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Book: Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky
Quotes of Book: Understanding Power: The
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  1. Noam Chomsky _ Understanding Power: The

    the countries that have developed economically are those which were not colonized by the West; every country that was colonized by the West is a total wreck.
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  2. Noam Chomsky _ Understanding Power: The

    Another thing they talk about a lot is water-and that's a very crucial thing, which is not discussed very much in the United States but it's probably the main reason why Israel is never going to give up the West Bank. See, this is a very arid region, so water is more important than oil, and there are very limited water resources in Israel. In fact, a lot of the wars in the Middle East have been about water-for instance, the wars involving Israel and Syria have usually been about the headwaters of the Jordan, which come from Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. And as a matter of fact, one of the main reasons why Israel is holding on to the so-called "Security Zone" it seized in southern Lebanon {in the 1982 invasion} is that that area includes a mountain, Mount Hermon, which is a big part of the watershed that brings water to the region.
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  3. Noam Chomsky _ Understanding Power: The

    So what the media do, in effect, is to take the set of assumptions which express the basic ideas of the propaganda system, whether about the Cold War or the economic system or the "national interest" and so on, and then present a range of debate within that framework-so the debate only enhances the strength of the assumptions, ingraining them in people's minds as the entire possible spectrum of opinion that there is.
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  4. Noam Chomsky _ Understanding Power: The

    ...the qualifications that I have to speak on world affairs are exactly the same ones has, and has, or anybody in the Political Science Department, professional historians-none, none that you don't have. The only difference is, I don't pretend to have qualifications, nor do I pretend that qualifications are needed. I mean, if somebody were to ask me to give a talk on quantum physics, I'd refuse-because I don't understand enough. But world affairs are trivial: there's nothing in the social sciences or history or whatever that is beyond the intellectual capacities of an ordinary fifteen-year-old. You have to do a little work, you have to do some reading, you have to be able to think but there's nothing deep-if there are any theories around that require some special kind of training to understand, then they've been kept a carefully guarded secret.
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  5. Noam Chomsky _ Understanding Power: The

    Look, part of the whole technique of disempowering people is to make sure that the real agents of change fall out of history, and are never recognized in the culture for what they are. So it's necessary to distort history and make it look as if Great Men did everything - that's part of how you teach people they can't do anything, they're helpless, they just have to wait for some Great Man to come along and do it for them.
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  6. Noam Chomsky _ Understanding Power: The

    what are called opinions "on the left" and "on the right" in the media represent only a limited spectrum of debate, which reflects the range of needs of private power-but there's essentially nothing beyond those "acceptable" positions. So what the media do, in effect, is to take the set of assumptions which express the basic ideas of the propaganda system, whether about the Cold War or the economic system or the "national interest" and so on, and then present a range of debate within that framework-so the debate only enhances the strength of the assumptions, ingraining them in people's minds as the entire possible spectrum of opinion that there is.
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  7. Noam Chomsky _ Understanding Power: The

    Bombing of urban areas was not considered a war crime at Nuremberg; reason is, the West did more of it than the Germans.
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  8. Noam Chomsky _ Understanding Power: The

    there has been a deepening recognition among elites in the West that as you begin to lose the power to control people by force, you have to start to control what they think. And in the United States, that recognition has reached its apogee.
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  9. Noam Chomsky _ Understanding Power: The

    Real education is about getting people involved in thinking for themselves- and that's a tricky business to know how to do well, but clearly it requires that whatever it is you're looking at has to somehow catch people's interest and make them want to think, and make them want to pursue and explore.
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