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There’s no more morality in world affairs, fundamentally, than there was at the time of Genghis Khan.

Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky
Age: 95
Born: 1928
Born: December 7
Anthropologist
Computer Scientist
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Human Rights Activist
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Media Critic
Opinion Journalist
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East Oak Lane
Philadelphia
Avram Noam Chomsky
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Fundamentally
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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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In the West, you don't get in any trouble if you tell the truth, but you still can't do it. Not only can't you tell the truth, you can't think the truth. It's just so deeply embedded, deeply instilled, that without any meaningful coercion it comes out the same way it does in a totalitarian state.
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I grew up in that, when I was a kid. My friends and I used to play cowboys and Indians. We were cowboys killing the Indians, following the Wild West stories. All of this combined into a very strange culture, which is frightened.
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Remember that in any major nuclear war, the first strike destroys the country that attacks it's been known for years. The first strike of a major power is very likely to cause what's called nuclear winter, leads to global famine for years and everything's basically gone. Some survivors straggling around. Could [Donald Trump] do it? Who knows.
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If you're in a system where you must make profit in order to survive. You are compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others.
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[With] military threats, you can see them actually, you can imagine it. People don't think about it enough. But if you think about it for a minute, you can see that a nuclear attack could be the end of everything.
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By most accounts, Aristide is the most popular figure in Haiti.
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If workers are more insecure, that's very 'healthy' for the society, because if workers are insecure, they won't ask for wages, they won't go on strike, they won't call for benefits they'll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that's optimal for corporations' economic health.
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I've often been struck by the extensive knowledge that people have of sports, and particularly, their self-confidence in discussing it with experts. . . . In contrast, when discussing matters of concern to human lives - their own and others - people tend to defer to experts.
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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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If anybody thinks they should listen to me because I'm a professor at MIT, that's nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it.
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There have been repeated cases when nuclear war came ominously close, often a result of malfunctioning of early-warning systems and other accidents, sometimes [as a result of] highly adventurist acts of political leaders.
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We're human beings we're not robots. And face-to-face contact is something totally different than typing a text message and then forgetting about it.
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Should a community... be free to enact legislation to say they don't want blacks? Now that's illegal. Fifty years ago it was legal. Is that progress or is that regress?
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