Noam Chomsky

The times are too difficult and the crisis too severe to indulge in schadenfreude. Looking at it in perspective, the fact that there would be a financial crisis was perfectly predictable: its general nature, if not its magnitude. Markets are always inefficient.

At the time of the First World War there was a fringe of dissidents, Bertrand Russell for example, who were in jail; Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknicht, in jail; Eugene Debs, in jail. That’s the standard picture throughout history. We find it right now.

Many countries are so weak that they can’t really solve their internal problems in the face of US power; they can’t even control their own wealthy. Their rich have virtually no social obligations-they don’t pay taxes and don’t keep their money in the country.

But free capital mobility is a high priority for the business world: it increases profit and also provides a powerful weapon to undermine labor organizing by threat of job transfer-technically illegal, but highly effective…

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

If you’ve taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself … is that its purpose? No it’s not.

The culture and ideology fostered in this globalization process relate largely to “lifestyle” themes and goods and their acquisition; and they tend to weaken any sense of community helpful to civic life.

The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.

These dolphin class submarines that Germany is providing to Israel are instantly refitted in Israel to have nuclear weapons capacity, and that’s not aimed at defense of Israel. Nuclear armed submarines don’t defend Israel. They are meant for attack, that’s what they are.

Historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomenon not only because it undermines moral and intellectual integrity but also because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead.

But Klaus Barbie was basically small potatoes. Operation Paper Clip was a big operation, involving many top Nazis. We managed to get Walter Rauff, the guy who created the gas chambers, off to Chile. Others went to fascist Spain.

While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the real truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors, he is a moral coward.

I didn’t come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country.

What kind of city are we living in, if we encourage the development or ownership of large, expensive properties for investment and land banking… while people are sleeping on the streets?

The Pentagon is in no sense a defense department. It has never defended the United States from anyone. It has only served to conduct aggression. And I think that the American people would be much better off without a Pentagon.

It is my view that we cannot conduct foreign policy at the extremes.

The United States should get rid of its militias.

As I have said for many years throughout this land, we’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the future of human civilization. Every bit of that has to change.

A free press is essential to our democracy, but much of our press isn’t very free at all.

Now the shift is toward trying to keep taxes just on wages and on consumption – which everyone has to do – not, say, on dividends, which only go to the rich. And that’s shifted the burden enormously.

People who call themselves supporters of Israel are actually supporters of its moral degeneration and ultimate destruction.