Re: On Intellectual Responsibility

I read your remarkable comment, I cannot answer, I was just
a little "impressed" by your reference:
>    1. http://agentmag.ca/features/investigative/noble_p1.html

You see, it doesn't surprise me, not even a little.
I had a professor who was a digital control expert at NASA in the
eighties who was fired because they found out he was a member of
the portuguese communist party.
I know a doctor from Faro (south Portugal) who worked with
drug addicts, dedicating his life, who is acknowledged as one of our
greatest experts in the treatment of addiction, who once caught
tuberculosis from his patients, who was fired (and worked on a
state institution) because he was in the list for a coalition that
includes the communist party and the green party for the local
elections. In the next election he was the candidate for mayor.
Latter he moved to Lisbon.
My own father with an administrative (and lective) position in
a superior school, not a member of the PCP, faced great
antipathy and moved to Lisbon.

And these are all recent events. I'm not even mentioning torture
(sleep torture in most cases) before our 25th of April...
perpetrated by a government of a country member of NATO
which had full support from the US, something that the first few
democratic governments didn't had.

You might be saying now that that is in Portugal, things may be
still pretty hot, third world governments, etc, etc...
No, no. Things are not hot at all. Be sure that we have here more
political tolerance that people do in the US. At least we have a
party who dares to be called PCP (of which I'm not a supporter
because it has been failing to criticize most events in the last 10
years at least).
The first case I mentioned is from the US...
I never went to the US, does one still have to sign a declaration
stating that one is not a communist to obtain visa ?
or is it that now it is a declaration stating that one is not a
islamic fundamentalist ?

Intellectual responsibility yes. But it must be dosed, and must be
exercised only where it really matters. It is mostly pointless to respond
to comments like the one of that business proprietor...
I too am starting my life and deciding what will be the level of my
participation in criticism or even the level of attention to give to
other people's criticism, because sometimes it is really a full time job...
And I don't have any links to even amnesty international in my
home page.
I don't have a job yet, and while I don't know what kind of job
I'm going to have, I'll have some care. Because there are jobs and
jobs. A friend of mine was recently asked about his political
afinities in an interview for a job in a dutch multinational that
produces software for NATO.
I'm ready to answer "I'm certainly not a communist, so help me
God!" in those situations.

So, intellectual responsibility is true. There is such responsibility.
Especially in crisis. But preferably in writing, to those whose ears
are not totally closed, addressing only the issues that really matter
and with large documentation. Like Chomsky.

Miguel Ramos