Noam Chomsky on Israel and Paletine

[Theodore Kurita]

Most people in these forums probably know who Noam Chomsky is... Radical Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT.

Anwho, here is a short article done my The Guardian on hist current viewpoint on how to achieve peace within the conflict between Israel and Palestine:

http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=5240

[corplinx]

Mr. Chomsky, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

{lifted from an Adam Sandler movie, may the god who doesnt exist have mercy on my soul for using an Adam Sandler quote to make light of the work of an academic like chomsky}

[a_unique_person]

what actual part of it doesn't make any sense? It all seemed pretty sensible to me. Was it the fact that he can't come up with a solution to the problem when no-one else in the world can either?

[corplinx]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
what actual part of it doesn't make any sense? It all seemed pretty sensible to me. Was it the fact that he can't come up with a solution to the problem when no-one else in the world can either?

I don't have a solution. Of course, I doubt a linguistics professor at MIT does either. I find the whole treatment of such a person as having the golden key as pretentious and insulting.

I mean come on, look at the answer to question 14. He answered it with a conspiracy theory. You also have to love how he slipped an East Timor reference into question 12's answer. You could make a drinking game based on his responses.

What I do think is that if there is a two-state solution to the problem, Israel will have to do all the work itself since the palestinians are currently incapable at this point. I think this is the direction Israel is going apparently and I think it will be the only way you wind up with two states.

Now, I'm just a computer guy in Tennessee but I think its perfectly obvious that the palestinian leadership does not control the terror groups and cannot reign them in long enough for any bilateral peace accord to work at this point (regardless of whoever's fault that is). Peace must be sought unilaterally by Israel and it appears they are doing so.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by corplinx


I don't have a solution. Of course, I doubt a linguistics professor at MIT does either. I find the whole treatment of such a person as having the golden key as pretentious and insulting.



I think he is just a clever guy who has done a lot of research into this area and is not blinded by patriotism, etc.



I mean come on, look at the answer to question 14. He answered it with a conspiracy theory. You also have to love how he slipped an East Timor reference into question 12's answer. You could make a drinking game based on his responses.



The conspiracy is no secret. Sharon has proudly stated his aim of destroying Palestine has succeeded. Did you read the interview with him I posted earlier? It was roundly ignored, but it was never denied.

East Timor was *********** disgrace. Australian intelligence predicted a massacre, and that was what the East Timorese got. The US could have used it's influence to achieve some sort of reduction in the brutality that led up to independence. For about 30 years, East Timor was the personal treasure chest of Suharto and his cronies. The East Timorese were treated like irrelevant ****.

Now the guy who led the massacre looks like he could be the next president of Indonesia.



What I do think is that if there is a two-state solution to the problem, Israel will have to do all the work itself since the palestinians are currently incapable at this point. I think this is the direction Israel is going apparently and I think it will be the only way you wind up with two states.



Israel, or rather, Likud, has ensured that it can call the shots. It has just done so. It will be a one-state solution. The Palestinians don't actually have a country at the moment. They are not recognised as a country. They never will be a country if Likud has it's way.

What they will be is a permanent reminder of why Israel will deserve the gain, and deserve, the status of pariah. Sharon doesn't care, but then he is a sociopath. The rest of Israel just doesn't seem to realise what he is condemning them to.l



Now, I'm just a computer guy in Tennessee but I think its perfectly obvious that the palestinian leadership does not control the terror groups and cannot reign them in long enough for any bilateral peace accord to work at this point (regardless of whoever's fault that is). Peace must be sought unilaterally by Israel and it appears they are doing so.

[Ziggurat]

What I found amazing was his reply to #5. He rightly points out that a call for a sinlge-state solution amounts to the destruction of Israel and likely oppression (or worse) of Jews. But then he actually claims that "The most extreme and violent elements in Israel and the US could hope for no greater gift than this [single-state] proposal." He's buying into the conspiracy-theory thinking that Israel/US need excuses for their actions, essentially ignoring the fact that many Palestinians call for a single-state solution precisely because this would be the result What a maroon.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
What I found amazing was his reply to #5. He rightly points out that a call for a sinlge-state solution amounts to the destruction of Israel and likely oppression (or worse) of Jews. But then he actually claims that "The most extreme and violent elements in Israel and the US could hope for no greater gift than this [single-state] proposal." He's buying into the conspiracy-theory thinking that Israel/US need excuses for their actions, essentially ignoring the fact that many Palestinians call for a single-state solution precisely because this would be the result What a maroon.

Why would Palestinians want it and then not Israelis. Note he says it is not going to happen, because the much more reasonable proposal is not going to happen with popular support, and the alternative has no international popular support.

Sharon has been boasting that he has achieved the destruction of Palestine. He has proclaimed that he does want conflict, because with conflict reasonableness goes out the window, and any unreasonable solution he can engineer becomes possible, which it has. He has created a non-state for non-people, whom he hopes will die out in a short time.

[zenith-nadir]

Noam Chomsky has no answers. Most of Chomskys "facts" are totaly made up or partial truths, he is a self-lothing jew who is employed as linguist. He is skilled at crafting words into meaningless propoganda and button-pushing ad hominems. If he was such an authority on the Middle East how come not one government or think tank in the world has ever hired him? Most intellectuals shun him like the plague. Instead, Chomsky just tours the university circut giving lectures about "Western Terrorism" and "the evil jooooooze"......he feeds on weak-minded guys like a_u_p who are sucked up into his vortex of lies and hate like a moth to the flame. That is how Chomsky pays his bills.

(now watch a_u_p, Demon and the Fool use everything in the book to defend Noam Chomsky and attack me... ;) )

[a_unique_person]

ZN, thanks for letting me know that he is one more person who is not a Real Jew (TM). Maybe you could make a list for me, so I know who to believe and who not to believe. (It may take a while to compile, so you had better get cracking).

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by zenith-nadir

Noam Chomsky has no answers. Most of Chomskys "facts" are totaly made up or partial truths, he is a self-lothing jew who is employed as linguist.

Please cite one instance when he has forged facts, or made partial truths.

He is skilled at crafting words into meaningless propoganda and button-pushing ad hominems.

He really doesn't write Propaganda. He does give critique of USA policy though. That, and he has NEVER used ad hominems to justify a point

If he was such an authority on the Middle East how come not one government or think tank in the world has ever hired him?

Here is a hint, he is loathed by Europe. Many Political Scientists, like Howard Zinn have met with him, and have cited him.

Most intellectuals shun him like the plague. Instead, Chomsky just tours the university circut giving lectures about "Western Terrorism" and "the evil jooooooze"......he feeds on weak-minded guys like a_u_p who are sucked up into his vortex of lies and hate like a moth to the flame. That is how Chomsky pays his bills.

Please give evidence for this. There are plenty of intellectuals that actually agree with Chomsky's positions on many things. That, and you might want to look into how much he ties is Linguistics Theories into his Political work.

(now watch a_u_p, Demon and the Fool use everything in the book to defend Noam Chomsky and attack me... ;) )

:rolleyes:

[zenith-nadir]

Theodore Kurita, Go ahead and believe chomsky, I do not care, for I know what he is about and what he represents. It is guys like you and a_u_p who buy into his garbage, not me.

The Sick Mind of Noam Chomsky (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=1020)

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by zenith-nadir
Theodore Kurita, Go ahead and believe chomsky, I do not care, for I know what he is about and what he represents. It is guys like you and a_u_p who buy into his garbage, not me.

The Sick Mind of Noam Chomsky (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=1020)



WITHOUT QUESTION, the most devious, the most dishonest and -- in this hour of his nation’s grave crisis – the most treacherous intellect in America belongs to MIT professor Noam Chomsky.



What skeptic could argue with this logic?

[Skeptic]

I'm truly surpirsed anybody takes Chomsky's politics seriously. In every single case where he expressed his political views, his "sage advice" had turned out to be 100% wrong.

Chomsky praised the North Vietnamese to the sky, claiming that all they want is "liberation from imperialism". When they killed 200,000 of their own people, imprisoned another 300,000 or so, and established Pol Pot to kill 2,000,000 more, Chomsky first claimed that all those photos of piles of dead are, in fact, victims of American bombings; then that the photos are American propaganda; then that the atrocities are so bad just because of the "chaos" caused by American interference; and then he simply shut up about it and didn't want to discuss it any more.

This is Chomsky at his worst, but, similarly, he praised Cuban "freedom" and "revolution" to the skies. To this day, he had not owned up to the fact that Cuba is simply another communist dictatorship; he had repeatedly said that the USSR is an "equivalent" system to the USA, not in any way worse or morally blameable, and that all the claims about the horrors and sheer impoverishment and want of life in the "paraside of the workers" is (you guessed it) "capitalist propaganda". Of course, he also claimed--a few years before the Soviet system collapsed utterly--that the Soviet system is in fact prospering and will continue to succeed for a long time.

Needless to say, Mr. "blame America for everything" had not, in fact, bothered to leave the evil, imperilistic USA; he lives in Cambridge, MA, and never in his life so much as visited most of the places he claims to "know" so much about and to tell us what the "real" situation there is. As a sage, sitting in his office in MIT is quite enough to figure out, by force of reasoning alone, what "the truth" behind the "American propaganda" is. (This "fail safe" method of figuring out "the truth" expalins quite a bit about his dismal batting average, come to think of it.)

When Chomsky praises some group or movement, his records shows that it is almost 100% certain that they will turn out to be mass murderers or at the very least fascists of some sort (whether marxist, islamist, or some other type of fascism). Long ago, Parkinson of "Parkinson's law" fame said that there is no such thing as a man who is always right, but there IS such a thing as a man who is always wrong; Chomsky, his record shows, is as close as humanely possible to Parkinson's ideal, at least in the field of politics.

Chomsky is a great linguist, indeed. But when it comes to politics, he's nothing but an "A Unique Person"-type run amok.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Skeptic
I'm truly surpirsed anybody takes Chomsky's politics seriously. In every single case where he expressed his political views, his "sage advice" had turned out to be 100% wrong.


That's a big call there, Skeptic, and I am calling ********.

I don't know who sees him as offering "sage advice", I see him as a clever person who I can learn a lot from, but I certainly don't seen him as being the Pope of the Left.

I also don't see him to be wrong in every single case.

[corplinx]

I would just like to say this. As an american, I am very apathetic about Israel/Palestine. The conflict there is just another one of many around the world.

The thing that strikes me is that non-Israelis and non-palestinians who care deeply about this conflict seem to fall into two categories. Zionists (of the jewish and fundamentalist christian variety) and anti-semites.

Personally, I find it funny that australians on this forum care so deeply about this conflict and it makes me wonder why they do so.

[Skeptic]

That's a big call there, Skeptic, and I am calling bulls**t.

Typical AUP-ian "argument": I said that Chomsky is 100% wrong in his politics, when careful research shows he is only 97% wrong on all his big political claims--you know, those about the nature of the North Vietnamese, Marxism, Islamism, globalisation, Pol Pot, and the USSR. How dare I be so unfair.

I don't know who sees him as offering "sage advice"

You and him are two, for starters.

I see him as a clever person who I can learn a lot from

Indeed so. However, to accept your praise of Chomsky, and Chomsky's recipocal praise for his "brave" and "anti-imperialist" readers who are SO much morally superior to the rest of us, is not unlike accepting mutual character testimonials from Uriah Heep and Seth Pecksniff.

[DaChew]

I stopped even reading anything Chomsky had to say after he accused the U.S. of committing "savage silent genocide" in Afghanistan. According to him there should be millions of corpses of inocent people killed by U.S. policy, facillitated by Pakistan right now. That kind of garbage, which he had no evidence whatsoever to claim or even suggest is apparently what he's famous for. Chomskyites seem to me to be just about the same as John Edwards fans. He piles on the BS and they look for anything that might be a hit and forget about all of his misses.

[Toastrider]

The Palestinians could've had their own land years ago if they actually -wanted- a homeland.

The trick? Civil disobedience. Borrow a page from MLK and Gandhi. Nonviolent protest would've yanked the moral ground out from under the Israelis.

The problem is that it's not what the PLO and various terrorist organizations based in the Palestinian-held areas want. They want blood -- Israeli blood. There is simply no other explanation for sending in men, women, and children with explosives strapped on into Israeli territory, to detonate in civilian areas.

I remember reading an op-ed, complaining about how Bush and Sharon were ignoring the Palestinians in the Mideast peace process. No s**t, Sherlock; Arafat signs some papers, and then they go right back to strapping on the explosives.

Do I think Israel has clean hands in this? No, not really. They're stuck in a siege mentality that dates back to the Holocaust. But it's hard to sympathize with the Palestinians when they venerate suicide bombers and cheer the deaths of Israeli civilians.

Enjoy your bed, Palestinians; you made it.

--Toasty

[Skeptic]

I stopped even reading anything Chomsky had to say after he accused the U.S. of committing "savage silent genocide" in Afghanistan. According to him there should be millions of corpses of inocent people killed by U.S. policy, facillitated by Pakistan right now.

You forgot the "millions" of Iraqis that should have starved to death by now, since the imperialistic and evil US would surely deliberately bombed food supplies, hospitals, etc.

Or the numerous terrorist attacks on US soil that should have happened since 9/11 because as Chomsky knows so well, hitting back at the Mullahs will just "enrage" them and cause them to continue the attacks, will be "ineffective", etc., etc., etc., you know the drill.

If you look at Chomsky's production in the last two years, and you'll see--how shall I put it?--that his accuracy is not quite up to his usual standards.

Chomskyites seem to me to be just about the same as John Edwards fans. He piles on the BS and they look for anything that might be a hit and forget about all of his misses.

Indeed so. Chomsky wrote literally hundreds of pages about Iraq and Afghanitan, and 98% is either unreadable post-modernist jargon that doesn't mean a damn thing, or simply wrong.

Perhaps there should be a show called "Crossing over with Noam Chomsky". I can see it now: "I see dead... somebody dies... more than 10 of them... and a war, somewhere, involving the imperialistic US... the rest is sort of hazy, but it's clear it's the US fault...I see 'the people' winning... I don't know which people, however... they might have brown skin... or yellow... somewhere in the middle east or Asia, maybe... some people angry with US, too... the rest is not so clear..."

[corplinx]

I have converted into a chomskyite, let me copy and paste my reply.

You are just not smart enough to understand what Chomsky writes. Your opposition to his teachings validates his views. Y

[Mycroft]

Originally posted by corplinx
I have converted into a chomskyite, let me copy and paste my reply.

You are just not smart enough to understand what Chomsky writes. Your opposition to his teachings validates his views. Y

Lol!

[varwoche]

Originally posted by Skeptic
he had repeatedly said that the USSR is an "equivalent" system to the USA, not in any way worse or morally blameable
...
he also claimed--a few years before the Soviet system collapsed utterly--that the Soviet system is in fact prospering and will continue to succeed for a long time.
Care to provide a reference?

[zenith-nadir]

Originally posted by varwoche
Care to provide a reference? This is what urks me about people who refer to Chomsky, they believe everything he says without question, then when you point out Chomskys many errors they go " hey, prove it". ;)

[varwoche]

Originally posted by zenith-nadir
This is what urks me about people who refer to Chomsky, they believe everything he says without question, then when you point out Chomskys many errors they go " hey, prove it". ;)
That ranks as one of the more notable knee jerk reactions in recent memory. Hard though it may be for you to fathom z-n, sometimes an innocent question is just that, an innnocent question.

I'm familiar with Chomsky and his views in general, though have never read his books. My *impression* of him, and those who seem to blindly worship him, is not very positive, despite that certain of his views align with mine. (I was looking for some ammo to fire at a buddy who's a maniacal Chomsky-ite fyi.)

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by zenith-nadir
Theodore Kurita, Go ahead and believe chomsky, I do not care, for I know what he is about and what he represents. It is guys like you and a_u_p who buy into his garbage, not me.

The Sick Mind of Noam Chomsky (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=1020)


I hate to say this, but Horowitz is known for his Ad Hominem attacks against Chomsky.

He is also someone who has campagined against anything that is to the left for the majority of his life.

He hands out brochures on University Campuses for crying out loud.

Here is a response to that criticism:

http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20021009.htm


And Skeptic, you keep claiming that his viewpoints are wrong 97% of the time.

Please provide evidence to this claim.

Otherwise, it is just an ad hominem attack that is readily and easily dismissable!

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by corplinx
I have converted into a chomskyite, let me copy and paste my reply.

You are just not smart enough to understand what Chomsky writes. Your opposition to his teachings validates his views. Y

Strawman.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Skeptic
That's a big call there, Skeptic, and I am calling bulls**t.

Typical AUP-ian "argument": I said that Chomsky is 100% wrong in his politics, when careful research shows he is only 97% wrong on all his big political claims--you know, those about the nature of the North Vietnamese, Marxism, Islamism, globalisation, Pol Pot, and the USSR. How dare I be so unfair.



You made a call, I am asking you to back it up. Is there something wrong with that?

[demon]

corplinx:
"{lifted from an Adam Sandler movie, may the god who doesnt exist have mercy on my soul for using an Adam Sandler quote to make light of the work of an academic like chomsky}"

From "Goodwill Hunting":
WILL "A History of the United States, Volume
I." If you want to read a real history
book, read Howard Zinn's "A People's
History of the United States." That
book will knock you on your ass.

SEAN How about Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing
Consent?";)

Skeptic:
" Chomsky wrote literally hundreds of pages about Iraq and Afghanitan, and 98% is either unreadable post-modernist jargon that doesn't mean a damn thing, or simply wrong."

This is ironic considering that in another thread you are critical because you suspect someone of commenting upon a writer you think they have not read. You haven`t read Chomsky if your statement above is anything to go by but I see it doesn`t stop you criticising him...a shared trait with others it seems when it comes to Chomsky.

Would you like to give an example of Chomsky using "post-modernist jargon". Since he doesn't use it and has, in fact, written on several occasions about how he distrusts post-modernism and post-structuralism, my guess is that you are just out to smear here.
You undercut your credibility by making such a ridiculous charge. Anybody who takes more than thirty seconds to read Chomsky would know that his prose, while hardly inspiring and frequently very dry, is a model of jargon-free clarity. As someone who has waded through his fair share of post-modernist literature, I'm still laughing my head off at the misapplication of the term.

Incidentally, the rest of your post isn't worth responding to unless you cite references and quotes for each of the claims you make.

(Chomsky on "post -modernism" etc)
http://www.zmag.org/ScienceWars/forumchom.htm
I've read similar remarks in an essay of his called "What is wrong with science and rationality" in the book "Market Killing. What the Free Market Does and What Social Scientists Can Do about it", by Greg Philo and David Miller (Longman 2001).

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Skeptic

You forgot the "millions" of Iraqis that should have starved to death by now, since the imperialistic and evil US would surely deliberately bombed food supplies, hospitals, etc.

Or the numerous terrorist attacks on US soil that should have happened since 9/11 because as Chomsky knows so well, hitting back at the Mullahs will just "enrage" them and cause them to continue the attacks, will be "ineffective", etc., etc., etc., you know the drill.

There is nothing saying they won't happen "Skeptic." It doesn't take a whole hell of a lot to organize a terroroist network.


Indeed so. Chomsky wrote literally hundreds of pages about Iraq and Afghanitan, and 98% is either unreadable post-modernist jargon that doesn't mean a damn thing, or simply wrong.

I doubt that you have even read any material by Chomsky yourself. He doesn't have a large amount of POMO (short hand for post-modernist) in his books. The only books written by him that have large amounts of POMO are the books he wrote in the 1950's on his personal form of Anarchy, and the arguments he made for a wageless society.

Perhaps there should be a show called "Crossing over with Noam Chomsky". I can see it now: "I see dead... somebody dies... more than 10 of them... and a war, somewhere, involving the imperialistic US... the rest is sort of hazy, but it's clear it's the US fault...I see 'the people' winning... I don't know which people, however... they might have brown skin... or yellow... somewhere in the middle east or Asia, maybe... some people angry with US, too... the rest is not so clear..."

Sorry, "Skeptic" but most of this argument wreeks of a Strawman, and an ad hominem.

[demon]

ZN:
"Theodore Kurita, Go ahead and believe chomsky, I do not care, for I know what he is about and what he represents. It is guys like you and a_u_p who buy into his garbage, not me.

The Sick Mind of Noam Chomsky"

David Horowitz - Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Come on ZN, you must be able to troll better than that.

[bignickel]

Originally posted by Skeptic

Chomsky praised the North Vietnamese to the sky, claiming that all they want is "liberation from imperialism". When they killed 200,000 of their own people, imprisoned another 300,000 or so, and established Pol Pot to kill 2,000,000 more, Chomsky first claimed that all those photos of piles of dead are, in fact, victims of American bombings; then that the photos are American propaganda; then that the atrocities are so bad just because of the "chaos" caused by American interference; and then he simply shut up about it and didn't want to discuss it any more.


Not that I want to get into the middle of all this, but wasn't Pol Pot running Cambodia?

[Skeptic]

Or the numerous terrorist attacks on US soil that should have happened since 9/11 because as Chomsky knows so well, hitting back at the Mullahs will just "enrage" them and cause them to continue the attacks, will be "ineffective", etc., etc., etc., you know the drill.

There is nothing saying they won't happen "Skeptic." It doesn't take a whole hell of a lot to organize a terroroist network.

See what I mean about Chomsky's grupies being like Edward's grupies?

Consider: I and "DaChew" noted three points about which Chomsky was totally wrong (the "millions" of dead in Iraq, the "millions" of dead in Afghanistan, and the numerous terrorist attacks on US soil)--and that's just in his post-9/11 predictions.

In fact, it is hard to imagine how anybody could be MORE wrong than Chomsky about international affairs; he made predictions on all the three most important international events in the post-9/11 world--Afghanistan, Iraq, and terrorism--and the exact opposite of what he predicted happened in all three cases. If you asked anybody off the street on 9/12 what would happen in Iraq, Afghanistan, and terror, they would probably have done a lot better in their predictions, and in any case couldn't possibly have done any worse. Chomsky was simply 100% wrong.

So what does Mr. Kurita do with Chomsky's dismal record? He ignores the utterly disproved predictions about Afghanistan and Iraq, and instead focuses on the fact that one of Chomsky's predictions--the one about future terrorist attacks--is open-ended. He then uses it to defends Chomsky's "accuracy" because it MIGHT come true IN THE FUTURE, so it wasn't really falsified.

Of course, the only reason Chomsky is "correct" on this one is that open-ended claim like "there will be terorrist attacks in the USA"--sometime, somewhere, by somebody--are technically unfalisifiable; no matter how much time there is no attack, it is always POSSIBLE that such an attack would occur later. Am I supposed to be impressed that Chomsky's unfalsifiable statement wasn't falsified?

This is PRECISELY the attitude of Edward's grupies. Edward will say something like "I see your brother... and your sister... and I see an operation". Well, you were an only child and your parents are now deceased, so Edward has two complete misses. In addition, you never had an operation in your life. However, Edward just said that he "sees" an operation, so it MIGHT be that you will have an operation SOMETIME in the future!

AMAZING!!! How did he know??? What more proof do those nasty skeptics want--don't they realize that "it doesn't take a lot for someone to need an operation, you know", so he still might be proven right after all?

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by Skeptic

Of course, the only reason Chomsky is "correct" on this one is that open-ended claim like "there will be terorrist attacks in the USA"--sometime, somewhere, by somebody--are technically unfalisifiable; no matter how much time there is no attack, it is always POSSIBLE that such an attack would occur later. Am I supposed to be impressed that Chomsky's unfalsifiable statement wasn't falsified?


I'd go even further than that. I'm reminded of what happens in doomsday cults. Their leader predicts that the world will end on such-and-such date. That date comes and goes, with no armageddon in sight. What happens to the cultists beliefs in the face of such refutation? Paradoxically, they tend to believe even more strongly in their delusions.

So it seems with Chomsky and his followers. He was wrong, time and time again. But that somehow still doesn't shake their belief that THIS time he actually knows what the hell he's talking about.

[corplinx]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita


Strawman.


Do you get a kick out of stating the obvious? You get the duh award.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Skeptic


See what I mean about Chomsky's grupies being like Edward's grupies?

Ad Hominem

Consider: I and "DaChew" noted three points about which Chomsky was totally wrong (the "millions" of dead in Iraq, the "millions" of dead in Afghanistan, and the numerous terrorist attacks on US soil)--and that's just in his post-9/11 predictions.

Great, now you are just getting into technicalities of the # of people dead. For cripes sake, large amounts of civilians have DIED in Iraq. The same goes for Afghanistand. I know Chomsky has been known to exagerrate the deat toll slightly. That, and the argument you are making is a Strawman.

In fact, it is hard to imagine how anybody could be MORE wrong than Chomsky about international affairs; he made predictions on all the three most important international events in the post-9/11 world--Afghanistan, Iraq, and terrorism--and the exact opposite of what he predicted happened in all three cases. If you asked anybody off the street on 9/12 what would happen in Iraq, Afghanistan, and terror, they would probably have done a lot better in their predictions, and in any case couldn't possibly have done any worse. Chomsky was simply 100% wrong.

Well, do you have anything avaliable that debunks his view, if you don't, this argument is irrelevant. One word for you "Skeptic," evidence. You need to prove your point with an actual rebuttal, with plenty of cited evidence for your viewpoint. If you don't your viewpoints become moot in debate terms.

So what does Mr. Kurita do with Chomsky's dismal record? He ignores the utterly disproved predictions about Afghanistan and Iraq, and instead focuses on the fact that one of Chomsky's predictions--the one about future terrorist attacks--is open-ended. He then uses it to defends Chomsky's "accuracy" because it MIGHT come true IN THE FUTURE, so it wasn't really falsified.

Strawman!

Of course, the only reason Chomsky is "correct" on this one is that open-ended claim like "there will be terorrist attacks in the USA"--sometime, somewhere, by somebody--are technically unfalisifiable; no matter how much time there is no attack, it is always POSSIBLE that such an attack would occur later. Am I supposed to be impressed that Chomsky's unfalsifiable statement wasn't falsified?

You still haven't proved your claim that Chomsky was wrong on anything and everything. Where is the f***ing evidence!?!

This is PRECISELY the attitude of Edward's grupies. Edward will say something like "I see your brother... and your sister... and I see an operation". Well, you were an only child and your parents are now deceased, so Edward has two complete misses. In addition, you never had an operation in your life. However, Edward just said that he "sees" an operation, so it MIGHT be that you will have an operation SOMETIME in the future!

Ad Hominem, and Strawman

AMAZING!!! How did he know??? What more proof do those nasty skeptics want--don't they realize that "it doesn't take a lot for someone to need an operation, you know", so he still might be proven right after all?

Where is the Proof that Chomsky get anything wrong! THAT IS THE ONLY THING I AM ASKING FOR HERE!

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by corplinx



Do you get a kick out of stating the obvious? You get the duh award.

I am sorry for taking the moral highground here, but I don't think "Skeptic" is worthy of his name unless he also avoids Logical Fallacy.

[demon]

Citations? References anyone?

Do some research and you'll find that, in the case of Afghanistan for example, Chomsky made no predictions, he merely quoted the warnings of the most reputable authorities (FAO UNICEF etc). Also, in the case of Afghanistan, we don't actually know the consequences of the bombing since we don't investigate such things.

You can try to use this scattergun approach to slating Chomsky but you're not using any direct quotes because all you've done is read some second hand criticism on the web. If you actually read Chomsky, you'd see that he is, in fact, incredibly careful and conservative in what he writes.

Instead, your criticism of him are just a copy of the majority of such attacks, unreferenced and cloudy attributions and a load of childish and irrelevant insults.

[corplinx]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita


I am sorry for taking the moral highground here, but I don't think "Skeptic" is worthy of his name unless he also avoids Logical Fallacy.

A strawman is not necessarily a fallacy. Neither is a slippery slope for that matter. Being able to differentiate is very important for any skeptic (so I guess that rules you out).

For instance, if my only arguement is a strawman then it indicates that I lack true evidence for my viewpoint. However, in informal conversation like an internet message board a strawman can be used to make a good point (especially when used in a humorous way).

As far as taking the moral highground, you sound like you need to put down the keyboard for a minute and go out and get some fresh air.

[Skeptic]

Great, now you are just getting into technicalities of the # of people dead.

Perhaps a few THOUSAND civilians died from MILITARY ACTION in Afghanistan and Iraq together. Chomsky predicted MILLIONS dying from STARVATION AND GENOCIDE. So now he is "right" because he "predicted" that some civilians will die and some civilians died? So the only way he would be wrong on his prediction that "millions will starve" would be if no civilians at all were killed in any manner? Sorry, but "millions will starve" is NOT the same as saying "a few thousands will be killed in military action". It's not even friggin close--it's getting the method of death completely wrong and exagerrating the number of dead wrong by a factor of 1000! I'd say that's a bit more than "quibbling" about the number of dead, wouldn't you?.

Or does this work the other way, too? If a holocaust denier says that only 6,000, and not 6,000,000, jews were killed by the nazis--about the same 1:1000 factor of being wrong as Chomsky's--is he really just "quibbling about technicalities of the numbers of jews dead"? Is he not a holocaust denier because to be a holocause denier you must say Hitler never killed a single jew at any time? Apparently so--if Chomsky can overestimate the dead by a factor of 1,000 and still be "correct", why can't the holocaust denier underestimate the dead by the same factor and still be "right"?

This is another typical "groupie" trick: bend and re-interpret any statement the guru makes in order to somehow, no matter how distortedly, make him seem "right". If he is wrong by a factor of 1,000, well, that's just "quibbling about numbers". If he claimed the world will end and it didn't, well, it still MIGHT end, so he isn't wrong. Like Edward or other gurus, Chomsky can do no wrong; it's just a matter of "intepreting" his "great wisdom" correctly--when "correctly" means realizing that statements like "millions will starve in Afghanistan" should not be interpreted LITERALLY, and "really" mean "more than one civilian will die as the result of the war in Afghanistan".

I know Chomsky has been known to exagerrate the deat toll slightly.

"Slightly" = by a factor of 1,000.

Well, do you have anything avaliable that debunks his view

The fact that all his predictions failed miserably is a start. He said that millions will starve in Afghanistan. Didn't happen. He said that millions will starve in Iraq. Didn't happen. He said numerous terorrist attacks on the US will occur. Didn't happen.

I'd say that's pretty much "debunking" his view, isn't it?

[Theodore Kurita]

I don't think you have that great of an understanding of Chomsky's arguments on 9/11 and Post 9/11.

This ought to clear it up.

This talk by Chomsky puts it in a nutshell:



The New War Against Terror
Noam Chomsky

Delivered at MIT, October 18, 2001

Everyone knows it’s the TV people who run the world [crowd laugher]. I just got orders that I’m supposed to be here, not there. Well the last talk I gave at this forum was on a light pleasant topic. It was about how humans are an endangered species and given the nature of their institutions they are likely to destroy themselves in a fairly short time. So this time there is a little relief and we have a pleasant topic instead, the new war on terror. Unfortunately, the world keeps coming up with things that make it more and more horrible as we proceed.



Assume 2 Conditions for this Talk{/B]

I’m going to assume 2 conditions for this talk.

· The first one is just what I assume to be recognition of fact. That is that the events of September 11 were a horrendous atrocity probably the most devastating instant human toll of any crime in history, outside of war.

· The second assumption has to do with the goals. I’m assuming that our goal is that we are interested in reducing the likelihood of such crimes whether they are against us or against someone else.

If you don’t accept those two assumptions, then what I say will not be addressed to you. If we do accept them, then a number of questions arise, closely related ones, which merit a good deal of thought.



[B]The 5 Questions

One question, and by far the most important one is what is happening right now? Implicit in that is what can we do about it? The 2nd has to do with the very common assumption that what happened on September 11 is a historic event, one which will change history. I tend to agree with that. I think it’s true. It was a historic event and the question we should be asking is exactly why? The 3rd question has to do with the title, The War Against Terrorism. Exactly what is it? And there is a related question, namely what is terrorism? The 4th question which is narrower but important has to do with the origins of the crimes of September 11th. And the 5th question that I want to talk a little about is what policy options there are in fighting this war against terrorism and dealing with the situations that led to it.

I’ll say a few things about each. Glad to go beyond in discussion and don’t hesitate to bring up other questions. These are ones that come to my mind as prominent but you may easily and plausibly have other choices.



1. What’s Happening Right Now?

Starvation of 3 to 4 Million People

Well let’s start with right now. I’ll talk about the situation in Afghanistan. I’ll just keep to uncontroversial sources like the New York Times [crowd laughter]. According to the New York Times there are 7 to 8 million people in Afghanistan on the verge of starvation. That was true actually before September 11th. They were surviving on international aid. On September 16th, the Times reported, I’m quoting it, that the United States demanded from Pakistan the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan’s civilian population. As far as I could determine there was no reaction in the United States or for that matter in Europe. I was on national radio all over Europe the next day. There was no reaction in the United States or in Europe to my knowledge to the demand to impose massive starvation on millions of people. The threat of military strikes right after September…..around that time forced the removal of international aid workers that crippled the assistance programs. Actually, I am quoting again from the New York Times. Refugees reaching Pakistan after arduous journeys from AF are describing scenes of desperation and fear at home as the threat of American led military attacks turns their long running misery into a potential catastrophe. The country was on a lifeline and we just cut the line. Quoting an evacuated aid worker, in the New York Times Magazine.

The World Food Program, the UN program, which is the main one by far, were able to resume after 3 weeks in early October, they began to resume at a lower level, resume food shipments. They don’t have international aid workers within, so the distribution system is hampered. That was suspended as soon as the bombing began. They then resumed but at a lower pace while aid agencies leveled scathing condemnations of US airdrops, condemning them as propaganda tools which are probably doing more harm than good. That happens to be quoting the London Financial Times but it is easy to continue. After the first week of bombing, the New York Times reported on a back page inside a column on something else, that by the arithmetic of the United Nations there will soon be 7.5 million Afghans in acute need of even a loaf of bread and there are only a few weeks left before the harsh winter will make deliveries to many areas totally impossible, continuing to quote, but with bombs falling the delivery rate is down to ½ of what is needed. Casual comment. Which tells us that Western civilization is anticipating the slaughter of, well do the arithmetic, 3-4 million people or something like that. On the same day, the leader of Western civilization dismissed with contempt, once again, offers of negotiation for delivery of the alleged target, Osama bin Laden, and a request for some evidence to substantiate the demand for total capitulation. It was dismissed. On the same day the Special Rapporteur of the UN in charge of food pleaded with the United States to stop the bombing to try to save millions of victims. As far as I’m aware that was unreported. That was Monday. Yesterday the major aid agencies OXFAM and Christian Aid and others joined in that plea. You can’t find a report in the New York Times. There was a line in the Boston Globe, hidden in a story about another topic, Kashmir.

Silent Genocide

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 few months….very casually with no comment, no particular thought about it, that’s just kind of normal, here and in a good part of Europe. Not in the rest of the world. In fact not even in much of Europe. So if you read the Irish press or the press in Scotland…that close, reactions are very different. Well that’s what’s happening now. What’s happening now is very much under our control. We can do a lot to affect what’s happening. And that’s roughly it.



2. Why was it a Historic Event?

National Territory Attacked

Alright let’s turn to the slightly more abstract question, forgetting for the moment that we are in the midst of apparently trying to murder 3 or 4 million people, not Taliban of course, their victims. Let’s go back…turn to the question of the historic event that took place on September 11th. As I said, I think that’s correct. It was a historic event. Not unfortunately because of its scale, unpleasant to think about, but in terms of the scale it’s not that unusual. I did say it’s the worst…probably the worst instant human toll of any crime. And that may be true. But there are terrorist crimes with effects a bit more drawn out that are more extreme, unfortunately. Nevertheless, it’s a historic event because there was a change. The change was the direction in which the guns were pointed. That’s new. Radically new. So, take US history.

The last time that the national territory of the United States was under attack, or for that matter, even threatened was when the British burned down Washington in 1814. There have been many…it was common to bring up Pearl Harbor but that’s not a good analogy. The Japanese, what ever you think about it, the Japanese bombed military bases in 2 US colonies not the national territory; colonies which had been taken from their inhabitants in not a very pretty way. This is the national territory that’s been attacked on a large scale, you can find a few fringe examples but this is unique.

During these close to 200 years, we, the United States expelled or mostly exterminated the indigenous population, that’s many millions of people, conquered half of Mexico, carried out depredations all over the region, Caribbean and Central America, sometimes beyond, conquered Hawaii and the Philippines, killing several 100,000 Filipinos in the process. Since the Second World War, it has extended its reach around the world in ways I don’t have to describe. But it was always killing someone else, the fighting was somewhere else, it was others who were getting slaughtered. Not here. Not the national territory.

Europe

In the case of Europe, the change is even more dramatic because its history is even more horrendous than ours. We are an offshoot of Europe, basically. For hundreds of years, Europe has been casually slaughtering people all over the world. That’s how they conquered the world, not by handing out candy to babies. During this period, Europe did suffer murderous wars, but that was European killers murdering one another. The main sport of Europe for hundreds of years was slaughtering one another. The only reason that it came to an end in 1945, was….it had nothing to do with Democracy or not making war with each other and other fashionable notions. It had to do with the fact that everyone understood that the next time they play the game it was going to be the end for the world. Because the Europeans, including us, had developed such massive weapons of destruction that that game just have to be over. And it goes back hundreds of years. In the 17th century, about probably 40% of the entire population of Germany was wiped out in one war.

But during this whole bloody murderous period, it was Europeans slaughtering each other, and Europeans slaughtering people elsewhere. The Congo didn’t attack Belgium, India didn’t attack England, Algeria didn’t attack France. It’s uniform. There are again small exceptions, but pretty small in scale, certainly invisible in the scale of what Europe and us were doing to the rest of the world. This is the first change. The first time that the guns have been pointed the other way. And in my opinion that’s probably why you see such different reactions on the two sides of the Irish Sea which I have noticed, incidentally, in many interviews on both sides, national radio on both sides. The world looks very different depending on whether you are holding the lash or whether you are being whipped by it for hundreds of years, very different. So I think the shock and surprise in Europe and its offshoots, like here, is very understandable. It is a historic event but regrettably not in scale, in something else and a reason why the rest of the world…most of the rest of the world looks at it quite differently. Not lacking sympathy for the victims of the atrocity or being horrified by them, that’s almost uniform, but viewing it from a different perspective. Something we might want to understand.



3. What is the War Against Terrorism?

Well, let’s go to the third question, ‘What is the war against terrorism?’ and a side question, ‘What’s terrorism?’. The war against terrorism has been described in high places as a struggle against a plague, a cancer which is spread by barbarians, by “depraved opponents of civilization itself.” That’s a feeling that I share. The words I’m quoting, however, happen to be from 20 years ago. Those are…that’s President Reagan and his Secretary of State. The Reagan administration came into office 20 years ago declaring that the war against international terrorism would be the core of our foreign policy….describing it in terms of the kind I just mentioned and others. And it was the core of our foreign policy. The Reagan administration responded to this plague spread by depraved opponents of civilization itself by creating an extraordinary international terrorist network, totally unprecedented in scale, which carried out massive atrocities all over the world, primarily….well, partly nearby, but not only there. I won’t run through the record, you’re all educated people, so I’m sure you learned about it in High School. [crowd laughter]

Reagan-US War Against Nicaragua

But I’ll just mention one case which is totally uncontroversial, so we might as well not argue about it, by no means the most extreme but uncontroversial. It’s uncontroversial because of the judgments of the highest international authorities the International Court of Justice, the World Court, and the UN Security Council. So this one is uncontroversial, at least among people who have some minimal concern for international law, human rights, justice and other things like that. And now I’ll leave you an exercise. You can estimate the size of that category by simply asking how often this uncontroversial case has been mentioned in the commentary of the last month. And it’s a particularly relevant one, not only because it is uncontroversial, but because it does offer a precedent as to how a law abiding state would respond to…did respond in fact to international terrorism, which is uncontroversial. And was even more extreme than the events of September 11th. I’m talking about the Reagan-US war against Nicaragua which left tens of thousands of people dead, the country ruined, perhaps beyond recovery.

Nicaragua’s Response

Nicaragua did respond. They didn’t respond by setting off bombs in Washington. They responded by taking it to the World Court, presenting a case, they had no problem putting together evidence. The World Court accepted their case, ruled in their favor, ordered the…condemned what they called the “unlawful use of force,” which is another word for international terrorism, by the United States, ordered the United States to terminate the crime and to pay massive reparations. The United States, of course, dismissed the court judgment with total contempt and announced that it would not accept the jurisdiction of the court henceforth. Then Nicaragua then went to the UN Security Council which considered a resolution calling on all states to observe international law. No one was mentioned but everyone understood. The United States vetoed the resolution. It now stands as the only state on record which has both been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism and has vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law. Nicaragua then went to the General Assembly where there is technically no veto but a negative US vote amounts to a veto. It passed a similar resolution with only the United States, Israel, and El Salvador opposed. The following year again, this time the United States could only rally Israel to the cause, so 2 votes opposed to observing international law. At that point, Nicaragua couldn’t do anything lawful. It tried all the measures. They don’t work in a world that is ruled by force.

This case is uncontroversial but it’s by no means the most extreme. We gain a lot of insight into our own culture and society and what’s happening now by asking ‘how much we know about all this? How much we talk about it? How much you learn about it in school? How much it’s all over the front pages?’ And this is only the beginning. The United States responded to the World Court and the Security Council by immediately escalating the war very quickly, that was a bipartisan decision incidentally. The terms of the war were also changed. For the first time there were official orders given…official orders to the terrorist army to attack what are called “soft targets,” meaning undefended civilian targets, and to keep away from the Nicaraguan army. They were able to do that because the United States had total control of the air over Nicaragua and the mercenary army was supplied with advanced communication equipment, it wasn’t a guerilla army in the normal sense and could get instructions about the disposition of the Nicaraguan army forces so they could attack agricultural collectives, health clinics, and so on…soft targets with impunity. Those were the official orders.

What was the Reaction Here?

What was the reaction? It was known. There was a reaction to it. The policy was regarded as sensible by left liberal opinion. So Michael Kinsley who represents the left in mainstream discussion, wrote an article in which he said that we shouldn’t be too quick to criticize this policy as Human Rights Watch had just done. He said a “sensible policy” must “meet the test of cost benefit analysis” -- that is, I’m quoting now, that is the analysis of “the amount of blood and misery that will be poured in, and the likelihood that democracy will emerge at the other end.” Democracy as the US understands the term, which is graphically illustrated in the surrounding countries. Notice that it is axiomatic that the United States, US elites, have the right to conduct the analysis and to pursue the project if it passes their tests. And it did pass their tests. It worked. When Nicaragua finally succumbed to superpower assault, commentators openly and cheerfully lauded the success of the methods that were adopted and described them accurately. So I’ll quote Time Magazine just to pick one. They lauded the success of the methods adopted: “to wreck the economy and prosecute a long and deadly proxy war until the exhausted natives overthrow the unwanted government themselves,” with a cost to us that is “minimal,” and leaving the victims “with wrecked bridges, sabotaged power stations, and ruined farms,” and thus providing the US candidate with a “winning issue”: “ending the impoverishment of the people of Nicaragua.” The New York Times had a headline saying “Americans United in Joy” at this outcome.

Terrorism Works – Terrorism is not the Weapon of the Weak

That is the culture in which we live and it reveals several facts. One is the fact that terrorism works. It doesn’t fail. It works. Violence usually works. That’s world history. Secondly, it’s a very serious analytic error to say, as is commonly done, that terrorism is the weapon of the weak. Like other means of violence, it’s primarily a weapon of the strong, overwhelmingly, in fact. It is held to be a weapon of the weak because the strong also control the doctrinal systems and their terror doesn’t count as terror. Now that’s close to universal. I can’t think of a historical exception, even the worst mass murderers view the world that way. So pick the Nazis. They weren’t carrying out terror in occupied Europe. They were protecting the local population from the terrorisms of the partisans. And like other resistance movements, there was terrorism. The Nazis were carrying out counter terror. Furthermore, the United States essentially agreed with that. After the war, the US army did extensive studies of Nazi counter terror operations in Europe. First I should say that the US picked them up and began carrying them out itself, often against the same targets, the former resistance. But the military also studied the Nazi methods published interesting studies, sometimes critical of them because they were inefficiently carried out, so a critical analysis, you didn’t do this right, you did that right, but those methods with the advice of Wermacht officers who were brought over here became the manuals of counter insurgency, of counter terror, of low intensity conflict, as it is called, and are the manuals, and are the procedures that are being used. So it’s not just that the Nazis did it. It’s that it was regarded as the right thing to do by the leaders of western civilization, that is us, who then proceeded to do it themselves. Terrorism is not the weapon of the weak. It is the weapon of those who are against ‘us’ whoever ‘us’ happens to be. And if you can find a historical exception to that, I’d be interested in seeing it.

Nature of our Culture – How We Regard Terrorism

Well, an interesting indication of the nature of our culture, our high culture, is the way in which all of this is regarded. One way it’s regarded is just suppressing it. So almost nobody has ever heard of it. And the power of American propaganda and doctrine is so strong that even among the victims it’s barely known. I mean, when you talk about this to people in Argentina, you have to remind them. Oh, yeh, that happened, we forgot about it. It’s deeply suppressed. The sheer consequences of the monopoly of violence can be very powerful in ideological and other terms.

The Idea that Nicaragua Might Have The Right To Defend Itself

Well, one illuminating aspect of our own attitude toward terrorism is the reaction to the idea that Nicaragua might have the right to defend itself. Actually I went through this in some detail with database searches and that sort of thing. The idea that Nicaragua might have the right to defend itself was considered outrageous. There is virtually nothing in mainstream commentary indicating that Nicaragua might have that right. And that fact was exploited by the Reagan administration and its propaganda in an interesting way. Those of you who were around in that time will remember that they periodically floated rumors that the Nicaraguans were getting MIG jets, jets from Russia. At that point the hawks and the doves split. The hawks said, ‘ok, let’s bomb ‘em.’ The doves said, `wait a minute, let’s see if the rumors are true. And if the rumors are true, then let’s bomb them. Because they are a threat to the United States.’ Why, incidentally were they getting MIGs. Well they tried to get jet planes from European countries but the United States put pressure on its allies so that it wouldn’t send them means of defense because they wanted them to turn to the Russians. That’s good for propaganda purposes. Then they become a threat to us. Remember, they were just 2 days march from Harlingen, Texas. We actually declared a national emergency in 1985 to protect the country from the threat of Nicaragua. And it stayed in force. So it was much better for them to get arms from the Russians. Why would they want jet planes? Well, for the reasons I already mentioned. The United States had total control over their airspace, was over flying it and using that to provide instructions to the terrorist army to enable them to attack soft targets without running into the army that might defend them. Everyone knew that that was the reason. They are not going to use their jet planes for anything else. But the idea that Nicaragua should be permitted to defend its airspace against a superpower attack that is directing terrorist forces to attack undefended civilian targets, that was considered in the United States as outrageous and uniformly so. Exceptions are so slight, you know I can practically list them. I don’t suggest that you take my word for this. Have a look. That includes our own senators, incidentally.

Honduras – The Appointment of John Negroponte as Ambassador to the United Nations

Another illustration of how we regard terrorism is happening right now. The US has just appointed an ambassador to the United Nations to lead the war against terrorism a couple weeks ago. Who is he? Well, his name is John Negroponte. He was the US ambassador in the fiefdom, which is what it is, of Honduras in the early 1980’s. There was a little fuss made about the fact that he must have been aware, as he certainly was, of the large-scale murders and other atrocities that were being carried out by the security forces in Honduras that we were supporting. But that’s a small part of it. As proconsul of Honduras, as he was called there, he was the local supervisor for the terrorist war based in Honduras, for which his government was condemned by the world court and then the Security Council in a vetoed resolution. And he was just appointed as the UN Ambassador to lead the war against terror. Another small experiment you can do is check and see what the reaction was to this. Well, I will tell you what you are going to find, but find it for yourself. Now that tells us a lot about the war against terrorism and a lot about ourselves.

After the United States took over the country again under the conditions that were so graphically described by the press, the country was pretty much destroyed in the 1980’s, but it has totally collapsed since in every respect just about. Economically it has declined sharply since the US take over, democratically and in every other respect. It’s now the second poorest country in the Hemisphere. I should say….I’m not going to talk about it, but I mentioned that I picked up Nicaragua because it is an uncontroversial case. If you look at the other states in the region, the state terror was far more extreme and it again traces back to Washington and that’s by no means all.

US & UK Backed South African Attacks

It was happening elsewhere in the world too, take say Africa. During the Reagan years alone, South African attacks, backed by the United States and Britain, US/UK-backed South African attacks against the neighboring countries killed about a million and a half people and left 60 billion dollars in damage and countries destroyed. And if we go around the world, we can add more examples.

Now that was the first war against terror of which I’ve given a small sample. Are we supposed to pay attention to that? Or kind of think that that might be relevant? After all it’s not exactly ancient history. Well, evidently not as you can tell by looking at the current discussion of the war on terror which has been the leading topic for the last month.

Haiti, Guatemala, and Nicaragua

I mentioned that Nicaragua has now become the 2nd poorest country in the hemisphere. What’s the poorest country? Well that’s of course Haiti which also happens to be the victim of most US intervention in the 20th century by a long shot. We left it totally devastated. It’s the poorest country. Nicaragua is second ranked in degree of US intervention in the 20th century. It is the 2nd poorest. Actually, it is vying with Guatemala. They interchange every year or two as to who’s the second poorest. And they also vie as to who is the leading target of US military intervention. We’re supposed to think that all of this is some sort of accident. That is has nothing to do with anything that happened in history. Maybe.

Colombia and Turkey

The worst human rights violator in the 1990’s is Colombia, by a long shot. It’s also the, by far, the leading recipient of US military aid in the 1990’s maintaining the terror and human rights violations. In 1999, Colombia replaced Turkey as the leading recipient of US arms worldwide, that is excluding Israel and Egypt which are a separate category. And that tells us a lot more about the war on terror right now, in fact.

Why was Turkey getting such a huge flow of US arms? Well if you take a look at the flow of US arms to Turkey, Turkey always got a lot of US arms. It’s strategically placed, a member of NATO, and so on. But the arms flow to Turkey went up very sharply in 1984. It didn’t have anything to do with the cold war. I mean Russian was collapsing. And it stayed high from 1984 to 1999 when it reduced and it was replaced in the lead by Colombia. What happened from 1984 to 1999? Well, in 1984, [Turkey] launched a major terrorist war against Kurds in southeastern Turkey. And that’s when US aid went up, military aid. And this was not pistols. This was jet planes, tanks, military training, and so on. And it stayed high as the atrocities escalated through the 1990’s. Aid followed it. The peak year was 1997. In 1997, US military aid to Turkey was more than in the entire period 1950 to 1983, that is the cold war period, which is an indication of how much the cold war has affected policy. And the results were awesome. This led to 2-3 million refugees. Some of the worst ethnic cleansing of the late 1990’s. Tens of thousands of people killed, 3500 towns and villages destroyed, way more than Kosovo, even under NATO bombs. And the United States was providing 80% of the arms, increasing as the atrocities increased, peaking in 1997. It declined in 1999 because, once again, terror worked as it usually does when carried out by its major agents, mainly the powerful. So by 1999, Turkish terror, called of course counter-terror, but as I said, that’s universal, it worked. Therefore Turkey was replaced by Colombia which had not yet succeeded in its terrorist war. And therefore had to move into first place as recipient of US arms.

Self Congratulation on the Part of Western Intellectuals

Well, what makes this all particularly striking is that all of this was taking place right in the midst of a huge flood of self-congratulation on the part of Western intellectuals which probably has no counterpart in history. I mean you all remember it. It was just a couple years ago. Massive self-adulation about how for the first time in history we are so magnificent; that we are standing up for principles and values; dedicated to ending inhumanity everywhere in the new era of this-and-that, and so-on-and-so-forth. And we certainly can’t tolerate atrocities right near the borders of NATO. That was repeated over and over. Only within the borders of NATO where we can not only can tolerate much worse atrocities but contribute to them. Another insight into Western civilization and our own, is how often was this brought up? Try to look. I won’t repeat it. But it’s instructive. It’s a pretty impressive feat for a propaganda system to carry this off in a free society. It’s pretty amazing. I don’t think you could do this in a totalitarian state.

Turkey is Very Grateful

And Turkey is very grateful. Just a few days ago, Prime Minister Ecevit announced that Turkey would join the coalition against terror, very enthusiastically, even more so than others. In fact, he said they would contribute troops which others have not willing to do. And he explained why. He said, We owe a debt of gratitude to the United States because the United States was the only country that was willing to contribute so massively to our own, in his words “counter-terrorist” war, that is to our own massive ethnic cleansing and atrocities and terror. Other countries helped a little, but they stayed back. The United States, on the other hand, contributed enthusiastically and decisively and was able to do so because of the silence, servility might be the right word, of the educated classes who could easily find out about it. It’s a free country after all. You can read human rights reports. You can read all sorts of stuff. But we chose to contribute to the atrocities and Turkey is very happy, they owe us a debt of gratitude for that and therefore will contribute troops just as during the war in Serbia. Turkey was very much praised for using its F-16’s which we supplied it to bomb Serbia exactly as it had been doing with the same planes against its own population up until the time when it finally succeeded in crushing internal terror as they called it. And as usual, as always, resistance does include terror. Its true of the American Revolution. That’s true of every case I know. Just as its true that those who have a monopoly of violence talk about themselves as carrying out counter terror.

The Coalition – Including Algeria, Russia, China, Indonesia

Now that’s pretty impressive and that has to do with the coalition that is now being organized to fight the war against terror. And it’s very interesting to see how that coalition is being described. So have a look at this morning’s Christian Science Monitor. That’s a good newspaper. One of the best international newspapers, with real coverage of the world. The lead story, the front-page story, is about how the United States, you know people used to dislike the United States but now they are beginning to respect it, and they are very happy about the way that the US is leading the war against terror. And the prime example, well in fact the only serious example, the others are a joke, is Algeria. Turns out that Algeria is very enthusiastic about the US war against terror. The person who wrote the article is an expert on Africa. He must know that Algeria is one of the most vicious terrorist states in the world and has been carrying out horrendous terror against its own population in the past couple of years, in fact. For a while, this was under wraps. But it was finally exposed in France by defectors from the Algerian army. It’s all over the place there and in England and so on. But here, we’re very proud because one of the worst terrorist states in the world is now enthusiastically welcoming the US war on terror and in fact is cheering on the United States to lead the war. That shows how popular we are getting.

And if you look at the coalition that is being formed against terror it tells you a lot more. A leading member of the coalition is Russia which is delighted to have the United States support its murderous terrorist war in Chechnya instead of occasionally criticizing it in the background. China is joining enthusiastically. It’s delighted to have support for the atrocities it’s carrying out in western China against, what it called, Muslim secessionists. Turkey, as I mentioned, is very happy with the war against terror. They are experts. Algeria, Indonesia delighted to have even more US support for atrocities it is carrying out in Ache and elsewhere. Now we can run through the list, the list of the states that have joined the coalition against terror is quite impressive. They have a characteristic in common. They are certainly among the leading terrorist states in the world. And they happen to be led by the world champion.

What is Terrorism?

Well that brings us back to the question, what is terrorism? I have been assuming we understand it. Well, what is it? Well, there happen to be some easy answers to this. There is an official definition. You can find it in the US code or in US army manuals. A brief statement of it taken from a US army manual, is fair enough, is that terror is the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to attain political or religious ideological goals through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear. That’s terrorism. That’s a fair enough definition. I think it is reasonable to accept that. The problem is that it can’t be accepted because if you accept that, all the wrong consequences follow. For example, all the consequences I have just been reviewing. Now there is a major effort right now at the UN to try to develop a comprehensive treaty on terrorism. When Kofi Annan got the Nobel prize the other day, you will notice he was reported as saying that we should stop wasting time on this and really get down to it.

But there’s a problem. If you use the official definition of terrorism in the comprehensive treaty you are going to get completely the wrong results. So that can’t be done. In fact, it is even worse than that. If you take a look at the definition of Low Intensity Warfare which is official US policy you find that it is a very close paraphrase of what I just read. In fact, Low Intensity Conflict is just another name for terrorism. That’s why all countries, as far as I know, call whatever horrendous acts they are carrying out, counter terrorism. We happen to call it Counter Insurgency or Low Intensity Conflict. So that’s a serious problem. You can’t use the actual definitions. You’ve got to carefully find a definition that doesn’t have all the wrong consequences.

Why did the United States and Israel Vote Against a Major Resolution Condemning Terrorism?

There are some other problems. Some of them came up in December 1987, at the peak of the first war on terrorism, that’s when the furor over the plague was peaking. The United Nations General Assembly passed a very strong resolution against terrorism, condemning the plague in the strongest terms, calling on every state to fight against it in every possible way. It passed unanimously. One country, Honduras abstained. Two votes against; the usual two, United States and Israel. Why should the United States and Israel vote against a major resolution condemning terrorism in the strongest terms, in fact pretty much the terms that the Reagan administration was using? Well, there is a reason. There is one paragraph in that long resolution which says that nothing in this resolution infringes on the rights of people struggling against racist and colonialist regimes or foreign military occupation to continue with their resistance with the assistance of others, other states, states outside in their just cause. Well, the United States and Israel can’t accept that. The main reason that they couldn’t at the time was because of South Africa. South Africa was an ally, officially called an ally. There was a terrorist force in South Africa. It was called the African National Congress. They were a terrorist force officially. South Africa in contrast was an ally and we certainly couldn’t support actions by a terrorist group struggling against a racist regime. That would be impossible.

And of course there is another one. Namely the Israeli occupied territories, now going into its 35th year. Supported primarily by the United States in blocking a diplomatic settlement for 30 years now, still is. And you can’t have that. There is another one at the time. Israel was occupying Southern Lebanon and was being combated by what the US calls a terrorist force, Hizbullah, which in fact succeeded in driving Israel out of Lebanon. And we can’t allow anyone to struggle against a military occupation when it is one that we support so therefore the US and Israel had to vote against the major UN resolution on terrorism. And I mentioned before that a US vote against…is essentially a veto. Which is only half the story. It also vetoes it from history. So none of this was every reported and none of it appeared in the annals of terrorism. If you look at the scholarly work on terrorism and so on, nothing that I just mentioned appears. The reason is that it has got the wrong people holding the guns. You have to carefully hone the definitions and the scholarship and so on so that you come out with the right conclusions; otherwise it is not respectable scholarship and honorable journalism. Well, these are some of problems that are hampering the effort to develop a comprehensive treaty against terrorism. Maybe we should have an academic conference or something to try to see if we can figure out a way of defining terrorism so that it comes out with just the right answers, not the wrong answers. That won’t be easy.



4. What are the Origins of the September 11 Crime?

Well, let’s drop that and turn to the 4th question, What are the origins of the September 11 crimes? Here we have to make a distinction between 2 categories which shouldn’t be run together. One is the actual agents of the crime, the other is kind of a reservoir of at least sympathy, sometimes support that they appeal to even among people who very much oppose the criminals and the actions. And those are 2 different things.

Category 1: The Likely Perpetrators

Well, with regard to the perpetrators, in a certain sense we are not really clear. The United States either is unable or unwilling to provide any evidence, any meaningful evidence. There was a sort of a play a week or two ago when Tony Blair was set up to try to present it. I don’t exactly know what the purpose of this was. Maybe so that the US could look as though it’s holding back on some secret evidence that it can’t reveal or that Tony Blair could strike proper Churchillian poses or something or other. Whatever the PR [public relations] reasons were, he gave a presentation which was in serious circles considered so absurd that it was barely even mentioned. So the Wall Street Journal, for example, one of the more serious papers had a small story on page 12, I think, in which they pointed out that there was not much evidence and then they quoted some high US official as saying that it didn’t matter whether there was any evidence because they were going to do it anyway. So why bother with the evidence? The more ideological press, like the New York Times and others, they had big front-page headlines. But the Wall Street Journal reaction was reasonable and if you look at the so-called evidence you can see why. But let’s assume that it’s true. It is astonishing to me how weak the evidence was. I sort of thought you could do better than that without any intelligence service [audience laughter]. In fact, remember this was after weeks of the most intensive investigation in history of all the intelligence services of the western world working overtime trying to put something together. And it was a prima facie, it was a very strong case even before you had anything. And it ended up about where it started, with a prima facie case. So let’s assume that it is true. So let’s assume that, it looked obvious the first day, still does, that the actual perpetrators come from the radical Islamic, here called, fundamentalist networks of which the bin Laden network is undoubtedly a significant part. Whether they were involved or not nobody knows. It doesn’t really matter much.

Where did they come from?

That’s the background, those networks. Well, where do they come from? We know all about that. Nobody knows about that better than the CIA because it helped organize them and it nurtured them for a long time. They were brought together in the 1980’s actually by the CIA and its associates elsewhere: Pakistan, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China was involved, they may have been involved a little bit earlier, maybe by 1978. The idea was to try to harass the Russians, the common enemy. According to President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the US got involved in mid 1979. Do you remember, just to put the dates right, that Russia invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Ok. According to Brzezinski, the US support for the mojahedin fighting against the government began 6 months earlier. He is very proud of that. He says we drew the Russians into, in his words, an Afghan trap, by supporting the mojahedin, getting them to invade, getting them into the trap. Now then we could develop this terrific mercenary army. Not a small one, maybe 100,000 men or so bringing together the best killers they could find, who were radical Islamist fanatics from around North Africa, Saudi Arabia….anywhere they could find them. They were often called the Afghanis but many of them, like bin Laden, were not Afghans. They were brought by the CIA and its friends from elsewhere. Whether Brzezinski is telling the truth or not, I don’t know. He may have been bragging, he is apparently very proud of it, knowing the consequences incidentally. But maybe it’s true. We’ll know someday if the documents are ever released. Anyway, that’s his perception. By January 1980 it is not even in doubt that the US was organizing the Afghanis and this massive military force to try to cause the Russians maximal trouble. It was a legitimate thing for the Afghans to fight the Russian invasion. But the US intervention was not helping the Afghans. In fact, it helped destroy the country and much more. The Afghanis, so called, had their own...it did force the Russians to withdrew, finally. Although many analysts believe that it probably delayed their withdrawal because they were trying to get out of it. Anyway, whatever, they did withdraw.

Meanwhile, the terrorist forces that the CIA was organizing, arming, and training were pursuing their own agenda, right away. It was no secret. One of the first acts was in 1981 when they assassinated the President of Egypt, who was one of the most enthusiastic of their creators. In 1983, one suicide bomber, who may or may not have been connected, it’s pretty shadowy, nobody knows. But one suicide bomber drove the US army-military out of Lebanon. And it continued. They have their own agenda. The US was happy to mobilize them to fight its cause but meanwhile they are doing their own thing. They were clear very about it. After 1989, when the Russians had withdrawn, they simply turned elsewhere. Since then they have been fighting in Chechnya, Western China, Bosnia, Kashmir, South East Asia, North Africa, all over the place.

The Are Telling Us What They Think

They are telling us just what they think. The United States wants to silence the one free television channel in the Arab world because it’s broadcasting a whole range of things from Powell over to Osama bin Laden. So the US is now joining the repressive regimes of the Arab world that try to shut it up. But if you listen to it, if you listen to what bin Laden says, it’s worth it. There is plenty of interviews. And there are plenty of interviews by leading Western reporters, if you don’t want to listen to his own voice, Robert Fisk and others. And what he has been saying is pretty consistent for a long time. He’s not the only one but maybe he is the most eloquent. It’s not only consistent over a long time, it is consistent with their actions. So there is every reason to take it seriously. Their prime enemy is what they call the corrupt and oppressive authoritarian brutal regimes of the Arab world and when the say that they get quite a resonance in the region. They also want to defend and they want to replace them by properly Islamist governments. That’s where they lose the people of the region. But up till then, they are with them. From their point of view, even Saudi Arabia, the most extreme fundamentalist state in the world, I suppose, short of the Taliban, which is an offshoot, even that’s not Islamist enough for them. Ok, at that point, they get very little support, but up until that point they get plenty of support. Also they want to defend Muslims elsewhere. They hate the Russians like poison, but as soon as the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan, they stopped carrying out terrorist acts in Russia as they had been doing with CIA backing before that within Russia, not just in Afghanistan. They did move over to Chechnya. But there they are defending Muslims against a Russian invasion. Same with all the other places I mentioned. From their point of view, they are defending the Muslims against the infidels. And they are very clear about it and that is what they have been doing.

Why did they turn against the United States?

Now why did they turn against the United States? Well that had to do with what they call the US invasion of Saudi Arabia. In 1990, the US established permanent military bases in Saudi Arabia which from their point of view is comparable to a Russian invasion of Afghanistan except that Saudi Arabia is way more important. That’s the home of the holiest sites of Islam. And that is when their activities turned against the Unites States. If you recall, in 1993 they tried to blow up the World Trade Center. Got part of the way, but not the whole way and that was only part of it. The plans were to blow up the UN building, the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, the FBI building. I think there were others on the list. Well, they sort of got part way, but not all the way. One person who is jailed for that, finally, among the people who were jailed, was a Egyptian cleric who had been brought into the United States over the objections of the Immigration Service, thanks to the intervention of the CIA which wanted to help out their friend. A couple years later he was blowing up the World Trade Center. And this has been going on all over. I’m not going to run through the list but it’s, if you want to understand it, it’s consistent. It’s a consistent picture. It’s described in words. It’s revealed in practice for 20 years. There is no reason not to take it seriously. That’s the first category, the likely perpetrators.

Category 2: What about the reservoir of support?

What about the reservoir of support? Well, it’s not hard to find out what that is. One of the good things that has happened since September 11 is that some of the press and some of the discussion has begun to open up to some of these things. The best one to my knowledge is the Wall Street Journal which right away began to run, within a couple of days, serious reports, searching serious reports, on the reasons why the people of the region, even though they hate bin Laden and despise everything he is doing, nevertheless support him in many ways and even regard him as the conscience of Islam, as one said. Now the Wall Street Journal and others, they are not surveying public opinion. They are surveying the opinion of their friends: bankers, professionals, international lawyers, businessmen tied to the United States, people who they interview in McDonald's restaurant, which is an elegant restaurant there, wearing fancy American clothes. That’s the people they are interviewing because they want to find out what their attitudes are. And their attitudes are very explicit and very clear and in many ways consonant with the message of bin Laden and others. They are very angry at the United States because of its support of authoritarian and brutal regimes; its intervention to block any move towards democracy; its intervention to stop economic development; its policies of devastating the civilian societies of Iraq while strengthening Saddam Hussein; and they remember, even if we prefer not to, that the United States and Britain supported Saddam Hussein right through his worst atrocities, including the gassing of the Kurds, bin Laden brings that up constantly, and they know it even if we don’t want to. And of course their support for the Israeli military occupation which is harsh and brutal. It is now in its 35th year. The US has been providing the overwhelming economic, military, and diplomatic support for it, and still does. And they know that and they don’t like it. Especially when that is paired with US policy towards Iraq, towards the Iraqi civilian society which is getting destroyed. Ok, those are the reasons roughly. And when bin Laden gives those reasons, people recognize it and support it.

Now that’s not the way people here like to think about it, at least educated liberal opinion. They like the following line which has been all over the press, mostly from left liberals, incidentally. I have not done a real study but I think right wing opinion has generally been more honest. But if you look at say at the New York Times at the first op-ed they ran by Ronald Steel, serious left liberal intellectual. He asks Why do they hate us? This is the same day, I think, that the Wall Street Journal was running the survey on why they hate us. So he says “They hate us because we champion a new world order of capitalism, individualism, secularism, and democracy that should be the norm everywhere.” That’s why they hate us. The same day the Wall Street Journal is surveying the opinions of bankers, professionals, international lawyers and saying `look, we hate you because you are blocking democracy, you are preventing economic development, you are supporting brutal regimes, terrorist regimes and you are doing these horrible things in the region.’ A couple days later, Anthony Lewis, way out on the left, explained that the terrorist seek only “apocalyptic nihilism,” nothing more and nothing we do matters. The only consequence of our actions, he says, that could be harmful is that it makes it harder for Arabs to join in the coalition’s anti-terrorism effort. But beyond that, everything we do is irrelevant.

Well, you know, that’s got the advantage of being sort of comforting. It makes you feel good about yourself, and how wonderful you are. It enables us to evade the consequences of our actions. It has a couple of defects. One is it is at total variance with everything we know. And another defect is that it is a perfect way to ensure that you escalate the cycle of violence. If you want to live with your head buried in the sand and pretend they hate us because they’re opposed to globalization, that’s why they killed Sadat 20 years ago, and fought the Russians, tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. And these are all people who are in the midst of … corporate globalization but if you want to believe that, yeh…comforting. And it is a great way to make sure that violence escalates. That’s tribal violence. You did something to me, I’ll do something worse to you. I don’t care what the reasons are. We just keep going that way. And that’s a way to do it. Pretty much straight, left-liberal opinion.

5. What are the Policy Options?

What are the policy options? Well, there are a number. A narrow policy option from the beginning was to follow the advice of really far out radicals like the Pope [audience laughter]. The Vatican immediately said look it’s a horrible terrorist crime. In the case of crime, you try to find the perpetrators, you bring them to justice, you try them. You don’t kill innocent civilians. Like if somebody robs my house and I think the guy who did it is probably in the neighborhood across the street, I don’t go out with an assault rifle and kill everyone in that neighborhood. That’s not the way you deal with crime, whether it’s a small crime like this one or really massive one like the US terrorist war against Nicaragua, even worse ones and others in between. And there are plenty of precedents for that. In fact, I mentioned a precedent, Nicaragua, a lawful, a law abiding state, that’s why presumably we had to destroy it, which followed the right principles. Now of course, it didn’t get anywhere because it was running up against a power that wouldn’t allow lawful procedures to be followed. But if the United States tried to pursue them, nobody would stop them. In fact, everyone would applaud. And there are plenty of other precedents.

IRA Bombs in London

When the IRA set off bombs in London, which is pretty serious business, Britain could have, apart from the fact that it was unfeasible, let’s put that aside, one possible response would have been to destroy Boston which is the source of most of the financing. And of course to wipe out West Belfast. Well, you know, quite apart from the feasibility, it would have been criminal idiocy. The way to deal with it was pretty much what they did. You know, find the perpetrators; bring them to trial; and look for the reasons. Because these things don’t come out of nowhere. They come from something. Whether it is a crime in the streets or a monstrous terrorist crime or anything else. There’s reasons. And usually if you look at the reasons, some of them are legitimate and ought to be addressed, independently of the crime, they ought to be addressed because they are legitimate. And that’s the way to deal with it. There are many such examples.

But there are problems with that. One problem is that the United States does not recognize the jurisdiction of international institutions. So it can’t go to them. It has rejected the jurisdiction of the World Court. It has refused to ratify the International Criminal Court. It is powerful enough to set up a new court if it wants so that wouldn’t stop anything. But there is a problem with any kind of a court, mainly you need evidence. You go to any kind of court, you need some kind of evidence. Not Tony Blair talking about it on television. And that’s very hard. It may be impossible to find.

Leaderless Resistance

You know, it could be that the people who did it, killed themselves. Nobody knows this better than the CIA. These are decentralized, nonhierarchic networks. They follow a principle that is called Leaderless Resistance. That’s the principle that has been developed by the Christian Right terrorists in the United States. It’s called Leaderless Resistance. You have small groups that do things. They don’t talk to anybody else. There is a kind of general background of assumptions and then you do it. Actually people in the anti war movement are very familiar with it. We used to call it affinity groups. If you assume correctly that whatever group you are in is being penetrated by the FBI, when something serious is happening, you don’t do it in a meeting. You do it with some people you know and trust, an affinity group and then it doesn’t get penetrated. That’s one of the reasons why the FBI has never been able to figure out what’s going on in any of the popular movements. And other intelligence agencies are the same. They can’t. That’s leaderless resistance or affinity groups, and decentralized networks are extremely hard to penetrate. And it’s quite possible that they just don’t know. When Osama bin Laden claims he wasn’t involved, that’s entirely possible. In fact, it’s pretty hard to imagine how a guy in a cave in Afghanistan, who doesn’t even have a radio or a telephone could have planned a highly sophisticated operation like that. Chances are it’s part of the background. You know, like other leaderless resistance terrorist groups. Which means it’s going to be extremely difficult to find evidence.

Establishing Credibility

And the US doesn’t want to present evidence because it wants to be able to do it, to act without evidence. That’s a crucial part of the reaction. You will notice that the US did not ask for Security Council authorization which they probably could have gotten this time, not for pretty reasons, but because the other permanent members of the Security Council are also terrorist states. They are happy to join a coalition against what they call terror, namely in support of their own terror. Like Russia wasn’t going to veto, they love it. So the US probably could have gotten Security Council authorization but it didn’t want it. And it didn’t want it because it follows a long-standing principle which is not George Bush, it was explicit in the Clinton administration, articulated and goes back much further and that is that we have the right to act unilaterally. We don’t want international authorization because we act unilaterally and therefore we don’t want it. We don’t care about evidence. We don’t care about negotiation. We don’t care about treaties. We are the strongest guy around; the toughest thug on the block. We do what we want. Authorization is a bad thing and therefore must be avoided. There is even a name for it in the technical literature. It’s called establishing credibility. You have to establish credibility. That’s an important factor in many policies. It was the official reason given for the war in the Balkans and the most plausible reason.

You want to know what credibility means, ask your favorite Mafia Don. He’ll explain to you what credibility means. And it’s the same in international affairs, except it’s talked about in universities using big words, and that sort of thing. But it’s basically the same principle. And it makes sense. And it usually works. The main historian who has written about this in the last couple years is Charles Tilly with a book called Coercion, Capital, and European States. He points out that violence has been the leading principle of Europe for hundreds of years and the reason is because it works. You know, it’s very reasonable. It almost always works. When you have an overwhelming predominance of violence and a culture of violence behind it. So therefore it makes sense to follow it. Well, those are all problems in pursuing lawful paths. And if you did try to follow them you’d really open some very dangerous doors. Like the US is demanding that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden. And they are responding in a way which is regarded as totally absurd and outlandish in the west, namely they are saying, Ok, but first give us some evidence. In the west, that is considered ludicrous. It’s a sign of their criminality. How can they ask for evidence? I mean if somebody asked us to hand someone over, we’d do it tomorrow. We wouldn’t ask for any evidence. [crowd laughter].

Haiti

In fact it is easy to prove that. We don’t have to make up cases. So for example, for the last several years, Haiti has been requesting the United States to extradite Emmanuel Constant. He is a major killer. He is one of the leading figures in the slaughter of maybe 4000 or 5000 people in the years in the mid 1990’s, under the military junta, which incidentally was being, not so tacitly, supported by the Bush and the Clinton administrations contrary to illusions. Anyway he is a leading killer. They have plenty of evidence. No problem about evidence. He has already been brought to trial and sentenced in Haiti and they are asking the United States to turn him over. Well, I mean do your own research. See how much discussion there has been of that. Actually Haiti renewed the request a couple of weeks ago. It wasn’t even mentioned. Why should we turn over a convicted killer who was largely responsible for killing 4000 or 5000 people a couple of years ago. In fact, if we do turn him over, who knows what he would say. Maybe he’ll say that he was being funded and helped by the CIA, which is probably true. We don’t want to open that door. And he is not he only one.

Costa Rica

I mean, for the last about 15 years, Costa Rica which is the democratic prize, has been trying to get the United States to hand over a John Hull, a US land owner in Costa Rica, who they charge with terrorist crimes. He was using his land, they claim with good evidence as a base for the US war against Nicaragua, which is not a controversial conclusion, remember. There is the World Court and Security Council behind it. So they have been trying to get the United States to hand him over. Hear about that one? No.

They did actually confiscate the land of another American landholder, John Hamilton. Paid compensation, offered compensation. The US refused. Turned his land over into a national park because his land was also being used as a base for the US attack against Nicaragua. Costa Rica was punished for that one. They were punished by withholding aid. We don’t accept that kind of insubordination from allies. And we can go on. If you open the door to questions about extradition it leads in very unpleasant directions. So that can’t be done.

Reactions in Afghanistan

Well, what about the reactions in Afghanistan. The initial proposal, the initial rhetoric was for a massive assault which would kill many people visibly and also an attack on other countries in the region. Well the Bush administration wisely backed off from that. They were being told by every foreign leader, NATO, everyone else, every specialist, I suppose, their own intelligence agencies that that would be the stupidest thing they could possibly do. It would simply be like opening recruiting offices for bin Laden all over the region. That’s exactly what he wants. And it would be extremely harmful to their own interests. So they backed off that one. And they are turning to what I described earlier which is a kind of silent genocide. It’s a…. well, I already said what I think about it. I don’t think anything more has to be said. You can figure it out if you do the arithmetic.

A sensible proposal which is kind of on the verge of being considered, but it has been sensible all along, and it is being raised, called for by expatriate Afghans and allegedly tribal leaders internally, is for a UN initiative, which would keep the Russians and Americans out of it, totally. These are the 2 countries that have practically wiped the country out in the last 20 years. They should be out of it. They should provide massive reparations. But that’s their only role. A UN initiative to bring together elements within Afghanistan that would try to construct something from the wreckage. It’s conceivable that that could work, with plenty of support and no interference. If the US insists on running it, we might as well quit. We have a historical record on that one.

You will notice that the name of this operation….remember that at first it was going to be a Crusade but they backed off that because PR (public relations) agents told them that that wouldn’t work [audience laughter]. And then it was going to be Infinite Justice, but the PR agents said, wait a minute, you are sounding like you are divinity. So that wouldn’t work. And then it was changed to enduring freedom. We know what that means. But nobody has yet pointed out, fortunately, that there is an ambiguity there. To endure means to suffer. [audience laughter]. And a there are plenty of people around the world who have endured what we call freedom. Again, fortunately we have a very well-behaved educated class so nobody has yet pointed out this ambiguity. But if its done there will be another problem to deal with. But if we can back off enough so that some more or less independent agency, maybe the UN, maybe credible NGO’s (non governmental organizations) can take the lead in trying to reconstruct something from the wreckage, with plenty of assistance and we owe it to them. Them maybe something would come out. Beyond that, there are other problems.

An Easy Way To Reduce The Level Of Terror

We certainly want to reduce the level of terror, certainly not escalate it. There is one easy way to do that and therefore it is never discussed. Namely stop participating in it. That would automatically reduce the level of terror enormously. But that you can’t discuss. Well we ought to make it possible to discuss it. So that’s one easy way to reduce the level of terror.

Beyond that, we should rethink the kinds of policies, and Afghanistan is not the only one, in which we organize and train terrorist armies. That has effects. We’re seeing some of these effects now. September 11th is one. Rethink it.

Rethink the policies that are creating a reservoir of support. Exactly what the bankers, lawyers and so on are saying in places like Saudi Arabia. On the streets it’s much more bitter, as you can imagine. That’s possible. You know, those policies aren’t graven in stone.

And further more there are opportunities. It’s hard to find many rays of light in the last couple of weeks but one of them is that there is an increased openness. Lots of issues are open for discussion, even in elite circles, certainly among the general public, that were not a couple of weeks ago. That’s dramatically the case. I mean, if a newspaper like USA Today can run a very good article, a serious article, on life in the Gaza Strip…there has been a change. The things I mentioned in the Wall Street Journal…that’s change. And among the general public, I think there is much more openness and willingness to think about things that were under the rug and so on. These are opportunities and they should be used, at least by people who accept the goal of trying to reduce the level of violence and terror, including potential threats that are extremely severe and could make even September 11th pale into insignificance.

Thanks.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita
Great, now you are just getting into technicalities of the # of people dead.
[/b]

The difference between ten thousand and a million, for example, is not a technicality. You've got some serious problems if you think otherwise.


For cripes sake, large amounts of civilians have DIED in Iraq. The same goes for Afghanistand. I know Chomsky has been known to exagerrate the deat toll slightly. That, and the argument you are making is a Strawman.
[B]

It's not simply about exagerating death tolls. It's also about denying death tolls (such as the Khmer Rouge), and attributing blame to the US whenever possible.

How wrong was Chomsky? Read some of his statements from early in Afghanistan:
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20020201.htm

"A very careful reader of the national press could discover the estimate by the UN that “7.5 million Afghans will need food over the winter—2.5 million more than on September 11,” a 50 percent increase as a result of the threat of bombing, then the actuality. In other words, Western civilization was basing its plans on the assumption that they might lead to the death of several million innocent civilians —not Taliban, whatever one thinks of the legitimacy of slaughtering Taliban recruits and supporters, but their victims."

Chomsky isn't simply wrong about how many Afghanis would die. Chomsky is falsely accusing the US of essentially planning to kill millions of Afghanis. This from a man who excused actual genocide in Cambodia, first on the basis that it wasn't really happening, and then by claiming that it was our fault anyways. I frankly don't care if Chomsky's record is 90% wrong, 80% wrong, or whatever. He's wrong pretty damned frequently when it comes to genocide and mass killings.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Skeptic
Great, now you are just getting into technicalities of the # of people dead.

Perhaps a few THOUSAND civilians died from MILITARY ACTION in Afghanistan and Iraq together. Chomsky predicted MILLIONS dying from STARVATION AND GENOCIDE. So now he is "right" because he "predicted" that some civilians will die and some civilians died? So the only way he would be wrong on his prediction that "millions will starve" would be if no civilians at all were killed in any manner? Sorry, but "millions will starve" is NOT the same as saying "a few thousands will be killed in military action". It's not even friggin close--it's getting the method of death completely wrong and exagerrating the number of dead wrong by a factor of 1000! I'd say that's a bit more than "quibbling" about the number of dead, wouldn't you?.

Or does this work the other way, too? If a holocaust denier says that only 6,000, and not 6,000,000, jews were killed by the nazis--about the same 1:1000 factor of being wrong as Chomsky's--is he really just "quibbling about technicalities of the numbers of jews dead"? Is he not a holocaust denier because to be a holocause denier you must say Hitler never killed a single jew at any time? Apparently so--if Chomsky can overestimate the dead by a factor of 1,000 and still be "correct", why can't the holocaust denier underestimate the dead by the same factor and still be "right"?

This is another typical "groupie" trick: bend and re-interpret any statement the guru makes in order to somehow, no matter how distortedly, make him seem "right". If he is wrong by a factor of 1,000, well, that's just "quibbling about numbers". If he claimed the world will end and it didn't, well, it still MIGHT end, so he isn't wrong. Like Edward or other gurus, Chomsky can do no wrong; it's just a matter of "intepreting" his "great wisdom" correctly--when "correctly" means realizing that statements like "millions will starve in Afghanistan" should not be interpreted LITERALLY, and "really" mean "more than one civilian will die as the result of the war in Afghanistan".

I know Chomsky has been known to exagerrate the deat toll slightly.

"Slightly" = by a factor of 1,000.

Well, do you have anything avaliable that debunks his view

The fact that all his predictions failed miserably is a start. He said that millions will starve in Afghanistan. Didn't happen. He said that millions will starve in Iraq. Didn't happen. He said numerous terorrist attacks on the US will occur. Didn't happen.

I'd say that's pretty much "debunking" his view, isn't it?

For cripes sake, you are just making one big fat flaming strawman here.

You just refuse to post evidence on the contrary.

That, and you have not cited any of his works to critique.

You have not given any true form of a critique beyond some generalized piece of sh** strawman laced with an ad hominem attack.

You sir were definitely not a debater, and you never will be a true debater unless you clean your act up, and actually post facts, citations, references, etc. etc. etc!

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Ziggurat


It's not simply about exagerating death tolls. It's also about denying death tolls (such as the Khmer Rouge), and attributing blame to the US whenever possible.

How wrong was Chomsky? Read some of his statements from early in Afghanistan:
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20020201.htm

"A very careful reader of the national press could discover the estimate by the UN that “7.5 million Afghans will need food over the winter—2.5 million more than on September 11,” a 50 percent increase as a result of the threat of bombing, then the actuality. In other words, Western civilization was basing its plans on the assumption that they might lead to the death of several million innocent civilians —not Taliban, whatever one thinks of the legitimacy of slaughtering Taliban recruits and supporters, but their victims."

Chomsky isn't simply wrong about how many Afghanis would die. Chomsky is falsely accusing the US of essentially planning to kill millions of Afghanis. This from a man who excused actual genocide in Cambodia, first on the basis that it wasn't really happening, and then by claiming that it was our fault anyways. I frankly don't care if Chomsky's record is 90% wrong, 80% wrong, or whatever. He's wrong pretty damned frequently when it comes to genocide and mass killings.

Not really.

You are selectively quoting (cherry picking).

He is getting this idea from a UN special report that he mentions just a few sentences after that here:

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food pleaded with the U.S. to end the bombing that was putting “the lives of millions of civilians at risk,” renewing the appeal of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who warned of a Rwanda-style catastrophe. Both appeals were rejected, as were those of the major aid and relief agencies. And virtually unreported.

In late September, the UN Food And Agricultural Organization warned that over 7 million people were facing a crisis that could lead to widespread starvation if military action were initiated, with a likely “humanitarian catastrophe” unless aid were immediately resumed and the threat of military action terminated. After bombing began, the FAO advised that it had disrupted planting that provides 80 percent of the country’s grain supplies, so that the effects next year are expected to be even more severe. All ignored.


In other words, Chomsky just gets his potential Death Toll figures from the UN.

That, and he is also referring to the fact that ignoring the UN and cutting off food supplies could lead to a large amount of people dieing.

[epepke]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
"A very careful reader of the national press could discover the estimate by the UN that “7.5 million Afghans will need food over the winter—2.5 million more than on September 11,” a 50 percent increase as a result of the threat of bombing, then the actuality. In other words, Western civilization was basing its plans on the assumption that they might lead to the death of several million innocent civilians —not Taliban, whatever one thinks of the legitimacy of slaughtering Taliban recruits and supporters, but their victims."

I saw a transcript of an interview with Chomsky about this very issue a few months ago. Instead of admitting that it didn't turn out that way, he got all huffy and is hiding behind the word might. He is without honor.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by epepke


I saw a transcript of an interview with Chomsky about this very issue a few months ago. Instead of admitting that it didn't turn out that way, he got all huffy and is hiding behind the word might. He is without honor.

epepke.

See the point I made above.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita
I don't think you have that great of an understanding of Chomsky's arguments on 9/11 and Post 9/11.


Actually, that rather proves the point about what a wingnut Chomsky really is.


1. What’s Happening Right Now?

Starvation of 3 to 4 Million People
...
After the first week of bombing, the New York Times reported on a back page inside a column on something else, that by the arithmetic of the United Nations there will soon be 7.5 million Afghans in acute need of even a loaf of bread and there are only a few weeks left before the harsh winter will make deliveries to many areas totally impossible, continuing to quote, but with bombs falling the delivery rate is down to ½ of what is needed. Casual comment. Which tells us that Western civilization is anticipating the slaughter of, well do the arithmetic, 3-4 million people or something like that.
...
Looks like what’s happening is some sort of silent genocide.


Your own source. Did YOU bother to read it? Did YOU bother to figure out what it might mean that Chomsky was so completely wrong about this? Did YOU think through what this might mean for the rest of his argument?


One is the fact that terrorism works. It doesn’t fail. It works. Violence usually works. That’s world history.


Very interesting statement, which has some extremely unpleasant consequences that Chomksy brushes over if you buy into what he says later. We'll return to this.


They hate the Russians like poison, but as soon as the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan, they stopped carrying out terrorist acts in Russia as they had been doing with CIA backing before that within Russia, not just in Afghanistan. They did move over to Chechnya. But there they are defending Muslims against a Russian invasion.


Never mind that terrorist attacks against Russia continued even after their pullout from Chechnya.


Now why did they turn against the United States? Well that had to do with what they call the US invasion of Saudi Arabia.
...
If you recall, in 1993 they tried to blow up the World Trade Center. Got part of the way, but not the whole way and that was only part of it. The plans were to blow up the UN building, the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, the FBI building.


Rather handily glosses over a central fact: the UN was a target as well. Does that mean that bin Laden blamed the UN for the "invasion of Saudi Arabia"? Seems like a rather relevant question, with rather imortant consequences. But of course nothing about that, we're still on a kick about how the terrorists really aren't so unreasonable.


Well, what about the reactions in Afghanistan. The initial proposal, the initial rhetoric was for a massive assault which would kill many people visibly and also an attack on other countries in the region.
...
So they backed off that one. And they are turning to what I described earlier which is a kind of silent genocide. It’s a…. well, I already said what I think about it. I don’t think anything more has to be said. You can figure it out if you do the arithmetic.


What did we learn today, children? Never try to learn math from a linguist.


We certainly want to reduce the level of terror, certainly not escalate it. There is one easy way to do that and therefore it is never discussed. Namely stop participating in it. That would automatically reduce the level of terror enormously. But that you can’t discuss. Well we ought to make it possible to discuss it. So that’s one easy way to reduce the level of terror.


Considering that Chomsky views pretty much any US military action as terrorism, here's the translation: if it's only our enemies killing us and not us killing our enemies, then fewer people will die. Of course, I'm not about to trust Chomsky's math on that point. More importantly, though, consider the implications of this with his earlier statement that terrorism and violence work. If he thinks that terrorism and violence work, and that we should stop doing what he considers terrorism and violence, he's basically saying he thinks we should let ourselves lose. So either Chomsky is throwing his lot in with our enemies, or he really doesn't have any internal consistency to his ideology (I hesitate to call it thinking).

You've made a major mistake, TK, in thinking that those opposed to Chomsky's idiocy are simply unaware of what he says. In many cases, opposition to Chomsky comes from knowing exactly what he says, and what it really means.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita

You are selectively quoting (cherry picking).


Translation: I'm losing the argument, so stop it.

If you think I took a quote out of context, that's a legitimate criticism, and you can go ahead and demonstrate the proper context. If you think that other views of Chomsky offset the problems I point out, go ahead and list them. But you really don't have a point here.


In other words, Chomsky just gets his potential Death Toll figures from the UN.


No, he isn't. The UN isn't providing death toll figures (do you see the words "death" anywhere in the UN quote?). He's using UN figures for other things to try to argue for a death toll in the millions. And he was spectacularly wrong.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by epepke


I saw a transcript of an interview with Chomsky about this very issue a few months ago. Instead of admitting that it didn't turn out that way, he got all huffy and is hiding behind the word might. He is without honor.

I think you have to distinguish between prediction and analysis. I can't think of anyone who can predict the future accurately (although I seem to have a pretty good record).

His analysis of existing situations is more accurate. For example, he quite clearly distinguishes in the cited article for the thread the difference between what he thinks is happening, and his speculation.

As to highly intelligent people finding it hard to admit when they are wrong, well, look at us here. I rest my case.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Ziggurat

Actually, that rather proves the point about what a wingnut Chomsky really is.

What do you expect from someone who is an Anarcho-Communist?

Your own source. Did YOU bother to read it? Did YOU bother to figure out what it might mean that Chomsky was so completely wrong about this? Did YOU think through what this might mean for the rest of his argument?

Yes, I have read all of his material. The man, like Stephen Hawkings, doesn't like to be wrong. I have known that. I am not a Chomsky nutter though. I don't agree with him 100% of thie time.

Very interesting statement, which has some extremely unpleasant consequences that Chomksy brushes over if you buy into what he says later. We'll return to this.

Chomsky is bringing out the fact that most of world history HAS been violent. Name one regime change or major even in history that hasn't involved violence. Even Civil Disobedience has had violence in its history becuase of people opposed to it.

Never mind that terrorist attacks against Russia continued even after their pullout from Chechnya.

Chechnya, yes a sad situation that exists there. Just have Russia give them their own nation and leave them alone.

Rather handily glosses over a central fact: the UN was a target as well. Does that mean that bin Laden blamed the UN for the "invasion of Saudi Arabia"? Seems like a rather relevant question, with rather imortant consequences. But of course nothing about that, we're still on a kick about how the terrorists really aren't so unreasonable.

Bin Laden and Al Qaeda would probably blame the UN too as they just seem to serve as a Pawn for US to justify war against any of their allies.

What did we learn today, children? Never try to learn math from a linguist.

:rolleyes:

Considering that Chomsky views pretty much any US military action as terrorism, here's the translation: if it's only our enemies killing us and not us killing our enemies, then fewer people will die.

Strawman

Of course, I'm not about to trust Chomsky's math on that point. More importantly, though, consider the implications of this with his earlier statement that terrorism and violence work. If he thinks that terrorism and violence work, and that we should stop doing what he considers terrorism and violence, he's basically saying he thinks we should let ourselves lose.

Again, a Strawman. You forgot to mention the attrocities that he mentions. The Regan Years. The CIA's involvement in supporting Fascist Regimes that turn on the USA. He arguing that most modern wars are done for imperialistic reasons.

So either Chomsky is throwing his lot in with our enemies, or he really doesn't have any internal consistency to his ideology (I hesitate to call it thinking).

You've made a major mistake, TK, in thinking that those opposed to Chomsky's idiocy are simply unaware of what he says. In many cases, opposition to Chomsky comes from knowing exactly what he says, and what it really means.

Still, you haven't provided a critique that was not just a few cherry pickings here and there. I hardly call that an analysis. A true analysis critques the entire document, and all of its points.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Ziggurat


Translation: I'm losing the argument, so stop it.

:rolleyes:

If you think I took a quote out of context, that's a legitimate criticism, and you can go ahead and demonstrate the proper context. If you think that other views of Chomsky offset the problems I point out, go ahead and list them. But you really don't have a point here.

But the cherrypick that you procided was explained in the next few sentences. Hint, HE GETS HIS FIGURES FROM THE United Nations and from field agents from the United Nations! Are you saying that the United Nations is a bad or unreliable source to cite?

No, he isn't. The UN isn't providing death toll figures (do you see the words "death" anywhere in the UN quote?). He's using UN figures for other things to try to argue for a death toll in the millions. And he was spectacularly wrong.

Lets see, here is the Quote again:


In late September, the UN Food And Agricultural Organization warned that over 7 million people were facing a crisis that could lead to widespread starvation if military action were initiated, with a likely “humanitarian catastrophe” unless aid were immediately resumed and the threat of military action terminated. After bombing began, the FAO advised that it had disrupted planting that provides 80 percent of the country’s grain supplies, so that the effects next year are expected to be even more severe. All ignored.

My interpretation from the quote.

The UN Food and Agricultural Organzation says that 7 million people are facing a crisis. The word "Starvation" sticks out like a sore thumb in this.

The UN in other words is saying that there will be at least 7 million people starving in Afghanistan because of United States actions against it.

Here is a hint Ziggurat. Large amounts of people starving can and usually does = large amounts of death caused by starvation!

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita

Chomsky is bringing out the fact that most of world history HAS been violent. Name one regime change or major even in history that hasn't involved violence. Even Civil Disobedience has had violence in its history becuase of people opposed to it.

You're missing the point. On the one hand he says that violence works, and on the other he's basically saying we should abandon the use of violence. The only way that could possibly be a legitimate strategy is if our enemies would somehow decide to give up violence as well. Chomsky seems to imply they would. I see no reason to think so.

Chechnya, yes a sad situation that exists there. Just have Russia give them their own nation and leave them alone.

You exactly missed my point: the Russians aren't going to leave Chechnya alone because the Chechnyan terrorists didn't leave Russia alone even when Russia pulled out.

Bin Laden and Al Qaeda would probably blame the UN too as they just seem to serve as a Pawn for US to justify war against any of their allies.

What bin Laden would blame the UN for isn't really the point, the fact remains that he would blame the UN. For bin Laden, even doing trade with the US amounts to support for the US's policies. In other words, unless other nations want to run their foreign policy on the basis of appeasement (and we all know how well that works in the long run), they're going to end up as targets. There is no possible change of foreign policy that could ever satisfy the terrorists short of total surrender.

Still, you haven't provided a critique that was not just a few cherry pickings here and there. I hardly call that an analysis. A true analysis critques the entire document, and all of its points.


Oh no. I didn't do a "true analysis". Pardon me for not caring. Maybe we should call this the "you missed a spot" defense.

I'm not writing an academic paper here, I'm posting on a message board in my spare time. I have no intention of analysing all of what Chomsky wrote, because frankly I don't care about everything he wrote. It doesn't matter if some of what he wrote was correct, incorrect, coherent, or even relevant. I posted on what I found to be relevant regarding the current war against terrorism, and Chomsky's terrible record regarding genocide and related matters.

If YOU want to write a complete analysis, go ahead, but don't expect me to spend my time doing what you want me to do just because you're not fully satisfied with the completeness of my criticism.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita

The UN in other words is saying that there will be at least 7 million people starving in Afghanistan because of United States actions against it.


I know this might be difficult, but Chomsky was a linguist, so he should have been able to follow this even if you can't. What you gave is not the UN quote in question. The UN never said that 7 million people were starving. The UN quote is, "We are facing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions in Afghanistan with 7.5 million short of food and at risk of starvation.” (emphasis mine)
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20020201.htm
Parse that sentence carefully: 7.5 million people are at risk of starvation, not actually starving. That means there are 7.5 million people each of whom has some risk (not specified, and possibly quite small) of starving. That is a VERY different thing than there being a risk that 7.5 million people will starve. Here's an example of how that can work: 300 million americans are at risk of being in a car accident this year (basically the whole population, since pretty much everyone gets in a car every once in a while, and you COULD get in an accident anywhere on the road), but there is no real risk that 300 million americans will be in an accident this year. See the distinction? Of course, that distinction involves math. And again, what did we learn today? Never trust a linguist with math. Yes, the UN statement is very suggestive, and it was probably intended that way (what? UN diplomats might be biased or have an agenda? Why, I never!), but either Chomsky is an idiot and can't understand that there's a distinction here, or he's purposely blurring it. I don't care if he's a liar or an idiot (more likely the former, since linguists should be good at parsing sentences), the point is he was wrong.


Here is a hint Ziggurat. Large amounts of people starving can and usually does = large amounts of death caused by starvation!


Here's another hint: Chomsky was wrong. You can pass off the blame to whoever you want, I frankly don't care WHERE Chomsky got his information. Even if the UN explicitly stated that 7 million people would definitely starve (and they didn't come close, see above), all that would mean is Chomsky was an idiot for believing them. He was wrong, and there was no mass starvation in Afghanistan. It's really that simple.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Ziggurat

You're missing the point. On the one hand he says that violence works, and on the other he's basically saying we should abandon the use of violence. The only way that could possibly be a legitimate strategy is if our enemies would somehow decide to give up violence as well. Chomsky seems to imply they would. I see no reason to think so.

What in the world makes you think that they wouldn't give up on a violent crusade? People to get tired of violence over long periods of time.

You exactly missed my point: the Russians aren't going to leave Chechnya alone because the Chechnyan terrorists didn't leave Russia alone even when Russia pulled out.

Well, did Russia declare Chechnya it's own soverign nation. That's right, Russia never devlared Chechnya it's own nation. Wouldn't you think that the Chechens would be really ticked off about the fact that Russia refuses to acknowledge it as it's own nation?

What bin Laden would blame the UN for isn't really the point, the fact remains that he would blame the UN. For bin Laden, even doing trade with the US amounts to support for the US's policies. In other words, unless other nations want to run their foreign policy on the basis of appeasement (and we all know how well that works in the long run), they're going to end up as targets. There is no possible change of foreign policy that could ever satisfy the terrorists short of total surrender.

Really, how about withdrawl and neutrality. Lets face it, the United States has made major screw ups in its own policy (Iraq among them), the idea that we go in and just beat them to the ground, hoping that they won't revolt against us is just pure absurdity. Using violence to fight violence is almost never a good way to stop violence.

Oh no. I didn't do a "true analysis". Pardon me for not caring. Maybe we should call this the "you missed a spot" defense.

:rolleyes:

You didn't even bring up the evidence he cited earlier. The Regan years, the supporting of terrorism by the United States in the 1980's. Don't you think that those are REALLy SIGNIFICAN POINTS?

I'm not writing an academic paper here, I'm posting on a message board in my spare time. I have no intention of analysing all of what Chomsky wrote, because frankly I don't care about everything he wrote. It doesn't matter if some of what he wrote was correct, incorrect, coherent, or even relevant. I posted on what I found to be relevant regarding the current war against terrorism

And some of our foreing policies during the 1980's and even the late 1970's are still effecting us today. We would have been better off in the first place if we didn't even screw around with Regime change in South America and the supporting of terrorist groups in Russia Vs. Afghanistan, which was a war of Imperialism by Russia BTW.

If YOU want to write a , and Chomsky's terrible record regarding genocide and related matters.complete analysis, go ahead, but don't expect me to spend my time doing what you want me to do just because you're not fully satisfied with the completeness of my criticism.


Whatever you say... :rolleyes:

I just prefer taking and analyzing materials as I please.

Ps. Chomsky did predict major revolt from the Iraqi's in "Hegemony or Survival" which is his newest book. Guess what is happening, that's right children, revolt is starting to occur as more and more people are geting aggitate with the United States still sitting over there. Although the probability of Iraqi revolt was certain, take a look at British Imperial History and it is pretty clear that the same was likely to happen to the US, sooner or later.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Ziggurat


I know this might be difficult, but Chomsky was a linguist, so he should have been able to follow this even if you can't. What you gave is not the UN quote in question. The UN never said that 7 million people were starving. The UN quote is, "We are facing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions in Afghanistan with 7.5 million short of food and at risk of starvation.” (emphasis mine)
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20020201.htm
Parse that sentence carefully: 7.5 million people are at risk of starvation, not actually starving. That means there are 7.5 million people each of whom has some risk (not specified, and possibly quite small) of starving. That is a VERY different thing than there being a risk that 7.5 million people will starve. Here's an example of how that can work: 300 million americans are at risk of being in a car accident this year (basically the whole population, since pretty much everyone gets in a car every once in a while, and you COULD get in an accident anywhere on the road), but there is no real risk that 300 million americans will be in an accident this year. See the distinction? Of course, that distinction involves math. And again, what did we learn today? Never trust a linguist with math. Yes, the UN statement is very suggestive, and it was probably intended that way (what? UN diplomats might be biased or have an agenda? Why, I never!), but either Chomsky is an idiot and can't understand that there's a distinction here, or he's purposely blurring it. I don't care if he's a liar or an idiot (more likely the former, since linguists should be good at parsing sentences), the point is he was wrong.



Here's another hint: Chomsky was wrong. You can pass off the blame to whoever you want, I frankly don't care WHERE Chomsky got his information. Even if the UN explicitly stated that 7 million people would definitely starve (and they didn't come close, see above), all that would mean is Chomsky was an idiot for believing them. He was wrong, and there was no mass starvation in Afghanistan. It's really that simple.


Well, I said I don't back him up on everything he says.

brownie points for you...

[zenith-nadir]

Theodore, previously I tried to say to you that Chomsky is nothing, a loser, a hateful man who has no moral or ethical ground. Most intellectuals scoff at his ridiculous diatribe. You have spent hundreds of words in this thread defending him and Ziggurat has blown one hole after another in Chomskys armour. Chomsky is nothing but strawmen, tricks and word plays. That's why so many get sucked into his deceptions. He is skilled at putting words together that sound brilliant and enlightened, but when you get to the core of what he is saying it is total garbage. I only can encourage you to give up on Chomsky, you will learn nothing from him.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita

What in the world makes you think that they wouldn't give up on a violent crusade? People to get tired of violence over long periods of time.


People get tired of violence when it doesn't get them anything. But when violence is part of the very goal itself (as for the terrorists), it's quite easy for that violence to carry on quite a long time. And "over long periods of time" is both vague and useless. Over long periods of time we all die anyways. In the mean time, waiting for terrorists toget tired isn't exactly a strategy I have faith in. Eventually I suppose the Nazis would have gotten tired of gassing Jews too.


Really, how about withdrawl and neutrality.


Withdrawl from where? Saudi Arabia? Did that. Israel? What, so the Islamofascists can try to commit genocide there? What about Spain? Should the Spanish withdraw from Spain? That's land bin Laden claims.

You're under a very dangerous delusion if you think that there are reasonable demands the Islamofascists would ever accept.

Using violence to fight violence is almost never a good way to stop violence.


So what's it to be then? Hugs and kisses, or appeasement?


You didn't even bring up the evidence he cited earlier. The Regan years, the supporting of terrorism by the United States in the 1980's. Don't you think that those are REALLy SIGNIFICAN POINTS?


No, for the most part I don't. You see, I never claimed the US was guiltless. Chomsky doesn't bring that stuff up because it has anything to do with the Islamofascist threat, he brings it up to tar the US. But the Islamists don't care about the terrible things that Christians do to other Christians. They really coudn't give a crap. And in fact, supporting democracy (what Chomsky complains we didn't do in Latin America) would still have been offensive to them, since they believe democracy is an abomination (and I'm being quite serious here - Islamofascists consider democracy as putting man's law above god's law, and that's a major sin for them). As for previous policy in the middle east, yes, we made mistakes. But Chomsky seems to operate under the deulsion that US policy never really changes fundamentally. And I simply don't buy that.


And some of our foreing policies during the 1980's and even the late 1970's are still effecting us today. We would have been better off in the first place if we didn't even screw around with Regime change in South America and the supporting of terrorist groups in Russia Vs. Afghanistan, which was a war of Imperialism by Russia BTW.


South america is irrelevant to Islamofascist terrorism. Yes, Afghanistan was a terrible mistake. But it was also something we did in the past, and the fact that we had a hand in creating a problem doesn't mean we should refrain from acting to solve that problem.


Ps. Chomsky did predict major revolt from the Iraqi's in "Hegemony or Survival" which is his newest book. Guess what is happening, that's right children, revolt is starting to occur as more and more people are geting aggitate with the United States still sitting over there.


Once again, Chomsky is wrong, and once again, a lot of people will choose to ignore his mistake. What's happening in Iraq is an insurgency, not a revolt. It does NOT have broad popular support. Sadr is a reject, a pretentious upstart who has no standing among the Shia clerics and has to fund his "army" (read: gang of criminals) with Iranian money and weapons. The insurgents in Fallujah seem to have more local sympathy (emphasis on local), but it's still a collection of Ba'athist holdouts and Sunni extremists that don't have anything close to the support of most Iraqis. We have over one hundred thousand soldiers in Iraq, which has a population of twenty-five million people. With that many people involved, how can you even seriously claim that the violence that has occured constitutes a major revolt?


Although the probability of Iraqi revolt was certain, take a look at British Imperial History and it is pretty clear that the same was likely to happen to the US, sooner or later.


Ah yes, the analogies are back.

Historical analogies can often be helpful, but they aren't exactly foolproof. One can say, "every time someone did X, Y always happened, so if we do X, then Y will happen." But of course, history is never that simple, and you can sometimes find contradictory predictions doing this. For example, judging from history alone, the US has had very good luck whenever is stages a major military conquest of a country followed by an effort to help rebuild it. So which analogy is right? We won't know for sure until after the fact. Iraq isn't quite like anything anyone has ever done before. Simplistic predictions based on incomplete historical analogies may happen to be correct by chance, but they aren't much good a priori for actually determining what will happen.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by zenith-nadir
Theodore, previously I tried to say to you that Chomsky is nothing, a loser, a hateful man who has no moral or ethical ground. Most intellectuals scoff at his ridiculous diatribe. You have spent hundreds of words in this thread defending him and Ziggurat has blown one hole after another in Chomskys armour. Chomsky is nothing but strawmen, tricks and word plays. That's why so many get sucked into his deceptions. He is skilled at putting words together that sound brilliant and enlightened, but when you get to the core of what he is saying it is total garbage. I only can encourage you to give up on Chomsky, you will learn nothing from him.

Right.

I am suppose to believe someone who has used arguments to appeal to emotion, and ad hominem's.

:rolleyes:

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by zenith-nadir
Theodore, previously I tried to say to you that Chomsky is nothing, a loser, a hateful man who has no moral or ethical ground. Most intellectuals scoff at his ridiculous diatribe. You have spent hundreds of words in this thread defending him and Ziggurat has blown one hole after another in Chomskys armour. Chomsky is nothing but strawmen, tricks and word plays. That's why so many get sucked into his deceptions. He is skilled at putting words together that sound brilliant and enlightened, but when you get to the core of what he is saying it is total garbage. I only can encourage you to give up on Chomsky, you will learn nothing from him.

I have to agree with TK, you have not stated one, reasoned argument here.

In Australia, he is regarded as a respected commentator. Not god, or a guru, all the source of all that is right in the world, but as a respected commentator. You can buy his books from any respectable, mainstream, book store.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Ziggurat


People get tired of violence when it doesn't get them anything. But when violence is part of the very goal itself (as for the terrorists), it's quite easy for that violence to carry on quite a long time. And "over long periods of time" is both vague and useless. Over long periods of time we all die anyways. In the mean time, waiting for terrorists toget tired isn't exactly a strategy I have faith in. Eventually I suppose the Nazis would have gotten tired of gassing Jews too.

Chomsky has never argued that what the United States did in WWII was wrong. However, he does criticize the amount of propaganda that the United States was chruning out at the time.

Withdrawl from where? Saudi Arabia? Did that. Israel? What, so the Islamofascists can try to commit genocide there? What about Spain? Should the Spanish withdraw from Spain? That's land bin Laden claims.

For one, Israel already has one of the worlds strongest Militaries. Don't get me started on how "poor and deffenseless" Israel is.

Cite one example where Bin Laden has said that the Spainish should withdrawl from Spain... That's right, it doesn't exist! Nice attempt at a Strawman.

You're under a very dangerous delusion if you think that there are reasonable demands the Islamofascists would ever accept.

:rolleyes:

No, I am just saying we should just flat out abandond support for Israel. In fact, the United States supporting Israel is what started this whole mess. If the United States would just declare neutrality to the whole Middle East, we really wouldn't have to worry about it.

So what's it to be then? Hugs and kisses, or appeasement?

Not appeasement, just negotiations. That is something that the United States has refused to do. Negotiations are what lead to peace agreements and lead to the loss of enemies over time.

No, for the most part I don't. You see, I never claimed the US was guiltless. Chomsky doesn't bring that stuff up because it has anything to do with the Islamofascist threat, he brings it up to tar the US. But the Islamists don't care about the terrible things that Christians do to other Christians. They really coudn't give a crap. And in fact, supporting democracy (what Chomsky complains we didn't do in Latin America) would still have been offensive to them, since they believe democracy is an abomination (and I'm being quite serious here - Islamofascists consider democracy as putting man's law above god's law, and that's a major sin for them). As for previous policy in the middle east, yes, we made mistakes. But Chomsky seems to operate under the deulsion that US policy never really changes fundamentally. And I simply don't buy that.

Thank you for the well Duh statement of the day. It still doesn't mean that we can't negotiate with these people.

South america is irrelevant to Islamofascist terrorism. Yes, Afghanistan was a terrible mistake. But it was also something we did in the past, and the fact that we had a hand in creating a problem doesn't mean we should refrain from acting to solve that problem.

Wouldn't negotiations be a simple way to solve the problem. I know a professor up at UMKC (University of Missouri at Kansas City) who has studied Politcal Science, and History. In History, he specialized in the study of Terrorism. He told me bluntly that these people will continue to attack us unless we are willing to negotiate.


Once again, Chomsky is wrong, and once again, a lot of people will choose to ignore his mistake. What's happening in Iraq is an insurgency, not a revolt. It does NOT have broad popular support. Sadr is a reject, a pretentious upstart who has no standing among the Shia clerics and has to fund his "army" (read: gang of criminals) with Iranian money and weapons. The insurgents in Fallujah seem to have more local sympathy (emphasis on local), but it's still a collection of Ba'athist holdouts and Sunni extremists that don't have anything close to the support of most Iraqis. We have over one hundred thousand soldiers in Iraq, which has a population of twenty-five million people. With that many people involved, how can you even seriously claim that the violence that has occured constitutes a major revolt?

Did it ever occur to you that revolts usually do start as minor rebellions, then catch on with the majority of the population later on. I am assuming you have read The Anatomy of a Revolution By: Crane Brinton. It is an excellent book on how Revolutions start. Everything is set if you compare what is happening now to his model. I'll elaborate more on this later.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by a_unique_person


I have to agree with TK, you have not stated one, reasoned argument here.

In Australia, he is regarded as a respected commentator. Not god, or a guru, all the source of all that is right in the world, but as a respected commentator. You can buy his books from any respectable, mainstream, book store.

Same here in the United States.

Although you really never hear about him in the Mainstream Media.

I to respect the man, I do agree with much of what he says.

But I personally think he doesn't get it right on everything.

He is human, and is vulnerable to as much error as we are.

[zenith-nadir]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita
Right.I am suppose to believe someone who has used arguments to appeal to emotion, and ad hominem's.
:rolleyes: Wow, some skeptics you and a_u_p are. :D Hard to argue with Chomsky-loving-folk who don't question anything he says. Then again many people didn't question Al Sharpton when it came to Tawana Brawley, or Bill Clinton when it came to Monica Lewinsky...until it was too late...hehehe ;)

[zenith-nadir]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita
Although you really never hear about him in the Mainstream Media.Geee....I wonder why?

:big:

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by zenith-nadir
Wow, some skeptics you and a_u_p are. :D Hard to argue with Chomsky-loving-folk who don't question anything he says. Then again many people didn't question Al Sharpton when it came to Tawana Brawley, or Bill Clinton when it came to Monica Lewinsky...until it was too late...hehehe ;)

Already reaching for the Clinton jokes are you.

Yeeesshhh.. and I thought I had seen horrible trolling in the past.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by zenith-nadir
Geee....I wonder why?

:big:


For cripes sake man, are you high?

You sure sound like it.

Now that I think about it all you have been doing in this thread is trolling.

You haven't posted anything of any real relavence.

Even the article you posted was a Joke, from somebody you uses ad hominems to justify his points.

In fact, you say you are try to "eliminate" people like A_U_P beacuse of your accusation that they use Ad Hominem's whil you on the other hand lace your posts with so much fallacy it really makes me think that you are probably one of the biggest hypocrites on this forum!

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by zenith-nadir
Wow, some skeptics you and a_u_p are. :D Hard to argue with Chomsky-loving-folk who don't question anything he says. Then again many people didn't question Al Sharpton when it came to Tawana Brawley, or Bill Clinton when it came to Monica Lewinsky...until it was too late...hehehe ;)

I think you need to consider, did Bill and Monica start a war, or just engage in consensual sex? The Republicans made a laughing stock of the US by pursuing this topic so assiduously. Like I said before, I bet Dubya now wishes he had let Condi give him a blowjob rather than get involved in Iraq.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita



For cripes sake man, are you high?



The bigger the smiley, the more desperate he is.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita

Chomsky has never argued that what the United States did in WWII was wrong.


Wow, that was so completely irrelevant to my point. My point was you're an idiot to think that waiting for your enemy to get tired of using violence against you is a viable strategy.


For one, Israel already has one of the worlds strongest Militaries. Don't get me started on how "poor and deffenseless" Israel is.


Yes they do. And one of the best ways to make sure they don't use it in an all-out battle for their survival (including possible use of nuclear weapons against muslim countries) is to make sure that they never get threatened enough to need to resort to the full exercise of their power.


Cite one example where Bin Laden has said that the Spainish should withdrawl from Spain... That's right, it doesn't exist! Nice attempt at a Strawman.


Talk about strawman. I never said bin Laden specifically stated the Spanish should withdraw from Spain. Sorry for saying something that required you to do a little thinking.

Here's the deal: Spain used to be under Islamic control. Therefore it is considered by many Islamofascists to be rightfully Islamic land, which they were expelled from. And bin Laden does specifically reference this (do a google search for bin Laden and Andalusia) when he gripes about the sins of the west. Since Spain used to be under Muslim control, and has a large Muslim immigrant population, many Islamofascists believe that these muslims should be living under Sharia law, as part of their dreamed-of Caliphate. I suppose that literally the Spanish wouldn't need to leave Spain, they could just hand over complete control to the Islamofascists, and pay the tax that non-Muslims are supposed to pay in Muslim lands. Short of that, though, Spain isn't going to be safe from Islamic terrorists. Sorry this required doing some thinking, but I'm sure you'll recover. So, do you want to feed the crocodile in the hope that it will eat you last, or do you want to bite back?


Not appeasement, just negotiations. That is something that the United States has refused to do. Negotiations are what lead to peace agreements and lead to the loss of enemies over time.


"Peace in our time". Read the second quote in my signature. It was tragically prophetic at the time, and I think applies quite well today. The enemy does not negotiate. On occasion it makes demands (for example, Al Quaeda demanded that European countries withdraw from Iraq, but they did not ask for negotiations on this issue). But generally they don't even do that. Because Al Quaeda doesn't simply want something FROM the U.S., Al Quaeda wants to destroy the U.S. They have no interest in negotiations, they have never asked for negotiations, and there's no reason to believe that negotiations can possibly work. You see, these people believe that they can win, that god really is on their side, that they will actually destroy the U.S. Given that, why should they ever negotiate a peace? You negotiate if you're afraid you might lose, not when you're convinced you're going to win.


Wouldn't negotiations be a simple way to solve the problem.


What is there to negotiate? The manner of our death? That you even propose such a vague and unrealistic "solution" shows how little you know about the situation. Who would we negotiate with? Islamofascist terrorists have a unifying ideology, but not a unified command structure. Why would one group agree to stop attacks simply because another group negotiated a truce? And how do we respond if they don't hold up their end of the bargin? Why would you ever think that any such agreement could be more than a Hudna? (and if you don't know what that term means, you really have no business discussing negotiations with muslim terrorists).


I know a professor up at UMKC (University of Missouri at Kansas City) who has studied Politcal Science, and History. In History, he specialized in the study of Terrorism. He told me bluntly that these people will continue to attack us unless we are willing to negotiate.


Argument from authority. Come on, after your repeated use of the term "strawman" and "ad hominim", I'd have thought you'd know this. But perhaps not. I really don't care what some professor you know dictated to you, if you can't form an argument then that's the bottom line on this board.


Did it ever occur to you that revolts usually do start as minor rebellions, then catch on with the majority of the population later on.


That might be relevant if ALL insurgencies developed into full-scale rebellions. But they do not. Therefore one cannot conclude that this one necessarily will. So what you're left with is the claim that, in the future, things MIGHT turn out the way Chomsky predicted, even though his track record is pretty bad so far. Haven't we already been down this path?

[epepke]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
I think you have to distinguish between prediction and analysis. I can't think of anyone who can predict the future accurately (although I seem to have a pretty good record).

It's not so much whether one can predict the future accurately. It's how one deals with it after the fact.

I predicted that the US wouldn't invade Iraq. I was flat-out wrong, and I admitted it. (Not here, because I hadn't arrived here, but on another group.)

If I had made a prediction like Chomsky's, and I had been taken to task for it, I would have said something like, "I am delighted for the sake of the Afghani people that the worst-case scenario I predicted did not come to pass." Without even saying "I was wrong," this seems to me an honorable response, even though it is spun.

However, I don't think much of doing ex post facto justification using weasel words like "might." It seems to me like a game. If what you say comes true, you are hailed as a Great Prophet™. If what you say doesn't come true, you can hide behind words. This seems to me slimy and not honorable.

[epepke]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita
See the point I made above.

I saw it. I'm not sure what you want me to make of it, though.

For one thing, the Red Cross got all of the emergency food supplies they needed into Afghanistan by the middle of October, which was something of a record for them.

For another, well, UN reports are one issue; and authors' whetting their ideological axes on them is quite another.

And in any event, an honorable man would have admitted that worst-case predictions didn't come true.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by epepke


I saw it. I'm not sure what you want me to make of it, though.

For one thing, the Red Cross got all of the emergency food supplies they needed into Afghanistan by the middle of October, which was something of a record for them.

For another, well, UN reports are one issue; and authors' whetting their ideological axes on them is quite another.

And in any event, an honorable man would have admitted that worst-case predictions didn't come true.

We had an interesting politician in Australia recently, Barry Jones. He is genius. He actually won one of those quiz shows with the increasingly difficult questions, that are designed so that no one wins in the end. In fact, he once corrected them when the answer for one question they had was wrong and he was right.

I asked a friend of mine who knew about these things, why don't we make him PM, or at least a senior minister. The answer was that he was a genius, but he couldn't handle being wrong.

Chomsky strikes me as being similar. It is a failing of the very intelligent, I would guess. That doesn't make them any less intelligent, and their analysis any less valuable.

[epepke]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
Chomsky strikes me as being similar. It is a failing of the very intelligent, I would guess. That doesn't make them any less intelligent, and their analysis any less valuable.

In a weird way, I think I agree with you. Chomsky is very intelligent but not even remotely wise. I like to read and listen to the stuff he writes and says. There are often great insights. But it's like the three-bean-salad at the salad bar; it may be attractive, but it might also taste terrible.

Take Chomsky's transformational grammar. Brilliant idea. Just wonderful. Inspirational, even. Yet totally inadequate to describe human language. If someone gets inspired by it and comes up with something better, great! But then there's the Cult of Chomsky effect, which makes it hard to get published.

[Giz]

Chomsky seems to make three broad mistakes in the talk TK posted for us.

Firstly, he assumes that everyone is reasonable. That we can all just sit down and negotiate our way to a mutually satisfactory conclusion. I wouldn't be so quick to assume that Osama Bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, Attila the Hun etc are going to have demands that you can live with (literally as well as figuratively).

Secondly, when performing any "analysis" of US actions he fails to place them in context - i.e. was it the lesser of two evils? What would have happened if the US had not acted? What did the US expect would happen if it didn't act? You cannot possibly analyse the cold war actions of the USA in isolation from the rest of the cold war and the USSR.

Thirdly, he exagerates. Data is used selectively and tends to be extreme scenarios rather than "most likely". Leads to i) a sense that he cries wolf rather too often, and ii) A sense of surprise that these US actions haven't depopulated the world by now.

Now all of the above are fine if (IF!) we consider him as being the Rush Limbaugh analogue of the anarcho-communists. A polemicist, NOT a historian or analyst (analyst in the sense of what's most likely to happen next in the real world kind of analyst, not crypto-anarchic-communist what might my ideology predict analyst!)

If you prefer him to Richard Littlejohn (UK readers - of the Sun - will know who I mean) fine, all power to you (I mean the people! All power to the people!) but dont expect dispassionate analysis of the global socio-eco-political situation, his biases (which make so interesting) get in the way.

[Skeptic]

You just refuse to post evidence on the contrary.

Er, to repeat what I said, here are Chomsky's claims about the post-9/11 world:

1). Millions of civilians will be starved and be genocided in Iraq and Afghanistan.
2). This will be the deliberate result of US interference, one of the goals of the plan.
3). It will be achieved by letting the Pakistanis commit "genocide" on the Afghanis, or
4). by deliberate US destruction of Iraqi civilian infrastructure.
5). Terror attacks on the US soil will continue.

Here is the evidence to the contrary:

a). Millions didn't starve, at most thousands died of military action. That's being wrong by a factor of 1000.
b). There certainly isn't, nor was there ever, any plan by the US to deliberately starve the Afghans or Iraqis.
c). No Pakistanis genocided the Afghanis (or, so far as I know, ever gave any indication they intend to do anything like that).
d). The Iraqi infrastructure was not destroyed.
e). No terror attacks on US soil since 9/11.

Chomsky made claims (1)-(5), did he not? (a)-(e) IS evidence, it is not--true factual claims about the world? It contradicts Chomsky's claims, does it not? What part "evidence" or "contradiction" didn't you understand?

[demon]

Ziggurat...
It really is startling how greatly you're missing the point here (deliberately or not) and the depths of sophistry to which you’re willing to descend in your fearsome demolition of Chomsky. But let’s move on.

You claim that, when the UN says 7.5 million people were put at risk of starvation this means that there were 7.5 million people, each of whom faced "some risk (not specified, and possibly quite small) of starving" and that this is a "VERY different thing than there being a risk that 7.5 million people will starve".

Your basis for this reasoning is the following,

"Here's an example of how that can work: 300 million Americans are at risk of being in a car accident this year (basically the whole population, since pretty much everyone gets in a car every once in a while, and you COULD get in an accident anywhere on the road), but there is no real risk that 300 million Americans will be in an accident this year. See the distinction?"

Yes, in fact I do see the distinction – the one that you apparently do not; for otherwise you would not draw such a false analogy. To try and compare the 300 million Americans who face the notional risk of being in a traffic accident and the 7.5 million Afghans who were at risk of starvation is to try and compare two causal chains of entirely different character.

In the former case, those 300 million Americans, by getting in a car, fulfil a necessary condition of being in a car accident (for the sake of simplicity, let’s leave aside the issue of pedestrians). In order to be in an accident, however, a number of intervening variables have to come into play: weather conditions, driver intoxication, mechanical failures, driver fatigue, freak events, etc. – all of which have to be multiplied and take into account the other drivers on the road. You are trying to compare this with several million people who were substantially dependent upon food aid deliveries, especially during the winter, and suggest that cutting off those aid supplies had the same degree of causal proximity as the connection between getting into a car and having an accident. This is so laughable as to be beneath contempt.

Your car example represents a long causal chain and a raft of intervening variables. The Afghan case represents one independent variable (aid supplies), one dependant variable (Afghan nutritional levels and risk of starvation), and one intervening variable (US actions terminating the aid supplies). If one accepts your logic for a moment, we could also say, with equal validity, that an unemployed person dependant on social security for their income would be at the same risk of poverty, were that social security to be stopped, as the American driver getting into the car is at risk of an accident.

You also compound your sophistry by refusing to acknowledge that the UNHCR statement explicitly states this direct causal relationship in order to justify the estimation of risk because they state that 7.5 million are "SHORT OF FOOD and at risk of starvation". Hence, they specify directly that the risk of starvation was caused by the shortage of food and that the shortage of food was caused by,

A) The US ordering, in late September, the cessation of aid deliveries of fuel and food from Pakistan ("Washington has also demanded a cutoff of fuel supplies, an end to the use of Pakistani banks as conduits for clandestine money movements by terrorists and the elimination of truck convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population." NYT 16/09/01)

B) The highly disruptive effects of the US bombing and the threat of bombing.

If you think this constitutes the same causal relationship as you car accident analogy, quite frankly, you are beyond the reach of reason.

After having made this feeble attempt to deconstruct the maths you then declare that it is irrelevant anyway because, even if the UN had stated categorically that 7 million people would starve (which they didn’t and which Chomsky never said they did) Chomsky would still be "an idiot" for believing them. This is remarkable really because you’re saying that one should ignore the warnings of the UNHCR, Christian Aid, Medecins sans Frontieres, The American Red Cross, and the World Food Programme (all of whom Chomsky cites in his footnotes). Firstly, these are the most respected authorities on the matter, so if one is not to take them seriously, to whom should one listen? Secondly, who provided a rebuttal of their warnings at the time? Thirdly, if Chomsky is "an idiot" for taking them seriously, does that not also make the New York Times, the London Financial Times, the London Guardian, and the plethora of other newspapers and journals who cited their warnings idiots also? Even if one accepts that there was no mass starvation in Afghanistan – in fact I do not believe there are or are ever likely to be accurate figures as to how many died – it is still perfectly sensible to cite the warnings of the most authoritative sources available; or are you suggesting that such bodies be ignored? If so, does that mean that, the next time the Red Cross make an appeal – for the people of Iraq for example – that we should ignore them?

You claim that Chomsky was "falsely accusing the US of essentially planning to kill millions of Afghanis". This is also factually incorrect. Chomsky’s accusation was, as he states quite clearly in the article you cite, that the opinion of the most credible and authoritative humanitarian bodies was "at the time when planning was undertaken and implemented, and evaluated in commentary: that these actions were likely to drive millions over the edge of starvation." In other words, the US was not +planning+ to kill millions of Afghans, they were planning actions that were considered likely to place millions of Afghans at risk of starvation.

This is the same principle as applies to a person who sets fire to an individual apartment in order to kill one person, knowing full well that the fire is likely to spread and kill many more. The person is not +planning+ to wipe out everybody in the apartment block, they are planning actions that are likely to bring this about as a side effect.

Chomsky is saying that you evaluate actions according to the expectations under which they were taken – and this is the absolutely crucial point. The question of whether the predictions he quoted actually occurred is an important but ENTIRELY SEPARATE question. We evaluate the morality of an action based on the reasonable expectations under which it was taken at the time – not their unforeseeable consequences later.

In this case, the US ordered and end to aid shipments from Pakistan, threatened to bomb (thus causing mass population displacement according to the US Red Cross), and bombed (thus massively disrupting aid efforts) when the most credible projections were that such actions would "drive millions to over the edge of starvation". We can assume that the US accepted these projections, since they offered no rebuttal at the time. We can assume that major commentators such as newspapers and journals of opinion also accepted them because they cited them and offered no rebuttal at the time. This is the elementary point of how we judge the actions of the US: the distinction between anticipation of consequences and consequences.

If you doubt this, I suggestion you buy a basic text on criminal law – precisely the same principle is applied in the distinction between Actus Reus (the act) and the Mens Rea (the mental awareness of the consequences of the act). This applies even to the legal principle of negligence since that concerns only neglect of +reasonably+ foreseeable consequences.

The rest of your points, concerning Afghanistan and the USSR etc, merit no comment. You haven’t offered any sources for your responses to Chomsky’s points, only your assertions.

[a_unique_person]

If you look at the results of Afghanistan and Iraq, you get the feeling the US has no concept of the risks it was taking, nor of how it was going to manage the security of the people it was taking responsibility for.

In Afghanistan, they have been handed back to the warlords. An improvement, perhaps, on the Taliban. But a life that is secure and safe, no way. The place is still incredibly unstable. For all the billions it cost to get this far in Afghanistan, and given the current state it is in, you have to wonder why the US dropped it, like a baby getting bored with the toy it is playing with, and moving on to Iraq.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
If you look at the results of Afghanistan and Iraq, you get the feeling the US has no concept of the risks it was taking, nor of how it was going to manage the security of the people it was taking responsibility for.


Who is this "you" that you speak of? I certainly don't get that feeling. Perhaps you should have used "I" instead. I get the feeling that we did a pretty good job overall in situations that were quite difficult, that the US military planners knew what they were doing a lot better than their detractors did, and that the naysayers like Chomsky were in fact completely wrong. The goalpost has moved from Chomsky's "silent genocide" to "we haven't imroved things enough". That in itself is a remarkable sign of our successes.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Ziggurat


Who is this "you" that you speak of? I certainly don't get that feeling. Perhaps you should have used "I" instead. I get the feeling that we did a pretty good job overall in situations that were quite difficult, that the US military planners knew what they were doing a lot better than their detractors did, and that the naysayers like Chomsky were in fact completely wrong. The goalpost has moved from Chomsky's "silent genocide" to "we haven't imroved things enough". That in itself is a remarkable sign of our successes.

Afghanistan is a disaster still. Having the biggest guns does not get you everything you want.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by demon
Ziggurat...
It really is startling how greatly you're missing the point here (deliberately or not) and the depths of sophistry to which you’re willing to descend in your fearsome demolition of Chomsky. But let’s move on.


Talk about sophistry. All you are doing is claiming that Chomsky's conclusions are valid if you take the UN at its word. That is quite debateable, but it's also somewhat beside the real point: Chomsky was dead wrong. He predicted mass starvation, and said that the US was complicit in that. But there simply WAS no mass starvation. There's no sophistry involved: Chomsky was spectacularly wrong, regardless of where he got his info or how reasonable it might have sounded at the time. Ergo, don't trust his future predictions.


You claim that, when the UN says 7.5 million people were put at risk of starvation this means that there were 7.5 million people, each of whom faced "some risk (not specified, and possibly quite small) of starving" and that this is a "VERY different thing than there being a risk that 7.5 million people will starve".

Your basis for this reasoning is the following,

"Here's an example of how that can work:
..."


You're an idiot, demon. That is not the basis of my reasoning, it was an illustration of the distinction. The basis of my reasoning is simple, straight forward parsing of the grammar of the exact quote from the UN. That reading is independent of my example illustration. If you think my reading is wrong, why don't you present a carefu parsing of the UN statement for us? If you think my analogy is poor, fine, I don't care, it's really quite secondary.


You also compound your sophistry by refusing to acknowledge that the UNHCR statement explicitly states this direct causal relationship in order to justify the estimation of risk because they state that 7.5 million are "SHORT OF FOOD and at risk of starvation". Hence, they specify directly that the risk of starvation was caused by the shortage of food and that the shortage of food was caused by,


My point had absolutely NOTHING to do with the causal relationship you're obsessing about. Go back to the UN statement: nowhere in there do they actually state how many people are actually likely to starve. My point isn't that the number likey to starve was of any particular level, my point was that Chomsky gets his conclusion of a likely 3 million starved from his own "analysis", not from what the UN directly stated.


After having made this feeble attempt to deconstruct the maths you then declare that it is irrelevant anyway because, even if the UN had stated categorically that 7 million people would starve (which they didn’t and which Chomsky never said they did) Chomsky would still be "an idiot" for believing them. This is remarkable really because you’re saying that one should ignore the warnings of the UNHCR, Christian Aid, Medecins sans Frontieres, The American Red Cross, and the World Food Programme (all of whom Chomsky cites in his footnotes). Firstly, these are the most respected authorities on the matter, so if one is not to take them seriously, to whom should one listen?


And the point flies right over your head.

There are two possibilities: one, that these organizations never said quite what Chomsky is saying, so the blame falls squarely on him for being so wrong. Or two, they DID say what he claims they're saying. If that's the case, what does it mean? It means that the problem is bigger than Chomsky. That all these groups were consistently and completely wrong, that they don't deserve the respect they have. Then Chomsky isn't alone in the blame, but so what? That he can't find reliable sources isn't really a lot better than he draws bad conclusions from reliable sources. Either way, why would we believe Chomsky on anything now?


Thirdly, if Chomsky is "an idiot" for taking them seriously, does that not also make the New York Times, the London Financial Times, the London Guardian, and the plethora of other newspapers and journals who cited their warnings idiots also?


Bravo. Yes it does make them idiots. Do you think I have a problem with that conclusion? Why do YOU have a problem with that conclusion?


Even if one accepts that there was no mass starvation in Afghanistan – in fact I do not believe there are or are ever likely to be accurate figures as to how many died...


What do you mean, "Even if"? That's not simply an unknown possibility. We KNOW that there were no mass starvations in Afghanistan. Yes, given appropriate definitions, we do not have "accurate" figures. But we do know quite definitively the numbers aren't anywhere NEAR what Chomsky predicted. He was wrong. And you're just trying to weasel ou of that fact.


– it is still perfectly sensible to cite the warnings of the most authoritative sources available; or are you suggesting that such bodies be ignored?


Well, part of my argument is that these organizations did NOT in fact make the kind of predictions that Chomsky made. That's why I parsed the UN statement rather carefuly. But you got too distracted by my imperfect analogy to realize that my statements don't depend on the analogy, but only on carefully reading what EXACTLY the UN said.


If so, does that mean that, the next time the Red Cross make an appeal – for the people of Iraq for example – that we should ignore them?


Strawman.


You claim that Chomsky was "falsely
accusing the US of essentially planning to kill millions of Afghanis". This is also factually incorrect. Chomsky’s accusation was, as he states quite clearly in the article you cite, that the opinion of the most credible and authoritative humanitarian bodies was "at the time when planning was undertaken and implemented, and evaluated in commentary: that these actions were likely to drive millions over the edge of starvation." In other words, the US was not +planning+ to kill millions of Afghans, they were planning actions that were considered likely to place millions of Afghans at risk of starvation.
This is the same principle as applies to a person who sets fire to an individual apartment in order to kill one person, knowing full well that the fire is likely to spread and kill many more. The person is not +planning+ to wipe out everybody in the apartment block, they are planning actions that are likely to bring this about as a side effect.


Except that the mass starvations didn't happen (which makes clinging to the notion that it was a "likely" outcome a little hard to accept), and there's no reason to think that the miltary planners thought there would be mass starvation.


Chomsky is saying that you evaluate actions according to the expectations under which they were taken – and this is the absolutely crucial point.


That's a reasonable enough stance. But of course Chomsky makes assumptions about expectations. He seems to think that other people not only SHOULD expect what he expects (since he's always right in his mind), but that they DO expect what he expects, and that what he expects is a correct assessment. There is of course no real evidence for this.


The question of whether the predictions he quoted actually occurred is an important but ENTIRELY SEPARATE question. We evaluate the morality of an action based on the reasonable expectations under which it was taken at the time – not their unforeseeable consequences later.


Expected by whom? Since Chomsky is accusing the US government of knowingly risking mass starvation, he's basically imposing his own expectations on another group, under the assumption that his expectations are the only reasonable ones. So basically, you're claiming that the US couldn't possibly have known that mass starvation wouldn't occur, that it's just some freak accident that millions didn't starve. Sorry, but I simply don't buy that crap. And since we now know his expectations were in fact wrong, it's rather to the point to ask whether his expectations really were reasonable. And I don't see any evidence of that, your only defense on that point is argument from authority (and even there it's weak since Chomsky draws conclusions beyond what the aid organizations and UN state).


In this case, the US ordered and end to aid shipments from Pakistan, threatened to bomb (thus causing mass population displacement according to the US Red Cross), and bombed (thus massively disrupting aid efforts) when the most credible projections were that such actions would "drive millions to over the edge of starvation".


Whose quote is that? Is that Chomsky, some aid organization, or the UN? Why were these "projections" the most credible ones and not simply the loudest ones?


We can assume that the US accepted these projections, since they offered no rebuttal at the time.


No, we cannot assume that at all. The military may have been basing their projections on knowlege of their own military plans. If so, they can't exactly come out with detailed projections. And the fact that there were no mass starvations is rather better proof than any argument made beforehand could ever be. You seem to think that refuting this accusation would automatically have been a priority, but there's no reason to think that either. But Chomsky, of course, feels safe in that assumption because he's always confident he's right (so his expectation must have been right at the time, it was only a fluke things turned out completely differently, honest) and he's always willing to attribute the worst motives to any US action.


We can assume that major commentators such as newspapers and journals of opinion also accepted them because they cited them and offered no rebuttal at the time.


Yet more argument from authority. Why, the chattering class of journalists couldn't be wrong! They all said it with such unanimity! Here's a clue: the fact that they all read from the same page is a sign of intellectual laziness more than correctness.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Ziggurat


Talk about sophistry. All you are doing is claiming that Chomsky's conclusions are valid if you take the UN at its word. That is quite debateable, but it's also somewhat beside the real point: Chomsky was dead wrong. He predicted mass starvation, and said that the US was complicit in that. But there simply WAS no mass starvation. There's no sophistry involved: Chomsky was spectacularly wrong, regardless of where he got his info or how reasonable it might have sounded at the time. Ergo, don't trust his future predictions.



Not just Chomsky, but many people were worried about a mass starvation.



The United Nations is set to issue an unprecedented appeal to the United States and its coalition allies to halt the war on Afghanistan and allow time for a huge relief operation.
UN sources in Pakistan said growing concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country - in part, they say, caused by the relentless bombing campaign - has forced them to take the radical step. Aid officials estimate that up to 7.5 million Afghans might be threatened with starvation.



Why pick on him?

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1501,578103,00.html

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by a_unique_person

Not just Chomsky, but many people were worried about a mass starvation.
(snip)
Why pick on him?


Because he was the topic of this thread, not the UN. And because he is quite frequently wrong in his knee-jerk anti-Americanism, and people asked for specific examples. I've got plenty of UN bashing in me, but that's for other threads.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Ziggurat


Because he was the topic of this thread, not the UN. And because he is quite frequently wrong in his knee-jerk anti-Americanism, and people asked for specific examples. I've got plenty of UN bashing in me, but that's for other threads.

Not just the UN, or Chomsky, but also aid agencies, with no axe to grind.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by a_unique_person

Not just the UN, or Chomsky, but also aid agencies, with no axe to grind.

What makes you think aid agencies can't have an axe to grind? Aid agencies are made up of people with generally similar points of view. And relatively homogenous groups of people are susceptible to group-think and ideological bias. But again, the mistakes of the aid agencies wasn't my point, since this thread is about Chomsky, not aid agencies.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Ziggurat


What makes you think aid agencies can't have an axe to grind? Aid agencies are made up of people with generally similar points of view. And relatively homogenous groups of people are susceptible to group-think and ideological bias. But again, the mistakes of the aid agencies wasn't my point, since this thread is about Chomsky, not aid agencies.

The point is, it wasn't just Chomsky who was saying this. In fact, it may have been these people's claims that he based his prediction on.

[Barkhorn1x]

Here is an intereting link on the topic of "Chomksy-spin"

http://www.leftwatch.com/articles/2004/000014.html

"Second, Chomsky did not simply report aid agencies' claims. All the FAO did was note that seven million people were already facing food instability and that disruptions of food aid would likely create a dire situation for those people. Chomsky alone made the absurd leap that since aid shipments were being cut in half that the U.S. and its allies were planning to murder 3.5 million people."


Oh, I know that some will post that this is biased source - yea, so what?? So is Chomsky himself - he's as baised as they come. As one critic stated, "What I object to is the lack of background, to the lack of context." Chomsky confuses and obfuscates to get his point across. He's no "honest broker."

BTW, I must come clean and state that my disdain for Chomsky dates back to his speech at my comencement back in 1983. At that time I knew little about the man or his views. As I sat in the audience I rememeber him stating that the greatest threat to world peace was not an armed and aggressive SU but the USA and that deployment of the Pershing II in WE was "destabilizing."

What the f***?? Hey Noam - how about all those SS-20's aimed at every capital in WE?? I guess they were just for self-defense.
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Barkhorn.

[DaChew]

Originally posted by a_unique_person


Not just Chomsky, but many people were worried about a mass starvation.



Why pick on him?



It is one thing to be worried about a mass starvation. It is quite another to accuse someone of committing genocide IMO.

[demon]

Ziggurat...

"He predicted mass starvation, and said that the US was complicit in that."

I think sentences like this are indicative of why it might be pointless trying to debate this matter with you. Chomsky DID NOT predict mass starvation. He quoted the warnings of the world's most authoritative bodies on these matters that US actions were likely to place an extra X number of people at RISK of starvation. This is entirely different. Try to understand this-Chomsky made NO predictions, he +quoted+ those of others.

Your talk of "parsing" the quote from the UN is tedious and diversionary. The intended meaning is quite clear to anyone and it is simply a sign of desperation that you're trying to find another meaning for it. The UN stated that "We are facing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions in Afghanistan with 7.5 million short of food and at risk of starvation".

You’re attempting to interpret this sentence as the UNHCR saying that 7.5 million people entered the category where starvation becomes a risk in the same way that those 300 million car drivers enter the category where being in crash becomes a risk. You’re doing this by preying on a grammatical ambiguity of a single sentence clause, between two formulations "7.5 million being at risk of starvation" and there being "a risk that 7.5 million will starve". This is disingenuous at best, for the reasons I explained in my previous post...the context simply doesn’t bear it out.

The reason for this is quite simple, in this case there is a single substantive factor causing the risk of starvation ie. the absence of aid. The context of this, which is vital, is that several million people were effectively dependant on a single "life line" for their survival, a life line that the US proposed to terminate. Once the aid was terminated by the US, that factor applied to all of those people in the category, therefore they were at the risk of starving and, more importantly, the risk was pretty uniform because there were few if any significant intervening variables. This is light-years away from your car example and your grammatical parsing is invalidated by the context. If those people were known at the time to be subject to a variety of other factors that mitigated the loss of aid, then your grammatical point might hold water, but they weren’t so it doesn’t. Try and prise the language apart as much as you like, but the meaning is clear.

Your talk in your second post about expectations again misses the point. They weren’t Chomsky’s expectations, they were the expectations of the relevant authorities at the time. As it happens these expectations had to be changed when, several weeks later, events changed and the US, under pressure, began to allow aid shipments again. Nor does Chomsky expect people to expect what he expects. He points to the projections of relevant authorities and points out that nothing in US statements indicates that they were proceeding under anything different. You can hypothesize that US strategic planners knew that such predictions weren’t going to occur but you have no evidence to support this contention.
Furthermore, it is reasonable to assume that they did not challenge the views of the UNHCR etc (upon whose work the US bases much of its own strategic projections anyway), because they made no rebuttal of them and made no projections of their own. In the absence of a competing case, one has no choice but to go with the most authoritative sources available. Your argument seems to be "ha, the Americans knew something that you didn’t". Possibly true, but there is no evidence for this.

The fact that the mass starvation on the worst case scale projected by UNHCR did not occur is not a vindication of US plans at the time since US policy and planning was changed as a result of events on the ground and pressure from humanitarian agencies, not to mention a massive aid program put into operation by aid agencies in response to US actions. In other words, the aid agencies picked up the pieces AFTER the US had begun to bomb and ameliorated the disaster.

[Barkhorn1x]

Demon and others;

You act as tho' Chomsky simply quoted the UNHCR's dire predictions and left it at. He did not, he goes on to state;
"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 few months . . . .very casually with no comment, no particular thought about it, that’s just kind of normal, here and in a good part of Europe."

~ and ~
"What the effects will be, we will never know. Starvation is not something that kills people instantly. People eat roots and leaves and they drag on for a while. And the effects of starvation may be the death of children born from malnourished mothers a year or two from now, and all sorts of consequences. Furthermore, nobody's going to look because the West is not interested in such things and others don't have the resources."

So IOW, the West and the US in particular are guilty as charged - and he has done this time and time again (just try to get through his "What Uncle Sam Really Wants" w/o laughing at his extremist cant.)

You can comfortably stake out the position of the US on EVERY issue by simply reversing Chomsky's position. Is this man itellectually honest?? Hell no.

Barkhorn.

[zenith-nadir]

You're wasting your time Barkhorn1x. Folks who follow Chomsky fall for his word-plays and tricks, they believe what Chomsky has to sell yet lack the intellect or will to ask themselves why Chomsky, (the "great mind") is ignored by every major media outlet and government in the world.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by demon
Ziggurat...

"He predicted mass starvation, and said that the US was complicit in that."

I think sentences like this are indicative of why it might be pointless trying to debate this matter with you. Chomsky DID NOT predict mass starvation. He quoted the warnings of the world's most authoritative bodies on these matters that US actions were likely to place an extra X number of people at RISK of starvation. This is entirely different. Try to understand this-Chomsky made NO predictions, he +quoted+ those of others.


Have you even been paying attention? The bloody point is that he did NOT simply quote from others, he extrapolated a prediction using information from others. Go back to Theodore's posting on page one, where he gives a transcript of a talk by Chomsky. He says,

"After the first week of bombing, the New York Times reported on a back page inside a column on something else, that by the arithmetic of the United Nations there will soon be 7.5 million Afghans in acute need of even a loaf of bread and there are only a few weeks left before the harsh winter will make deliveries to many areas totally impossible, continuing to quote, but with bombs falling the delivery rate is down to ½ of what is needed. Casual comment. Which tells us that Western civilization is anticipating the slaughter of, well do the arithmetic, 3-4 million people or something like that."

Chomsky predicting 3-4 million people starving. This prediction IS NOT MADE by ANY major aid organization or by the UN. The UN only gives the 7.5 million people as being vulnerable to food shortages (note also that his characterization of their condition is his own personal embelishment). Chomsky pulls the *prediction* of 3-4 million starvations out of his backside, he does NOT get that figure from any outside authoritative source. Once AGAIN, never trust a linguist to do your math.


Your talk of "parsing" the quote from the UN is tedious and diversionary. The intended meaning is quite clear to anyone and it is simply a sign of desperation that you're trying to find another meaning for it. The UN stated that "We are facing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions in Afghanistan with 7.5 million short of food and at risk of starvation".


Indeed they did. Note that they do NOT say that 3-4 million will probably starve. That's a prediction that HE made, not anyone else, and it's a prediction that was completely wrong. And that's what I'm really nailing him on. Look, demon, if you can't follow a thread more than two posts deep, don't bother coming. I'm tired of having to point out what should be obvious. Start paying attention, or stay out of the debate.

[a_unique_person]

Once again, we have a case of "If it isn't pushed right up under your nose, it didn't happen".

http://www.somaliawatch.org/archivemar02/020309101.htm

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
Once again, we have a case of "If it isn't pushed right up under your nose, it didn't happen".

http://www.somaliawatch.org/archivemar02/020309101.htm

I'm not sure what you mean by "it". If by "it" you mean the mass starvation that Chomsky predicted, then yes, "it" plainly did not happen, as your article states:

"Always, in any situation like this, people are going to die, but we've done a lot to minimize the loss of life," said Alejandro Chicheri, a spokesman for the World Food Program of the United Nations. "If there is starvation, it's only in small pockets."

I'm not making the claim that things weren't bad in Afghanistan. They were bad to begin with, even without famine, as the article makes clear. But the magnitude of the problem is important, and the poignancy of these indvidual stories doesn't validate Chomsky's outrageous accusations of genocide.

[Barkhorn1x]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
Once again, we have a case of "If it isn't pushed right up under your nose, it didn't happen".

http://www.somaliawatch.org/archivemar02/020309101.htm

Where's the evidence for the 3 to 4 million dead??

Oh...I forgot, that never happened. :rolleyes:

Barkhorn.

[Skeptic]

The funny thing is, that AUP and other Chomskiites are saying in this thead, at the same time, that:

1). So what if Chomsky was wrong in his predictions about Afghani famie--the UN and others also got it wrong, too!

2). Look! Look! Here's a web site saying there are problems in Afghanistan--so Chomsky was right after all!

So, which one is it? Is he wrong or is he right? Make up your mind!

The obvious truth, of course, is that Chomsky is wrong: there are problems in Afghnaistan, but he predicted a deliberate starvation of millions, based on "pulling it out of my ass" extrapolation of a UN report he obviously deliberately "misunderstood". The actual UN report said nothing of the kind.

Such a deliberate starvation never occured, nor had anything remotely similar occured, nor was it predicted by the UN. Chomsky was just dead wrong. Sorry, guys.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Barkhorn1x


Where's the evidence for the 3 to 4 million dead??

Oh...I forgot, that never happened. :rolleyes:

Barkhorn.

I'm not saying it did. What I am saying is that

a) there were serious grounds for concern.
b) There were and are people starving.
c) Reputable sources were voicing concerns.

Chomsky may get paranoid at times, there are certainly grounds to wonder how much that paronia is based in fact, but he is still a commentator that I want to hear. He offers a point of view that is important, and one that helps me, along with the other sources I use for information, to help me form my world view.

Feel free to disregard his errors. However, given that balls up that now exists in Iraq and Afghanistan, I can't see why he is so hated and loated. He is a commentator, with an interesting point of view. The US under Dubya has stumbled from one disaster to the next. It is ironic that he is the one who has said "bring it on". I ask you, who is more wrong. Chomsky for saying things that can be wrong, but are just a personal opinion, or Dubya for inviting death upon his own troops.

[a_unique_person]

Ledt's have a look at this prediction, pretty spot on to me.

http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-4-1.html



The future

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Things have changed
It's important to recognize how much the scene has changed in the past 30 years as a result of the popular movements that organized in a loose and chaotic way around such issues as civil rights, peace, feminism, the environment and other issues of human concern.

Take the Kennedy and Reagan administrations, which were similar in a number of ways in their basic policies and commitments. When Kennedy launched a huge international terrorist campaign against Cuba after his invasion failed, and then escalated the murderous state terror in South Vietnam to outright aggression, there was no detectable protest.

It wasn't until hundreds of thousands of American troops were deployed and all of Indochina was under devastating attack, with hundreds of thousands slaughtered, that protest became more than marginally significant. In contrast, as soon as the Reagan administration hinted that they intended to intervene directly in Central America, spontaneous protest erupted at a scale sufficient to compel the state terrorists to turn to other means.

Leaders may crow about the end of the "Vietnam syndrome," but they know better. A National Security Policy Review of the Bush administration, leaked at the moment of the ground attack in the Gulf, noted that, "In cases where the US confronts much weaker enemies" -- the only ones that the true statesman will agree to fight -- "our challenge will be not simply to defeat them, but to defeat them decisively and rapidly." Any other outcome would be "embarrassing" and might "undercut political support," understood to be very thin.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by a_unique_person

Ledt's have a look at this prediction, pretty spot on to me.


What prediction? There's no prediction here. There's an attempt at a description of what's going on (which doesn't seem spot on at all), but what exactly is he predicting? That evil conspiratorial warmongers will continue to guide American policy? Sorry, but that's not a prediction, that's a rant.


Leaders may crow about the end of the "Vietnam syndrome," but they know better. A National Security Policy Review of the Bush administration, leaked at the moment of the ground attack in the Gulf, noted that, "In cases where the US confronts much weaker enemies" -- the only ones that the true statesman will agree to fight -- "our challenge will be not simply to defeat them, but to defeat them decisively and rapidly." Any other outcome would be "embarrassing" and might "undercut political support," understood to be very thin.


This is an essentially meaningless accusation. First off, EVERY country in the world is weaker than the US. Most countries are much weaker. Chomsky's accusation that we're bullies for only picking on weak countries is convenient because the result is more or less correct (we mostly fight weak countries), but he's got the cause completely backwards. It's only weak countries where the security and stability problems become severe enough that we need to intervene (strong countries, even enemy states like the Soviet Union, are rational actors, and we have options other than war with rational actors). Chomsky's use of quotations is also always suspect: did those single-word quotes come from the same source? I'd bet not, but even if so, is he really using them in the same context they were originally used? No way to be sure without knowing exactly what he quotes. But of course, he's not attributing the single-word quotes specifically to anything, so if it turns out he's pulled them from somewhere else, he can still pretend he was honest about their use. Simply put, there's no way of telling how much of his argument is assembled from his sources and how much he's just making up (remind you of, say, the erroneous 3-4 million starved claim that he "based" on other sources?). More generally speaking, though, Chomsky seems to be spectacularly (or willfully) ignorant of the realities of warfare. It really IS a military imperative that if you are seen as being much stronger before the battle than your enemy, you had better win handily or even your victory can inflate the prestige of your enemies and encourage violence against you. This is not sinister at all, that's been the reality of warfare since time immemorial, and the public knows this better than Chomsky apparently does.

And I'm not even going to bother getting into Chomsky's misuse of the term "terrorism".

[Barkhorn1x]

UAP;

Do you realize that this passage shows Chomsky at his "extremist *******" worst?

Overblown Rhetoric;
- a huge international terrorist campaign
- escalated the murderous state terror in South Vietnam to outright aggression ( one would think he was describing the VC/NVA!)
- all of Indochina was under devastating attack
- the state terrorists

Unsubstantiated Claims;
- spontaneous protest erupted
- Leaders may crow about the end of the "Vietnam syndrome," but they know better.
- Any other outcome would be "embarrassing" and might "undercut political support," understood to be very thin.

Linguistic smoke and mirrors;
- Leaders may crow…but they know better” = The US puts on a brave face but really shakes in its boots.
- "In cases where the US confronts much weaker enemies" -- the only ones that the true statesman will agree to fight = those cowardly US bastards (he hopes you don’t notice the “In cases”)
- Any other outcome would be "embarrassing" and might "undercut political support," understood to be very thin. = forget the might – just focus on the “understood to be very thin.”

Do you actually share his cracked worldview?

Barkhorn.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Barkhorn1x
UAP;

Do you realize that this passage shows Chomsky at his "extremist a**hole" worst?

Overblown Rhetoric;
- a huge international terrorist campaign
- escalated the murderous state terror in South Vietnam to outright aggression ( one would think he was describing the VC/NVA!)
- all of Indochina was under devastating attack
- the state terrorists

Unsubstantiated Claims;
- spontaneous protest erupted
- Leaders may crow about the end of the "Vietnam syndrome," but they know better.
- Any other outcome would be "embarrassing" and might "undercut political support," understood to be very thin.

Linguistic smoke and mirrors;
- Leaders may crow…but they know better” = The US puts on a brave face but really shakes in its boots.
- "In cases where the US confronts much weaker enemies" -- the only ones that the true statesman will agree to fight = those cowardly US bastards (he hopes you don’t notice the “In cases”)
- Any other outcome would be "embarrassing" and might "undercut political support," understood to be very thin. = forget the might – just focus on the “understood to be very thin.”

Do you actually share his cracked worldview?

Barkhorn.

Given that he was describing the times of GB The First, and what a stuff up his son, GB The Second, has made of it, and his methods in doing so, he is spot on. They thought that because they could take on Iraq with an vastly superior military force and that that would then be the end of the matter is incredibly accurate, because that is exactly what has happened.

[Skeptic]

Given that he was describing the times of GB The First, and what a stuff up his son, GB The Second, has made of it, and his methods in doing so, he is spot on.

"Spot on" about WHAT, exactly? Virtually all his falsifiable claims were proven false. Those which were "correct" are so vague and general (e.g., of the "I see trouble in Iraq" sort) as to be totally useless, and in any case a ten-year-old could make them. The rest of his claims are of the "Bush is evil" or "USA is a bully" name-calling.

Chomsky didn't yet master the art of sage predictions as well as Nostradamus. Yes, he has the "use emotional, unfalsifiable language" part down pat; he does the "make vague predictions that can be 'proven' no matter what happens" part reasonably well; he is the master of the "use weasel-words like 'might', 'could', 'possibly', etc. in any opportunity" technique; but he still hasn't mastered the art of not making any specific predictions, since that will blow the cover of "profound knowledge" his vague, multi-syllabilic mush tries to convery.

When Chomsky is saying general things, he uses ten-dollar-words all over the place to hide the fact that his actual claims, when stripped of the tinsel, are usually trivial or so obvious as to be tautologies (e.g., "US has more power than other nations"'; "Iraq is be difficult to handle") or literally ARE tautologies because he uses 'might' and 'could' all over the place ("the war COULD go badly", etc.) When he decides to risk it--make some non-trivial, non-tautological, specific prediction--he is almost invariably simply wrong. Now, what does THAT tell you about his political writing?

[Theodore Kurita]

What aboout Manufacturing Consent?

The Propaganda Model he developed with Edward S. Hermann does seem to fit the actions of the United States Media almost perfectly.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita
What aboout Manufacturing Consent?

The Propaganda Model he developed with Edward S. Hermann does seem to fit the actions of the United States Media almost perfectly.

I haven't read Manufacturing Consent, so I can't comment on the details. But it sounds like what you're talking about is a descriptive "model", not really a predictive one. That is, it's easy to fit the past to a model even if the model has little connection to reality (and given Chmsky's rants on other topcs I have little reason to expect it to describe the real forces that shape the US, even if it can account for some obervations). Are there really any predictions that his model makes that are not completely obvious or uselessly subjective? If not, then it really doesn't matter how much it "seems" to fit the US.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Ziggurat


I haven't read Manufacturing Consent, so I can't comment on the details. But it sounds like what you're talking about is a descriptive "model", not really a predictive one. That is, it's easy to fit the past to a model even if the model has little connection to reality (and given Chmsky's rants on other topcs I have little reason to expect it to describe the real forces that shape the US, even if it can account for some obervations). Are there really any predictions that his model makes that are not completely obvious or uselessly subjective? If not, then it really doesn't matter how much it "seems" to fit the US.

Here is an article that really sums up the model. This was written by Edward S. Herman himself:

http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20031209.htm

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita


Here is an article that really sums up the model. This was written by Edward S. Herman himself:

http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20031209.htm

I haven't finished it yet, but so far I'm not impressed. Implicit in all of this seems to be an assumption that each "class" has a unified "interest" and that the various classes have necessarily competing interests. But of course, that isn't true. People are divided along a LOT of different lines, and "elites" vs. the masses usually isn't even the relevant divide.

The second paragaph introduces a neat little conceit: "Because the propaganda model challenges basic premises and suggests that the media serve antidemocratic ends, it is commonly excluded from mainstream debates on media bias." Seems to me they're using their model to explain why the model itself is excluded from the debate, then implying that this exclusion shows that the model is correct. It's not explicitly stated, but there's implicit circular logic going on here. There's another reason that this theory might be excluded: if everyone simply thinks it's full of crap. But of course, Chomsky wouldn't even consider that for a moment (without coming up with a brain-washing theory for why people disregard him).

This statement also struck me as full of crap:
"And political scientist Ben Page provides evidence that there are common 'elite-mass gaps,' with 'ordinary citizens...considerably less enthusiastic than foreign policy elites about the use of force abroad..."
I find myself in circles with above average incomes and considerably above average education levels, and I can say quite definitively that the "elites" are much more reticent about the use of American military power than the masses.

There are a number of other things that I have a problem with, but the biggest is the basic approach to all of this: I believe in the addage that one should not ascribe to conspiracy what can be adequately described by incompetence. Chomsky may insist that this isn't a conspiracy, but he is basically positing actual control over the direction of media bias, even if that control is some sort of "market-like" collective force rather than a cabal. The central problem with the media, the main reason why they consistently fail, is because they are incompetent, cliqueish, and self-obsessed. I see no adequate accounting of this in this model. And unlike the internalized biases that Chomsky suggests, there is little reason to think that general incompetence can be harnessed or directed consistently. And the evidence that it is a guided bias seems little more than circumstantial to me.

[epepke]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
The second paragaph introduces a neat little conceit: "Because the propaganda model challenges basic premises and suggests that the media serve antidemocratic ends, it is commonly excluded from mainstream debates on media bias."

If Manufacturing Consent is so non-mainstream, how come I hear about it a dozen times a month?

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by epepke

If Manufacturing Consent is so non-mainstream, how come I hear about it a dozen times a month?

Actually, that's a good point too. Either you're moving in non-mainstream circles, or it's not really being excluded. For the former case, it doesn't mean much that you hear about it a lot. But if it's not being excluded (or if most people go beyond what's commonly called "mainstream"), then the claim that the media would automatically exclude this theory is wrong.

Of course, they can around that by their use of the word "commonly". Be vague enough and you're never completely wrong.

[Skeptic]

This part is priceless:

Failure to touch base with reporters. Romano did in fact follow up with the admonition that we had failed to ask reporters why they did what they did. He implied, without offering any evidence, that the journalistic bias we criticized might have been revealed as for good cause, if we had only asked for an explanation. But, apart from the fact that we did speak with quite a few reporters, the criticism is inane. Are reporters even aware of the deeper sources of bias they may internalize? Won't they tend to rationalize their behavior?

So, let's see. They have a theory about how the "elites" control the "media". Do they actually listen to what anybody from either camp what they think of this theory? No. If the reporters they asked laughed at their suggestions, that of course is no evidence that they might be wrong--it's just evidence that the reporter is "unaware of their deeper sources of bias they may internalize", and a "rationalization" of their behavior.

Sounds familiar? Yes, sounds precisely like the nonsense known as "psychoanalysis". The psychiatrist declares, from on high, that you want to have sex with your mother. If you accept it, well, that proves you want to have sex with your mother. If you deny it, well, that just proves you want to have sex with your mother and that you're "in denial" besides.

This is typical of their approach: if they are criticized, then the very fact that the critic disagrees with them is in itself evidence that the critic is stupid, or "rationalizing", or otherwise deficient, and therefore the criticism doesn't need to be taken seriously. Look at this self-important bit of "reply" to criticism that they are offering a conspiracy theory:

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.

So, the critics that claimed they are offering a conspiracy theory are just lazy, deliberately lying, or just "superficial". And how do we know they're lazy, lying, and superficial? Well, they CRITICIZED us, didn't they? What more evidence do you need?

In addition, this "model" has two more similarities to psychoanalysis: namely, unfalsifiablity and fake "depth". Let's start with unfalsifiablity. It is quite clear that there isn't ANYTHING that would prove to Chomsky & co. that their analysis is wrong.

For example, let's consider the logical spectrum of reactions to the media. If "the masses" (don't you love the patronizing way these "socialists" talk about 99% of the population?) totally agree that war is needed and wondeful, well, that just proves that the media "monopoly" succeded. However, if "the masses" are divided, some agreeing and some disagreeing (as is in fact the case, of course), then that's just evidence that the the monopoly is not TOTALLY succesful, but is still there. In fact, they say just that as a reply to the question of whether the fact that the masses often disagree with the media isn't evidence against them:

We never claimed that the propaganda model explained everything or that it shows media omnipotence and complete effectiveness in manufacturing consent.

And what about the third possiblity? Suppose "the masses" rise up, and, say, burn down the CNN building for lying to them. Well, that, too would prove such a "monopoly" exist, or at least existed--after all, otherwise, why would "the masses" rebel against?

So what does this theory has going for it? One thing--as the rather naive Mr. Kooista said, "it seems to fit almost perfectly". But why does it seem to "fit almost perfectly"? Why, like psychoanalysis, it has the ability to give you that subjective "Wow! That's explains thins so ACCURATELY!" feeling?

When you look deeper, you find out that the feeling of how "deep" and "accurate" the theory is based on the fact that it "explains" absoluely everything: it is totally unfalsifiable, and every political or social outcome whatsoever would be "explained" by it "perfectly", in much the same way that a psychoalayist could "explain" absolutely every human behavior "perfectly" with a wave of his hand.

So, in sum:

1). A theory that seems to be "pefect", but in reality is unfalsifiable dogma that "explains" everything and, therefore, explains nothing;

2). Promoted by theorists that don't bother to actually check their theories emprically (e.g., by talking to reporters), and that simply discount and explain away any empirical evidence to the contrary by using words like "rationalization" or "denial";

3). The theorists, furthermore, view the very fact that their theory is criticized as evidence that the critic is deranged or evil or simply wrong, and thus as reason to discount the criticism;

4). Annoying self-important, holier-than-thou writing style, a clear attempt to intimidate the reader into thinking the author knows so much more than he does, even asking questions about his theory is an act of disrespect, if not actual proof that the reader, too, is deranged just like those other critics. (See for comparison's Freud's writings).

You know what this "amazing" theory is, Koonista? It's psychoanalysis tranferred to the sociological field, or in other words, bulls--t squared. But it SOUNDS cool and important, and FEELS so accurate, and makes you feel SO bad if you disagree with them, that it impresses the gullible.

I'm calling their bluff.

[Mycroft]

Originally posted by epepke
If Manufacturing Consent is so non-mainstream, how come I hear about it a dozen times a month?

I guess that depends on where you hear it. If you hang out in places where Chomsky is popular, like internet message boards, you would likely hear of it more than other people would.

[zenith-nadir]

We never claimed that the propaganda model explained everything or that it shows media omnipotence and complete effectiveness in manufacturing consent. Classic. We "warned" you we may be wrong... ;) 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... Yes. Thats it. We "masses" are too stupid and lazy to read daddy's big words let alone understand them.....I can't read anymore of this patronizing tripe.

Here's an interesting article...

Averaging Wrong Answers: Noam Chomsky and the Cambodia Controversy by Bruce Sharp (http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm)

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by epepke


If Manufacturing Consent is so non-mainstream, how come I hear about it a dozen times a month?

You might, but then I bet you don't watch Batchelor III either.

[epepke]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
Actually, that's a good point too. Either you're moving in non-mainstream circles, or it's not really being excluded. For the former case, it doesn't mean much that you hear about it a lot. But if it's not being excluded (or if most people go beyond what's commonly called "mainstream"), then the claim that the media would automatically exclude this theory is wrong.

I think it's the latter. Unless Barnes and Noble is some kind of left-wing underground organization.

I think it's simply a load of crap. Every journalist of every_stripe wants to give the perception that they alone are unique mavericks who are especially valuable compared to The Mainstream Press™ And I mean everyone, including Dan Rather and Fox News and CNN and the New York Times. I don't mind if they actually earn it by, you know, like, going out and getting scoops or something, but just whining about it is not impressive.

[Lithrael]

I know a professor up at UMKC (University of Missouri at Kansas City) who has studied Politcal Science, and History. In History, he specialized in the study of Terrorism. He told me bluntly that these people will continue to attack us unless we are willing to negotiate.
Originally posted by Ziggurat
Argument from authority. Come on, after your repeated use of the term "strawman" and "ad hominim", I'd have thought you'd know this. But perhaps not. I really don't care what some professor you know dictated to you, if you can't form an argument then that's the bottom line on this board.

I thought argument from authority was a fallacy when the quoted authority was not actually an expert in whatever he was talking about? The guy specialised in the study of terrorism and made a statement about terrorism. If you wanted to question his level of expertise and how much weight to give his words, that's fine, but I don't think it was a flat out fallacious argument from authority.

Now I don't know much of anything about Chomsky (I saw a show based around Manufacturing Consent a while ago and thought it was neat, and I know Peter Gabriel thinks he's underestimating the minds of primates). As a fairly uninterested party I must say that the people that don't like him are doing a terrible job of convincing fence-sitters. If the people that considered him a liar, misrepresenter, jerk etc would have presented a clearer and less 'nyahh!' argument earlier on... I wouldn't have had to read three pages to get the point.

I see that his supporters in this thread have been shown evidence of Chomsky's getting stuff wrong, making statements that could easily be interpreted as alarmist extrapolations, and being evasive after the fact. But I also see that they calmly asked for that evidence. So they like him, so what? If they're willing to stick around in the discussion and let his detractors try to convince them he's more wrong than interesting... There is some dismissal by them of some of the points against Chomsky, but no moreso than in any debate with some serious disagreements. I don't get why his detractors seem to be so hostile. (I do mean comparatively hostile, I'm not implying you're all brandishing knives and going 'arr!')

-Lith

[demon]

Ziggurat...
Ok, one more time...

I don’t blame you entirely for your obtuseness, as I suspect you’ve been reading the efforts of "Daimnation", who said in his web blog (www.damianpenny.com/archived/002028.html ) that "As you can see, he basically pulled "the slaughter of 3-4 million people" out of his ass", which is very similar to "your" statement that "Chomsky pulls the *prediction* of 3-4 million starvations out of his backside" -despite your partial paraphrase. Indeed, the arguments on that page are very similar to your own.

You claim that, in the following paragraph, Chomsky makes a prediction of his own, rather than my contention, which is that he merely quoted authoritative sources. This is the paragraph.

"After the first week of bombing, the New York Times reported on a back page inside a column on something else, that by the arithmetic of the United Nations there will soon be 7.5 million Afghans in acute need of even a loaf of bread and there are only a few weeks left before the harsh winter will make deliveries to many areas totally impossible, continuing to quote, but with bombs falling the delivery rate is down to 1/2 of what is needed. Casual comment. Which tells us that Western civilization is anticipating the slaughter of, well do the arithmetic, 3-4 million people or something like that."

So, lets take it piece by piece and try to find this independent, reckless prediction that you allege Chomsky made.

Piece 1:

“After the first week of bombing, the New York Times reported on a back page inside a column on something else, that by the arithmetic of the United Nations there will soon be 7.5 million Afghans in acute need of even a loaf of bread and there are only a few weeks left before the harsh winter will make deliveries to many areas totally impossible…”

OK, look carefully here and you well see that Chomsky is reporting the NEW YORK TIMES quoting the arithmetic of the UN (the World Food Programme, specifically). The NYT is saying that the UN has said 7.5 million Afghans will soon be at risk of starvation and that there are only a few weeks to get that food to them, as soon the winter will make delivery to many areas totally impossible.

Now, I think you’ll agree, nowhere in this section does Chomsky predict anything. He quotes the NYT, citing the UN. I hope you’re with me, so bear that in mind as we move on.

Piece 2:

"continuing to quote, but with bombs falling the delivery rate is down to 1/2 of what is needed."

Here Chomsky does his best to be clear by saying "continuing to quote" -this means that everything after the next comma but before the full stop (period to you, I assume) is still Chomsky quoting the NYT, who were citing the UN. So, what we see here is that, according to the NYT (who are citing the UN WFP), the effect of the bombing is that only half the food that is necessary is getting through.

Now, remember that, according to the UN, 7.5 million people are starving. Put that together with the UN’s other statement, that only half of the deliveries of what are needed are getting through. Let’s also bear in mind that ‘needed’ means we’re talking about the basic minimum to keep people alive. So lets try and pull together what we’ve learnt so far. 7.5 million people are starving and only half the food deliveries necessary to stop them from starving are getting through.

Piece 3.

Chomsky then says "Casual comment. Which tells us that Western civilization is anticipating the slaughter of, well do the arithmetic, 3-4 million people or something like that."

Now, I think this is where you can see the prediction, so let’s go carefully over this bit and take the last section first. Chomsky is doing a basic sum in his head. He’s taking the 7.5 million who are starving and he’s taking the comment that only half the food necessary is getting through. So, on the face of it, only half of the 7.5 million people who need food are getting food the food they need. So, his sum is 7.5 million divided by 2. This is 3.75 million people.

Still, Chomsky has to be careful here because of two factors. Firstly, it may not be the case that every community that gets some food gets all the food they need, some people might get some but not enough to survive. Others may get nothing at all and others may get all they need. However, based on what we know about Afghanistan and the impending winter, we did know, as the UN reported, that some areas would be completely cut off and so would get nothing. Others would get some but not enough. So the figure can’t be as clear cut as say 3.75 million. What we can assume with a fair degree of certainty is that with, only half the food getting through, roughly half the people are getting the bare minimum they need to live. Therefore good estimation based on the UN’s figures is about 3-4 million -which is the figure Chomsky gives.

I think you now can see why now that Chomsky made no prediction. In fact what he did was make an extrapolation -and a very, very simple one- of the figures provided by the New York Times.

To recap:

The UN says 7.5 million people starving. The UN says only half the food necessary to stop these people from starving is getting through. Therefore, approximately half will starve. Half of 7.5 million is 3.75 million. Allow some margin of error either way. Final answer 3-4 million people will starve.

You see? Chomsky makes no prediction -just the simplest of arithmetical extrapolations, based on the figures known at the time. In fact, if you’d just read your own quotations a little more carefully, rather than relying on Daimnation, you’d see that Chomsky was very careful to point out that he did not know what was going to happen. For example,

"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 few months . . . .very casually with no comment, no particular thought about it, that’s just kind of normal, here and in a good part of Europe."

The first sentence is his impression of what was going on at the time -certainly not a prediction- and a certainly not a definitive statement. What he reports is that the best estimate of the best authorities was that 3-4 million people were likely to starve because of the positive actions of the US. "Genocide" is a harsh word, I agree but I think it was well chosen. In fact, "silent genocide" is not Chomsky phrase but that of the UN special Rapporteur for food who made the point that millions of people in the world are starving and that this is barely discussed in the west -ie. a "silent genocide". Chomsky, perceptively in my opinion, is pointing out that the NYT can report that US policy is proceeding on the assumption that it will likely cause 3-4 million people to starve but that it could do so blandly and without comment. Another "genocide" about which we are "silent". After all genocide doesn’t have to mean wiping people out specifically, it can mean simply not caring of they are wiped out in the process of achieving something else (my burning apartment analogy, if you recall).

So this is the meat of his argument: that programmes were being implemented on the assumption that the consequences predicted by the UN and others would occur. Whether they did or not is a much more complex question -though months later groups like the Red Cross were reporting that 2-3 million people were still desperately short of food. Chomsky’s central point is that so-called western civilisation can make plans which anticipate the strong likelihood of millions dying off starvation as a consequence and that virtually no comment is made -the NYT article, which Chomsky quotes, blandly reports the possibility but does not see fit to comment. What, Chomsky asks, does that say about us?

Chomsky made no independent predictions -only a simple arithmetical extrapolation of the UN’s own figures. If you can`t see that then you are beyond reason.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by epepke


I think it's the latter. Unless Barnes and Noble is some kind of left-wing underground organization.

I think it's simply a load of crap. Every journalist of every_stripe wants to give the perception that they alone are unique mavericks who are especially valuable compared to The Mainstream Press™ And I mean everyone, including Dan Rather and Fox News and CNN and the New York Times. I don't mind if they actually earn it by, you know, like, going out and getting scoops or something, but just whining about it is not impressive.

Yes. but who has control over those Journalists.

Large corporate media companies with special interests.

Look no further than Fox News (TM) for the best example of this.

In fact, I'll probably be posting the empirical evidence that Chosmky and Herman built up to make the case for the model.

In fact, most of the books in of itself is large amounts of cited evidence with a thesis, and some side commentary.



Oh, and to address Zenith-Nadir, Chomsky didn't get it wrong on Cambodia. That is the most commonly referred to arguemtn, the fact is, he didn't get it wrong.

Read up before you post here.

Here are some of the most common tactics used to Smear Chomsky.

http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20021009.htm

[Theodore Kurita]

Here is a better article on Manufacturing Consent.

However, I do strongly remind you that this isn't the most recent model, so it doesn't cover some things (i.e. the internet):

http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/198901--.htm

The article talks about and sets up the basic filters of the corporate media.

This article is an interview done by Robert W. McChensey.

It covers most all of the info, and it answers a good amount of FAQ's on the Propaganda Model itself.

[epepke]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita


Yes. but who has control over those Journalists.

Large corporate media companies with special interests.

So what?

Chomsky isn't living in a tent in Mexico or churning out pamphlets stenciled by a manual typewriter on a Mimeograph machine. He's a pampered New England upper-middle-class academic with tenure who probably has never missed a meal in his life. At a university that matriculated me, so I know first-hand what supercilious bourgeois twittage saturates the place like gobs of thick, gooey snot. He's the premiere American intellectual to Europeans.

Edited to add: Even if he were part of the non-mainstream, which he most obviously isn't, just because one is poor or struggling or not aligned with "corporate interests" does not mean that one cannot be a complete jackass.

[alancarre]

/begin comic relief

My favourite reference to Chomsky:

http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/21.html

on Page 4 of the article.

Though I am someone who generally agrees with him, this was just too funny...

/end relief

- Alan

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by demon
Ziggurat...
Ok, one more time...

I don’t blame you entirely for your obtuseness, as I suspect you’ve been reading the efforts of "Daimnation",


Never heard of it before. I guess I'm just not the only one who reads Chomsky the same way.


Now, remember that, according to the UN, 7.5 million people are starving.


Now YOU are pulling a Chomsky. This is NOT what the UN said. The UN said that 7.5 million people were at risk, NOT that 7.5 million people were starving. Keep your facts straight.


Put that together with the UN’s other statement, that only half of the deliveries of what are needed are getting through. Let’s also bear in mind that ‘needed’ means we’re talking about the basic minimum to keep people alive. So lets try and pull together what we’ve learnt so far. 7.5 million people are starving and only half the food deliveries necessary to stop them from starving are getting through.


Again, you're saying that the UN said something that the UN did not say. The UN never said that 7.5 million people were starving.


Chomsky then says "Casual comment. Which tells us that Western civilization is anticipating the slaughter of, well do the arithmetic, 3-4 million people or something like that."

Now, I think this is where you can see the prediction, so let’s go carefully over this bit and take the last section first. Chomsky is doing a basic sum in his head. He’s taking the 7.5 million who are starving and he’s taking the comment that only half the food necessary is getting through. So, on the face of it, only half of the 7.5 million people who need food are getting food the food they need. So, his sum is 7.5 million divided by 2. This is 3.75 million people.

Still, Chomsky has to be careful here because of two factors. Firstly, it may not be the case that every community that gets some food gets all the food they need, some people might get some but not enough to survive. Others may get nothing at all and others may get all they need. However, based on what we know about Afghanistan and the impending winter, we did know, as the UN reported, that some areas would be completely cut off and so would get nothing. Others would get some but not enough. So the figure can’t be as clear cut as say 3.75 million. What we can assume with a fair degree of certainty is that with, only half the food getting through, roughly half the people are getting the bare minimum they need to live. Therefore good estimation based on the UN’s figures is about 3-4 million -which is the figure Chomsky gives.


Yes, I understand where he gets the number. But it's pulled out of his ass, because there's no accounting for how long this cut in food delivery might last, how much internal reserves there might be, how long people can last with food levels below subsistence (people don't starve overnight), etc. That's not a simple issue, and simply dividing by two simply has no real basis. So it's really not surprising that Chomsky was completely wrong. He was completely wrong because his prediction didn't really make sense to begin with.


The UN says 7.5 million people starving. The UN says only half the food necessary to stop these people from starving is getting through. Therefore, approximately half will starve. Half of 7.5 million is 3.75 million. Allow some margin of error either way. Final answer 3-4 million people will starve.


Your "Therefore, approximately half will starve" statement simply does not follow automatically. And it did not follow in reality either. That makes it a prediction, and a prediction that was completely wrong.


You see? Chomsky makes no prediction -just the simplest of arithmetical extrapolations, based on the figures known at the time.


You're playing a semantic game here: it wasn't a prediction, it was an extrapolation. That's a distinction without a difference. Chomsky made statements about possible future events (even he was smart enough to hedge his bet on this). And he was completely wrong. I frankly don't care what led to him making those predictions OR "extrapolations", he was completely wrong, and changing the label doesn't change that.


In fact, if you’d just read your own quotations a little more carefully, rather than relying on Daimnation, you’d see that Chomsky was very careful to point out that he did not know what was going to happen.


Funny that you assume that I'm relying on an external source. Is that because you always rely on Chomsky and his supporters, so you assume I couldn't come up with this criticism on my own?

And yes, Chomsky hedges his bet. Good thing, too, since that gives him an "out" despite being wrong so frequently. If he remains at least somewhat noncommital, then he and his followers can always argue that he wasn't REALLY wrong. And that's why he's always noncommital. But being noncommital hasn't helped him actually get things right.

"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 few months . . . .very casually with no comment, no particular thought about it, that’s just kind of normal, here and in a good part of Europe."


What he reports is that the best estimate of the best authorities was that 3-4 million people were likely to starve because of the positive actions of the US.


Just how stupid are you? There were NO "authorities" that made the prediction that 3-4 million people would starve. Even if you want to call it an "extrapolation" (your word), it's still an extrapolation that only Chomsky made. Nobody else was making that "extrapolation". The 3-4 million is exactly NOT an estimate of ANY source that he quotes.


Chomsky made no independent predictions -only a simple arithmetical extrapolation of the UN’s own figures. If you can`t see that then you are beyond reason.

That IS a prediction. You cannot cite a SINGLE group that Chomsky quotes who make the prediction OR extrapolation that 3-4 million people would die. Your complaint amounts to an insistence that an extrapolation is not a prediction, but it is. Hell, look it up on www.m-w.com, and you'll find that extrapolate means "to predict by projecting past experience or known data". So next time you want to argue a semantic difference between two words, you better make sure that they aren't actually synonymous. What a moron.

[Barkhorn1x]

Umm...

Game, set, match to Ziggurat

Barkhorn.

[Barkhorn1x]

I know a professor up at UMKC (University of Missouri at Kansas City) who has studied Politcal Science, and History. In History, he specialized in the study of Terrorism. He told me bluntly that these people will continue to attack us unless we are willing to negotiate.

And this "expert" has evidence for his position that being "willing to negotiate" with TERRORISTS works.

I want to see this evidence please.

Barkhorn.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita

Oh, and to address Zenith-Nadir, Chomsky didn't get it wrong on Cambodia. That is the most commonly referred to arguemtn, the fact is, he didn't get it wrong.

Read up before you post here.

Here are some of the most common tactics used to Smear Chomsky.

http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20021009.htm

That page doesn't really mount any defense of Chomsky's shameful record on Cambodia. Let's take a look at what that page says:

"Chomsky's framework for understanding US foreign policy is appealing because it appears to see through the fog, while allowing those who accept it to feel like they're on the side of history's angels. His world is an orderly, logical one in which everything is foretold. The shape events assume may be unexpected, but the events themselves are the predictable outcome of this or that American policy. Applied to Vietnam, East Timor and Palestine, Chomsky's analysis of American imperialism has demonstrated uncommon prophetic powers. Applied to Cambodia and the Balkans, it has prevented him from comprehending evil that has not been plotted from Washington."

Shatz doesn't even attempt to offer any proof for the assertions of this paragraph. He can state it as if it is true because similar false accusations have been launched for years, to the point where people think 'oh, it must be true'. This is the same smear that far-right ideologue Richard Bennett used in his CNN debate with Chomsky a few months ago.

Note first that it doesn't actually tell us what Chomsky is accused of being wrong about. All we know is that Chomsky was accused of being wrong. And what's the defense? Well, a real defense would require showing what the accusation really was, then refuting it with facts or a counter-argument. But none of that here. All we get is the statement that this particular person did not offer proof. That doesn't mean that there isn't any proof, and furthermore it doesn't mean that other accusations against him by other people haven't been supported. This is not a defense of his position, this is simply an evasion of the issue. I would think you could find something better than this to back up Chomsky's record, but maybe there isn't anything better.

So let's take a look at some details of what Chomsky got wrong regarding Cambodia, shall we? I'll use something that Chomsky actually wrote at the time, not someone's paraphrase of his position after the fact.
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19770625.htm

Before looking more closely at Ponchaud's book and its press treatment, we would like to point out that apart from Hildebrand and Porter there are many other sources on recent events in Cambodia that have not been brought to the attention of the American reading public. Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing. These reports also emphasize both the extraordinary brutality on both sides during the civil war (provoked by the American attack) and repeated discoveries that massacre reports were false. They also testify to the extreme unreliability of refugee reports, and the need to treat them with great caution, a fact that we and others have discussed elsewhere (cf. Chomsky: At War with Asia, on the problems of interpreting reports of refugees from American bombing in Laos). Refugees are frightened and defenseless, at the mercy of alien forces. They naturally tend to report what they believe their interlocuters wish to hear. While these reports must be considered seriously, care and caution are necessary. Specifically, refugees questioned by Westerners or Thais have a vested interest in reporting atrocities on the part of Cambodian revolutionaries, an obvious fact that no serious reporter will fail to take into account.
(emphasis mine)

I'm not particularly interested in exactly how reasonable Chomsky's stance was at the time, I wasn't there so I don't know how confusing the reports coming out of Cambodia were. But what we have here nonetheless is Chomsky saying that there were no large-scale massacres, that tales of genocide coming out of Cambodia were false, and that refugees were probably lying about the scale of it. And he was wrong. I don't care WHY he was wrong, I don't care that there are some disclaimers (it's not HIS stance, he's just quoting others, or the use of words like "maybe" or "might"), he was wrong. But the fact that many of Chomsky's defenders can't even ADMIT that he was wrong (as in the page above claiming to refute Chomsky "myths") is pretty indicative of their intellectual honesty.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by Lithrael
I thought argument from authority was a fallacy when the quoted authority was not actually an expert in whatever he was talking about?


What you are refering to is sometimes refered to as argument from false authority, which is a subset of argument from authority. Argument from authority (also called appeal to authority) is usually used for arguments that claim to be right simply because an authority figure (even a valid one) said so. The fallacy is that being an authority does not in and of itself make your arguments correct. An argument must be able to stand on its own, regardless of the source. One can reasonably expect that authorities on a topic are usually better able to form good arguments than non-authorities, but that need not be the case. And in the current context, no argument was presented at all other than that an authority figure said that negotiating with terrorists was the only solution.


The guy specialised in the study of terrorism and made a statement about terrorism. If you wanted to question his level of expertise and how much weight to give his words, that's fine, but I don't think it was a flat out fallacious argument from authority.


Well, I can't really do that since I don't even know the identity of the authority in question. In fact, other than Theodore's word, I don't even know that this authority even exists or that he said anything of the sort. But it does't matter, I'm willing to take his word for it, since my criticism is that Theodore presented an argument from authority, not an argument from false authority.


There is some dismissal by them of some of the points against Chomsky, but no moreso than in any debate with some serious disagreements. I don't get why his detractors seem to be so hostile. (I do mean comparatively hostile, I'm not implying you're all brandishing knives and going 'arr!')

-Lith

Part of it has to do I think with the fact that these debates have been raging for a long time. For a fence sitter, I guess it could seem like a rather spontaneous flareup in hostility. But for me and I suspect a lot of other participants, Chomsky supporters should have been (and many certainly were) exposed to criticisms of Chomsky long before now. So when I see a Chomsky supporter ask for evidence that he was wrong, my instinct is that this person already has some passing knowlege of what Chomsky's critics attack him about, and is using this as an opening move in the debate rather than simply enquiring (as a fence sitter would) because they honestly don't know.

Perhaps this is not always the case, perhaps Chomsky supporters are less aware than I believe them to be with Chomsky's mistakes. If so, then I may appear a little too confrontational to them. But I remained quite civil in my debate with Theodore, for example, and will continue be civil. But with demon, I call him an idiot because I've been in plenty of debates with him on other topics, so I feel quite safe in coming to such a conclusion even from the outset, and his utter ignorance and denial displayed in this thread (such as insisting that an extrapolation is not a prediction) have born out that assesment.

[zenith-nadir]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita
Oh, and to address Zenith-Nadir, Chomsky didn't get it wrong on Cambodia. That is the most commonly referred to arguemtn, the fact is, he didn't get it wrong., Read up before you post here.
You are so far up Chomsky's colon you are beginning to sound like a religious zealot. Like I said, if Chomsky is this great mind why does the popular media shun him?, why isn't he an advisor to any government or corporation?

from : http://www.noam-chomsky.com/bio.htm During the year of 1955, he left his fellowship at Harvard and obtained a position at MIT where he taught for the next 19 years. He was also married to Carol Chomsky, a Professor at Harvard. Noam now holds Ferrari P. Ward Chair of Modern Languages and Linguistics. Between 1965 and1973, he played a major role in the American resistance against the Vietnamese policy of the United States Government, he published views on Southeast Asia and United States policy in magazines such as New York Review of Books and Ramparts and spent a week in North Vietnam just before Cambodian invasion. Truly, Noam Chomsky is an impressive man. Impressive?, What an ego. How the hell does he claim to be an expert on media if he hasn't spent one day working in the field? How the hell does he claim to be an expert on Cambodia if he spent one week in North Vietnam? Give me a break. :rolleyes:

[epepke]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
Now YOU are pulling a Chomsky. This is NOT what the UN said. The UN said that 7.5 million people were at risk, NOT that 7.5 million people were starving. Keep your facts straight.

You're trying valiantly, but I'm coming to the conclusion that you're simply arguing against people who could not think their way out of a paper bag.

7.5 million is probably about the size of Florida's workforce. Let's say that half of them have job security, either from holding a state position or having tenure or being in one of the fairly rare unionized positions. The other half, 3.75 million, are at risk of becoming unemployed at any time.

This does not mean that 3.75 million people are unemployed, or that there is a risk of 3.75 million people becoming emplyoyed. It means only that half of the people have no risk, and the rest are at some risk.

This is a totally analogous situation. Chomsky pulled a fast one, and his fanboys are gullible to the max.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by zenith-nadir
You are so far up Chomsky's colon you are beginning to sound like a religious zealot. Like I said, if Chomsky is this great mind why does the popular media shun him?, why isn't he an advisor to any government or corporation?

You are really pushing the trollish ad hominem attacks today.

from : http://www.noam-chomsky.com/bio.htm Impressive?, What an ego. How the hell does he claim to be an expert on media if he hasn't spent one day working in the field? How the hell does he claim to be an expert on Cambodia if he spent one week in North Vietnam? Give me a break. :rolleyes:

Back at you Zenith-Nadir, how can you argue that you are such an authority on anything political in Israel if you have never been there?

The reason he is able to claim authority is simple. He has done huge amounts of works in many fields. That, and he has also spent loads of time reading political literature, studying it, and analyzing it. Most of his influence in politics comes from the French Philosopher and Radical Rosseau.

That, and it might not hurt you to actually take a look at what the deffinition of a Linguist is:

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/3920/



Ps. Edward S. Herman was the primary person for writing Manufacturing Consent, not Noam Chomsky...

[Theodore Kurita]

Ok, fine...

Like I admitted earlier, Chomsky did get it wrong on the # of predicted casualties.

And to back my position up, you might want to take a look at Edward S. Herman's credentials.

He is more than qualified to analyze the media:



Edward Herman is a Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, an economist and media analyst, with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy and the media. He is the author of numerous books, including Corporate Control, Corporate Power (1981), Demonstration Elections (1984, with Frank Brodhead), The Real Terror Network (1982), Manufacturing Consent (1988, with Noam Chomsky), Triumph of the Market (1995), and The Global Media (1997, with Robert McChesney). He is just going to press with The Myth of The Liberal Media: an Edward Herman Reader (1999).

His homepage can be found here:

http://www.zmag.org/bios/homepage.cfm?authorID=72

[Mycroft]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita
He is more than qualified to analyze the media:


I don't know, the only thing that suggests that is the blurb in his biography that says he's a media analyst. What does that mean? A guy who watches TV a lot could claim to be a media analyst.

[zenith-nadir]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita
Back at you Zenith-Nadir, how can you argue that you are such an authority on anything political in Israel if you have never been there?My family is from Tsfat, I've spent more time sitting on an Israeli toilet than Chomsky ever spent in southeast Asia. Perhaps Theodore you just can't admit Chomsky conned you. He is a brilliant linguist.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by epepke You're trying valiantly, but I'm coming to the conclusion that you're simply arguing against people who could not think their way out of a paper bag.

That's certainly true of demon, I can't tell yet about Theodore, he's certainly obstinate but I know he isn't as dumb as demon. Took him a long time to admit Chomsky blew it on Afghanistan, and yet he still tried arguing that Chomsky wasn't wrong about Cambodia.

Ultimately, though, I'm not really trying to convince either demon or Theodore. Demon is a lost cause, I wouldn't want him on my side anyways, and I suspect that this isn't really going to do more than make Theodore a little more cautious about using Chomsky as a source. I'd be happy to be wrong about that, but I don't want people dropping in on this thread who aren't familiar with the issues to come away thinking that the Chomsky fans have a leg to stand on, and that's why I've hammered away at it.

[a_unique_person]

You are cherry picking, Chomsky is not some guru who always gets it right. But in the quote I provided, his analysis of the first gulf war applies perfectly to what has happened in GWII(The Empire Strikes Back).

[demon]

This guy, spattered in paint, walks into a bar with a miserable look on his face.
The barman asks him, 'what's wrong pal?'

'I'm tired -I've been painting all day and I'm pissed off with my boss.'

'Why?' says the guy behind the bar.

'I was told I have to paint 200 sheds by the end of the month -otherwise, when the rain comes- they're going to rot.'

'So what's the problem?' asks the barman.

'Well,' says the guy, 'I'll need 100 tins of paint to do the job but I've only got 50 and, the way things are looking, I'm not likely to get any more before the end of the month.'

'So,' says the barman, 'unless you get more paint, you're only going to be able to do half of them, and a load will rot, right?'

'That's right, mate,' says the painter, 'that exactly what I'

'NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!' pipes up the village idiot at the end of the bar, making a feeble attempt to stand, 'that ISN'T what he's saying! How DARE you make such an outrageous prediction -he never said that -all he said was that he had half the paint he needed to stop all the sheds from rotting. You can't say from that that half the sheds will rot -that's irresponsible. And it proves that, as a barman, you're always wrong!'

The man's temper fades as quickly as it erupted -a delighted look spreads across his rough-hewn features - as he finds a pretzel in a nearby ashtray. For the moment, at least, he has forgotten the barman and the painter are there.

The barman and the painter exchange looks.

'What's his problem?' asks the painter.

'Oh, he does this from time to time -I let him do it because he drinks a lot and most of my other patrons think he's a "character" even though he cant argue his way out of a paper bag'.

'So why does he come here, if he doesn't like you?' asks the painter.

'I've often wondered,' says the barman with a shrug, 'so you wanna beer? we're having a special, a dollar a beer.'

'Why not,' says the painter, 'I've got two dollars on me.'

'So you can have two beers,' the barman recklessly extrapolates.

'NO NO NO NO NO NO!........'

[demon]

Theodore Kurita don`t be suprised by the ad hominems...what Chomsky says and what he doesn`t say are pretty obvious to any rational person.
The fanboys of the great USA get a bit annoyed if you disrupt their work of writing the 21st Century version of "The White Man`s Burden"

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Mycroft


I don't know, the only thing that suggests that is the blurb in his biography that says he's a media analyst. What does that mean? A guy who watches TV a lot could claim to be a media analyst.

He is also an economist.

Most of Manufacturing Consent doesn't argue a shady backroom conspiracy that makes the media Conservative and self serving.


The bulk of the argument is that market forces make the immense institutions of media.

Under these immense media conglomerations it is easy to Propagandize the Media so to speak.

Look at the 2 articles that I posted earlier.

They can elaborate on it more than I could.

Here is an example of his cited evidence:

http://human-nature.com/reason/01/eherman.html


And here is an article done on him:

http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=183

Herman was the creator of the Propaganda Model, not Chomsky.

For more info on Herman, visit this website:

http://www.google.com/univ/upenn?q=Edward+Herman&site=search&hl=en&lr=&safe=off

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by zenith-nadir
My family is from Tsfat, I've spent more time sitting on an Israeli toilet than Chomsky ever spent in southeast Asia. Perhaps Theodore you just can't admit Chomsky conned you. He is a brilliant linguist.

That means you only have your families point of view.

Still, you can't get beyond the trollish urge to post ad hominems...

sad...

[zenith-nadir]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita That means you only have your families point of view.You just pulled a Chomsky. The fact you omitted in your analysis wasOriginally posted by Zenith-Nadir I've spent more time sitting on an Israeli toilet than Chomsky ever spent in southeast Asia.

[Ziggurat]

As if to prove my point...

Originally posted by demon
This guy, spattered in paint, walks into a bar with a miserable look on his face.

remaining rant removed for space


None of this really means anything to the problem at hand. Why? Because we know Chomsky was wrong, we know know that millions of Afghanis did NOT die, and we know this because it already happened. And no amount of arguing about why he SHOULD have been right will change the fact that he was NOT right. So you've gone from Chomsky only quoting others (false) to Chomsky "extrapolating" and not "predicting" (no difference) to his "extrapolation" being the only logical conclusion (irrelevant, since it was wrong anyways). So what excuse will you move onto next? Even AUP has the sense to not back Chomsky on everything. Face it: Chomsky was wrong. So unless you can find 3 million dead Afghanis hidden away somewhere, your protestations simply don't matter.

[demon]

"Even AUP has the sense to not back Chomsky on everything"

I think you mistake my motives here...you are assuming that I think Chomsky is right on everything. I don`t, and never said that.
However, I`m not going to go along with a deliberate misreading of what he actually said and meant so that a cheap smear goes unchallenged.
I won`t reiterate my position on this, I think we both know where we stand on the matter.
You know, it puzzles me that you will go to such lengths to smear/prove Chomsky wrong when you remain an apologist for those who certainly made predictions, told blatent lies, concocted a mythical scenario of why an invasion of a sovereign country was necessary and actually participate in spreading those myths yourself.
One does have to wonder.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by demon

You know, it puzzles me that you will go to such lengths to smear/prove Chomsky wrong when you remain an apologist for those who certainly made predictions, told blatent lies, concocted a mythical scenario of why an invasion of a sovereign country was necessary and actually participate in spreading those myths yourself.
One does have to wonder.

Ah yes, when you're losing the argument, change the subject. Now we know what's next.

As for your accusations against me, I presume you mean my support of the decision to invade Iraq. But there you run into a problem, if you're being honest (never stopped you before), which is that my reasons for supporting the invasion need not be identical to Bush's reasons. I do not expect everyone to agree with my reasoning, but nothing about my motivations has been shown to involve any myths. I supported an action, not a person, so I'm not sure who you think I'm appologising for. And as for spreading myths, I think you'd be hard pressed to find any myths that I spread. You will I'm sure bring up a single incorrect statement I made that you've brung up before, and try to use this as proof that I've been "spreading myths". Not much good, though, when it wasn't central to my point at the time and since I've corrected it anyways. Got anything else, synonym-boy?

[demon]

"Ah yes, when you're losing the argument, change the subject. Now we know what's next."

I think your resort to ad hominems from the very begining say more about that remark than my last post and I`m not the only one who noticed it.

As for losing the argument? You totally failed to show Chomsky "predicted" anything. If you would like to do that then I`d be interested so lets get back to the subject by all means.

Here's the kind of thing Chomsky was quoting. Fairly straightforward to find. Just typed "afghanistan starvation 7 million un" into google. First thing I found was this....
"The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan worsened during the last week, with the UN estimating that almost two-thirds of Afghan urban dwellers have fled into the countryside for fear of a U.S. bombing campaign. UNHCR's worst-case scenarios forecast 1.5 million displaced persons in the country, of whom 1 million are expected to head towards Pakistan, 400,000 towards Iran, 50,000 towards Turkmenistan, and the same number towards Tajikistan. Over 7 million Afghans are said to be in danger of starving this winter. On 27 September UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed to donor countries for $584 million to avert catastrophe, AFP reported, while noting that the most dire predictions of refugee torrents have yet to be realized. "

There's much more of course.

What you ignore for expediency is Chomsky's purpose. He is, above all else, a media commentator. His point is that expressions of concern by serious agencies are completely ignored by the mainstream media. He's not making predictions. He's using other groups/people's concerns to make a point about the response from the west. Which is negligable. That's his point but then you know that but to acknowledge it means you have to bring a little morality into the discussion but you can`t do that when your real desire is to crush another countries for selfish gain who had no way to defend themselves. You have shares in Halliburton by any chance?
Every day this fraudulent fiasco continues and more and more evidence of the west`s down right hypocrisy and deceit come to light the less places you`ll find to hide yourself and your sorry excuses for aggression.

As for your myths not being central to your point at the time you use them, that still begs the question of why you indulge in them at all. They must be there to add credence to whatever else you are rabbiting on about so I guess we are entitled to ask where does the myth end and a touch of reality kick in. Hmmm, hard one to figure out with you (...oh yeah, nearly forgot...toppling of Saddams statue was everything the media told us it was...good one...that would be the same Saddam who kicked out the weapons inspectors of course LOL).

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by demon
As for your myths not being central to your point at the time you use them, that still begs the question of why you indulge in them at all.


Well, for starters, all you have is a single misstatement I ever made (that Saddam kicked out the inspectors, when he only stopped cooperating with them so that staying in the country became useless). One misstatement. Not plural. Why did I make a misstatement? Perhaps because I'm human, and I occasionally make mistakes. But unlike you AND Chomsky, I admit and correct mistakes when I make them. You're stuck on repeat with yours (Chomsky made an extrapolation, an extrapolation is not a prediction, therefore he didn't make a prediction - get a dictionary for cryin out loud).


(...oh yeah, nearly forgot...toppling of Saddams statue was everything the media told us it was...good one...that would be the same Saddam who kicked out the weapons inspectors of course LOL).

Ah yes. This is a funny sort of accusation. What I reported regarding the statue was that I saw interviews with some of the soldiers involved, and their description of the events matched the initial media portrayal. I further said that these soldiers were credible to me. What do you have to argue against that? Nothing but inuendo - you're not even bold enough to put forward what you really think happened, because that will only force you to concede that you have no evidence for your fantasy version. Is it possible I'm wrong in my assesment, that it's not only the media lying to us but the soldiers involved are also complicit? In principle, yes, and in principle it's possible Chomsky has sexual fantasies involving Hello Kitty and Oscar the Grouch. But there's no evidence for either. So how does my believing what a soldier says about his own experiences count as more of a myth than your paranoid rantings?

[demon]

"all you have is a single misstatement I ever made"...my, how modest of you! Only one misstatement! LOL

"I further said that these soldiers were credible to me. What do you have to argue against that? Nothing but inuendo -"

Yeah, credible to you! Like anything the media tells you...weapons inspectors kicked out, the toppling of Saddams statue (not the army by the way but the Marines...get your facts right)..anything is credible to you so long as it involves a reason/justification to bomb someone.

"What I reported regarding the statue was that I saw interviews with some of the soldiers involved..."
Oh well than, forgive me for questioning you...you saw interviews with the soldiers involved.
I saw interviews and some footage about Big Foot...it`s all real I tell ya, all real!

[zenith-nadir]

Originally posted by demon
As for losing the argument? You totally failed to show Chomsky "predicted" anything. If you would like to do that then I`d be interested so lets get back to the subject by all means. I guess Demon didn't read the first few pages of this thread... Originally posted by demon
What you ignore for expediency is Chomsky's purpose. He is, above all else, a media commentator. His point is that expressions of concern by serious agencies are completely ignored by the mainstream media.Chomsky has never worked one day in his life in the media, yet he is self-proclaimed "expert" on media. Chomsky spend one week in Vietnam, yet he is a self-proclaimed expert on Southeast Asia. :rolleyes:

I have never built a Formula One car, worked on an F1 team or driven a F1 car, but I've been to a couple races, so by Chomsky's standards I can call myself an expert on Formula One. ;) Originally posted by demon
He's not making predictions. He's using other groups/people's concerns to make a point about the response from the west. Which is negligable. That's his point but then you know that but to acknowledge it means you have to bring a little morality into the discussion but you can`t do that when your real desire is to crush another countries for selfish gain who had no way to defend themselves. You have shares in Halliburton by any chance?Chomsky.....er...ahhh...nevermind, what about evil Halliburton and the West! Demon is the atypical Chomskyite....

[demon]

ZN:
" I have never built a Formula One car, worked on an F1 team or driven a F1 car, but I've been to a couple races, so by Chomsky's standards I can call myself an expert on Formula One."

You never met Moses, Abraham, Solomon, or King David either but that doesn`t stop you from using them as some sort of provinance for a dodgy land deal.
Get a grip ZN, this might come as a shock to you but Chomsky`s a little more reliable than the Old Testament and ipso facto you.

[zenith-nadir]

Originally posted by demon
Get a grip ZN, this might come as a shock to you but Chomsky`s a little more reliable than the Old Testament and ipso facto you. Please, continue...

:dl:

[Barkhorn1x]

Originally posted by demon
"However, I`m not going to go along with a deliberate misreading of what he actually said and meant so that a cheap smear goes unchallenged.
A cheap smear should never go unchallenged - that is why we critize Chomsky.

You know, it puzzles me that you will go to such lengths to smear/prove Chomsky wrong when you remain an apologist for those who certainly made predictions, told blatent lies, concocted a mythical scenario of why an invasion of a sovereign country was necessary and actually participate in spreading those myths yourself.
One does have to wonder.

Who's an apologist?? What you fail to grasp is the point that Chomsky is an anti-American cretin who will ONLY quote from those sources that back up his tired "Evil American Empire" screed. He offers no balanced viewpoint on any subject one can care to name. He is intellectually dishonest - end of story.

Barkhorn.

[Barkhorn1x]

Originally posted by demon
"What you ignore for expediency is Chomsky's purpose. He is, above all else, a media commentator. His point is that expressions of concern by serious agencies are completely ignored by the mainstream media. He's not making predictions. He's using other groups/people's concerns to make a point about the response from the west. Which is negligable. That's his point but then you know that but to acknowledge it means you have to bring a little morality into the discussion but you can`t do that when your real desire is to crush another countries for selfish gain who had no way to defend themselves. You have shares in Halliburton by any chance?
Every day this fraudulent fiasco continues and more and more evidence of the west`s down right hypocrisy and deceit come to light the less places you`ll find to hide yourself and your sorry excuses for aggression.



Chomsky and his "cause" are just SOOOO Noble! What a bunch of agitprop ***** devoid of any real content. :rolleyes:

Hey, can you and Chomsky please give us back the word "Progressive"? It's been kidnapped by you fascistic leftist group thinkers for far too long.

Barkhorn.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by zenith-nadir
Please, continue...


You know that you have referred to the Old Testament more than once here. Each time, you hve quickly realised that you made a big mistake.

[zenith-nadir]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
You know that you have referred to the Old Testament more than once here. Each time, you hve quickly realised that you made a big mistake. Attribute whatever emotion or reasoning you need for me to "feel" to justify your sad agenda, no skin off my nose.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by zenith-nadir
Attribute whatever emotion or reasoning you need for me to "feel" to justify your sad agenda, no skin off my nose.

You have quoted me using the word "feel". I cannot see where I have used this word.

[Skeptic]

This thread, where the Chomskiyites will absolutely, positively, simply not admit Chomsky was wrong about anything, is beginning to look like Monty Python's "Dead Parrot Sketch":

CHOMSKY OPPONENT (Annoyed): Hello, I like to complain about this prediction, which I have just read in Chomsky's work, a book I had bought not an hour ago in this very store.
CHOMSKY SUPPORTER: Yes, what's wrong with it?
OPPONENT: I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's totally false, that's what's wrong with it.
SUPPORTER: No, no, no. It's not wrong. It's just pining for the fjor--I mean, it's roughly true!
O: No, it isn't!
S: Yes, it is!
O: Look here, he said 3,500,000 Afghans will die from deliberate US-planned starvation.
S (Apologetically): Well... that's SORT OF correct... isn't it?
O: No!
S: The UN said the same thing!
O It didn't!
S: It did!
O: It didn't!
S: It did!
O (Exasperated): Listen, mate. I took the liberty of examining the "UN prediction" in Chomsky's book. It turns out it's a photocopy of the back of a cereal package, with "CHOMSKY IS A GENIUS" written on it with a felt-tip pen!
S: Well... that's he's reasonable interpretation of what the UN said.
O (Slowly): My friend, this prediction will not become true if you electrocute it with 30,000 volts. It has kicked the bucket; it has passed away. It's bleedin' demised! THIS (throws Chomsky's book on table) IS A WRONG PREDICTION!!!

(Silence)

S: OK, so I'll replace it.
O: With what?
S: A different Chomsky book; this time, about the evil media!
O (Skeptically): Does it make testable predictions?
S: Not really.
O: SO IT'S NOT MUCH OF A BLOODY REPLACEMENT, IS IT??!!

[Skeptic]

He's not making predictions.

Oh? What part of "millions of Afghans will die by deliberate US planning" didn't you understand? If that's not a prediction, what it? Didn't happen, did it?

You have shares in Halliburton by any chance?

(snort) Typical cultic mentality: if you criticize the guru, you are probably part of the evil conspiracy to hide the truth.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by demon
"all you have is a single misstatement I ever made"...my, how modest of you! Only one misstatement! LOL

"I further said that these soldiers were credible to me. What do you have to argue against that? Nothing but inuendo -"

Yeah, credible to you!


Yup, you got nothing but inuendo on that one. No facts, no argument, your opinion really only comes down to "it can't possibly be so, I just know it, because the US is so terrible they couldn't possibly do something good!"


Like anything the media tells you...weapons inspectors kicked out, the toppling of Saddams statue (not the army by the way but the Marines...get your facts right)


Oh my god! It was the Marines and not the Army! Why, that changes everything! I stand corrected, I didn't track down which branch it was because I didn't think it utimately mattered (does it? Are you arguing the point to be pedantic or because there's an important distinction? Cause if we're just being pedantic, I could point out your misuse of the phrase "begs the question" above, but that's not important either). So now you've got two things against me. Congratulations, demon. I doubt anyone is impressed.

[Skeptic]

His point is that expressions of concern by serious agencies are completely ignored by the mainstream media. He's not making predictions.

Oh REALLY? So if 3.5 million people HAD starved in Afghanistan, Chomsky would say, "well, I said something about that, but it wasn't a prediction"? Of course not. We wouldn't hear the end of how correct he was in his prediction.

Chomsky--and his fans--are pulling an Edward, so to speak: when his predictions are correct, he's a sage and a genius; when they are wrong, they "weren't really predictions" so they don't count.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Skeptic
This thread, where the Chomskiyites will absolutely, positively, simply not admit Chomsky was wrong about anything, is beginning to look like Monty Python's "Dead Parrot Sketch":

CHOMSKY OPPONENT (Annoyed): Hello, I like to complain about this prediction, which I have just read in Chomsky's work, a book I had bought not an hour ago in this very store.
CHOMSKY SUPPORTER: Yes, what's wrong with it?
OPPONENT: I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's totally false, that's what's wrong with it.
SUPPORTER: No, no, no. It's not wrong. It's just pining for the fjor--I mean, it's roughly true!
O: No, it isn't!
S: Yes, it is!
O: Look here, he said 3,500,000 Afghans will die from deliberate US-planned starvation.
S (Apologetically): Well... that's SORT OF correct... isn't it?
O: No!
S: The UN said the same thing!
O It didn't!
S: It did!
O: It didn't!
S: It did!
O (Exasperated): Listen, mate. I took the liberty of examining the "UN prediction" in Chomsky's book. It turns out it's a photocopy of the back of a cereal package, with "CHOMSKY IS A GENIUS" written on it with a felt-tip pen!
S: Well... that's he's reasonable interpretation of what the UN said.
O (Slowly): My friend, this prediction will not become true if you electrocute it with 30,000 volts. It has kicked the bucket; it has passed away. It's bleedin' demised! THIS (throws Chomsky's book on table) IS A WRONG PREDICTION!!!

(Silence)

S: OK, so I'll replace it.
O: With what?
S: A different Chomsky book; this time, about the evil media!
O (Skeptically): Does it make testable predictions?
S: Not really.
O: SO IT'S NOT MUCH OF A BLOODY REPLACEMENT, IS IT??!!


Sheeesh...

Skeptic, your name will have to be changed to AntiSkeptic if you keep basing your arguements on anecodotes, ad hominems, and strawmen like this arguement is.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Barkhorn1x


Chomsky and his "cause" are just SOOOO Noble! What a bunch of agitprop s**te devoid of any real content. :rolleyes:

Hey, can you and Chomsky please give us back the word "Progressive"? It's been kidnapped by you fascistic leftist group thinkers for far too long.

Barkhorn.


Barkhorn1 do you have anything to say that does not consist of ad hominem attacks?

You come off as being extremely crass.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by zenith-nadir
Please, continue...

:dl:

:rolleyes:

Ad hominem.


I still haven't managed to see any post by you where you haven't posted some variant of a logical fallacy.

The only person that I have seen in this debate that has had ANY good debating skills would have to be Ziggurat.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Skeptic
His point is that expressions of concern by serious agencies are completely ignored by the mainstream media. He's not making predictions.

Oh REALLY? So if 3.5 million people HAD starved in Afghanistan, Chomsky would say, "well, I said something about that, but it wasn't a prediction"? Of course not. We wouldn't hear the end of how correct he was in his prediction.

Chomsky--and his fans--are pulling an Edward, so to speak: when his predictions are correct, he's a sage and a genius; when they are wrong, they "weren't really predictions" so they don't count.

:rolleyes:

Again, "Skeptic" you are just pulling an ad hominem with a strawman.

[corplinx]

Originally posted by demon
Theodore Kurita don`t be suprised by the ad hominems...what Chomsky says and what he doesn`t say are pretty obvious to any rational person.
The fanboys of the great USA get a bit annoyed if you disrupt their work of writing the 21st Century version of "The White Man`s Burden"


I concur.

I have converted into a chomskyite, let me copy and paste my reply.

You are just not smart enough to understand what Chomsky writes. Your opposition to his teachings validates his views.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by corplinx



I concur.

I have converted into a chomskyite, let me copy and paste my reply.

You are just not smart enough to understand what Chomsky writes. Your opposition to his teachings validates his views.

:rolleyes:

Again, corplinx you go down to using a Strawman with an Ad Hominem.

For Cripes SAKE!!!

If I see 1 more logical fallacy that is an ad hominem or a strawman, I will have an aneurism burst here....

[Skeptic]

Skeptic, your name will have to be changed to AntiSkeptic if you keep basing your arguements on anecodotes, ad hominems, and strawmen

You really should stop calling everything that criticizes Chomsky either you disagree with either "ad hominem" or "strawman". These name-callings only serve to show that you have a serious problem with hero-worship.

A "strawman" argument is one the author didn't make, which is falsely ascribed to him and then demolished. Clearly, you consider any analysis of Chomsky's views that entrails concluding he was wrong about somthing as a "strawman" argument that couldn't possibly be what Chomsky really meant. But this is only a "strawman" if you accept that Chomsky couldn't possibly mean something that turned out to be wrong!

Similarly with your "ad hominem" claims. It means "to the person"--to attack a person's unsavory character instead of his arguments. You interpret any argument critical of Chomsky's views as ad hominem, even if it says nothing at all about him, only that his arguments are wrong. But proving someone's arguments wrong is not an ad hominem, unless you consider it a terrible insult, lese majeste, to even point out that his honorable genius Noam Chomsky is wrong about something.

You see ad hominems and starawmen arguments everywhere simply because your hero-worship of Chomsky makes it seem that any argument against him is one or the other or both.

[demon]

Skeptic:
"Oh? What part of "millions of Afghans will die by deliberate US planning" didn't you understand? If that's not a prediction, what it? Didn't happen, did it?"


"millions of Afghans will die by deliberate US planning"?

You put this statement in quotes like someone actually said that...as Ziggurat might say, from whose backside did you pull that quote from? Don`t tell me, is it another made up quote attributed to The Fool?

[corplinx]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita


If I see 1 more logical fallacy that is an ad hominem or a strawman, I will have an aneurism burst here....

I have converted into a chomskyite, let me copy and paste my reply.

You are just not smart enough to understand what Chomsky writes. Your opposition to his teachings validates his views.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Skeptic
Skeptic, your name will have to be changed to AntiSkeptic if you keep basing your arguements on anecodotes, ad hominems, and strawmen

You really should stop calling everything that criticizes Chomsky either you disagree with either "ad hominem" or "strawman". These name-callings only serve to show that you have a serious problem with hero-worship.

A "strawman" argument is one the author didn't make, which is falsely ascribed to him and then demolished. Clearly, you consider any analysis of Chomsky's views that entrails concluding he was wrong about somthing as a "strawman" argument that couldn't possibly be what Chomsky really meant. But this is only a "strawman" if you accept that Chomsky couldn't possibly mean something that turned out to be wrong!

Similarly with your "ad hominem" claims. It means "to the person"--to attack a person's unsavory character instead of his arguments. You interpret any argument critical of Chomsky's views as ad hominem, even if it says nothing at all about him, only that his arguments are wrong. But proving someone's arguments wrong is not an ad hominem, unless you consider it a terrible insult, lese majeste, to even point out that his honorable genius Noam Chomsky is wrong about something.

You see ad hominems and starawmen arguments everywhere simply because your hero-worship of Chomsky makes it seem that any argument against him is one or the other or both.

The whole argument you are makin here is even a Strawman, a mock position you created on your own.

Look at Carl Sagan's deffinition.


I am NOT a Chosmky Worshipper!

I do agree that he has managed to predict actions of the United States and other nations correct several times.

I don't agree with all of his positions.

I don't agree on everything he says.

I do however find some of his theoretical frameworks applicable like, The Propaganda Model.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by corplinx


I have converted into a chomskyite, let me copy and paste my reply.

You are just not smart enough to understand what Chomsky writes. Your opposition to his teachings validates his views.

Ok, now you are just spamming this thread now.

If you don't have anything of substance to say STFU!

[corplinx]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita

If you don't have anything of substance to say STFU!

One word: gotcha!

Besides, its as much spam as the posts that yourself, demon, and AUP have made basically stating the same thing. Don't be mad because I took your bag.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by corplinx


One word: gotcha!

Besides, its as much spam as the posts that yourself, demon, and AUP have made basically stating the same thing. Don't be mad because I took your bag.

Nope..

One word, STRAWMAN!!!

And in case Skeptic is wanting to challenge the very deffinition of what it is, he has to take it to Admin Pyrrho:


Straw Man
Committed when a conclusion or premise is misinterpreted, misrepresented, or invented, and an attempt is made to refute the misinterpreted, misrepresented, or invented conclusion or premise. Example: “In your analysis of fried eggs, you said that brown eggs taste better than white eggs. Obviously you believe that white chickens are inferior to brown chickens. Well, genetic studies of all kinds of chickens show that brown chickens and white chickens are equally good.”


That comes from this thread:

http://host.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37460

[demon]

epepke:
"You're trying valiantly, but I'm coming to the conclusion that you're simply arguing against people who could not think their way out of a paper bag."

Not so profound considering the following:

"7.5 million is probably about the size of Florida's workforce. Let's say that half of them have job security, either from holding a state position or having tenure or being in one of the fairly rare unionized positions. The other half, 3.75 million, are at risk of becoming unemployed at any time.

This does not mean that 3.75 million people are unemployed, or that there is a risk of 3.75 million people becoming emplyoyed. It means only that half of the people have no risk, and the rest are at some risk.

This is a totally analogous situation. Chomsky pulled a fast one, and his fanboys are gullible to the max."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OK that is your analogy...here’s my explanation of why this analogy fails.

3.75 million are at risk of unemployment. However, this not the same as saying that there is a risk that 3.75 million will lose their jobs. This is because, in that group of 3 million, the risk of unemployment is not uniform and it is not dependant on the same cause. In other words, they do not all work for the same employer and any downturn in the economy will not have a uniform effect on all firms (obviously some are bigger than others and they vary in their financial situation). It is not, therefore, reasonable to expect that all of those 3.75 million will lose their jobs and, of those that do, many can find new jobs fairly quickly. In a nutshell, 3.75 million share a collective risk but the risk for each individual is not the same, because their circumstances are different and their employment is not dependant on a single source.

So, if Chomsky were have to said that 3.75 million people are at risk of unemployment and, therefore, 3.75 million would lose their jobs it would be irresponsible. This is because there is no 1 to 1 straightforward causality. Of the 3.75 million at risk, it is unreasonable to believe that all or even most would lose their jobs. There are too many individual companies and sets of circumstances at play.

Now the Afghan example.

The UN states that 7.5 million are at risk of starvation without outside assistance. Remember that the UN and others were already conducting a massive aid programme because there were originally 5 million dependant on external food supplies to avoid starvation. The effects of the imminent bombing (internal displacement etc) had added a further 2.5 million.

The UN say that, because of US actions, they are able to feed only half that number. Therefore, they can only help half that 7.5 million. Half of that 7.5 million is roughly 3-4 million. This was Chomsky’s extrapolation, based on the UN figures. He predicts nothing, just does the maths. Is this acceptable? Of course it is.

Here’s why:

7.5 million are dependant on external support -it is their ONLY source of food. For the relevant matter (starvation) the circumstances of each individual in that 7.5 million are the same -they are ALL dependant on outside food aid. Therefore, unlike the Floridian example, the factor upon which they are dependant IS THE SAME. They all depend on external food aid in a way that the 3 million Floridians do NOT depend on a single source for their employment. As I made clear days ago in my discussion of your road traffic example, your analogies don’t work because they don’t involve the same causal relationships -and that is the key to the math.

At the time the UN made its prediction and the time Chomsky quoted it, there was no talk of any provision to feed those Afghan’s who weren’t receiving aid and had no other source of food. The US had announced what it was about to do and the evident consequence AT THE TIME was that 3-4 million would starve unless something else was done. However, nobody was discussing that something else -it wasn’t even an issue- and this was Chomsky’s crucial point about the morality of western ‘civilisation’. The US was making plans which, according to the UN (for convenience, when I say UN, read UN and aid agencies working under its umbrella) would leave them unable to feed 3-4 million people who had no other source of food and the NYT was able to report this in passing.

As it turned out, during the next few months the various aid agencies were able to launch large appeals and get aid in and save a lot of lives (we don’t know how many died). But at the time the US plans were discussed, no thought was given to those 3-4 million. That was Chomsky’s point, he made no prediction, he simply drew attention to a fact: that the US was planning an action which -according to the UN- would leave the UN unable to feed 3-4 million people who were dependent solely on the UN to be fed. The US, at the time this planning was discussed made no statement about if or how it would compensate for this but, crucially, the issue was not even discussed. In other words the US said ‘we are going to do X’, the UN said ‘if X happens, 3-4 million people will have no food.’ Not only did the US not say what it was going to do (if anything) to deal with this but nobody EVEN asked. And that was Chomsky’s point.

It was said a while ago that the US might have planned in secret for its own aid programme to ameliorate the effects of the bombing, or that it might have expected the aid agencies to have done what they did, or that they may have had a different assessment of the situation. All of this may be true but it is irrelevant because the US’s public position did not refute the UN’s calculations and the media did not ask them if they could. The point is that, on the face of the evidence publicly available at the time, 3-4 million people were likely to starve and NOBODY in the intellectual culture cared. The US didn’t have to say whether they had a plan to aid the starving or whether they even accepted the UN’s predictions -because nobody cared enough to ask.

This has to be the last time I try an explain this. I really can’t see any way of making it clearer and if people still don’t agree then we’re going to have to agree to disagree.

[Shane Costello]

So did anyone starve to death in Afghanistan in the end?

[corplinx]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita


Nope..

One word, STRAWMAN!!!

And in case Skeptic is wanting to challenge the very deffinition of what it is, he has to take it to Admin Pyrrho:




Actually, I am not argueing with you. I have not constructed a strawman and then proceeded to attack the strawman. I have merely parodied the repeatedly demonstable behavior of you and others.

Now I just need to parody you screaming STRAWMAN over and over and I will have summed up both of your contributions to this forum.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Shane Costello
So did anyone starve to death in Afghanistan in the end?

Yep.

[Mycroft]

Originally posted by a_unique_person


Yep.

Really?

Do you have any sources that would show how many and when?

[epepke]

Originally posted by demon
The UN say that, because of US actions, they are able to feed only half that number. Therefore, they can only help half that 7.5 million. Half of that 7.5 million is roughly 3-4 million. This was Chomsky’s extrapolation, based on the UN figures. He predicts nothing, just does the maths. Is this acceptable? Of course it is.

Thank you for taking the time to make such a lengthy reply.

To save nit-picking, I'll just say that where your argument falls down is that the UN and the US government are not the only sources of food relief. In other words, Afghanistan, the UN, and the US do not exhaustively partition all of the sources of relief.

I remember the Red Cross/Red Crescent announcing that they had gotten all the food they needed for relief during the winter actually into and distributed within Afghanistan two weeks ahead of schedule. This was at the time when people were claiming that the US was blockading food shipments. That would have been a pretty pathetic blockade, nicht wahr?

The Red Cross/Red Crescent is the tip of the iceburg when it comes to relief organizations.

This has to be the last time I try an explain this. I really can’t see any way of making it clearer and if people still don’t agree then we’re going to have to agree to disagree.

That's a relief. But I'm going to leave a parting shot. Chomsky was as flat-out wrong about his predictions as Bill O'Reilly was about WMDs. But even such a toad as Bill O'Reilly has admitted publically that he was wrong. Chomsky and his supporters, such as yourself, hide behind these elaborate justifications.

This is every bit as disgusting to me as when, during the 1980s, Republicans glossed over the wrongness of Iran-Contra, for approximately the same reasons.

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by demon
The UN states that 7.5 million are at risk of starvation without outside assistance. Remember that the UN and others were already conducting a massive aid programme because there were originally 5 million dependant on external food supplies to avoid starvation. The effects of the imminent bombing (internal displacement etc) had added a further 2.5 million.

The UN say that, because of US actions, they are able to feed only half that number. Therefore, they can only help half that 7.5 million.

No, the UN never said that. Chomsky quotes sources that said that the food aid was halved. But again, without much more information (such as how much of these people's food was coming from internal sources), we simply cannot conclude what Chomsky does without making some assumptions. And considering how wrong Chomsky turned out to be, it should be apparent (but probably won't be to you) that at least some of Chomsky's assumptions were wrong.


Here’s why:

7.5 million are dependant on external support -it is their ONLY source of food.


Except that isn't what "dependent" means. Some of them undoubtably did depend entirely on external food supplies. But others likely got some food locally, but not enough to survive long-term, making them dependent on external aid. People are also able to survive for finite periods of time on food intake that would starve them to death if it continued indefinitely - people do not starve to death overnight. So a cut of half in external aid doesn't necessarily translate into an overall halving of food intake, or even that half the people will die (Chomsky's claim). These other factors involved cannot be ignored, but Chomsky gives no information about these factors.


At the time the UN made its prediction and the time Chomsky quoted it,


Once again, demon, NOBODY that Chomsky quotes ever gave the 3-4 million number that Chomsky does. Therefore he is not quoting them on this number. All you would have to do to disprove me is find a UN or major aid agency that gives the number of 3-4 million before Chomsky did (I won't count any group that might be quoting Chomsky instead of the other way around), but of course you haven't done that because you can't do that. That you refuse to see this is why the Monty Python dead parot sketch was brought up - you continue to insist on defying the obvious reality of the situation.


This has to be the last time I try an explain this. I really can’t see any way of making it clearer and if people still don’t agree then we’re going to have to agree to disagree.

"That parrot isn't dead."

[Barkhorn1x]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita



Barkhorn1 do you have anything to say that does not consist of ad hominem attacks?

You come off as being extremely crass.

Me crass Teddy?? Ah pshaw.
:p

And this from a guy who posted "STFU" about 2 post later.

:rolleyes:

Barkhorn.

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by corplinx


One word: gotcha!

Besides, its as much spam as the posts that yourself, demon, and AUP have made basically stating the same thing. Don't be mad because I took your bag.

Crap.

[Skeptic]

["That parrot isn't dead."

You sure get that feeling arguing with these guys, don't you?

"Chomsky wasn't wrong, he was just pining for Afghanistan..."

[a_unique_person]

I have already distinguished between the predictions and the analysis. I provided a quote of his analysis from GWI. It is spot on, especially given the events of GWII.

Many commentators had egg on their face when GWII was over quickly and easily. They had predicted a more traumatic campaign. They can now wipe the egg off their faces, Dubya needs it all. The battle for phase 1 of the war was won hands down by the US, (as I predicted), but (As I asked), where was the plan for post victory. It didn't exist in any meaningful sense, as events have proven.

[Skeptic]

I have already distinguished between the predictions and the analysis. I provided a quote of his analysis from GWI. It is spot on, especially given the events of GWII.

Actually, when a theory--like Chomsky's--can only be applied post hoc to "explain" and "analyze' things that already occured, but fails miserably in making any predictions, that's a very strong sign that the theory is merely a unfalsifiable dogma that "explains" what happened merely because it "explains" everything and therefore "explains" nothing.

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by Skeptic
I have already distinguished between the predictions and the analysis. I provided a quote of his analysis from GWI. It is spot on, especially given the events of GWII.

Actually, when a theory--like Chomsky's--can only be applied post hoc to "explain" and "analyze' things that already occured, but fails miserably in making any predictions, that's a very strong sign that the theory is merely a unfalsifiable dogma that "explains" what happened merely because it "explains" everything and therefore "explains" nothing.

No Skeptic...

Did you read any of the article that AUP posted earlier.

Chomsky CLEARLY PREDICTED that Gulf War II was going to happen.

And guess what, it DID!

[a_unique_person]

Originally posted by Skeptic
I have already distinguished between the predictions and the analysis. I provided a quote of his analysis from GWI. It is spot on, especially given the events of GWII.

Actually, when a theory--like Chomsky's--can only be applied post hoc to "explain" and "analyze' things that already occured, but fails miserably in making any predictions, that's a very strong sign that the theory is merely a unfalsifiable dogma that "explains" what happened merely because it "explains" everything and therefore "explains" nothing.

Chomsky was analysing GWI. Guess what, his analysis pretty well sums up GWII. Not post hoc at all.

[Skeptic]

No Skeptic...

Did you read any of the article that AUP posted earlier.

Yes, I did.

Chomsky CLEARLY PREDICTED that Gulf War II was going to happen.

No, he didn't. There isn't anything in that 1993 article (I presume you mean this one: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-4-1.htmlsaying ) that predicts a second gulf war.

All it does is use his usual "I'll tell you what the REAL REASONS for X is!" brand of "analysis" to "expalin" the first gulf war. Where is the prediction, exactly?

Chomsky was analysing GWI. Guess what, his analysis pretty well sums up GWII. Not post hoc at all.

My point exactly; his "analysis" fits with GWII for the same reason it fits with GWI and with every possible war at all: it's unfalsifiable dogma that "explains" everything.

But he DIDN'T predict the second gulf war. It's just that his unfalsifiable analysis is of the one-size-fits-all-possible-events type that would explain any war that occured.

[demon]

epepke...
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by demon
The UN say that, because of US actions, they are able to feed only half that number. Therefore, they can only help half that 7.5 million. Half of that 7.5 million is roughly 3-4 million. This was Chomsky’s extrapolation, based on the UN figures. He predicts nothing, just does the maths. Is this acceptable? Of course it is.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for taking the time to make such a lengthy reply.

To save nit-picking, I'll just say that where your argument falls down is that the UN and the US government are not the only sources of food relief. In other words, Afghanistan, the UN, and the US do not exhaustively partition all of the sources of relief.

I remember the Red Cross/Red Crescent announcing that they had gotten all the food they needed for relief during the winter actually into and distributed within Afghanistan two weeks ahead of schedule. This was at the time when people were claiming that the US was blockading food shipments. That would have been a pretty pathetic blockade, nicht wahr?

The Red Cross/Red Crescent is the tip of the iceburg when it comes to relief organizations.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This has to be the last time I try an explain this. I really can’t see any way of making it clearer and if people still don’t agree then we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
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That's a relief. But I'm going to leave a parting shot. Chomsky was as flat-out wrong about his predictions as Bill O'Reilly was about WMDs. But even such a toad as Bill O'Reilly has admitted publically that he was wrong. Chomsky and his supporters, such as yourself, hide behind these elaborate justifications.

This is every bit as disgusting to me as when, during the 1980s, Republicans glossed over the wrongness of Iran-Contra, for approximately the same reasons.
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No problem about the lengthy reply...here`s another one...it`s just that these things need a little meat on the bones, don`t you agree?

So, you are arguing (I hope I`ve got this right...correct me if I`m wrong), that food was coming in from other sources than the UN World Food Program (WFP) -thus invalidating their warnings and estimates.
You've picked the nit, allow me to step on it for you.

My argument doesn’t fall down because the figures given by the UN (and +quoted+ by the Chomsky) were for the entire aid effort to Afghanistan, which incorporated the efforts of all the NGO’s operating in the area. It was the WFP that set the aid targets and coordinated the NGOs to meet them. To quote the NYT article that Chomsky originally cited,

“In fact, by the arithmetic of the United Nations, there will soon be 7.5 million Afghans in acute need of even a loaf of bread. The World Food Program has set a target of delivering 52,000 tons of wheat per month into Afghanistan. But with bombs falling, fewer trucks are entering. This past week, only 6,000 tons were sent, a dangerous shortfall.” (NYT October 15th 2001)

The WFP coordinated all the NGOs in Afghanistan, so I’m afraid you can’t make the argument that ‘the UN and the US government are not the only sources of food relief’ because the UN estimates and subsequent reports took into to account all NGOs operating. It’s standard practice in an urgent situation like that for there to be central coordination by the most competent authority -that’s one of the main functions of the WFP. Standard practice, I’m afraid, so that everyone knows what they’re doing. To quote the WFP on the matter at the time:

“WFP has now signed distribution plans with more than 61 NGOs to provide over 300,000 tonnes of food aid to six million people in the next three-six months.

Each agreement stipulates how many people the NGO is feeding, the quantity of aid they require for the next six months and where they want WFP to deliver the food.” (WFP, DELIVERING FOOD AID TO AFGHANISTAN: BEATING THE CLOCK available at http://www.wfp.org/newsroom/in_depth/afghanistan-11_9_01.html ). There may possibly have been one or two small NGOs operating outside of the WFP umbrella but there is no evidence for it, it is extremely unlikely, and, even if they were, their effect would be negligible.

This also means that your second point:

“I remember the Red Cross/Red Crescent announcing that they had gotten all the food they needed for relief during the winter actually into and distributed within Afghanistan two weeks ahead of schedule.”

Which may be true (you offer only your memory) is irrelevant, since the RC was only one component of the WFP effort. In fact, for the record, the WFP only reached its target of 52,000 tons per month by November 16th 2001 (Breakthrough: Wfp Hits Target For Food Deliveries Into Afghanistan, WFP Press Release 16/11/01 available at http://www.wfp.org/index.asp?section=2 )

This was a full 40 days after bombing had commenced on October 7th. Also, just to clarify, there was no ‘blockade’ of Afghanistan as such. The US ordered Pakistan to close its bordes on September 16th (NYT) thus terminating truck deliveries but the WFP was able to resume sending aid on a sporadic basis on September 25th by air (WFP timeline http://www.wfp.org/newsroom/in_depth/afghanistan-10_16_01.html ).

Pakistan was still refusing to relent on this as late as 27th Sept. (NYT reported that officials in Pakistan ‘said today that they would not relent in their decision to seal off the country's 1,400- mile border with Afghanistan, a move requested by the Bush administration because, the officials said, they wanted to be sure that none of Mr. bin Laden's men were hiding among the huge tide of refugees’). However, truck deliveries were able to resume sporadically on the 29th (WFP Press Release, 29/09/01 http://www.wfp.org/index.asp?section=2 )

If you have any other nits you need dealing with, please let me know.
Your disgust at my replies in this thread seems to assume I am being disingenuous with my position, I assure you I am not. That`s not to say I can`t be wrong but I`m not arguing against prevailing opinion here for the fun of it. Hope you get that straight.