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Why Not Stakeholder Action? There's No Economic Principal That Says That Management Should Be Responsive To Shareholders, In Fact You Can Read In Texts Of Business Economics That They Could Just As Well Have A System In Which The Management Is Responsible To Stakeholders.

-Noam Chomsky

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Why Not Stakeholder Action?

Noam Chomsky

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Why Not Stakeholder Action? There's No Economic Principal That Says That Management Should Be Responsive To Shareholders, In Fact You Can Read In Texts Of Business Economics That They Could Just As Well Have A System In Which The Management Is Responsible To Stakeholders.

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I Had Relatives In New York City Who I Stayed With. And In Those Days, The Area From Union Square Down Fourth Avenue Had Small Bookstores, Many Of Which Were Run By Spanish Immigrants Who'd Fled After [francisco] Franco's Victory. I Spent Time In Them, And Also In The Offices Of Freie Arbeiter Stimme (free Worker's Voice) With Anarchists. I Picked Up A Lot Of Material And Talked To People, And It Became A Major Influence.

If You Look At Say, England And Germany A Century Ago, Which Had The Most Advanced Navies Then, They Were Dealing With Extremely Tricky Technological Problems. Putting A Huge Gun On A Moving Platform And Ensuring That It Could Hit Another Moving Target Was One Of The Hardest Technical Problems Of The Early Twentieth Century.

[mikhail] Gorbachev Said That He Would Agree To The Unification Of Germany, And Even Adherence Of Germany To Nato, Which Was Quite A Concession, If Nato Didn't Move To East Germany. And [george] Bush And [james] Baker Promised Verbally, That's Critical, Verbally That Nato Would Not Expand "one Inch To The East," Which Meant East Germany. Nobody Was Talking About Anything Farther At The Time. They Would Not Expand One Inch To The East. Now That Was A Verbal Promise. It Was Never Written. Nato Immediately Expanded To East Germany.

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

Concentration Of Wealth Yields Concentration Of Political Power. And Concentration Of Political Power Gives Rise To Legislation That Increases And Accelerates The Cycle.

Concentration Of Wealth

The Crimes Committed Against The People Of West Papua Are Some Of The Most Shameful Of The Past Years. The Western Powers Have Much To Answer For, And At The Very Least Should Use Their Ample Means To Bring About The Withdrawal Of The Occupying Indonesian Army And Termination Of The Shameful Exploitation Of Resources And Destruction Of The Environment And The Lives And Societies Of The People Of West Papua, Who Have Suffered Far Too Much.

William R. Polk Discusses The Spanish Guerrilla War Against Napoleon [ Bonaparte] And Other Cases Where The Conflict Turns Into A Political War, And The Invader, Who Usually Has Overwhelming Power, Loses Because They Can't Fight The Political War.

To Achieve Respectability, To Be Admitted To The Debate, They Must Accept Without Question Or Inquiry The Fundamental Doctrine That The State Is Benevolent, Governed By The Loftiest Intentions, Adopting A Defensive Stance, Not An Actor In World Affairs But Only Reacting To The Crimes Of Others...if Even The Harshest Of Critics Tacitly Adopt These Premises, Then The Ordinary Person May Ask, Who Am I To Disagree?

The Russian Ambassador At The United Nations Did Make Some Proposals For A Political Settlement In Which Bashar Assad Would Be Slowly Eased Out. The West Dismissed It Immediately, And We Don't Know If It Was Real, Because It Didn't Come From The Kremlin, And It Was Informal. But The Point Is Every Such Proposal Is Immediately Scotched. And You Just Don't Know If They're Real.

A Woman Was The Property Of Her Father Or Her Husband And That Remained True Right Into The Twentieth Century. It Wasn't Until 1975 That Women Had A Guaranteed Right To Serve On Federal Juries.

It's Perfectly Obvious That There Is Some Genetic Factor That Distinguishes Humans From Other Animals And That It Is Language-specific. The Theory Of That Genetic Component, Whatever It Turns Out To Be, Is What Is Called Universal Grammar.

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.

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

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.

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

It Is An Astonishing Fact About The Current Era That In The Most Powerful Country In World History, With A High Level Of Education And Privilege, One Of The Two Political Parties Virtually Denies The Well-established Facts About Anthropogenic Climate Change.

There's A Strange Myth Of Anglo-saxonism. When The University Of Virginia Was Founded By Thomas Jefferson, For Example, Its Law School Offered The Study Of "anglo-saxon Law." And That Myth Of Anglo-saxonism Carries Right Over Into The Early Twentieth Century.

In Any Institution-factory, University, Health Center, Or Whatever-there Are A Variety Of Interests That Ought To Be Represented In Decision-making: The Work Force Itself, The Community In Which It Is Located, Users Of Its Products Or Services, Institutions That Compete For The Same Resources. These Interests Should Be Directly Represented In Democratic Structures That Displace And Eliminate Private Ownership Of The Means Of Production Or Resources, An Anachronism With No Legitimacy.

I Like The Cold Weather. It Means You Get Work Done.

As Long As Each Individual Is Facing The Television Tube Alone, Formal Freedom Poses No Threat To Privilege

The Number Of People Killed By The Sanctions In Iraq Is Greater Than The Total Number Of People Killed By All Weapons Of Mass Destruction In All Of History.

Mass Destruction

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.

The Atrocities In Cambodia Are A Direct And Understandable Response To The Violence Of The Imperial System.

The American Claim That The Bombing Of North Vietnam Was Directed Against Military Targets Does Not Withstand Direct Investigation.

What The Polls Don't Tell You Is, Though Other Polls Do, Is That If You Do A Study Of Ceos, Top Executives In Corporations, They're Liberal.

The Contradiction Is Somehow Unresolved. In The Case Of The Business Propaganda, It's Particularly Ironic Because While Business Wants The Population To Hate The Government, They Want The Population To Love The Government. Namely, They're In Favor Of A Very Powerful State Which Works In Their Interest.

A Bombing Was Planned [in Syria], Which Would Probably Make The Situation Worse, But Would At Least Establish Us Credibility.

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.

It's Necessary To Address The Concerns And Beliefs Of Those Who Are Taken In By The Fraud, Or Who Don't Recognize The Nature And Significance Of The Issues For Other Reasons. If By Philosophy We Mean Reasoned And Thoughtful Analysis, Then It Can Address The Moment, Though Not By Confronting The "alternative Facts" But By Analyzing And Clarifying What Is At Stake, Whatever The Issue Is. Beyond That, What Is Needed Is Action: Urgent And Dedicated, In The Many Ways That Are Open To Us.

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.

The First Modern Propaganda Agency Was The British Ministry Of Information A Century Ago, Which Secretly Defined Its Task As "to Direct The Thought Of Most Of The World" - Primarily Progressive American Intellectuals, Who Had To Be Mobilized To Come To The Aid Of Britain During World War I.

The Former Colonies, In Latin America In Particular, Have A Better Chance Than Ever Before To Overcome Centuries Of Subjugation, Violence And Foreign Intervention, Which They Have So Far Survived As Dependencies With Islands Of Luxury In A Sea Of Misery.

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

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

For A Privileged Minority, Western Democracy Provides The Leisure, The Facilities, And The Training To Seek The Truth Lying Hidden Behind The Veil Of Distortion And Misrepresentation, Ideology And Class Interest, Through Which The Events Of Current History Are Presented To Us.

I Don't Feel That I Have Anything To Say Beyond Moral Truisms.

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?"

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.

The [barack] Obama Administration Has Pressured Mexico To Keep Them Away From The Mexican Border, So That They Don't Succeed In Reaching The United States. Pretty Much The Same Thing Europeans Have Done To Turks And Syrians.

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

The Neoliberal Programs Of The Last Generation Have In Fact Been, And Were Intended To Be, A Pretty Serious Attack On Democracy, But Also They've Led To Stagnation Or Decline For Large Parts Of The Population - The Working Class, The Lower Middle Class, These People Have Essentially Been Cast Aside.

I Wrote An Article About The Marine Landing [in Haiti] Right Away, But Barely Mentioned The Oil, Because My Article Would Come Out Two Months Later And I Assumed By Then, "of Course, Everybody Knows." Nobody Knew. There Was A News Report In The Wall Street Journal, In The Petroleum Journals, And In Some Small Newspapers, But Not In The Mainstream Press.

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

The Beam In Our Own Eye Is Harder To Detect, Although - Or More Accurately Because - To Detect It, And Remove It, Is Vastly More Important On Elementary Moral Grounds, And Commonly More Important In Terms Of Direct Human Consequences As Well. Intellectuals Have Historically Played A Critical Function In Performing These Tasks, And [ivan] Illich Is Right To Observe That Claims To Scientific Expertise And Special Knowledge Are Often Used As A Device.

Plainly Elites In America Don't Want Democracy. And Why Should They? Democracy Is Always Harmful To Elite Interests. Almost By Definition.

Freedom Without Opportunity Is A Devil's Gift, And The Refusal To Provide Such Opportunities Is Criminal

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.

Europe Is Being Subjected To The Kinds Of Programs That Devastated Latin America For Many Years. Latin America Has Thrown Them Out And Is Pulling Out: It's Successful; It's Democratizing; It's Economically Developing; And It's Free From The Shrapnel Of Us Imperialism For 25 Years. Meanwhile, Western Europe Is Destroying Itself Systematically, Destroying Itself Going In The Opposite Direction.

Elements Of The Christian Fundamentalist Right Are One Of The Strongest Components Of "support For Israel" - Support In An Odd Sense, Because They Presumably Want To See It Destroyed In A Cosmic Battle At Armageddon, After Which All The Proper Souls Will Ascend To Heaven - Or So I Understand, Again, Not From Close Reading.

There Is Good Reason To Believe That We Have Already Entered The Sixth Extinction, A Period Of Destruction Of Species On A Massive Scale, Comparable To The Fifth Extinction 65 Million Years Ago, When Three-quarters Of The Species On Earth Were Destroyed, Apparently By A Huge Asteroid.

If You Look At History, Even Recent History, You See That There Is Indeed Progress. . . . Over Time, The Cycle Is Clearly, Generally Upwards. And It Doesn't Happen By Laws Of Nature. And It Doesn't Happen By Social Laws. . . . It Happens As A Result Of Hard Work By Dedicated People Who Are Willing To Look At Problems Honestly, To Look At Them Without Illusions, And To Go To Work Chipping Away At Them, With No Guarantee Of Success — In Fact, With A Need For A Rather High Tolerance For Failure Along The Way, And Plenty Of Disappointments.

[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.

If You Want To Find Weapons Of Destruction, You Can Find Them All Over The Place. Take, Say, Israel. There Is A Very Great Concern Right Now About Proliferation Of Nuclear Weapons, As There Should Be. Israel Has A Couple Of Hundred Nuclear Weapons And Also Chemical And Biological Weapons. This Stockpile Is Not Only A Threat In Itself But Encourages Others To Proliferate In Reaction And In Self-defense. Is Anybody Saying Anything About This?

Quite Generally, International Affairs Have More Than A Slight Resemblance To The Mafia. The Godfather Does Not Take It Lightly When He Is Crossed, Even By A Small Storekeeper.

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

International Relations

The Local Grocery Store Was A Gathering, A Community Place. You Knew The Owner, If You Didn't Have Any Money They'd Let You Go For A Couple Days. You Talked. It Was A Friendly Place. Supermarkets Are Totally Impersonal. I Mean, You May Say Hello To The Checkout Girl Or Something, But The Personal Connections Are All Gone.

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.

Rely On Yourself

By Accident Of Geography, The World's Major Oil Resources Are In Shi'ite-dominated Areas. Iran's Oil Is Concentrated Right Near The Gulf, Which Happens To Be An Arab Area, Not Persian. Khuzestan Is Arab, Has Been Loyal To Iran, Fought With Iran Not Iraq During The Iran-iraq War. This Is A Potential Source Of Dissension. I Would Be Amazed If There Isn't An Attempt Going On To Stir Up Secessionist Elements In Khuzestan.

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

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

The Most Striking Aspect Of Linguistic Competence Is What We May Call The 'creativity Of Language,' That Is, The Speaker's Ability To Produce New Sentences, Sentences That Are Immediately Understood By Other Speakers Although They Bear No Physical Resemblance To Sentences Which Are 'familiar.

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.

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. These Are Simply Decisions Made Within Institutions That Are Subject To Human Will And That Must Face The Test Of Legitimacy. And If They Do Not Meet The Test, They Can Be Replaced By Other Institutions That Are More Free And More Just, As Has Happened Often In The Past.

Parts Of The United States Are Taking On A Third World Look.

A Consistent Anarchist Must Oppose Private Ownership Of The Means Of Production, And The Wage-slavery Which Is A Component Of This System, As Incompatible With The Principle That Labor Must Be Freely Undertaken And Under The Control Of The Producer.

People Don't Have Knowledge And Understanding About The Outside World, Or About History [in The Usa].

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

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

I Pretend No Originality In Observing That Mass Education Was Motivated In Part By The Perceived Need To "educate Them To Keep Them From Our Throats," To Borrow Ralph Waldo Emerson's Parody Of Elite Fears That Inspired Early Advocates Of Public Mass Education.

Rush Limbaugh Has Answered - It's The Rich Liberals Who Own The Banks And Run The Government, And Of Course Run The Media, And They Don't Care About You - They Just Want To Give Everything Away To Illegal Immigrants And Gays And Communists And So On.

Neoliberal Democracy. Instead Of Citizens, It Produces Consumers. Instead Of Communities, It Produces Shopping Malls. The Net Result Is An Atomized Society Of Disengaged Individuals Who Feel Demoralized And Socially Powerless. In Sum, Neoliberalism Is The Immediate And Foremost Enemy Of Genuine Participatory Democracy, Not Just In The United States But Across The Planet, And Will Be For The Foreseeable Future.

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

Growing Up In The Place I Did I Never Was Aware Of Any Other Option But To Question Everything.

It Makes Sense To Work Towards A Better World, But It Doesn't Make Any Sense To Have Illusions About What The Real World Is.

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.

In The 1960s, There Was A Point, 1968, '69, When There Was A Very Strong Antiwar Movement Against The War In Vietnam. But It's Worth Remembering That The War In Vietnam Started - An Outright War Started In 1962.

The Change Between Horse And Buggy To Automobile Is A Big Change And There Hasn't Been A Major Change Since.

Maybe The Science Is Uncertain, Maybe We Don't Have To Worry About It. Climate Change Is The Worst, But There's Others.

The Military Has A Huge Role In The Economy [of Pakistan] With Big Stakes And, As You Say, It Has Constantly Intervened To Make Sure That It Keeps Its Hold On Policy Making. Well, I Hope, And There Seem To Be Some Signs, That The Military Is Taking A Backseat, Not Really In The Economy, But In Some Of The Policy Issues. If That Can Continue, Which Perhaps It Will, This Will Be A Positive Development.

In The Sciences Particularly The Large Public Universities Must And Do Take An Active Role In Fostering Creativity And Independence; Otherwise The Fields Will Wither, And Along With Them Even The Aspirations Of Wealth And Power.

Do I Believe In God? Can't Answer, I'm Afraid. I'm Not Being Flippant, But I Don't Understand The Question. What Is It That I Am Supposed To Believe Or Not Believe In? Are You Asking Whether I Believe There Is Something Not In The Universe (or The Universes, If There Are (maybe Infinitely) Many Of Them), And That Somehow Stands Above Them? I've Never Heard Of Any Reason For Believing That.

Suppose I Try To Say The Us Carries Out Terror, In Fact It's One Of The Leading Terrorist States In The World. You Can't Say That Between Commercials. People Rightly Want To Know What Do You Mean. They've Never Heard That Before. Then You Have To Explain. You Have To Give Background. That's Exactly What's Cut Out.

There Is No Evolutionary Pressure To Create Minds Capable Of Forming Sciences; It Just Happened. Evolutionary Pressure Has Not Led To Higher Rates Of Reproduction For People Capable Of Solving Scientific Problems Or Creating New Scientific Ideas. So If, In Fact, The Science-forming Capacities Evolved For Other Reasons, It Would Not Be Too Surprising If Those Particular Structures That Have Developed Proved To Be Rather Special In Their Nature, Reflecting The Contingencies Of Their Evolution Or The Working Of Physical Law.

The Us Is A Country [in Which] Eighty Percent Of The Population Thinks The Bible Was Written By God. About Half Think Every Word Is Literally True. So It's Had To Appeal To That - And To The Nativist Population, The People That Are Frightened, Have Always Been... It's A Very Frightened Country And That's Increasing Now With The Recognition That The White Population Is Going To Be A Minority Pretty Soon, "they've Taken Our Country From Us."

Democracy Has Both Expanded And Declined Over The Years.

Democracies Have

For The Last Couple Of Hundred Years, There Have Been Struggles About This. Even The Fifth And Sixth Amendments Of The Constitution Talk About Personal Rights.

Universities Are Less Constrained By Authority And Rigid Doctrine In The United States Than In Most Other Societies, To My Knowledge.

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.

Education Is Imposed Ignorance.

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.

Our Health Care Is Rationed By Wealth.

To Construct A Scientific Theory From The Data And To Be Able To Recognize That It Is A Reasonable Theory Is Possible Only If There Are Some Very Sharp Restrictive Principles That Lead You To Go In One Direction And Not In Another Direction. Otherwise, You Wouldn't Have Science At All, Merely Randomly Chosen Hypotheses.

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

Democracy Doesn't Mean Much If People Have To Confront Concentrated Systems Of Economic Power As Isolated Individuals. Democracy Means Something If People Can Organize To Gain Information, To Have Thoughts For That Matter, To Make Plans, To Enter Into The Political System In Some Active Way, To Put Forth Programs And So On. If Organizations Of That Kind Exist, Then Democracy Can Exist Too. Otherwise It's A Matter Of Pushing A Lever Every Couple Of Years; It's Like Having The Choice Between Coca-cola And Pepsi-cola.

Whenever There Is Injustice, Oppression, Aggression, Violence, It's Standard For It To Be Supported By Those We Now Call "intellectuals," But Typically Not By All; There Is Typically A Fringe Of Dissidents. With Very Rare Exceptions - In Fact, It's Hard To Think Of Any - They Suffer In One Or Another Way; How Depends On The Nature Of The Society.

All Media Depend On Advertisement To Survive.

When I Was In High School I Asked Myself At One Point: "why Do I Care If My High School's Team Wins The Football Game? I Don't Know Anybody On The Team, They Have Nothing To Do With Me... Why Am I Here And Applaud? It Does Not Make Any Sense." But The Point Is, It Does Make Sense: It's A Way Of Building Up Irrational Attitudes Of Submission To Authority And Group Cohesion Behind Leadership Elements. In Fact It's Training In Irrational Jingoism. That's Also A Feature Of Competitive Sports.

It Also Seems Beyond Controversy That Moral Responsibilities Are Greater To The Extent That People "have The Resources, The Training, The Facilities And Opportunities To Speak And Act Effectively."

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.

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.

Immediately After 11 September, The U.s. Closed Down The Somali Charitable Network Al-barakaat On Grounds That It Was Financing Terror. This Achievement Was Hailed One Of The Great Successes Of The 'war On Terror.' In Contrast, Washington's Withdrawal Of Its Charges As Without Merit A Year Later Aroused Little Notice.

The Indoctrination Is So Deep That Educated People Think They’re Being Objective.

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.

The Point Of Public Relations Slogans Like "support Our Troops" Is That They Don't Mean Anything ... That's The Whole Point Of Good Propaganda. You Want To Create A Slogan That Nobody Is Going To Be Against And I Suppose Everybody Will Be For, Because Nobody Knows What It Means, Because It Doesn't Mean Anything. But Its Crucial Value Is That It Diverts Your Attention From A Question That Does Mean Something, Do You Support Our Policy? And That's The One You're Not Allowed To Talk About.

Anarchism, In My View, Is An Expression Of The Idea That The Burden Of Proof Is Always On Those Who Argue That Authority And Domination Are Necessary. They Have To Demonstrate, With Powerful Argument, That That Conclusion Is Correct. If They Cannot, Then The Institutions They Defend Should Be Considered Illegitimate. How One Should React To Illegitimate Authority Depends On Circumstances And Conditions: There Are No Formulas.

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

On The Other Hand, You Have To Balance That Against Expanding Our Nuclear Forces, Add To Our So-called Depleted Military, Which Is Already More Powerful Than The Rest Of The World Combined; Attack In Syria, Send Forces To Syria, Start Bombing. Who Knows What Could Be Next?

As Long As Individuals Are Compelled To Rent Themselves On The Market To Those Who Are Willing To Hire Them, As Long As Their Role In Production Is Simply That Of Ancillary Tools, Then There Are Striking Elements Of Coercion And Oppression That Make Talk Of Democracy Very Limited, If Even Meaningful.

The Major Organizing Centers, Like The Labor Movement, Have Been Severely Weakened In The United States By Policy.

Because They Don't Teach The Truth About The World, Schools Have To Rely On Beating Students Over The Head With Propaganda About Democracy. If Schools Were, In Reality, Democratic, There Would Be No Need To Bombard Students With Platitudes About Democracy. They Would Simply Act And Behave Democratically, And We Know This Does Not Happen. The More There Is A Need To Talk About The Ideals Of Democracy, The Less Democratic The System Usually Is.

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.

Physics And Those Parts Of Other Fields That Grow Out Of Physics - Chemistry, The Structure Of Big Molecules - In Those Domains, There Is A Lot Of Progress. In Many Other Domains, There Is Very Little Progress In Developing Real Scientific Understanding.

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

The Level Of Destruction And Terror And Violence Carried Out By The Powerful States Far Exceeds Anything That Can Imaginably Can Be Done By Groups That Are Called Terrorists And Subnational Groups.

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

Trump Keeps The Spotlight On Himself With One Act After Another, Assuming Correctly That Yesterday's Antics Will Be Swept Aside By Today's.

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.

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

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.

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

Women Didn't Have Rights. Under British Common Law, Women Were Property.

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

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.

In This Possibly Terminal Phase Of Human Existence, Democracy And Freedom Are More Than Just Ideals To Be Valued - They May Be Essential To Survival.

Democracies Have

[my Father] Came Over As An Immigrant And Didn't Know Any English. He Went To Work At A Sweat Shop In Baltimore. He Told Me Later That This Guy Was Coming Around, And The Guy Seemed To Be For The Workers, So He Signed Up. It Turned Out That Guy Was An Iww Organizer . My Father Didn't Regret Signing Up; He Just Really Didn't Know What Was Going On.

The [ronald] Reagan Administration Picked Up The Rhetoric Of The Anti-nuclear Movement; They Said "yyeah, You're Right." We Have To Eliminate Nuclear Weapons.

Technology Can Also Be Used So That Private Individuals Will Have Access To The Way Centralized Decisions Are Being Made.

The U.s. Is, To A Very Unusual Extent, A Business-run Society.

Every Wave Of Immigrants Who Came [to America] Were Treated Pretty Badly, But When They All Finally Became Integrated, All Of Us Became Anglo-saxons.

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.

Since James Madison Day (and Long Before), There Have Been Constant Struggles Over "democratic Governance".

Democracy, In Any Rational Form, Also Imposes Conditions On Majority Rule. That's What The Bill Of Rights Is About, For Example.

I Think A Decent Society Should Protect Rights To Private Property Within Limits, But Not Concentrations Of Private Power That Infringe On The Freedom And Rights Of Others, Including Exploitation Of Labor, And That Convert Any Democratic Forms Into What Have Been Called Sometimes "hierarchical Democracies," Like Ours, In Which Some Have Vastly Greater Influence Over Public Policy Than Others. Spelling All Of This Out Is A Complex Matter That Raises Many Issue And Problems That Are Impossible To Address Here.

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

Capitalism Denies The Right To Live. You Have Only The Right To Remain On The Labour Market.

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.

The Zionist Movement Based In Palestine Pretty Much Took Over The Camps And Instituted The Policy That Every Man And Woman Between The Ages Of Seventeen And Thirty-five Should Be Directed To Palestine - Not Allowed To Go To The West.

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 Development Of Space Technology, Including Space Warfare Today, Is Similar In Its Technological-industrial Significance To The Development Of Navies A Hundred Years Ago.

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

The Target Of Preventive War Must Have Several Characteristics. It Must Be Virtually Defenceless; It Must Be Important Enough To Be Worth The Trouble; It Must Be Possible To Portray It As The Ultimate Evil And An Imminent Threat To Our Survival.

It Is True That Classical Libertarian Thought Is Opposed To State Intervention In Social Life, As A Consequence Of Deeper Assumptions About The Human Need For Liberty, Diversity, And Free Association.

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.

In The Occupied Territories, What Israel Is Doing Is Much Worse Than Apartheid. The South African Nationalists Needed The Black Population. That Was Their Workforce. The Israeli Relationship To The Palestinians In The Occupied Territories Is Totally Different. They Just Don’t Want Them.

Put Yourself In The Position Of A Person, Sort Of An Ordinary American, "i'm A Hard-working, God-fearing Christian. I Take Care Of My Family, I Go To Church, I, You Know, Do Everything 'right'. And I'm Getting Shafted. For The Last Thirty Years, My Income Has Stagnated, My Working Hours Are Going Up, My Benefits Are Going Down. My Wife Has To Work Two [jobs] To, You Know, Put Food On The Table. The Children, God, There's No Care For The Children, The Schools Are Rotten, And So On. What Did I Do Wrong? I Did Everything You're Supposed To Do, But Something's Going Wrong To Me.

Since Jimmy Carter, Religious Fundamentalists Play A Major Role In Elections. He Was The First President Who Made A Point Of Exhibiting Himself As A Born Again Christian. That Sparked A Little Light In The Minds Of Political Campaign Managers: Pretend To Be A Religious Fanatic And You Can Pick Up A Third Of The Vote Right Away. Nobody Asked Whether Lyndon Johnson Went To Church Every Day. Bill Clinton Is Probably About As Religious As I Am, Meaning Zero, But His Managers Made A Point Of Making Sure That Every Sunday Morning He Was In The Baptist Church Singing Hymns.

There Are No Conservatives In The United States. The United States Does Not Have A Conservative Tradition. The People Who Call Themselves Conservatives, Like The Heritage Foundation Or Gingrich, Are Believers In -- Are Radical Statists. They Believe In A Powerful State, But A Welfare State For The Rich.

The Press Is Owned By Wealthy Men Who Only Want Certain Things To Reach The Public.

A Person Who Issues That Charge That Someone Adheres To The Principle "do As I Say, Not As I Do" Has Three Options: Produce An Example; Withdraw The Charge; Take The Coward's Way Out And Slink Away Silently.

[mikhail] Gorbachev Complained. He Was Told Look, There's Nothing On Paper. People Didn't Actually Say It But The Implication Was Look, If You Are Dumb Enough To Take Faith In A Gentleman's Agreement With Us, That's Your Problem. Nato Expanded To East Germany.

Washington Still Refuses To Provide Evidence To Support The Claims In 1990 That A Huge Iraqi Military Build-up On The Saudi Border Justified War.

The Argument That Resistance To The War Should Remain Strictly Nonviolent Seems To Me Overwhelming.

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.

Resource Extraction Impacts A Global Environment That Is Increasingly At Severe Risk.

As Long As Nuclear Weapons Exist, The Chances Of Survival Of The Human Species Are Quite Slight.

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

[mikhail Bakunin] Expectations Were Generally Confirmed, Including His Prediction That Some Would Seek To Gain State Power On The Backs Of Popular Revolution, Then Constructing A "red Bureaucracy" That Would Be One Of The Worst Tyrannies In History, While Others Would Recognize That Power Lies Elsewhere And Would Serve As Its Apologists, Becoming Mystifies, "disablers," And Managers While Demanding The Right To Function In "technocratic Isolation," In World Bank Lingo.

There Is A Phrase In Trade Theory; It's Called "kicking Away The Ladder." First You Violate The Rules - The Market Rules - And Then By The Time You Succeed In Developing, You Kick Away The Ladders So Others Can't Do It Too, And You Preach About "free Trade."

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

Take A Look At The Supreme Court Decision That Just Authorized An Effort By U.s. Claimants Against Iran For Terrorist Acts. What Are The Terrorist Acts? The Terrorist Acts Are Bombings Of U.s. Military Installations In Lebanon And Saudi Arabia, Which Iran Is Claimed To Have Something To Do With. Well Suppose They Did. That's Not Terrorism. I Mean If We Have A Military Base In Lebanon That While We're Shelling Lebanese Naval Ships, The Navy Is Shelling Lebanese Installations And Somebody Attacks [that's Not Terrorism].

There's One White Powder Which Is By Far The Most Lethal Known, It's Called Sugar. . . . The Caribbean Back In The 18th Century Was A Soft Drug Producer: Sugar, Rum, Tobacco, Chocolate. And In Order To Do It, They Had To Enslave Africans.

The Similarity Is That Concentration Of Capital Influences Virtually Everything That Goes On. It Influences The Way The Media Functions, It Very Powerfully Influences How The Government Works And It Of Course Influences Corporate Sector Elements, Like Say How Google Or Amazon Present Materials That Reach The Public.

State Formation Has Been A Brutal Project, With Many Hideous Consequences. But The Results Exist, And Their Pernicious Aspects Should Be Overcome.

For Those Who Stubbornly Seek Freedom, There Can Be No More Urgent Task Than To Come To Understand The Mechanisms And Practices Of Indoctrination. These Are Easy To Perceive In The Totalitarian Societies, Much Less So In The System Of 'brainwashing Under Freedom' To Which We Are Subjected And Which All Too Often We Serve As Willing Or Unwitting Instruments.

The Smart Way To Keep People Passive And Obedient Is To Strictly Limit The Spectrum Of Acceptable Opinion, But Allow Very Lively Debate Within That Spectrum.

The Sanders Campaign Showed That A Candidate With Mildly Progressive Programs Could Win The Nomination, Maybe The Election, Even Without The Backing Of The Major Funders Or Any Media Support. There's Good Reason To Suppose That Sanders Would Have Won The Nomination Had It Not Been For Shenanigans Of The Obama-clinton Party Managers. He Is Now The Most Popular Political Figure In The Country By A Large Margin.

It's Designed To Carry Forward The Neoliberal Project To Maximize Profit And Domination, And To Set The Working People In The World In Competition With One Another So As To Lower Wages To Increase Insecurity

The Idea That Hezbollah Is Acting As An Agent Of Iran Is Very Dubious. It's Not Accepted By Specialists On Iran Or Specialists On Hezbollah. But It's The Party Line. Or Sometimes You Can Put In Syria, I.e. "syrian-supported Hezbollah," But Since Syria Is Of Less Interest Now You Have To Emphasize Iranian Support.

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.

People Have To Be Atomized And Segregated And Alone. They're Not Supposed To Organize, Because Then They Might Be Something Beyond Spectators Of Action. They Might Actually Be Participants If Many People With Limited Resources Could Get Together To Enter The Political Arena. That's Really Threatening.

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.

People Who Spend Their Working Hours In A Lab Or Research Library Or A Classroom Might Be Intent Primarily On Keeping Or Advancing Their Elite Positions, Thereby Lending Tacit Support To Power Structures. Or They Might Not Be.

I Think Half The Population Supports This Ban On These Dangerous Immigrants Who Are Going To Come In And Do Something, Who Knows What. And Meanwhile The Countries That Really Have Been Involved In Terrorism, They're Out. It's Kind Of Like I Think It Was Oklahoma Banning Sharia Law.

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.

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

Language Etches The Grooves Through Which Your Thoughts Must Flow.

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

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

When I Wrote About The Spanish Civil War Many Years Later, I Used Documents That I Picked Up When I Was A Child, As A Lot Hadn't Been Published (a Lot More Resources Are Available Now).

By A Generative Grammar I Mean Simply A System Of Rules That In Some Explicit And Well-defined Way Assigns Structural Descriptions To Sentences. Obviously, Every Speaker Of A Language Has Mastered And Internalized A Generative Grammar That Expresses His Knowledge Of His Language. This Is Not To Say That He Is Aware Of The Rules Of The Grammar Or Even That He Can Become Aware Of Them, Or That His Statements About His Intuitive Knowledge Of The Language Are Necessarily Accurate.

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

In Fact, Clinton-era Publications Of The Us Space Command Describe Control Over Space As A Parallel To Control Over The Oceans A Century Ago. Then, Countries Built Navies To Protect And Enhance Their Power In Commercial And Strategic Interests. Today, The Militarization Of Space Is Intended To Protect Us Investments And Commercial Interest And Us Hegemony Around The World.

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.

For One Thing, Studying Language Is By Itself A Part Of A Study Of Human Intelligence That Is, Perhaps, The Central Aspect Of Human Nature. And Second, I Think, It Is A Good Model For Studying Other Human Properties, Which Ought To Be Studied By Psychologists In The Same Way.

As Far As Bernie Sanders Is Concerned, He Is A Decent, Honest Person, And I Supported Him. What He Means By Socialism Is New Deal Liberalism. In Fact, His Actual Policies Would Not Have Been A Great Surprise To General Eisenhower. The Fact That This Is Called A "political Revolution" Is A Sign Of How Far To The Right The Political Spectrum Has Shifted, Mainly In The Last 30 Years Since The Neoliberal Programs Began To Be Instituted. What He Was Calling For Was A Restoration Of Something Like New Deal Liberalism, Which Is A Very Good Thing.

Political Revolution

In Fact, The Capitalist Class In The '50s Was Sort Of Part Of A Social Contract. It Was Part Of The Tenor Of The Times.

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

In Kosovo, The U.s. Has Chosen A Course Of Action That Escalates Atrocities And Violence. It Is Also A Course Of Action That Strikes A Blow Against The Regime Of International Order, But Which Offers The Weak At Least Some Protection From Predatory States.

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

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.

For The Past Century Or So That's [ Monroe Doctrine] Actually Been True, But It's Declining Very Significantly.

Throughout History, Even The Harshest And Most Shameful Measures Are Regularly Accompanied By Professions Of Noble Intent - And Rhetoric About Bestowing Freedom And Independence.

Take A Look At The Current Debates In Washington, And Of Course, Everything In The Media. Only One Issue Is Discussed: The Deficit - The Least Significant Issue, But The Most Significant Issue For The Banks. The Big Problem, Joblessness, Is Barely Discussed, Even Though That's What The Public Wants, As Polls Clearly Show. That's Even What The Business Press Supports, But The Financial Institutions Are So Powerful That The Only Issue Is The Deficit, And This Runs Right Through The Intellectual Culture.

There Is A Considerable Polarization Taking Place Here, Increasing The Gap Between Rich And Poor. It's Most Dramatic In Third World Countries, Of Course, But In The Rich Countries It's Also Very Noticeable.

State Propaganda, When Supported By The Educated Classes And When No Deviation Is Permitted From It, Can Have A Big Effect. It Was A Lesson Learned By Hitler And Many Others, And It Has Been Pursued To This Day.

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.

I Didn't Pay My Taxes For Years.

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.

The Russians Were Doing A Lot Of Rotten Things, You Can Point To Them. But The Idea That If You Consider What Hans Morgenthau Called "i Called Abuse Of Reality," The Picture Of The World Was Almost The Opposite Of What They Presented. But Somehow This Sells And Is Continually Repeated, At Least In This Kind Of Situation.

The Very Properties Of The Human Mind That Provide An Enormous Scope For Human Genius In Some Domains Will Serve As Barriers To Progress In Other Domains, Just As The Properties That Enable Each Child To Acquire A Complex And Highly Articulated Human Language Block The Acquisition Of Other Imaginable Linguistic Systems.

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