You Don't Have Any Other Society Where The Educated Classes Are So Effectively Indoctrinated And Controlled By A Subtle Propaganda System - A Private System Including Media, Intellectual Opinion Forming Magazines And The Participation Of The Most Highly Educated Sections Of The Population. Such People Ought To Be Referred To As "commissars - For That Is What Their Essential Function Is - To Set Up And Maintain A System Of Doctrines And Beliefs Which Will Undermine Independent Thought And Prevent A Proper Understanding And Analysis Of National And Global Institutions, Issues, And Policies".

-Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky

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Truth

Independent

Issues

More From Noam Chomsky

... The Media Serve The Interests Of State And Corporate Power, Which Are Closely Interlinked, Framing Their Reporting And Analysis In A Manner Supportive Of Established Privilege And Limiting Debate And Discussion Accordingly.

Media

Supportive

Analysis

Governments Don't Control People Like They Used To.

Government

People

Used

Chemistry, Until My Childhood, Not That Long Ago, Was Regarded As A Calculating Device. Because You Couldn't Reduce To Physics. So It's Just Some Way Of Calculating The Result Of Experiments. The Bohr Atom Was Treated That Way.

Long Ago

Childhood

Way

This Sarah Palin Phenomenon Is Very Curious. I Think Somebody Watching Us From Mars — They Would Think The Country Has Gone Insane.

Country

Thinking

Political

Clinton, Kennedy, They All Carried Out Mass Murder, But They Didn't Think That That Was What They Were Doing - Nor Does Bush. You Know, They Were Defending Justice And Democracy From Greater Evils.

Thinking

Evil

Justice

The Prescription For Endless War Poses A Far Greater Danger To Americans Than Perceived Enemies Do, For Reasons The Terrorist Organisations Understand Very Well.

War

Enemy

Reason

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.

War

Agency

Tasks

I Have Written Occasionally On Links Between My Scientific Work And Political Thinking, But Not Much, Because The Links Seem To Me Abstract And Speculative.

Thinking

Political

Links

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

Party

Conservative

Republican

I Am A Child Of The Enlightenment. I Think Irrational Belief Is A Dangerous Phenomenon, And I Try To Consciously Avoid Irrational Belief. On The Other Hand, I Certainly Recognize That It's A Major Phenomenon For People In General, And You Can Understand Why It Would Be. It Does, Apparently, Provide Personal Sustenance, But Also Bonds Of Association And Solidarity And A Means For Expressing Elements Of One's Personality That Are Often Very Valuable Elements. To Many People It Does That. In My View, There's Nothing Wrong With That.

Children

Mean

Thinking

The Main Selling Appeal Of Nafta To Us Corporations Is That It Gives Them An Advantage In The North American Market Over Their European And Japanese Competitors.

Giving

Corporations

Selling

Language Is A Weapon Of Politicians, But Language Is A Weapon In Much Of Human Affairs.

Weapons

Language

Affair

There Are Plenty Of Things That Are Unknown, But Are Assumed Reasonably To Exist, Even In The Most Basic Sciences. Maybe 90 Percent Of The Mass-energy In The Universe Is Called "dark," Because Nobody Knows What It Is.

Dark

Energy

Mass

[isaiah] Berlin's Observation Is Accurate Enough, And Applies At Home As Well, And Even More Harshly For The Reasons Already Mentioned: The Apparatchiks And Commissars Could At Least Plead Fear In Extenuation.

Home

Berlin

Enough

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

Believe

Law

Privilege

Hamas Must Agree To First Recognize Israel, Second To End All Violence, Third To Accept Past Agreements. Try To Find A Mention Of The Fact That The United States And Israel Reject All Three Of Those. They Obviously Don't Recognize Palestine, They Certainly Don't Withdraw The Use Of Violence Or The Threat Of It - In Fact They Insist On It - And They Don't Accept Past Agreements, Including The Road Map.

Past

Israel

Agreement

That's A Large Part Of The Source Of The Gun Culture. You Have To Have A Gun When You Go Into Starbucks, Because Who Knows What's Going To Happen. It Just Doesn't Happen In Other Countries.

Country

Gun

Culture

The Attack On Unions Has Been Far More Extreme Here [in U.s], And It Has Been Much More Successful.

Successful

Unions

Extremes

It Is Only In Folk Tales, Children's Stories, And The Journals Of Intellectual Opinion That Power Is Used Wisely And Well To Destroy Evil. The Real World Teaches Very Different Lessons, And It Takes Willful And Dedicated Ignorance To Fail To Perceive Them.

Children

Real

Ignorance

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.

Needs

Originality

Inspired

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

People

Borders

Flow

By That Time [1966], We Did Begin To Get Some Protests [against Vietnam War]. But Not From Liberal Intellectuals; They Never Opposed The War.

War

Vietnam

Vietnam War

The Literature Is Like That - They [unions] Are Constantly Talking About The Masses, The Danger They Pose, And How To Control Them. They Understand What They're Doing, And They're Very Class Conscious. They Press Policies Which Work For Their Interests.

Talking

Class

Literature

There's A Split In The Us About How This [split] Will Be Resolved. The Main Point To Look At Is The Split Within The Republican Party. The Republican Establishment, And Wall Street, And The Bankers, And The Corporate Executives And So On, They Don't Want This. They Don't Want It At All. It's The Part Of The Base That Is Mobilized That Wants It.

Wall

Party

Bankers

There Have Been Many Measures Taken To Try To Turn The Educational System Towards More Control, More Indoctrination, More Vocational Training, Imposing A Debt, Which Traps Students And Young People Into A Life Of Conformity... That's The Exact Opposite Of [what] Traditionally Comes Out Of The Enlightenment. And There's A Constant Struggle Between Those. In The Colleges, In The Schools, Do You Train For Passing Tests, Or Do You Train For Creative Inquiry?

Educational

Taken

Struggle

There Is Undoubtedly Much To Learn About The Social Uses Of Language, For Communication Or For Other Purposes. But At Present There Is Not Much In The Way Of A Theory Of Sociolinguistics, Of Social Uses Of Languages, As Far As I Am Aware.

Communication

Purpose

Use

The Key Element Of Social Control Is The Strategy Of Distraction That Is To Divert Public Attention From Important Issues And Changes Decided By Political And Economic Elites, Through The Technique Of Flood Or Flooding Continuous Distractions And Insignificant Information.

Keys

Issues

Political

Jingoism, Racism, Fear, Religious Fundamentalism: These Are The Ways Of Appealing To People If You're Trying To Organize A Mass Base Of Support For Policies That Are Really Intended To Crush Them.

Crush

Religious

Racism

The U.s. Directed The War Against South Vietnam. There Was A Political Settlement In 1954. But In The Late '50's The United States Organized An Internal Repression In South Vietnam, Not Using Its Troops, But Using The Local Apparatus It Was Constructing. This Was A Very Significant And Very Effective Campaign Of Violence And Terrorism Against The Vietminh - Which Was The Communist-led Nationalist Force That Fought The French. And The Vietminh At That Time Was Adhering To The Geneva Accords, Hoping That The Political Settlement Would Work Out In South Vietnam.

War

Work Out

Political

It Is Only Natural To Expect That Guilds Will Tend To "protect Their Turf" And To Resist Challenge.

Challenges

Natural

Protect

If The Mutation Is Partially Transmitted To Offspring, They Too Would Have The Advantage. And Over Time It Might Have Come To Dominate A Small Breeding Group.

Groups

Mutation

Might

You Never Know How [donald Trump] Is Going To React. When He Learned For Example That He'd Lost The Election By About Three Million Votes, His Instant Reaction Was Insanity; You Know, Three To Five Million Illegal Immigrants Somehow Were Organized In Some Incredible Fashion To Vote.

Fashion

Insanity

Example

Insofar As The Universities Are Free And Independent, They Will Also Be "subversive," In The Sense That Dominant Structures Of Power And Their Ideological Support Will Be Subjected To Challenge And Critique, A Counterpart To Attitudes That Are Fostered In The Hard Sciences Wherever They Are Taken Seriously.

Attitude

Taken

Independent

If You Assume That There Is No Hope, You Guarantee That There Will Be No Hope. If You Assume That There Is An Instinct For Freedom, That There Are Opportunities To Change Things, Then There Is A Possibility That You Can Contribute To Making A Better World.

Courage

Freedom

Opportunity

Some Innate Capacity - Some Part Of The Human Genetic Endowment - Enters Into Language Acquisition. That Much Is Uncontroversial Among Those Who Believe That Humans Are Part Of The Natural World. If It Were Not True, Would Be A Miracle That My Granddaughter Reflexively Identified Some Elements Of The Blooming Buzzing Confusion As Language-related And Went On To Acquire Capacities Of The Kind That You And I Are Now Exercising, While Her Pet Kitten (chimp, Songbird, Bee...), Presented With Exactly The Same Data, Could Not Take The First Step, Let Alone The Later Ones.

Believe

Exercise

Data

The House Of Representatives, Which Was Closer To The Population, Had Much Less Power. The Executive Was More Or Less An Administrator, Not An Emperor Like Today.

House

Population

Today

That Is What I Have Always Understood To Be The Essence Of Anarchism: The Conviction That The Burden Of Proof Has To Be Placed On Authority, And That It Should Be Dismantled If That Burden Cannot Be Met.

Burden Of Proof

Essence

Anarchy

[health-care System] Is Largely Privatized And Unregulated. So Of Course It's Highly Inefficient And Costly.

Care

Health Care

Courses

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

Horse

Bigs

Automobile

When I Look At Public Opinion, I'm Not Far Out Of The Mainstream. I'm In It, In Many Respects. In Some Respects, Public Opinion Goes Beyond Anything I've Ever Said.

Public Opinion

Looks

Mainstream

Our Concern Is To Help People Counter The Efforts Of Those Who Seek To "regiment The Public Mind Every Bit As Much As An Army Regiments The Bodies Of Its Soldiers," So That The Self-designated "responsible Men" Will Be Able To Run The Affairs Of The World Untroubled By The "bewildered Herd" - The General Public - Who Are To Be Marginalized And Dispersed, Directed To Personal Concerns, In A Well-regulated "democracy."

Running

Army

Men

The First Step Is To Penetrate The Clouds Of Deceit And Distortion And Learn The Truth About The World, Then To Organize And Act To Change It. That's Never Been Impossible And Never Been Easy.

Clouds

Political

Deceit

England Shouldn't Have The Real Freedom Of Vote And We Shouldn't Either. Because As [james Madison] Put It, One Of The Primary Goals Of Government Was To Protect The Minority Of The Opulent Against The Majority, To Make Sure The Opulent Maintain Their Rights. The Constitutional System Was Structured To Ensure That Outcome.

Real

Rights

Government

The Fact Of The Matter Is That The U.s. Is Run By An Unusually Class-conscious, Dedicated Business Class That Has A Very Violent Labor History, Much Worse Than In Europe.

Running

Europe

Class

The United States Is Going To Continue To Punish Iran Because Of Its Defiance.

Iran

United States

Defiance

We Don't Live In Tyrannies, You Know, The King Doesn't Decide What's Legitimate, And There's Much More Freedom Than There Was In The Past.

Kings

Past

Tyranny

Mexico Is A Pretty Poor Country, But They Are Maintaining A Free, High Quality Public Education System, Not For Everyone Of Course But Pretty Substantial.

Country

Quality

Mexico

During The Terrorist Regime In Haiti In The 1990s, The Cia, Under The Administration Of Bill Clinton, Was Reporting To Congress That Oil Shipments Had Been Blocked From Entering Haiti. That Was Just A Lie. I Was There. You Could See The Oil Terminals Being Built And The Ships Coming In.

Lying

Oil

Entering

Education Is A System Of Imposed Ignorance.

Education

Ignorance

Thrive

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.

Israel

Black

Population

Syria Is Descending Into Suicide. It's A Horror Story And Getting Worse And Worse. There's No Bright Spot On The Horizon. What Will Probably Happen, If This Continues, Is That Syria Will Be Partitioned Into Probably Three Regions; A Kurdish Region - Which Is Already Forming - That Could Pull Out And Join In Some Fashion The Semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, Maybe With Some Kind Of Deal With Turkey.

Suicide

Fashion

Kind

Half The Population Hold That The Government Is Run By A Few Big Interests Looking Out For Themselves, As Polls Regularly Show.

Running

Government

Population

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.

Law

Ideas

Creating

It's Not Radical Islam That Worries The Us -- It's Independence

Worry

Independence

Islam

The Iranian Government Is Undoubtedly A Severe Danger To Its Own Population, But Not Beyond That.

Government

Population

Danger

There Are Cases - For Example, The American Revolution. George Washington's Army Lost Just About Every Battle With The British, Who Had A Much Better Army. The War Was Basically Won By Guerrilla Forces That Managed To Undermine The British Occupation.

War

Army

Battle

The Country That Consistently Ranks Among The Highest In Educational Achievement Is Finland. A Rich Country, But Education Is Free. Germany, Education Is Free. France, Education Is Free.

Country

Educational

Rich Countries

The Entire Socioeconomic System Is Based On Production For Profit And A Growth Imperative That Cannot Be Sustained.

Growth

Profit

Imperatives

Independent Development Can Be A Virus That Can Infect Others.

[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.

East Germany

Agreement

People

To Pay Attention To The Actual Core Of The Movement - That Would Be Pretty Hard. Can You Concentrate For Example On Either The Policy Issues Or The Creation Of Functioning Democratic Communities Of Mutual Support And Say, Well, That's What's Lacking In Our Country That's Why We Don't Have A Functioning Democracy - A Community Of Real Participation. That's Really Important. And That Always Gets Smashed.

Country

Real

Mutual Support

The People Who Live On The Land - Israelis And Palestinians - Have A Right To Live In Security And Peace.

Land

People

Palestinian

Regulate The Banks, Get Money Out Of Elections; Raise The Minimum Wage, Environmental Issues. They're All Very Important And The Occupy Movement Made A Difference. It Shifted Not Only The Discourse But To Some Extent, Action On These Issues.

Differences

Issues

Environmental

Independence Of Mind, Enthusiasm, Dedication To The Field, And Willingness To Challenge And Question And To Explore New Direction. There Are Plenty Of People Like That, But Schools Tend To Discourage Those Characteristics.

School

Dedication

People

How Many Educated Americans Can Even Remember The Names Of The Assassinated Jesuit Intellectuals Of El Salvador, Or Would Know Where To Find A Word They Wrote? The Answers Are Revealing, Particularly When We Draw The Striking - And Historically Typical - Contrast To The Attitudes Towards Their Counterparts In Enemy Domains.

Attitude

Names

Enemy

Contemporary Technology Could Be Used To Eliminate Ownership And Management Of Corporations. It Could Be Used To Provide - Lets Say Apple Computers. In Principle Information Technology Could Be Used To Provide Direct Information To The Work Force On The Ground So That They Could Democratically Decide What The Company Would Do, Eliminating The Role Of Management. It Could Be Used For That. People Aren't Developing Technology For That Purpose.

Technology

Apples

People

We Must Present A National Persona Of Being Irrational And Vindictive, Because That's Going To Terrify People. And Then, They'll Back Off. And This Is Not [donald] Trump, This Is [bill] Clinton. It's Not [richard] Nixon, You Know. We Have To Be Irrational And Vindictive, Because That's Going To Frighten People.

People

Bills

Clinton

On Abortion: We Are Talking About Ambiguous Issues Of A Complicated Kind Where You Have To Balance Conflicting Interests And Concerns.

Talking

Issues

Abortion

The Earthquake In Haiti Was A Class-based Catastrophe. It Didn't Much Harm The Wealthy Elite Up In The Hills, They Were Shaken But Not Destroyed. On The Other Hand The People Who Were Living In The Miserable Urban Slums, Huge Numbers Of Them, They Were Devastated. Maybe A Couple Hundred Thousand Were Killed. How Come They Were Living There? They Were Living There Because Of-it Goes Back To The French Colonial System-but In The Past Century, They Were Living There Because Of Us Policies, Consistent Policies.

Couple

Past

Hands

U.s. Has No Feudal Background, So Institutions That Remained In Place In Europe Did Not Remain In Place Here.

Europe

Institutions

Backgrounds

Wikileaks Is A Democratizing Force. Its Giving Individuals Access To Decisions And Thinking By Their Representatives And In A Democracy That Ought To Be Reflexive.

Thinking

Giving

Decision

Take The Iraq War,it's The Second Worst Crime After The Second World War. It's The First Time In History, In The History Of Imperialism, There Were Huge Demonstrations, Before The War Was Officially Launched.

War

Iraq

World

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.

Party

Iran

Ideas

The Process Of Shaping Opinion, Attitudes, And Perceptions Was Termed The 'engineering Of Consent' By One Of The Founders Of The Modern Public Relations Industry, Edward Bernays.

Attitude

Engineering

Perception

There Is A Noticeable General Difference Between The Sciences And Mathematics On The One Hand, And The Humanities And Social Sciences On The Other. It's A First Approximation, But One That Is Real. In The Former, The Factors Of Integrity Tend To Dominate More Over The Factors Of Ideology. It's Not That Scientists Are More Honest People. It's Just That Nature Is A Harsh Taskmaster. You Can Lie Or Distort The Story Of The French Revolution As Long As You Like, And Nothing Will Happen. Propose A False Theory In Chemistry, And It'll Be Refuted Tomorrow.

Integrity

Real

Lying

The Criminalization Of Black Life Was Something Specific To The United States In The Post-reconstruction Period And There's Something Like It Happening Today With Mass Incarceration, Directed Largely Against Black Males.

Black

Males

United States

Optimism Is A Strategy For Making A Better Future. Because Unless You Believe That The Future Can Be Better, You Are Unlikely To Step Up And Take Responsibility For Making It So.

Believe

Future

Optimistic

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.

Rights

Majority

Minorities

A Basic Principle Of Modern State Capitalism Is That Costs And Risks Are Socialized To The Extent Possible, While Profit Is Privatized.

Risk

Principles

Cost

The Elections Are Run By The Same Guys Who Sell Toothpaste. They Show You An Image Of A Sports Hero, Or A Sexy Model, Or A Car Going Up A Sheer Cliff Or Something, Which Has Nothing To Do With The Commodity, But It's Intended To Delude You Into Picking This One Rather Than Another One.

Sports

Sexy

Running

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.

Class

Lesson Learned

Lessons

The British Had An Even Stronger [then America] Business Interest In Nazi Germany. And Benito Mussolini Was Greatly Admired.

America

Stronger

Germany

The Term 'globalisation' Is Conventionally Used To Refer To The Specific Form Of Investor-rights Integration Designed By Wealth And Power, For Their Own Interests.

Rights

Wealth

Used

Internal Security Means Something. It Means War Against Your Own Population.

War

Mean

Population

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

United States

Crisis

Horrible

South America Has Virtually Broken Away In The Last Decade. That's An Event Of Historic Significance. South America Just Doesn't Follow Us Orders. In Fact There Isn't A Single Us Military Base Left There.

Military

America

Order

China Has Been There For 3,000 Years, Has Contempt For The Barbarians, Is Overcoming A Century Of Domination, And Simply Moves On Its Own. It Does Not Get Intimidated When Uncle Sam Shakes His Fist. That's Scary.

Uncles

Moving

Years

I Organized Tax Resistance In 1965, With A Friend. I Kept At It For About Ten Years. I Don't See It As A Principle, It's A Tactic. And I Felt I Had Exhausted Its Potential As A Tactic Right About Then, So I Stopped.

Years

Principles

Tactics

As Any Good Teacher Knows, The Methods Of Instruction And The Range Of Material Covered Are Matters Of Small Importance As Compared With The Success In Arousing The Natural Curiosity Of The Students And Stimulating Their Interest In Exploring On Their Own.

Teacher

Teaching

Curiosity

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.

Powerful

Groups

Done

What's Called "liberal" In The Intelectual Culture Means Highly Conformist To Power, But Mildly Critical.

Mean

Culture

Critical

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

Thinking

Iran

Enemy

Stock Ownership In The Us Is Very Highly Concentrated. [shareholder Actions Are] Something, But It's Like The Old Communist Party In The Ussr, It Would Be Nice To See More Protest Inside The Communist Party But It's Not Democracy. It's Not Going To Happen. [shareholder Actions] Are A Good Step, But They're Mostly Symbolic.

Nice

Party

Democracy

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.

Years

People

Salary

Honduras Has Become A Murder Capital Of The World; There's Horrible Atrocities, Infanticide, Murder Of Women Is Way Up, And People Are Fleeing In Desperation. They Come To The Border, And We Put Them In Trucks And Send Them Back To Mexico To Die. And Here People Are Scared Of Illegal Immigrants - That's What We're Doing. It's Pretty Shocking.

People

Atrocities

Fleeing

I Don't See Any Possibility Of Britain And The U.s. Allowing A Sovereign Independent Iraq; That's Almost Inconceivable.

Independent

Iraq

Sovereign

It's Easy To Put [serious Threats] Aside, And The Media Don't Talk About Them. Other Things Are More Important. How Am I Going To Put Food On The Table Tomorrow? That's What I've Got To Worry About, And So On. It's Very Serious, But It's Hard To Bring Out The Enormity Of These Issues, When They Do Not Have The Dramatic Character Of Something You Can Show In The Movies, With A Nuclear Weapons Falling And Everything Disappears.

Fall

Character

Media

I Have Often Thought That If A Rational Fascist Dictatorship Were To Exist, Then It Would Choose The American System.

Fascists

Fascism

Dictatorship

Enormous And Growing Parts Of The Population Are Basically Superfluous For Profit-making Purposes. Along With This, The Jail Population Is Increasing Very Rapidly; It's The Highest In The Industrial World By Far. New And Onerous Crime Bills Are Being Passed To Deal With This Superfluous Population.

Jail

Population

Purpose

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

People

Would Be

Done

The Number Of Illegal Firings Tripled During The [ronald] Reagan Years. It Was At That Time That You Started Getting These Companies That Specialized In How To Destroy Unions.

Years

Numbers

Unions

The Idea That You Have To Drop Any Thing That You Might Be Interested In Doing Because You Have To Pass That Test Tomorrow And It's Something That You're Not Interested In, That's Just The Opposite Of Education. It's Also Harming Teaching, Because The Teachers Are Evaluated By The Results Of The Test.

Teacher

Teaching

Ideas

There Are Very Deep And Restrictive Principles That Determine The Nature Of Human Language And Are Rooted In The Specific Character Of The Human Mind

Character

Mind

Principles

It Was Right After Woodrow Wilson's First Serious Post-world War I Repression, Which Deported Thousands Of People, Effectively Destroyed Unions And Independent Press, And So On. Right After That, The Anti-immigration Law Was Passed That Remained In Place Until The 1960s.

War

Independent

Law

Technology Is Usually Fairly Neutral. It’s Like A Hammer, Which Can Be Used To Build A House Or To Destroy Someone’s Home. The Hammer Doesn’t Care. It Is Almost Always Up To Us To Determine Whether The Technology Is Good Or Bad.

Home

Technology

House

Another Recollection Is That [ Paul Johnson] Mostly Kept Away From Ideas And Dedicated Activism, And Concentrated On Sex Lives And Other Gossip.

Sex

Ideas

Gossip

I Think We Can Be Reasonably Confident That If The American Population Had The Slightest Idea Of What Is Being Done In Their Name, They Would Be Utterly Appalled.

Thinking

Names

Ideas

The Missile Defense Component Is A Minor Feature That Nobody Takes Very Seriously. Nobody Really Believes That The Us Is Trying To Protect Itself From North Korea. That's Not Serious. But The Militarization Of Space Is Quite Serious.

Believe

Space

Korea

I Do Not See How We Can Rationally Oppose High Speed Rail Because Of The Environmental And Other Costs Without Considering The Social And Human Consequences Of The Radical Elimination Of Transportation That This Entails.

Environmental

Cost

Speed

In Any Case, It Is Better To Have Some Deal Than No Deal, But It's Interesting That Obama Picked The Day Of Implementing Of Iran Deal To Impose New Sanctions On North Korea.

Iran

Korea

Interesting

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

Latin

Sea

Luxury

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.

Thinking

Assessment

Understanding

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

Running

Unusual

We Don't Have Polls From The Business World, But It's Pretty Clear That The Energy Corporations In America Would Be Quite Happy To Be Given Authorization To Go Back Into Iran Instead Of Leaving All That To Their Rivals. But The State Won't Allow It. And It Is Setting Up Confrontations Right Now, Very Explicitly. Part Of The Reason Is Strategic, Geo-political, Economic, But Part Of The Reason Is The Mafia Complex. They Have To Be Punished For Disobeying Us.

Iran

America

Political

Some Kind Of Settlement In Kashmir Is Crucial For Both India And Pakistan. It's Also Tearing India Apart With Horrible Atrocities In The Region Which Is Controlled By Indian Armed Forces. This Is Feeding Right Back Into Society Even In The Domain Of Elementary Civil Rights.

Rights

India And Pakistan

Kashmir

All Media Depend On Advertisement To Survive.

Media

Advertisements

Depends

The Pashtuns In Particular Are Kind Of Trapped. They've Never Accepted The Durand Line Nor Has Any Afghan Government Historically Accepted It.

Government

Lines

Kind

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

War

Iran

Oil

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.

Character

Cutting

Simple

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.

Disappointment

Hard Work

Law

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.

Real

World

Illusion

If You're Teaching Today What You Were Teaching Five Years Ago, Either The Field Is Dead Or You Are.

Teaching

Years

Today

The Labor Movement Had Been Pretty Much Killed In The 1920s, Almost Destroyed. It Revived In The 1930s And Made A Huge Difference. By The Late 1930s The Business World Was Already Trying To Find Ways To Beat It Back.

Differences

Trying

Movement

Nobody Should Have Any Illusions. The United States Has Essentially A One-party System And The Ruling Party Is The Business Party.

Party

Should Have

United States

There's A Radical Insurgency, Which Is A Large Part Of The Republican Base, Which Is Willing To Do Anything, Destroy The Country, Whatever, In Order To Get Rid Of This Affordable Care Act. That's The One Thing That They're Able To Hang Onto.

Country

Order

Care

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

Smart

Passivity Is

People

There Was A Time Traditionally - Say, Gm In The 1950s - It Was Trying To Develop A Consumer Base That Would Be Loyal And Lasting And They Were Thinking In Terms Of An Institution That Would Remain And Grow And Thrive In The Society. By Now, A Lot Of The Investment Firms - Bankers, Hedge Funds - Are Perfectly Happy To Destroy What They're In And Come Out With Huge, Tremendous Benefits. That's A New Stage Of Capitalism.

Thinking

Trying

Bankers

It's True That Language Is In A Sense Linear But That Is As Obvious As Perceptual Space Is Three-dimensional.

Space

Three

Language

Well, In Fact If You Look At The Trump Voters, You Take A Look At Their Attitudes It's Not All That Different. In Some Respects They're Similar. They're An Older Version Of The Sanders People. So A Lot Of It Is Racist And You Have That Sort Of Thing, But If You Look At Their Views On Say Health, Education, And So On, It's Kind Of The Same As Sanders.

Attitude

Views

Health Education

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."

Years

Political

United States

I Don't Buy Much. Almost Buy Nothing. I Buy What I Need, Do It The Easiest Way Possible.

Needs

Way

Just Media Alone Is Not Enough. You Have To Have Organization.

Media

Organization

Enough

As For The Various Religions, There's No Doubt That They Are Very Meaningful To Adherents, And Allow Them To Delude Themselves Into Thinking There Is Some Meaning To Their Lives Beyond What We Agree Is The Case. I'd Never Try To Talk Them Out Of The Delusions, Which Are Necessary For Them To Live A Life That Makes Some Sense To Them. These Beliefs Can Provide A Framework For Deeds That Are Noble Or Savage, And Anywhere In Between, And There's Every Reason To Focus Attention On The Deeds And The Background For Them, To The Extent That We Can Grasp It.

Meaningful

Thinking

Focus

Well Before September 11, It Was Understood That With Modern Technology, The Rich And Powerful Will Lose Their Near Monopoly Of The Means Of Violence And Can Expect To Suffer Atrocities On Home Soil.

Powerful

Home

Mean

There Is Massive Propaganda For Everyone To Consume. Consumption Is Good For Profits And Consumption Is Good For The Political Establishment.

Political

Propaganda

Profit

As Elite Attitudes Towards Public Education Over Time Illustrate, Simple Formulas Are Far From Adequate. There Are Conflicting Tendencies.

Attitude

Simple

Adequate

Under Capitalism, We Can't Have Democracy By Definition. Capitalism Is A System In Which The Central Institutions Of Society Are In Principle Under Autocratic Control.

Democracy

Principles

Definitions

Cuba Has Become A Symbol Of Courageous Resistance To Attack. Since 1959, Cuba Has Been Under Attack From The Hemispheric Superpower.

Cuba

Resistance

Courageous

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.

Crush

Blow

People

In Fact, What Were Called The Socialist Countries In Eastern Europe Were The Most Anti-socialist Systems In The World. Workers Had More Rights In The United States And England Than They Had In Russia, And It Was Somehow Still Called Socialism.

Country

Russia

Rights

There Could Be An Independent Labor-based Party, Which Might Over Time Become An Important Force The Way The Labor Party Did In England. To All Of These Things There Are Plenty Of Barriers, In The Culture And In The Social And Political Institutions, The Concentration Of Economic Power. But These Are Not Insuperable Barriers, I Think. They Can Be Overcome. And It Is Urgent That This Be Done, Because There Are Really Incredible Problems That Are Simply Not Being Addressed.

Party

Independent

Thinking

All Forms Of Involuntary Servitude Are Prohibited, Not Only Slavery But Also Conscription, Forced Association, And Forced Welfare Distribution.

Slavery

Association

Welfare

If Something Comes Along That You Don't Like, There Are A Few Sort Of Four-letter Words That You Can Use To Push It Out Of The Sphere Of Discussion. If You Were In A Bar Downtown, They Might Have Different Words, But If You're An Educated Person What You Use Are Complicated Words Like "conspiracy Theory" Or "marxist." It's A Way Of Pushing Unpleasant Questions Off The Agenda So That We Can Continue In Our Own Happy Ideology.

Downtown

Agendas

Four

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.

War

Lying

Support

My Position Is That We Should Not Succumb To Irrational Belief.

Belief

Should

Irrational

From A Comparative Perspective, The United States Is Unusual If Not Unique In The Lack Of Restraints On Freedom Of Expression. It Is Also Unusual In The Range And Effectiveness Of Methods Employed To Restrain Freedom Of Thought... Where The Voice Of The People Is Heard, Elite Groups Must Insure Their Voice Says The Right Things.

Unique

Expression

Voice

Like Most Technology, The Internet Has Mixed Effects. It's A Neutral Instrument.

Technology

Internet

Instruments

There Have, For Years, Been Comparative Studies Of Religious Fanaticism And Factors That Correlate With It. By And Large, It Tends To Decline With Increasing Industrialization And Education. The Us, However, Is Off The Chart, Ranking Near Devastated Peasant Societies. About 1/2 The Population Believe The World Was Created A Few Thousand Years Ago: The Justification For The Belief Is That That Is What They Were Ordered To Believe By Authority Figures To Whom They Were Taught One Must Subordinate Oneself. And On, And On.

Religious

Believe

Years

Donald Trump And Sean Spicer Do One Thing After Another To Keep The Media Attention Focused On Them. And It Works. These Legislative Achievements Are Being Made Which Are Chipping Away At Anything The Government Has That's Of Any Use To Anybody. Paul Ryan, I Think, Is The Most Dangerous Guy In The Government. He Knows What He's Doing. And It's Very Systematic. I Presume He's Behind The Cabinet Appointments, But It's Pretty Amazing That Every Single Cabinet Appointment Is Somebody Devoted To Destroying That Part Of Government.

Thinking

Achievement

Guy

The Point Of Advertising Is To Destroy Markets.

Advertising

The "end Of History" Has Been Proclaimed Many Times, Always Falsely.

Ends

Has Beens

If The Nuremberg Laws Were Applied, Then Every Post-war American President Would Have Been Hanged.

War

Law

President

The Question In Brief, Is Whether Democracy And Freedom Are Values To Be Preserved Or Threats To Be Avoided . . . Democracy And Freedom Are More Than Values To Be Treasured; They May Well Be Essential To Survival.

Survival

Democracy

Essentials

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.

Latin

Wings

America

English Is A Second Language In Most Of The Educated Sectors Of Europe And Much Of The World. But Maybe In The Future Chinese Will Be. But I Doubt That National Languages Will Disappear. In Fact, To Some Extent They're Becoming More Diverse, Like In Europe.

Europe

Doubt

Chinese

If You Claim To Have A Theory That Deduces Unexpected Consequences From Nontrivial Principles, Let's See It.

Principles

Unexpected

Theory

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

Purpose

Half

Tactics

It's Only Terrorism If They Do It To Us. When We Do Much Worse To Them, It's Not Terrorism.

Terrorism

Ifs

It's Not A Free Trade Agreement. It Has Virtually Nothing To Do With Free Trade... It's A Protectionist Agreement; It's Anti Free-trade.

Agreement

Trade

Free Trade

If You Owned Everything And A Tiny Little Piece Gets Out Of Control, Then Your World's Gone. Like Some Unusual Child Who Has A Million Toys And One Of Them Is Stolen, He's Going To Perish.

Children

Gone

Pieces

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

School

Virginia

Law

There's A Tremendous Gap Between Public Opinion And Public Policy.

Public Opinion

Gaps

Policy

If [respulicans] Can't Get Rid Of [obamacare], They're Going To Have To Tell Their Base, We've Been Lying To You For The Last Five Years. So They're Willing To Go To Almost Any Extent To Do That. That's Unusual, In Fact I Think It's Unique In The History Of Modern Parliamentary Systems. And It's Very Dangerous For The Country And For The World.

Country

Lying

Unique

If You And I Go Into A Store To Rob It, And I Say "shoot," That's Not Protected. Like All Judicial Decisions And Legislation, This Leaves Plenty Of Gray Areas, Including Many Of Great Significance That Are Rarely Discussed: Advocacy Of Imminent War Crimes, Such As Aggression, For Example. I Think We Would All Agree That Such Speech Should Be Protected, Despite The Often Horrific Consequences, But It's Worth Noting That That Stretches The Doctrine To Its Limits.

War

Thinking

Decision

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.

Latin

Moving

Independent

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

Edification

Too Much

Reason Why

Science Talks About Very Simple Things, And Asks Hard Questions About Them. As Soon As Things Become Too Complex, Science Can't Deal With Them... But It's A Complicated Matter: Science Studies What's At The Edge Of Understanding, And What's At The Edge Of Understanding Is Usually Fairly Simple. And It Rarely Reaches Human Affairs. Human Affairs Are Way Too Complicated.

Simple

Understanding

Matter

Iran Has Been Calling For It For Years, And The Arab Countries Support It. Everyone Except The United States And Israel Support It. The U.s. Won't Allow It Because It Means Inspecting Israel's Nuclear Weapons. The U.s. Has Continued To Block It, And In Fact Blocked It Again Just A Couple Of Days Ago; It Just Wasn't Widely Reported. Iran's Nuclear Program, As U.s. Intelligence Points Out, Is Deterrent, And The Bottom Line Is That The U.s. And Israel Don't Want Iran To Have A Deterrent.

Country

Couple

Block

With Regard To Freedom Of Expression There Are Basically Two Positions: You Defend It Vigorously For Views You Hate, Or You Reject It In Favor Of Stalinist/fascist Standards.

Hate

Views

Expression

I Really Suggest Listening To Talk Radio. I Mean, If You Just Listen To What The Talk Hosts Are Saying, They Sound Like They Are Lunatics.

Mean

Listening

Sound

Optimism Is A Strategy For Making A Better Future. Because Unless You Believe That The Future Can Be Better, It’s Unlikely You Will Step Up And Take Responsibility For Making It So. If You Assume That There’s No Hope, You Guarantee That There Will Be No Hope. If You Assume That There Is An Instinct For Freedom, There Are Opportunities To Change Things, There’s A Chance You May Contribute To Making A Better World. The Choice Is Yours.

Leadership

Believe

Responsibility

The European Reaction To Obama Is A European Delusion.

Reactions

Delusion

Greece, Alone, Is In A Very Vulnerable Position. If The Greeks Had Had Support From Progressive Left And Popular Forces Elsewhere In Europe They Might Have Been Able To Resist The Demands Of The Troika, But They Had Almost No Support. Not Even From Portugal, Spain, Or Other Left Forces. They Were Left Alone.

Europe

Support

Greek

Education Is Imposed Ignorance.

Ignorance

I Would, However, Question The Implication That There Is Some Novelty In This Beyond Modalities [of Mikhail Bakunin], Which Naturally Change As Institutions Change And Develop.

Novelty

Institutions

Implications

In Fact, Some Leaders Come Right Out And Say It. Mario Draghi The President Of The European Central Bank Had An Interview With The Wall St Journal In Which He Said The Social Contract's Dead; We Finally Got Rid Of It.

Wall

Leader

President

The World Was Warned Of Extremely Severe Dangers Unless Urgent Steps Are Taken To Deal With Global Warming.

Taken

World

Steps

No Use In Waiting, We Can All Work Hard To Bring About Changes.

Hard Work

Waiting

Use

What Is "credibility"? It's A Very Familiar Notion. It's Basically The Notion That Is Central To The Mafia. So Suppose Say The Godfather Produces Some Kind Of Edict And Says You're Going To Have To Pay Protection Money.

Mafia

Pay

Kind

The Us Is A Business-run Huckster Society, And Its Primary Value Is Deceit.

Running

Deceit

Primaries

When Britain And The U.s. Invaded Iraq, It Was With The Reasonable Expectation That It Was Going To Increase The Threat Of Terror, As It Has.

Iraq

Expectations

Increase

It Has Been Known For Some Time That A Major Nuclear War Might Lead To Nuclear Winter That Would Destroy The Attacker As Well As The Target. And Threats Are Now Mounting, Particularly At The Russian Border, Confirming The Prediction Of George Kennan And Other Prominent Figures That Nato Expansion, Particularly The Way It Was Undertaken, Would Prove To Be A "tragic Mistake," A "policy Error Of Historic Proportions."

War

Mistake

Winter

Historically, Several Policy Domains, Including That Of Foreign Policy Towards The Us And India, Budget Allocations Etc, Have Been Controlled By The Pakistani Military, And The Civil-military Divide Can Be Said To Be The Most Fundamental Fracture In Pakistan's Body Politic.

Military

Pakistan

Fundamentals

If You Ask The Ceo Of Some Major Corporation What He Does, He Will Say, In All Honesty, That He Is Slaving 20 Hours A Day To Provide His Customers With The Best Goods Or Services He Can And Creating The Best Possible Working Conditions For His Employees.

Honesty

Creating

Corporations

Sectors Of Power Are Not Going To Favor The Flourishing Of Dissidence.

Favors

Flourishing

Some Kind Of Settlement In Kashmir Is Crucial For Both Countries [pakistan And India]. It's Also Tearing India Apart With Horrible Atrocities In The Region Which Is Controlled By Indian Armed Forces.

Country

India

Atrocities

I Don't Like Piracy But If Anybody's Concerned About Piracy, Why Don't They Pay Attention To Our Role In It?

Roles

Attention

Pay

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

Thinking

People

Indoctrination

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

Men

Want

Certain

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.

War

Mean

Media

The United States Is A Very Insular Society. Most People Know Very Little About The Outside World And Don't Care That Much. They're Concerned With Their Own Affairs.

People

Care

Littles

After The First International Days Of Protest In October, 1965, Senator Mansfield Criticized The 'sense Of Utter Irresponsibility' Shown By The Demonstrators.

Firsts

October

Protest

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.

Military

War

Support

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

Mean

Army

Past

Bolivia Is A Striking Example. The Mostly White, Europeanized Elite, Which Is A Minority, Happens To Be Sitting On Most Of The Hydrocarbon Reserves. For The First Time Bolivia Is Becoming Democratic. So It's Therefore Bitterly Hated By The West, Which Despises Democracy, Because It's Much Too Dangerous.

White

Democracy

Example

The Social System Is Taking On A Form In Which Finding Out What You Want To Do Is Less And Less Of An Option Because Your Life Is Too Structured, Organised, Controlled And Disciplined.

Want

Life Is

Social

In The United States Everyone Is An Illegal Immigrant - Everyone Except The People In Indian Reservations. This Is An Immigrant Society.

People

United States

Illegal

America Is A Very Fundamentalist Society. It's Like Iran In The Degree Of Fanatic Religious Commitment.

Religious

Commitment

Iran

Human Language Is Nothing Like The Signalling Systems Of Other Animals.

Animal

Language

Humans

Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

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

1. Defining Quotes

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

2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

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

2.2. Providing Evidence

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

2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

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

3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

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

3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

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

3.3. Block Quotes

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

4. Proper Usage of Quotes

4.1. Contextual Relevance

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

4.2. Integration into Your Writing

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

4.3. Attribution and Citation

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

5. Common Mistakes to Avoid

5.1. Overusing Quotes

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

5.2. Lack of Analysis

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

5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

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

6. Quotes in Different Contexts

6.1. Academic Writing

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

6.2. Journalism

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

6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

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

7. Punctuation and Formatting

Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:

Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.

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

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

8. Ethical Considerations

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

9. Tools for Managing Quotes

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

Conclusion

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

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