democrat, Mildly Conservative, That Have Been Running The Countries For Years. They Are Severely Declining. You Can See It In Voting; You Can See It Also In Popular Attitudes: Contempt For What Are Called "the élites," The Experts, The People In Charge.
Running
Country
Attitude
Suppose That Insect Wings Developed Primarily As Thermoregulators And Then Were Used For Skimming And Finally Flying, Evolving Along The Way. What Would They Be "for"? Or What Is The Skeleton "for"? For Keeping One Upright, Protecting Organs, Storing Calcium, Making Blood Cells...?
Skeletons
Cells
Blood
... 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
A Lot Of Association On The Internet Is Highly Constructive. There Are People Interacting, Interchanging Ideas, Making Plans, Coordinating Activities; Take Any Of The Popular Movements, A Lot Of The Organization Is Through The Internet. We Want To Have A Demonstration Or We Want To Have A Meeting, Its Done Through The Internet. I Think That's All To The Good.
Thinking
Organization
Ideas
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
People Are Dangerous. If They're Able To Involve Themselves In Issues That Matter, They May Change The Distribution Of Power, To The Detriment Of Those Who Are Rich And Privileged.
Power
Issues
People
A Democracy Barely Functions Under The Neoliberal System.
Democracy
Function
My Own Concern Is Primarily The Terror And Violence Carried Out By My Own State... It Is Very Easy To Denounce The Atrocities Of Someone Else. That Has About As Much Ethical Value As Denouncing Atrocities That Took Place In The 18th Century.
Atrocities
Violence
Easy
Obama's Latest Line Is That He Didn't Establish A "red Line" But The World Did Through Its Conventions On Chemical Warfare.
World
Welsh Is Now Almost A National Language In Wales. The Scottish Dialects Are Reviving To Some Extent. I Don't Think It's A Major Thing, But It's There, And It's Happening Elsewhere.
Thinking
Dialect
Language
Private Companies Can Make A Personal Profile, Direct You To Things - They Will Say - That You Would Be Interested In, But That's Their Choice Not Your Choice.
Choices
Would Be
Profile
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 Bush Administration Do Have Moral Values. Their Moral Values Are Very Explicit: Shine The Boots Of The Rich And The Powerful, Kick Everybody Else In The Face, And Let Your Grandchildren Pay For It. That Simple Principle Predicts Almost Everything That's Happening.
Powerful
Simple
Grandchildren
Human Language Is Nothing Like The Signalling Systems Of Other Animals.
Animal
Language
Humans
It Is One Thing For The Institution To Offer Space For Serious Engagement, In Thought And Action, And To Encourage Free And Independent Use Of Such Opportunities; It Is Something Else For The University To Become Engaged As An Institution, Beyond A Fairly Narrow Range Where True Consensus Exists, And Even That Raises Questions.
Independent
Opportunity
Raises Questions
The Task For A Modern Industrial Society Is To Achieve What Is Now Technically Realizable, Namely, A Society Which Is Really Based On Free Voluntary Participation Of People Who Produce And Create, Live Their Lives Freely Within Institutions They Control, And With Limited Hierarchical Structures, Possibly None At All
People
Tasks
Live Free
I Do Not See How We Can Rationally Oppose High Speed Rail Because Of The Environmental And Other Costs Without Considering The Social And Human Consequences Of The Radical Elimination Of Transportation That This Entails.
Environmental
Cost
Speed
One Substitute For The Disappearing Evil Empire (the Soviet Union) Has Been The Threat Of Drug Traffickers From Latin America. In Early September 1989, A Major Government-media Blitz Was Launched By The President. That Month The Ap Wires Carried More Stories About Drugs Than About Latin America, Asia, The Middle East And Africa Combined. If You Looked At Television, Every News Program Had A Big Section On How Drugs Were Destroying Our Society, Becoming The Greatest Threat To Our Existence, Etc.
Latin
Media
Government
Some Kind Of Settlement In Kashmir Is Crucial For Both Countries [pakistan And India]. It's Also Tearing India Apart With Horrible Atrocities In The Region Which Is Controlled By Indian Armed Forces.
Country
India
Atrocities
By Most Accounts, Aristide Is The Most Popular Figure In Haiti.
Haiti
Figures
Accounts
The Big Change, The Really Radical Change In Communication, Was In The Late 19th Century. The Shift From Sailing Ships To Telegraph Is Astronomical. Everything Since Then Has Been Small Increments, Including The Internet.
Communication
Sailing
Ships
[ronald] Reagan Bitterly Hated Unions And Wanted Them Destroyed. This Began With The Air Controllers' Strike And Went On From There.
Air
Unions
Strikes
George Washington Hated The Guerrillas. He Wanted To Imitate The British Red Coat Armies, Fighting As Gentlemen Are Supposed To Fight.
Fighting
Army
Gentleman
There Are Two Problems For Our Species' Survival - Nuclear War And Environmental Catastrophe - And We're Hurtling Towards Them. Knowingly.
War
Two
Survival
I Think That Has A Lot Of Dangers, As Does Government Surveillance, Which Is Way Too High.
Thinking
Government
Surveillance
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
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
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
There Are Few Genuine Conservatives Within The U.s. Political System, And It Is A Sign Of The Intellectual Corruption Of The Age That The Honorable Term 'conservatism' Can Be Appropriated To Disguise The Advocacy Of A Powerful, Lawless, Aggressive And Violent State, A Welfare State For The Rich Dedicated To A Lunatic Form Of Keynesian Economic Intervention That Enhances State And Private Power While Mortgaging The Country's Future.
Country
Powerful
Political
You've Just Got To Get People Organized And Tell Them The Truth. There Aren't Any Magic Tricks To It. You Know, Sometimes It's Pretty Amazing. Actually, I Mentioned A Pretty Striking Case Of This In "crisis And Hope," Which Was The Caterpillar Case In The Early 1990s.
People
Magic
Sometimes
If You Don't Like What Someone Has To Say, Argue With Them.
Arguing
Ifs
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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