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If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
Computer Scientist
Historian
Human Rights Activist
Linguist
Media Critic
Opinion Journalist
Pedagogue
Philosopher
East Oak Lane
Philadelphia
Avram Noam Chomsky
A. Noam Chomsky
Chomsky
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The uniformity and obedience of the media, which any dictator would admire...
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Take a look at the bombing of Serbia in 1999. The US was quite open about the reasons for the bombing. A main reason was to preserve stability and credibility. Serbia was interfering with stability, meaning that it was the one part of the Balkans that was not integrated into the Western-dominated (mostly US-dominated) system.
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I don't think that any deal was needed: Iran was not a threat. Even if Iran were a threat, there was a very easy way to handle it - by establishing a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, which is something that nearly everyone in the world wants.
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[Health-care system] is largely privatized and unregulated. So of course it's highly inefficient and costly.
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In southern culture, possession of a gun became kind of a sign of manhood, not just because of slaves but other white men. If you had a gun, you're not going to push me around. You know, I'm not one of those guys you can kick in the face.
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What the [James] Monroe Doctrine stated, in effect, is that the US should dominate the hemisphere.
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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.
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One of the benefits of a properly functioning democracy is minority rights and majority rule.
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Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can't afford the time to think.
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The 50,000 Korean mercenaries we had in Vietnam were professional killers and just massacred people outright. And the American army did plenty of that too, but it couldn't take it after awhile. It's not the kind of job you can give to conscripts who are not trained to be murderers.
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Suppose that insect wings developed primarily as thermoregulators and then were used for skimming and finally flying, evolving along the way. What would they be for? Or what is the skeleton for? For keeping one upright, protecting organs, storing calcium, making blood cells...?
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The US is to an unusual extent a business-run society, where short-term concerns of profit and market share displace rational planning.
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U.S. international and security policy . . . has as its primary goal the preservation of what we might call the Fifth Freedom, understood crudely but with a fair degree of accuracy as the freedom to rob, to exploit and to dominate, to undertake any course of action to ensure that existing privilege is protected and advanced.
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The United States invaded Iraq to gain control of one of the major sources of the world's energy.
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Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, “What kind of peace?
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In a moment of crisis, of which there are all too many, Russian military planners may conclude that lacking a deterrent, the only hope of survival is a first strike - which means the end for all of us.
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If you are working 50 hours a week in a factory, you don't have time to read 10 newspapers a day and go back to declassified government archives. But such people may have far-reaching insights into the way the world works.
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One of the real problems of society is that its far too atomized, what sociologists call secondary associations.
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If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.
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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.
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