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My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state... It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
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East Oak Lane
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We have a record for Nawaz Sharif but not the others. And judging by the record, it's pretty hard to be optimistic. His [Sharif's] previous governments were very corrupt and regressive in the policies pursued.
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Individuals in a university - students, faculty, staff - can choose to become politically engaged, and a free university should foster a climate in which those are natural choices.
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Whether the person should then be called an intellectual seems to reduce the issue to a question of terminology.
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The basic principle, rarely violated, is that what conflicts with the requirements of power and privilege does not exist.
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If a person chooses not to be a writer, or speaker, then (by definition) the person is choosing not to be engaged in an effort,to bring the truth about matters of human significance to an audience that can do something about them, apart, perhaps, from some circle of immediate associates.
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The reason academic disputes are so vicious is that so little is at stake.
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...dissent, protest, presures of a wide variety that escape elite control can modify the calculus of costs of planners, and offer a slight hope that Washington can be compelled to permit at least some steps towards justice, freedom and democracy within its domains.
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America is a very fundamentalist society. It's like Iran in the degree of fanatic religious commitment.
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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.
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It is now well-known that the Taliban's creation was facilitated by the CIA and the ISI as part of the 1980s anti-Soviet war.
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Don't be obsessed with tactics but with purpose. Tactics have a half life.
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Radical Islamist extremists surely hope that an attack on Iraq will kill many people and destroy much of the country, providing recruits for terrorist actions.
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But on the contrary Wikileaks is under heavy attack by the government and corporations are participating in that by closing down their websites.
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