In some respects, South African apartheid was more vicious than Israeli practices, and in some respects the opposite is true.
The respected intellectuals are those who conform and serve power interests.
California is maybe the richest place in the world. They’re destroying the best public education system in the world.
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.
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.
The Republican and Democratic Parties are only factions of the Government Party.
It’s designed to carry forward the neoliberal project to maximize profit and domination, and to set the working people in the world in competition with one another so as to lower wages to increase insecurity.
American society is now remarkably atomized. Political organizations have collapsed. In fact, it seems like even bowling leagues are collapsing. The left has a lot to answer for here. There’s been a drift toward very fragmenting tendencies among left groups, toward this sort of identity politics.
The threat and use of violence is stimulating nuclear proliferation along with jihadi terrorism.
The worst drug of all by far is tobacco; the death toll from tobacco is just overwhelming.
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.
Mr. Mijanovi and those associated with him are the hope and the conscience of the Yugoslav revolution.
Those who had demanded no more than an end to the bombing of North Vietnam and a commitment to negotiations saw their demands being realized, and lapsed into silence.
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.
Anyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by ‘sophisticated’ methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real.
The United States invaded Iraq to gain control of one of the major sources of the world’s energy.
It’s very hard to look in the mirror. We all know this. It’s much easier to have illusions about yourself. And in particular, when you think, well, I’m going to believe what I like, but I’ll say what the powerful want, you do that over time, and you believe what you say.
The ‘free-floating intellectual’ may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.
The people who live on the land – Israelis and Palestinians – have a right to live in security and peace.
The more there is a need to talk about the ideals of democracy, the less democratic the system usually is.