In 1963, the U.N. Security Council declared a voluntary arms embargo on South Africa. That was extended to a mandatory embargo in 1977. And that was followed by economic sanctions and other measures – sometimes officials, countries, cities, towns – some organized by popular movements.
The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.
Reagan was extreme. Beginning of his administration, one of the first things was to call in scabs – hadn’t been done for a long time, and it’s illegal in most countries – in the air controller strike.
In some respects, South African apartheid was more vicious than Israeli practices, and in some respects the opposite is true.
Since the civil war in Laos was resumed in earnest in 1963, American participation has been veiled in secrecy.
It is easier to go to the Internet than to go to the library, undoubtedly. But the shift from no libraries to the existence of libraries was a much greater shift than what we’ve seen with the Internet’s development.
State formation has been a brutal project, with many hideous consequences. But the results exist, and their pernicious aspects should be overcome.
In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress ‘suspects.’
I don’t want followers.
In general, I think, U.S. policies remain constant, going back to the Second World War. But the capacity to implement them is declining.
History shows that, more often than not, loss of sovereignty leads to liberalisation imposed in the interests of the powerful.
I have never really thought that the Left was much in ‘array’ as far as political purposes were concerned.
When Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter. If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy.
I like Gramsci. He’s an important person.
The ‘peace movement’ exists only in the fantasies of the paranoid.
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.
Part of the population of Laos lives in urban centers, Vientiane being the largest.
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.
If you do a Google search, you will probably read a lot of stuff about how I am someone who wants to kill all the Jews and hates the United States.
The 1950s and 1960s had been a period of enormous growth, the highest in American history, maybe in economic history.
I have trouble reading modern Hebrew. In the 1950s, I could read anything. I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with contemporary Hebrew. It’s quite difficult.
Armed attack has a definition in international law. It means sudden, overwhelming, instantaneous ongoing attack.
There happen to be a lot of people around who spent an hour on the Internet and think they know a lot of physics, but it doesn’t work like that… There’s a reason there are graduate schools in these departments.
In 1961, the United States began chemical warfare in Vietnam, South Vietnam, chemical warfare to destroy crops and livestock. That went on for seven years. The level of poison – they used the most extreme carcinogen known: dioxin. And this went on for years.
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.
In a democracy, in a functioning democracy, what would be happening is that popular organizations, unions, political groupings, others would be developing their programs, putting them forth, insisting that their representatives implement those programs.
We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won’t be a world – at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others.
From the U.S. point of view, negotiations are, in effect, a way for Israel to continue its policies of systematically taking over whatever it wants in the West Bank, maintaining the brutal siege on Gaza, separating Gaza from the West Bank and, of course, occupying the Syrian Golan heights, all with full U.S. support.
Popular struggles to bring about a freer and more just society have been resisted by violence and repression, and massive efforts to control opinion and attitudes. Over time, however, they have met with considerable success, even though there is a long way to go, and there is often regression.
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.
Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense.
I do not think psychoanalysis has a scientific basis. If we can’t explain why a cockroach decides to turn left, how can we explain why a human being decides to do something?
I know some really outstanding Turkish journalists, and have been pleased and honored to be able to join with them a few times in their courageous protests against state terror and repression.
Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.
A siege is an act of war.
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.
Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.
Whatever the reasons may be, I was very much affected by events of the 1930s – the Spanish Civil War, for example, though I was barely literate.
In the late 19th century there was a major union organization, Knights of Labor, and also a radical populist movement based on farmers. It’s hard to believe, but it was based in Texas, and it was quite radical. They wanted their own banks, their own cooperatives, their own control over sales and commerce.
Israel is following policies which maximise its security threats… policies which choose expansion over security… policies which lead to their moral degradation, their isolation, their delegitimation, as they call it now, and very likely ultimate destruction. That’s not impossible.
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.
Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.
The ‘free-floating intellectual’ may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.
Up until the First World War, when people turned anti-German, Germany had been described by American political scientists as the model of democracy.
There are two problems for our species’ survival – nuclear war and environmental catastrophe – and we’re hurtling towards them. Knowingly.
By most accounts, Aristide is the most popular figure in Haiti.
Before the 1970s, banks were banks. They did what banks were supposed to do in a state capitalist economy: they took unused funds from your bank account, for example, and transferred them to some potentially useful purpose like helping a family buy a home or send a kid to college.
Everyone who is critical of Israeli policy is deluged by crazed messages intended to flood their email system or, more insidiously, passwords are accessed and messages sent out under their name! I’m sure it’s illegal. It’s also an effort to undermine free speech.
American decline is real, though the apocalyptic vision reflects the familiar ruling class perception that anything short of total control amounts to total disaster.
The Internet has compromised the quality of debate.
When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.
The truth is, I have absolutely no professional credentials – literally, which is why I’m teaching at MIT.
I haven’t read Horowitz. I didn’t used to read him when he was a Stalinist, and I don’t read him today.
What’s important in Libya is, first of all, it has a good deal of oil. A lot of the country is unexplored; there may be a lot more. And it’s very high-quality oil, so very valuable.
The Vietnamese see their history as an unending series of struggles of resistance to aggression, by the Chinese, the Mongols, the Japanese, the French, and now the Americans.
France had a policy, initiated by General de Gaulle, of trying to turn Europe into what was then called a ‘third force,’ independent of the two superpowers, so Europe should pursue an independent course.
