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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

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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.

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

I Don't Think That Any Deal Was Needed: Iran Was Not A Threat. Even If Iran Were A Threat, There Was A Very Easy Way To Handle It - By Establishing A Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, Which Is Something That Nearly Everyone In The World Wants.

People Are Interested In Authentic Long-term, Socialist Goals, Which Is Not What Is Usually Called Socialism. They Should Be Thinking Through Carefully How The Projected Society Should Work, But Not In Extensive Detail Because A Lot Of Things Just Have To Be Learned By Experiment And We Don't Know Enough To Plan Societies In Detail By Any Means. But, General Guidelines Could Be Worked Out And Many Of The Specific Problems Can Be Discussed. That Should Just Be Part Of People's Popular Consciousness. That's How A Transition To Socialism Could Take Place.

The Dominant Propaganda Systems Have Appropriated The Term "globalization" To Refer To The Specific Version Of International Economic Integration That They Favor, Which Privileges The Rights Of Investors And Lenders, Those Of People Being Incidental. In Accord With This Usage, Those Who Favor A Different Form Of International Integration, Which Privileges The Rights Of Human Beings, Become "anti-globalist."

The American Escalation Of The War In Laos Provoked A Response By The Communist Forces, Which Now Control More Of Laos Than Ever Before.

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.

It Is Now Well-known That The Taliban's Creation Was Facilitated By The Cia And The Isi As Part Of The 1980s Anti-soviet War.

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

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

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.

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

Public Opinion Can Be Influential, The Media Can Be Influential.

The United States Is Unique Among The Rich Countries, Developed Countries, In Not Having Some Kind Of A National Health-care System.

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.

I Don't Encourage Socialists Or Anarchists To Accept Falsehoods, In Particular, To See Revolutionary Potential Where There Is None.

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

It Is Familiar To Mainstream Academic Scholarship. One Very Prominent Political Scientist, In His Standard Text American Politics 20 Years Ago, Observes That "the Architects Of Power In The United States Must Create A Force That Can Be Felt But Not Seen."

I'm Into Eating As Little As Possible... I Never Cook. Never Use The Stove Or Anything.

The Racism In Europe Takes The Form Of Anti-immigrant Extremism - Which Is Bad Enough Here - I Think It's Hard To Measure, But My Guess Is That It's Probably Worse There.

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.

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."

[ Republican Party] Is Correctly Described As A "radical Insurgency" By One Of The Leading Conservative Commentators, Norman Ornstein.

In A Democracy The Day When You Pay Your Taxes, April 15, Would Be A Day Of Celebration, Because You're Getting Together To Provide Resources For The Programs You Decided On.

Haiti, Which Has Been The Main Target Of Us Intervention Throughout The 20th Century, Is The Poorest. And Guatemala, Which Is Maybe The Third Major Target Of Us Intervention, Probably Ranks Third Poorest.

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

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

And If You Look At All This Academic Work In The Conferences And So On There's A Constant Theme That Terrorism Is Extremely Hard To Define And We Therefore Have To Have A Deep Thinking About It. And The Reason It's Hard To Define Is Quite Simple. It's Hard To Find A Definition That Includes What They Do To Us But Excludes What We Do To Them. That's Quite Difficult. So It Takes A Global War On Terrorism.

Blacks Have No Rights - In Fact They Were Three - Fifths Human According To The Constitution To Give Slave Owners More Voting Rights. So That's African Americans.

An Effective Regulatory System Today Would Be One Guided By A Few Basic Premises That Can Be Applied Flexibly But Also Universally.

In Fact, Anyone Who Merits Attention And Who Promotes Any Cause At All Is Doing So On The Basis Of A Belief That It Is Somehow Good For Humans, Because Of Their Inherent Nature.

Politicians Don't Want Democracy Here In America, Why Would They Want It In The Middle East?

Today, Aid To Colombia Is Given Under The Pretext Of A Drug War. That's Pretty Hard To Take Seriously. Ten Years Ago, Amnesty International Flatly Called It A Myth.

Students Typically Are At A Period Of Their Lives When They're More Free Than At Any Other Time. They're Out Of Parental Control. They're Not Yet Burdened By The Needs Of Trying To Put Food On The Table In A Pretty Repressive Environment, Often, And They're Free To Explore, To Create, To Invent, To Act, And To Organize. Over And Over Through The Years, Student Activism Has Been Extremely Significant In Initiating And Galvanizing Major Changes. I Don't See Any Reason For That To Change.

That's The Whole Point Of Good Propaganda. You Want To Create A Slogan That Nobody's Going To Be Against, And Everybody's Going To Be For. Nobody Knows What It Means, Because It Doesn't Mean Anything.

It Was During The Reagan Years That Defiance Of International Law And The U.n. Charter Became Entirely Open.

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

I Think That Has A Lot Of Dangers, As Does Government Surveillance, Which Is Way Too High.

Reparations - Not Just Aid - Should Be Provided By Those Responsible For Devastating Iraqi Civilian Society By Cruel Sanctions And Military Actions, And - Together With Other Criminal States - For Supporting Saddam Hussein Through His Worst Atrocities And Beyond. That Is The Minimum That Honesty Requires.

There Was A Striking Example Of This In Pakistan When The Us Sent In Special Forces, To Be Honest, To Kill Osama Bin Laden. He Could Easily Have Been Apprehended And Caught But Their Orders Were To Kill Him.

Education Is A System Of Imposed Ignorance.

There Are A Lot Of Things That Can Be Done Within The Framework Of Existing Institutions Which Would Be Very Valuable For People.

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

The Most Interesting - In Fact, Inspiring - People I Met There [porto Alegre] Are Those Who Remain Nameless: Representatives Of The International Campesino Movement, The East Timorese Delegation,... - The Usual Heroes, Who Disappear, Unknown, Apart From The Consequences Of Their Work.

Corporations Are Totalitarian Institutions. Board Of Directors At The Top Of Managers Give Orders, Everyone Follows Orders..... At The Very Bottom Of Command, If You Are Lucky You Can Rent Yourself To It And Get A Job , And If You Are Sufficiently Propagandized You May Even Buy Some Of The Junk They Produce And So On.

...if You Ask Me Whether Or Not I'm An Atheist, I Wouldn't Even Answer. I Would First Want An Explanation Of What It Is That I'm Supposed Not To Believe In, And I've Never Seen An Explanation.

The First Thing You Ought To Do Is Verify What I Present. Just Because I Say It Doesn't Make It True. So Check It Out, See What Looks Correct, What Looks Wrong, Look At Other Material Which Wasn't Discussed, Figure Out What The Truth Really Is. That's What You've Got A Brain For.

One Of The Benefits Of A Properly Functioning Democracy Is Minority Rights And Majority Rule.

Younger People Who Are Being Indoctrinated Into The Contemporary System Of Falsification - They Really Have To Do Some Research To Find Out What Is The Truth. In The General Population, People Forget Or Don't Care That Much. And Gradually What You Hear Drilled Into Your Head Everyday Comes To Be Believed. People Don't Understand What You're Talking About Any More If You Discuss The American War On South Vietnam.

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

Israel Uses Sophisticated Attack Jets And Naval Vessels To Bomb Densely-crowded Refugee Camps, Schools, Apartment Blocks, Mosques, And Slums To Attack A Population That Has No Air Force, No Air Defense, No Navy, No Heavy Weapons, No Artillery Units, No Mechanized Armor, No Command In Control, No Army And Calls It A War.

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

George Washington Hated The Guerrillas. He Wanted To Imitate The British Red Coat Armies, Fighting As Gentlemen Are Supposed To Fight.

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

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

The Us And Europe Are Committing Suicide In Different Ways. In Europe It's Austerity In The Midst Of Recession And That's Guaranteed To Be A Disaster. There's Some Resistance To That Now. In The Us, It's Essentially Off-shoring Production And Financialization And Getting Rid Of Superfluous Population Through Incarceration.

The 50,000 Korean Mercenaries We Had In Vietnam Were Professional Killers And Just Massacred People Outright. And The American Army Did Plenty Of That Too, But It Couldn't Take It After Awhile. It's Not The Kind Of Job You Can Give To Conscripts Who Are Not Trained To Be Murderers.

There Is No Reason To Accept The Doctrines Crafted To Sustain Power And Privilege, Or To Believe That We Are Constrained By Mysterious And Unknown Social Laws.

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

Since The Civil War In Laos Was Resumed In Earnest In 1963, American Participation Has Been Veiled In Secrecy.

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.

There Are By Now Declassified Documents From The 1950s That Tells You A Lot About What's Going On In Egypt And We Should Have Known It Then. It's About Exactly What's Happening, How We Can Disregard Public Opinion As Long As The Dictators We Support Are Capable Of Suppressing Their Populations. So To Hell With Public Opinion. That's All Right There In The 1950's. That's Not Security. That's Not Security Of The Government. That's, If Anything, Security From Its Own Population. And There's A Lot Of That.

There Are Questions As To Whether It Should Even Exist. Who Should Corporations Be Responsive To, The Management Of A Corporation? Theoretically They Are Responsive To The Shareholders, But I Why Not To The So - Called Stakeholders, The Work Force And The Community? Nothing In Economic Theory Opposes That. Those Are Social And Political Decisions.

Borders Are Semiporous. Capital Flows More Freely Than People Across Them. On C Span.

You Know, People Talk About [richard] Nixon's "madman Theory." We Don't Really Know Much About That. It Was In Memoirs, By Somebody Else.

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.

If You Want Information About Sports, I Can Tell You Things From The 1940's, And The Couple Years That My Grandson Was Kind Of A Jock, But Nothing In Between.

Somebodys Paying The Corporations That Destroyed Iraq And The Corporations That Are Rebuilding It. Theyre Getting Paid By The American Taxpayer In Both Cases. So We Pay Them To Destroy The Country, And Then We Pay Them To Rebuild It. Those Are Gifts From U.s. Taxpayer To U.s. Corporations.

The 'free-floating Intellectual' May Occupy Himself With Problems Because Of Their Inherent Interest And Importance, Perhaps To Little Effect.

Venezuela Is Independent. It's Diversifying Its Exports To A Limited Extent, Instead Of Just Being Dependent On Exports To The United States. And It's Initiating Moves Toward Latin American Integration And Independence. It's What They Call A Bolivarian Alternative And The United States Doesn't Like Any Of That.

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.

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

Edward Said Is A Very Honorable Representative Of The "intellectual" In The Sense Of The Term That He Defines.

In The Late 19th Century There Was A Major Union Organization, Knights Of Labor, And Also A Radical Populist Movement Based On Farmers. It's Hard To Believe, But It Was Based In Texas, And It Was Quite Radical. They Wanted Their Own Banks, Their Own Cooperatives, Their Own Control Over Sales And Commerce.

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

The European Reaction To Obama Is A European Delusion.

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.

In The United States, The Day When You Pay Your Taxes Is A Day Of Mourning Because This Alien Force - The Government - Is Coming To Rob You Of Your Hard-earned Money. That's The General Attitude, And It's A Tremendous Victory For The Opponents Of Democracy, And, Of Course, Any Privileged Sector Is Going To Hate Democracy. You Can See It In The Healthcare Debate.

There Are Many Cases Around The World In Which The Presence Of Un Peace-keeping Forces Has Had A Somewhat Beneficial Effect.

Right After 9-11, As Far As I Know, One Newspaper In The United States Had The Integrity To Investigate Opinion In The Muslim World: The 'wall Street Journal.'

International Relations Bears More Than A Slight Resemblance To The Mafia.

If Kids Are Studying For A Test, They're Not Going To Learn Anything. We All Know That From Our Own Experience.

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.

Expressing Criticism Of Society Is Not Being A Grouch.

There Has To Be Spiritual Transformation Among The Masses, Who Have To Be Willing To Recognize That Their Oppression Is Not A Law Of Nature. That's What Latin American Bishops Were Doing When They Formed Base Communities. They Were Trying To Get Peasants To Recognize That You Can Take Your Fate Into Your Own Hands. That's What The Civil-rights Movement Did Here. That's What The Women's Movement Did.

Real Popular Culture Is Folk Art - Coalminers' Songs And So Forth.

Every Great Power, Every Aggressive Power Has Always Regarded Itself As Exceptional And As Doing Things Only For The Most Moral Ends.

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.

I Know Some Really Outstanding Turkish Journalists, And Have Been Pleased And Honored To Be Able To Join With Them A Few Times In Their Courageous Protests Against State Terror And Repression.

[companies That Specialized In How To Destroy Unions] Don't Make It A Secret, And They Have All Sorts Of Techniques For Management To Destroy Unions.

There Are Simple Things Which Would Make Sense. Take, Say, Weatherization, Which Would Make A Big Cut In The Unemployment Rate. That's The Kind Of Work That Plenty Of People Are Quick To Do, And It Would Save Individual Households Money, And It Would Make A Significant Reduction In The Threats Of Climate Change. But Something Is Holding It Back: The Sociopathic Character Of Market Systems.

The Media Are Corporations So... It's The Concentrations Of Private Power Which Have An Enormous, Not Total Control, But Enormous Influence Over Congress And The White House And That's Increasing Sharply With Sharp Concentration Of Private Power And Escalating Cost Of Elections And So On.

We Still Name Our Military Helicopter Gunships After Victims Of Genocide. Nobody Bats An Eyelash About That: Blackhawk. Apache. And Comanche. If The Luftwaffe Named Its Military Helicopters Jew And Gypsy, I Suppose People Would Notice.

One Of The Real Problems Of Society Is That Its Far Too Atomized, What Sociologists Call Secondary Associations.

To Go Back To A Moment Of Western Civilization Remote Enough In Time So That We Should Be Able To Look At It Dispassionately, Ask What Happened During World War I. What Was The Typical Behavior Of Respected Intellectuals In Germany, England, The United States? What Happened To Those Who Publicly Questioned The Nobility Of The War Effort, On Both Sides? I Do Not Think The Answers Are Untypical.

Technology Can Be Used That Way And It Can Also Be Used In Other Ways.

It's This Kind Of Wild Unpredictability, Megalomania, Thin-skinned Craziness That Really Has Me Worried, More Than [donald Trump] Statements. Now, On The Climate Change There's Just Nothing To Say, He's Perfectly Straightforward.

If The Us Were To Attack North Korea, They'd Certainly Destroy North Korea, But South Korea Would Be Pretty Well Wiped Out Too.

Similar Problems Are Arising In Egypt Too. The Question Is Whether The Military Will Release Its Grip Which Has Been Extremely Strong For The Past 60 Years. So This Is Happening All Over The Region And Particularly Strikingly In Pakistan.

Latin America Has Much Richer Resources. You'd Expect It To Be Far More Advanced Than East Asia, But It Had The Disadvantage Of Being Under Imperialist Wings.

We Should Recall That During The Second World War And The Great Depression There Was An Upsurge In Popular, Radical Democracy. In All Over The World. It Took Different Forms, But It Was There, Everywhere. In Greece It Was In The Greek Revolution, And So On. And It Had To Be Crushed. In Countries Like Greece, It Was Crushed By Violence. In Countries Like Italy, Where The Us Forces Entered In 1943, It Was Crushed By Attacking And Destroying The Anti-german Partisans And Restoring The Traditional Order.

From The U.s. Point Of View, Negotiations Are, In Effect, A Way For Israel To Continue Its Policies Of Systematically Taking Over Whatever It Wants In The West Bank, Maintaining The Brutal Siege On Gaza, Separating Gaza From The West Bank And, Of Course, Occupying The Syrian Golan Heights, All With Full U.s. Support.

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".

There Is A Narrow Class Of Uses Of Language Where You Intend To Communicate. Communication Refers To An Effort To Get People To Understand What One Means. And That, Certainly, Is One Use Of Language And A Social Use Of It. But I Don't Think It Is The Only Social Use Of Language. Nor Are Social Uses The Only Uses Of Language.

There Are Huge Areas Where The Human Mind Is Apparently Incapable Of Forming Sciences, Or At Least Has Not Done So. There Are Other Areas - So Far, In Fact, One Area Only [physics] - In Which We Have Demonstrated The Capacity For True Scientific Progress.

I Admire Ralph Nader And Denis Kucinich Very Much, And Insofar As They Bring Up Issues And Carry Out An Educational And Organisational Function - That's Important, And Fine, And I Support It.

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."

What Matters Is What Happens Among The Powerful.

I Don't See How One Can "believe In Organized Religion." What Does It Mean To Believe In An Organization? One Can Join It, Support It, Oppose It, Accept Its Doctrines Or Reject Them. There Are Many Kinds Of Organized Religion. People Associate Themselves With Some Of Them, Or Not, For All Sorts Of Reasons, Maybe Belief In Some Of Their Doctrines.

Even Stalin Proclaimed His Love For Democracy. We Do Not Learn About The Nature Of Systems Of Power By Listening To Their Rhetoric.

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.

That Was The Reason Why Very Few People Fleeing The Rise Of Fascism In Europe, Especially In Germany, Could Get To The United States. And There Were Famous Incidents Like With The Ms Saint Louis, Which Brought A Lot Of Immigrants, Mostly Jewish, From Europe. It Reached Cuba, With People Expecting To Be Admitted To The United States From There. But The Administration Of Franklin D. Roosevelt Wouldn't Allow Them In And They Had To Go Back To Europe Where Many Of Them Died In Concentration Camps.

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.

As For Academics, I Do Not See Why Their Responsibilities As Moral Agents Should Differ In Principle From The Responsibilities Of Others; In Particular, Others Who Also Enjoy A Degree Of Privilege And Power, And Therefore Have The Responsibilities That Are Conferred By Those Advantages.

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.

Andorrans Deserve Much Better Than The Rule Of Superstitious Hysterics And Extreme Authoritarians, Who Try To Instill Obedience To Their Holy Texts And Chosen Divinities - And We Should Not Fail To See That The Terms Are Appropriate, If Anything Too Kind.

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.

There Are A Lot Of People That Form Movements Around Particular Commitments, Like Gay Rights. It Is Important, But It Does Not Link Easily To, Say, Economic Rights, And It Often Looks Like It's Opposed To Them. The Attempt To Bring These Together Has Yet To Be Done In A Truly Effective Way, And I Think It Can Be.

The Drug Problem Is In The United States, Not In Mexico. It's A Demand Problem And That Is To Be Dealt With Here, And It Is Not Being Dealt With. It's Been Shown Over And Over That Prevention And Treatment Are Far More Cost Effective Than Police Action, Out-of-country Action, Border Control, And So On.

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.

If The Most Important Revolutionary Part Of The George W. Bush Doctrine Is That States That Harbor Terrorists Are Terrorist States, What Do We Conclude From That? We Conclude Exactly What Kissinger Was Kind Enough To Say: These Doctrines Are Unilateral. They Are Not Intended As Doctrines Of International Law Or Doctrines Of International Affairs. They Are Doctrines That Grant The U.s. The Right To Use Force And Violence And To Harbor Terrorists, But Not Anyone Else.

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

If You Look At The Minutes Of The Constitutional Convention - Which We Have - Madison Who Was The Main Framer, Proceeded To Develop A System In Which - As He Put It - Power Would Be In The Hands Of The Wealth Of The Nation, The More Responsible Set Of Men And Who Recognize The Need To Protect The Rights Of Property Owners. That's Why In The Constitutional System, The Most Powerful Part Of The Whole System Is The Senate.

If You Take An Economics Or A Political Science Course, You're Taught That Humans Are Supposed To Be Rational Wealth Accumulators, Each Acting As An Individual To Maximize His Own Wealth In The Market.

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

One Of The Dangers [that Donald Trump Poses, Due To The Augmented Risk Of Nuclear War] Is Unquestionable. Of The Two Existential Threats - The Threats To The Termination Of The Species Basically And Most Other Species - One Of Them, Climate Change, On That I Think There's No Basis For Discussion.

There Are Some Very General Ideas That People Can Keep In Mind; They're Kind Of Truisms. It's Only Worth Mentioning Them Because They're Always Denied.

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

As For Geoengineering, There Have Been Serious General Critiques That I Think Cannot Be Ignored, Like Clive Hamilton's, Along With Many Positive Assessments. It Is Not A Matter For Subjective Judgment Based On Guesswork And Intuition. Rather, These Are Matters That Have To Be Considered Seriously, Relying On The Best Scientific Understanding Available, Without Abandoning Sensible Precautionary Principles.

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

In Many Respects, The United States Is The Freest Country In The World. I Don't Just Mean In Terms Of Limits On State Coercion, Though That's True Too, But Also In Terms Of Individual Relations. The United States Comes Closer To Classlessness In Terms Of Interpersonal Relations Than Virtually Any Society.

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.

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.

Modern China; One Also Finds Many Things That Are Really Quite Admirable.

The Public Is Easily Amenable To Lies: The More Lies There Are, The Greater The Support For War. For Instance, When The Public Was Told That Saddam Hussein Would Attack The U.s., This Increased Support For The War.

Intellectuals (in The Standard Sense Of The Term, Not [ Edward] Said's Prescriptive Sense) Are The People Who Write History.

Farming Out Atrocities To Paramilitaries Is Standard Operating Procedure.

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?"

If We Choose, We Can Live In A World Of Comforting Illusion.

Karl Marx Was In Favor Of Socialist And Communist-socialist Revolutions, But He Had A Pretty Nuanced View About It.

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

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

Public Opinion In Egypt Is Very Antagonistic To The Way The Dictatorship, Mubarak Dictatorship, Interpreted Relations With Israel. Very Antagonistic.

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

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.

This Is Real. This Is The Real Mad Man Theory. We Have To Be Irrational And Vindictive, So People Don't Know What We're Up To. This Is Not [donald] Trump And [steve] Bannon, It's From The [bill] Clinton Era.

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.

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

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

Tough Love Is Just The Right Phrase: Love For The Rich And Privileged, Tough For Everyone Else.

We Have To Recognize That There Is A Range Of Interests, Like There Isn't A Single Corporate Interest And A Single State Interest, So There's A Range. In Addition To That, There Is The Fact Of Professional Integrity.

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.

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

Security Systems

The Government Of Israel Doesn't Like The Kinds Of Things I Say, Which Puts Them Into The Same Category As Every Other Government In The World.

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.

We Use The Official Definitions Of Terrorism. The Definitions In The U.s. Code, In British Law, In U.s. Army Manuals And So On. And If You Use Those Definitions It Follows Instantly That The United States Is The Leading Terrorist State In The World.

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

[donald] Trump Has Been Very Inconsistent On Many Things; On Twitter He's Been All Over The Place, But Some Of It Is Very Consistent. That Is: Do Nothing About Climate Change Except Make It Worse. And He's Not Just Speaking For Himself, But For The Whole Republican Party, The Whole Leadership. It's Already Had Impact, It Will Have Worse Impact.

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

My Own Feeling Is That One Should Refuse To Participate In Any Activity That Implements American Aggression - Thus Tax Refusal, Draft Refusal, Avoidance Of Work That Can Be Used By The Agencies Of Militarism And Repression, All Seem To Me Essential.

Democracy Has Both Expanded And Declined Over The Years.

Democracies Have

A Democracy Barely Functions Under The Neoliberal System.

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.

September 11 Shocked Many Americans Into An Awareness That They Had Better Pay Much Closer Attention To What The Us Government Does In The World And How It Is Perceived. Many Issues Have Been Opened For Discussion That Were Not On The Agenda Before. That's All To The Good.

Just Take Ease Of Interchange Between People. Your Email Is Of Course Faster Than Letter - On The Other Hand The Transition From Sailing Ship To Telegraphs Was Far Greater Than The Shift From The Postal Service To Email. That Was A Fabulous Change. If You Sent A Letter To England, Instead Of Waiting A Couple Of Months For A Response You Got It Instantly. That's A Huge Change. Every One Of These Changes Of Course Increases Opportunities And Also Increases Means Of Control And Domination.

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

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.

If The Principle Is, "let's Not Get Lethal Substances Out To The Public", The First One You'd Go After Is Tobacco. The Next One You'd Go After Is Alcohol. Way Down The List You'd Get To Cocaine, And Sort Of Invisibly Low You'd Get To Marijuana.

The Soviet Union Was Pretty Much What Lenin And Trotsky Said It Was.

The Republicans Went So Far To The Right That They Just Can't Get Votes. They've Become A Dedicated Party Of The Very Rich And The Corporate Sector.

American Decline Is Real, Though The Apocalyptic Vision Reflects The Familiar Ruling Class Perception That Anything Short Of Total Control Amounts To Total Disaster.

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.

Target Audience

. . . Among All Grammars Meeting This Condition (of Adequacy), We Select The Simplest.

I Have Not Suggested That The Emergence Of Language Is Instantaneous. Rather, That The Rewiring Of The Brain Enabling An Infinite Array Of Structured Expressions Was In Effect Instantaneous. I Have Never Heard Of An Alternative To This Suggestion.

Us Wars Are Going To Be Against Much Weaker Enemies. And They Have To Be Won Quickly And Decisively Before A Popular Reaction Develops.

We Had One Or Another Form Of State Capitalism During An Extremely Brief Period Of Human History, Which Tells Us Essentially Nothing About Human Nature. If You Look At Human Societies And Human Interactions, You Can Find Anything. You Find Selfishness, You Find Altruism, You Find Sympathy.

The September 11 Attacks Were Major Atrocities. . . . This Was A Horrendous Crime . . . The Primary Victims . . . Were Working People: Janitors, Secretaries, Firemen, Etc. It Is Likely To Prove To Be A Crushing Blow To Palestinians . . . It Is Also Likely To Lead To Harsh Security Controls, With Many Possible Ramifications For Undermining Civil Liberties And Internal Freedom.

Our Crimes, For Which We Are Responsible: As Taxpayers, For Failing To Provide Massive Reparations, For Granting Refuge And Immunity To The Perpetrators, And For Allowing The Terrible Facts To Be Sunk Deep In The Memory Hole. All Of This Is Of Great Significance, As It Has Been In The Past.

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.

Well, They Really Didn't Have To Worry, Because The Way Power Politics Works, The World Court Can't Do Anything. Look, There's One Country In The World At The Moment Which Has Refused To Accept World Court Decision-that's The United States. Is Anybody Going To Do Anything About It?

I Also Learned From Reading The Left-wing Press About The [franklin] Roosevelt Administration's Indirect Support For Francisco Franco, Which Was Not Well Known, And Still Isn't.

People Tend To Rally Around Power.

Yes, And Syrians. There Is A Horrible Crisis There And The United States Has Admitted Virtually None Of The Refugees.

Private Sector Unionization Is Down To Practically Seven Percent. Meanwhile The Public Sector Unions Have Kind Of Sustained Themselves [even] Under Attack, But In The Last Few Years, There's Been A Sharp [increase In The] Attack On Public Sector Unions, Which Barack Obama Has Participated In, In Fact. When You Freeze Salaries Of Federal Workers, That's Equivalent To Taxing Public Sector People.

There Was A Free Election In Palestine, But It Came Out The Wrong Way. So Instantly, The United States And Israel With Europe Tagging Along, Moved To Punish The Palestinian People, And Punish Them Harshly, Because They Voted The Wrong Way In A Free Election. That's Accepted Here In The West As Perfectly Normal. That Illustrates The Deep Hatred And Contempt For Democracy Among Western Elites, So Deep-seated They Can't Even Perceive It When It's In Front Of Their Eyes. You Punish People Severely If They Vote The Wrong Way In A Free Election.

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.

During The 1960s, Large Groups Of People Who Are Normally Passive And Apathetic Began To Try To Enter The Political Arena To Press Their Demands.... The Naive Might Call That Democracy, But That's Because They Don't Understand. The Sophisticated Understand That That's The Crisis Of Democracy.

The Us Is To An Unusual Extent A Business-run Society, Where Short-term Concerns Of Profit And Market Share Displace Rational Planning.

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.

I Don't Suggest That The Observations Are Surprising Or Profound. Rather, They Seem To Me The Merest Truisms. I Was Not Aware That [ Michel] Foucault Had Used The Phrase "speaking Truth To Power." I Had Thought It Was An Old Quaker Phrase.

[francisco] Franco's Army Was Mainly Moorish. They Were Recruiting People From Morocco To Come To Spain. There Was An Uprising In Morocco At The Time Led By Abd El-krim (whose Tactics Influenced Ho Chi Minh And Che Guevara) That Sought Independence For Morocco And Northern Africa.

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

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

I Had Two Spinster Aunts Who Were Seamstresses, And Of Course Unemployed In The 1930s, But The Union Gave Them A Life. They Had A Couple Of Weeks In The Country For A Union Installation And They Had Educational Programs And All Sorts Of Things. There Was A Life, You Know, A Real Community.

Adam Smith Is An Egalitarian, He Believed In Equality Of Outcome, Not Opportunity. He Is An Enlightenment Figure, Pre-capitalist. He Says, Suppose In England, One Landowner Got Most Of The Land And Other People Would Have Nothing To Live On. He Says It Wouldn't Matter Much, Because The Rich Land Owner, By Virtue Of His Sympathy For Other People Would Distribute Resources Among Them, So That By An Invisible Hand, We Would End Up With A Pretty Egalitarian Society. That Is His Conception Of Human Nature.

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

You Have 30% Of The World Unemployed, A Huge Amount Of Work, That Needs To Be Done Just Rebuilding The Society Alone.

It Is Important To Bear In Mind That Political Campaigns Are Designed By The Same People Who Sell Toothpaste And Cars.

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.

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

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.

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