Is Noam Chomsky a good source?

[NWO Sentryman]

Is noam chomsky a good source on the Cold War?

[LibraryLady]

Great source on linguistics. I'm not sure of his other expertise.

[negativ]

Noam Chomsky is an important part of this balanced breakfast. Fortified with 9 vitamins and iron, Noam Chomsky is the morning pick-me-up that keeps on delivering all day long.

[Phrost]

When I become the world's foremost professor of underwater basketweaving, I'm going to branch out into global politics as well.

[timhau]

When I become the world's foremost professor of underwater basketweaving, I'm going to branch out into global politics as well.

How's that Transformational-Generative Theory of Basketweawing coming along?

[jimtron]

I'm not aware of what he's written on that topic, but in my view he's a good source. He's seen by many as a radical, but I find his writing to be quite rational and well informed, and backed by evidence. Why do you ask?

eta: Here are some Chomsky threads:
http://forums.randi.org/search.php?searchid=182567

[PixyMisa]

Great source on linguistics. I'm not sure of his other expertise.
A couple of my linguist friends (well, I only have two, so both my linguist friends) say that he set linguistics back twenty years.

[jimtron]

A couple of my linguist friends (well, I only have two, so both my linguist friends) say that he set linguistics back twenty years.

How so?

[Phrost]

I know he describes himself as an "anarcho-socialist" which given how socialism requires a massive centralized government to impose/enforce, makes as much sense as an atheist-theocrat.

[PixyMisa]

His universal grammar - in their opinion, and from what I know of it, I'd agree - is not a predictive theory, but rather a post-hoc rationalisation. That is, it's simply a model patterned to fit the data, without any explanatory power.

Similar criticism can be found in the Wikipedia article on the subject (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar#Criticism).

[brodski]

I know he describes himself as an "anarcho-socialist" which given how socialism requires a massive centralized government to impose/enforce, makes as much sense as an atheist-theocrat.

I'm sorry, can you cit what qualifications you have to make that statement?

How's the underwater basket-weaving going?

[jimtron]

I know he describes himself as an "anarcho-socialist" which given how socialism requires a massive centralized government to impose/enforce, makes as much sense as an atheist-theocrat.

AFAIK he is a sympathiser of anarcho-syndicalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism), not anarcho-socialism.

[Phrost]

I'm sorry, can you cit what qualifications you have to make that statement?

What?

[Skeptic Ginger]

NWO: Why are you asking about Chomsky's views on the "cold war"? Do you have any links to Chomsky's comments you have a particular concern about?

I think we can assume Chomsky doesn't hold your view on the 'red threat'.

[brodski]

What?

Your first post in this thread is seemingly critical of Chomsky for pronouncing on political matters which are outside of the field of his academic background, I was wondering how widely you applied the principle.

[NWO Sentryman]

NWO: Why are you asking about Chomsky's views on the "cold war"? Do you have any links to Chomsky's comments you have a particular concern about?

I think we can assume Chomsky doesn't hold your view on the 'red threat'.

well, there was "the washington connection and Third World fascism"

The Cold War was real, and the Soviet Union was an active Player

As for you, you try to downplay history by portaying the Soviet union as if it were never a threat.

Communism was a real threat (Korea, Mitrokhin Archive, Venona files, "The President and the Press" etc.). Read about the Potsdam and Yalta conferences. You will find that Stalin was the one who instigated the whole cold war boondoggle.

[Skeptic Ginger]

....
As for you, you try to downplay history by portaying the Soviet union as if it were never a threat.You have such an imagination based reality.

If someone doesn't agree with your world view you seem to fill in all the blanks you don't have a clue about with your stereotyped version of the person. You have done that with your incorrect comments about my beliefs numerous times in this forum.


It's typical of the right wing, 'America, Love It or Leave It' crowd. If you criticize the government, you must automatically be praising the enemy. It's bull. That is simplistic thinking that the world is good and evil, black and white.


Here's some news for you: You can support capitalism and still be against the methods the US government has frequently instituted to support capitalism.

I happen to think we'd have a much better capitalist economy if greed didn't over-ride humanitarian values. The most concrete example of this was modeled by Henry Ford. Pay your workers enough to buy your product!

[Skeptic Ginger]

Here are some links to excerpts from The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman; published by South End Press, 1979 (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/ThirdWorldFascism_ChomHer.html) posted on Third World Traveler.

More book excerpts, Google books (http://books.google.com/books?id=lWjLdLahLToC&printsec=frontcover&hl#v=onepage&q=&f=false)


Chomsky is well informed on this subject. I'm sure many Americans prefer to not address these issues and believe instead in the John Wayne version of America. There are two sides to some of these stories, but the fact many in the American public have turned a blind eye to this side has made the world a worse place, not a better one.

[NWO Sentryman]

You have such an imagination based reality.

If someone doesn't agree with your world view you seem to fill in all the blanks you don't have a clue about with your stereotyped version of the person. You have done that with your incorrect comments about my beliefs numerous times in this forum.

It's typical of the right wing, 'America, Love It or Leave It' crowd. If you criticize the government, you must automatically be praising the enemy. It's bull. That is simplistic thinking that the world is good and evil, black and white.

Here's some news for you: You can support capitalism and still be against the methods the US government has frequently instituted to support capitalism.

I happen to think we'd have a much better capitalist economy if greed didn't over-ride humanitarian values. The most concrete example of this was modeled by Henry Ford. Pay your workers enough to buy your product!

No, It was about preventing Communism from Spreading. The President and the Press

I am citing World War 2 behind Closed Doors By Laurence Rees, the Venona Files, Oleg Kalugin, Ion Pacepa, the Mitrokhin Archive etc.

You do realise what the Red Terror was in Russia (20 million dead, including the Holodomor between 1931 and 1941).

Communism was a real threat. The Korean war was a conspiracy involving Stalin, Mao and Kim Il Sung.

It was very polarised, but there were shades of grey with the cloak-and-dagger (Contras, Gladio, AJAX etc.)

The Forced Famines in China that left 40 million dead: Mao the unknown story (1958-1961)

If US Intervention Prevented a Stalin or Mao from coming to power, it improved everyone's lives.

Wasn't henry Ford a Nazi BTW?

Thirdworldtraveler is a joke BTW, with my woo level heading off the Scale. Give me one photo of Rumsfeld and Saddam and i will give you 1 of Che and Mao.

Edward S Herman? The same guy that runs the Srebrenica group, the biggest Genocide deniers since David Irving?

John wayne Version? Check out the declassified Soviet documents as well as Ion Mihai Pacepa, the Highest ranking eastern Bloc defector. Kalugin is also good.

[jimtron]

NWO Sentryman: May I ask why you started this thread? Are you sincerely wondering if Chomsky is a good source on the Cold War, or do you already have an opinion of his views?

[NWO Sentryman]

NWO Sentryman: May I ask why you started this thread? Are you sincerely wondering if Chomsky is a good source on the Cold War, or do you already have an opinion of his views?

sorry about that. I was discussing a particular book, not Chomsky in general.

i have some idea, when i tried to read Rethinking Camelot. Very painful stuff.

But i must question the credibility of thirdworldtraveler, with someone like John Stockwell, who is known for his JFK woo, as well as the apologia for Milosevic.

Let us end this ill-conceived thread here.

[jimtron]

sorry about that. I was discussing a particular book, not Chomsky in general.

i have some idea, when i tried to read Rethinking Camelot. Very painful stuff.

But i must question the credibility of thirdworldtraveler, with someone like John Stockwell, who is known for his JFK woo, as well as the apologia for Milosevic.

Let us end this ill-conceived thread here.

No need to apologize; I was just curious about what you were getting at.

[NWO Sentryman]

No need to apologize; I was just curious about what you were getting at.

I was just wondering if Chomsky was a credible source. My history teacher said he should be taken with a pinch of Salt.

Especially with Pol Pot, Milosevic and whatnot.

[Childlike Empress]

His universal grammar - in their opinion, and from what I know of it, I'd agree - is not a predictive theory, but rather a post-hoc rationalisation. That is, it's simply a model patterned to fit the data, without any explanatory power.

Similar criticism can be found in the Wikipedia article on the subject (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar#Criticism).


His main achievement in science is the Chomsky hierarchy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy). You can trust this man with logic and formal things like sourcing his claims. That's why he's so respected even by people who don't share his conclusions.

William F. Buckley interviewed him in 1969 when he was speaking out against the vietnam war. Hilarious:

870106744163006454

[Jontg]

I would at least point out that Communism was never a threat. Communism has never existed--the moment Lenin and company deviated from Marx's original conception of a slow, natural transition to Socialism by advocating and ultimately instigating revolution, they ceased to be Communists, as has every other so-called "Communist revolutionary" since then. What the first part of that revolution created could still have been called a Socialist government--but that system was destroyed within weeks by further violent uprisings, and in the end Russia wound up with Stalin, and the exact opposite of Communism: a totalitarian dictatorship, where the elite lived in mansions and the workers struggled to "share" the scraps that were left. Like with every system that came before it, the hoarders and misers of the world ruined it for everyone else; there's a reason why we used to forbid that sort of thing.

[Skeptic Ginger]

No, It was about preventing Communism from Spreading. The President and the Press

I am citing World War 2 behind Closed Doors By Laurence Rees, the Venona Files, Oleg Kalugin, Ion Pacepa, the Mitrokhin Archive etc.

You do realise what the Red Terror was in Russia (20 million dead, including the Holodomor between 1931 and 1941).

Communism was a real threat. The Korean war was a conspiracy involving Stalin, Mao and Kim Il Sung.

It was very polarised, but there were shades of grey with the cloak-and-dagger (Contras, Gladio, AJAX etc.)

The Forced Famines in China that left 40 million dead: Mao the unknown story (1958-1961)

If US Intervention Prevented a Stalin or Mao from coming to power, it improved everyone's lives.

Wasn't henry Ford a Nazi BTW?

Thirdworldtraveler is a joke BTW, with my woo level heading off the Scale. Give me one photo of Rumsfeld and Saddam and i will give you 1 of Che and Mao.

Edward S Herman? The same guy that runs the Srebrenica group, the biggest Genocide deniers since David Irving?

John wayne Version? Check out the declassified Soviet documents as well as Ion Mihai Pacepa, the Highest ranking eastern Bloc defector. Kalugin is also good.
Your distortions are so predictable, NWO. It's tiring addressing them over and over. Nothing I say is likely to open your eyes to a different view of the world, and I have already thoroughly examined the US foreign policy interventions in the third world over my adult lifetime. In post after post you spout opinion and very little, if any, actual evidence supporting your view. And the evidence you have posted is not convincing against my lifetime of experience.

For example, you accused TWT of being a source which never cited authors. Yet every article I've linked to in these threads has had an identified author. Your claim TWT is not a reliable web source fails.


The Wiki article on Henry Ford covers the spectrum. Nothing there suggest he was a Nazi. It cites Hitler admiring Ford. The Wiki article has a long discussion about Ford's antiSemitism. None of that has anything to do with what I said. I said Ford was pro-capitalism yet against many of the things the federal government supported at the time. Your Ford ad hom fails.


One need merely glance at Political commentaries by Edward S. Herman (http://musictravel.free.fr/political/political.htm) to see why you would use ad homs to attack him. Clearly he doesn't see the 'red threat' as you do.

This opinion piece from Herman, GENOCIDE INFLATION IS THE REAL HUMAN RIGHTS THREAT (http://www.coldtype.net/Assets.07/Essays/1107.Ed.Genocide.pdf), makes many good points which I suspect you are unable to see through your dislike of his view. The evidence of this is your false accusation Herman is a holocaust denier. Here are Herman's own words:Those denying this horrendous set of real events......I take it you missed that sentence or any equivalent of it in your anger that Herman would point out cases of genocide either inflated or ignored based on what the American government felt was in America's best interest. Many Israelis, for example, refuse to believe their treatment of the Palestinians is part of the problem. Herman points out such things as the Israeli treatment of Palestinians in detail.

Your claim Herman is a holocaust denier fails.


Since I have not said the Soviets posed no threat to the US, I don't see why I need to confirm my view they did. Perhaps you could generalize a bit less about my opinions in this discussion. You are generalizing incorrectly.



-

[Skeptic Ginger]

I would at least point out that Communism was never a threat. Communism has never existed--the moment Lenin and company deviated from Marx's original conception of a slow, natural transition to Socialism by advocating and ultimately instigating revolution, they ceased to be Communists, as has every other so-called "Communist revolutionary" since then. What the first part of that revolution created could still have been called a Socialist government--but that system was destroyed within weeks by further violent uprisings, and in the end Russia wound up with Stalin, and the exact opposite of Communism: a totalitarian dictatorship, where the elite lived in mansions and the workers struggled to "share" the scraps that were left. Like with every system that came before it, the hoarders and misers of the world ruined it for everyone else; there's a reason why we used to forbid that sort of thing.
While this sounds a bit pedantic, it actually makes a good point. Calling something a terrorist or communist threat turns a complex issue into an oversimplified enemy. These are the kind of generalizations used specifically to stop people from thinking about the details and instead convince people to blindly follow a leader.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Since NWO has said this was an ill conceived thread he would choose to end, I would like to add a related sidetrack about Third World Traveler, the site NWO has such contempt for.

Here is their main page (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/). As you can see, it is an incredibly extensive site with hundreds of sources and thousands of entries. Of course in all that one cannot expect every article to be vetted and valid. But as a source of information, there is an incredible wealth of it here.

To dismiss TWT as nothing but leftest propaganda or whatever it is NWO believes the site to be is ignorant, absurd, and frankly, the sign of someone only interested in reading material that confirms what they already believe.



-

[theprestige]

I would at least point out that Communism was never a threat. Communism has never existed--the moment Lenin and company deviated from Marx's original conception of a slow, natural transition to Socialism by advocating and ultimately instigating revolution, they ceased to be Communists, as has every other so-called "Communist revolutionary" since then. What the first part of that revolution created could still have been called a Socialist government--but that system was destroyed within weeks by further violent uprisings, and in the end Russia wound up with Stalin, and the exact opposite of Communism: a totalitarian dictatorship, where the elite lived in mansions and the workers struggled to "share" the scraps that were left. Like with every system that came before it, the hoarders and misers of the world ruined it for everyone else; there's a reason why we used to forbid that sort of thing.

While this sounds a bit pedantic, it actually makes a good point. Calling something a terrorist or communist threat turns a complex issue into an oversimplified enemy. These are the kind of generalizations used specifically to stop people from thinking about the details and instead convince people to blindly follow a leader.
I'm sorry, but I think it's Jontg that's oversimplifying.

I mean, wasn't Lenin's whole argument that Communism--properly understood--could, in fact, be "jump-started" by the methods he proposed? Hundreds of thousands of self-proclaimed Communists worldwide understood Leninism to be a valid and viable form of Communism. You can't just proclaim that because it wasn't Marxist fundamentalism, it wasn't Communism, or that it wasn't a threat (Nor Stalinism, nor Maoism, etc.).

The Marxist-Leninist debate has been going on for decades, and is far too complex and nuanced for you to wave it away with a twitch of your Internet discussion forum wand. Especially since, for the purposes of this particular discussion forum, it doesn't matter anyway. It's not like anybody besides hardcore students of socialist theory care about which Communist pundits are canon and which aren't. That's the kind of thing that would really only matter on a Communist fanfic forum.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm sorry, but I think it's Jontg that's oversimplifying.

I mean, wasn't Lenin's whole argument that Communism--properly understood--could, in fact, be "jump-started" by the methods he proposed? Hundreds of thousands of self-proclaimed Communists worldwide understood Leninism to be a valid and viable form of Communism. You can't just proclaim that because it wasn't Marxist fundamentalism, it wasn't Communism, or that it wasn't a threat (Nor Stalinism, nor Maoism, etc.).

The Marxist-Leninist debate has been going on for decades, and is far too complex and nuanced for you to wave it away with a twitch of your Internet discussion forum wand. Especially since, for the purposes of this particular discussion forum, it doesn't matter anyway. It's not like anybody besides hardcore students of socialist theory care about which Communist pundits are canon and which aren't. That's the kind of thing that would really only matter on a Communist fanfic forum.I am not saying, and I don't believe Jontg was either, that communism is a wonderful economic system the world should adopt. I don't happen to believe human nature fits well with a communist economic system.

But it's nonsense that communism or terrorism are bogeymen. One is an economic system and one is a technique. Russia (then) and Al Qaeda (now) are led by men who pose a threat to the US. Claiming we are fighting terrorists and commies is a propaganda technique used as a means to stop people from thinking about the details and blindly following the leader. By the same token, calling the US, the Great Satan, serves the same purpose.

[quarky]

Chomsky is a good source.

[Brainster]

Chomsky is a good source if you're on the far left of the political spectrum, or trying to impress a professor who is located there.

His biggest failure was his attempt to deny the Killing Fields of Cambodia; of course after the fact he claimed that he was just criticizing the media for giving credibility to those who fled the regime and reported on the atrocities ongoing there.

On the other hand, he has been terrific on the 9-11 Troofers.

[whatnot]

I was an undergrad fan of NC's political critiques, less so nowadays. He's been famously right on things like Indochina, Nicaragua, and E. Timor. But IMO he was fatally wrong about Cambodia, Bosnia, and Afghanistan. I stopped paying attention to him after reading Samantha Powers' "A Problem From Hell" and his faceoff with Hitchens in the Nation online in the months after 9/11.

Actually, truther Kevin Barrett posted a longish email thread between himself and Chomsky a while back, it's a pisser. Sadly, it's MIA in the wake of Barrett's abortive run for elected office. Not sure why Barrett would want to publicize it; when Chomsky thinks you're paranoid, you might want to get a neuropsych eval.

[jimtron]

Chomsky is a good source if you're on the far left of the political spectrum, or trying to impress a professor who is located there.

His biggest failure was his attempt to deny the Killing Fields of Cambodia; of course after the fact he claimed that he was just criticizing the media for giving credibility to those who fled the regime and reported on the atrocities ongoing there.

On the other hand, he has been terrific on the 9-11 Troofers.

Could you provide a source for him denying the killing fields of Cambodia?

[Pardalis]

On the other hand, he has been terrific on the 9-11 Troofers.

9/11 conspiracy theories are so patently false and outrageous, it's the least he could do.

[jimtron]

Chomsky answers readers' questions in the Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/noam-chomsky-you-ask-the-questions-413678.html

[NWO Sentryman]

If communism was not a threat then why were communist parties infiltrating the US Government. Declassified documents show that communist agents were successful in infiltrating the State department. Why did they adhere to the ten planks of communism (abolition of private property, central planning etc.), and why did you put the words cold war in inverted commas?

saying they weren't true communists just moves the goalposts.

I never said TWT didn't cite sources. I say that it's sources are unreliable.

It also gives outrageous claims such as Chiang Kai shek and Pinochet being comparable to pol pot, and America being in controll of Saddam when in reality he was a soviet client. The Stockholm International peace research institute concludes that Saddam received 57% of his hardware from the Soviet Union, with France ocntributing 13% and China contributing 12% with the Warsaw Pact 11% and America supplying less than 1%.

Let us look at some contributors to third world traveler shall we:

"William Blum" The same guy who is on the international committee to defend Slobodan Milosevic, and also wrote apologia for Stalin.

"Edward Herman" Khmer rouge and Bosnian Serb apologist. I never said he was a Holocaust denier. I said he was a srebrenica denier.

http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/Herman-FPIF.htm

"John Stockwell": Very unreliable source. Said Korea and Vietnam were "covert wars" as well as pearl harbour being staged.

"Philip Agee" Pacepa and Kalugin agree he's a traitor as well as Mitrokhin

Pilger: Denies genocide in Kosovo.

Fisk: got beaten up by Afghans and said "If i was one of them, i'd have beaten me". Possible Twoofer.

"howard Zinn" said Maoist China was great

"ahundati Roy": condoned the 9/11 attacks in a very wardish manner

"Paul Craig Roberts": Twoofer and anti-semite

I stopped reading when i saw the "New World Order" busston

[Skeptic Ginger]

Could you provide a source for him denying the killing fields of Cambodia?
From Jimtron's link above for those not bothering to seek out the answer to this question he asked Brainster:Do you regret mocking the accounts of refugees fleeing Pol Pot's Cambodia? LIJIA FREEMAN, NEW YORK

[Chomsky:] The closest approximation to this ludicrous charge is that Edward Herman and I cited the best-informed sources then available on Cambodia, State Department intelligence and François Ponchaud, who made the familiar point that testimony of refugees must be treated with caution. I certainly do not regret that. The record of deceit on this topic is huge. It has all been refuted, point by point, many times. This is one illustration of an interesting feature of intellectual culture. Periodically, there are atrocities that we can blame on official enemies - what Herman calls "nefarious atrocities", unlike those for which we share responsibility and can therefore easily mitigate or terminate. The latter are regularly downplayed or suppressed. The nefarious atrocities regularly elicit religious fervour, dramatic posturing, baseless claims to inflate them as much as possible - and fury if anyone does not blindly join the parade, but seeks to determine the truth, cites the most reputable authorities, and exposes the innumerable fabrications. The common reaction to such treachery is an impressive torrent of deceit. There is an instructive record, quite well documented in many cases. The reasons are not hard to explain. The topic should be pursued systematically, but that is unlikely, obviously.Just like NWO doesn't hear the facts, he hears his stereotyped images of people who disagree with him, it would appear Brainster has a similar hearing/reading deficit.



Chomsky does use a couple pronouns here that for a guy whose area of study was linguistics, are surprisingly grammatically incorrect and leave the answer open to some confusion in interpretation:

"The record of deceit on this topic is huge. It has all been refuted, point by point, many times. This is one illustration of an interesting feature of intellectual culture. "

Pronouns like these are supposed to refer to the last relevant noun preceding the pronoun. It isn't clear here if "this topic" refers to "refugees' testimony must be treated with caution", the killing fields, or, the charge against Chomsky the questioner asks about.

But since Chomsky clearly states in the first sentence that the claim he ever denied the killing fields is a "ludicrous charge", we can rule out the pronouns of confusion here referring to deceit that the killing fields occurred. And that is what Brainster claims Chomsky said.

[Brainster]

Could you provide a source for him denying the killing fields of Cambodia?

Start here (http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm), which happens to be the first Google search result for Chomsky and Cambodia. Again, Chomsky claims he was making media criticisms, but the effect was the same as those who criticize legitimate books about the Holocaust.

ETA: For example consider this couple that Chomsky and Hermann quote in an infamous article in the Nation:

Regarding the evacuation of Phnom Penh, Chomsky and Herman devote several pages to an account written by Shane Tarr, a New Zealander, and Chou Meng, his Khmer wife. The Tarrs originally left Phnom Penh in the evacuation, then returned to Phnom Penh and were confined to the French embassy along with the other foreigners. Devout communists, the Tarrs claimed to have seen "'no organised executions, massacres, or the results of such like.'" The evacuation, they claim, was "'slow and well-organized,'" and "'The aged and the ill were not expected to join in the march. We saw very few who were old or sick on the road; those that we met elsewhere told us that the revolutionary organisation catered for their needs.'"(79)

Read the passages after that for why those people were not considered reliable sources.

Now I will admit that there is a difference between Holocaust Denial in 1944 and Holocaust Denial in 2009, just as there is a difference between denying the Killing Fields in 1976 and in 2009. One is a mistake (possibly honest), the other clearly implies more than the usual crankdom. Are there any more Killing Fields deniers?

I'm not accusing him of being the equivalent of a Holocaust Denier; that would be unfair. He was wrong, terribly wrong, and worse, he was wrong in a way that obviously suited his confirmation bias. I doubt the American people would have been inclined to any sort of intervention in Cambodia even if he had been right and strident about the Killing Fields, just as knowledge of the Holocaust going on in the concentration camps would not have made the Allies fight any harder (they could not have). So it's not like he changed history.

But he was wrong.

[Jontg]

Yes, Lenin tried to argue that. And he was wrong. Communism can't work if it's achieved by violent revolution--people's minds are still stuck in a Capitalist worldview, and in all likelihood the leaders of the revolution will just become the new ruling class rather than setting up a proper, democratic government. And in Russia's case, that's exactly what happened; Stalin and his cohorts lived in ivory towers while the proletariat scrabbled over the crumbs that were left--and at the urging of Stalinist propaganda, they even blamed those among themselves who happened to have a goat or two to their names for their state of privation, just as the modern American is convinced that Socialism would consist of taking their hard-earned money and giving it to worthless bums.
Communism is not a goal, or an ideology--it is the end product of the natural, inevitable evolution of society from feudalism to democracy, from self-interest to altruism, from barbarism to enlightenment. If it has to be forced on people, they're not ready for it yet.

[NWO Sentryman]

That is the "no true scotsman" fallacy again. Are those goalposts on wheels?

Anyway, Marx advocated violent revolution.

Have you even read the ten planks of communism?

[NWO Sentryman]

No, it is not caricatured. i was commenting on the credibility of TWT. Having people who portary milsoevic as the good guy in the balkans on your site doesn't do too much good in terms of creidbility.

[Jontg]

Yes, I have--and they say nothing about stringing people up or appointing dictators.

[gtc]

What a self-serving and nonsensical article. He calls for the US to pay reparations for the 'US-Israeli' invasion of Lebanon in 2006.

Then he lies about his statements about Jews.

This is what he wrote in 'Variant (http://www.variant.randomstate.org/16texts/Chomsky.html)':

By now Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population. You find occasional instances of anti-Semitism but they are marginal. There's plenty of racism, but it's directed against Blacks, Latinos, Arabs are targets of enormous racism, and those problems are real. Anti-Semitism is no longer a problem, fortunately. It's raised, but it's raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control. That's why anti-Semitism is becoming an issue. Not because of the threat of anti-Semitism; they want to make sure there's no critical look at the policies the US (and they themselves) support in the Middle East. With regard to anti-Semitism, the distinguished Israeli statesman Abba Eban pointed out the main task of Israeli propaganda (they would call it exclamation, what's called 'propaganda' when others do it) is to make it clear to the world there's no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. By anti-Zionism he meant criticisms of the current policies of the State of Israel. So there's no difference between criticism of policies of the State of Israel and anti-Semitism, because if he can establish 'that' then he can undercut all criticism by invoking the Nazis and that will silence people. We should bear it in mind when there's talk in the US about anti-Semitism.


His justification is now:

You misunderstood. It was an ironic reference to people who would not be satisfied even if they had only 98 per cent control. Of course there is nothing even remotely like that.

[Skeptic Ginger]

....
Communism is not a goal, or an ideology--it is the end product of the natural, inevitable evolution of society from feudalism to democracy, from self-interest to altruism, from barbarism to enlightenment. If it has to be forced on people, they're not ready for it yet.Well now here we'll have to part ways.

This view makes some idealistic assumptions about human nature as if you can predict evolution. We are what our genes make us. No path to enlightenment is going to change the human species.

[NWO Sentryman]

Well now here we'll have to part ways.

This view makes some idealistic assumptions about human nature as if you can predict evolution. We are what our genes make us. No path to enlightenment is going to change the human species.

I think we can agree there.

Another example:

Why then, when rome became a republic, did it digress into an empire?

[PixyMisa]

Yes, Lenin tried to argue that. And he was wrong. Communism can't work if it's achieved by violent revolution--people's minds are still stuck in a Capitalist worldview, and in all likelihood the leaders of the revolution will just become the new ruling class rather than setting up a proper, democratic government. And in Russia's case, that's exactly what happened; Stalin and his cohorts lived in ivory towers while the proletariat scrabbled over the crumbs that were left--and at the urging of Stalinist propaganda, they even blamed those among themselves who happened to have a goat or two to their names for their state of privation, just as the modern American is convinced that Socialism would consist of taking their hard-earned money and giving it to worthless bums.
Given what has happened in every nominally communist country ever, they have good reason for their convictions.

Communism is not a goal, or an ideology--it is the end product of the natural, inevitable evolution of society from feudalism to democracy, from self-interest to altruism, from barbarism to enlightenment. If it has to be forced on people, they're not ready for it yet.
The problem is, this is no more than a fairy tale. There is no such "natural, inevitable evolution", and communism is an economic system, not a political system. And as an economic system, it suffers from intrinsic scaling problems that make it unworkable for any significantly large number of people. That's why communism invariably fails when implemented on a national scale.

J. B. S. Haldane - himself a communist - pointed this out in his wonderful essay On Being the Right Size (http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html) (which is mostly about biology, but discusses the broader applicability of scaling laws). That was back in 1928.

[Skeptic Ginger]

If communism was not a threat then why were communist parties infiltrating the US Government. Declassified documents show that communist agents were successful in infiltrating the State department. Why did they adhere to the ten planks of communism (abolition of private property, central planning etc.), and why did you put the words cold war in inverted commas?

saying they weren't true communists just moves the goalposts.I answered this. You don't seem to be addressing my answer. You seem to just be repeating yourself, including your misrepresentation of my position.

I never said TWT didn't cite sources. I say that it's sources are unreliable.You said:...
And Thirdworldtraveler is one of the Death to America websites with no editors. Heck the woo level is so high on that i need a new woo-o-meter. As well as that, you have Stalinists and Milosevic apologists abound.In reality, the TWT web site has an incredibly broad range of articles from many reliable sources. But you throw ad homs at any source you don't agree with rather than making an attempt to actually examine a subject. Most (all?) of your answers are little one liners with no substance. There are thousands of articles on TWT. Yet you manage to dismiss them all because you don't like the political view of some of them.


And what sources do you cite?

The Top 200 Chomsky Lies Compiled by Paul Bogdanor (http://www.paulbogdanor.com/200chomskylies.pdf)

It's a list of cherry picked quotes Chomsky supposedly said or wrote over his career combined with a personal vendetta refuting each of the quotes. If you criticize the US government you can expect to find pissed off people. And you can expect this kind of attack to be repeated ad nauseum round and round the blogosphere and all the other right wing sites like Front Page Mag.

Instead of looking at a person's views in their entirety, instead of considering you may not agree with everything a person says but they have a point of view that has a lot of validity, the mentality you are showing here, the mentality of the citation you posted is: Evil Person Ahead - Warning Do Not Listen To Anything Coming From The Mouth Of Said Evil Person.


There are times when a person does lose all credibility. That's how I feel for example about Dick Cheney. And clearly that is how you feel about Chomsky.

But where I see the difference here is a lot of right wingers totally refuse to see the US government as having done anything wrong toward other countries. And that is absurd. We need to look at our mistakes, not pretend we've always been the good guys, always done the ethical thing, always been right. That just isn't true.

Chomsky is not afraid to point out the bad things the US government is responsible for. You seem to hate him on those grounds alone.

I'm not sure I believe the cherry picked quotes truly represent Chomsky's views on your 200 Lies site. In this thread a number of people have misstated what the evidence supports about Chomsky's views. Because people don't like to hear the bad things about the US, they exaggerate Chomsky's negative positions then say, see what a bad guy he is.

[NWO Sentryman]

I dislike chomsky because of his distortions of history.

1. The Khmer Rouge (Distortions at fourth hand)

2. Vietnam (Comparing US ignorance of the atrocities in vietnam, and i do call them atrocities, to holocaust denial)

3. Fabricating quotes from harry truman

4. Running apologia for Holocaust denial (Faurisson affair)

5. Denying the Srebrenica massacre (Marko Hoare).

6. relying on discredited evidence (Forged letter of stalin)

7. Compared the 9/11 attacks to the airstrike on a pharmaceutical plant (Chris Hitchens tears him to pieces over this)

8. Said there was a "silent genocide" in afghanistan (even though UNICEF said that famine was averted).

9. Knowingly appearing on The Alex Jones Show.

I wouldn't consider Harold Pinter, Michael Parenti and Mr Blum Reliable sources (International committee to defend Slobodan Milosevic, and in parenti's case, JFK woo).

Heck, it has George galloway on it, whom hitchens destroyed after his cringeworthy appearance on celebrity big brother.

Johann Hari tore Galloway and Pilger to pieces over their support for saddam.

Mr Blum even compares the millions murdered by Stalin to deaths by natural causes.

John Stockwell either (Big time on JFK Woo)

Agee was a traitor (Mitrokhin Archive, Pacepa)

Chomsky actually said those things. You just try to move the goalposts by claiming they were quotemined. I have heard those canards before.

[cornsail]

I dislike chomsky because of his distortions of history.

1. The Khmer Rouge (Distortions at fourth hand)
He misinterpreted the situation as it was happening. Afterward he claimed nothing contrary to the historical record. How is that a "distortion of history"?

2. Vietnam (Comparing US ignorance of the atrocities in vietnam, and i do call them atrocities, to holocaust denial)
You are misrepresenting. What he said was that denying atrocities is not necessarily motivated by racism and used Vietnam as an example.

3. Fabricating quotes from harry truman
The Truman misquote was a mistake, which he corrected (quickly I believe). Given the amount of books he's written, this is hardly damning.

4. Running apologia for Holocaust denial (Faurisson affair)
Because he is against banning Holocaust denial?

5. Denying the Srebrenica massacre (Marko Hoare).
"The readers' editor has considered a number of complaints from Noam Chomsky concerning an interview with him by Emma Brockes published in G2, the second section of the Guardian, on October 31. He has found in favour of Professor Chomsky on three significant complaints.

Principal among these was a statement by Ms Brockes that in referring to atrocities committed at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war he had placed the word "massacre" in quotation marks. This suggested, particularly when taken with other comments by Ms Brockes, that Prof Chomsky considered the word inappropriate or that he had denied that there had been a massacre. Prof Chomsky has been obliged to point out that he has never said or believed any such thing. The Guardian has no evidence whatsoever to the contrary and retracts the statement with an unreserved apology to Prof Chomsky.

The headline used on the interview, about which Prof Chomsky also complained, added to the misleading impression given by the treatment of the word massacre. It read: Q: Do you regret supporting those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated? A: My only regret is that I didn't do it strongly enough.

No question in that form was put to Prof Chomsky."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/nov/17/pressandpublishing.corrections

6. relying on discredited evidence (Forged letter of stalin)
By this logic do you dislike yourself? :)

Source, BTW?

7. Compared the 9/11 attacks to the airstrike on a pharmaceutical plant (Chris Hitchens tears him to pieces over this)
I couldn't find the Hitchens article, but I found Chomsky's response:
http://www.counterpunch.org/chomskyhitch.html

No strong opinion from me on this since I don't know what the original quote was. I would disagree with calling the two things analogous, although I tend to yawn at "how dare you compare X to Y" bluster, personally. No complaints if you feel differently.

8. Said there was a "silent genocide" in afghanistan (even though UNICEF said that famine was averted).
Incorrect. Source?

9. Knowingly appearing on The Alex Jones Show.
Lol, he also went on Ali G without knowing who he was or that it was a comedy show. Likely the same situation here (except AJ may not realize its a comedy show either). He correctly questioned AJ's factual accuracy and was thus dubbed a "shill" for the NWO.

[NWO Sentryman]

Srebrenica
http://www.henryjacksonsociety.org/stories.asp?id=302

And Vietnam. He said that many americans thought 100000 people died in vietnam. If Germans thought that 200000 died in the holocaust, you'd think there was something wrong. Chomskyites go on to say Vietnam was a genocide.

For Faurisson

http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2004/11/chomsky_and_hol_1.html

Harry Truman Quote:

http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2004/09/an_intellectual.html

Silent Genocide:

http://semiskimmed.net/misc/chomsky_genocide.html

Well we could easily go on... but all of that... first of all indicates to us what’s happening. Looks like what’s happening is some sort of silent genocide. It also gives a good deal of insight into the elite culture, the culture that we are part of. It indicates that whatever, what will happen we don’t know, but plans are being made and programs implemented on the assumption that they may lead to the death of several million people in the next couple of weeks... very casually with no comment, no particular thought about it, that’s just kind of normal, here and in a good part of Europe.

Anyone with half a brain would know who Alex Jones was. Even Bill Cooper knew that.

I Stand corrected on the Forged Stalin letter.

Hitchens' response to the article by chomsky.

http://humanities.psydeshow.org/political/hitchens-3.htm

[cornsail]

Srebrenica
http://www.henryjacksonsociety.org/stories.asp?id=302
Am I supposed to read the whole thing?

And Vietnam. He said that many americans thought 100000 people died in vietnam. If Germans thought that 200000 died in the holocaust, you'd think there was something wrong.

Huh? Not following...

Chomskyites go on to say Vietnam was a genocide.
"Chomskyites" or Chomsky?

For Faurisson

http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2004/11/chomsky_and_hol_1.html
I asked for clarification of what your complaint is. That he signed a petition for a guy who was put in prison for holocaust denial? Posting a link to some guy's blog doesn't help me.

Harry Truman Quote:

http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2004/09/an_intellectual.html
Another link to the same blog with absolutely no explanation. :rolleyes: Be less lazy please.

Silent Genocide:

http://semiskimmed.net/misc/chomsky_genocide.html
You claimed "[Chomsky] Said there was a "silent genocide" in afghanistan (even though UNICEF said that famine was averted)." That is, Chomsky declared that there was a genocide (referring to the past). The webpage you link to argues that Chomsky predicted a genocide (referring to the future). Chomsky's gripe at the time was that major human rights groups were reporting a strong likelyhood of mass starvation if the US took certain actions--which were ignored by the US government. Better get clear on what your argument is.

Anyone with half a brain would know who Alex Jones was.
Really? I didn't know who he was till about a year ago. Most people I've mentioned him to don't know he is. Maybe you spend too much time on JREF.
Even Bill Cooper knew that.
Excellent point.

I Stand corrected on the Forged Stalin letter.

Hitchens' response to the article by chomsky.

http://humanities.psydeshow.org/political/hitchens-3.htm
Again, I find "how dare you compare X to Y" political correctness crap boring, but you're free to disagree. I don't have much respect for Hitchen's pro-Bush foreign policy views anyway, although I like some of his stuff against religion.

[NWO Sentryman]

I was just citing sources as to why i thought Chomsky was not a credible source of information.

Just poor structuring of an argument on my part.

As I said Chomskyites insist genocide was committed by the US in Vietnam.

[Gregoire]

Is noam chomsky a good source on the Cold War?

To answer the OP,

All of us should try to understand at least the major points of view about the Cold War (and other issues). That is why I actively seek these opinions out. And in my experience it is better to listen to actual intellectuals speak rather than just biased reports about what they supposedly said. Chomsky, I believe, is one such intellectual.

I have found CSPAN to be one good source for this since they regularly broadcast alternative views. Chomsky is one person they have had on many times.

(Interestingly, on one occasion he spoke to West Point cadets who obviously did not agree with him. Howver, they were very respectful and listened carefully, asking relevant questions. I contrast this to programs where David Horowitz was speaking was treated rudely by the Left who made no attempt to understand what he was saying. Obviously, this doesn't prove anything, but it does call in to question the opinion of many on this forum that the Left is always better at critical thinking than everyone else.)


But while understanding is extremely important, the problem is that many of the issues debated in the 1980's are now actually settled. As you point out, there has been a whole lot of evidence from the Soviet archives that any student of history must come to terms with.

We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History by Gaddis
http://www.amazon.com/We-Now-Know-Rethinking-History/dp/B001TI7HJO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253452063&sr=1-2

Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev
http://www.amazon.com/Spies-Rise-Fall-KGB-America/dp/0300123906/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253452214&sr=1-1

[cornsail]

I was just citing sources as to why i thought Chomsky was not a credible source of information.

Just poor structuring of an argument on my part.
Oh, I see. Well address my points when you get a chance.

As I said Chomskyites insist genocide was committed by the US in Vietnam.

Really? All "Chomskyites" (whatever that means--I assume "Chomsky fans")?

[Gregoire]

I was an undergrad fan of NC's political critiques, less so nowadays. He's been famously right on things like Indochina, Nicaragua, and E. Timor. But IMO he was fatally wrong about Cambodia, Bosnia, and Afghanistan.

Right about Nicaragua? Did he predict that Violeta Chamorro, active supporter of the Nicaraguan resistance, was going to defeat Daniel Ortega in the 1990 election? I remember there were some who predicted that, but none of them were on the far Left.

[DropGems]

Chomsky is a good source but his logic is screwy at times. Please see the Chomsky vs Leo Casey (not Hitchens) debate on the 9-11/pharmaceutical bombing comparision for this screwy logic http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:vTQn9o_-onYJ:clipmarks.com/clipma%20%20rk/C6FCAE2A-F11A-4B60-A0B9-BD515058A86B/+noam+chomsky+leo+casey&hl%20%20=en&ct=clnk&cd=18&gl=us (scroll down on the page for the numbered exchanges, Chomsky starts getting owned on page 3)

[DropGems]

Chomsky is a good source but his logic is screwy at times. Please see the Chomsky vs Leo Casey (not Hitchens) debate on the 9-11/pharmaceutical bombing comparision for this screwy logic http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:vTQn9o_-onYJ:clipmarks.com/clipma%20%20rk/C6FCAE2A-F11A-4B60-A0B9-BD515058A86B/+noam+chomsky+leo+casey&hl%20%20=en&ct=clnk&cd=18&gl=us (scroll down on the page for the numbered exchanges, Chomsky starts getting owned on page 3)

FYI: Those links don't work anymore. I used them a year ago on a different forum and they worked. Don't feel like tracking down the debate but somebody search Chomsky vs Leo Casey if you want to see Chomsky get destroyed.

PS: Chomsky's best debate, and possibly the best debate ever was when he destroyed Richard Perle.

[Childlike Empress]

I copied "Chomsky vs Leo Casey" from your post and googled it (without quotation marks). This thread was the first result it came up with. Found one hour ago.

Google really likes this forum.

edit: Here's (http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?213527) a link to a part of "The Chomsky - Casey - Hitchens Debate". Other parts are listed at the bottom in no apparent order. I'm not willing to untangle it.

[Childlike Empress]

Well, the part where Chomsky gets "owned" or "destroyed" must come later, because here we see him alive and kicking just like back in the days with Buckley, Jr. - same accusations, same answer, same logic:

I will add only one comment, which, although a truism, is perhaps worth noting, since some, at least, do not seem to comprehend it. To begin with, if we are even minimally serious, we apply to ourselves the standards we rightly apply to others: more precisely, harsher standards, because it is our actions for which we are responsible and that we can modify. In the case of official enemies who have committed crimes, we count not only those who they personally murdered, but those who died as a consequence of their acts.

To move from abstract to concrete, consider the crimes of Communism in the 20th century. These have received enormous publicity, reaching a peak with the publication of the "Black Book" in France and then in the US, with major reviews in early 2000 expressing amazement and horror at the depths to which humans can descend. The centerpiece of the accusation was the Chinese famine of 1958-61, which accounted for 1/3 of the grim total. Of course, no one supposed that Mao literally murdered tens of millions of people, or that he "intended" that any die at all.

Rather, these crimes were the outcome of institutional and ideological structures of the Maoist system, as discussed in the primary scholarly work on the topic by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and his colleague Jean Dreze. These charges are unchallenged, and rightly so. I will not elaborate because I have done so elsewhere in a ZNet commentary in January 2000, reprinted and extended in _Rogue States_.

It is taken for granted, rightly of course, that the crimes are not mitigated by the obvious lack of intent. These are crimes that flow from deep-seated institutional and ideological structures, like the bombing of the Sudan, and innumerable more severe cases. Nor would the worst of the crimes of Communism be mitigated in the slightest if it were discovered that something in Mao's personal life might have had some role in the orders that led to the crime (as is speculated, dubiously in my view, with regard to this minor crime of the Clinton administration).

If anyone were to argue, in extenuation, that Mao did not personally kill or intend to kill the victims, or that the crime that is the centerpiece of the indictment of Communism is mitigated by the fact that it was a failure of information (as Sen and Dreze argue) or had to do with something in Mao's personal life, they would be dismissed with contempt as apologists for atrocities. And if these apologists actually shared the responsibility for the crimes, as Casey does in the present case, the judgment would be far harsher, and rightly.

I will not insult the intelligence of readers by spelling out the conclusions that follow at once for the case at hand.

[Jontg]

How, exactly, do we know all of this? Pure Communism, like pure Capitalism, has never even existed--and for just about as good a set of reasons. And as for natural societal evolution, it's been going on, with a few setbacks, since the dawn of time. It's most blatantly obvious in the past hundred years, just like every other aspect of humanity's progress as a species--I mean, how can somebody be so blind as to yak online about demented right-wing extremists and not realize what they're so demented over? Obama's just a Social Democrat like myself, but he's a step forward, and they're freaking terrified of that.

[NWO Sentryman]

How, exactly, do we know all of this? Pure Communism, like pure Capitalism, has never even existed--and for just about as good a set of reasons. And as for natural societal evolution, it's been going on, with a few setbacks, since the dawn of time. It's most blatantly obvious in the past hundred years, just like every other aspect of humanity's progress as a species--I mean, how can somebody be so blind as to yak online about demented right-wing extremists and not realize what they're so demented over? Obama's just a Social Democrat like myself, but he's a step forward, and they're freaking terrified of that.

You are not a social democrat. You are a Marxist.

They are terrified and unjustly so becasue of

a) the red terror in Russia

b) the mass famines in China

c) Year Zero in Cambodia

If we are supposed to be loving and sharing why then were there the crusades, the dark ages, nobility, serfs etc. for 1 millenium?

[Jontg]

Because **** happens. Society is a tenuous thing, and it can all collapse if things break down badly enough, for long enough. In this case, Rome had the bad luck to experience political stagnation, natural disasters so gradual that nobody noticed them until people began starving, and a series of massive invasions all at the same time, which basically rebooted "Western" civilization. Since then, we've rebuilt, going from complete anarchy to increasingly complex feudalism to capitalism, and now we're making slow, but steady advancements toward socialism. Globalization, the spread of the internet and the Open-Source movement that accompanies it, and the increasingly transparent and inclusive nature of modern governments--these are all baby steps toward a real New World Order. And when we've automated labor to the point where there are no more jobs to be done, the cycle that created Capitalism will come to its logical conclusion, replacing the slave armies that made older non-Capitalist civilizations possible with robotic workers and freeing up time and resources to the point where we will experience a nearly post-scarcity economy. And from there, it will be a small step from techno-Socialism to true Communism.
Oh, and I love the cognitive dissonance in your post--talking about the Dark Ages and the Crusades in the same breath that you announce that RRRR ARG COMMIES BAD because somebody used the trappings of Socialism in a petty power grab. By definition, what went on in Russia and most of Asia was the diametric opposite of Communism. I repeat, if you think Communism can be achieved by violent revolution, you're not a Marxist; you're a Leninist. And if you think Communism involves genocide and totalitarianism, you're a Stalinist.

[Skeptic Ginger]

....I don't have much respect for Hitchen's pro-Bush foreign policy views anyway, although I like some of his stuff against religion.Good example. And some find Hitchen's views on the Islamic religion over the top.

People are not either all good or all evil (with a few exceptions). Hating a person for some ideological difference is not a healthy way to explore the world. In an effort to hate the person you hate's every view, the arguments lose any quality of a reasoned debate and instead just sound like a boring tirade.

[lightfire22000]

Chomsky has been one of the most informative and accurate sources when it comes to the development of language, though I have sharp and extreme disagreements on political issues.

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
As I said Chomskyites insist genocide was committed by the US in Vietnam.Well I hate to break it to you, NWO, but not everyone in the world views our military interventions as being noble causes. Big bombs kill lots of innocent civilians. Massive Napalm drops don't just target enemy soldiers. Mass defoliation of forests destroys food crops. Bombing Cambodia allowed Pol Pot to take power.


Why do you want to completely ignore this reality just because other countries also killed lots of people?

[thought_fugitive]

Concerning the core question you have, NWO, I think you should be aware that Chomsky doesn't tend to hold demonstrably false beliefs on matters of fact. There are numerous examples in this thread. On the matter of the Truman quote, he admitted that it was an error based off of a misattributed paraphrase which was corrected for the second time the book went to print:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky#President_Truman

With regards to Vietnam, I've always known of the American loss of life as being >59,000. Likewise, considering such a significant number of American casualties along with the sheer force of our military, I'd assume something was terribly wrong if there were only 100,000 deaths (either including or in addition to Americans... but I still don't quite understand the implications of your analogue.)

I'm not certain whether or not Chomsky claims America was executing a deliberate genocide, but one relevant example I've seen him cite is a transcript of discussions from Nixon and Kissinger before the commencement of Operation Freedom Deal which was a massively destructive air raid against the Communist forces.

Kissinger is quoted as saying the operation will be "anything that flies on anything that moves." Chomsky condemned this as a blatant call for genocide. Anyway, this is where you get into the semantic gray area that Chomsky's famous for, so I think ultimately you should assume that statements of opinion stem from his ideology. That's not to say they should be dismissed completely, but if you're curious about using him as a source I think your best bet would be to research specific points of interest as opposed to accepting or ignoring something just on the basis of who made the claim.

[cornsail]

NWO Sentryman,

No defense of your reasons for considering Chomsky a bad source? Any more retractions you'd like to make?

[whatnot]

skeptigirl: can you link to examples of Hitchens criticizing Muslims in general (as opposed to Wahhabists and Ba'athists)? I'd be interested to see such language from him. He describes himself as anti-theist, but he's non-denominational.

[NWO Sentryman]

Well I hate to break it to you, NWO, but not everyone in the world views our military interventions as being noble causes. Big bombs kill lots of innocent civilians. Massive Napalm drops don't just target enemy soldiers. Mass defoliation of forests destroys food crops. Bombing Cambodia allowed Pol Pot to take power.


Why do you want to completely ignore this reality just because other countries also killed lots of people?

I do realise that vietnam was horrible.

And you try to portray america as genocidal in vietnam.

Genocide is a crime of intent. The US did not intend defoliants to starve millions.

as for the "anything that flies on anything that moves", that is indeed a grey area. Who said those words? Kissinger trying to humour nixon or Nixon giving a direct order?

[thought_fugitive]

Kissinger said it, but I'm pretty sure the statement was made to military leaders. I apologize for implying it was a dialogue between him and Nixon. I don't necessarily think that genocide is always a gray area, but it's tough on the surface to judge in a circumstance like this. Nixon expressed the desire to obliterate the North, but when you consider that he's in a quagmire with a dismal outlook and an increasingly unsettling domestic climate, I find it understandable that he'd respond in a dramatic fashion like this.

Also, unless you share Jean-Paul Sartre's outlook on the Nobel Foundation, it'd be understandable to be reluctant to accept that a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize would be overtly genocidal. However, when you consider a statement out-of-context that seems to suggest the annihilation of all life in the target area, things do start to get confusing. I don't know much about Kissinger, though, and as it stands I'm still confused.

[Skeptic Ginger]

skeptigirl: can you link to examples of Hitchens criticizing Muslims in general (as opposed to Wahhabists and Ba'athists)? I'd be interested to see such language from him. He describes himself as anti-theist, but he's non-denominational.I'll look for something in writing for you later but my recollection having heard him at TAM 5 was that he insisted the religion itself called for the destruction of everyone who wasn't a believer.

[McHrozni]

Is noam chomsky a good source on the Cold War?

In my view, he is much too cynical to be taken literarily, and severely biased against the one system that allows him to criticize it freely and make money from it.

Some of his works may be good though, but you need to look at them with a critical eye and a good shovel of salt.

McHrozni

[thought_fugitive]

I'll look for something in writing for you later but my recollection having heard him at TAM 5 was that he insisted the religion itself called for the destruction of everyone who wasn't a believer.

Somewhat off-topic, but this is something I've read in some pamphlets by Slavoj Zizek. One of the more popular ones is called "Welcome to the Desert of the Real" and was I think it was commissioned as part of a series of far-left criticisms of 9/11 and its impact on the West.

I'm not familiar with much of Hitchens' work so I don't know how they compare, but Zizek is bitterly critical of Bush's insistence on saying "we're not at war with Islam, we know that Muslims are peaceful people" because Zizek would contend something like there is an element of inherent violence in the political incarnations of Islam.

Anyway, I don't have much of an opinion on that subject, but this is another example of the use of developing critical thinking skills. Zizek is very vocal and charismatic and interesting, and he's also very contemptuous of people who don't share his interpretation of Hegel or Lacan or Deleuze etc. It'd be rather harmful to take what he says as gospel but by the same token it'd be harmful to ignore the totality of his scholarship.

[cornsail]

I think there are portions of the Qur'an that can be used to support the idea that Islam supports killing infidels. Then again there are other portions supporting peace and non-violence. It's a bit like the Bible, sort of a grab-bag that can be used to support a variety of things.

I'm not familiar with much of Hitchens' work so I don't know how they compare, but Zizek is bitterly critical of Bush's insistence on saying "we're not at war with Islam, we know that Muslims are peaceful people" because Zizek would contend something like there is an element of inherent violence in the political incarnations of Islam.
Bush is right, we're not at war with Islam, but it has nothing to do with them being peaceful. Saudi Arabia is our ally for obvious reasons and Indonesia has been as well.

Chomsky was once asked what a war on Islam would look like and I believe he said "world war III".

[gtc]

I think there are portions of the Qur'an that can be used to support the idea that Islam supports killing infidels. Then again there are other portions supporting peace and non-violence. It's a bit like the Bible, sort of a grab-bag that can be used to support a variety of things.

That is my understanding too. Most muslims don't seem to take those sections of the Quran seriously enough to do anything about it.

[DropGems]

I copied "Chomsky vs Leo Casey" from your post and googled it (without quotation marks). This thread was the first result it came up with. Found one hour ago.

Google really likes this forum.

edit: Here's (http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?213527) a link to a part of "The Chomsky - Casey - Hitchens Debate". Other parts are listed at the bottom in no apparent order. I'm not willing to untangle it.

Yea you have to read the entire debate. Part 1 Leo starts out against chomsky, then comes noam's rebuke (which is very good), then comes Leo's counter with plenty of evidence to back up his claims as well as expose chomskys bad logic, then chomsky has the last rebuttal where he can't rebuke, doesn't address all the issues that Leo points out and ultimately loses the debate (in my eyes and many others).

I know my synopsis is very vague as I haven't read the debate in about 5 years but at the time, I concluded that chomsky's way of rationalizing his 9/11 statements proved to be pretty absurd after Leo Casey exposed him.

[PixyMisa]

How, exactly, do we know all of this?
Mathematics. Read the Haldane piece, it's excellent. Communism does not work.

Pure Communism, like pure Capitalism, has never even existed--and for just about as good a set of reasons.
Every time anyone goes to set up a communist state, we end up with a prison camp. Once might be coincidence, but every time?

And as for natural societal evolution, it's been going on, with a few setbacks, since the dawn of time.
Evolution works through selective pressure, through competition. As we have seen - and as Haldane showed 80 years ago - communism is an impossible optimisation problem, and capitalism will outperform it on any but the smallest of scales. Capitalism is the "natural" evolutionary outcome, and communism a clear dead end.

It's most blatantly obvious in the past hundred years, just like every other aspect of humanity's progress as a species--I mean, how can somebody be so blind as to yak online about demented right-wing extremists and not realize what they're so demented over? Obama's just a Social Democrat like myself, but he's a step forward, and they're freaking terrified of that.
What are you talking about now?

[PixyMisa]

And if you think Communism involves genocide and totalitarianism, you're a Stalinist.
Then why, I have to ask, does communism invariably involve totalitarianism, and very often genocide as well? The USSR and Eastern Bloc, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, North Korea.... It's a litany of disaster.

[PixyMisa]

Wikipedia has a good article on the structural inefficiencies of communism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem), with plenty of interesting links.

[Arcade22]

Is noam chomsky a good source on the Cold War?

No. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky#Cambodia)

[Praktik]

I think Chomsky is an excellent source, especially when it comes to the media.

Oftentimes you will read in Truther materials throwaway lines about "media control" and it resembles a kind of cartoonish view where editors of newspapers and broadcasting are "told what to say".

Manufacturing Consent should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand how it is that propaganda functions in Western society. It follows my MO for understanding the world: focusing on systems and institutions instead of individuals.

Where I think Chomsky slips up sometimes is just in coming across as too strident. He's talking about some pretty horrible things: East Timor, the 2 million dead in SE Asia during Vietnam, etc - and I think you can see his emotions coming into play and that does take away from his analysis a bit understandable though his disgust may be. I guess I'm a bit of a stickler for accuracy and prefer sanitized analyses of things so that's my biggest gripe.

And its funny how often the Pol Pot and his free-speech thing for the Holocaust-denying book come up. Both of these criticisms fall apart upon inspection but I guess they've been repeated enough by people who feel threatened by Chomsky's conclusions that they become the "go-tos" for people who want to discredit him.

I wonder if the people up in arms about Cambodia have track records we can check where they criticized Reagan for his role in encouraging Pol Pot (since he was an enemy of communist Vietnam)? The fact is that Chomsky is on record as attributing nearly three quarters of a million deaths to Pol Pot and his killing fields. Its his highlighting of the half-million dead from a brutal and ruthless bombing campaign directly prior to Pol Pot's rule that get American apologists on the defensive.

[NWO Sentryman]

Chomsky should have chosen the Italian model of media rather than the American. One Word: Silvio Berlusconi. No bigger crook.

Reagan was supporting Not the Khmer Rouge, but a different army that were Sihanouk Loyalists. They may have had affiliations with the KR but weren't KR themselves

Pol Pot was long gone and the Khmer rouge were splintering at the time.

Besides, Chomsky has been proven wrong over the Balkans and ran apologia fro the Bosnian serb military.

http://www.glypx.com/balkanwitness/Chomsky-Norris.htm

As well as that, he got shredded by Hitchens and casey over his 9/11 comparison to an airstrike on a chemical plant in Sudan

[PixyMisa]

No. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky#Cambodia)
Good article. The section on criticism of Chomsky in the field of linguistics is also well worth reading.

[cornsail]

NWO, still no defense of your other points/accusations?

Besides, Chomsky has been proven wrong over the Balkans and ran apologia fro the Bosnian serb military.

http://www.glypx.com/balkanwitness/Chomsky-Norris.htm
From your source (bolding mine):

Noam Chomsky is a liar.

For example, Noam Chomsky says:

On the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Danilo Mandic: Director of Communications [for Clinton Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott], John Norris.... [T]ake a look on John Norris's book and what he says is that the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians. It was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms, meaning it was the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the US-run neo-liberal programs, so therefore it had to be eliminated. That's from the highest level...

Here's the passage from John Norris (2005), Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo (New York: Praeger), that Chomsky is mis-citing, p. xxii ff.:

...
It was Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform--not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians--that best explains NATO's war.
...
(bolding mine)
lol :covereyes:dig:

You have bigger things to worry about than whether Noam Chomsky is a good source.

[NWO Sentryman]

http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/Chomsky-NewStatesman-Watson.htm

Besides you are just parroting the Michael Parenti Line that Yugoslavia could ahve been saved. It's collapse was inevitable long before tito's death.

Read the chomsky articles.

http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/Articles-deniers.htm

[cornsail]

http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/Chomsky-NewStatesman-Watson.htm
Once again you respond by posting links and saying nothing. Unbelievable.

Besides you are just parroting the Michael Parenti Line that Yugoslavia could ahve been saved. It's collapse was inevitable long before tito's death.
Uhhh what? When did I say anything about Yugoslavia? All I did was show that your source owned itself.

Read the chomsky articles.

http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/Articles-deniers.htm

I'm certainly not going to read more articles from the same awful source or from any of your other awful sources. If you have a point to make make it yourself.

[PixyMisa]

Uhhh what? When did I say anything about Yugoslavia? All I did was show that your source owned itself.
No, you merely demonstrated the same quote-out-of-context deceit that Chomsky is guilty of.

[PixyMisa]

Norris answers the point specifically:

Having seen the repeated use, and frankly misuse, of this particular passage from by book by Noam Chomsky, I am happy to weigh in to set the record straight. I agree with Strobe that your authors have it just plain wrong. If one reads the analysis I present in my book, including the longer passage from which the quote is directly pulled, it is clear that I am in no way arguing that "market forces" drove the war. In making the case that Serbia was at odds with the broader trends in Europe, I argued that the western powers had gotten fed up with Milosevic for reasons that stretched back to the war in Bosnia, Srebrenica, the brutal treatment of political opposition and numerous other outrages. The broader trends sweeping Europe were increasing respect for the rule of law, fulfillment of basic standards of human rights and yes, economic integration, but the economic imperatives for any conflict with Kosovo were never raised by any senior official anywhere in the book or any of my research.


For whatever reasons, Mr. Chomsky seems simply unwilling to accept that there were justifiable humanitarian reasons for the conflict in Kosovo. That is certainly his prerogative, but I would greatly appreciate it if he no longer quoted my book both selectively and out of context to advance his polemic.Chomsky here is clearly dishonest.

[Skeptic Ginger]

....Capitalism is the "natural" evolutionary outcome, and communism a clear dead end....This absolutism argument can easily be challenged. We are a gregarious species. We clearly evolved with altruism and cooperation traits benefiting the group.

On the other hand, selfish aggression has its moments of success as well.

Both traits would appear to have been naturally selected.

A combination of capitalism with some socialism would seem to me to be the evidence supported ideal system of cultural interaction. I don't want police, fire, or military to be privatized. Education, medical services, and utilities using combined capitalist and socialist systems such as public regulation of private systems provides is one solution in this area.

Certain products are bast produced under a competitive capitalist system such as cars and computers.


Drawing knee jerk conclusions about the best system means people opt for their image of that system rather than the actual system which would be apparent if only people would look past their black and white images.

[PixyMisa]

This absolutism argument can easily be challenged. We are a gregarious species. We clearly evolved with altruism and cooperation traits benefiting the group.

On the other hand, selfish aggression has its moments of success as well.

Both traits would appear to have been naturally selected.

A combination of capitalism with some socialism would seem to me to be the evidence supported ideal system of cultural interaction. I don't want police, fire, or military to be privatized. Education, medical services, and utilities using combined capitalist and socialist systems such as public regulation of private systems provides is one solution in this area.

Certain products are bast produced under a competitive capitalist system such as cars and computers.

Drawing knee jerk conclusions about the best system means people opt for their image of that system rather than the actual system which would be apparent if only people would look past their black and white images.
I agree, though you're drawing a broader point than I was. Specifically in terms of economic efficiency, capitalism will always beat socialism, and in large economies (a million people or more) the difference becomes enormous. There's no "evolutionary path" from capitalism to socialism, because socialism is less well adapted to survive.

That doesn't necessarily mean that in all respects capitalism is the best way to deliver all goods and services; it's sometimes impractical (or has been, historically) or prone to specific failures (e.g. tragedy of the commons, positive feedback cycles, perverse incentives). Mind you, most of those flaws can be found in socialism too - just not always in the same circumstances, which is why leavening capitalism with a little socialism does seem to work pretty well.

[cornsail]

No, you merely demonstrated the same quote-out-of-context deceit that Chomsky is guilty of.

I "demonstrated deceit"? Actually if you read the whole paragraph it reinforces Chomsky's interpretation if anything:

"NATO's large membership and consensus style may cause endless headaches for military planners, but it is also why joining NATO is appealing to nations across central and eastern Europe. Nations from Albania to Ukraine want in the western club. The gravitational pull of the community of western democracies highlights why Milosevic's Yugoslavia had become such an anachronism. As nations throughout the region sought to reform their economies, mitigate ethnic tensions, and broaden civil society, Belgrade seemed to delight in continually moving in the opposite direction. It is small wonder NATO and Yugoslavia ended up on a collision course. It was Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform--not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians--that best explains NATO's war. Milosevic had been a burr in the side of the transatlantic community for so long that the United States felt that he would only respond to military pressure. Slobodan Milosevic's repeated transgressions ran directly counter to the vision of a Europe 'whole and free,' and challenged the very value of NATO's continued existence."

What's your interpretation?

ETA: The alleged "lie" in question:

"Noam Chomsky is a liar.

For example, Noam Chomsky says:

'On the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Danilo Mandic: Director of Communications [for Clinton Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott], John Norris.... [T]ake a look on John Norris's book and what he says is that the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians. It was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms, meaning it was the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the US-run neo-liberal programs, so therefore it had to be eliminated. That's from the highest level...'"

[PixyMisa]

I "demonstrated deceit"?
Yes.

Actually if you read the whole paragraph it reinforces Chomsky's interpretation if anything:
Keep reading. You're still quoting out of context.

What's your interpretation?
It's background, which Chomsky is trying to represent as the whole of the argument, which is patently false and deliberately dishonest. Chomsky's premises are false, his conclusions are false, and his methods deceitful.

ETA: The alleged "lie" in question:

"Noam Chomsky is a liar.

For example, Noam Chomsky says:

'On the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Danilo Mandic: Director of Communications [for Clinton Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott], John Norris.... [T]ake a look on John Norris's book and what he says is that the real purpose of the war had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians. It was because Serbia was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms, meaning it was the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the US-run neo-liberal programs, so therefore it had to be eliminated. That's from the highest level...'"Yes, Chomsky is a liar. There's more than one way to tell a lie.

[cornsail]

You'll have to do better than that. Tell me what the real 'whole of the argument' is and quote the specific text which shows that I'm misinterpreting that paragraph.

[NWO Sentryman]

I was citing articles by people who specialise in the history of the former yugoslavia.

I was citing War Crimes Prosecutor Marko Atilla Hoare.

I was making the point that chomsky is an unreliable source on the former yugoslavia.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I agree, though you're drawing a broader point than I was. Specifically in terms of economic efficiency, capitalism will always beat socialism, and in large economies (a million people or more) the difference becomes enormous. There's no "evolutionary path" from capitalism to socialism, because socialism is less well adapted to survive.

That doesn't necessarily mean that in all respects capitalism is the best way to deliver all goods and services; it's sometimes impractical (or has been, historically) or prone to specific failures (e.g. tragedy of the commons, positive feedback cycles, perverse incentives). Mind you, most of those flaws can be found in socialism too - just not always in the same circumstances, which is why leavening capitalism with a little socialism does seem to work pretty well.You are confusing two concepts here, economic efficiency and survival adaptation. The two are not equivalent.

What I'm saying is you are better off looking at the specific product or service to determine which economic model is most beneficial for survival (IE natural selection).

[Skeptic Ginger]

I was citing articles by people who specialise in the history of the former yugoslavia.

I was citing War Crimes Prosecutor Marko Atilla Hoare.

I was making the point that chomsky is an unreliable source on the former yugoslavia.It appears to me that you are having a hard time determining which of Chomsky's statements are about facts, and which are his opinions. When you don't agree with his opinions, you report that Chomsky's facts are erroneous.

[PixyMisa]

You are confusing two concepts here, economic efficiency and survival adaptation. The two are not equivalent.
For economic systems, they are equivalent.

What I'm saying is you are better off looking at the specific product or service to determine which economic model is most beneficial for survival (IE natural selection).
Well, there's one thing we know: It's never going to be communism, unless you classify "crushing poverty" and "mass starvation" as products or services.

[PixyMisa]

It appears to me that you are having a hard time determining which of Chomsky's statements are about facts, and which are his opinions. When you don't agree with his opinions, you report that Chomsky's facts are erroneous.
It's clear that Chomsky is distorting the facts when he quoted Norris. It's not an error, it's obviously deliberate.

[Marc39]

Great source on linguistics. I'm not sure of his other expertise.

Chomsky has a regular day job?

[Pardalis]

Chomsky has a regular day job?

Bashing America is very lucrative business, just ask Michael Moore and Naomi Klein.

[Marc39]

Bashing America is very lucrative business, just ask Michael Moore and Naomi Klein.

Michael Moore, yes, given the success of his films. I'd be surprised if Chomsky made much money off his books. It's only fairly recently that Hugo Chavez became his literary agent.

[Skeptic Ginger]

For economic systems, they are equivalent. So are you claiming that people would evolve toward capitalist economic systems because they would provide a survival advantage?

Because a purely laissez faire capitalist society would have poorer outcome as a group, than a society with a mixed economy which applied a more ideal economy for each of the society's needs.


Well, there's one thing we know: It's never going to be communism, unless you classify "crushing poverty" and "mass starvation" as products or services.And no one claimed it was, in this thread anyway. Are you building straw men here?

[whatnot]

...Kevin Barrett posted a longish email thread between himself and Chomsky a while back, it's a pisser. Sadly, it's MIA in the wake of Barrett's abortive run for elected office.

I found a link to the email thread mentioned above. But as a newbie, I can't post links. If anyone wants it, pls email me for the link. It's super entertaining.

[Skeptic Ginger]

It's clear that Chomsky is distorting the facts when he quoted Norris. It's not an error, it's obviously deliberate.Early on in this thread, people made allegations about Chomsky's supposed factual errors while Chomsky sources have refuted those claims.

Yet the accusations continue. Why should I continue to fact check every allegation after checking several only to find the allegations false? I don't have all the time in the world.


Cite a specific fact, not opinion of Chomsky's and a give us a specific citation refuting that quoted Chomsky fact.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I found a link to the email thread mentioned above. But as a newbie, I can't post links. If anyone wants it, pls email me for the link. It's super entertaining.
Just type out the link with a few spaces.
Welcome to the forum.

[Tsukasa Buddha]

I agree, though you're drawing a broader point than I was. Specifically in terms of economic efficiency, capitalism will always beat socialism, and in large economies (a million people or more) the difference becomes enormous. There's no "evolutionary path" from capitalism to socialism, because socialism is less well adapted to survive.

That doesn't necessarily mean that in all respects capitalism is the best way to deliver all goods and services; it's sometimes impractical (or has been, historically) or prone to specific failures (e.g. tragedy of the commons, positive feedback cycles, perverse incentives). Mind you, most of those flaws can be found in socialism too - just not always in the same circumstances, which is why leavening capitalism with a little socialism does seem to work pretty well.

I don't know about that. The one good idea I think Marx had was his view that the economic systems were dependent upon the bases of the economy, the means of production. If I were to jump in a time machine, I don't think I could institute capitalism going back even five hundred years. For most of human history, I would say, capitalism was not the efficient route. Unless we want to play loose with our definitions.

Chomsky is of course a good source, for Chomsky's direct arguments. But sources are no good if they are left alone.

(I personally think he engages in intellectual masturbation and only crafts impotent notions)

[Marc39]

Early on in this thread, people made allegations about Chomsky's supposed factual errors while Chomsky sources have refuted those claims.

Yet the accusations continue. Why should I continue to fact check every allegation after checking several only to find the allegations false? I don't have all the time in the world.


Cite a specific fact, not opinion of Chomsky's and a give us a specific citation refuting that quoted Chomsky fact.

If Chomsky weren't a crackpot and a screwball, he would have been plastered all over the media, from the NY Times to the Washington Post to Meet The Press. He would be testifying before Congress.

Instead, in his 40+ years, not once has Chomsky been taken seriously as a self-proclaimed authority on domestic and foreign affairs. Not once.

He's a farce.

[cornsail]

It's clear that Chomsky is distorting the facts when he quoted Norris. It's not an error, it's obviously deliberate.
Yet you've still failed to even try to make your case.

[Praktik]

Had this on the backburner last night.

So what if Chomsky got a few things wrong, or *gasp* even let his bias direct him towards certain conclusions. He's a human being. Show me someone claiming to have found a perfect source and I'll show you someone who's delusional.

Seems to me that people who disagree with Chomsky's opposition to US foreign policy, Israeli policy and critiques of capitalism like to latch on a few things which they then use to turn their brains off and pretty much disregard everything chomsky says.

I like to consider other points of view. I own more than a few Pat Buchanan books, I subscribe to The American Conservative and I tool around NRO and other conservative sources with whom I disagree rather vehemently. But Pat's somewhat covert white nationalism doesn't mean that he's off his rocker when advocating for a humbler foreign policy. His social conservatism doesn't mean that when describing American society, he's always going to get it wrong.

We should be adult enough to realize that all human beings are fallible, biased and have outlooks that differ from ours. There's a difference between someone like Chomsky, and say Alex Jones or David Icke. There's not too much those two say that's worth listening to but even I would be uncomfortable with suggesting that 100% of what they say is wrong (maybe like, 90%.. hehe).

Chomsky's hit/miss ratio is still much better than theirs, and we shouldn't fall into the trap of using the times he's messed up to disregard absolutely everything he says. Sure, maybe he should have thought twice before writing that forward to the holocaust book given the fact many would not understand the free speech motive for doing so - but does that mean that all his writings on US policy in SE Asia are wrong? Even if there's a technical argument over the chronology of atrocities in Cambodia - does that mean his work on the American bombing campaign there is entirely without merit?

We should be able to read him, cognizant of his bias, and still find the places where even with his bias, he hits the mark.

Its kind of fun actually, to read people you disagree with and find out: "Well geez, Buchanan actually hit that on the head." And I think doing so contributes to a healthy intellectual development that is able to consider a wider array of viewpoints fairly, without resorting to describing those you disagree with as complete dimwits or so hopelessly biased that nothing they ever say has any value. Doing that - I think - is a recipe for intellectual stagnation.

[cornsail]

Had this on the backburner last night.

So what if Chomsky got a few things wrong, or *gasp* even let his bias direct him towards certain conclusions. He's a human being. Show me someone claiming to have found a perfect source and I'll show you someone who's delusional.

Yes, true. Additionally, there is a big difference between being wrong in speculation, opinion, or interpretation and claiming facts that are clearly not true. I've never heard a legitimate criticism of Chomsky as a source other than him:

A) Getting something wrong and correcting it quickly
B) Misinterpreting a situation while it was happening and the information was limited, but not persisting in that interpretation once the facts were more evident.

I'm actually glad this thread came up, because I'm reading a Chomsky book at the moment and the weakness of the arguments (or lack thereof) by his critics here reinforces my confidence in being able to trust the information contained.

[cornsail]

I was citing articles by people who specialise in the history of the former yugoslavia.

I was citing War Crimes Prosecutor Marko Atilla Hoare.

I've wasted enough time on your links in this thread, which have included long-winded blog posts and an article that contradicts its own charges (leading me to assume you didn't even read it). If you've got a point to make, make it yourself or at very least quote the relevant portions, say what you think their significance is specifically and then provide a link to the source that the information came from.

I was making the point that chomsky is an unreliable source on the former yugoslavia.
No you weren't.

[Skeptic Ginger]

If Chomsky weren't a crackpot and a screwball, he would have been plastered all over the media, from the NY Times to the Washington Post to Meet The Press. He would be testifying before Congress.

Instead, in his 40+ years, not once has Chomsky been taken seriously as a self-proclaimed authority on domestic and foreign affairs. Not once.

He's a farce.So by this standard, Glenn Beck is a respected authority on ... er.. uh... hmmm, not sure what to say there.


Chomsky's views certainly became well know somehow.

[Skeptic Ginger]

....

Seems to me that people who disagree with Chomsky's opposition to US foreign policy, Israeli policy and critiques of capitalism like to latch on a few things which they then use to turn their brains off and pretty much disregard everything chomsky says.....That's my assessment as well.

[lightfire22000]

This absolutism argument can easily be challenged. We are a gregarious species. We clearly evolved with altruism and cooperation traits benefiting the group.



Since "we clearly evolved with altruism and cooperation", and since morality appears to continue it's evolution today in what Dawkins termed a "shifting moral zeitgeist", doesn't it make sense to have more capitalism since people can naturally be altruistic. I think you're making the false assumption that Capitalism is always self-centered and Socialism/Communism is inherent altruistic. People can choose to be altruistic and help others.

[Doc Daneeka]

To the OP - all that needs to be said about Chomsky's political writing:

He provides truly copious endnotes. Check them out, and decide for yourself whether his viewpoints are valid. Whether you find his sources to be BS or the fountain of wisdom, the point is that he provides them for you to look at. In great profusion.

One could contrast this with the behaviour of a lot of other political writers all over the political spectrum.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Since "we clearly evolved with altruism and cooperation", and since morality appears to continue it's evolution today in what Dawkins termed a "shifting moral zeitgeist", doesn't it make sense to have more capitalism since people can naturally be altruistic. I've certainly not said everyone is greedy or, that a capitalist cannot be philanthropic.


I think you're making the false assumption that Capitalism is always self-centered and Socialism/Communism is inherent altruistic. People can choose to be altruistic and help others.Well you think wrong because I don't make that assumption at all.

First, what I said was natural selection would favor the best economic system as measured by the well being of the individual, not as measured by the biggest profit.

While it would seem profit and well being would naturally be the same, there are many cases where that isn't the case. Nothing in capitalism would stop the tragedy of the commons, for example, until the system crashed.

If wealth is too concentrated at the top, the bulk of the population would not have a survival advantage, for example. And it has led historically to annihilation of the top as well.

But let's look just at innovation. I think most innovation would correlate with better survival outcome. But capitalism does not always produce innovation.

I've used the following example many times but it demonstrates the problem well. We need new antibiotics. But when new antibiotics come on the market, they are prescribed very conservatively to save them for the most drug resistant infections. If we used them excessively, antibiotic resistance to the new drug would quickly develop.

A drug company wouldn't want to tie up their capital in R&D for new antibiotics until the need was great, because the return on the investment wouldn't occur until there was a great need for the new drug. That means there is an incentive to let drug resistant infections multiply first before tying up the capital for a long term gain.

Drug companies do however, have an incentive to make copy cat drugs for which there is a proven market. But we don't get better drugs. We might get better marketed drugs, but typically one doesn't need to produce a better Viagra. One merely needs to produce an equivalent Viagra and market it effectively. Billions of R&D dollars are wasted to produce copy cat drugs with proven markets.


There are many other examples where capitalist market forces do not produce the best outcome. That's why I say people shouldn't make rigid absolutism claims that either a socialist or a capitalist economic system is better. Neither is absolutely better. We should look at products and services individually and use the evidence to determine the proper mix of systems.

While the Republics are trying to make 'socialism' a bad word, it is ignorant to buy that claim. Look at how many well run public services we have in capitalist America.

[Gregoire]

Had this on the backburner last night.


I like to consider other points of view. I own more than a few Pat Buchanan books, I subscribe to The American Conservative and I tool around NRO and other conservative sources with whom I disagree rather vehemently. But Pat's somewhat covert white nationalism doesn't mean that he's off his rocker when advocating for a humbler foreign policy. His social conservatism doesn't mean that when describing American society, he's always going to get it wrong.........


Its kind of fun actually, to read people you disagree with and find out: "Well geez, Buchanan actually hit that on the head." And I think doing so contributes to a healthy intellectual development that is able to consider a wider array of viewpoints fairly, without resorting to describing those you disagree with as complete dimwits or so hopelessly biased that nothing they ever say has any value. Doing that - I think - is a recipe for intellectual stagnation.

Exactly!

This is, after all, a skeptics forum. How can we know we are "right" if we don't continually expose ourselves to other points of view?

[Marc39]

So by this standard, Glenn Beck is a respected authority on ... er.. uh... hmmm, not sure what to say there.


Chomsky's views certainly became well know somehow.

Beck is a younger version of Chomsky.

Both are irrelevant and charlatans.

[PixyMisa]

There's a difference between someone like Chomsky, and say Alex Jones or David Icke. ... Chomsky's hit/miss ratio is still much better than theirs...
Wow. Talk about damning with faint praise! :covereyes

I can see the dust jacket of his next book:

Less insane than David Icke.
-- The Boston Daily Sun Herald Gazette

Has a better hit/miss ratio than Alex Jones.
-- The New York Post Review of Books

Not quite as mad as a box of frogs.
-- Washington Post-Times-Times-Post

[PixyMisa]

Early on in this thread, people made allegations about Chomsky's supposed factual errors while Chomsky sources have refuted those claims.

Yet the accusations continue. Why should I continue to fact check every allegation after checking several only to find the allegations false? I don't have all the time in the world.

Cite a specific fact, not opinion of Chomsky's and a give us a specific citation refuting that quoted Chomsky fact.
The citation was already supplied. The original text, and Chomsky's distortion of it. Chomsky lied.

[PixyMisa]

First, what I said was natural selection would favor the best economic system as measured by the well being of the individual, not as measured by the biggest profit.
Which is wrong. We're talking about natural selection of economic systems. The biggest profit (over the long term) is the measure of fitness.

While it would seem profit and well being would naturally be the same, there are many cases where that isn't the case. Nothing in capitalism would stop the tragedy of the commons, for example, until the system crashed.That's not true either. An individual tragedy of the commons won't "crash" capitalism. We've already seen this.

If wealth is too concentrated at the top, the bulk of the population would not have a survival advantage, for example.Says who?

And it has led historically to annihilation of the top as well.In a capitalist economy? When, exactly?

But let's look just at innovation. I think most innovation would correlate with better survival outcome. But capitalism does not always produce innovation.When does it not?

I've used the following example many times but it demonstrates the problem well. We need new antibiotics. But when new antibiotics come on the market, they are prescribed very conservatively to save them for the most drug resistant infections. If we used them excessively, antibiotic resistance to the new drug would quickly develop.

A drug company wouldn't want to tie up their capital in R&D for new antibiotics until the need was great, because the return on the investment wouldn't occur until there was a great need for the new drug. That means there is an incentive to let drug resistant infections multiply first before tying up the capital for a long term gain.Except that this is not what happens. Research into new antibiotics continues apace.

Drug companies do however, have an incentive to make copy cat drugs for which there is a proven market. But we don't get better drugs. We might get better marketed drugs, but typically one doesn't need to produce a better Viagra. One merely needs to produce an equivalent Viagra and market it effectively. Billions of R&D dollars are wasted to produce copy cat drugs with proven markets.Except that, again, this is not what happens. We do get better drugs. Not consistently, not guaranteed, but research is funny like that.

There are many other examples where capitalist market forces do not produce the best outcome.To say that there are "other" examples is to suggest that you had already provided examples.

That's why I say people shouldn't make rigid absolutism claims that either a socialist or a capitalist economic system is better.Economically, capitalism is always better.

Neither is absolutely better. We should look at products and services individually and use the evidence to determine the proper mix of systems.Well then. Capitalism is always better.

While the Republics are trying to make 'socialism' a bad word, it is ignorant to buy that claim. Look at how many well run public services we have in capitalist America.Yeah, sure. There's the DMV, and the VA, and... No, wait...

[Praktik]

Wow. Talk about damning with faint praise! :covereyes

I can see the dust jacket of his next book:

lol

I guess the point sailed over your head. And this might sound strange coming from a debunker, but my point was that its important to read even dyed-in-the-wool crazies like Icke and Jones, they are wrong UNBELIEVABLY more than they are right (MUCH MORE than Chomsky) but even they touch on real issues like national sovereignty in a changing world of macro-regional governance, and issues of personal freedom in a changed security environment. And they offer a window into the perspectives of the many who follow them.

I read them. I even read idiots like David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes. I read Chomsky - and think the value of his insights rise far above the other names I've listed here. And even if you consider Chomsky in the same light I consider Pat Buchanan, or Alex Jones - there is value in reading perspectives with which you disagree.

[NWO Sentryman]

I don't see how Daniel pipes is an idiot.

First off, he stumped howard Zinn in a debate.

http://hnn.us/articles/1025.html

Then he tears the October Surprise myth to shreds.

http://hnn.us/articles/4249.html

[oldhat]

Beck is a younger version of Chomsky.

Both are irrelevant and charlatans.

Comparing Glenn Beck to Chomsky is laughable.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Which is wrong. We're talking about natural selection of economic systems. The biggest profit (over the long term) is the measure of fitness.Last time I checked, gold didn't reproduce.

While profits certainly contribute to the ability to reproduce, they are merely a means to an end and as such profits are a secondary but not a primary measure of success.

It's akin to measuring number of germs killed. The real desired outcome is amount of disease prevented. Sometimes killing germs leads to disease prevention, but not always. And as such, number of germs killed is not the optimal measurement of success. Disease prevention is.

With profits, they are like killing germs. Sometimes the most profitable system does not lead to the best outcome for human beings. Human outcome is the best measure, not the indirect measurement of profits.

That's not true either. An individual tragedy of the commons won't "crash" capitalism. We've already seen this.An 'individual' tragedy? Apparently you don't know the story. Overgrazing leads to everyone's cows dying, not just the individual who added the first extra cow.

Says who?

In a capitalist economy? When, exactly?I am referring to peasant revolts which have occurred against the aristocracy over and over in recorded history.

When does it not?What do you do here, reply before you read the answer to your question? Read the post before you waste my time.

Except that this is not what happens. Research into new antibiotics continues apace.Right. And guess who funds that research? The government! Without public funds the drug companies would be unwilling to tie up their capital in R&D that only promised long term return.

BTW, we needed new antibiotics years ago. Only now that drug resistant strains have become pandemic are we seeing any new drugs developed. The market is here now. But lots of people have died of untreatable infections in the meantime. And the few new antibiotics that are out of the gate have had major side effect risks so far.

Except that, again, this is not what happens. We do get better drugs. Not consistently, not guaranteed, but research is funny like that.You don't know much about this field, do you? Have you ever looked into just how much public money goes into drug company R&D so the public need is met?

... Provide some sources supporting your above claims that market forces are driving ALL new drug innovation. There's a lot of money going into many new drugs that there is no current solution to and a huge market awaits: weight loss, anti-aging, Alzheimer's, cancer treatment, some vaccines...

That's why I said a mix is called for. But without public dollars, the outcome of pharmaceutical R&D would be optimum for drug companies, but not optimum for the human species.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I don't see how Daniel pipes is an idiot.

First off, he stumped howard Zinn in a debate.

http://hnn.us/articles/1025.html

Then he tears the October Surprise myth to shreds.

http://hnn.us/articles/4249.htmlI read the transcript in the first link, and I find your impression of it differs from mine. Pipes rehashes the BS belief that America can do no wrong and anyone who dares find fault with the actions of the US is a bad person. It's the idealistic John Wayne version of America. Zinn's version seems a lot more realistic than idealistic to me.

I'll comment on the second one when I have the time to bother with it.

[NWO Sentryman]

Wait a minute, Zinn is realistic? He believes in the "Mirror Universe" version of history, with every action undertaken by the US supposedly for profit, regardless of the facts.

He also brought praise for Maoist China.

As well as that, he has proven to be a very unreliable source.

Zinn Is not a good historian, but a good polemicist.

Notice how he shifts the topic from Iraq to Southeast Asia/Latin America to healthcare.

[PixyMisa]

lol

I guess the point sailed over your head. And this might sound strange coming from a debunker, but my point was that its important to read even dyed-in-the-wool crazies like Icke and Jones
No it isn't.

I read them. I even read idiots like David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes. I read Chomsky - and think the value of his insights rise far above the other names I've listed here. And even if you consider Chomsky in the same light I consider Pat Buchanan, or Alex Jones - there is value in reading perspectives with which you disagree.
If they are informed perspectives, yes. This does not apply to David Icke or Alex Jones or Pat Buchanan - or Chomsky.

[PixyMisa]

Last time I checked, gold didn't reproduce.
Non-sequitur.

While profits certainly contribute to the ability to reproduce, they are merely a means to an end and as such profits are a secondary but not a primary measure of success.
Non-sequitur.

It's akin to measuring number of germs killed. The real desired outcome is amount of disease prevented. Sometimes killing germs leads to disease prevention, but not always. And as such, number of germs killed is not the optimal measurement of success. Disease prevention is.
Red herring.

With profits, they are like killing germs. Sometimes the most profitable system does not lead to the best outcome for human beings. Human outcome is the best measure, not the indirect measurement of profits.
Red herring.

An 'individual' tragedy? Apparently you don't know the story. Overgrazing leads to everyone's cows dying, not just the individual who added the first extra cow.
Yes. This is true. It is also irrelevant. If you overgraze a particular area, you run out of food, and have to sell of your livestock, possibly at a loss, and wait for the land to recover. This is clearly not sound policy, though it's sometimes hard to avoid. Overfishing is a prime example today.

But it does not crash the system. We've been through numerous tragedies of the commons of varying kinds and on varying scales, and the economy survived all of them.

I am referring to peasant revolts which have occurred against the aristocracy over and over in recorded history.
Okay. Nothing to do with capitalism, then, so another red herring.

What do you do here, reply before you read the answer to your question? Read the post before you waste my time.
You said "capitalism does not always produce innovation".

This is false. Capitalism does always produce innovation.

Right. And guess who funds that research? The government!
Some drug research is government-funded. Some isn't. Do you have details showing that all research into new anti-biotics is exclusively government-funded in all countries?

Without public funds the drug companies would be unwilling to tie up their capital in R&D that only promised long term return.
Long-term return is better than no-return.

BTW, we needed new antibiotics years ago. Only now that drug resistant strains have become pandemic are we seeing any new drugs developed. The market is here now. But lots of people have died of untreatable infections in the meantime. And the few new antibiotics that are out of the gate have had major side effect risks so far.
Perhaps that's why these new antibiotics weren't released earlier?

You don't know much about this field, do you? Have you ever looked into just how much public money goes into drug company R&D so the public need is met?
Do you?

... Provide some sources supporting your above claims that market forces are driving ALL new drug innovation.
Provide some sources supporting your above claim that I ever said that.

There's a lot of money going into many new drugs that there is no current solution to and a huge market awaits: weight loss, anti-aging, Alzheimer's, cancer treatment, some vaccines...
Yes? And?

That's why I said a mix is called for. But without public dollars, the outcome of pharmaceutical R&D would be optimum for drug companies, but not optimum for the human species.
You mean they'd be run like every other field of human endeavour?

[PixyMisa]

Comparing Glenn Beck to Chomsky is laughable.
Why?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Why?Their relative degrees of intelligence and education are miles apart.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Non-sequitur.


Non-sequitur.


Red herring.


Red herring.


Yes. This is true. It is also irrelevant. If you overgraze a particular area, you run out of food, and have to sell of your livestock, possibly at a loss, and wait for the land to recover. This is clearly not sound policy, though it's sometimes hard to avoid. Overfishing is a prime example today.

But it does not crash the system. We've been through numerous tragedies of the commons of varying kinds and on varying scales, and the economy survived all of them.


Okay. Nothing to do with capitalism, then, so another red herring.


You said "capitalism does not always produce innovation".

This is false. Capitalism does always produce innovation.


Some drug research is government-funded. Some isn't. Do you have details showing that all research into new anti-biotics is exclusively government-funded in all countries?


Long-term return is better than no-return.


Perhaps that's why these new antibiotics weren't released earlier?


Do you?


Provide some sources supporting your above claim that I ever said that.


Yes? And?


You mean they'd be run like every other field of human endeavour?You've dismissed comments rather than discuss them. I don't have time to waste on such a discussion.

[Marc39]

Their relative degrees of intelligence and education are miles apart.

In Chomsky's chosen field of linguistics. Otherwise, he's a loon.
Beck, at least, figured out a way to get rich being one.

[Doc Daneeka]

In Chomsky's chosen field of linguistics. Otherwise, he's a loon.
Beck, at least, figured out a way to get rich being one.

What? You don't think that Chomsky is rich? Surely he's sold a hell of a lot of books over the past 40 years.

[Skeptic Ginger]

In Chomsky's chosen field of linguistics. Otherwise, he's a loon.
Beck, at least, figured out a way to get rich being one.As has been noted here with supporting citations, Chomsky pays meticulous attention to facts. It's his conclusions people take issue with. Beck doesn't know the difference between fact and fiction and his conclusions suck as well.

[gtc]

As has been noted here with supporting citations, Chomsky pays meticulous attention to facts. It's his conclusions people take issue with.

Is this like his 'fact' that Jews control 98% of America? Or his 'fact' that the US invaded Lebanon in 2006? Was he paying meticulous attention to the facts when he made those claims?

References to where he claimed those 'facts' to be true were provided on the first page of this thread by me but you have seemed to overlook them.

Even if you want to argue that he is just using rhetorical flourishes when he says that the US invaded Lebanon in 2006 or that Jews control the US you still have the problem that he claimed (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/noam-chomsky-you-ask-the-questions-413678.html):

- the US-Israeli invasion, according to the (accurate) perception of 90 per cent of Lebanese.

You will notice he provides not a skerrick of evidence to support his claim that 90% of the Lebanese believe that it was a US-Israeli invasion. And what is more, even if 90% of Lebanese people believe something that doesn't mean it is true.

In these two examples he is recklessly disregarding logic and the truth to make ideologically motivated claims. That is, obviously, not unique but it does show that it is wrong to claim that he has a great regard for the facts.

[NWO Sentryman]

As has been noted here with supporting citations, Chomsky pays meticulous attention to facts. It's his conclusions people take issue with. Beck doesn't know the difference between fact and fiction and his conclusions suck as well.

Excuse me, Chomsky is guilty of more intellectually dishonesty than RJ Rummel and Ward Churchill combined. Srebrenica, Darfur, Faurisson etc.

His citations usualy return to his earlier writings

[Marc39]

What? You don't think that Chomsky is rich? Surely he's sold a hell of a lot of books over the past 40 years.

Chomsky had wealthy parents, however, unless he has sold millions of books, then, he hasn't made much money off them.

[Jono]

I recommend people email Chomsky and ask him about these matters personally. I generally try to do that, when possible, if I find myself with enough curiosity and/or ample interest to hear it from the horse's mouth as it is.
Also, in my experience Chomsky gladly replies to emails, within reason.

[Marc39]

I recommend people email Chomsky and ask him about these matters personally. I generally try to do that, when possible, if I find myself with enough curiosity and/or ample interest to hear it from the horse's mouth as it is.
Also, in my experience Chomsky gladly replies to emails, within reason.

I have had email correspondence with Chomsky. Rather than hearing from the horse's mouth, I got the other end of the horse.

[Jono]

I have had email correspondence with Chomsky. Rather than hearing from the horse's mouth, I got the other end of the horse.

Not sure I understood that pun. You mean simply to say he bs'ed you? Good for you either way I guess.

[Prometheus]

Excuse me, Chomsky is guilty of more intellectually dishonesty than RJ Rummel and Ward Churchill combined. Srebrenica, Darfur, Faurisson etc.

His citations usualy return to his earlier writings

As opposed to your claims which, I note, do not contain any citations at all.

[Marc39]

Not sure I understood that pun. You mean simply to say he bs'ed you? Good for you either way I guess.

Chomsky revealed himself as a broken record in email correspondence. He turns a deaf ear, two deaf ears, to contrary POVs.

As Dershowitz characterizes it, it's Planet Chomsky.

[NWO Sentryman]

As opposed to your claims which, I note, do not contain any citations at all.

Srebrenica

http://genocideinbosnia.blogspot.com/2006/01/noam-chomsky-and-srebrenica-massacre.html

I meant Cambodia and the sudan pharma strike

But, regardless, my point about chomsky still stands.

[Prometheus]

Srebrenica

http://genocideinbosnia.blogspot.com/2006/01/noam-chomsky-and-srebrenica-massacre.html

I meant Cambodia and the sudan pharma strike

But, regardless, my point about chomsky still stands.

Are you serious? An unsubstantiated blog post consisting of nothing but hearsay regarding a single interview allegedly broadcast on Bosnian television? And you complain about the quality of Chomsky's citations?

[NWO Sentryman]

Are you serious? An unsubstantiated blog post consisting of nothing but hearsay regarding a single interview allegedly broadcast on Bosnian television? And you complain about the quality of Chomsky's citations?

Well, there is also balkanwitness:

http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/Articles-Bosnia.htm#Srebrenica

and:

http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2005/12/chomskys-genocidal-denial.html

[gtc]

I recommend people email Chomsky and ask him about these matters personally. I generally try to do that, when possible, if I find myself with enough curiosity and/or ample interest to hear it from the horse's mouth as it is.
Also, in my experience Chomsky gladly replies to emails, within reason.

I have posted his response about his claim that Jews control 98% of America. He claims it was 'an ironic reference to people who would not be satisfied even if they had only 98 per cent control'.

That is, frankly, BS.

[Doc Daneeka]

Is this like his 'fact' that Jews control 98% of America?

Yeah. I just don't read it that way. To me, it refers to a 'privileged class, which now accepts Jews without prejudice.' Then again, perhaps it requires familiarity with Chomsky's other writings to read it that way.

I have mixed feelings about the guy. However, I believe you have misread the passage.

[Doc Daneeka]

Excuse me, Chomsky is guilty of more intellectually dishonesty than RJ Rummel and Ward Churchill combined. Srebrenica, Darfur, Faurisson etc.

His citations usualy return to his earlier writings

Not in my experience. His citations usually refer to journalists, academic historians, political theorists, or historians. Whether or not one finds his conclusions or choice of sources to be valid, he doesn't just write pages of endnotes referring to his own work.

[gtc]

Yeah. I just don't read it that way. To me, it refers to a 'privileged class, which now accepts Jews without prejudice.' Then again, perhaps it requires familiarity with Chomsky's other writings to read it that way.

I have mixed feelings about the guy. However, I believe you have misread the passage.

I don't see how you can read it that way.

He starts off by saying that 'By now Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population. ' and then says that 'it's raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control' and then 'they want to make sure there's no critical look at the policies the US (and they themselves) support in the Middle East.'

It seems pretty clear to me that the '98% control' is placed in the context of his complaints about the power and influence of Jews in America.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Is this like his 'fact' that Jews control 98% of America? Or his 'fact' that the US invaded Lebanon in 2006? Was he paying meticulous attention to the facts when he made those claims?Your link in Chomsky's own words:You misunderstood. It was an ironic reference to people who would not be satisfied even if they had only 98 per cent control. Of course there is nothing even remotely like that.


It's clear you are the one lying about Chomsky or at a minimum, misinterpreting what he has actually said. And that is what I said. When you seek out actual quotes or answers by Chomsky, you find the claims about his factual errors are lies or mistakes.

[gtc]

Your link in Chomsky's own words:


It's clear you are the one lying about Chomsky or at a minimum, misinterpreting what he has actually said.

It is clear that you ignored this quote for the same reason that you are now accusing me of lying. Your ideological blinkers prevent you from actually thinking for yourself. Did you even read the original quote or are you too afraid to do so?

Yet again, here is what he wrote (http://www.variant.randomstate.org/16texts/Chomsky.html) in 2003:


By now Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population. You find occasional instances of anti-Semitism but they are marginal. There's plenty of racism, but it's directed against Blacks, Latinos, Arabs are targets of enormous racism, and those problems are real. Anti-Semitism is no longer a problem, fortunately. It's raised, but it's raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control. That's why anti-Semitism is becoming an issue. Not because of the threat of anti-Semitism; they want to make sure there's no critical look at the policies the US (and they themselves) support in the Middle East. With regard to anti-Semitism, the distinguished Israeli statesman Abba Eban pointed out the main task of Israeli propaganda (they would call it exclamation, what's called 'propaganda' when others do it) is to make it clear to the world there's no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. By anti-Zionism he meant criticisms of the current policies of the State of Israel. So there's no difference between criticism of policies of the State of Israel and anti-Semitism, because if he can establish 'that' then he can undercut all criticism by invoking the Nazis and that will silence people. We should bear it in mind when there's talk in the US about anti-Semitism.


Where is the evidence that Jews are the most privileged and influential part of the population? Where is the evidence that anti-Semitism is only mentioned as a problem 'because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control'?

If he is not suggesting that Jews have '98% control' why did he call them the most priveleged and influential part of the population and then talk about 'privileged people' holding 98% control?

His statement in 2006 that:
You misunderstood. It was an ironic reference to people who would not be satisfied even if they had only 98 per cent control. Of course there is nothing even remotely like that.

This is patently false. There was no suggestion that the privileged people would want 98% control; the statement was referring to a current state of the world - these people have 98% control.

He was saying that they have 98% control but want more. He was not saying that they do not have 98% control but want 98% and even then would not be happy.

But even if he was suggesting that American Jews are a powerful and privileged group using claims of anti-semitism to strive for complete control of the US - how is that much better?

Face it skeptigirl, he was wrong in 2003, he was wrong in 2006 and his two statements don't match.

[Jono]

Chomsky revealed himself as a broken record in email correspondence. He turns a deaf ear, two deaf ears, to contrary POVs.

As Dershowitz characterizes it, it's Planet Chomsky.

That's all well and good I suppose. However the pot calling the kettle black in Dershowitz' case imo.

[Jono]

If he is not suggesting that Jews have '98% control' why did he call them the most priveleged and influential part of the population and then talk about 'privileged people' holding 98% control?


Personally I had never seen either of the given quotes. However he's not saying jews control 98% of anything. To me it reads as if he's talking about the typical behaviour of priviliged people wanting to have 100% control, not just 98%. I.e, they are overzealous in seeking control/influence.
With this meaning, in that context, he's basically saying that jews in the US generally do little half-arsed but all the way in terms of aspiring for influence and control of the discussed issues.

I'm not claiming he's an oracle of truth here, but the above mentioned sentiments are what he appears to state as I can see.

As an example with a less controversial comparison (which I tend to use to help see the point), if I were to say that danish people in Sweden are amongst the most priviliged, and like privileged people they do not want just almost-control (98) but total control, then I wouldn't be claiming that danish people have 98% control. If someone said I did, they would be misinterpreting what I had said.

[Prometheus]

Well, there is also balkanwitness:

http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/Articles-Bosnia.htm#Srebrenica

and:

http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2005/12/chomskys-genocidal-denial.html

I'm still reading all the follow-on links, but am quite busy right now, so I'll have to come back to this later. For now, I'll just say that I don't yet see anything impressive in these criticisms of Chomsky.

[Doctor Evil]

As a side comment related to gtc's post (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5151645&postcount=153), it seems that Antisemitism is not that marginal in the US. A short Google search lead me to the 2007 hate crime table (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2007/table_01.htm). Anti Jewish hate crime are the second most common ones, behind anti-Black ones. I would say Chomsky did not do his homework in that instance.

[NWO Sentryman]

I'm still reading all the follow-on links, but am quite busy right now, so I'll have to come back to this later. For now, I'll just say that I don't yet see anything impressive in these criticisms of Chomsky.

Em, there is "Chomsky's Srebrenica Shame", which is quite a big one. IT was written by War crimes Investigator (i stand corrected on the prosecutor point) Marko Hoare who was in the prosecution team in Milosevic's trial.

As well as that, there is this link

http://ww4report.com/node/1239

Don't be thrown off by the far left jazz.

[whatnot]

...truther Kevin Barrett posted a longish email thread between himself and Chomsky a while back, it's a pisser. Sadly, it's MIA in the wake of Barrett's abortive run for elected office. Not sure why Barrett would want to publicize it; when Chomsky thinks you're paranoid, you might want to get a neuropsych eval.

sott[DEL]net/articles/show/157773

Njoy that.

[whatnot]

Some drug research is government-funded. Some isn't.

enDELwikipediaDELorg/wiki/Onchocerciasis

Not a shill, I'm just sayin'...

[whatnot]

Bashing America is very lucrative business, just ask Michael Moore and Naomi Klein.

This on a t-shirt makes a great stocking stuffer for the smartass in your life.

(c) 2007 / Ain't I A Stinker? LTD

[BabyHeadedMan]

As a side comment related to gtc's post (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5151645&postcount=153), it seems that Antisemitism is not that marginal in the US. A short Google search lead me to the 2007 hate crime table (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2007/table_01.htm). Anti Jewish hate crime are the second most common ones, behind anti-Black ones. I would say Chomsky did not do his homework in that instance.
Anti-Semitism may be a common theme in hate crimes in the United States, but the frequency of various hate crimes relative to one another cannot be seen as being representative of the prejudices of the general population. Pew surveys (http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=262) in the past few years have found that the percentage of Americans who hold unfavorable views of Jews has consistently remained in the single-digit range. In contrast, Pew measured the percentage of Americans who hold negative views of Muslims as having fluctuated between 31 and a little below 23.

[Doctor Evil]

Anti-Semitism may be a common theme in hate crimes in the United States, but the frequency of various hate crimes relative to one another cannot be seen as being representative of the prejudices of the general population. Pew surveys (http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=262) in the past few years have found that the percentage of Americans who hold unfavorable views of Jews has consistently remained in the single-digit range. In contrast, Pew measured the percentage of Americans who hold negative views of Muslims as having fluctuated between 31 and a little below 23.

That may be true. However, I would say that it is the instances of extreme behavior, such as hate crimes, which have the greatest influence on the people involved. And according to the hate crime data above, Anti-Jewish hate crimes outnumber Anti-Muslim ones by a factor of 8.

[BabyHeadedMan]

That may be true. However, I would say that it is the instances of extreme behavior, such as hate crimes, which have the greatest influence on the people involved. And according to the hate crime data above, Anti-Jewish hate crimes outnumber Anti-Muslim ones by a factor of 8.
There are many dimensions to anti-Muslim/anti-Arab sentiment with the phenomenon of hate crimes being just one of them. Trends seen in various discriminatory practices and civil liberties issues have been causes for concern over the past few years. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee provides an overview of these many dimensions along with specific examples of each in their 2003-2007 Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination Against Arab Americans (http://www.adc.org/PDF/hcr07.pdf). What evidence do you have that hate crimes are more significant in their effect than all these other problems?

[Marc39]

...the percentage of Americans who hold unfavorable views of Jews has consistently remained in the single-digit range. In contrast, Pew measured the percentage of Americans who hold negative views of Muslims as having fluctuated between 31 and a little below 23.

I'm shocked--SHOCKED! After all, Islam is a religion of peace, right?

[Doctor Evil]

There are many dimensions to anti-Muslim/anti-Arab sentiment with the phenomenon of hate crimes being just one of them. Trends seen in various discriminatory practices and civil liberties issues have been causes for concern over the past few years. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee provides an overview of these many dimensions along with specific examples of each in their 2003-2007 Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination Against Arab Americans (http://www.adc.org/PDF/hcr07.pdf). What evidence do you have that hate crimes are more significant in their effect than all these other problems?

You seem to be changing the subject, which was Chomsky's claim that Antisemitism is not relevant compared to other types of racism. I have brought an example to the contrary. One which is very easy to find. This point was to show that that specific comment is flawed, and he should have done his homework.

Now, you seem to argue that there are other manifestations of racism. That is undoubtedly true. One can ask whether those forms of discrimination hurt Arab Americans more than Jews. To answer that question one has to perform a proper comparative study. Until I see such studies, I confess ignorance regarding this question.

Anyway, the hate crime statistics are enough to make my original point. Namely, that in contrast to Chomsky's claim, antisemitism is still a problem in the US. Furthermore, it is very easy to find data that demonstrates this.

[thinkingman]

I have always appreciated Chomsky's work and his view on political topics.

[BabyHeadedMan]

You seem to be changing the subject, which was Chomsky's claim that Antisemitism is not relevant compared to other types of racism. I have brought an example to the contrary. One which is very easy to find. This point was to show that that specific comment is flawed, and he should have done his homework.

Now, you seem to argue that there are other manifestations of racism. That is undoubtedly true. One can ask whether those forms of discrimination hurt Arab Americans more than Jews. To answer that question one has to perform a proper comparative study. Until I see such studies, I confess ignorance regarding this question.

Anyway, the hate crime statistics are enough to make my original point. Namely, that in contrast to Chomsky's claim, antisemitism is still a problem in the US. Furthermore, it is very easy to find data that demonstrates this.
I did some research on the Hate Crime Statistics program and found that serious questions have been raised about its accuracy. The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote a lengthy article (http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=291) in their Intelligence Report about the methodological flaws plaguing the FBI's efforts to collect information on the nation's hate crimes. They specifically criticize the 2007 report (http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2008/10/29/anti-latino-hate-crimes-rise-for-fourth-year/#more-2791) on their Hatewatch blog and contrast it with a report by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics based on data from National Crime Victimization Surveys that suggests hate crimes occur at a rate 20 to 30 times greater than what is shown by the FBI's work. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any information on how specific religious groups were targeted in the latter report and so can't compare anti-Muslim crime rates with those of crimes characterized by other biases. However, it is important to note that the SPLC points out that hate crimes of certain biases get underreported because the same kinds of prejudices which make certain groups the targets of hate crimes in the first place can also contribute to a mistrust of the police among those groups, so perhaps anti-Muslim/anti-Arab incident numbers are low in the FBI report not on account of the virulence of the racism against Muslims/Arabs being less significant than that of other less common forms of bigotry but instead because the virulence and quantity of racism against Muslims/Arabs is so great. An LA Times article (http://articles.latimes.com/2002/nov/26/nation/na-hate26) about the sudden increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes after 9/11 lends credence to this suggestion when it says Islamic leaders told the paper that many Muslims were afraid to go to the police to report hate crimes for fear of becoming the subjects of investigations.

[Doctor Evil]

The self reporting of hate crimes by various states could indeed bias the FBI hate crime statistics. Or it may not.

In any case, I have used it to argue that Chomsky was wrong to say that antisemitism is no longer a problem. Do you really believe that a more complete statistics would somehow show that antisemitic hate crimes are very rare? I doubt that this would turn out to be the case.

[JJM 777]

I'm shocked--SHOCKED! After all, Islam is a religion of peace, right?
Compared to US military action of the past century, Muslims actually look very peaceful.

[gtc]

Compared to US military action of the past century, Muslims actually look very peaceful.

I really don't think people from countries that allied themselves to Nazi Germany should condemn the US for participating in World War II.

However, this is off topic and there are many threads dealing with the percieved evilness of the US.

[Clare Swinney]

Noam Chomsky has lied about 9/11 and thus has no credibility in my opinion. He is not a man for the people as he pretends to be. His infamous question “Who cares?” about 9/11 Truth has revealed he does not genuinely care about humanity. Rather he functions as a gatekeeper for elite controllers in my opinion.

[Praktik]

is that really your opinion?

[BabyHeadedMan]

The self reporting of hate crimes by various states could indeed bias the FBI hate crime statistics. Or it may not.
We know there's a good chance it biases the information. We know people are afraid to report being victimized, and we know individuals in charge of reporting hate crimes who are resistant or apathetic to the Hate Crime Statistics program also cause incidents to go uncounted. An inability on the part of some record keepers to recognize some kinds of hate crimes properly has also created a good deal of inaccuracy in the report, and the embarrassment hate crimes can bring to a community further contributes to cases being ignored. Systemic problems play a role too.
In any case, I have used it to argue that Chomsky was wrong to say that antisemitism is no longer a problem. Do you really believe that a more complete statistics would somehow show that antisemitic hate crimes are very rare? I doubt that this would turn out to be the case.
At the most, what we might see is a small minority of people directing an unusual amount of energy toward anti-Semitic activity, but as is evidenced by the Pew surveys, anti-Semitism is far from being thoroughly entrenched in American culture as it once was. I, as a Jew, haven't personally come across much of it, although I supposedly don't really look Jewish, and since I'm secular, most people wouldn't even realize I was a Jew, unless I went out of my way to tell them. Arabophobia/Islamophobia, on the other hand, is much more common in America, and frighteningly, some manifestations of it are often seen as acceptable. This is what Chomsky was trying to explain. Pro-Israel groups warn about a "new anti-Semitism" all the time in order to discredit criticisms of Israel when polls show anti-Semitic beliefs are expressed only by a single-digit percentage of the American population.

[Doctor Evil]

At the most, what we might see is a small minority of people directing an unusual amount of energy toward anti-Semitic activity, but as is evidenced by the Pew surveys, anti-Semitism is far from being thoroughly entrenched in American culture as it once was. I, as a Jew, haven't personally come across much of it, although I supposedly don't really look Jewish, and since I'm secular, most people wouldn't even realize I was a Jew, unless I went out of my way to tell them. Arabophobia/Islamophobia, on the other hand, is much more common in America, and frighteningly, some manifestations of it are often seen as acceptable. This is what Chomsky was trying to explain. Pro-Israel groups warn about a "new anti-Semitism" all the time in order to discredit criticisms of Israel when polls show anti-Semitic beliefs are expressed only by a single-digit percentage of the American population.

The Pew surveys may have their own biases. As an example, they may reflect the opinions which are perceived to be socially acceptable more than the opinions which people actually hold.

In any case, I am not sure how much to pursue this argument, as we just do not have good information. All I can say, even with your correct remarks on the limitations of the hate crime statistics, they still give some information. Namely, that antisemitism is a problem, and is in fact one of the more common types of hate crimes. You have your own personal experience, but I am not convinced that it explains away the statistics we do have.

[BabyHeadedMan]

The Pew surveys may have their own biases. As an example, they may reflect the opinions which are perceived to be socially acceptable more than the opinions which people actually hold.

In any case, I am not sure how much to pursue this argument, as we just do not have good information. All I can say, even with your correct remarks on the limitations of the hate crime statistics, they still give some information. Namely, that antisemitism is a problem, and is in fact one of the more common types of hate crimes. You have your own personal experience, but I am not convinced that it explains away the statistics we do have.
I agree with you that the low quality of information we have on the subject under discussion will probably preclude this conversation from reaching any sort of definite conclusion, although I don't share your presumption that the proportions between anti-Jewish hate crimes and hate crimes motivated by other biases shown in the FBI report are correct. The most important fact in all of this is that there is no reliable evidence to suggest there to be a widespread resurgence of anti-Semitism in the United States, and it is claims from the pro-Israel camp about such a phenomenon which Chomsky criticizes.

[Doc Daneeka]

Compared to US military action of the past century, Muslims actually look very peaceful.


I really don't think people from countries that allied themselves to Nazi Germany should condemn the US for participating in World War II.

However, this is off topic and there are many threads dealing with the percieved evilness of the US.

Weird. For the second time in this thread, I have to say that I've no idea how you could have read the quote that way. I might hazard a guess here: he wasn't talking about WW2.

(Also, Finland was not quite a German ally during the war. As Ben Goldacre would put it, I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that. I know, this is way outside the scope of this thread, but I had to mention it.)

[Slayhamlet]

is that really your opinion?

Yes, it is. She's insane.

[Doc Daneeka]

Noam Chomsky has lied about 9/11 and thus has no credibility in my opinion. He is not a man for the people as he pretends to be. His infamous question “Who cares?” about 9/11 Truth has revealed he does not genuinely care about humanity. Rather he functions as a gatekeeper for elite controllers in my opinion.


Let me guess: he lied about 9/11 because he doesn't believe it was a gigantic government conspiracy. And because he doesn't believe it, he's against humanity.


What is it like to live in a world where those who disagree with you are all elitist liars who hate humanity, or else helpless dupes who unknowingly provide cover for a vast conspiracy? Sounds exciting...

[Clare Swinney]

Doc Daneeka
Sounds exciting...




You can hear what Chomsky has to say here in a Q & A time, during which he is questioned about what he has had to say in relation to 9/11:
http://vodpod.com/watch/1535594-qa-chomsky-on-the-911-conspiracy-theories

Also refer:
Rebuttal of Noam Chomsky’s 9/11 Comments
http://www.infowars.com/rebuttal-of-noam-chomskys-911-comments/

If you think what I wrote sounds exciting you will enjoy reading The True Story of The Bilderberg Group by Daniel Estulin. He has been covering the Bilderberg meetings for some time. This reveals that it is the elite who are pulling the strings of government. You will also enjoy listening to the radio show at Infowars.com, which is the most popular radio show on the Internet now. You won't be disappointed!

[gtc]

Weird. For the second time in this thread, I have to say that I've no idea how you could have read the quote that way. I might hazard a guess here: he wasn't talking about WW2.

His was a blanket condemnation of American military action in the last century. He wasn't making a distinction so I don't think we should read one into what he wrote.

If he wants to ammend his post then he can.

(Also, Finland was not quite a German ally during the war. As Ben Goldacre would put it, I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that. I know, this is way outside the scope of this thread, but I had to mention it.)

I am aware of that which is why I wrote that they allied themselves to Germany.

[paulheinze]

Is noam chomsky a good source on the Cold War?

Check his sources, then you can decide for yourself. I often make the effort, to get the sources he cites in his footnotes at least on crucial statements.
In my experience he is a good source.

[paulheinze]

Well, there is also balkanwitness:

http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/Articles-Bosnia.htm#Srebrenica

and:

http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2005/12/chomskys-genocidal-denial.html

Srebrenica was actually overstated. Cruelties happened there. But it was used as a propaganda vehicle to get support to attack Jugoslavia. I would like to remind of the biggest ethnic cleansing operation of the wars in 90s where 200000 Serbs where the victims. As Croatia enjoyed support by the NATO, this crime did not receive the attention it deserved.

[NWO Sentryman]

Srebrenica was actually overstated. Cruelties happened there. But it was used as a propaganda vehicle to get support to attack Jugoslavia. I would like to remind of the biggest ethnic cleansing operation of the wars in 90s where 200000 Serbs where the victims. As Croatia enjoyed support by the NATO, this crime did not receive the attention it deserved.

Nope, Credible sources say 8000 people were murdered at Srebrenica.

Em, 200000 people were not massacred

Em, the problem with refugees is whether or not they were coerced into fleeing and by whom.

This is like denying the holocaust yet saying the (illegal) expulsions of the sudeten germans was worse.

As well as that, several croats were indicted at ICTY for Operation Storm.

[dc1971]

Noam Chomsky is an important part of this balanced breakfast. Fortified with 9 vitamins and iron, Noam Chomsky is the morning pick-me-up that keeps on delivering all day long.

HA HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!! Nice!

"I was saying BOOuuurns!!"

DC (Dick Cheney I am not!):drool:

[Skeptic]

Noam Chomsky is a linguistics professor. He has no more training or knowledge in politics than the guy shooting his mouth off next to you in the local bar, or, to give a better example, Oprah.

This being the case, whether or not to trust his views about politics depends on how reasonable those views are, not on his celebrity status.

But he is on record supporting the world's worst dictators, floating conspiracy theories, being chummy with holocaust deniers and neo-nazis, and much more besides.

Why, then, take anything he says about politics seriously? On what grounds?

[Eyeron]

I found this interesting article from Wiki on criticism of noam chomski:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky

And in the section with Harry S Truman I just learned that Chomsky is prone to making quotes up to suit his criticisms of America and capitalism. So if he makes things up how is he a good source? Since he makes things up, it seems he jsut cannot be trusted.

[Prometheus]

For me, it depends what is meant by 'source'. If you're looking for a trustworthy authority to settle an argument, then I'd say, in general, no.

However, if you're looking for a source from which to begin researching a topic, then yes. One thing is usually certain: virtually anything Chomsky says will be pored over, and picked apart by both fans and foes from all over the political spectrum, so he makes a good jumping off point from which to reconnoiter the diversity of opinions on topics he writes about.

[Childlike Empress]

And in the section with Harry S Truman I just learned that Chomsky is prone to making quotes up to suit his criticisms of America and capitalism. So if he makes things up how is he a good source? Since he makes things up, it seems he jsut cannot be trusted.


Sorry? We're talking about an author who has written several dozen books over nearly forty years and the critics have to come up with an error he made in the first edition of his first book? That's telling enough.

In the first book that I wrote, American Power and the New Mandarins, in the first edition there’s a slight error, namely that I attributed a quote to Truman which was in fact a very close paraphrase, almost verbatim paraphrase of what he said in a secondary source. I got a note mixed up and instead of citing the secondary source I cited Truman. It was corrected within about two months, in the second printing. There isn’t a scholarly monograph that doesn’t have a similar error somewhere. There have been at least a dozen articles, if not more, using this to denounce me, to prove that you can’t believe anything that’s said by anybody on the left, etc.

[NWO Sentryman]

Sorry? We're talking about an author who has written several dozen books over nearly forty years and the critics have to come up with an error he made in the first edition of his first book? That's telling enough.

But still, denying the Srebrenica Massacre is probably a biggie, as well as cavort with Holocaust Deniers, write apologia for the Khmer Rouge and Milosevic.

As well as that, Oliver Kamm has done some good deconstructions of Chomsky's books.

Heck, there is an excellent review on amazon of failed states that tears it to shreds.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R3CJYZRHLEANN7/ref=cm_aya_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0805079122#wasThisHelpful

[Childlike Empress]

Why does Chumpsky believe a bedrock moral is "we must apply to ourselves the same standards we do to others" (pp 3, 81)? Who is he to tell anyone what a state's morality is or should be, and besides, isn't he just unconsciously parroting the Christians' Golden Rule (p 4)?


Muahahaha. At least that fascist scumbag is honest. "Chumpsky", eh? You have a strange standard for "excellence", Sentryman.

[NWO Sentryman]

Muahahaha. At least that fascist scumbag is honest. "Chumpsky", eh? You have a strange standard for "excellence", Sentryman.

So anyone who disagrees is a fascist eh?

Besides, his other points still stand.

[Childlike Empress]

Do you understand what he is saying? He's defending bigotry. Chomsky's political work is completely based on the premise that one should live up to his own moral standards. He's saying for all those decades look, we say we are a benevolent force spreading freedom and democracy, but the facts show a different picture. We should change that.

Most of his critics try to prove that he paints the US in an unfairly black light and only sees the flaws - they think that in instances where the US influence is destructive, it is because of incompetence, mistakes, etc, but never out of calculated self-interest.

Very few people are, like the amazon reviewer, so bold to say hell yeah, he's right, we act out of self-interest and don't live up to our proclaimed moral values - but who cares? USA! USA! USA!

If you share this view, Chomsky's whole criticism falls indeed flat on its face, but in that case you are completely discredited as a discussion partner in the views of anyone, religious or not, who bases his moral understandings on some kind of Golden Rule/Categoric Imperative.

What do you call that?

[NWO Sentryman]

Do you understand what he is saying? He's defending bigotry. Chomsky's political work is completely based on the premise that one should live up to his own moral standards. He's saying for all those decades look, we say we are a benevolent force spreading freedom and democracy, but the facts show a different picture. We should change that.

No, Chomsky lives in some parallel dimension where everything ever done by the US is absolutely evil.

The US has been largely benevolent throughout WW2 and beyond. Of course, Indochina was a mess, but my main point is that Chomsky only sees the US as irredeemably evil.


Most of his critics try to prove that he paints the US in an unfairly black light and only sees the flaws - they think that in instances where the US influence is destructive, it is because of incompetence, mistakes, etc, but never out of calculated self-interest.

Would you call trying to stop another Mao or Stalin calculated self-interest?

And Chomsky is portraying the US as the devil. No wonder tyrants and bin laden love him and plug his death to america books.

Very few people are, like the amazon reviewer, so bold to say hell yeah, he's right, we act out of self-interest and don't live up to our proclaimed moral values - but who cares? USA! USA! USA!

And chomsky is "Death to AMERIKKKA!" just like any maoist third worldist, or jucheist.

Plese show me in the review where the reviewer said the US acted out of self interest.

What the reviewer was doing was giving him a fisking, or a point by point refutation.

Besides, the review used concise facts and Chomsky is just another Len Hart in his distortions.


If you share this view, Chomsky's whole criticism falls indeed flat on its face, but in that case you are completely discredited as a discussion partner in the views of anyone, religious or not, who bases his moral understandings on some kind of Golden Rule/Categoric Imperative.

The writer was pointing out Chomsky writes with an axe to grind.

And Chomsky himself has been inconsistent with his values due to support for Pol Pot, Milosevic, Mao, Axis Japan, hezbollah and other villains in the past.

What do you call that?

[Childlike Empress]

Did you read "Failed States"?

[NWO Sentryman]

Did you read "Failed States"?

unfortunately, i do not have an amazon account, and i do not know if i can find any copies anywhere nearby.

[Childlike Empress]

Well, go to a library. I haven't read it eighter. Aren't we both in a bad position to judge if the reviewer really refuted Chomsky? His very sloppy use of quotes doesn't make it easier:

Chumpsky is one of those "who believe that the International Court of Justice" had standing to pass judgment on the U.S.' actions in Nicaragua. Yes, Mr. Chumpsky, it is a question of your belief -- your faith -- isn't it? What is it with you and Nicaragua, anyway?


So, i recommend you make yourself familiar with the work of the man before you believe stuff like that. Who provides you with links like that anyway?

I read a couple of his books, the latest was his post-9/11 "Hegemony or Survival". I think it's an important book and recommend it. You will find that Chomsky doesn't think in categories like d/evil.

[NWO Sentryman]

Well, go to a library. I haven't read it eighter. Aren't we both in a bad position to judge if the reviewer really refuted Chomsky? His very sloppy use of quotes doesn't make it easier:




So, i recommend you make yourself familiar with the work of the man before you believe stuff like that. Who provides you with links like that anyway?

I read a couple of his books, the latest was his post-9/11 "Hegemony or Survival". I think it's an important book and recommend it. You will find that Chomsky doesn't think in categories like d/evil.

Thing is i don't know if my library stacks it either.

I tried goign through rethinking camelot once. Takes a hard stomach.

[cornsail]

The US has been largely benevolent throughout WW2 and beyond.
History easily demonstrates otherwise. Of course this is somewhat subjective and has little to do with whether Chomsky is a reliable source of information or not.

Your posts in the thread have been factually unreliable, poorly sourced (blog posts that contradict themselves, amazon.com reviews, retracted newspaper articles), and biased toward your worldview that the United States is benevolent. And the arguments you've tried to make are that Chomsky is unreliable, poorly sourced and biased toward his worldview that the United States is immoral. Why do you fail so hard at living up to your own standards?

[cornsail]

Noam Chomsky has lied about 9/11 and thus has no credibility in my opinion.
Thanks for backing me up. I love having someone jump in to accuse Chomsky of not being radically anti-US enough. :)

[NWO Sentryman]

well, what am i supposed to say? That the US are a bunch of babykillers who do things only for the sake of being evil.

Still, if the US prevents a Mao or Stalin coming to power, that is a sign of benevolence.

[cornsail]

No, just apply your own standards to yourself.

[NWO Sentryman]

No, just apply your own standards to yourself.

I know the US has done some pretty nasty stuff in the past (Supporting Suharto, fouling up in Vietnam, shady things done by the CIA such as GLADIO and Paperclip), but overall, Chosmky presents a very distorted worldview, such as saying the US Committed genocide in Vietnam, rewards torture, was convicted for international terrorism in the ICJ (Even though the ICJ ruling itself never said the words "International Terrorism" or "Terrorism")

Chomsky is a very cunning man. He doesn't necessarily lie, but he often equivocates or distort the facts to suit his worldview. He plays semantics in a way that is way beyond our comprehension. It's kinda like Alex Jones. Alex Jones goes on and on about MSM reports, declassified documents. Remember his "Clown Goblin Creature"?

[cornsail]

Chomsky has a biased worldview, sure. I don't think any author can escape that. I also think it's an okay reason not to like him or be attracted to his work. Scrounging every bit of dirt you can find on him using poor sources is hypocritical though.

If you're skeptical of declassified document claims then you can look them up your self to see whether they're accurate.

There is no comparison to Alex Jones who lies all over the place and has no scholarly training or respectable publications.

[NWO Sentryman]

Chomsky has a biased worldview, sure. I don't think any author can escape that. I also think it's an okay reason not to like him or be attracted to his work. Scrounging every bit of dirt you can find on him using poor sources is hypocritical though.

If you're skeptical of declassified document claims then you can look them up your self to see whether they're accurate.

There is no comparison to Alex Jones who lies all over the place and has no scholarly training or respectable publications.

Chomsky usually writes with an axe to grind, damaging his credibility.

Chomsky goes on and on about the declassified record, but has rarely named specific documents to look up.

There are comparisons between the two:

Both make vague references to the declassified record

Both believe in some cabal secretly ruling the world

both believe said cabal engineered vietnam and iraq wars

[Childlike Empress]

He plays semantics in a way that is way beyond our comprehension.


He doesn't play semantics at all. By his profession he uses words in their original meaning. And he insists on one human death - one count, regardless of them being US citizens or not.

[cornsail]

Chomsky usually writes with an axe to grind, damaging his credibility.
More not living up to your own standards since you are very obviously doing this. What do you think his beef is exactly?

Chomsky goes on and on about the declassified record, but has rarely named specific documents to look up.
Are you sure?

Both believe in some cabal secretly ruling the world
Wrong.

both believe said cabal engineered vietnam and iraq wars
Wrong.

[NWO Sentryman]

He doesn't play semantics at all. By his profession he uses words in their original meaning. And he insists on one human death - one count, regardless of them being US citizens or not.

he does use semantics to equivocate, exxagerate etc.

Chomsky's beef was vietnam, which then expanded to various areas of US policy

I'd like to see the "declassified records" chomsky refers to. while he does name northwoods and mongoose etc. this gives him a veneer of invulnerability as people who look at the documents and go tl;dr think he's always right.

"Manufacturing Consent" talked about this cabal and about how they controlled the media and the thought of the nation. Alex jones rails about Corporate media and talks about the "New World Order" and their use of media

Chomsky said the GOP and DEM were the same party. Alex jones rails about they are "Two sides of the coin"

Finally, Chomsky refers to Obama as a Puppet. Alex Jones does as well.

Chomsky said the cabal wanted a vietnam war, as well as an iraq war, namely for profit and control. Ditto Alex Jones.

[cornsail]

For those who think he's just anti-American, a couple quotes for perspective. :)

"There's nothing nice that you can say about any of [the Arab countries]."

"Canada became the per capita largest war exporter, trying to make as much money as it could from the murder of people in Indochina. In fact, I'd suggest that you look back at the comment by a well known and respected Canadian diplomat, I think his name was John Hughes, some years ago, who defined what he called the Canadian idea, namely "we uphold our principles but we find a way around them". Well, that's pretty accurate. And Canada is not unique in this respect, maybe a little more hypocritical."

"France is doing some really vicious things there, in fact they're just wiping out islands because they want them for nuclear tests. And when the socialist government in France is asked, "Why to do this?", they say, "Well look, we have to have nuclear tests." Well, if you have to have nuclear tests, why not have them in southern France? [audience laughter] Why have them in some island in the Pacific? Well, the answer to that is clear, after all they're just a bunch of little brown people or something. But you can't say that exactly, especially if you're a socialist, so something else is said."

[cornsail]

I'd like to see the "declassified records" chomsky refers to.
So look them up...

[gtc]

For those who think he's just anti-American, a couple quotes for perspective. :)

So he is not just anti-American.

[Childlike Empress]

"Manufacturing Consent" talked about this cabal and about how they controlled the media and the thought of the nation.


The Propaganda Model is NOT a conspiracy theory. You really should start researching for yourself.

Co-Author Edward Herman (http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20031209.htm):

In retrospect, perhaps we should have made it clearer that the propaganda model was about media behavior and performance, with uncertain and variable effects. Maybe we should have spelled out in more detail the contesting forces both within and outside the media and the conditions under which these are likely to be influential. But we made these points, and it is quite possible that nothing we could have done would have prevented our being labeled conspiracy theorists, rigid determinists, and deniers of the possibility that people can resist (even as we called for resistance).

[PixyMisa]

Chomsky is a very cunning man. He doesn't necessarily lie, but he often equivocates or distort the facts to suit his worldview. He plays semantics in a way that is way beyond our comprehension. It's kinda like Alex Jones. Alex Jones goes on and on about MSM reports, declassified documents. Remember his "Clown Goblin Creature"?
Though Chomsky is a little brighter than Jones, not to mention more coherent.

[Childlike Empress]

From Herman's "retrospective" linked above:

We explained in Manufacturing Consent that critical analyses like ours would inevitably elicit cries of conspiracy theory, and in a futile effort to prevent this we devoted several pages of the preface to an explicit rejection of conspiracy and an attempt to show that the propaganda model is best described as a 'guided market system.' Mainstream critics still made the charge, partly because they are too lazy to read a complex work, partly because they know that falsely accusing a radical critique of conspiracy theory won't cost them anything, and partly because of their superficial assumption that, as the media comprise thousands of 'independent' journalists and companies, any finding that they follow a 'party line' that serves the state must rest on an assumed conspiracy. (In fact, it can result from a widespread gullible acceptance of official handouts, common internalized beliefs, common policies established from above within the organizations based on ideology and/or interests, and fear of reprisal for critical analyses from within the organization or from the outside.) The apologists can't abide the notion that institutional factors can cause a 'free' media to act like lemmings in jointly disseminating false and even silly propaganda; such a charge must assume a conspiracy.

[Praktik]

So he is not just anti-American.

Wrong. He is not even anti-american, nor is he anti-Canadian (a bizarre concept to begin with) or anti-french.

He thinks the very concept of "anti-american" is bankrupt: (http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20021209.htm)

CHOMSKY: The concept "anti-American" is an interesting one. The counterpart is used only in totalitarian states or military dictatorships, something I wrote about many years ago (see my book Letters from Lexington). Thus, in the old Soviet Union, dissidents were condemned as "anti-Soviet." That's a natural usage among people with deeply rooted totalitarian instincts, which identify state policy with the society, the people, the culture. In contrast, people with even the slightest concept of democracy treat such notions with ridicule and contempt. Suppose someone in Italy who criticizes Italian state policy were condemned as "anti-Italian." It would be regarded as too ridiculous even to merit laughter. Maybe under Mussolini, but surely not otherwise.

Actually the concept has earlier origins. It was used in the Bible by King Ahab, the epitome of evil, to condemn those who sought justice as "anti-Israel" ("ocher Yisrael," in the original Hebrew, roughly "hater of Israel," or "disturber of Israel"). His specific target was Elijah.

It's interesting to see the tradition in which the people you refer to choose to place themselves. The idea of leaving America because one opposes state policy is another reflection of deep totalitarian commitments. Solzhenitsyn, for example, was forced to leave Russia, against his will, by people with beliefs very much like those you are quoting.

[PixyMisa]

Yes, that's Chomsky all over.

[Praktik]

Well I happen to agree with it. The idea that Chomsky is "anti-american" is really quite bizarre, given he's american, all his friends and loved ones are - and the fact he's built his whole life in the country.

Its probably the most retarded criticism of Chomsky out there.

[McL]

This is my first message to this forum though I've been reading here off and on for a long time. Some knowledgeable insightful people. But there is the inevitable creeping in of the willfully uniformed with exes to grind.

I know more about how Chomsky really feels about his pronouncements through sources I won't go into.

My analysis with the benefit of some extra input. Chomsky is of course a brilliant guy. Very much a product of the American Jewish liberal toerant to a fault anti-war mindset of his day.

As an academic he has seen himself increasingly marginalized by his peers.
But as a political thinker, on the pop culture end of the spectrum, he's a superstar. Every pronouncement, every published sentence, every interview throwaway remark, is carefully analyzed and meaning extracted.

Now Chomsky, as sagacious as he may be, like most of us, forms opinions on the fly. Sometimes he thinks something is the case based on current info on a certain day - but later he sees things in a different light.

To his increasing vexation he is called upon to justify statements he has made in the past, even though his evaluations have moved on.

Unfortunately even someone as self-aware as Chomsky can succumb to the late in life attained role of guru or wise old man. And he runs with it.

So we more and more see present day Chomsky justifying what Chomsky of the past has said. I'm told his personal views are somewhatdifferent these days form those of the Noam Chomsky of ten, twenty, or thirty years ago.

I'll leave it at that with just the reminder that Chomsky finds himself in an intellectually compromising feedback loop with his faithful audiences. Something he himself hadn't anticipated.

M

[PixyMisa]

Well I happen to agree with it. The idea that Chomsky is "anti-american" is really quite bizarre, given he's american, all his friends and loved ones are - and the fact he's built his whole life in the country.
Some of his best friends are American!

[PixyMisa]

Chomsky is of course a brilliant guy.
Why "of course"?

[Praktik]

Some of his best friends are American!

So do you believe the accusation is valid?

Does that make him a "self-hating" American on top of being a "self-hating" jew?

perhaps you should define what you even think the term "anti-american" means. As I understand it, it is primarily used to ascribe the conclusions someone draws to irrational hate, rather than evidence.

[calebprime]

... But there is the inevitable creeping in of the willfully uniformed with exes to grind.

...
M

could it be stewardesses? with, like, angry white ex-boyfriend(s) in wife-beater tee-shirts who (are) stalking them? and then the woodchipper?

[cornsail]

Yeah I don't think the term Anti-American makes much sense either. One more.

"In many respects, the United States is the freest country in the world. I don't just mean in terms of limits on state coercion, though that's true too, but also in terms of individual relations. The United States comes closer to classlessness in terms of interpersonal relations than virtually any society."

[gtc]

Wrong. He is not even anti-american, nor is he anti-Canadian (a bizarre concept to begin with) or anti-french.

Why is the idea that someone could be anti-Canadian bizarre?

The problem is that Chomsky claim not to be anti-American, anti-Canadian, anti-French, anti-Semitic or anti-Arab or whatever is contradicted by the other things he writes.


As an example:

"There's nothing nice that you can say about any of [the Arab countries]."


Even if he only meant to imply that the there is nothing nice that can be said about any of the Arab governments then that is still wrong and enormously counter-productive.

Its probably the most retarded criticism of Chomsky out there.

That is an offensive statement.

[Praktik]

Sorry man, it just is.

Maybe Americans and others are inured to the term "anti-american" but I really don't see much difference between it and the traditional Truther tactic of ascribing differences of opinion to ignorance or irrationality.

After all, the whole aim of the attack is to undercut the source and claim that the reason they say what they say is not because of the evidence they've amassed and their particular interpretation of that - but because they have an irrational hate.

"You said that because you hate America" is not so different than "You said that cause you are blind" - and both are childish, and yes, retarded.

I concede that there ARE people out there incensed by US policy and could perhaps be termed "anti-american" outside of America, but the frequency with which this is applied internally, to other Americans, is just appalling and disgusting. Its a caricature.

If you're arguing with someone do yourself a favour and get outta the slums and find something substantive to argue with - instead of engaging in mind-reading and pretending the source is possessed by some sort of irrational hate. Its an intellectual cop-out that makes the speaker look worse than the target, at least in my books.

[Praktik]

Why is the idea that someone could be anti-Canadian bizarre?

Because I can't even conceive of the term being properly applied to anyone.

The concept really doesn't exist up here.

[gtc]

Instead of the ad-homs, why don't you address what he has actually said in the numerous statements that have been posted here.

His statements are clearly anti-American, anti-French, anti-Semitic etc, etc and they clearly contradict any claims he makes to the contrary.

[Childlike Empress]

His statements are clearly [...] etc, etc.


Yep. Keep labeling.

[Praktik]

Instead of the ad-homs, why don't you address what he has actually said in the numerous statements that have been posted here.

His statements are clearly anti-American, anti-French, anti-Semitic etc, etc and they clearly contradict any claims he makes to the contrary.

Nice support there buddy.

The other reason people use this ridiculous and simple-minded tactic is to cast the opinions of the target as outside the realm of acceptable discourse.

And this is another reason, on top of the ones I listed above, why the dumb "anti-" attacks are a major pet peeve of mine.

They represent an artificial narrowing of the scope of debate, an attempt to cast the target as completely beyond the pale.

And as with your comments above, most who engage in this tripe don't bother supporting their accusation.

The reason being that calling Chomsky - an american and a jew - "anti american" or "anti semitic" is supposed to shut down debate. The hope is that others will shut their ears and dismiss the target without any further consideration.

Ironically, the result of this with someone like me is to dismiss the issuer of such epithets as providing little of constructive value in a political discussion. Its a major red flag and a useful one.

Rarely do wise words proceed after one screams "ANTI AMERICAN!!"

As I said above, this is "slumming it" in a major way. There are substantive and worthwhile criticisms you could use if you want to argue against chomsky.

Screaming anti-american or anti-semite like a child is not one of them.

[gtc]

No one is screaming anything.

Lengthy quotes have been provided to back up the points that have been made but you haven't addressed them.

Instead you have launched into a series of ad homs and claims that I am trying to shut down debate. Humourously, this appears to be an attempt by you to shut down debate.

[Praktik]

No one is screaming anything.

Lengthy quotes have been provided to back up the points that have been made but you haven't addressed them.

Instead you have launched into a series of ad homs and claims that I am trying to shut down debate. Humourously, this appears to be an attempt by you to shut down debate.

I havent found any of the arguments asserting "anti-americanism" or anti-semitical thoughts on Chomsky's behalf convincing in this thread.

It really is a form of mind-reading - the people who assert these things are claiming to know the inner-mind of Chomsky and that he is motivated by hate.

There is nothing in this thread which supports this claim.

And perhaps you can tell me how calling someone a racist or a hateful speaker isn't an attempt to discredit them so severely that any further consideration of their words is rendered futile. Why take a hateful racist seriously?

And I am still confounded at how people can claim that an American hates America, or that a Jew hates jews with a straight face.

Really, its beyond ridiculous and just shows how far apart the perspectives are. The gulf is so great, that some feel the need to ascribe their differences to irrationality, rather than the fact their worldviews are so vastly different.

[gtc]

Maybe you need to look at yourself too. You are claiming that I am needing to ascribe my differences with Chomsky to irrationality and yet you are doing exactly that when you talk about mind-reading and about how you are confounded that I can make my allegations with a straight face.

Let's take some of the heat out of it. He may not hate Americans or Jews or Canadians or Arabs etc, I honestly don't know, but the statements he makes are anti-American, anti-Semitic and so on.

Numerous examples have been posted. Why not address them?

[Praktik]

Maybe you need to look at yourself too. You are claiming that I am needing to ascribe my differences with Chomsky to irrationality and yet you are doing exactly that when you talk about mind-reading and about how you are confounded that I can make my allegations with a straight face.

Let's take some of the heat out of it. He may not hate Americans or Jews or Canadians or Arabs etc, I honestly don't know, but the statements he makes are anti-American, anti-Semitic and so on.

Numerous examples have been posted. Why not address them?

Hehe this is true. However the nested-doll nature of this issue is very real: Chomsky's critics are using very irrational claims to assert his irrationality... not much I can change about that!

There's a lot of junk in this thread what specifically did you find most convincing?

Think of this not as a dodge, but a product of my impending bedtime.

I will also say that I have read many Chomsky books and listened to many lectures and read many interviews, and not once did I come across any hateful intent regarding Jews or America.

Remember: criticizing American policy or the American government or American elites is not the same as criticizing America as a whole. Surely the salvation he envisions for the ills he sees is sourced entirely in America.

[cornsail]

He may not hate Americans or Jews or Canadians or Arabs etc, I honestly don't know, but the statements he makes are anti-American critical of American policy, anti-Semitic critical of Israeli policy and so on.

Correction.

[gtc]

I take your points and I have been a bit glib. I don't think he hates America so much as that he makes statements that seem to imply that he does. They are not about America but the statements in cornsail's post yesterday show the sorts of things I am talking about.

[Praktik]

For those who think he's just anti-American, a couple quotes for perspective. :)

"There's nothing nice that you can say about any of [the Arab countries]."

"Canada became the per capita largest war exporter, trying to make as much money as it could from the murder of people in Indochina. In fact, I'd suggest that you look back at the comment by a well known and respected Canadian diplomat, I think his name was John Hughes, some years ago, who defined what he called the Canadian idea, namely "we uphold our principles but we find a way around them". Well, that's pretty accurate. And Canada is not unique in this respect, maybe a little more hypocritical."

"France is doing some really vicious things there, in fact they're just wiping out islands because they want them for nuclear tests. And when the socialist government in France is asked, "Why to do this?", they say, "Well look, we have to have nuclear tests." Well, if you have to have nuclear tests, why not have them in southern France? [audience laughter] Why have them in some island in the Pacific? Well, the answer to that is clear, after all they're just a bunch of little brown people or something. But you can't say that exactly, especially if you're a socialist, so something else is said."

These ones gtc? - really!??

Ok let's look at #1 - obviously an off-the-cuff comment from an interview somewhere. I sincerely doubt that he believes 100% that there is nothing "nice" to say about any Arab country. Obviously he's referring to dismal human rights records, oppression of women, suppression of democracy, and the pimping out of the regions resource's to the highest bidder for the wealth of the tiny elites selling out and not the benefit of the populace. Those are ubiquitous things in the middle east.

#2 - I'm a Canadian and I fully agree with that statement. In fact, I'm taking my final class for my IR degree (a little late!) and its on Canadian Foreign and Defence Policy. We hit the years of Lester B Pearson and Trudeau last week. Our prof mentioned the fact that while we prevaricated on Vietnam, or sent signals we were displeased, we nonetheless cashed in. I guess my prof is "anti-Canadian"??

lolz

#3 - the French nuclear testing. He's talking about pretty standard Great Power practise in the Pacific - clear out an island with little compensation cause the people dont matter nearly as much as the state's military aims. The history there is callous and shameful and deservedly he called out France on their shameful practises. I am not well educated on the French misadventures in the Pacific but for a look at American treatment of islanders there's none better than this right here. (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22691)

Western involvement in the Pacific has been 100% self-interested, and the lives of the peons counted for nothing. I fully support Chomsky here and I also love the french. I'd love to go to france and eat their cheese and if I'm single, mingle with their women and if not - gaze at them longingly..;) My best friend is from Nice... lovely place there..;)

-----

So #1 here obviously is perhaps the most criticism-worthy and likely an overstatement. I don't believe it speaks to a hatred of arabs but rather a hatred of anti-democratic government. My personal belief is that if you had the opportunity to press Chomsky on it and ask "Really? Nothing good to say about any Arab country?"

He'd reply: "well that was an overstatement on my part what I really meant was...."

And in the other cases, we have very deserving criticisms of countries and their policy. Again, we see critics discomforted by criticism of a country and conflating that criticism with an irrational hatred of that country. This allows the critic to process that criticism without having to engage with it.

I think there are shameful aspects of Aussie history - that does not make me anti-aussie - though I will say the pitch of your women's voices can sometimes be quite shrill and discomforting..;)

[cornsail]

My only point with those quotes was that he gives criticism where he thinks criticism is due, regardless of what country it is. He doesn't criticize the United States based on some unreasonable standard that he doesn't hold other countries up to.

gtc, should I conclude that you're an anti-Semite and an anti-American for criticizing Noam Chomsky, an American Jewish man? Should I conclude you're a racist for dismissing criticism of France's treatment of indigenous islanders or dismissing criticism of Canada's exploitation of the killing of Indochinese? Or should we rise above that level of discussion?

[Praktik]

My only point with those quotes was that he gives criticism where he thinks criticism is due, regardless of what country it is. He doesn't criticize the United States based on some unreasonable standard that he doesn't hold other countries up to.

And this is a common criticism of Chomsky. That he focus inordinately on the United States and then out pops a laundry list of things in other countries that he should also condemn to remain intellectually coherent.

beyond the fact that he does criticize other countries from time to time his defence of his focus on America is that he is an American citizen, and sees the primary duty of a citizen to criticize their home country since that's the place where that criticism has the greatest chance of bringing results.

[cornsail]

beyond the fact that he does criticize other countries from time to time his defence of his focus on America is that he is an American citizen, and sees the primary duty of a citizen to criticize their home country since that's the place where that criticism has the greatest chance of bringing results.

Indeed. Another reason is that there is less point in criticizing things that are already understood as bad by the majority of the target audience (i.e. Soviet oppression of its citizens).

The accusation "you criticized X, but not Y" is, of course, meaningless. It'd be like me accusing NWO Sentryman of criticizing Chomsky, while ignoring the crimes of Hitler.

The accusation "you criticized X for A, but you defended Y for A" would be valid and that is what I was providing some counter-examples against.

[Childlike Empress]

beyond the fact that he does criticize other countries from time to time his defence of his focus on America is that he is an American citizen, and sees the primary duty of a citizen to criticize their home country since that's the place where that criticism has the greatest chance of bringing results.


That's btw exactly what he said to Buckley in the video i've posted early in this thread. And that's not the only "point" that his critics bring up that was already explained by Chomsky in that video. That forty years old video.

Must be incredibly frustrating. No surprise he sometimes treats his less sharper critics like children.

[Praktik]

Ya those debates with Buckley were great... saw them first when I was a lot younger and Chomsky featured a lot more in my thinking and reading and writing...

In later years, especially with the clowns that took over the conservative movement, I find myself appreciating the videos from a completely different angle: as much as I disagree with many of Buckley's points he puts up a good fight, and is a great example of a kind of intellectual conservatism we dont see enough of these days.

[GreyArea]

I don't think that Chomsky hates Americans at all, especially since he has been repeating for several years now that we've improved our political awareness and moral outlook in a more-democratic direction.

Go back to 1965 when there were 150,000 troops in Indochina, at that time there was almost no vocal opposition to the war. It developed much later, when the war had entered a far more brutal and destructive stage. So the fact of the matter is that there's much more protest against the war in Iraq now than there was against the war in Indochina at any comparable stage. In my opinion, that reflects the civilizing effect of the activism of the 1960s, which changed society in many ways: opposition to aggression, commitment to human rights, minority rights, women's rights, and concern over the environment. The Society simply became more civilized.
http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/Tikkun-ChomskyonIraq

One very promising development is the slow evolution of a human rights culture among the general population, a tendency that accelerated in the 1960s, when popular activism had a notable civilizing effect on many domanins, extending significantly in the years that followed. One encouraging feature has been a greatly heightened concern for civil and human rights, including rights of minorities, women, and future generations, the latter the driving concer of the environmental movement, which has become a powerful force.
http://books.google.com/books?id=Xx3ptbzQ8L4C&pg=PA235&lpg=PA235&dq=chomsky+american+civilizing+effect&source=bl&ots=WRx0PdDLII&sig=VQNKRXBKR2cgGuR7t43tZ1nwjQQ&hl=en&ei=HxL7Sr-CMJPWlAe9_ei5Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CBQQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Hegemony or Survival, p.235

Asked about the apparent decline of racism signalled by Obama's election, Chomsky replied:
But to the extent that it [the decline of racism] is real, I think it is primarily a result of the civilizing effect of the activism of the 1960s and its aftermath. That has indeed changed the moral and cultural level of the society, significantly, while leaving institutions essentially intact. I do not happen to like any of the candidates in the November 2008 election, but it is important to bear in mind that 40 years ago, and also more recently, it was unthinkable that the two candidates in the Democratic primary would be an African-American and a woman.
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20090228.htm

When asked in 2001 if the 9/11 attacks would cause Americans to support attacks on civilians abroad and loss of civil liberties at home, Chomsky replied:
But that's by no means inevitable, and we should not underestimate the civilizing effects of the popular struggles of recent years. We need not stride resolutely towards catastrophe, merely because those are the marching orders.
http://struggle.ws/issues/war/afghan/statements/chomsk7_trans_se01.html

In a very recent statement to the United Nations about the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P), Chomsky wrote:
American public opinion brings up a futher consideration. The maxims that largely guide international affairs are not graven in stone, and, in fact, have become considerably less harsh over the years as a result of the civilizing effect of popular movements. For that continuing and essential project, R2P can be a valuable too, much as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been.
http://www.un.org/ga/president/63/interactive/protect/noam.pdf , penultimate paragraph

Chomsky is indeed very critical of U.S. government policy, but (as has been said before) this is not the same thing as being critical of the American public or American society as a whole (let alone hating them).

He thinks the American public is a different kind of people than we were in the 1950's and '60's. We're getting better at being a civilization worthy of the name, and a democracy. I don't see any hatred there, I see respect and admiration.

[gtc]

It seems obvious that we aren't going to get anywhere with this discussion. People are prepared to assume that he didn't really mean what he wrote, just as with the the statement about Arabs and with the statement about Jews from the first page (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5123879&postcount=44).

It seems odd that such an intelligent man would repeatedly make such unintentionally inflamatory remarks

gtc, should I conclude that you're an anti-Semite and an anti-American for criticizing Noam Chomsky, an American Jewish man?

You don't see the difference between criticising one man for what he says and condemning an entire nation?



Should I conclude you're a racist for dismissing criticism of France's treatment of indigenous islanders or dismissing criticism of Canada's exploitation of the killing of Indochinese? Or should we rise above that level of discussion?

Should you be able to prove that I dismiss such criticism then you would be able to criticise me for that.

[cornsail]

Should you be able to prove that I dismiss such criticism then you would be able to criticise me for that.

You called it "anti-French" / "anti-Canadian". That implies you don't think the criticism was valid.

"The problem is that Chomsky claim not to be anti-American, anti-Canadian, anti-French, anti-Semitic or anti-Arab or whatever is contradicted by the other things he writes."

[gtc]

You called it "anti-French" / "anti-Canadian". That implies you don't think the criticism was valid.

"The problem is that Chomsky claim not to be anti-American, anti-Canadian, anti-French, anti-Semitic or anti-Arab or whatever is contradicted by the other things he writes."

You appeared to be making the claim that I reject all criticism of France's treatment of its indigenous islanders. A claim that is simply not true.

[Praktik]

But cornsail didnt assert that, he did only by way of illustrating the type of logical mistake you make with reference to Chomsky....