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United Nations University Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility 2016 Annual Guest Lecture Barcelona, Spain | 5 November 2016 Crises of Immigration Professor Noam Chomsky Pope Francis captured the essence of “crises of immigration” in simple words: “Migrants are not a danger — they are in danger.” The implication is clear. The crises of immigration are, in significant measure, moral crises in the wealthy countries of the world, the societies that have the resources and the capacity to help those who are in severe danger and to mitigate or resolve the circumstances that lie at the roots of their plight – rich societies that furthermore often have significant responsibility for creating the crises in the first place and that have, in many ways, benefited from the circumstances that lie behind the plight of refugees, considerations that deepen the moral crisis of the rich and privileged. Reflection on these matters is, I think, essential if we are to face the moral crises honest...

Recently I posted these to Twitter:         These were among the replies I got: I said I'd respond when I had time. I couldn’t condense a thoughtful reply into a tweet and didn’t want to try to write a long series of tweets so I've published my response here and to a PDF that can be downloaded or viewed online. The link is at the bottom of this post. For the record, I don't monetize my social media account nor the website and I've set the website to collect the minimum possible data that the host, Google's Blogger, allows. I take seriously that we all have a general default right to privacy in what we think about, read, and talk about. What I do see is anonymous information like the number of users, their or their VPN's general location, time spent on the site, etc. Google, the NSA, Putin, or others might surveil online activities but I don't see IP addresses nor do I want to. I’ll defend the assertion that MAGA is an authoritarian ideology. And I’ll r...

"Never mind that Republicans have consistently opposed legislation that would strengthen workers’ rights , increase their income (including increases in the minimum wage), or even provide them with health care (Medicare and Medicaid ). Many unions are also multiracial organizations and cannot stomach the Republican Party’s growing commitment to racism. But at present, there is another reason for the partisan divide that labor — like it or not  — must deal with. As many political experts have recognized, the current political system is one of minority rule . Republicans are able to capture and hold political power through elections and institutions in which the majority of the population is effectively sidelined. Republicans also now control the Supreme Court by a 6-3 majority; this is perhaps the most obvious example where labor cannot ignore how difficult it will be to organize unions within a judicial system stacked by Republicans." full article at CEPR